Family and Education

Offices Held

Biography

Save for his single return to Parliament nothing is known about this Member before November 1422, when royal letters of pardon were issued to one William Cornwall of Hereford, gentleman, who had previously been outlawed for his failure to appear in court when being sued by Hethersett for a debt of £10. The case was begun in London, which seems to have been Hethersett’s home from the early 1420s onwards if not before. During the course of a second lawsuit brought by him at this time for the recovery of 40s. from a Nottingham wool merchant he is said to have been living in London; and in June 1426 an intruiging reference occurs to John Hethersett ‘citizen and fishmonger of London, described also as of Bishop’s Lynn, clerk, and of Northampton, fishmonger’. On this occasion yet another of his customers, a Buckinghamshire landowner named John Fitzjohn, managed to avoid the settlement of his account after litigation in the royal courts. All this evidence suggests that the MP did business on a fairly large scale; and towards the end of his life, at least, he owned his own warehouse on the Thames. The will of his neighbour, Margaret Morys, drawn up in May 1433, disposed of certain property in the parish of St. Faith, ‘situate near the house of John Hethersett, fishmonger, called Le Herynghows’, so he was evidently a figure of some substance by this date.1

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: C.R.

Notes

Variants: Hederset(e), Hedirsete, Hethershede.

• 1. CPR, 1422-9, pp. 24, 152, 236, 312; Cal. Wills. ct. Husting London ed. Sharpe, ii (2), 470-1.