Family and Education

Offices Held

Cofferer of the guild merchant, Reading 1400; mayor Mich. 1404-5, 1407-8, 1418-19, 1422-3.2

Biography

Hunt, a tailor, owned property both in Reading and at nearby Whitley. Apart from his own parliamentary service, in the course of which John Pernecote* and John Kent I* were among his mainpernors, he himself stood surety for Vachell and Balet in September 1388, and for Shortwade in 1395. He was also present at the local elections of 1413 (May), 1417, 1419, 1420, 1421, 1422 and 1423. (In the election of December 1421 he appears, unusually, to have witnessed his own return to Parliament.)3 This involvement in parliamentary representation together with his service as cofferer and at least four times mayor, make Hunt one of the most prominent of Reading burgesses.

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: Charles Kightly

Notes

• 1. Described as ‘tailor’ in the return (C219/10/3). Possibly it had been his brother, John Hunt ‘butcher’, who had sat in the Parliaments of 1383 and 1399. In 1400 that John granted 6d. a year pension from an endowment made by his wife Alice Erwaker to the cofferers of Reading (who included his brother the tailor). He died before Jan. 1409; Reading Pub. Lib. deeds, 88, 89; CAD, i. A556.
• 2. Reading deeds, 88, 89, 106, 107, 109; cofferers’ accts. R/F/A/1423-4; C219/12/3, 13/1, 2; C. Coates, Hist. Reading, app. xiv.
• 3. Reading deeds, 97, 106-9; C219/9/5, 11, 11/1, 12/2-6, 13/1, 2.