MOSE, Robert, of Dorchester, Dorset.

Both of Robert Mose’s elections to Parliament took place while he was bailiff, a post he held for four terms in all. Clearly a prominent member of the community, he was one of just four burgesses who took to the county court of Dorset the returns for the borough to the Parliaments of 1425, 1426, 1429, 1431, 1432, 1435 and 1437, on three of these occasions (1426, 1429 and 1437) also taking part in the election of the knights of the shire. Although he is not known to have held land outside Dorchester, within the town he was a property owner of some note. In 1412 he had acquired two tenements with curtilages in South Street, and he bought more, in High Street and West Street, subsequently. However, a burgage with a dovehouse which he purchased in 1420 from John Roger I was sold again within a few months. It was perhaps merely as a feoffee-to-uses that in 1421 he obtained all the premises held in chief in Dorchester by Alice, widow of Henry Cravell.Ibid. 189, 196, 204, 221, 227-8, 230, 236, 248. In 1424 he made a further purchase in South Street and in the following year John Gouvitz released to him and his wife, Joan, another tenement there. As co-executors of the will of John Syward senior, Gouvitz and Robert Veel conveyed to Mose and his wife a property in West Street and three years later, in 1428, quite likely in the same capacity, they granted them two burgages in ‘Durnelane’, Dorchester, and another in Melcombe Regis. Again in 1428, Mose shared in the acquisition of a house in West Street, this time from the executors of John Jordan of Wolfeton. Meanwhile, in 1421, he had himself been named with Jordan as an administrator of the will of Robert Greenleaf alias Baker, another burgess of Dorchester, a task which was still keeping him busy in 1428. It was in this year too that the MP transferred to John Mose, possibly his son, ownership of a burgage in ‘Pyselane’ he had acquired two years earlier from William Fytheler.Ibid. 243, 255-7, 261, 264, 269, 272.