Whatley’s background remains obscure, although he may possibly have been a kinsman of the London woolmonger, John Whatelegh, who helped to supply the City with grain in 1358. A mercer named John Whatley stood surety for John of Northampton, John More and Richard Norbury after their banishment from London as dangerous radicals in 1386. It was almost certainly he, rather than the subject of this biography, who was owed a debt of £40 by another merchant some six years later, since our Member did not complete his articles of apprenticeship until about 1396, being admitted to the livery of the Mercers’ Company one year later. The appearance of a John Whatley ‘citizen and mercer of London’ as one of John More’s executors in 1410 and 1412 might suggest that More’s former mainpernor and the MP were one and the same person, but on chronological grounds alone it seems far more likely that there was some longstanding family connexion between More and successive generations of Whatleys.
For most of his life Whatley played an important part in the affairs of the Mercers’ Company, serving as warden for no less than four terms between 1400 and 1428. He learnt his trade under William Sheringham, and took on the first of his many apprentices while still a relatively young man in 1398. His commercial interests seem to have grown rapidly and taken him abroad, probably to Flanders, for it was then that he obtained a papal indult for a portable altar to be used in the event of his doing business ‘in schismatic or other interdicted places’. His inclusion among the eight senior mercers ‘de sagesse et discrecion’ chosen by their fellows to settle a dispute which divided the Company during the early years of the 15th century shows how much authority he already possessed in this quarter.
Some of Whatley’s other transactions were on an equally large scale and possibly involved the provision of credit facilities for members of the gentry. In February 1410, for example, he joined with his fellow mercer, William Marchford, in promising to pay £600 to Sir John Lumley and William Mayhew over the next four years. These recognizances were cancelled shortly afterwards on Lumley’s request and identical ones made out in favour of the draper, William Cromer. Between July 1416 and November 1420, Whatley tried to recover at least £175 which various persons, including John Hobildod, had failed to pay by the required date.
It is now impossible to determine exactly how much property Whatley owned in London, since he was so often called upon to act as a trustee that his own purchases cannot easily be distinguished from those made by other people. We know from his will that he owned a tenement called ‘Le Worme’ in St. Christopher’s parish and another in the parish of St. Mary Colechurch, both of which were in his hands by August 1425. He was, furthermore, a party to settlements of land, rents and buildings in at least 13 other London parishes. On some occasions his interest was without doubt that of a feoffee—as, for example, when he became involved in conveyances made by and for the mercer, John Shadworth, and Henry Julian. The latter, who was for a time Whatley’s co-warden of London Bridge, joined with him in securing property in Greenwich for the Bridge estates.
Although Whatley held only one important civic office, he was regarded as a man of some consequence by his fellow Londoners. In July 1411 he was appointed to audit certain private accounts submitted to the city chamberlain; and on at least four occasions between May 1420 and September 1426 he acted as an arbitrator in mercantile disputes being heard by the court of aldermen. His presence is recorded at several meetings of this court and of the common council in August 1421 and January 1423; and subsequently, in July 1425, Robert Tattersall, then alderman of Broad Street Ward, chose Whatley to act as his deputy. In the following October the mercer sat on a jury at the husting court of London: he also attended the parliamentary elections held there in November 1422 and February 1426.
Towards the end of his life, in July 1427, Whatley obtained a second papal indult, this time allowing him to have mass celebrated before daybreak. He was still alive in October of the following year, but died before 11 June 1432. In his will, only part of which was entered on the husting roll, he set aside all the property he is definitely known to have held in London for the upkeep of a chantry in St. Christopher’s church. He does not appear ever to have been married or to have had any children, but evidence of this may well have been lost.