RESON, Walter

More may be added to the earlier biography. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 195-6.

Before his impressive parliamentary service for Wareham began, Reson was pricked as a juror at the assize of novel disseisin held at Dorchester in March 1414 in the suit between the abbess of Tarrant and Sir Robert Turberville† and his family – just one stage in their long-running quarrel over rights of jurisdiction at Bere Regis. C260/127/7c. He himself was no stranger to the law courts at Westminster. He appeared in the common pleas in person in Easter term 1424 to sue men from Blandford Forum for stealing his timber at Thorncomb, although in 1432, while he was attending his last Parliament, it was alleged by the master of the hospital of St. Nicholas of Salisbury that he himself had wasted land in the same neighbourhood which he held on a lease from the hospital. In the summer of 1426 he brought a plea in King’s bench against a chaplain from Stoke for assaulting his servant Alice Chaldecote at Wareham, asserting that the loss of her services had cost him as much as £10; and in later years he sued men of Wareham and Swanage for substantial debts. CP40/653, rot. 345; 686, rot. 237; 699, rot. 596; 715, rot. 36; 738, rot. 536; KB27/661, rot. 84d.

Reson’s experience in the service of the Crown, as an official handling large sums of money, had no doubt prompted the wealthy John Newburgh I (a fellow Member of the Commons of 1425, when Newburgh had represented the county) to ask him to be his bailiff and receiver at Combe Keynes. However, he allegedly failed to render full account for the profits of the estate, and in Trinity term 1441 Newburgh brought an action against him in the common pleas. In the record of the proceedings Reson was described as a merchant, but no details of his trading interests have been found. CP40/722, rot. 84d. He is not recorded after 1446.

Walter left descendants who continued to live in Wareham at least until the end of the century. His son John, who attested the Dorset elections of 1455, not only officiated as mayor of the town in 1458-9 and 1460-1, but also in the intervening year as portreeve. Dorset Nat. Hist. and Arch. Soc. lxv. 105; Dorchester Recs. ed. Mayo, 21-22; SC6/1113/14. For their kinship: CP40/789, rot. 447d. He was appointed a tax collector in Dorset in 1463. Of other relations, Richard Reson was a portreeve in 1468-9 and collector of rents in Wareham bef. Mich. 1482: SC6/834/6; 1114/4; and Agnes Reson, a prosperous widow, made her will in Wareham on 2 June 1496: PCC 4 Horne (PROB11/11, f. 33).