Little is recorded of Walden before the 1430s, by which time he had already established himself as a successful member of the Grocers’ Company in London. His admission to the livery of the Grocers at some point between 1439 and 1441 would suggest that he had obtained the freedom a decade or so before, but once again it is uncertain whether he was admitted to the franchise by redemption or through apprenticeship. Certainly, he had become active in the grocery trade in London long before he became a liveryman. A feature of the transactions entered into by him and other traders in this period was the increasing use of ‘gifts’ of goods and chattels as a means by which debts could be assigned to third parties. Bonds of this kind entered into by traders thus became legally negotiable instruments of credit. In 1436 Walden brought an action which, after it was heard before the mayor’s court, became the first in London to uphold the legal rights of third parties to whom bills had been assigned. He brought this suit because a bill of exchange, which had been made over to him in settlement of a debt, had not been honoured. Although the court upheld his claim there seems to have been some uncertainty at this time about the assignment of bills, as it was noted that he had brought the action in the name of the designated payee, not his own.
Walden’s involvement in the affairs of his Company was very much shaped by his growing prominence as a merchant of the Calais staple. His standing within the craft was reflected by his election as a warden on two occasions, in 1444 and 1454, and, once he had become an alderman, he was chosen to render the Company’s accounts with the wardens on two subsequent occasions. Despite this it seems clear that he was not as closely concerned as some of his fellow liverymen in matters affecting the domestic trade: in 1453 his name was absent from a list of prominent grocers who subscribed to an agreement concerning the great beam in Eastcheap, where many of their goods were weighed. This may well indicate that he was not using it, and that he was by then spending significant amounts of time in Calais.
The extent and location of Walden’s own property in the capital is unclear, mainly because it is difficult to distinguish those transactions in which he was involved as a feoffee from those which concerned tenements he himself held. In the course of his business dealings he and William Abraham, a vintner, may have acquired a wharf near Billingsgate from John Reynwell* in July 1443, and he was involved in another transaction concerning property in that part of London three years later, this time acting as a feoffee with Stephen Brown*, Thomas Catworth* and William Marowe*. It was probably after he became an alderman that Walden took out a lease on a large mansion in the Dowgate area which Reynwell had bequeathed to the City. At some point in his career he and his first wife, Elizabeth, acquired a residence of their own in Botolph’s Lane near Billingsgate, and in 1474 this, along with his lands at Lessness and Erith in Kent called ‘Garstons’ and ‘Nortons’, was bequeathed by their eldest son, Thomas, to another son, William. In his will Thomas also mentioned a wool-house in Calais which may originally have been acquired by his father.
It is uncertain when Walden himself became a merchant of the Calais staple, although it is probable that his business dealings were still centred on London in the early 1440s. In general, however, little is known of his trading activities outside the staple: unlike some of his fellow staplers he appears to have played no part in the export of cloth to the continent, and there is equally little to show that he imported other goods into the port of London. For most of his career he appears to have concentrated almost exclusively upon the wool trade which, though declining in relation to the levels of the late fourteenth century, could still produce large profits as long as Calais and the staplers might continue to exercise a monopoly over exports from England. The maintenance of this monopoly became a vital issue for the staplers from the late 1440s onwards as the Crown began to grant licences to foreign merchants, royal servants and others, enabling them to export wool through Calais free of customs duty, or even to places other than Calais. Related concerns for the staplers were the repayment of the loans which they had advanced to the Lancastrian government, and, following the loss of Normandy to the French, the security of Calais and its garrison. Walden was one of a small, but powerful, group of Londoners whose political allegiances and fortunes were shaped by their experiences as merchants of the staple during the 1450s, a period which saw the control of Calais become a priority for both the government of Henry VI and the duke of York, increasingly the most vocal critic of the government. Walden himself was one of the Crown’s principal creditors among the staplers. In October 1449 he was granted letters patent enabling him and John Harryngdon to recover £446 5s. 4d. over four years by shipping wool from London free of customs duty. This sum was part of a total of £10,700 which had been loaned by the staplers in the past, the repayment of which effectively meant that there would be little or no revenue available for other purposes at Calais until 1453. The following March a similar licence was granted to Walden, John Harowe* and others in respect of a loan of 400 marks. At the Parliament which met in November 1449 the staplers reiterated their demands for the restriction of licences to bypass the Calais staple, and with English fortunes in Normandy at their lowest ebb the Crown had no choice but to agree. In the meantime the staplers were also guaranteed an annual income from the Calais customs of £2,667.
The prominence of Londoners among the staplers served to create a powerful interest group in the City, whose views of the policies of the Lancastrian government were to prove highly influential. Several, including Walden, became members of the court of aldermen, and indeed by 1460 a fifth of the aldermanic bench in London were staplers.
On the part of the Londoners, Walden’s election may well have been directly related to the continuing complaints of the staplers about the granting of licences to bypass Calais. Formal proposals were presented, probably at the instigation of the Londoners, to deal with breaches of the earlier Act and to annul all existing licences; these were, not surprisingly, rejected by the Crown. In the meantime it had become even more apparent that the revenues from the wool trade were, in any case, inadequate for the funding of the Calais garrison: the Parliament was informed that the captain of Calais, Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, was himself owed £21,649 up to 6 June. The loans from the staplers could not match these needs either, and the Crown’s revenues from the customs were themselves reduced by the need to repay its debts. While Parliament was still in session Walden himself advanced the relatively small sum of £20 to the King.
In the meantime, the political climate had changed dramatically following Henry VI’s lapse into mental incapacity in the summer of 1453. Parliament reassembled in November but was swiftly prorogued until February 1454. In March the duke of York was appointed Protector, and in view of his longstanding rivalry with the King’s chief minister, the duke of Somerset, and the strategic importance of Calais, control of the town and its garrison became an important issue in the political struggle of the day. Soon after being made Protector, York made a formal bid for the captaincy of Calais in open Parliament, but it was clear that entry to the port could only be achieved by winning over the staplers and solving the problem of the funding of the garrison. York therefore turned to the staplers and opened negotiations with the mayor of the staple. The staplers, Walden among them, agreed to advance 10,000 marks for the wages of the garrison which was to be repaid over the next two years from the proceeds of a clerical tenth. In return, the merchants secured an undertaking for the renewal of assignments totalling some 12,000 marks in repayment of long outstanding loans and the reversal of bills introduced earlier in the parliamentary session which were deemed prejudicial to the interests and privileges of the staple. The terms of the agreement were settled before Parliament was dissolved in mid April, and the staplers duly paid the 10,000 marks into the Exchequer. This allowed York’s brother-in-law Viscount Bourgchier to open negotiations with the garrison itself.
In the event, York failed to secure admission to Calais during his first protectorate. A better opportunity arose a year later when, following his victory at the battle of St. Albans, he and his supporters controlled the government once more. He immediately appointed his wife’s nephew, Richard, earl of Warwick, as captain of Calais, but in order to secure the latter’s admission had to make an immediate offer to the staplers. An agreement was reached on 27 Oct. that year, but the staplers, wary of committing themselves to York, made sure that the sums they advanced could be recovered through the Calais customs. Further difficulties arose from the fraught relationship between the staplers and the garrison, and by the end of the year York had made concessions to both parties. Parliament, then in session, was informed of these arrangements, which included the payment of 26,500 marks by the staplers, representing the value of wool which had been sold by the garrison to fund their wages, and the delivery of obligations to Walden and five others in respect of subsidies on wool amounting to 9,703 marks 3s. 4d. An additional 2,000 marks was also needed for the soldiers’ wages, and an indenture between the victualler of Calais, Sir John Cheyne II*, and the mayor and named merchants of the staple, of whom Walden was one, acknowledged that Cheyne had delivered to them obligations in respect of this sum. In all, the agreement meant that the staplers could expect to recover some £39,000 from the customs at Calais. This, and the sums they themselves advanced to the Crown, meant that they had made a significant investment in Yorkist control of the port.
It is striking that these negotiations took place while Walden was serving his first term as the alderman of the Grocers’ Company responsible for overseeing the work of the wardens, and it is possible that this period saw the beginnings of the Company’s gradual shift of position towards the Yorkists. Certainly, the prominence of men such as Walden in London meant that the staplers’ changing attitude towards the Yorkists was reflected by an influential group of aldermen and commoners in the capital. They, in turn, represented a wider body of opinion which had for some time been unhappy at the government’s favourable treatment of alien merchants, particularly Italians, who were among those who acquired licences to avoid the Calais staple. A large body of circumstantial evidence suggests that a number of staplers, particularly mercers such as John Harowe, instigated the attacks upon aliens and upon the mayor and sheriffs in the spring of 1456.
At no time did the strategic importance of Calais become more apparent than in the summer of 1460 when it became the launching pad for the Yorkist lords’ invasion of England. By this time Walden was one of the most prominent of the London staplers: as well as serving as mayor of the staple in 1460-1 he himself exported no fewer than 383 sacks of wool through the staple. He and two other grocers together accounted for 18% of the denizen exports. His interests, and the interests of a number of members of his Company, were therefore clearly identified with the cause of the duke of York and his adherents.
Walden’s time as mayor of the staple did not pass without controversy, owing to the allegations made against him and other staplers by Richard Heyron, a merchant later described as ‘a man of ill condition and worse report’.
By this time it is probable that Walden was contemplating retirement from public life. On 3 Feb. 1464 the mayor and aldermen granted permission to the ‘venerable alderman’ to continue to hold his mansion house, formerly the property of John Reynwell, for life at an annual rent of £20 p.a.