WALTON, William

Walton was a native of Hythe, where his father and namesake served as a jurat during the reigns of Henry IV and Henry V. Hythe recs., jurats’ accts. 1412-13, H 1052, ff. 1, 46. The elder William paid maltolts on fish, and it was as a fish seller that he incurred a fine in 1408. He was dead by 1419 when his widow and executrix accounted for his maltolts. Hythe recs., hundred ct. pprs., H 1027; jurats’ acct. bk. 1419, H 1054, f. 13. The MP initially comes into view in March 1424, acting as his mother’s attorney in the bailiff’s court at Hythe where she was pursuing debtors of her late husband. He himself was sued for debt there by the local lawyer, Stephen Alby*, in October 1431. H 1018, ff. 39, 108.

After becoming a jurat of Hythe in February 1436, Walton sat regularly as such in the same court. According to local accounts, he accompanied the town’s representatives to a meeting of the Cinque Ports’ Brodhull in April 1442, although he himself did not attend the Brodhull as an official delegate until two years later. It was also in 1444 that he was chosen as the purser of a cogship that Hythe put to sea for the crossing of Margaret of Anjou to England. H 1055, ff. 43v, 45; White and Black Bks. 15, 17. For the next decade or so, Walton was frequently employed on extraordinary business for the Port of Hythe. In 1445 he was in the delegation of jurats which rode to Dover to meet Gervase Clifton*, the duke of Gloucester’s lieutenant in the Ports, in connexion with a dispute with a Folkestone man, and two years later he rode to London for discussions about the office of bailiff of Hythe with Archbishop Stafford. In 1450 he travelled to Dover, New Romney and London for meetings with James Fiennes*, Lord Saye and Sele, the warden of the Cinque Ports, an errand for which he claimed expenses of 6s. 8d. H 1055, ff. 62v, 109v, 144. Between July 1446 and April 1454, he also attended six meetings of the Brodhull, and on one occasion, on 15 Oct. 1450, he did so as the deputy bailiff of Hythe. White and Black Bks. 21-32. Walton also served as one of the chamberlains of his Port, with a fee of 10s., in the later 1440s, H 1055, f. 95. and as its bailiff in the mid to late 1450s. It was as bailiff that he attended a meeting of the Brodhull in July 1454, although the new archbishop, Bourgchier, did not officially grant him the office until the following December, and he would not hold his first court as such until 8 Feb. 1455. In order to secure this office for Walton, the jurats of Hythe compensated Henry Fitzjohn, to whom Archbishop Bourgchier had earlier granted it, with the sum of 46s. 8d. H 1019, f. 56v. In part at least, the delay in the holding of Walton’s first court as bailiff may have resulted from his election as one of the Cinque Ports’ bailiffs at Yarmouth on 21 July 1454, an office for which he was able to claim an allowance of 2s. a day from his maltolts. H 1023, f. 52; H 1055, ff. 183, 187; H 1078; White and Black Bks. 33.

It was therefore as bailiff and one of the most experienced of Hythe’s jurats that Walton entered the Parliament of 1455. Following their election at the town’s Common Hall on 19 June that year, he and his fellow MP, Robert Christian*, agreed to serve for 2s. a day once they arrived in London, as had Thomas Honywood* and Thomas Stace* during the previous Parliament. While the length of Walton’s parliamentary service is unrecorded, the reason for his election is clear. On the previous 15 Apr. the Brodhull had ordered him and Christian to sue for a remedy for the ‘undewe vexacion’ they had suffered while at Yarmouth the previous year, although the precise nature of these difficulties is unknown. White and Black Bks. 34.

Following his return from Parliament, Walton’s career proceeded very much as before. He continued to serve as jurat and he attended five meetings of the Brodhull between April 1456 and April 1459. Ibid. 35-40. He was involved in organizing Hythe’s ship service in 1456-7, a duty which involved his riding to Canterbury and New Romney and for which he was able to claim expenses of 7s., mainly for the cost of hiring horses. H 1019, ff. 52v, 56v. Walton’s last recorded duty as a jurat of Hythe was his attendance at the Brodhull on 3 Apr. 1459. He was not among the jurats chosen on 2 Feb. 1460, by which date he was presumably already dead. His widow appeared before the jurats on the following 21 Jan. and accounted for her late husband’s maltolts, where it was found that the commonalty of Hythe still owed him 21s. 3¼d., mainly for his time as bailiff. Ibid. f. 99. Thomasina Walton’s involvement in her late husband’s affairs did not end there. In 1463 the Brodhull ordered the bailiff of Hythe to arrest her at the request of one of her late husband’s creditors, John Archer I* of Hastings. White and Black Bks. 47. Five years earlier, the bailiff of Hythe had put the dispute between Walton and Archer to the arbitration of Robert Christian, Thomas Russell II* and Giles Christopher: H 1023, f. 105.

The dispute with Archer was almost certainly related to Walton’s commercial dealings. The MP’s reckoning for his maltolts show him to have traded in various commodities, most commonly grain and livestock. He also sold ale and beer, but does not appear to have brewed it himself. He paid his maltolts in Middle Ward, as had his father, and the property he owned in Hythe brought him a rental income of 20s. p.a. by the time of his death. H 1019, ff. 56v, 72, 99; H 1055, ff. 6, 21, 69v, 116, 144, 157, 171, 187. Walton also claimed exemption from parliamentary taxation in Folkestone hundred in 1430, and (like his father) he also received allowances in the nearby hundreds of Street, Worth and Heane. E179/124/83; 124/93; 225/48/61, 64. Walton’s widow continued to pay maltolts in her own right for brewing ale until 1482, Hythe recs., jurats’ acct. bk. 1467-84, H 1058, ff. 5v, 64v, 101v, 124, 161v, 180, 201, 214, 225. and it is possible that the Thomas Walton†, who in sat in Parliament for Hythe in 1487, was her son by the MP.