It is possible that the MP was the John William who in 1428-9 paid 6s. 8d. p.a. to the steward of Southampton for the use of a certain pool (‘gurgite’) in the water opposite the town, although there was a namesake then living in Southampton. The latter, the holder of a tenement on the east side of French Street from 1436 to 1445 and a garden by the West Hall from 1435 to 1450,
William’s inland trade was also busy, for he supplied tradesmen and inn-keepers of Winchester, Oxford, Andover, Newbury and Salisbury with wine and fish.
By that date William had served five terms as mayor and for more than 30 years had occupied a leading position among the rulers of Southampton. He had been the first sheriff elected after the granting of the royal charter of 1447 which turned the borough into an urban county. As mayor in February 1449 he was party to the electoral indenture to Parliament, and during this term of office he evidently tried to impose his authority over local trouble-makers in an attempt to put an end to the political dissension of the previous few years.On 19 Apr. certain of his leading opponents, John Payn I* and the latter’s son-in-law Thomas White among them, made a formal quitclaim and relaxation to him and others of all the actions, suits and quarrels between them from the beginning of the world to date. Yet underlying grievances were not laid to rest, for Payn, always one to harbour a grudge, brought a suit against William in the central courts at Westminster in October 1456, and accused Walter Clerk (the sheriff during William’s second mayoralty) of maintaining him in breach of the statutes. Although William was not to be a principal figure in the increasingly vituperative litigation between Payn and Clerk over the next four years, he remained on Clerk’s side. The two men had also been associated in a quarrel with John Chapman of Shaftesbury, the yeoman-porter to the duke of Somerset, who alleged that he had been wronged by them and Nicholas Holmehegge* during the latter’s mayoralty of 1454-5. Chapman had to be paid 33s. 4d. from the town funds before he would make a quitclaim of all his actions against them in November 1457.
Meanwhile, William had been one of 16 burgesses named on the parliamentary indenture of March 1453, and had himself been elected to Parliament in June 1455. His second election as mayor during the parliamentary recess that autumn led inevitably to neglect of his duties at home when the Commons were called to two more sessions, lasting 12 weeks altogether, before the dissolution in March 1456.
William’s final mayoralties of 1469-71 coincided with the gravest crises of Edward IV’s reign, and presented the MP with certain political dilemmas, which he seems to have resolved by quickly coming to terms with changes of regime. On 15 Oct. 1470, two days after Henry VI had been re-crowned, William instructed the steward of Southampton to pay 2s. to a gentleman in the service of Richard, earl of Warwick, to take a letter to him, and in January 1471 he authorized delivery of £11 to Warwick himself from the purser of the royal ship The Gracedieu. Meanwhile, he had proved willing to represent the borough in the Parliament of the Readeption. He had left Southampton on 23 Nov., returned home for Christmas, and gone back to Westminster on 19 Jan. for the second session, then staying there another 38 days. In all he was paid a total of £10 13s., but part of this was reimbursement for various payments he had made at the Exchequer. These had been necessary for a plea which Sir John Langstrother, the treasurer of England, instigated before the barons on 10 Dec. Langstrother informed the court that William, as mayor of Southampton, had seized for the King 40 butts of alum from an alien merchant who had failed to pay subsidies. Ownership of the cargo was claimed by John Neve, a London mercer, who asserted that the subsidies had been paid and William had wrongly seized the alum (a plea which later won the support of the restored Edward IV). A messenger who came to Southampton on 15 Apr. from the Lancastrian prince of Wales, recently arrived from Normandy with his mother Margaret of Anjou, was rewarded with 20d. Southampton was currently engaged in a lawsuit with Henry, duke of Buckingham, over the title to some local property, and at some point in 1470-1 William stayed in London at the Cardinal’s Hat near Newgate to have talks about it with the young duke’s council. Perhaps Southampton’s liberties came under threat when Edward IV regained his throne; in the summer William supervised a ‘grete serche’ in the Exchequer for evidences regarding the payment of Southampton’s fee farm over the centuries since the days of King John.
Over the years William was placed in positions of trust by his fellow merchants. Robert Hoton entrusted him with his goods and chattels in 1454, and in 1462 he was made a feoffee of the property of Joan, widow of both William Marche* and Nicholas Holmehegge, to implement her will with regard to the foundation of a chantry. He was one of the ‘venerable men of the town’ asked in 1463 by the relict of Adam Marsh to administer her four messuages for the rest of her life, paying her the rents and profits until they reverted on her death to the commonalty.
William remained involved in Southampton affairs until late in life. He was one of 15 burgesses named on the parliamentary indenture of 1472, is recorded present in the ‘counsaile hous’ when a certain royal commission was delivered there on 5 Jan. 1474, and was still active as an alderman in August that year, by which date his son, Walter, was officiating as town clerk. Indeed, for some weeks in 1474-5 he acted as lieutenant for the mayor while he was away from the town, and at Michaelmas 1475 he served as a j.p. there. His trading ventures, too, continued into the 1470s.
Walter William contested the claim of Agnes, widow of Vincent Pitlesden*, that his late father had failed to honour a bond in £20 to her previous husband Thomas Panter.