MOULTON (MULTON), John (d.1399/1400), of Norwich, Norf.

Moulton was one of six citizens from Mancroft leet who, together with a like number from each of the other three districts, elected the bailiffs of Norwich in September 1369. During his own first bailiffship, in 1379, he joined with another citizen in making a grant of four stalls in the fishmarket in the parish of St. Peter Mancroft to the committee recently authorized to hold property for the general benefit of the community. He is known to have attended meetings of the civic assembly in November 1379 and June 1380. At the time of the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 he was among the leaders of the community chosen to treat with the rebels outside the gates, offering them large bribes to persuade them not to enter. In 1386, in the course of his second bailiffship, when an invasion by the French was expected, he was made a member of an emergency council under the bishop of Norwich, Henry Despenser, whose task was to arm the inhabitants and prepare the city defences ‘in order for war’. As bailiff he shared responsibility for making returns to the Parliaments of 1385 and 1386.Recs. Norwich, i. 269; F. Blomefield, Norf. iii. 108, 112; C219/8/12, 9/1; Norf. RO, Norwich ‘Domesday bk.’, f. 15; assembly roll 3 Ric. II.

Moulton was often asked by fellow citizens, among them Roger Blickling, to act as a trustee of their property in Norwich, or as an executor of their wills.Norwich enrolments, 14 mm. 1d, 5d, 24, 32, 15 mm. 1d, 4. His own property holdings were quite extensive. From 1377 until his death he leased from the local authorities a shop ‘under the Morageloft’, and he was also the city’s tenant of a building ‘at the head of the Tolhouse’, paying for these together 34s. a year. In 1380 his uncle, Richard Moulton, made him an executor of his will, and as such he sold a house in St. Stephen’s parish. Elsewhere, he retained messuages in the parishes of St. Mary Coselany and St. Gregory, his principal holdings, however, being in the parish of St. Peter Mancroft, where he and his wife possessed shops, gardens, a tavern and a large house boasting an underground vault with a kitchen built over it, a shop and a solar.Recs. Norwich, ii. 245; Norwich enrolments, 14 mm. 2d, 4, 4d, 7d, 8d, 13, 17, 21d, 15 mm. 26d, 28, 33, 36; deed box 9 no. 254. Moulton is last recorded in June 1399 when he made an assignment of a rent from a shop in the ‘Overrowe’, and he died within seven months. By his will, enrolled in the city court on 12 Feb. 1400, he left most of his property to his widow for life, then to be sold for pious uses.Norwich enrolments, 15 m. 38, 16 mm. 2, 2d.