OLIVER, William II

Although a chaloner (manufacturer of bedspreads) by trade, Oliver may have had other commercial interests as well, since on one occasion (perhaps in the early 1430s) he, John Moreys and William Wodeward sold a blacksmith’s goods and chattels to two other burgesses.4 C1/1489/43. During the third of his five known terms as bailiff, he presided over an inquest for Stephen Baret, a ‘kerver’ from Gloucester whom a fellow townsman, the mason Henry Grene, had stabbed to death in St. Nicholas’s churchyard in July 1440. Indicted of the crime before Oliver and his co-bailiff, John Rede, Grene escaped any serious consequences since he was able to sue out a royal pardon in October 1442.5 CPR, 1441-6, p. 134. It was as ‘coroner’ that Oliver held the inquest, but it is possible that by this date the office had been absorbed by that of bailiff and was no longer an independent responsibility: VCH Glos. iv. 33.

Oliver was again bailiff when the burgesses of Gloucester secured a royal charter of July 1447, a response to a petition from them about their fee farm of £60 p.a. In the petition they had asserted that the town’s economic hardships made this sum too great a burden for it to bear and that the bailiffs were being forced to meet £20 of the farm out of their own goods, meaning that nobody would serve in that office in the future. To make up the shortfall, the charter gave them the right to build two new water-mills on the Severn, free from of any imposts to the Crown.6 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 70-71. It was also during Oliver’s last known term as bailiff that the burgesses forfeited certain financial securities they had provided to two justices of oyer and terminer, William Yelverton* and Giles Brydges*. In the following February, however, the Crown issued letters in favour of Oliver and his erstwhile co-bailiff Henry Dode*, as well as of their successors as bailiffs, of the commonalty of Gloucester and of John Butler*, the sheriff of Gloucestershire in 1446-7, freeing them all from any claims it might have against them with regard to this matter.7 CPR, 1446-52, p. 126; E159/224, brevia Hil. rot. 20.

Still alive in early 1453 when he attested the return of Gloucester’s burgesses to the Parliament of that year, Oliver was certainly dead by 1455 when his widow Elizabeth was recorded as holding a ‘principal tenement’ in Southgate Street and two cottages in Travel Lane.8 Gloucester Rental, 12, 14. In October 1459 she had dealings with Thomas West*, an esquire of Henry VI’s household who had arrived in Gloucester to purvey food and drink for the King’s army. West set off for Gloucester, presumably from Ludlow where Henry was then based, on 12 Oct., the day the royal forces confronted the Yorkists at Ludford Bridge. Among those from whom he obtained victuals was Elizabeth, who supplied him with a pipe of ale worth 12d. She was still owed this sum in the following February when the King directed the Exchequer to issue West with funds to reimburse her and her fellow victuallers.9 E404/71/4/25.