John Clavering, a parish priest with an M.A. degree from Oxford who bounced around from one lucrative parish to another (in 1493 he was both rector of Twickenham and vicar of Staines),[1] seems also to have dabbled in the retail of wine: when a man named Swan failed to pay him for some wine, despite having sworn a promise to do so in the bishop’s palace before two other men, Clavering sued him for breach of faith. Perhaps simply the launch of the suit was enough to prompt Swan to pay up, as there is only one deposition in the case, from one of Clavering’s clerical colleagues.
[Shannon McSheffrey and Collin Bonnell]
LMA, MS DL/C/A/001/MS09065, fol. 180r
Testimony of Sir Richard Wodhouse, 24 Jan. 1494
24 January by the lord Official in Pardon church-hawe, in my, Richard Grome’s, presence.
Sir Richard Wodhouse, vicar of Witham [Essex], London diocese, where he has lived for a year, literate, of free condition, fifty-two years old as he says. Sworn as a witness etc., he says that he has known Master John Clavering for three years and Richard Swan from the day about which he is about to depose below. To the first article, he says that on a certain day in the month of December three years ago, this witness was present in the palace[2] together with Thomas Jutillesham, Master Clavering, and John Swan, when and where after many things were discussed between them, Swan promised Master John by his faith to settle with him for the wine on the following day. To the second and third articles, he knows nothing to depose except by what Master John told him. To the fourth article, he says that what he said above is true, and that public voice and fame circulated and circulate about it in the house of the lord bishop of London.
[1] See A. B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A. D. 1500, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), 1:426.
[2] Presumably the palace of the bishop of London, by St. Paul’s cathedral.
Consistory 