Nicholas Wotton

Nicholas Wotton was a wealthy and influential Londoner who held a prominent place in civic affairs. During his early years, his chief interest lay in the wool trade, in which he invested heavily. Between October 1397 and March 1408 he had royal licenses to ship a minimum of 555 sarplers of wool and 4,000 woolfells to Calais.

The evidence of Wotton’s rising fortunes is to be found in a series of loans which he made to the Crown. In 1407, for example, he joined with two other merchants in advancing £1,200 to Henry IV (r. 1399 – 1413) ‘for the defence of the kingdom’. Wotton and his partners were then excused customs duties on wool exported through the ports of London, Chichester and Sandwich until the debt had been repaid. He continued the practice of high loans to the Crown during the reigns of Henry V (r. 1313 – 1322) and Henry VI (r. 1322 – 1361 and 1370 – 1371).

Wotton invested his income to land and had established himself as a landowner of some consequence. In London he possessed shops and tenements in the parishes of All Hallows the Great, St. Lawrence Pountney and St. Magnus the Martyr. In 1397 Wotton acquired a joint interest in the manor of Bruscombe in Egerton, Kent, which subsequently became his alone, together with other land and manors extending in a wide arc from central Kent to the Isles of Thanet and Sheppey. His possessions in Kent, Essex and Surrey were assessed at £147 a year, but the valuation, made for tax purposes, takes no account of the land in and around Kingston-upon-Thames and Kingston Blount in Oxfordshire which Wotton acquired in 1424 and promptly settled upon his feoffees, so he must have been very wealthy indeed.

Wotton played an active part in civic government for over 44 years during which time he twice served as mayor of London, in 1415 and 1430, and was six times a Member of Parliament.