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It is quite likely that this MP was the John Bakwell of Somerset who, at the time of the Parliament in question, was active in the service of the Luttrells of Dunster. In January 1406 he had been paid 12s. for writing evidences for Sir Hugh Luttrell*, at a time when Luttrell’s title to Dunster, Minehead, Carampton and Kilton was being challenged by the coheirs of John, 2nd Lord Mohun. The suit took up some of the time of the Parliaments of 1406 and 1407, during which Sir Hugh, himself serving as a knight of the shire for Devon and supported in the earlier stages of the suit by John Luttrell* of Carampton, his kinsman who was then parliamentary burgess for Barnstaple, sought and won the backing of the Commons. From midsummer 1406 until 1417, if not over a longer period, Bakwell was the steward of Sir Hugh’s household, an officer who must have been of considerable use to him at the Gloucester Parliament of 1407. Apart from the report of Bakwell’s ride from Dunster to Bridgwater in April 1406 to fetch a friar for the wedding of the lord’s daughter, and his appearance as a witness to an indenture drawn up in October 1409 between Luttrell and Sir Baldwin Malet, no other details of his career are recorded.

H.C. Maxwell-Lyte, Hist. Dunster and Fams. Mohun and Luttrell, 83, 87, 95, 107, 356; Honour of Dunster (Som. Rec. Soc. xxxiii), 138.

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes