Family and Education

m. Margery, 1s.

Offices Held

Jurat, Canterbury Mich. 1389-90, 1392-4, 1396-8, 1400-2, 1404-6; bailiff 1394-5;2 alderman of Westgate by June 1396-bef. Sept. 1409.

Biography

In 1391 Gervays purchased a house in Gravesend, but he normally lived in Canterbury, where he was engaged in the cloth trade. His two elections to Parliament both occurred while he was acting as a jurat of the city. In the summer of 1396 he acquired the aldermanry of Westgate, along with land in the suburbs of Canterbury.3 He also held the lease from February 1395, for a term of 101 years, of a tenement belonging to the Benedictine nuns of St. Sepulchre’s convent, which in his will, enrolled in the burghmote court in November 1410, he bequeathed to his wife Margery and Thomas Langdon*, presumably as his executors. His son John, who lived in Gravesend, died before 1443.4

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

• 1. Transcribed as ‘Gornay’ in OR, i. 245, but it was certainly Gervays who received wages for attending the Parliament: Canterbury Cathedral City and Diocesan RO, city accts. FA1, f. 6.
• 2. Canterbury accts. FA1, ff. 2, 9, 27, 31, 48, 53, 66, 70; burghmote reg. O/A1, f. 13; List of Canterbury Officials comp. Urry and Bunce, 48.
• 3. CP25(1)110/244/905, 247/977; E101/339/17, 18.
• 4. O/A1, f. 28; CP25(1) 115/317/583.