Family and Education

m. Maud (d.1413), 1da.

Offices Held

Bailiff, Dorchester Mich. 1397-8.1

Tax collector, Dorset Nov. 1404.

Biography

Westpray is first heard of in 1391 when he acquired a messuage and four acres of land near Dorchester. However, so far as is known, the rest of his property lay within the town walls, where he and his wife made several purchases. Among these was a burgage adjoining one he already held in South Street, conveyed to him and his wife in 1399 by Robert Veel* and others. Another property in the same street, which he apparently bought in 1409, was disposed of just four years later. Westpray was named as one of the four burgesses making the return for the borough to Henry V’s first Parliament, in May 1413, but he died before the end of the year. It was as his widow that, on 2 Dec. following, Maud made a will in which she bequeathed to her grand daughter Joan, daughter of William Clerk I* of Weymouth, two tenements which, failing direct heirs, were to be sold and the proceeds distributed for her own and her late husband’s souls.2

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: E.M. Wade

Notes

• 1. Recs. Dorchester ed. Mayo, 128.
• 2. Dorset Feet of Fines, ii. 214; Recs. Dorchester, 138, 176, 199, 200; C219/11/2.