Family and Education

m. (1) by 1391, Margery; (2) by 1425, Joan.

Offices Held

Bailiff, Dartmouth Mich. 1409-10, 1411-12; mayor 1422-3.1

Collector of customs and subsidies, Dartmouth 20 Nov. 1415-16, Dartmouth and Exeter Feb. 1416-Mich. 1419.

Commr. of inquiry, Devon Feb. 1418 (illegal seizure of a ship).

Dep. butler, Dartmouth and Kingsbridge Nov. 1418-1422.

Water bailiff, Dartmouth by Nov. 1419-c.1423.2

Biography

In 1391 Glover and his first wife purchased a garden in Dartmouth, and later, with his second wife, he occupied a house on the sea-front.3 He also appears as a feoffee of other properties in the town on behalf of a former mayor, Richard Henry, and of a wealthy merchant of Bridport, William Mountfort II*.4

Little is known of Glover’s mercantile activities before his only election to Parliament, but certainly by that date his business in the Gascon wine trade was well established. In March 1403 the Seinte Anne of the Gironde was frieghted at La Rochelle by Glover and other merchants with a cargo of wine for shipment to London, but when sailing up the Channel she was captured by a fleet commanded by John Brandon* of Bishop’s Lynn and taken to Dartmouth. The mayor was ordered to deliver the vessel and its cargo to Glover, but it seems that the latter failed to obtain full compensation for his losses, for in July 1405 he filed a private suit against Brandon in the central courts. Another incident at sea involved his partner in that venture, Richard Garner of Piedmont: when La Marie Knight of Sluys, which Garner had freighted with wine, was captured and taken to Dartmouth in 1408, Glover and three other prominent Dartmouth men undertook to hand over the merchandise to him if he could prove his ownership before the King’s Council, but otherwise agreed to share it out among the owners of the vessels party to the capture. For four years Glover served as a collector of customs in Dartmouth and the Exe estuary, but in 1419 a jury from the hundred of East Budleigh gave evidence to a royal commission at Exeter that he had concealed from the Exchequer duties paid in February 1418 and between May and Michaelmas that year.5 Although he was not re-appointed to the customs service, he did continue in office as deputy butler in Dartmouth and Kingsbridge until Henry V’s death, and as water bailiff of Dartmouth for roughly the same length of time.

Glover is last recorded in 1428, when he was chosen to arbitrate in a suit pending before the court of admiralty regarding a barge seized by an English fleet from certain Breton merchants. When he died is not known, but in 1464 all his property in Dartmouth went to St. Saviour’s church to help found the chapel of St. John the Baptist, where prayers were to be said for his soul.6

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

• 1. E368/182; H.R. Watkin, Dartmouth, 184; SC6/827/7.
• 2. Sel. Cases Law Merchant (Selden Soc. xlix), 183.
• 3. Watkin, 78, 79, 107.
• 4. Ibid. 75, 97, 98; C146/10094.
• 5. CPR, 1401-5, p. 276; CCR, 1402-5, pp. 43, 524; CIMisc. vii. 376, 572.
• 6. Watkin, 140-1, 392.