A 1464 Patent Rolls document sheds new light on John Carpenter, Town Clerk of London. We can see that by 1464 he was deceased and that 1464 connected him to the ‘mercer’ trade, at least during his years in London. “ …..and all other lands thereto annexed, and all lands, rents and services in the parishes of St. Mary Wolnoth and St. Michael upon Cornhull London, sometime of Michael de la Pole earl of Suffolk, which the grantor had jointly with William Estfeld, John Fray then chief baron of the exchequer, Henry Frowyk, William Milreth, John Olney late citizens and aldermen of London, Hugh Dyke, John Carpenter the younger, Richard Ryche citizens and mercers, Thomas Walsyngham, John Wilton, Rodger Birkes, Thomas Dukmaton and John Kirkeby chaplain, all now deceased, by demise and feoffment of William Phelip, Thomas Tudenham (Todenham),knights, John Hampden and Thomas Haseley; Ralph Josselyn being mayor of London, John Tate and John Stone sheriffs. Witnesses: Thomas Cooke, Matthew Philip, Richard Lee, Hugh Wythe, Thomas Wenslowe. Dated London, 21 November 4 Edward IV.” May of the names read like a whos-who of London finance and politics of the time. Henry Frowyk appears in other documents with John Carpenter. Henry was once mayor of London and himself a prominent mercer. Thomas Cooke’s father Robert Cooke was associated with the Carpenter brothers during their draper days in Lavenham. The mercer connection here does much to explain Town Clerk John’s tenure as Town Clerk under Whittington’s tenure as mayor of London. Whittington was a mercer. Carpenter’s role in the formal mercer organization is well explained in vol. I of William Herbert’s THE HISTORY OF THE TWELVE GREAT LIVERY COMPANIES OF LONDON, pp. 226-7. Carpenter was a warden of the organization with a John Coventry and William Grove. These three figures together gained formal recognition of the mercers as a guild by the king, Henry VI. John Carpenter was in a sense a charter member of the mercer’s organization and their rise to prominence in London finance and politics. Herbert also alludes to a existing portrait of John Carpenter, still in existence by the 1800s. The mercers were largely retailers of wool cloth by about 1400. From that point on they also sold silks and velvets. Previous identifications of all three Carpenter brothers, and father Richard, with the wool cloth manufacturing business (draper trade), are by no means a contradiction. Multiple business connections in the period were extremely common. The Carpenters seem to have made wool cloth outside of London, and then retailed it within the city. It is not difficult to imagine them selling their own cloth, or even the cloth made from wool of their own sheep. Town Clerk John and his family members were entrepreneurs of the highest order. All of the above will begin to illuminate kindred groups and their activities outside the city into the late 1400s. One such group I have already discovered in Reading Berkshire. Bruce E. Carpenter