Connections between John the Town Clerk, his wife Kathrine, John's parents and the flourishing foreign community of merchants in London can readily by seen. First three tiers of people inhabited London in the period. First were citizens, a legal status, which John claimed for himself. Second were the denizens, groups of permanent resident foreigners. Lastly were the aliens. This second and third group of individuals resided in special areas of London, the Picards in their neighborhood, the Italians in theirs and the Flemings in another. When special taxes were levied on these groups, called tallage, many of these people made written protest. The documents survive and we can easily see what areas of London the foreign business people lived. One such area was Cornhill, where John choose to reside. His parents were members of a Cornhill church and were buried there. Kathrine Carpenter's will also reveals her connections with two additional neighborhoods with a high number of denizens, perhaps with connections to her own probable denizen family. The fact that John Carpenter became town Clerk at all, implies a connection to foreign trade. One needn't be an English citizen at all to be even the Mayor of London. In the 1300s a Picard wine Merchant was mayor of both London and Calais at the same time! Another factor with these groups of people are the loans they made to the crown. Any military adventure, and there were many, had to be financed with foreign money. Did the Carpentiers become the Carpenters and English citizens, with a town clerk's position as well as a very important bishop's postion, though the financial backing of the English crown? Sincerely, Bruce E. Carpenter