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Notes for William Stourton and Elizabeth Moigne

William Stourton's biography in The History of Parliament states, [1]

In his will, made on 20 July 1410, he had asked to be buried in the cloister of Witham priory. His body was to be wrapped only in a linen cloth: 'corpusque mourn putridum, nudum sicut deus me projecit in mundo, ita nudum sepeliendum'. Nothing ceremonious was to be done, save that alms were to be distributed among poor men, and no provision for masses of requiem was to be made. To his son, John, he left two missals, a psalter, a gradual, a portiforium, a book of legends of English saints, and a book of physic, and to his daughter, Margaret (later the wife of William Carent of Toomer) he bequeathed £200 for her dowry. Finally, to Thomas Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury (reverendo Domino meo et patri), he left a covered cup of gold. That Stourton’s will vilified his body and also prohibited requiem masses, seems to place it among the small series of so-called 'lollard wills'. Stourton had been associated with lollard sympathizers and, indeed, had once had in his possession (on loan) a copy of an illicit translation of the Bible. However, his support for Witham priory, and for the abbeys of Glastonbury and Shaftesbury, not to mention his bequest to Archbishop Arundel (whom he evidently held in esteem), would seem to mitigate against any idea that he was of doubtful orthodoxy.


Footnotes:

[1] J.S. Roskell, Linda Clark, and Carole Rawcliffe, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1386-1421, 4 vols. (Stroud: Alan Sutton for the History of Parliament Trust, 1992), [History of Parliament Online].