Cofferers' Accounts of the Gild Merchant

Slade lists John Veyre as mayor in 1430–1, while Guilding lists John Kyrkby as mayor (Reading Gild Accounts, pt 2, p 195; Reading Records, vol 1, p xxxviii). Slade has John Kyrkby serving the next year (Reading Gild Accounts, pt 2, pp 195–6). Slade is correct. The two historians were working with their own documents. The heading of the Cofferer's Account that ran from Michaelmas 1430–1 states that John Veyre is mayor. The first document from the Diary of the Corporation that Guilding publishes is dated 7 December 10 Henry VI 'tempore Johannis Kyrkeby, Majoris' (Reading Records, vol 1, p 1). The tenth year of Henry VI ran from 1 September 1431–31 August 1432. Guilding must have mistaken the dates of the regnal year.

John Kyrkby was a parishioner at St Laurence and is listed as giving 6s 8d to the church in 1440 (Kerry, Municipal Church of St Lawrence, p 12).

In May, 1430–1, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester (who was regent for his nine-year-old nephew, Henry VI, that year) suppressed a Lollard uprising in the Abingdon area led by a weaver, William Perkins, alias Mandeville, who took the alias 'Jack Sharpe.' Perkins was tried, convicted, and executed. Gloucester and his household would have been in Berkshire during that time (M.E. Aston, 'Lollardy and Sedition 1381–1431,' Past and Present 17.1 (April 1960), 24–9.