John Mower, Vicar of Tenterden in the Late Fifteenth Century: His Will, His Career and His Library

In 1489, at the end of an ecclesiastical career spent partly at the university of Oxford and partly in offices and benefices in London and various parts of England, John Mower drew up his will, making a series of bequests both to his church of Saint Mildred in Tenterden, where he was by then perpetual vicar, and to a large number of friends, colleagues and former institutions.¹ Many of these bequests were of books, which Mower would have collected during a career which spanned the interesting transitional period following the invention of printing when both manuscript and printed books were in current use. It is clear that Mower was well educated and well connected. His ownership of Greek books suggests that he had been in some way involved in the Humanist revival in fifteenth-century England.

Mower’s will has been noticed before. A partial transcription (in the original Latin) of the sections relating to books was printed by H. R. Plomer in 1903.² An abbreviated translation into English can be found on the website of the Kent Archaeological Society in the invaluable series of Medieval & Tudor Kent P.C.C. Wills, transcribed over a hundred years ago by L. L. Duncan.³ The will is also noticed in an article in Archaeologia Cantiana on the incumbents of St Mildred’s Tenterden,⁴ and by A. B. Emden in the entry for John Mower in his Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500, where a number of the beneficiaries and the books they received are identified.⁵ An almost complete, but not always accurate transcription of the Latin text was presented in 1968 by Josephine W. Bennett.⁶ Aspects of the will relating to Thomas Linacre are also discussed by Cecil Clough.⁷ Mower’s bequests to two non-university collegiate institutions are documented by James Willoughby.⁸ Bennett’s article concentrates particularly on evidence offered by the will for the Canterbury connections of the humanist scholar Thomas Linacre and for the activities of William Selling (prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, 1472–95) as a student (and possible teacher) of Greek.⁹ This present note will attempt to reassess Mower’s career from the evidence of his will and to look particularly at the identities of the recipients. The will has been re-transcribed in full (see Appendix I) from a digital copy of the original provided by the National Archives.¹⁰

John Mower’s biography

A key element in Josephine Bennett’s account of Mower’s career is her belief that ‘John Mower’ (Emden, p. 1326) is the same person as ‘John Morer’ (Emden, p. 1309). It is certainly the case that there is a degree of similarity in the variant forms of names recorded by Emden for these two people:

Mower:

Moeer, Morre, Mowar, Moweer, Mowere, Mowre, Moyer

Morer:

Morar, Moreor, Morere, Moror, Morre.

Bennett notes that both entries in Emden record their man as senior proctor at Oxford in 1461–62 and assumes that the two entries must therefore relate to the same person.¹¹ By pooling the information from the two biographies, she is able to give a very interesting account of a career as an Oxford don and a client of the Lancastrians, including a time as chancellor of Wells.¹² Unfortunately, it is quite clear that Emden was recording the careers of (at least) two separate clerics. One of them, John Morer, D. M., who was chancellor of Wells (1467) and prebendary of Combe Prima (?1467–72), had died by 12 January 1472 when his successor was appointed and cannot be our John Mower of Tenterden.¹³ There is no record of John Mower’s being a doctor of medicine. Additionally, John Morer is recorded as priest and rector of Compton Beauchamp one year before John Mower is recorded as being ordained.¹⁴ Morer appears to have been a Lancastrian,¹⁵ whereas Mower made a bequest to the sometime Yorkist magnate Sir John Guildford [15], though by the time...