MORE ON MAYOR Roger Bevyn Le Wheaton
Not sure which group would like to be related to our dear Mayor! He sounds just as feisty as Robert of Rehoboth. However Robert was not literate and Roger surely is!
This from Exeter Memories re Mayors|
1302 Roger Beynim (Roger le Whetene) – a dispute arose between Mayor and people of the city, and tenants of the Lord of Kenton and Wyke, who refused to pay Murage for their wares and merchandises. Murage was a tax for repairing the walls.
1303 Roger Wheaton (Roger Beyvin) – Wheaton decreed that persons who set up for Lammas Fair before the appointed time had to answer to the Mayor.
1309 Roger Beynim – Hugh Courtenay was in dispute with Bishop Cator over the purchase of three pots of fish in the market. The Mayor intervened and ordered that one box be allocated to Courtenay, one to the bishop and one to the market. Courtenay berated the Mayor over the affair with the citizens outside, afraid for the Mayor’s safety. The Mayor wearing a coat bearing the Earl’s coat of arms, suddenly took the coat off and flung it to the ground, stating that Exeter’s Mayors from then on would only answer to the king.
1313 Roger Beynim – the Mayor this year fined the bakers of the city for underweight bread. Seventeen complained, but lost their case.
Wheaton Wood 
Go check Robert of Rehobeth again. Surely he was literate.
Sent from my iPhone to explain odd spellings.
I will need to check further. In a legal agreement with his neighbor Robert Fuller he signed using his mark, not a signature. His son Ephraim was definitely well schooled and became a minister…..
I quite fancy Mayor Roger. Sounds like a real Devon man, and someone to have on your side. Not a judgement of Solomon, but something similar with the sharing out of the 3 pots.
Re the mark business. In later years I have sometimes found someone signing his name and sometimes signing with a X. My theory, for what it’s worth, is that when clerks made copies they just did the X thing. Lazy. Other examples: shoemakers down as labourers, bootmakers transcribed as butchers, and sometimes the name of the church missing on the entry heading. And if we are talking about literacy, some of the parish registers look as if they were written by 5 year olds.
Susan
So the clerk who witnessed Robert’s mark was pretty efficient. However, could Robert have been very frail or arthritic at that point and could not hold the quill. Does the cross look wobbly? Marks are also used and witnessed when people are ill.
possible. Once I order and have a look at the original town records I will be better able to answer.