DAY, John

The Days were a prominent Lostwithiel family who had been resident in that borough by the 1330s and had played a part in its internal government for much of the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. A namesake and probable kinsman of the Liskeard MP of 1449 served as mayor of Lostwithiel in 1419-20, having represented the borough in Henry IV’s first Parliament, and another putative kinsman, Lewis Day, served as the duchy of Cornwall’s bailiff of Lostwithiel in 1466-7.1 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 759; C241/213/22; 214/10; SC6/816/8, m. 1.

The John Day who represented Liskeard in the Parliament of November 1449 may have been the man who many years later was described as ‘of Wolston’ or ‘of Tolverne’, suggesting a possible connexion with the influential cadet branch of the powerful Arundells of Lanherne which resided at the latter manor.2 C67/51, m. 35. No details of such a connexion have, however, been discovered, and other details of Day’s career remain equally obscure. As far as the fragmentary records enable us to tell, he did not hold office either locally or under the Crown, and it is possible that – as in the case of several other Liskeard Members of the fifteenth century – it was his willingness to serve for an insubstantial wage that recommended him to the borough electorate.

As regards his private life, it is uncertain whether Day can be identified with either the man who married Ennora, daughter and ultimate coheiress of the wealthy John Petit and widow of one John Billing, or he who by 1487 had married Everne, widow of the landowner Ralph Antron.3 C1/80/7, 197/63.