JONES, Nicholas

A ‘gentleman’ of unknown parentage, Jones was from Tetbury in Gloucestershire although it would appear that for at least part of his career he resided at Charlton in Wiltshire, just a few miles to the south-east.1 KB27/780, rot. 63d. It is possible that he had a family connexion with Cricklade, since in the late 1370s there were two burgesses named Andrew Jones living in the borough, one of whom sat for it in the Parliament of 1386.2 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 500. There was also an Edward Jones of Castlecombe who was appointed a tax collector in Wilts. in 1453: CFR, xix. 52.

The Cricklade election to the Parliament of 1453 occurred on 27 Feb. that year but Jones gained election in his absence, for at that date he and 19 associates were prisoners in Gloucester castle. His fellow prisoners, all from Wiltshire, included Thomas* and Richard Hasard* and John Cricklade*, of whom the Hasards were likewise returned to the same Parliament in their absence, Thomas for Malmesbury and Richard for Wootton Bassett. The prisoners remained in confinement for another month, meaning that Jones and the Hasards missed the whole of the first parliamentary session at Reading; why the electors of their respective boroughs should have returned men not then at liberty is a mystery. The plea rolls of the court of King’s bench show that their imprisonment arose from a quarrel with the Gloucestershire esquire, Giles Brydges*. Soon after gaining his freedom, Thomas Hasard took legal action at Westminster against Brydges, his son Thomas* and several of their associates, alleging that they had conspired to have him and his own associates arrested and imprisoned. According to him, Brydges and his supporters had falsely claimed that he, Jones and the others had broken into the close belonging to the franklin Thomas Felpottys at Minety, a Gloucestershire parish situated just across that county’s boundary with north Wiltshire, and stolen a sheep. For this imagined crime, supposed to have occurred in February 1452, a jury had indicted Hasard and his friends in Gloucestershire, at sessions of oyer and terminer where Giles Brydges was one of the justices. Following their indictment, the authorities had arrested and imprisoned them for nearly four months, from 1 Nov. 1452 until the following 27 Mar. when they had secured their acquittal before Sir Maurice Berkeley II* and other justices of gaol delivery. Three of the defendants answered Hasard’s plea, and they may have reached an out of court settlement with him, but his chief opponent, Giles Brydges, ignored the summonses against him and probably was never brought to account. It is unlikely that the quarrel began with the alleged theft of a single sheep but, unfortunately, the plea rolls do not reveal its wider background.3 C219/16/2; CPR, 1452-61, p. 62; KB27/768, rots. 53d, 55d; 769, rots. 7, 47, 63; 770, rot. 27d; 771, rot 58; 772, rot. 16; 773, rots. 17, 54; 774, rot. 73. Not long afterwards, Jones somehow fell out with his erstwhile associate Thomas Hasard, who was suing him in King’s bench for trespass by the mid 1450s.4 KB27/780, rot. 63d; 781, rot. 9d; 782, rot. 10. It is in this suit that Jones was referred to as ‘of Charlton’, indicating that he was then residing in that parish, where Hasard is known to have possessed lands.

For the next decade and more, nothing is known about Jones’s activities and whereabouts and he is next heard of as a follower of Thomas Talbot, Viscount Lisle, at the field of Nibley Green. Lisle and many of his men were killed in this private battle, fought in 20 Mar. 1470, but there were also casualties on the victorious Berkeleys’ side, among them the yeoman, John Lewis, whose widow Agnes subsequently sued an appeal against those whom she blamed for his death. Beginning her suit in early 1471, she named as her late husband’s murderers John Daunte*, Robert Tanner and John Draycote (of whom she accused Daunte of having split his skull with a ‘bille’ (halberd), Tanner of having struck him from behind with a sword and Draycote of having dealt him another mortal blow with a stick), and, as accessories to murder, Jones and three men from Stroud in Gloucestershire, David Jones, Thomas Tanner and Thomas Halyday. (Possibly David, described as a ‘weaver’, was a less well to do relative of Nicholas; on the other hand theirs was hardly an uncommon surname.) By then the Crown was also prosecuting all seven of Agnes’s opponents, upon their indictment for the same alleged murder. Having taken flight after Nibley Green, Nicholas remained at large until he gave himself up to the Marshalsea prison in London on 11 July 1471. On the following day the Crown granted away all his goods to one John Jones but it is unlikely that he lost any of them as a result. Upon surrendering he was immediately released on bail, and heading those who stood bail for him was none other than John Jones of Cirencester, probably a relative and the grantee of 12 July. When he appeared in King’s bench in the following Michaelmas term Nicholas pleaded not guilty. In the event, Agnes’s case against him and his alleged co-accessories collapsed a year later, before any trial was held, because she failed to pursue her suit. Possibly she had agreed to forgo her appeal because she was included in – and in some way compensated by – the settlement made between Lord Berkeley and Lisle’s widow. The Crown also dropped criminal proceedings against Nicholas and his three associates and they all obtained royal pardons, of which the MP’s was dated 5 Oct. 1472. As for Lewis’s alleged murderers, they were all outlawed for failing to answer Agnes’s appeal but there is no evidence that any of them was successfully prosecuted.5 P. Fleming and M. Wood, Nibley Green, 65, 78, 93-94; KB27/839, rot. 43d; 840, rots. 8, 18; 841, rot. 27; 843, rot. 57; KB29/100, rot. 11d; 102, rot. 34; CPR, 1467-77, p. 276; C67/49, mm. 14, 16. (The account of Agnes’s appeal in Fleming and Wood is not altogether accurate and some of its plea roll references are incorrect.) Curiously, the controlment rolls of KB show that one John Lewis of Berkeley, yeoman, stood indicted for felony and murder in Glos. at the beginning of 1471, and that he was outlawed in the following year. Even more curiously, this entry in the rolls lies directly below another related to the indictment of the MP and the others implicated in the killing of Agnes’s husband. Presumably this John Lewis was a namesake of the dead man and, given his address, it would appear that the Berkeleys had at least two servants of the same name: KB29/100, rot. 11d. It is impossible to tell whether political considerations or patronage helped them to escape punishment and there is no evidence of Nicholas Jones’s activities after 1472.