CONVERS, John

Information about Convers’s origins is lacking, but his career prior to his only return to Parliament was that of a soldier serving in Normandy in the closing stages of English rule. Whether he came from a gentry family is uncertain, although it may be pertinent that he was called ‘esquire’ when acting as lieutenant of the castle and town of Caen early in 1450, under the command of Robert Whittingham II*. On 5 Feb. that year the Exchequer was ordered to deliver to the captain and his lieutenant 1,000 lb of gunpowder, 1,000 lb of saltpetre, 600 bows and six gross of bow-strings as well as £27 in money for the cost of carrying these vital items to Caen, then facing a siege by the French. Another warrant was sent to the Exchequer three weeks later to pay Convers five marks as his reward for bringing letters from Whittingham to the King, presumably to report their precarious position.3 E404/66/104, 117. Yet how long he served at Caen, or indeed whether he was there, with Sir Robert de Vere*, when the castle fell a few months later, does not appear. By the autumn of 1452 Convers was living in Winchelsea, and he then obtained from Battle abbey a lease for 20 years of a tenement in the parish of St. Thomas, for which he was to pay 9s. p.a. The abbot agreed to supply timber for any new buildings Convers might erect within the first ten years of the lease, although the lessee was to pay the costs of felling the trees and take responsibility for keeping the property well maintained.4 Huntington Lib., San Marino, California, Battle Abbey mss, deed 1632. This holding qualified him, as resident in the Port, for election to the Parliament summoned to Reading on 6 Mar. following, although there is no other sign of close contact between him and the men of Winchelsea. The Commons in this Parliament of 1453 was dominated by those loyal to the Lancastrian court, among them Convers’s former commander, Whittingham, who represented Buckinghamshire. Subsequently, Convers was not noticeably involved in the affairs of the Ports, although he was sent to Brodhulls in May and July 1458 as a deputy from Rye.5 White and Black Bks. of Cinque Ports (Kent Rec. Ser. xix), 39, 54.

It was not, apparently, until after the Yorkist victory at Northampton in July 1460 that Convers returned to royal employment. During the Parliament meeting in the autumn of that year he was granted the office of a serjeant-at-arms in the place of Thomas Pope* of Rye. This appointment was made for life as a reward for his good service in the French wars, and brought with it a daily wage of 12d.6 CPR, 1452-61, p. 626; CCR, 1454-61, p. 466. Not long afterwards, Convers married the widow of Geoffrey Southworth, who had been killed fighting on the duke of York’s side at Wakefield. She had been held captive by William Singleton, an esquire from Lancashire, until she gave him an annuity of six marks from her land in Yorkshire. Singleton had then made distraint on her tenants, from whom he extracted nine marks, and he also broke into her house, from which he stole gowns, bed linen, mattresses, utensils, pickled pork, silver cutlery and pewter vessels, and his haul included a barn-full of corn, three acres of rye, eight oxen and other livestock, in all valued at 100 marks. The ‘maistrye’ of the tenants of her lordship of Carlton-in-Craven allegedly gained her oppressor £24 in the brief period between the battles of Wakefield and Towton.7 C1/27/202.

Edward IV confirmed Convers in his post as a serjeant-at-arms in July 1461, with orders for payment of his wages from the first day of the reign. Besides this, he was granted in the following May a corrody at Norwich cathedral priory.8 CPR, 1461-7, p. 125; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 10, 164. Convers held office as controller of customs at Chichester in 1462-3, and during his term he was given sole authority to seize all ships in the ports of Norfolk and Suffolk ready to put to sea, in preparation for defending the realm against invasion.9 CPR, 1461-7, p. 279. He sued for and obtained exemption from the workings of the Acts of Resumption passed in the Parliaments of 1463 and 1467 with respect to his post as a serjeant-at-arms.10 PROME, xiii. 198, 303. It was as ‘of Winchelsea, esquire, serjeant-at-arms’ that Convers took out letters of protection in the retinue of Ralph Wolseley, victualler of Calais, on 30 Jan. 1466,11 C76/149, m. 10. but as ‘of London’ that he appeared in the Exchequer five months later, then standing surety for John Wykes esquire, given keeping of land in the King’s lordship of Castle Rising in Norfolk.12 CFR, xx. 185. In October the sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire was ordered to pay him arrears of his wages as a royal serjeant.13 CCR, 1461-8, pp. 343-4. Perhaps surprisingly, he was kept on in the post during the Readeption of Henry VI, and obtained an exemplification of his original grant for life from that King, after claiming that these letters had been accidentally lost. He does not seem to have been replaced when Edward IV was restored in the spring of 1471, but died before 17 Aug. that year.14 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 237, 273. The John Convers who represented Winchelsea in the first Parliament of Henry VII’s reign may have been his son, although there is no contemporary evidence to confirm their relationship.