LEVELORD, Adam

Levelord’s steadily growing prominence in Southwark may be charted by his appearance at the head of witnesses to important property conveyances in the town as his career progressed,3 CCR, 1435-41, p. 467; 1441-7, pp. 281, 481; 1447-54, p. 255; 1454-61, p. 46. and was reflected in his election to represent the borough in Parliament on no fewer than six occasions. Trained in the law (although where this training took place has not been discovered), he was appointed one of the coroners for Surrey at some point before May 1429 (that is, before his first Parliament assembled), and continued to occupy this onerous post for 25 years until, in 1454, he was reportedly ‘too sick and aged to travail for exercise of the office’.4 CCR, 1454-61, p. 11.

Of obscure background, Levelord made his home in Southwark before 1420,5 London Metropolitan Archs., London Bridge House Estates mss, H35. and gradually acquired a large number of properties in the town. By Easter 1423 he was in possession of a messuage, a shop and an inn known as the Saracen’s Head in the parish of St. Margaret. The inn may have come into his possession by marriage to a local widow. He initially leased it for a term of 40 years to Henry Warkworth, the prior of St. Mary Overey, and his convent, before deciding to relinquish his title altogether, presenting it to the priory as a benefaction. It was not until June 1440 that it was discovered that this transaction had been carried out without a royal licence, and as a consequence the inn escheated to the Crown. Yet the prior protested that Levelord’s grant had been conferred before September 1431, and that he, the prior, had received a royal pardon of any alienations made without licence before that date.6 CP25(1)/232/70/3; E136/212/9; CPR, 1436-41, p. 420; SC8/128/12393. Most of Levelord’s lands and tenements in Southwark were situated in the same parish of St. Margaret or else in that of St. George, but he also acquired property in other places on the south side of the river Thames, such as at Newington and Lambeth. To reinforce his title he employed a small group of trusted feoffees, who included such leading Southwark residents as Nicholas Preest* and William Kirton II*.7 CP25(1)/232/71/57; 72/90, 95; 73/9. Other neighbours proved less trustworthy. In October 1443 Levelord initiated proceedings against Thomas Wakefield, a local hosteler, whom he accused of breaking into his house and stealing trestle tables and other items of furniture.8 KB27/735, rot. 1d.

Levelord’s legal services were valued in the locality: in April 1440 he was authorized, with the prior of St. Mary Overey and Arthur Ormesby†, to resolve a dispute between Peter Saverey* and Alice Milton over the sale of cloth,9 C145/309/10. and he was active as a feoffee in Southwark, notably on behalf of Kirton and the brewer William Kyng. In 1448 these three joined together to obtain at the Exchequer custody of three messuages, including Le Ram, until it should be determined whether they might be restored to full possession.10 CP25(1)/232/71/66; 72/105; C44/29/7; C145/312/3; CFR, xviii. 95. During the course of a long-running suit in Chancery, Levelord and Kirton were accused of frustrating efforts to fulfill the last wishes of Agnes Salford concerning an inn called Le Cok. They had been enfeoffed by her late husband, John Salford, and claimed that they had followed John’s wishes by settling the property to the use of the parish church of St. George. Their defence rested upon a verbal request, made by Salford before his death, and their assertion, supported by the evidence of Kyng, that the tenement had been enfeoffed to the use of John alone. This was disputed by Agnes’s executors, who claimed in 1450 that Le Cok had in fact been enfeoffed to the use of both John and Agnes, that Levelord and Kirton had acted unlawfully by preventing Agnes from conveying it to other feoffees, and that they had even sought to coerce her on her death-bed into following her late husband’s instructions. The dispute was still unresolved when Levelord died.11 C1/18/193-202; 27/255; C253/32, no. 157.

Well before then, Levelord had become a respected member of the county community, and as such, styled ‘of Southwark, esquire’, he had been one of the men of Surrey required in 1434 to take the general oath not to maintain malefactors. The assessments for the tax on incomes from land, as levied two years later, reveal that by then his landed holdings in Surrey, Kent and London brought in as much as £54 16s. 8d. a year, making him a figure of some substance.12 Surr. Hist. Centre, Woking, Loseley mss, LM/1719. His standing may be further measured by the importance of his associates. Thomas Haseley†, the influential clerk of the Commons, had asked him to witness a transaction dated at Southwark on 5 Oct. 1435, whereby Haseley placed all his moveable goods in the hands of a group of men headed by Archbishop Kemp and the earls of Stafford and Suffolk. This was just five days before the opening of the Parliament of that year, of which Levelord was a Member-elect. He established other links with the Surrey landowner Nicholas Carew*, with whom he acted as a co-feoffee in 1441,13 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 40, 460. and it may have been through him that he came to the attention of Sir Roger Fiennes*, the treasurer of the King’s household, who was Carew’s father-in-law. This in turn led to a new direction for Levelord’s career, hitherto centred on Southwark, for in September 1442 he, Fiennes and others were enfeoffed by John Chitecroft* of the manor of Leasam and lands in Rye, Hastings, Winchelsea and Fairlight, all situated in east Sussex. This was a region where Fiennes was a dominant landowner. The enfeoffment was apparently made in Levelord’s interest, for four years later, in December 1446, Chitecroft made a declaration stating that Fiennes and the rest should formally quitclaim the estate to Levelord whenever he required them to do so. By the following August Levelord had taken possession, and then leased out the manor and other holdings to three townsmen of Rye, including Robert Onewyn I* and John Sutton*, for five years, at an annual farm of as much as £20.14 CCR, 1441-7, p. 462; E. Suss. RO, Rye mss, deed 137/13 (transcribed in full in HMC 5th Rep. 500-1). After Levelord’s death Leasam was transferred by Thomas Pope* and his wife Katherine to trustees for a settlement on Chitecroft and his wife, Margaret: VCH Suss. ix. 56. Having established his credentials in Rye, Levelord was able to claim exemption from parliamentary subsidies by virtue of his new status as a Portsman.15 E179/229/138.

Levelord had sued out a royal pardon on 12 July 1446 as a ‘gentleman of Southwark, alias coroner in Surrey’, and he attended the Surrey elections on at least two occasions, in January 1447 (when he himself was returned to his sixth Parliament for Southwark) and January 1449.16 CPR, 1429-36, p. 380; C219/15/4, 15/6; C67/39, m. 35. Why he chose to seek election to the next Parliament, that of November 1449, for a constituency outside his home county is not readily apparent. Nor is there an obvious reason why he may have been passed over at Southwark at the two elections held that year. As we have seen, he had taken the trouble to obtain a residential qualification for election for Rye, and besides paying the authorities there 3s. 4d. a year as one of the advocants (foreign freemen), he took on some legal business on their behalf concerning their member-Port of Tenterden. But that he was not actually living at Rye at the time of his election for the Port is confirmed by his description as ‘of Southwark’ in the local accounts compiled at that time. It may be that he offered to sit for a lower wage than others expected. In the summer of 1450 he was paid 20s. as ‘part payment’ of his stipend for attending the Parliament, but it is not stated how large a part that sum represented. Significantly, especially in the context of Rye’s pattern of representation, his fellow MP was also an outsider to Rye. He, Robert Berde*, was the clerk of Dover castle, serving under the warden of the Cinque Ports, James Fiennes*, Lord Saye and Sele, and there is no doubt that Lord Saye arranged Berde’s election. Coincidentally, the election took place at a time when Saye’s brother, Sir Roger, lay dying (his death occurred at an unknown date between 29 Oct. and 18 Nov.), so it may be that Levelord’s links with Sir Roger played a part in his selection, by making him acceptable to Lord Saye, only recently promoted treasurer of England.17 Rye mss, acct. bk. 60/2, ff. 9, 12, 14, 15v; Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Stafford, f. 178. Even so, there is no evidence to show that he offered tangible support to Saye in a Parliament in which the government faced severe criticism as Normandy fell to the French and the King’s chief ministers came under attack. After the dissolution, in the autumn of 1450 Levelord acquired further lands in the neighbourhood of Rye, including a messuage, 20 acres of meadow and 60 acres of woodland in Northiam. Those assisting him in the transaction included Robert Oxenbridge of Brede, who married his daughter Anne and later acted as one of his executors. It was probably in this capacity that in 1456 Oxenbridge received 16s. 8d. as full payment of the seven nobles still owing by the commonalty of Rye to Levelord as his parliamentary wages.18 CP25(1)/241/90/14; Suss. Arch. Collns. ix. 216; lxxvi. 90; Rye mss, 60/2, f. 53. Levelord died owing the Rye authorities half a mark, this being for two years’ payments as an advocant: Rye mss, 60/2, f. 41. Robert and Anne produced six children including Adam Oxenbridge†, evidently named after his maternal gdfa.

Throughout this period of the 1440s and early 1450s Levelord had maintained his connexion with Southwark, and had also been active in London, where he was retained by the civic authorities, probably in a legal capacity. In December 1451 he was granted an annual livery from the city chamber ‘for his good and many services to the city past and to come’.19 Corp. London RO, jnl. 5, f. 68. He also appears in the London records as a feoffee, and in February 1454 he was named with Nicholas Carew and others in a plaint of intrusion concerning property in two city parishes.20 Corp. London RO, hr 176/14; Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, pp. 137, 173. Although his health was evidently suffering, he continued as a coroner until the autumn. In his will made on 11 Sept. that year, he asked to be buried in the priory of St. Mary Overey where his two wives had been interred, and of which he had been a benefactor. He also established a chantry, for one year, in the chapel of the Virgin Mary in St. George’s church for the souls of his parents, his brother, Henry, and his sister, Isabel. No mention was made of his daughter Anne, but he made bequests of cash and clothing to two poor women who were known to another daughter, Margaret, as well as to Joan, ‘paupere mea’. The bulk of the goods in his house and stable were left to his son, Robert. Oxenbridge’s fellow executors were John Pemberton* of Southwark and his relative, the London vintner of the same name. The will was proved on 4 Aug. 1455.21 PCC 5 Stokton. Levelord’s son followed him into the legal profession, becoming a member of Staple Inn, and sat for Southwark in the Parliament of 1472 and Taunton in 1478.22 J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii. 1051.