DYKES, William

The Dykes family of Waverton were long-established but not wealthy. In the subsidy returns of 1435-6 William Dykes was assessed in Cumberland on an annual income of £20 p.a., modest by the standards of most counties but enough in his native shire to make him a more substantial man than he would have been elsewhere.3 E179/90/26. His father’s career had been undistinguished: two appointments as a tax collector in the 1380s were the extent of his recorded activity in local government.4 CFR, x. 159, 267. And although our MP never attained to any particular distinction, he was a more prominent and better-connected man than his father had been. When he first appears in the records in 1407 he offered mainprise for a royal lease made to one of the county’s leading gentry, Sir John Skelton*. At this date he was probably not much past his majority.5 CFR, xiii. 67. Much later, in 1441, when he was a juror at a proof of age, his age was given as 60 and more, as it was again when he acted in the same capacity in 1446: CIPM, xxv. 614; xxvi. 586. Such estimates are not generally to be heavily relied upon, but, in this case, a birthdate in the early 1380s is consistent with all else known of his career. His youth would explain why he does not appear again in the records until 1417 when party to a final concord concerning lands in which his neighbour, Sir William Osmundlaw† of Langrigg, had a life interest.6 CP25(1)/35/13/6. His connexion with Osmundlaw was to benefit him in the following year: the knight surrendered in his favour his lease from the Crown of 27 acres of meadow and pasture in Cleugh Head to the north of Carlisle. The lands were re-granted to Dykes to hold for a term of 20 years at 20s. p.a. with the wealthy local knight, Sir Peter Tilliol*, acting as one of his sureties.7 CFR, xv. 34.

At this early stage in his career, Dykes was already associated with Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland. In July 1421 the earl named him and the younger Sir William Leigh*, who may have been our MP’s brother-in-law, as his attorneys to deliver seisin of certain property to his servant Roger Heighmore. Later, in January 1422, he was nominated by John Ribton to act as an arbiter in a dispute over the ownership of the manor of Clifton (near Workington).8 Cumbria RO, Carlisle, Blencow mss, DHGB/1/148; Kendal, Le Fleming of Rydal mss, WDRY/92/77. Not until 1430 was he appointed to his first ad hoc commission of local government, but thereafter he assumed a greater prominence. On 8 Apr. 1432 he attested his first parliamentary election, and he was himself elected at the hustings held on 15 Sept. 1435. No doubt he owed his election, in company with another Percy man, Thomas Curwen*, to his Percy connexion. Competition for seats was stronger in Cumberland than in neighbouring Westmorland, and, unlike Curwen, Dykes was too insignificant to secure election in his own right. Indeed, his new importance may reflect his assumption of a more prominent place in the Percy retinue. By the early 1440s, and probably for some years before, he was acting as steward of the courts in the lordship of Cockermouth and a magistrate in the Percy forest of Westward.9 CPR, 1429-36, p. 71; C219/14/3, 5; Booth, 34.

Dykes did not live to enjoy his new prominence for long. He died between Trinity term 1447, when defendant in a minor action of debt brought by Thomas de la More*, and the following Trinity term when his son and heir, another William, as the administrator of the goods of his intestate father, sued a yeoman of Waverton for a debt of 25 marks. This William continued his father’s service to the Percys, for he was present in their ranks when they confronted the Nevilles at Heworth Moor near York on 24 Aug. 1453.10 CP40/750, rot. 399; KB9/149/11/16. Another of our MP’s sons was a successful lawyer. By 1461 the ill-fated Alexander Dykes was principal of Furnival’s Inn, an inn of Chancery.11 J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), i. 617. Alexander was murdered in 1491. His wid. was assisted in her appeal by Robert Leigh, a further indication that our MP had married into that family: Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. xi. 123.