DYSSWALL, Thomas

The name of Dysswall was an uncommon one in fifteenth-century England, and it is thus reasonably likely that the Calne MP of 1449 was in some way related to the family of that name based in the marches of Wales. There, the minor lawyer Nicholas Dysswall, son of Walter Dysswall of Weobley, had served as Sir John Oldcastle†’s under sheriff of Herefordshire in 1406-7,1 E13/123, rots. 20, 20d; WARD2/60/239/14. and in the early 1440s a John Dysswall was holding property at Weobley.2 CAD, iv. A8675, 8758.

On the occasion of his own return Thomas Dysswall formed part of a distinct Herefordshire grouping in the Wiltshire county court: along with John Monmouth*, one of the Members for Malmesbury, and the probable descendant of a Hereford family, he found surety for the attendance in the Commons of John Dewall*, a one-time parliamentary burgess for the city of Hereford, who had been elected a knight for Wiltshire.3 C219/15/7. While no definite evidence of Dysswall’s political allegiance has come light, Weobley was the seat of (Sir) Walter Devereux I*, steward in the marches for Richard, duke of York, and in the light of York’s increasingly prominent place among those critical of the conduct of the government and French war by the court party around the duke of Suffolk, it is likely that he secured election at Calne in the Yorkist interest.

Like his two fellows from the march, Dysswall did, however, also possess ties within Wiltshire. More than two years before his election for Calne he had been drawn (albeit apparently in a supporting role) into the protracted dispute over the title to the manor of Great Chalfield in that county. In 1447 he was among the attorneys appointed by William Rous and his second wife Isabel (the others being the lawyers Thomas Tropenell* and Henry Long*) to convey seisin of the property to a panel of feoffees headed by Adam Moleyns, bishop of Chichester and keeper of the privy seal, and also including Dewall and Monmouth. The key figure in this transaction was, however, clearly the wily Tropenell, who before long secured a lease of the manor from the Rouses.4 Tropenell Cart. ed. Davies, i. 327-8; VCH Wilts. vii. 60-61.