FITZHARRY, Thomas

Fitzharry’s career, as lawyer and Lancastrian loyalist, was a remarkable one. His family, whose origins lay in Wales, owed their entry into the Herefordshire gentry to the house of Lancaster. Our MP’s father was a servant of Henry of Bolingbroke: by 1396 he was in office as deputy steward of Bolingbroke’s lordship of Brecon, and when his patron became King he was entrusted with the constableship of Aberystwyth and rewarded with the considerable royal annuity of £40. That service also brought him advancement of another kind for it recommended him as a suitable husband for a daughter of as exalted a Lancastrian servant as Sir Hugh Waterton, chamberlain of the duchy of Lancaster. Thereafter, however, the family suffered a setback: John’s younger brothers, Thomas and Gruffydd, were implicated in Glendower’s rebellion, and later John himself formed a compromising friendship with the lollard traitor, Sir John Oldcastle†.8 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 299-300. None the less, the family’s close, if sometimes troubled, relationship with the house of Lancaster was an important factor in determining the career of our MP.

As a third son Thomas Fitzharry’s expectations at birth were poor, and they were only contingently improved by the childless death of his eldest brother, Hugh, late in Henry V’s reign. Little is known of his early life, although it is a reasonable surmise that he was brought up in the wardship of another prominent Lancastrian, John Leventhorpe I*. In 1421 Leventhorpe, perhaps in his capacity as one of Waterton’s executors, had been entrusted by the Crown with the wardship and marriage of our MP’s elder brother, and it was natural that the two boys should be kept together.9 CIPM, xxi. 578; CPR, 1416-22, p. 315. If this speculation is correct, then Leventhorpe was probably responsible for enrolling the young Thomas in Gray’s Inn. He was probably studying there when, on 16 July 1438, the Crown committed to him at an annual farm of 46s. 8d. the keeping of the impoverished alien priory of Craswall in the near vicinity of the Fitzharry estates.10 CFR, xvii. 50. Fitzharry long continued to hold the farm. In Dec. 1455 the college of Godshouse (now Christ’s College) in Cambridge, to which the priory had been granted, leased it to him for a term of 30 years at 23s. 4d. p.a.: Early Hist.of Christ’s College Cambridge ed. Lloyd and Lloyd, 141. By the autumn of 1441 he was dividing his time between London and his native shire, taking responsibility, on at least one occasion, for delivering into King’s bench an indictment taken before the Herefordshire j.p.s.11 KB9/238/56.

Fitzharry had an aptitude for legal learning. Since he is described, in the early 1450s, as an apprentice-at-law, he must have progressed as far as reading. Success of this sort was compensation for the disadvantages of a younger son; and he appears to have enjoyed another in the form of a land settlement, perhaps under the terms of his father’s will. As early as 1441 he brought a plea of trespass against a lesser man of Dorstone, near Vowchurch, implying he had property there; and by 1448 he certainly had land at Vowchurch, for he then sued two local gentlemen for killing six of his young oxen there and depasturing his grass to the value of £5.12 KB27/721, rot. 9; 747, rot. 37; 749, rot. 6d. These holdings were deemed sufficient to qualify him for local office. Appointment as escheator and addition to the quorum of the peace generally marked the start of the local careers of lawyers from established gentry families, and Fitzharry was no exception, both offices coming to him in the space of a few months in the winter of 1442-3.

During his term as escheator a threat emerged to part of the lands of his brother, Richard, nominally the head of the family but already eclipsed by our MP. On 14 Sept. 1443 two royal commissioners, Henry Oldcastle* and Thomas Bromwich*, charged with inquiring into the lands of John Abrahall*, found that he had died seised, among other things, of a moiety of the manor of Eaton Tregoze in the south-east of the county. This gave the Fitzharry brothers cause for concern. The moiety had been the property of their mother, Elizabeth Waterton, and, although in 1439 Richard had agreed to exchange his moiety for Abrahall’s manor of Ocle Pychard, that exchange, in the contention of the brothers, had not been completed. This doubt explains why, on Abrahall’s death, the Crown issued a special commission rather than directing the routine writ of diem clausit extremum to our MP as escheator.13 J.H. Matthews, Herefs. (Wormelow), 141-2; CPR, 1441-6, p. 147; C115/51/3550. The brothers felt themselves thwarted and acted robustly. Two weeks later they approached Oldcastle at Hereford, asking him not to return the inquisition and reacting to his refusal with a physical assault. If a later action is to be credited, they had further reason for displeasure at Oldcastle’s role, as they had retained him to be of their counsel in the question of the manor’s descent and held him guilty of betraying a supposed weakness in their title to Abrahall’s widow.14 E28/71/54; KB9/245/113; CP40/734, rot. 472. Whatever the truth of this claim, their failure to prevent the return of the inquisition obliged them to adopt a different tack. Since Abrahall’s son was a minor, the inquisition’s findings brought the disputed property into the hands of the Crown. On 8 Nov. the King committed the keeping of the manor to Richard on the surety of our MP and another Herefordshire lawyer, John Welford*, presumably on the Fitzharrys’ petition. Later, on 23 July 1445, another jury, summoned to investigate title, found that the findings were false, and Richard was restored to the manor in right of inheritance.15 CFR, xvii. 297; KB27/734, rot. 36.

The Fitzharrys had won the argument, but it was to be a little longer before they were clear of difficulties. Their resort to violence proved to be an error, for Oldcastle was a difficult man to intimidate. At a session of the peace at Hereford on 13 Jan. 1444 they were indicted for their unlawful but understandable assault upon him. The latter also presented a litany of the wrongs allegedly committed against him to the chancellor, adding the colourful detail that the Fitzharrys had threatened to cut up, ‘as smalle as haukes mete’, all the jurors they blamed for wronging them. As a result our MP and his brother were summoned to appear before the King and council under heavy financial penalties. No doubt there was an element of truth in these accusations, yet they cannot be taken at face value, not least because of the strong coincidence in wording between the indictment and petition. In any event, our MP was only momentarily inconvenienced. In the following Easter term he came in person into King’s bench to plead successfully the insufficiency of the indictment, and no traceable action was taken against him as a result of his appearance in the same term before the royal council.16 KB9/245/113; E28/71/54; KB27/732, rex rot. 23.

These problems aside, in the mid 1440s Fitzharry began to attract important patrons. In May 1444 Humphrey Stafford, earl of Stafford, appointed him to hold sessions in his Welsh lordship of Huntington, and, more importantly, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, as royal justice of south Wales, chose him as one of his deputies. He was soon busy in the latter of these roles, sitting as one of four justices at the great sessions at Carmarthen on 21 Sept.17 Griffiths, 151; SC6/1168/4, m. 1. These were high marks of favour for one who was of little substance in his own right, and clearly suggest that Fitzharry was widely perceived as a man of more than ordinary abilities. The Crown certainly thought so, naming him (against statute) as escheator again only a year after he had relinquished the office. Recognition from the gentry of his native shire followed a few years later. On 18 Jan. 1449 he was elected to Parliament at hustings attended by his brother, Richard; and he was also elected to the second Parliament of that year.18 C219/15/6, 7.

While an MP in this second Parliament, Fitzharry was drawn into the controversy surrounding the lands of the Beauchamp dukedom of Warwick. Early in 1450, during the second session, he was among those commissioned to inquire into the late duke’s lands. Since earlier inquisitions had entirely vindicated the title of the late duke’s sister of the whole blood, Anne, wife of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, this new inquiry cannot but have been unwelcome to the powerful earl. Even worse from his point of view was the grant made on 14 Mar. to our MP and another Herefordshire gentleman, Henry ap Griffith, of the keeping of all the duke’s lands in Herefordshire to hold during the minority of a rival claimant to the Despenser part of the great Beauchamp inheritance, George Neville, son and heir of Anne’s maternal half-sister and Warwick’s first cousin. Both commissioners and keepers are likely to have been the nominees of George’s father and the earl’s uncle, Edward Neville, Lord Abergavenny, and it may be significant here that, in 1447, Fitzharry had been named to act as a feoffee in part of the Fitzalan earldom of Arundel, to which Abergavenny’s wife was coheir.19 CFR, xviii. 162; E326/9091. However this may be, Fitzharry and Griffith travelled to Hereford on 15 Apr., during the parliamentary recess, to act on their commission. The findings differed in important particulars from the earlier inquiry in that they supported the Abergavenny title to part at least of the Despenser inheritance. A month later, after Parliament had reassembled, the Crown made another grant to our MP and Griffith, committing to them the keeping of the share of the lordship of Ewyas Lacy, which the inquiry had assigned to Edward’s son.20 C139/135/34; M.A. Hicks, Warwick, 45-46; CFR, xviii. 155. Whether Fitzharry was, in these proceedings, acting consciously against the earl of Warwick is far from clear, but, significantly from the point of view of his later career, his role can have done little to foster friendship between the two men.

On 24 Oct. 1450 Fitzharry was again elected to Parliament, on this occasion with (Sir) Walter Devereux I*, another against whom he was to find himself at odds at the end of the decade. A third successive election for a county was a surprising achievement for a man who had few lands of his own, for his elder brother still lived. As such, patronage was vital to him, and he received two royal grants during the course of this assembly. On 27 Nov., during the first session, he was entrusted with the temporary keeping of the temporalities of the bishopric of Hereford, vacated by the translation of Richard Beauchamp to Salisbury in the previous August; and on 9 June 1451, a few days after the end of the assembly, he shared the less important grant of the keeping of a hall in the city of London.21 C219/16/1; CFR, xviii. 185, 204. Such grants, however, could be only a partial substitute for a competence of one’s own, and our MP was soon to gain what he had previously lacked. His elder brother, Richard, last appears in the records early in 1451, when he was assessed to the subsidy of that year at £40 p.a., a considerable income in the context of impoverished Herefordshire. The family patrimony – consisting principally of the manor of Monnington Strade and a moiety of the disputed manor of Eaton Tregoze – probably passed to our MP soon afterwards.22 E179/117/64; CPR, 1461-7, p. 372.

With new resources Fitzharry flourished further. He had retained his position as one of the deputy justices in South Wales after the fall of the duke of Gloucester in 1447, or, if he had not, he was back in office by June 1450, when, as deputy to Gloucester’s successor, John, Lord Beauchamp of Powick, he sat at the great sessions. Later, in November 1451, Humphrey Stafford, now duke of Buckingham, formalized an earlier connexion by granting him an annuity of 40s., and soon after the duchy of Lancaster added him to the apprentices-at-law it retained. Another who employed his services was John, abbot of Dore, who, finding himself ‘oppressed by sons of iniquity’ in the spring of 1453, asked the Crown that his abbey be committed to the keeping of Fitzharry and four others, headed by Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley.23 SC6/1223/11, m. 1; Griffiths, 151; Somerville, 454; CPR, 1452-61, p. 48.

This middle period of Fitzharry’s career also saw a further addition to his newly-acquired land. Nothing is known of the identity of his first wife, but, in September 1453, he married the twice-widowed niece of John Merbury*, who had played a pivotal part in Herefordshire affairs until his death in 1439.24 Since he had a son old enough to serve as escheator of Herefs. in 1458-9, he must have had at least one previous wife: CFR, xix. 222. As a result of her first marriage she had a dower interest in the manor of Little Hereford (on the Shropshire border),25 Her first marriage is known only from an action for dower in this manor sued by Joan and our MP against Edmund de la Mare in 1456: CP40/782, rot. 130d. The manor cannot have been a valuable one, as Edmund was assessed on an income of only £6 p.a.: E179/117/64. but more important was the property that came to her through her second husband, Ralph Lingen of Lingen. She claimed jointure in the Herefordshire manors at Broxwood and Kenchester, valued together in Lingen’s inquisition post mortem at about £8 p.a., and, much more contentiously, in the valuable manor of Sutton Overcourt (just north of Hereford), which her late husband had acquired from his stepfather, John Russell I*.26 E179/117/64. According to an ex parte deposition in a Chancery suit, Ralph Lingen valued his wife’s jointure at 46 marks p.a., exclusive of the manor of Sutton Overcourt: C1/26/528a. Unfortunately for Fitzharry, her title to the latter was vigorously contested by her son, John Lingen, and a dispute with Lingen was to be an important factor in Fitzharry’s career until the end of the decade. In about the summer of 1454 he and his new wife petitioned the chancellor, Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, claiming that, on 6 Sept. 1453, just before their marriage, Lingen came to the manor of Sutton, where his mother lived, and ‘as cruell and eville disposid child’ detained her and her servants for six hours. Soon after he added insult to injury by forcibly putting his unfortunate mother out of possession of both Sutton and Kenchester. His actions must have found favour with some of the Lingen feoffees, who refused to allow Joan either jointure or dower.27 Procs. Chancery Eliz. ed. Caley and Bayley, pp. xlviii-l; C1/22/107; 201/37; CP40/780, rot. 137. The dismissal of the case from Chancery with the assent of the complainants implies that the matter went to negotiation, but any negotiations had seemingly broken down by the end of March 1455. Then, at a session of the peace at Hereford, Lingen was indicted for the forcible entry into Sutton 18 months before and his continued possession since. No doubt he had our MP to thank for this indictment: Fitzharry was one of the j.p.s before whom it was taken and took responsibility for delivering it into King’s bench.28 KB9/277/78.

Thereafter the dispute continued against the background of increasing divisions in national politics which were replicated and amplified in Herefordshire. Few, if any, other counties were to be so riven by faction in the struggle between York and Lancaster, and Fitzharry wholeheartedly identified himself with the Lancastrians. His loyalties were clear by the middle of the decade when, in April 1455, he was summoned with another Herefordshire Lancastrian, (Sir) John Skydemore* to the great council that provoked the duke of York into armed demonstration that ended in the first battle of St. Albans.29 PPC, vi. 341. In May 1456, with the Lancastrians once more in control of government, he was added to the quorum of the peace in distant Middlesex. On the available evidence this is puzzling – he is not known to have had land in that county – but it shows he was very much a persona grata with the government.

Against this background it is not surprising that Fitzharry should have played a prominent part in resisting the powerful Yorkist faction in Herefordshire, his resolve no doubt strengthened by his stepson’s identification with that faction. In March 1456 he witnessed the ruthless violence of the local Yorkists at first hand, or, at least, he is said to have done so. A gang of armed men, headed by Walter Devereux II* and John Lingen, allegedly came to the sessions of the peace at Hereford to take vengeance on those they held responsible for the death of a kinsman of (Sir) William Herbert*. To give their revenge the cloak of legality, they forced the j.p.s., one of whom was our MP, to take indictments against six citizens, whom they then hanged. This was one of several serious crimes attributed to the Yorkists when royal commissions, headed by the duke of Buckingham, came to the county in April 1457. But all is perhaps not as it appears. If an action of conspiracy brought by Devereux and others is to be credited, their indictment for the raid upon Hereford was false, the product of a conspiracy by Fitzharry and others who were later to prove supporters of Lancaster. One of the correspondents of John Paston* certainly believed that at least some of the Yorkists had a case, writing on 1 May, ‘Manye be endyted, som causelese’.30 KB27/784, rex rot. 6; Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner, iii. 118. It is going too far to believe that the story of the raid is all fiction, yet it is probable that, in the strife that divided the county in the late 1450s, the offences of the Lancastrians went unrecorded. Several of them, our MP included, were indicted before the commissioners for illegal livery-giving, but they faced no more grievous charges.31 Fitzharry was distrained to answer this indictment in Trin. term 1458, but he had, in the previous Mar., armed himself with a general pardon: KB27/789, rex rot. 36d; C67/42, m. 13.

This is the context of an arbitration arranged early in 1458. On 8 Feb. Fitzharry joined three Lancastrians, James Tuchet, Lord Audley, Sir John Barre* and Thomas Cornwall, in a bond in £1,000 to abide the arbitration of John Stanbury, bishop of Hereford, and John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, in their dispute with Sir Walter Devereux I, Sir William Herbert, Walter Devereux II and Thomas Bromwich. Significantly, the point at issue was said to be the indictments taken in April 1457, again suggesting that there was something suspicious about them. This attempt to bring peace to the county ran parallel with the similar effort in national politics, but both were to be overtaken by events.32 Longleat House, Wilts., Devereux pprs. DE/Box I/15.

As the temperature was rising in Herefordshire politics Fitzharry stepped up his campaign against his troublesome stepson, John Lingen. In Easter term 1457 he brought bills against him in King’s bench, claiming damages of 650 marks; and on 23 July the vicar of Madley and Sir John Barre made depositions in respect of a suit pending in Chancery supporting the claim of our MP and his wife to jointure in the manor of Sutton Overcourt.33 KB27/785, rots. 43, 57; C1/26/528a. Fitzharry used his influence as a j.p. to pursue his advantage early in 1459. At a session of the peace on 8 Jan. an indictment was laid against John’s brother, Richard, for felonious theft of oxen from our MP at Sutton. There may have been a political dimension to this charge, for not only were Fitzharry and two other prominent local Lancastrians, Skydemore and Barre, among the six j.p.s. who took the indictment, but John Kene, a lawyer active in the cause of local Yorkists, was named as an accessory to the theft.34 KB9/292/5; KB27/804, rex rot. 27. However this may be, the discomfiture of the Lingens was increased yet further when the assize justices came to Hereford seven weeks later. Juries found for Fitzharry and his wife on almost every count pending between the parties, including the alleged assault against Joan as long before as 1453, and awarding them costs and damages totaling 259 marks.35 KB27/785, rots. 43, 57d.

These victories, however, were to stand for nothing in the battles of the civil war of 1459-61. Here Fitzharry fought for the King. There is every reason to suppose that he was with the Lancastrian army that intimidated the Yorkist lords into ignominious withdrawal at Ludford Bridge on the night of 12 Oct. On the following day he travelled to Hereford to take part in the parliamentary election convened there by the Herefordshire sheriff, the courtier, (Sir) William Catesby*, acting on writs of summons issued only four days before. In view of the events at Ludford Bridge, the gathering at the county court was a remarkable one. As one would expect, prominent local Lancastrians, most notably Fitzharry, Barre and Skydemore, were present, no doubt making their way directly from the Lancastrian encampment. But, strikingly, so too were several, like the two Thomas Bromwiches, father and son, and John Walwyn, who had sided with Devereux and Herbert in recent divisions within the shire, and, most remarkably of all, John Milewater, the duke of York’s receiver-general, in what was either an act of abandonment or a display of defiant loyalty to a defeated lord. If, as seems probable, their purpose was to oppose the election of Lancastrian partisans, they failed: Fitzharry was elected in company with Barre.36 C219/16/5.

Fitzharry was rewarded by the Crown for his support. He was appointed to act (probably pending the nomination of a more substantial figure) in the important office of chamberlain of South Wales, vacated by the death of Lord Audley, killed at the battle of Blore Heath on 23 Sept. 1459; and on 29 May 1460, after the attainder of the Yorkist lords, he was granted the keeping of the duke of York’s manor of Marden (near his own holding at Sutton) at a farm to be agreed.37 Griffith, 186; CFR, xix. 273. This new prominence was, however, based on unstable foundations. The recent events had done nothing to lessen tensions in Herefordshire politics. The award of 1458 had clearly failed: as early as Hilary term 1459 Walter Devereux II and Thomas Bromwich had instituted actions in King’s bench, alleging that Fitzharry and other local Lancastrians had conspired to have them falsely indicted for the Hereford raid of March 1456. Much more importantly, the Lancastrian hold on power was tenuous, undermined by the extremity of the measures taken in the Parliament of which Fitzharry was a Member, and the Yorkist victory at the battle of Northampton in July 1460 exposed him, for the first time, to the political dangers of the period. A month later, on 13 Aug., a commission was issued for his arrest (along with that of Sir John Barre, John Chippenham and Thomas Breynton*, all three of whom were among his fellow defendants in the conspiracy action) for spreading false news contrary to statute.38 KB27/791, rot. 19d; 798, rot. 40d: CPR, 1452-61, p. 612.

Too far committed to avoid continued involvement in the escalating conflict, Fitzharry was with the army commanded by Jasper Tudor, earl of Pembroke, and defeated by the earl of March at the battle of Mortimer’s Cross on 2 or 3 Feb. 1461. According to the antiquary, William Worcestre, who visited Herefordshire in 1479, he was one of several Lancastrians taken at the battle and beheaded at Hereford. This cannot be true. A month later, on 6 Mar., he was exempted by name from an offer of pardon by the new King, as he was again on 12 Aug. when pardon was extended to rebels in Wales.39 William of Worcestre, Itins. ed. Harvey, 203; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 55-56; CPR, 1461-7, p. 45. This was more than bureaucratic inertia, for Fitzharry also appears in an active role. According to the Act of Attainder passed in the first Parliament of the new reign, he joined the earl of Pembroke and Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, in raising war against Edward IV at Twthill, just outside Caernarvon, in the autumn of 1461. He is also said to have absconded, in his capacity as chamberlain of South Wales, with the court roll of Cardiganshire in the wake of the decisive Yorkist victory at Towton.40 PROME, xiii. 46; Griffiths, 151; SC6/1168/4, m. 1. Thereafter he presumably took to the mountains of Snowdon with the earl of Pembroke, noting from hiding the royal grant, in February 1462, of his lands to Richard Herbert in tail male. From thence he seems to have travelled to Scotland: a spy in the service of Sir John Russell places him with the Lancastrians there in the same year.41 CPR, 1461-7, p. 77; H.T. Evans, Wales and the Wars of the Roses, 86; Three 15th Cent. Chrons. (Cam. Soc. n.s. xxviii), 158. Where he spent the remainder of the 1460s can only be a matter of speculation, but he survived to the Readeption and seemingly beyond. He was restored to the quorum of the Herefordshire bench on 6 Dec. 1470, and two weeks later he received a grant of the farm of the Herefordshire lands of the Yorkist, John Milewater.42 CFR, xx. 283-4, 290. Miles ap Harry, appointed escheator of Herefs. during the Readeption, was the son of Henry ap Griffith not of our MP: CFR, xx. 281. Further, although the chronicler Warkworth names ‘Sere Thomas Fiztharry’ among those killed on the Lancastrian side at the battle of Tewkesbury on 4 May 1471, our MP was one of five men, headed by the duke of Exeter and the earl of Pembroke, exempted from the pardon offered to the Lancastrians in south Wales by Edward IV more than three months after that battle.43 J. Warkworth, Chron. Reign Edw. IV (Cam. Soc. x), 18; CPR, 1467-77, p. 283. None the less, his death probably followed soon afterwards for by early in 1473 the family’s affairs were in the hands of his son, Thomas ap Harry. It was this Thomas who, in February 1473, sued out an assize of novel disseisin against John Abrahall’s son, William, in respect of the disputed moiety of the manor of Eaton Tregoze, and who soon afterwards entered the moiety on the possession of the Crown, which claimed title during the minority of William, son and heir of the royal grantee, Sir Richard Herbert.44 C66/530, m. 5d; C1/54/390. Our MP certainly did not live to see the reversal of his attainder in the first Parliament of Henry VII’s reign, for on 23 Feb. 1486 a commission was issued to inquire into the lands he had held in chief of Edward IV.45 PROME, xv. 113-15; CPR, 1485-94, p. 133.