MEKYLFFYLD, William

An ‘obscure figure from an obscure family’,6. C.F. Richmond, John Hopton, 234. Mekylffyld was the nephew of William Mekylffyld of Henham, the elder brother of his father Robert.7. William should be distinguished from another namesake, who died before 1458. This William, the father of Thomas Mekylffyld of Whatfeld, must have been one of his relatives: C139/176/34; CPR, 1452-61, p. 592; CFR, xix. 212. Although Robert was his brother’s heir, when the childless older William came to draw up his will in the autumn of 1439, while ‘purposyng towird ye holy lond’,8 Norwich consist. ct., Reg. Doke, ff. 145-7. he left the most important part of his estate to John Ulveston*, who was both his stepson and brother-in-law. In the will he directed that John, his wife Isabel’s son by her first husband, Thomas Ulveston, should have his manor at Micklefield and, after Isabel’s death, the right to buy the reversion of his manor of ‘Cravenes’ in Henham. The gift of Micklefield was ‘in recompence and satisfaccion’ for 200 marks which Thomas Ulveston had advanced towards the purchase of ‘Cravenes’. The reason for the advance is unclear; perhaps Thomas had provided it when John married the testator’s sister, Elizabeth. By making such arrangements the senior William, a substantial enough landowner to have been considered for knighthood in 1430, was probably influenced by his wife, for they favoured his stepson at the expense of his true heir, Robert, a minor lawyer of Clifford’s Inn.9 Baker, 1096. After the testator died in mid 1441, Robert succeeded to no more than a manor at Blyford (to which was annexed ten acres of fen at ‘Bregge’ as compensation for the loss of Micklefield) and lands and tenements in Sotterley, Henstead and Rushmere, together with other properties his brother had bought in Bildeston and Harleston. Furthermore, there was a restriction of his enjoyment of Blyford, in the form of annuities charged upon its income, one of £10 to William’s widow, Isabel, and another annuity to Robert Banyard. The elder William remembered his nephew and namesake in his will, assigning him ten marks to receive when he reached the age of 21. In this he was even-handed (for he gave the same amount to John Ulveston’s son, Richard), but certainly not overly generous.10 Richmond, 232-3; E372/275, ‘adhuc item London, item adhuc item London’. The date of Isabel’s death is unknown.

The younger William Mekylffyld was probably some years short of his majority when his uncle made his will, for he next appears in the records as an attestor at the election of the knights of the shire for Suffolk to the first Parliament of 1449. Like his father, he trained as a lawyer, in his case at the Middle Temple.11 Baker, 1097. Joining that profession was a sensible career step considering his father’s longevity and the relatively meagre estates to which he would one day succeed. He again comes into view in September 1452, when he and his other uncle, John Ulveston, were mainpernors for Robert Bumpstede of Willingham, a parish lying a few miles north of Blyford.12 CFR, xviii. 259.

By that date, Ulveston and the Mekylffylds were caught up in the backlash which followed the downfall of William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk. Ulveston was a prominent de la Pole retainer and both Robert Mekylffyld (who had witnessed a deed on behalf of Suffolk in 1442),13 CCR, 1441-7, p. 57. and the elder William had been attached to the duke’s affinity in East Anglia. After de la Pole’s death in 1450, his followers came under attack from their opponents and on 7 Dec. that year a commission of oyer and terminer headed by Judge William Yelverton* heard complaints about their activities in Suffolk. Ulveston, Robert and the elder William were said unjustly to have disseised the daughters and heirs of Roger Chestan, all children, of a manor in Westleton in the mid 1430s and in subsequent years to have oppressed the lawyers, William Jenney* and his brother John*, who had tried to help them. Although he had taken out letters of attorney prior to going abroad in November 1439,14 DKR, xlviii. 33. it is unlikely that the elder William Mekylffyld fulfilled his intention to go the Holy Land, for it was also said that he, Robert, Ulveston and others had entered the manor again in July 1440 in order physically to eject the Chestans after they had regained possession. Allegedly, they had picked up the young sisters by the arms and thrown them onto a dung heap outside the property.15 KB27/798, rex rot. 9. Two years after the oyer and terminer hearing, the subject of this biography was likewise at the receiving end of the reaction against de la Pole’s adherents. In Michaelmas term 1452 the sheriff of Suffolk was ordered to secure the appearance in the court of King’s bench of him and his father, along with Ulveston and others who had followed the late duke of Suffolk, to answer for divers trespasses and other misdeeds.16 KB27/766, rex. rot. 6.

There is no evidence of Mekylffyld’s activities between 1452 and March 1458 when a London tailor, John Goldeman, was obliged to transfer his goods and chattels to Ulveston and others as a security for debts he owed Mekylffyld and John Stodhard, another tailor from the City.17 CCR, 1441-7, p. 482. How these debts had arisen is unknown. It is possible that Mekylffyld had encountered Goldeman while attending his inn of court, although in that case one might have expected him to have been the debtor rather than the creditor. Later that year, he and his wife Elizabeth leased out a manor at Stuston in north Suffolk to a couple of tenants.18 WARD2/52A/178/54.

Relative youth may explain Mekylffyld’s obscurity before he entered Parliament as a Member for Dunwich in 1459. The election for the borough of him and John Sulyard*, another Suffolk gentleman rather than a burgess, was not out of the ordinary. Owing to its financial difficulties, Dunwich had already chosen outsiders to represent it in Parliament on previous occasions, although that of 1459 was apparently the first in which neither MP was a resident burgess. Even so, it is unlikely that Mekylffyld was a complete stranger to the electors, for his father had attested the Dunwich elections to the Parliaments of 1435 and November 1449, and his home parish of Blyford was only a few miles to the north-west of the town. The Coventry Parliament of 1459 was notoriously packed with the court’s adherents and, given his connexions with the likes of Ulveston, his candidature probably had the backing of Lancastrian supporters in East Anglia.

Yet Mekylffyld was clearly no diehard Lancastrian since early in Edward IV’s reign he became a member of the Suffolk commission of the peace. Subsequently dropped from the bench before the Readeption, he was not reappointed when Henry VI returned to the throne and he did not begin his second stint as a j.p. until after Edward had recovered the Crown. Whatever his apparent detachment from national politics, he appears to have taken part in at least one dispute at a local level. In September 1465 ‘Mykelfylde younger’ (presumably William, since his father, Robert, was still alive) was one of over 60 men who rode out in support of (Sir) Gilbert Debenham II*, then challenging the Paston family’s claim to the Suffolk manor of Caldecote.19 Paston Letters ed. Davis, i. 319-20. Debenham was a retainer of John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk. In spite of his previous de la Pole connexions, Mekylffyld himself appears to have joined the Mowbray affinity, since he was among those to whom the duke allegedly made illegal grants of livery in June 1469.20 KB27/839, rex rot. 31d; 841, rex rot. 49.

Earlier that decade, Mekylffyld received £5 13s. 4d. from the officials of John Hopton of Blythburgh, perhaps as a payment for legal services.21 Richmond, 52. Blythburgh lay just south of Blyford and he must have counted the Hoptons among his closest associates. His wife, Elizabeth, was the niece of Thomasina Hopton (John’s wife), and his uncle, John Ulveston, was overseer of the Hopton estates and John Hopton’s adviser and steward.22 Ibid. 51, 84, 97, 103, 234. Another member of the Hopton circle was Mekylffyld’s father-in-law, Thomas Barrington. Barrington appointed the MP an executor of his will, in which role Mekylffyld was involved in demising a manor in Matching and Abbots Roding, Essex, to Thomas’s grandson, Nicholas Barrington, in 1489.23 PCC 6 Wattys; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 554. In the will, drawn up in 1469, Barrington remembered his other grandchildren, Mekylffyld’s children by his wife, Elizabeth, who was already dead by this date. He left £10 to the couple’s elder son and heir, Robert, £20 towards the marriage of their daughter, Anne, and 20 marks to their second daughter, Margaret. Another of Mekylffyld’s associates was Christopher Willoughby of Parham, one of Hopton’s neighbours. In February 1477 Willoughby acquired licence to demise his Suffolk manor of Bradfield, a property he held in chief, to the MP and other feoffees.24 CPR, 1476-85, p. 16. It was probably also on behalf of Willoughby that Mekylffyld, in association with John Hotoft and Thomas Wallar, obtained the keeping for three years of the castle, manor and lordship of Orford from the Crown in March 1498.25 CFR, xxii. no. 314. It is unclear how Orford, a property which had descended to Willoughby through an entail made by his great-uncle, Robert, Lord Willoughby of Eresby, had come into the King’s hands. When in the same year Willoughby (claimant to the title and lands of Willoughby of Eresby) came to make his will, he made bequests of ten marks to Mekylffyld and £5 to ‘my aunte Margery Mekilfield’, suggesting that he had a family connexion with the MP.26 Richmond, 225-9, 234. Apart from the Hoptons, Barringtons and Christopher Willoughby, Mekylffyld was also associated with the far humbler Playters of Sotterley, where he himself held lands, in his later years. Along with their holdings in Suffolk, the Playters’ estates included a manor at Welborne in Norfolk. Following the death of Thomas Playter in 1479, Welborne passed to that minor attorney’s younger son Edmund. Edmund subsequently fell out with the feoffees of the manor, of whom Mekylffyld was one, suing several actions in the Chancery against them for breach of trust in the late 1490s and early 1500s.27 C1/219/57; 250/24; 346/58; Procs. Suff. Inst. Archaeology, lxxxv. 43.

It is possible that at least one of these suits was still in progress when Mekylffyld died on 15 Sept. 1506. A writ of diem clausit extremum was sent to the escheator in Suffolk several weeks later but, for whatever reason, an inquisition for his lands was delayed until November 1519. His estate, to which he had succeeded well into his adulthood, consisted of the manor at Blyford once held by his uncle, along with various lands and rents in Blyford and other parishes in north-east Suffolk. According to the inquisition, these properties were worth no more than £22 p.a. net. While probably an underestimate, it further indicates that the MP possessed modest estates.28 C142/34/27; CFR, xxii, no. 854. Although both the MP and his eldest son (‘Mekelfeilde senior and junior’) feature in the ‘King’s Book’ of 1501, this may in fact merely emphasise their modest means. A list of lords, knights and superior gentry compiled by the Crown with the intention of summoning for knighthood at the marriage of Prince Arthur all those worth at least £40 p.a. in lands, the book also includes landowners, like the Mekylffylds, with no sums beside their names. As it does not contain any valuations below £40, it may well be that those without any figure fell below that qualification: Baker, 50. Mekylffyld must have outlived his heir, Robert, for his successor was another son, William. As William was aged about 40 at the time of inquisition, Elizabeth Mekylffyld might not have been his mother, although it is not possible to prove that the MP had remarried after her death.