VAGE, Robert

Vage ranks among the more obscure men to represent Liskeard in Parliament in the fifteenth century. The patchy survival of the borough records makes it impossible to ascertain whether he ever held local office, but he may have owed his return to the Commons to the influence of his family. A putative kinsman, Richard Vage, was a substantial merchant connected with Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, and a man who harboured considerable political ambition. It may have been at his incitement that in October 1439 a group of the burgesses, including John Colys*, marched on the guildhall of Liskeard, declared the recently-elected mayor John Clement deposed and elected Richard Vage in his stead.2 CPR, 1436-41, p. 371; C1/12/237. It is possible that Robert’s election alongside the ubiquitous lawyer Robert Clay*, who lacked local credentials, was connected with these events, for he must have been comparatively young and inexperienced at the time. Indeed, Richard Vage had previously been connected with Clay, whom he had employed as his attorney in the King’s bench in 1431.3 KB27/679, rot. 25d.

Richard Vage may have been a quarrelsome man, for in the mid 1440s he was squabbling with the powerful Thomas Bodulgate* and John Beket over certain tenements in Liskeard, and it fell to our MP along with a number of professional sureties including Thomas Tregedek* to stand surety in Chancery for his agreement to the arbitration of John Pentire, Nicholas Cavell, James Nanfan* and George Denysell, or in default of the assize justices Richard Newton and Nicholas Aysshton*.4 KB27/742, rots. 136d, fines 2d. Probably as a result of these events, before the end of the 1450s Robert himself was also engaged in litigation with Bodulgate and Beket.5 CP40/787, rots. 515, 519.

It is possible that Vage was the same man who in 1450 entered the King’s household as a yeoman in one of the household offices, and continued in this capacity for at least two years, although he was not included among those kept on in the reformed household of November 1454.6 PPC, vi. 220-33. If he was the royal servant he returned to the south-west after Edward IV’s accession, for only in the 1460s did he become active in local society, attesting deeds, serving on juries, and even attending the shire elections of 1467 at Lostwithiel.7 C140/7/5; KB9/307/100; 943/56; Cornw. RO, Liskeard bor. recs., B/Lis/20/2/58.