VAVASOUR, John

The Vavasours of Hazlewood, summoned to Parliament by personal writ of summons from 1299 to 1313, were one of the most ancient families of the West Riding.3 CP, xii(2), 230-5. John is not to be confused with his namesakes, father and son, of Weston and Newton-on-Nidd in the W. Riding: W.P. Baildon, Baildon and the Baildons, i. 524ff. It was the good fortune of our MP’s birth that his family were wealthy enough to make significant landed provision for their younger sons. On 13 Jan. 1414, shortly after his father’s death, the manor of East Halton in north Lincolnshire, once the property of his mother’s family, was settled upon a powerful group of feoffees, headed by Thomas, duke of Clarence, to hold for his mother’s life with remainder to him and his issue. His mother’s death soon afterwards meant that he was still a minor when this remainder fell in, and the manor, valued at 20 marks p.a., probably remained in the hands of the feoffees until he came of age in the mid 1420s.4 C138/16/52. In 1432, styled as ‘of Hazlewood, esq.’, he was returned as seised of the manor: Feudal Aids, iii. 343.

Vavasour’s family connexions also allowed him to add to his property by marriage: at an unknown date, but probably in the late 1420s or early 1430s, he took as his wife the eldest of the four coheiresses of a family long established at Spaldington in the East Riding.5 One of her yr. sisters was contracted in marriage in Oct. 1433: Test. Ebor. iv (Surtees Soc. liii), 10n. Some idea of the value of the lands she brought him is provided by the 1412 tax assessment of her grandfather, Peter de la Haye, the Yorkshire escheator of 1414-15 and 1423-4 and an East Riding j.p. His lands were valued at £51 p.a.,6 Early Yorks. Chs. ed. Clay, xii. 88-89; Feudal Aids, vi. 268, 272, 543, 545, 547; Test. Ebor. i (Surtees Soc. iv), 155n. and although the inheritance had to be divided with her three sisters, over time John increased his wife’s share. By a fine levied in Michaelmas term 1449 the couple acquired lands in Spaldington, Willitoft and Aughton, all in the East Riding, from her sister Elizabeth Knyght and her mother Joan Lounde, and by his death the whole of the manor of Spaldington was in the hands of the Vavasours.7 CP25(1)/281/160/14, 17; Procs. Soc. Antiqs. ser. 2, iv. 79.

To the profits of marriage and an inheritance that was greater than most gentry younger sons could expect, Vavasour added the rewards of a career of modest success in the law. He was of age by Michaelmas term 1426 when, with his co-plaintiff John Langholm I*, he appeared in person in the court of common pleas to prosecute pleas of debt against a courtholder of Killingholme and a bailiff of Immingham, suits which very probably arose out of his tenure of the neighbouring East Halton.8 CP40/663, rot. 272. In 1446 Vavasour won a small sum in damages when disseised of his right of common pasture in Killingholme: C260/149/13. Given his subsequent career in the law, he may then have been studying at an Inn of Chancery. There is no direct evidence, but either he or a namesake was a member of Staple Inn in the early 1460s.9 J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii. 1591.

Not until the late 1430s did Vavasour begin to appear in Chancery records: in July and November 1438 he acted as a mainpernor for another young lawyer, Peter Ardern.10 CFR, xvii. 48, 68. While he was never to achieve Ardern’s eminence in the profession he was by this date already in office as clerk of estreats, the chief clerkship of the court of common pleas. Nothing is known of his apprenticeship in that court, but what seems to have been rapid promotion may have been due to his birth, more exalted than that of the generality of the court’s clerks. Another factor may have been a connexion with Sir William Babington, the chief justice of the court until his retirement in February 1436. In June 1441 he stood mainprise for Sir William’s son, William Babington*, with whom he was long to remain closely connected, and it is possible that he had earlier been a servant of the chief justice. However this may be, he took up his clerkship in either Hilary or Easter term 1437.11 He was in office in Easter term 1437 but he had not been in the previous Mich. term: CP40/703, att. rots.; 705, att. rots. The relevant rots. for the intervening term are too damaged to identify the clerk: CP40/704, att. rots. Later, on 23 July 1439, the Crown assigned him an annuity of £10 from the issues of Yorkshire in consideration of his costs, care and labour in the office. Further grants of royal patronage, albeit minor ones, followed: in February 1442 he had a licence with another lawyer, William Eland*, to trade with Iceland in two ships from Kingston-upon-Hull, and in the following month he secured a further grant of his £10 p.a. fee, implying he had encountered difficulty in its collection.12 CPR, 1436-41, p. 302; 1441-6, p. 56; CFR, xvii. 193; C76/124, m. 18.

No doubt Vavasour’s office in the central courts made him an attractive parliamentary candidate to the electors of Lincoln who returned him successively to the Parliaments of 1447 and 1449 (Feb.).13 C219/15/4, 6. Another consideration, particularly in respect of the Parliament of 1447, may have been his brother Henry’s position as one of the ushers of the King’s chamber.14 PPC, v. 410; E101/409/11; 410/9. But the most important explanation of John’s returns lies in his relationship with the richest of Lincoln’s merchants, Hamon Sutton I*, the husband of his sister Margaret. This family connexion was the only thing to associate John with the constituency he represented and it is clear that it was a close one. When, in October 1449, a settlement was made on the divorce of Sutton’s daughter, Agnes, from John Bussy, our MP, together with his brother Henry, was among the trustees nominated to guarantee her life estate in various Bussy properties. Similarly, during negotiations in 1457 for a marriage between another of Sutton’s daughters and William Copledyke, John was named by Sutton, along with William Babington and another lawyer, Thomas Fitzwilliam II*, to protect his daughter’s interests in the consequent resettlement of the Copledyke estates.15 CCR, 1447-54, p.164; C1/34/9; CAD, iv. A8373.

Not long after sitting in Parliament for the second time, Vavasour surrendered his clerkship in favour of his maternal cousin, William†, son of Patrick Skipwith*. Although, on 22 June 1452, he had a further assignment of his £10 annuity on the issues of Yorkshire, the following Easter term was the last in which he acted as clerk.16 CPR, 1446-52, p. 552; 1452-61, p. 366. Once no longer involved with duties in Westminster, John became active in the administration of his native county, appearing for the first time on local commissions and the East Riding bench. He also purchased further lands there, acquiring by fine in 1453 nearly 300 acres of farmland at Humbleton (in Holderness).17 CP25(1)/281/160/44. Not surprisingly, he also found employment with various local institutions: from an unknown date he was in receipt of an annual fee of 20s. from Selby abbey; in 1455 he was paid his expenses for acting for Fountains abbey at a loveday at Knaresborough; and in 1458-9 he was paid for his counsel by the authorities of Kingston-upon-Hull.18 N.L. Ramsay, ‘The English Legal Profession’ (Camb. Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), app. 9, pp. cvi-cvii.

Yet, although Vavasour lived on for another 30 years his later career is one of obscurity. During the civil war of 1459-61 it is probable that his political sympathies lay with the Yorkists for he was removed from the bench in December 1459, only to be reappointed after Edward IV’s accession. He continued thereafter to play a role in local government, but few references to him survive in any other connexion. In May 1474 he was named as one of the executors of his old friend William Babington, whom he survived by nearly ten years; and as late as 1475 he was in receipt of an annual fee of one mark from the dean and chapter of York cathedral.19 Ibid. p. cvii; Test. Ebor. iii (Surtees Soc. xlv), 186n. Later, in August 1481, his advanced age prompted Archbishop Rotherham of York to allow him and his two daughters, Ellen Langholm and Katherine Wombwell, to have an oratory for three years.20 Test. Ebor. iv. 91. Ellen was the wid. of William, son and heir of John Langholm I*. He probably died between 17 Mar. 1482, when named to his last commission, and 14 May 1483, when omitted from the bench, having survived to see his son John well advanced on a legal career that was more successful than his own. Educated at the Inner Temple, the younger John was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law in 1478 and was a justice in the common pleas from 1489 until his death in 1506.21 Baker, ii. 1591-2.

A Chancery suit of the mid 1440s provides an interesting sidelight on Vavasour’s career. It shows that, while clerk of estreats, he was, like many other lawyers, involved in money-lending, and was perhaps prepared to go further in recovering his debts than some contemporaries would have found acceptable. He advanced £20 to a London grocer, John Ikilton, and then, if an accusation made by another of Ikilton’s creditors is to be believed, had the unfortunate grocer committed to prison on his failure to repay. Ikilton died in prison.22 C1/16/125-31.