PETYR, Nicholas

The Petyr family, of relatively modest standing, lived in north Dorset at Bagber in Sturminster Newton.3 Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 346, 353. After the death of Nicholas’s father, at an unknown date before 1426, his mother Alice married an altogether more distinguished man, John Stork† of Trent, Somerset, who had already established a reputation as an advisor to prominent landowners of the region, and was known to members of the King’s council such as Bishop Stafford of Bath and Wells. Whether Nicholas was the eldest of her sons is not clear, and the extent of his inheritance is obscure. All that is known is that in her widowhood the long-lived Alice released to him lands in East and West Bagber which she held as part of her dower from her first husband, but that when she died in December 1474 her heir was found to be her 24-year-old grandson William, the son of another John Petyr. Nicholas had died some nine years earlier.4 Hutchins, iv. 340; C140/48/12; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 485-6. Writs de diem clausit extremum had been issued to the escheator of Somerset and Dorset on 8 Feb. 1466 to hold an inquest regarding his estate, and were followed on 10 May with instructions to make inquiries about that of his late stepfather John Stork, but no inquisitions post mortem survive to furnish details about the lives and landed holdings of either man.5 CFR, xx. 145, 176. The timing of the writs points to the Crown’s interest in the Petyr properties, whether in the possession of the MP or Stork.

Although Petyr’s membership of Lincoln’s Inn commenced in 1445, surprisingly few details about his legal practice can be traced, and despite his stepfather’s important connexions (most notably with the duke of York, from whom Stork received a fee as a councillor in the mid 1440s) it would seem that he was unsuccessful in attracting clients of standing in his home county. The borough of Shaftesbury, just a few miles from Bagber, often chose men of law as its parliamentary representatives, and perhaps Petyr came to a personal arrangement with the burgesses to serve them for reduced expenses. Thomas Cross*, his fellow MP in the Commons of November 1449, was much more of a stranger to the town, for he was one of the clerks of the Exchequer and hailed from Huntingdonshire. While the Parliament was in its second session in London in Hilary term 1450 Petyr was drawn into a quarrel between another fellow of Lincoln’s Inn, Richard Thurland, and Thomas Trefredo, a ‘gentleman’ of the parish of St. Clement Danes. In the previous law term Thurland had accused Trefredo of seriously assaulting him on 10 Aug. 1449 in the parish of St. Dunstan in the West near the Temple. Now Trefredo retaliated by alleging that Thurland, together with Petyr and John Chiselden* (recently admitted to their Inn) – all three styled ‘gentlemen’ and parishioners of St. Andrew’s church, Holborn – had attacked him on the same day and place. In Easter term he claimed damages of 1,000 marks. Thurland appeared in court to deny culpability, but whether Petyr ever did likewise does not transpire.6 CP40/755, rot. 335; 756, rot. 415d; 757, rot. 124d.

The remaining references to the MP are also found in the plea rolls. In Trinity term 1454 when the pensioner of Lincoln’s Inn was pursuing 25 ‘gentlemen’ for their dues, Petyr was said to owe 40s.; and six years later the prominent Dorset lawyer John Newburgh II* sued him as ‘of East Bagber, gentleman’, for illegally detaining two bonds.7 Baker, i. 100; CP40/798, rot. 193.