PYSTOR, Nicholas

This obscure MP for Ludgershall may have been a kinsman of Robert Pystor, a prominent figure in the county town of Wiltshire, as steward of Wilton in 1440-1 and mayor of that borough in 1459-60.1 Wilts. Hist. Centre, Wilton bor. recs. stewards’ accts. G25/1/88; gen. entry bk. G25/1/21, f. 601; C219/16/6. Robert also served as a juror at inquisitions post mortem held at Wilton in the 1440s and 1450s: C139/103/36; 118/16; 130/7; 149/25. He attested the shire elections of 1459: C219/16/5. It has been suggested that he was the esquire from Hampshire who bore the same name, but that Nicholas does not appear in the records until several years after Parliament met at Bury St. Edmunds in 1447, and died as late as 1504, so while the identification is not impossible it is very unlikely.2 HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 687, states that he was a juror in Hants in the 1460s, sometimes being described as ‘of Thornegate’ – a place which has not been identified. He inherited the manor of Upper Eldon in King’s Somborne, which had been in his fam. since the mid 14th century. This, situated on the road between Ludgershall and Winchester, was settled in tail by Pystor’s feoffees on his son Edmund and the latter’s wife Alice at some point before Edmund’s death in 1485: VCH Hants, iv. 477; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 103. But Nicholas outlived Edmund, dying on 20 Apr. 1504. His post mortem showed that he also held the manor of Bossington, in south-west Hants, worth £11 p.a., and that in 1500 he had made arrangements that lands there to the value of £10 p.a. should be held by his feoffees to the use of his gds. William Pystor and the latter’s wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Michael Skilling†. By the time of his death William, his heir, was aged 22: CFR, xxii. no. 788; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 971; VCH Hants, iv. 491. Perhaps they were kinsmen.