TYRELL, Richard

It has been assumed that the MP was the Richard Tyrell, brother of John and Edward Tyrell, who was mentioned in the latter’s will of 1442 as the recipient of commemorative prayers. During his lifetime, however, he was not expressly recorded in association with either of them or with other members of the Tyrell family. The Tyrells’ principal estates were situated in Essex, but Richard himself seems to have had little connexion with that shire, although he was to be buried in the adjoining county of Hertfordshire. His early career was shaped by his connexion with John Norbury†, who had risen to wealth and influence through service to Henry of Bolingbroke (becoming the latter’s first treasurer when he attained the throne in 1399). During the early years of Henry’s reign Tyrell was closely associated with Norbury’s son-in-law, Nicholas Usk, one-time treasurer of John of Gaunt’s household and latterly treasurer of Calais, and by March 1405 he was acting as an executor of Usk’s will. This task presented him with considerable challenges, for Usk was found to be indebted to the Crown in £10,471, although in the event he and his fellow executors managed to obtain a pardon for this sum.2 CPR, 1405-8, pp. 6-7.

Tyrell’s connexion with Norbury led to his inclusion on the second royal commission on which he served – that of November 1408 authorizing the reconstruction of a wooden palisade which Norbury had had built at Winchelsea and Rye for the defence of the lower court of the castle at Guînes, where he was captain. In 1414 Tyrell is recorded acting on Norbury’s behalf, first as one of the recipients of his goods and chattels, and then as a trustee of various of his lands in Kent to hold during the nonage of Alice, daughter and heir of Richard, Lord Saint Maur (d.1409), and his wife Mary Pever. (It had once been planned that Norbury’s daughter should marry Lord Saint Maur, but she had died before the event.)3 CCR, 1419-22, pp. 178-9. This led in turn to Tyrell being enfeoffed in property in Bedfordshire for Alice’s grandfather Thomas Pever† (d.1429).4 CPR, 1413-16, p. 304. In that transaction, dated 1415, Tyrell’s address was given as Rauceby in Lincolnshire, and it was similarly identified that he took out a pardon ten years later.5 E159/202, brevia Mich. rot. 38d. But how he had come by any properties in that county is not known. His links with the Norburys had continued, in that early in 1420 he was appointed by Sir John Montgomery*, the Hertfordshire knight who had married John Norbury’s widow, as an attorney during his absence on military service in France.6 DKR, xlii. 347.

There is, however, no evidence to suggest that the Norburys were instrumental in securing Tyrell’s marriage to the heiress Anne Croyser, whereby he came to Surrey. Anne’s father had held the manors of Stoke Dabernon, Aldebury and Fetcham, with their advowsons, which were worth £40 p.a. according to the tax assessments of 1412,7 C131/44/7; Feudal Aids, vi. 517. and in addition there were family holdings in Bedfordshire. When her father died Anne was still a minor, and aged 13 she had been married, on 27 Apr. 1418, to the son and heir apparent of Sir Maurice Bruyn, her mother Edith’s new husband. By a curious stroke of fate, Edith died on the day of the wedding, and Anne’s husband Ingram did not survive for much longer either.8 C138/12/37; 32/30; Surr. Arch. Collns. li. 92. Subsequently, Anne’s wardship was committed on 24 Feb. 1419 to Richard, Lord Beauchamp of Abergavenny, and his wife Lady Isabel, to whom she remained ward by further royal grants of July and December that year.9 CFR, xiv. 270-1, 281, 303. Whether it was the Beauchamps or her stepfather Bruyn who arranged her marriage to Tyrell is not recorded. It had taken place by February 1421, by which date the couple had successfully petitioned for a papal licence to have a portable altar.10 CPL, vii. 331. Besides the Croyser estates in Surrey, of which Tyrell now took possession,11 Feudal Aids, v. 121, 123, 125. he and his wife laid claim at assizes held in 1427 to the manor of Pavenham in Bedfordshire, against John Grey esquire, gaining judgement in their favour and confirmation of their title by Lord Grey of Ruthin. The Tyrells promptly made a settlement of the manor as well as of land in Great Bookham and Walton-on-Thames in Surrey on themselves in jointure, with remainder to their feoffees.12 VCH Beds. iii. 78; JUST1/1539, rot. 16; CP25(1)/292/66/52; Campbell Ch. X 10.

Although Tyrell took no noticeable part in the administration of Surrey, or in the affairs of the local gentry, he was returned to two Parliaments as a knight of the shire. In both Parliaments he joined in the Commons his much more experienced brother John, sitting for Essex. Richard was occasionally called upon to act as a trustee of property. During the 1420s he served as a feoffee of an estate in and near Horsham in Sussex and in Whethampstead, Hertfordshire, quitclaimed by the lawyer John Corve* and his wife, and the will of Thomas Beaufort, duke of Exeter, made in 1426, referred to lands and tenements which he had acquired from Tyrell and others.13 CP25(1)/291/65/46; Add. Ch. 18710; Reg. Chichele, ii. 362. Among Tyrell’s own feoffees, as chosen in 1427, was John Feriby*, the controller of the royal household who was to be his fellow shire-knight two years later. He also established close links with Nicholas Dixon, one of the barons of the Exchequer, whom he named not only as a feoffee in 1427 but also later as overseer of his will. The two men had known each other for many years, for as rector of Cheshunt in Hertfordshire Dixon was closely connected with the Norburys, who held the advowson of the church, and like Tyrell he had been among the attorneys nominated by Sir John Montgomery. Two other of Tyrell’s feoffees were later to appear as executors of his will, namely William Estfield*, the London mercer and alderman, who was mayor of London at the time of Tyrell’s second Parliament, and a priest named Roger Housewyf. The latter was employed as receiver and chaplain by Eleanor Hull (the mother of Sir Edward Hull*), who was also named among Tyrell’s executors. A formidable lady, Eleanor had attended on Queen Joan, and was in receipt of a royal annuity of 50 marks, but it remains a mystery as to how Tyrell had come to befriend her.

Tyrell wrote his will ‘in myn owen hond’ and in English at Stoke Dabernon on 26 May 1431. He bequeathed his ‘sinfull soule’ to God, and his body to be buried in the Benedictine priory of Sopwell, near St. Albans. The sum of 20 marks was assigned for repairs to the priory church and as a gift to the nuns, while £8 6s. 8d. was set aside for works on the on the ‘rodelofte’ of the parish church at Stoke. The will was proved on 10 July.14 PCC 14 Luffenham (PROB11/3, f. 107v), printed in Fifty Earliest English Wills (EETS lxxviii), 89-90. Shortly before his death Tyrell and his wife Anne had obtained in the court of common pleas a judgement in their favour in a suit against a clerk named John Bromesgrove for wasting Anne’s property in Surrey, and were awarded triple damages of £92. Anne had to bring an action against the clerk’s executors for this sum in 1432.15 CP40/686, rot. 415. Tyrell does not appear to have left surviving issue, and his widow, who outlived him by 33 years, took her inheritance to her third husband Sir Henry Norbury* (the son and heir of Tyrell’s earliest patron), by whom she had eight children.16 CP25(1)/292/68/184. The acct. given in Surr. Arch. Collns. x. 283-7 fails to notice Anne’s earlier marriage to Tyrell. Besides being remembered in the will of his brother Edward, Tyrell was also mentioned in a codicil to that made in 1446 by his executor William Estfield. Estfield requested that £40 be distributed for the welfare of Richard’s soul, and £20 be given to his poor tenants in Surrey when a parliamentary fifteenth was next levied.17 Lambeth Palace Lib, Reg. Stafford, f. 141.