TYRELL, William II

A member of a prominent Essex family, Tyrell was a younger son of an influential parliamentarian and servant of the Lancastrian Crown. Most of Sir John Tyrell’s lands passed to his eldest son, Thomas, but William succeeded to a manor at Rawreth in south-east Essex, where he took up residence, and another at nearby North Benfleet, a property that his mother had brought to Sir John in marriage.13 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1161; Morant, i. 261. It is not clear whether Tyrell came into any other lands through his own marriages, although he did augment his estates by acquiring a manor at Hockley and other holdings in Essex, and by farming a manor or manors in Rawreth from Robert Darcy I* and his son, Robert II* in the late 1440s and early 1450s.14 C1/56/129; Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 67; SC6/848/14-19. It is also possible that he obtained properties in London, where he formed strong connexions. In a pardon of 1452 he was described as ‘late of London’,15 C67/40, m. 16. and his son and heir, John, married the daughter of a grocer from the City, John Walden*.16 Morant, i. 286. In the early 1450s he was a trustee for the mercer, Richard Everle,17 CCR, 1447-54, p. 254. and in the following decade he witnessed a conveyance on behalf of a leading citizen, (Sir) Thomas Cook II*.18 CAD, i. C1171. Furthermore, he bought property in Essex from the executors of William Cobbe, a London glover who died in 1459, and played a part in the affairs of Ralph Marche, a mercer from the City, perhaps in the capacity of an executor.19 PCC 32 Godyn; 18 Stokton (PROB11/4, ff. 140v-141). In spite of his links with London, his main interest always lay in Essex, where he frequently acted as a feoffee or a witness on behalf of his brother Thomas and other gentry,20 CCR, 1447-54, p. 137; 1454-61, p. 338; 1468-76, no. 63; 1476-85, no. 345; CP25(1)/72/282/311; CPR, 1446-52, p. 529; 1461-7, p. 228; CAD, i. C1105; iv. A7909; Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 54, 55; Essex RO, deeds, 1460, 1467, D/DHf T41/91, 100, 102. and served as a local administrator.

Tyrell is first heard of witnessing a conveyance in February 1441.21 CCR, 1435-41, p. 490. A few months later, he went to France in the retinue of Richard, duke of York, a magnate whom his father had served as receiver-general.22 E101/53/33. By Michaelmas the same year, he had become an esquire of the King’s household, of which his elder brothers, Thomas and William senior, were also members.23 E101/409/9. He began his career as a local administrator in 1443, when he was appointed a j.p. in Essex, and six years later he entered the Commons for the first time. Before riding to Westminster he attested the return of his eldest brother (now Sir Thomas) to the same assembly as a knight of the shire for Essex. There is little doubt that he owed his election as one of the burgesses for Weymouth to the patronage of the duke of York, who was the lord of this Dorset borough.24 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 386. He was re-elected to the Commons in the following autumn, but this time for the county of Essex. The Parliament of November 1449 was fiercely critical of the government and the Court and it impeached the King’s chief minister, William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk. This placed Tyrell in a somewhat unusual position, given that he was both a Household man and associated with the duke of York, the leader of the opposition to de la Pole and the Court.

Tyrell’s second Parliament came to an end just as Cade’s rebellion was beginning. Several weeks into the rebellion he was suspected of involvement in it, and in July 1450 he was pardoned at the queen’s request for having taken part in an illegal gathering in Essex.25 CPR, 1446-52, p. 338. Yet he retained the trust of the government, which in the following September placed him on a commission ordered to arrest and imprison traitors found in the county. In the same month the King awarded him, his eldest brother and John Ingrowe £40 for their efforts in capturing those involved in the rebellion.26 E404/67/20. He nevertheless found it necessary to take out another royal pardon in August 1452,27 C67/40, m. 16. and in the following November he was indicted for having assembled with others in his county during the rebellion. It was alleged that he had proclaimed that he would be ‘captain’ in Essex and that he had called for the deaths of those lords close to the King.28 KB9/273/26. The indictment still hung over him in June 1454 when he surrendered himself to the Marshalsea prison. Bailed by his brother Sir Thomas and others after pleading not guilty in the court of King’s bench, he was acquitted a few weeks later.29 KB27/772, rex rot. 31d. It is hard to say what lay behind this affair, although local enmities in Essex might have played a part in the indictment, which Tyrell claimed was malicious. Perhaps he had encountered a group of rebels and, in an effort to control a threatening situation, promised to become their ‘leader’. During the Peasants’ Revolt Richard II had averted potential disaster by naming himself captain of the angry rebels gathered at Smithfield. Those involved in popular revolts sometimes sought a prominent figure to act as their commander and it is possible that Tyrell was familiar with Froissart’s account of the death of Sir Robert Salle†, an East Anglian knight murdered in 1381. According to Froissart, Salle was killed after he had refused the demands of a group of rebels that he should become their captain.30 J. Froissart, Chrons. ed. Brereton, 222-4; Peasants’ Revolt ed. Dobson (2nd edn.), 16, 237-8, 258, 262. It is also conceivable that Tyrell’s problems arose from his links with York, since the rebels of 1450 declared their support for the duke, with whom Cade himself claimed a connexion. Whatever the case, those very same links probably assisted his election to the Commons later in the year, since York is known to have ‘laboured’ to ensure the return of his supporters to the Parliament of 1450. Tyrell’s fellow knight of the shire was his brother-in-law Robert Darcy II, whose father had served the duke in a legal capacity.31 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 752.

Tyrell was returned to the Commons for the last time in the wake of York’s victory at the battle of St. Albans. During the Parliament he submitted a petition claiming that his indictment of 1452 was malicious and sought the permission of the King and Lords to take legal action against those who had procured it.32 SC8/144/7177. It would appear that the petition was unsuccessful: ‘le Roy saduysera’ is written on its dorse and it does not feature in the Parl. rolls. Shortly after the dissolution of the Parliament of 1455-6, he, his fellow knight of the shire, John Green III*, Henry Bourgchier and Sir Thomas Tyrell paid the Crown £220 for the wardship of the daughter and heir of John Hill III* of Somerset.33 C81/1622/69, 85; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 285-6, 288; J.S. Roskell, Speakers, 266. No doubt they acquired the wardship with the help of the treasurer of England, Bourgchier’s father, Henry, Viscount Bourgchier, an ally of the duke of York. Tyrell’s own father had enjoyed a good relationship with the Bourgchiers and he himself remained on friendly terms with them in later years.34 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 684; L.S. Woodger, ‘Hen. Bourgchier’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1974), 270; E41/332. It was perhaps because of his connexion with York that he took out a royal pardon in January 1458,35 C67/42, m. 39. but by now, as the country’s political divisions were widening, his primary loyalty was to the Lancastrian Crown. In the later 1450s the government, back in the hands of those associated with the Court, placed him on four commissions of array and in November 1459, shortly before the Parliament of that year opened, he was appointed escheator in Essex and Hertfordshire. His brothers Sir Thomas and William I sat in this partisan assembly, which attainted York and his leading allies, and in July 1460 he himself, along with Sir Thomas’s eldest son, another William Tyrell, fought for the Lancastrians at Northampton. Both he and his nephew were knighted by the King on the morning of the battle.36 HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 893; Shaw, ii. 12. One of those killed at Northampton was Humphrey, duke of Buckingham, whose widow appointed the MP steward of her estates a few months later.

After Edward IV seized the throne, the new government excluded Tyrell from the administration of Essex although by 1463 trusted his brother, Sir Thomas, sufficiently to make him a j.p. He and Sir Thomas were more fortunate than their brother, William I, who had been arrested for treason early in the previous year. Three days before the elder William’s execution on 20 Feb. 1462, Tyrell took the precaution of acquiring a royal pardon.37 C67/45, m. 37. No doubt his links with the Bourgchiers protected him: they supported the new regime and Edward IV made Viscount Bourgchier earl of Essex. Although Tyrell’s political views differed from those of the Bourgchiers, he served as steward of the household of the earl’s brother Thomas Bourgchier, archbishop of Canterbury, from 1464 to 1468, and on two occasions in the later 1460s he and the earl’s son Humphrey Bourgchier*, Lord Cromwell, stood surety for the archbishop.38 CFR, xx. 211, 244. He also acted as a feoffee for (Sir) John Say II*,39 CCR, 1476-85, no. 345; CPR, 1461-7, p. 228. another associate of the Bourgchier family, who served as under treasurer at the Exchequer during the earl of Essex’s first two terms as treasurer of England.

Following the Readeption of Henry VI in the autumn of 1470, Tyrell was restored to the bench and once again placed on ad hoc commissions. Well aware that Edward IV, then in exile in the Low Countries, would try to regain the throne, the authorities kept a close watch on East Anglia, forcing him to land in Yorkshire on his return to England in the following spring.40 C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, 231; Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, v. 94-95; Arrivall of Edw. IV (Cam. Soc. i), 2. Two days after Edward’s landing at Ravenspur on 14 Mar., Tyrell drew up his will, but it is impossible to tell whether this was in reaction to the news and in anticipation of the fighting ahead.41 PCC 32 Godyn. The news of the Yorkist King’s return had certainly reached the earl of Oxford, then at Bury St. Edmunds, on 19 Mar: Paston Letters, v. 95-96. He died soon afterwards but it is unclear whether it was he or his nephew and namesake who fell at the battle of Barnet, under the banner of Richard, earl of Warwick, just over a month later.42 Paston Letters, v. 100. Sir William Tyrell of Warley was certainly dead when his father, Sir Thomas, made his will in 1475: PCC 31 Wattys (PROB11/6, ff. 237-41). According to Trans. Essex Arch. Soc. iii. 80n, the MP was buried in the church of the Austin friars, London, the burial place of his executed brother and namesake, rather than in Essex. Yet the fact that John, his eldest son by his first wife, had to negotiate with the Crown for the right to succeed to his father’s lands might suggest that the MP had taken up arms for Henry VI. John recovered his inheritance with the help of the archbishop of Canterbury, who interceded on his behalf, but he was still obliged to pay the King a fine of 300 marks.43 C1/56/127.

No inquisition post mortem for Tyrell survives, but his lengthy and detailed will, made in his ‘owne hande’, gives much detail about his lands. Apart from his manors at Rawreth, North Benfleet and Hockley, he died possessed of other holdings in south-east Essex (many of which he had purchased in piecemeal fashion from his tenants and neighbours) and Kent. His son, John, heir to Rawreth and other inherited lands, features only briefly in the will, which was largely concerned with providing for the MP’s second wife, Philippa, and his children by her. William awarded Philippa, the daughter of a Kentish Lancastrian, and the widow of an esquire from the same county, a life interest in North Benfleet, along with other lands and tenements in Essex and his holdings in Kent, including a ‘place’ in Maidstone which he had jointly purchased with James Brown and others. He also directed that their son Jasper, still a minor, should succeed to part of her dower holdings in Essex, after her death. None of Tyrell’s three daughters by Philippa was married when he made the will and he set aside the income from various properties in Hockley and Rawreth for their upbringing and that of Anne Pympe, evidently a resident of his household, and perhaps Philippa’s daughter by her previous marriage. He also arranged that Elizabeth, his eldest daughter by Philippa, should have a marriage portion of £100.44 PCC 32 Godyn. Not mentioned in the will is Margaret, his daughter by his first wife, who had married Thomas Huntingdon, an esquire with lands in Essex and Cambridgeshire.45 Morant, ii. 529; PCC 29 Horne (PROB11/11, f. 236); CFR, xxii. no. 620; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 448. For the good of his soul, Tyrell asked his male descendants annually to observe the anniversary of his death by attending a requiem mass and distributing alms in honour of the Five Wounds of Christ. In addition he also asked his executors, if they had the means, to found a grammar school at Rawreth, served by a priest who would offer prayers for himself and others, including his brother Sir Thomas. Tyrell was also concerned to ensure that any debts connected with goods which had once belonged to Ralph Marche and had passed through his hands were paid off, as well as to save harmless various neighbours and friends who had entered three bonds on his own behalf. These were connected with some undertaking he had made to the late Robert Mounteney (the son-in-law of his uncle, Edward Tyrell*), and to discharge his guarantors he assigned some of the income from his manor at Hockley and other lands and tenements to Mounteney’s executors. The will, as registered in the prerogative court of the archbishop of Canterbury, bears no date of probate; for what reason is unknown.

Within a few years of Tyrell’s death his widow, Philippa, whom he had appointed one of his executors, remarried. In the second half of the 1470s she and her new husband, Sir John Guildford of Kent, took action in Chancery against her co-executor, the clerk, William Howard, and others in relation to her late husband’s estate. In several bills they accused Howard of withholding money intended for the upbringing of her children by the MP, as well as deeds relating to Tyrell’s lands. Howard was again a defendant in Chancery in the mid 1480s, when Elizabeth and Anne, two of Tyrell’s daughters by his second marriage, sued him over their father’s will and estates.46 C1/51/99-102; 56/129; 58/9; 76/16; 78/87.