Much more may be added to the earlier biography.
Abrahall’s first marriage was probably less profitable than implied in the earlier biography. Although, by a final concord levied in June 1412, Margaret’s first husband’s manor of Hampton Mappenore, with land at Bacton and Hampton Richard, was settled on the couple for her life, to be held of the heirs of her first husband, this arrangement may not have held. In July 1413, the couple were obliged to bring an assize of novel disseisin against Richard Hampton and John Forster for her property at Hampton Richard (the outcome is unknown), and, later in the same year, the heirs and their husbands conveyed the estate settled in 1412 to the future justice, William Paston. This may not materially have effected the earlier arrangement, yet it is probably significant that the fine of 1412 is the only evidence of our MP’s tenure of his first wife’s lands.
Since his father survived long into his career and his mother outlived him, Abrahall was dependent on their indulgence and his own efforts to add to whatever profit his first marriage brought. Fortunately for him, his parents were ready to moderate their own interests in his favour: in 1415 his father leased to him various properties in Archenfield at an annual rent of eight marks; and in 1424 his parents accepted an annual farm of £7 in return for the family’s manor place and its land at Abrahall, retaining for their own use ‘the halls … and all the chambers and the kichyn and the colnhowll with an house that is ycalled the Lytalle berne’.
Abrahall was outlawed at the Shropshire county court on 6 Dec. 1414 for his failure to answer the indictments laid against him when King’s bench had come to that county earlier in the year. Only four days later he secured a general pardon, but he was slow to plead it in court. He was thus technically an outlaw when named as escheator of Herefordshire in 1417 and elected to represent the borough of Hereford in the Parliament of 1419. This election presents several interesting features. The borough’s election was held on 10 Oct., three days after that for the county, and it is not unlikely that he took that seat because his candidature for the county seat had been thwarted by the candidature of two royal servants, John Merbury* and John Russell I*.
Abrahall, true to form, chose to make this respite a brief one. After the conclusion of the Parliament, his quarrel with Lord Talbot’s brother-in-law, Sir Thomas, son and heir-apparent of Sir Thomas de la Barre†, escalated, prefiguring his alienation from Talbot himself. The reason for his hostility to de la Barre is unknown. It may have had something to do with ap Howell’s murder (for Maidstone, the supporter of the appeal, was a servant of de la Barre), and with the disputed ownership of the manor of Strangford, near Ross-on-Wye (on 3 Dec. 1419 the county j.p.s were ordered by the Crown to oust Abrahall from this manor and restore another de la Barre servant, David ap Rees of Pencoyd).
Abrahall’s influence in the Talbot franchise of Archenfield and his ability to secure false indictments before the j.p.s is a measure of his remarkable influence, an influence that his repeated illegalities had done nothing to curtail. It may be that his famous clash with John, Lord Talbot, in 1423 was provoked, in part, by Talbot’s determination to restrain him, their former friendly relationship compromised by our MP’s dispute with de la Barre. But another factor was Abrahall’s service to Beatrice, widow of John’s brother, Gilbert, Lord Talbot (d.1418), for whom he was acting as receiver-general by about 1420. In clashing with Lord John, he may, to put the most gallant interpretation on his activities, have been seeking to protect her interests as well as his own. This is implied by an action brought by Talbot in 1423, seeking redress against our MP, Beatrice and her new husband, Thomas Fettiplace*, for close-breaking and the theft of charters at Whitchurch (Shropshire), a part, perhaps, of Beatrice’s efforts to secure her jointure.
Whatever, however, lay behind the breakdown of Abrahall’s relationship with Talbot, both their quarrel and our MP’s long criminal career came to an effective close at a session of the peace held before Talbot himself on 4 Oct. 1423. Abrahall was indicted for a whole catalogue of offences, including laying in wait with 1,000 men to kill Talbot and his brother, Sir William Talbot, yet it seems that neither the j.p.s nor the jurors were anxious that he should answer for these alleged crimes. The indictments were absurdly and obviously flawed, several of the offences alleged against him, including two murders, were dated to July 1424, and, unlike the ap Howell appeal, they put our MP to little trouble. Writs ordering his outlawry did not receive the shrieval co-operation necessary to make them effective, and Abrahall waited until Michaelmas term 1427 before appearing in King’s bench successfully to plead insufficiency against him.
None the less, Abrahall’s clash with the uncompromising Lord Talbot had caused local disruption alarming enough to prompt the presentation of several petitions to the Parliament which assembled at Westminster on 20 Oct. 1423. No doubt through the agency of the Speaker, the influential Herefordshire lawyer, John Russell, these were taken up by the Commons, who went so far as to request the King’s bench be sent to the county to investigate the offences of Abrahall, Lord Talbot and nearly 80 of their followers listed by name. The government’s positive response was in the affirmative, but nothing was done, probably because the heat had already gone from the dispute.
The county’s election indenture of 1432 names as many as 170 attestors, adding, for good measure, that the election was witnessed by 200 men. This strongly implies that there was a contest, and it is possible that Abrahall was the defeated candidate. The election was witnessed not only by Abrahall himself, but also by his father, his son-in-law, William Fitzthomas, his brother-in-law and nephew, Philip and John Cokkes, and several other of his associates including Thomas Moore, Thomas Barewe, Richard Fulcher (later one of his feoffees) and Roger Blount.
As with his first experience of parliamentary service, Abrahall effectively exploited his time in the later assemblies. On 23 Jan. 1437, two days after the beginning of his second Parliament, he sued out pardons for outlawries incurred for failure to answer several debt pleas (taking advantage of the deaths of the plaintiffs), and later in the session he was added to the Herefordshire bench. On 21 Dec. 1439, the day on which the first session of his next Parliament was prorogued, he was named as receiver-general of the former de Bohun lands in dispute between the Crown and the Staffords.
Shortly before his death Abrahall made a significant property acquisition. On 27 Apr. 1439 he entered into an agreement with Richard ap Harry, elder brother of the Herefordshire lawyer, Thomas Fitzharry*, to exchange his manor at Ocle Pychard for ap Harry’s moiety of the manor of Eaton Tregoze, some 12 miles to the south of Ocle Pychard and near our MP’s home at Gillow. The exchange was to be provisional, to be void if ap Harry should succeed in acquiring the other moiety of Eaton Tregoze, in the hands of his cousin, John Chalons, but Abrahall forestalled this possibility by himself acquiring Chalons’s share. On 5 Feb. 1443 he paid £16 to the Crown for the unlicensed acquisition of both moieties, which were held of the King in chief. So were the seeds shown for a later dispute.
Having troubled to invest in his estate, it would have been surprising if Abrahall had decided to disinherit his son, William, born to him, probably by his third wife, late in life. The earlier biography is in error in supposing, on the evidence of an inquiry before Bishop Spofford of Hereford, that he had intended to do so by diverting his lands to his nephew and the bishop’s domicellus, John Cokkes. That inquiry concerned only the Abrahall lands at Tredoughan (in the lordship of Goodrich) in which the bishop was a feoffee.
To add a further complication, Abrahall’s title to one moiety of the manor of Eaton Tregoze was disputed by ap Harry, who took advantage of our MP’s death to reassert his title. Since the escheator was then his brother, Thomas Fitzharry, the matter could not be left to that official to resolve. This explains the royal commission issued on 8 July for an inquiry into what our MP had held in chief. Before Henry Oldcastle* and Thomas Bromwich* at Weobley on the following 14 Sept., a jury returned that Abrahall had been seised of the disputed moiety.
Abrahall’s widow lost little time in remarrying: by 1 Dec. 1443 she was the wife of John Cheyne, son of Thomas Cheyne of Chesham Bois (Buckinghamshire) and nephew of Sir John Cheyne I*. The new couple were soon assailed with difficulties, arising in part from our MP’s land transactions. On 1 May 1444 Eustace Whitney†, who may have been her brother, claimed the massive sum of 1,000 marks against them and others, including Dean Berewe, for breaking his close at Ocle Pychard, and in Trinity term 1445 a Herefordshire jury came into King’s bench and awarded the plaintiff over £200 in costs and damages. Later litigation shows that this was part of a dispute over the manor there that our MP had contentiously exchanged with ap Harry for a moiety of the manor of Eaton Tregoze.