DEVENISH, John (d.1477), of Hellingly, Suss.

The origins of this MP are obscure, although as he referred in his will to landed holdings in unspecified places in Somerset it may be the case that he was related to the Devenish family of Bristol, which produced some wealthy merchants. For the wills of Thomas (d.1426) and Nicholas Devenish (d.1438), both requesting burial in St. Stephen’s church, Bristol, see PCC 2, 26 Luffenham (PROB11/3, ff. 17v, 206v-207). It should be noted, however, that there were other Devenishes who traded as mercers in London in the early 15th century, and a John Devenish was living in Kent in Hen. IV’s reign: CCR, 1402-5, pp. 307, 381, 516. What is certain is that our MP acquired his property in Sussex through marriage to the widow of a prominent local lawyer, and that before this marriage took place he had little to do with the county or its inhabitants. He had made his way through service to the young Henry VI’s tutor Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, to whom he had formed an attachment by the late 1420s. Having indented to serve with Warwick in 1427, he was listed as a member of his household retinue in June 1428, and appeared successively as clerk and steward of the household in 1430. Furthermore, the earl, as hereditary sheriff of Worcestershire, appointed him as his deputy in the shrievalty, so that in 1434-5 he carried out the sheriff’s duties in that county. In the early 1430s Devenish was in receipt of an annuity of £10 charged on the Beauchamp property in Southampton. A.F.J. Sinclair, ‘Beauchamp Earls of Warwick’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1987), 344, 349; SC12/18/45, f. 6; J. Amundesham, Chron. S. Albani ed. Riley, i. 68.

Devenish’s marriage to Margaret Hurst, the heiress of the manor of Pebsham in Bexhill and land at Hastings, worth at least £20 p.a., took place in 1434 or 1435. As the widow of John Halle, who had died childless, she was also possessed of the manor of Hellingly, and it was there that he took up residence. Suss. Arch. Collns. lxvi. 185. By final concords made in November 1435 he and his wife enfeoffed John Faukes (afterwards clerk of the Parliaments) and John Judde of the manor of ‘Herstlyngener’ (afterwards called Horselunges) and 12 messuages, some 370 acres of land and 50s. rent in and near Hellingly, with pasture for 300 sheep at Milton. They received the same back again in the following June. Another fine concluded in 1437 also concerned the manor of Werlington. The Devenishes encountered difficulties over gaining possession of Margaret’s manor of Pebsham, when her title was challenged by Sir Thomas Etchingham, one of the leading landowners of Sussex. In May 1437 Devenish and Etchingham both entered recognizances in £400 to abide by the award of four leading men of law: John Vampage* and John Hody*, chosen on behalf of Devenish and his wife, and William Chaunterell, serjeant-at-law, and Richard Wakehurst†, nominated by Sir Thomas. The four arbiters were to consider the respective claims to the property and put an end to all legal actions between the parties by making an award before the quinzaine of Trinity next, or else by deferring to the judgement of the chancellor, Bishop Stafford of Bath and Wells, and two royal judges. CP25(1)/241/87/16, 29; CCR, 1435-41, pp. 111, 122. Some details of the Devenishes’ side of the argument are revealed in a petition they sent to the chancellor, in which they asserted that when Margaret had been single she had enfeoffed Etchingham and others including Judde and John Tamworth* of the disputed manor, but the feoffees had refused to return it to her after her marriage to Devenish. The couple successfully recovered Pebsham by June 1439, when they placed it in the keeping of Faukes, Vampage and Hody. C1/9/308, 11/223; CP25(1)/241/88/6.

Devenish’s choice of the King’s attorney John Vampage as both mediator in his dispute with Etchingham and feoffee of his wife’s estate had no doubt come about because of their mutual connexion with the earl of Warwick, whom Vampage had long served as legal counsel. Litigation over Pebsham was probably already in course when Devenish was returned for Sussex to the Parliament summoned to meet on 21 Jan. 1437, and it is of interest that John Hody, the future judge, whom he chose as mediator alongside Vampage, sat in the Commons as one of the knights for Somerset. Private concerns may well have been a factor in his candidacy for election. Devenish was appointed to his first royal commission (one of array) while Parliament was in session. No doubt before the dissolution on 27 Mar. the King’s council and the Lords began to consider who should succeed the duke of York as lieutenant-general in France when his term expired. On 7 Apr. the duke was asked to stay in France until a replacement was appointed, and within the next few days Warwick agreed to serve as lieutenant-general and governor. PROME, xi. 200. In July Devenish, by then treasurer of the earl’s household, received £4,169 at the Exchequer for payment of Warwick’s army for the first quarter, and he took out letters of protection to cross the Channel in his retinue. In the event, however, delays meant that they did not finally embark until November. While in France Devenish grew dissatisfied with the rate of pay offered to him, when he realized that the treasurer of the duke of York, when he had been governor of France, had received a salary commensurate with one of the knights of his household, that is, 25 liv. tournois per month, whereas he, being ranked only as an esquire, was paid at a lower rate. On 27 June 1438 by instruction of the King his salary was raised accordingly. E403/727, m. 7 (named Thomas in error); DKR, xlviii. 319; Add. Ch. 139; Sinclair, 349. Probably before they embarked, Devenish was associated with Warwick as his co-feoffee of property at Wimbledon, Surr., in which Thomas Burghill*, a putative member of the earl’s affinity, was to have an interest: CCR, 1441-7, pp. 131, 134. Perhaps owing to personal inclination, Devenish never took up knighthood.

It would appear from Devenish’s appointment to the Sussex bench in March 1439 that he returned home to England before the earl’s death at Rouen in the following month. He then became one of the group of Beauchamp retainers who entered into or strengthened their relations with court circles, probably because it was at the royal court that the young heir Earl Henry resided, as the King’s ward and companion, and where he was in a good position to promote their interests. Devenish joined the Household as an esquire of the hall and chamber, and is known to have received livery there from 1441 until 1452 or later. E101/409/9, 11, 16; 410/1, 3, 6, 9. On 30 Oct. 1445 he and another Beauchamp retainer, Thomas Portalyn*, were granted at the Exchequer wardship of estates in the West Country late of Sir Thomas Arundell*, and also the keeping of lands formerly belonging to John Trenewith, during the minority of his son and heir John*, together with the latter’s marriage. CFR, xviii. 3-4. That he continued to be of service to the Beauchamps is clear from his involvement in the financial and legal affairs of Earl Henry, who had by then been elevated to the dukedom of Warwick. CP40/755, rot. 421d. The feoffees of the estates of the earldom had awarded him £10 p.a. out of the issues of Spelsbury, Oxfordshire, in 1443-4, and on 25 May 1446 Duke Henry granted him for life a yearly rent of £20 from the manor of Rotherfield, not far from his home in Sussex. Rotherfield came into the Crown’s possession along with the rest of the duke’s inheritance when he died shortly afterwards, but on 10 July the King confirmed Devenish’s annuity for the duration of the minority of the duke’s infant daughter. Devenish was then styled ‘King’s serjeant’. Sinclair, 349; CPR, 1441-6, p. 441. Devenish’s close association with the Beauchamps is also indicated by his nomination as a feoffee of estates pertaining to the duke’s half-sister Elizabeth, Lady Abergavenny, but his tenure ceased after her death in 1447, CPR, 1446-52, p. 83. and there is nothing to suggest that he transferred his allegiance to Richard Neville when the latter became earl of Warwick in 1449. He long preserved the memory of his early patrons: in his will made some 38 years after the death of his first lord, Richard Beauchamp, he left the substantial sum of 40 marks for a priest to celebrate masses for the souls of the earl and his son Duke Henry. PCC 28 Wattys (PROB11/6, f. 215).

Devenish apparently never entered the Commons again after his service in the Parliament of 1437, but this was not because he had little to do with the administration of his adopted region. On the contrary, he was appointed to many ad hoc commissions, regularly figured on the Sussex bench, and took on the shrievalty of Surrey and Sussex for a term. The prior of Michelham priory, near his home, considered it worthwhile to offer him presents to secure his goodwill, although it was discovered at episcopal visitations in September 1441 and the following January that the prior had recklessly granted corrodies and gifts to many people, and was guilty of perjury and disobedience. VCH Suss. ii. 79. For his counsel to the dean and chapter of Chichester cathedral Devenish received an annual fee of two marks from March 1454, mid way through his term as sheriff. Add. Ch. 30921. Yet Devenish failed to distinguish himself in the latter office; indeed, there are signs of incompetence, if not worse. On the following 11 Oct. Chief Justice Fortescue* ordered him to appear in the King’s bench to respond to charges levied against him, and he was subsequently fined a massive £20 for making an insufficient return in a plea between the prior of Michelham and the abbot of Bayham, as well as for other unspecified misprisions. KB27/774, rots. 21d, fines 1d. His duties as sheriff brought him as a defendant before the barons of the Exchequer on at least two occasions. The first, in July 1455, was to answer a bill presented by (Sir) Roger Lewknor*, one of the knights of the shire for Sussex in the Parliament of 1453-4, who alleged that he had failed to respond to a writ dated 18 Apr. 1454 at the close of the Parliament instructing him to levy £64 8s. to pay Lewknor and his fellow MP John Audley* for their parliamentary service. Devenish denied the charge, claiming to have paid Sir Roger £5 on 10 July at Westminster and the remainder two days later at Battle. Another suit brought in Michaelmas term 1455 involved allegations by one of Devenish’s predecessors in the shrievalty, William Belknap, that he had unjustly detained £10 11s. 5d. from the revenues of their bailiwick. E13/145B, rot. 70d; 146, rots. 3-4.

There are few hints as to where Devenish stood in the political upheavals of the late 1450s, although the fact that he was dropped from the bench in 1458 and reinstated under the Yorkist regime may provide a pointer. In 1463 he took out a pardon which specifically referred to his shrievalty of ten years earlier and in May 1468 he procured letters patent exempting him from further royal employment against his will. C67/45, m. 10; CPR, 1467-77, p. 84. The government of the Readeption initially appointed him to commissions in October 1470, but then removed him from the bench once more. After Edward IV’s return from exile Devenish was associated with the King’s friend William, Lord Hastings, and others including two of his fellow j.p.s (the lawyers Bartholomew Bolney* and Thomas Hoo II*), as guardians of the estates of Richard West, Lord la Warre. These they were to hold in trust to the use of the King until he was satisfied of the fine of 1,000 marks imposed on de la Warre for fighting against him at Tewkesbury. CCR, 1468-76, no. 807. In the early 1470s Devenish received a fee of £5 p.a. from the duke of Norfolk, charged on his estate at Allington in Sussex, but the nature of his association with the duke is not revealed. L.E. Moye, ‘Estates and Finances of the Mowbray Fam.’ (Duke Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), 438.

Devenish’s wife Margaret had not been mentioned in a final concord made in 1458 regarding the lands in Hellingly and nearby which she had acquired through her first marriage, nor, more significantly, in a transaction of March 1459 when Master John Faukes and other of Devenish’s feoffees put him and a new body of nominees back into possession of the manors of ‘Herstlyngever’ and Werlington, so it looks as if she was then no longer alive. CP25(1)/241/91/26; Add. Ch. 30337. Nevertheless, the enfeoffments ensured that he retained her property for life, and as he had gained admittance as a baron of the Cinque Ports he was able to claim the privilege of exemption from parliamentary subsidies on his possessions at Bexhill, Hellingly and elsewhere. E179/189/96; 229/154. Devenish, Faukes and Thomas Bayen* (later Faukes’s deputy as clerk of the Commons) held jointly a messuage and 300 acres of land in Hastings and Hollington by nomination of Sir John Passhele (d.1453), and after Faukes died the other two were confirmed in possession by Passhele’s grandson in 1472. C54/324, m. 9d (calendared incorrectly in CCR, 1468-76, no. 1013).

Long in years, Devenish made his will on 31 Jan. 1477. Requesting burial in the chancel of Hellingly church, he left ten marks to build a porch on its south side. Michelham priory and the abbeys at Robertsbridge and Bayham were each left £1 for his obit, and other churches a total of £2 3s. 4d. for prayers for his soul, while £4 3s. 4d. was set aside for the celebration of 1,000 masses in his memory, and a further 40 marks for prayers for the testator and his parents and benefactors to be said over a period of four years. This was in addition to the 40 marks set aside for the souls of Earl Richard and Duke Henry of Warwick. Devenish’s daughters, Mercy and Sibyl, were left silver vessels, and more plate was to pass to his son and heir John, together with the former MP’s armour, 50 cattle and the utensils from his kitchen and bakehouse. Six servants were each to receive 20s. On the same day Devenish issued his last instructions regarding the deposition of his landed estate. The profits from certain holdings in Pevensey were to be used to fund in perpetuity a light in Hellingly church, his annual obit and prayers for his second wife, Joan. All his lands in Somerset were to pass to William Tanner and his son John for their lifetimes, together with the house where Tanner lived and the property known as ‘Constables’, with remainder to the testator’s son. The latter was to inherit all his other manors and lands in tail, with remainder in tail-male to John’s sister Mercy, and in default of male heirs to be sold to the next kin of the MP’s late wife Margaret (‘if any be known’), or otherwise to the highest bidder. From the proceeds of this sale £100 was to be donated to Bayham abbey. The will was proved on 6 May. PCC 28 Wattys. A writ de diem clausit extremum was issued on 2 May, but no inq. post mortem survives: CFR, xxi. no. 403.

Perhaps before Devenish died, his heir was married to Elizabeth, one of the four daughters and coheirs of Thomas Hoo I*, Lord Hoo and Hastings, and niece of our MP’s one-time colleague Thomas Hoo II. She had previously been married to Thomas Massingberd (fl.1475). By her, John, knighted in Henry VII’s reign, left a son and heir, Richard. CP, vi. 565; Add. Ch. 23828.