EVERARD, Walter, of Malmesbury and Bradfield, Wilts.

If the MP was Walter, son of John Everard of Calne, then in 1444 he joined his father in taking out a lease for term of their lives and an additional 13 years of some pasture-land in Calne. Money-Kyrle mss, 1720/273. John of Calne has been distinguished from John Everard II* of Salisbury. What is certain, however, is that he lived at Malmesbury, in the north of Wiltshire, and that several years earlier, by 1428, had come into possession of lands and tenements in nearby Bradfield. Feudal Aids, v. 235. Walter headed the jurors at the inquisition post mortem conducted at Malmesbury in October 1429, following the death of Sir William Moleyns, CIPM, xxiii. 389. and was of sufficient standing to be appointed as a collector of parliamentary subsidies in the county in 1430, and to be listed among those required four years later to take the oath not to maintain peace-breakers. CPR, 1429-36, p. 371. He was described as a ‘gentleman’ of Bradfield in Hilary term 1436 in the suits he brought in the court of common pleas against two Gloucestershire landowners: Thomas Slaughter of Slaughter, for a debt of 20 marks, and a much more prominent figure, James, Lord Berkeley, for the sum of £21 15s. In association with others, he was also engaged in a lawsuit alleging that wastes had been committed on property in Malmesbury which he and his fellow plaintiffs had rented out on a long lease. A local jury found in their favour, deciding that they should recover the property with damages of 20s., although part of their claim was shown to be false. CP40/700, rots. 120, 176d, 56 (second foliation). Before too long Everard became a landowner of moderate substance, with holdings assessed for the purposes of taxation at £10 p.a. E179/196/118.

In the mid 1430s Everard occupied the post of verderer of the royal forest of Braydon, situated not far from Malmesbury, but in April 1437 the sheriff was ordered to elect a replacement on the basis that he did not dwell within the bounds of the forest, nor (strangely) even in the shire. CCR, 1435-41, p. 89. Some compensation for this loss of office came on 1 Dec. 1439 when together with Richard Furbour* he was given at the Exchequer keeping of the estates of the Wiltshire priory of Clatford, to hold for seven years in return for an annual payment of £40. CFR, xvii. 115. It may have been dissatisfaction with the terms of this lease, and the need to travel to Westminster to present his case, that led Everard to seek election to the Parliament of 1442. Under the terms of a grant by the King to his uncle Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, Everard and Furbour were bound to pay the duke £40 a year from the issues of the Clatford estates, and finding this additional charge insupportable they surrendered their patent and petitioned for redress. Eventually, on 27 Jan. 1443, they were pardoned all sums demanded at the Exchequer, and the barons were instructed not to trouble them further. CPR, 1441-6, p. 143; E159/219, brevia Hil. rot. 8. Even so, an inquiry conducted the following autumn found that Everard had wasted various assets on the priory estates by allowing buildings to stand unroofed, so that their timbers rotted, and by felling oaks, this behaviour resulting in losses amounting to £13 13s. 4d. The felling of the oaks was said to have taken place in the lifetime of Henry IV’s queen, Joan of Navarre, who had died six years earlier, so it looks as if Everard had been involved in the administration of the estate by the queen’s appointment well before he formally took custody by Exchequer lease. CIMisc. viii. 174.

Meanwhile, at an unknown date Everard had recovered the verderership of Braydon, only to be removed again in July 1443, once more on the basis of non-residence, but this time also following reports that, being illiterate, he was unsuited for the role. This information had been imparted to the Chancery by Thomas Hasard*, Everard’s fellow Member for Malmesbury in the Commons of the previous year. CCR, 1441-7, p. 97. It may be that the two men had fallen out, their quarrel causing Hasard to contrive to have our MP ousted from his post; although an alternative explanation may be that there was collusion between them in order to extricate Everard from the burdens of an office he no longer wished to occupy. To judge from his service as a juror and his other activities it seems most unlikely that he was indeed uneducated. As for his relationship with Hasard, they were on good terms a few years later, for Everard stood surety for Hasard’s appearance for Malmesbury at the Parliament of 1447. C219/15/4.

Everard himself is not known to have sat in the Commons again, although he was interested enough in parliamentary affairs to participate in the shire elections held at Wilton for the Parliament of February 1449. This provides a measure of his standing in the county, as too does the armigerous rank accorded him when he attested a transaction for Robert Hungerford, Lord Moleyns, and the lawyer Thomas Tropenell* in April that year. He served as a juror at an assize of novel disseisin in Salisbury three months later, which found in the lawyer’s favour, Tropenell Cart. ed. Davies, i. 101-2; ii. 58-59. and it may have been through the introduction of Tropenell, who had already made himself indispensible in the service of the Hungerfords, that he himself came to be retained for life by Lord Moleyns’ father, Robert, 2nd Lord Hungerford. From Lord Robert he received a modest annual fee of 13s. 4d. in the early 1450s, and on one occasion, in 1453-4, at Farleigh Hungerford, his lord also personally gave him an additional reward of half a mark. SC6/971/10, 12. Whether Everard’s link with the Hungerfords had influenced his election to Parliament cannot now be established. Nor are there signs that he was drawn into their troubled affairs following Lord Moleyns’ capture and ransom in France. The background to his purchase of a royal pardon in May 1456 remains obscure. C67/41, m. 7. Everard is last recorded as a juror at an inquisition post mortem on Lord Hungerford, at Chippenham in June 1459. This was a specially-commissioned inquiry conducted by Tropenell, the receiver-general of the Hungerford estates, which, probably deliberately, withheld significant information about the late lord’s estates. C139/172/17.