HASARD, Thomas (d.1456), of Eastcourt and Lea, Wilts.

Although a lawyer, one of many to represent a Wiltshire borough in this period, Hasard was scarcely a carpet-bagger given his family’s long connexion with Malmesbury. Hasards had represented the town in Parliament since the late thirteenth century and he himself married a woman with landed interests in its immediate environs. It was perhaps to his wife Alice that he owed his connexion with the parishes of Eastcourt and Lea near Malmesbury, since Lea was where her ancestor Richard Parfet held an estate in the mid thirteenth century. VCH Wilts. 122; C1/17/174.

It was as ‘of Lea’ that Hasard was sued in the court of common pleas by Robert Andrew* and John Frye in 1436. They alleged that he and the widowed Christine Parfet (evidently an in-law) had broken into their close at Little Somerford. The plea roll entries for this suit also refer to him as a ‘husbandman’, perhaps an indication of lowly social origins if not of deliberate disparagement on the part of the plaintiffs. CP40/701, rot. 285. Yet Hasard was styled a ‘gentleman’ in royal pardons of July 1446 and May 1452 (both of which also referred to Eastcourt and Lea as his places of residence) and as an ‘esquire’ in a deed of 1454. The pardon of 1452 also reveals – as does a lawsuit of 1454 – that he was sometimes known as ‘Thomas Short’, although it is not clear how regularly he used his surname alias. C67/39, m. 7; 40, m. 31; CP40/773, cart. rot; KB27/772, rot. 16.

It is possible that Hasard married his daughter, another Alice, to a kinsman, since his son-in-law was named William Short. In mid 1436 the couple appointed him as their attorney in the common pleas, and later that year William stood surety for Hasard when the latter was elected to his first Parliament. CP40/702, att. rot. 3; C219/15/1. Hasard was also associated with William and Alice in the 1440s when he and the couple jointly took legal action against a tenant, Thomas Baker, for allowing a messuage in Malmesbury to fall into ruin. CP40/753, rot. 269. Earlier in the same decade, Alice Short featured in a couple of settlements made by the Wiltshire esquire John Dewall* and his wife Joan. First, in 1444 Joan’s valuable paternal inheritance in that county, comprising the manors of Dauntsey, Marden, Smithcot, ‘Pertenale’, Trow, Bremilham, Wilsford and Winterbourne Dauntsey, was settled on the Dewalls and Joan’s children, with provision made for Alice to succeed to Dauntsey and Bremilham if Joan were to die childless. Secondly, Alice was named as a contingent heir in a settlement relating to just two of these manors, Smithcot and Wilsford, which the Dewalls made in 1445. Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 564, 573; CP40/702, att. rot. 3. Her inclusion in these settlements must mean that she was in some way related to Joan, presumably through her mother and namesake Alice Hasard. Joan, who had taken Dewall as her third husband, was a lady of good family, since she was the daughter of Sir John Dauntsey of Dauntsey, as well as the widow of both Sir Maurice Russell† (d.1416) and Sir John Stradling (d.1435). In short, if Alice Hasard was indeed her kinswoman then Hasard had married above himself.

Another acquaintance with whom Hasard shared his alternative surname was the clerk, Thomas Short. In all likelihood the two men were relatives, since in 1456 Hasard and his wife conveyed to Short a reversionary interest to lands in Christian Malford, perhaps among the holdings in that parish over which the Hasards had pursued a lawsuit against Elizabeth Russell (apparently the widow of Robert Russell I*) and others in the early 1450s. Wilts. Feet of Fines, 625; C66/472, m. 11d; CP40/773, cart. rot. Hasard and Elizabeth clashed again later in the same decade. By 1457 she was pursuing a suit against him and 11 co-defendants, also from Wiltshire and including Walter Sambourn, Walter’s relative John Cricklade* and William Kemell*. She accused them of forgery with the intent to defraud her of three messuages and 200 acres of pasture that she held at Cockleborough in Chippenham. In August 1450, or so Elizabeth alleged, the defendants had gathered at Down Hatherley in Gloucestershire to make false deeds showing that the lands in question belonged to Sambourn’s family. The matter was referred to a jury but appears never to have come to trial. KB27/782, rot. 83; 784, rot. 31d.

The Christian Malford lands belonged to Hasard’s wife, perhaps by descent from her forebear, Richard Urdley, from whom certainly she inherited lands at Hankerton, just outside Malmesbury. As it happened, she did not retain the Hankerton estate, which she and Hasard sold to John Huberd* in 1440. Wilts. Feet of Fines, 533; VCH Wilts. xiv. 98. Alice had also succeeded to Urdley’s interest in other lands and rights in Wiltshire, comprising holdings in the vicinities of Malmesbury, Swindon, Chippenham and Calne, the bailiwick of Braydon and a corrody at Malmesbury abbey. At some stage before 1457, however, a local esquire, Wibert Charlton of Charlton next Malmesbury, challenged her title in the Chancery, claiming that Urdley had held them only as the surviving feoffee of his late father, Walter Charlton. C1/17/174. In mid 1453 Hasard and his wife were party to transactions involving the manor of Tytherton Lucas near Chippenham, apparently for the benefit of Henry Long*, and two years later they conveyed holdings in Little Somerford to Robert, Lord Hungerford, and John Phelip, perhaps in the capacity of vendors. Wilts. Feet of Fines, 604, 621.

Whatever the exact extent of Alice’s landed interests, Hasard was never a substantial landowner although he was of sufficient substance to swear the oath to keep the peace that was widely administered in 1434. CPR, 1429-34, p. 371. When assessed for the purposes of taxation in early 1451, he was found to hold lands and tenements worth just £18 p.a. but the return made on this occasion did not record where those lands lay and whether they included any that he held in the right of his wife. Listed in the same tax return were two other minor landowners in Wiltshire, Richard and William Hasard, who were respectively estimated to derive annual incomes of £2 and £5 from their lands. E179/196/118. In this period there was also a Henry Hasard, who in 1447 witnessed a deed relating to property near Malmesbury. Som. Archs., Walker-Heneage mss, DD\WHb/1893. Presumably all three men were related to the MP, and in all likelihood Richard (who was also sometimes known by the surname ‘Short’) and William were his sons.

On one occasion in 1452, Hasard was referred to as ‘of London’. He spent a considerable amount of time at Westminster, where from the 1430s onwards he found work as an attorney in the courts of King’s bench and common pleas. CP40/688, rot. 112; 702, att. rot. 3; 703, att. rot. 1d; 705, att. rot. 3d; 706, att. rot. 1d; 768, rot. 207d; KB27/690, att. rot. 1; 756, att. rot. 1. A familiarity with Westminster must have influenced the course of his parliamentary career, particularly the frequency with which he was elected to the Commons. It was the most regular venue for Parliament, making it convenient to combine his duties in the courts with parliamentary service. Among those who employed Hasard as an attorney was the Wiltshire gentleman, Edmund Dauntsey of Laverstock, perhaps his principal patron and client. During the late 1420s and early 1430s, he and another of Dauntsey’s servants, Thomas Tyler, were caught up in a quarrel between their employer on the one hand and Thomas Pakyn* of Salisbury and his father William* on the other. In Hilary term 1431 the younger Pakyn appeared in person in the common pleas to bring a suit for assault and illegal imprisonment against Dauntsey, Hasard and Tyler. The suit came to pleadings two years later, when Pakyn alleged that they had assaulted him at Clarendon (where William Pakyn was purveyor of the King’s works) on Christmas Eve 1430. Also claiming that they had held him prisoner at Laverstock for seven hours on the same day, he sought damages of £40. Dauntsey responded with suits of his own. In Michaelmas term 1433 he sued Thomas Pakyn and a kinsman, John Pakyn, for trespass in King’s bench, an action in which Hasard acted as his attorney, and in the following summer he began another such suit in the common pleas, this time against William and Thomas Pakyn. The latter case, which reached pleadings in Trinity term 1435, suggests that, as in so many of such disputes, land lay at the root of the quarrel. Dauntsey accused his opponents of having grazed their livestock on his property at Laverstock in December 1429, so provoking a confrontation with Hasard and Tyler, whom they had beaten so badly that he had lost their services for eight months. In subsequent years Hasard remained attached to Dauntsey, who died in about 1438. He was an executor of Dauntsey’s no longer extant will, in which capacity he was party to several suits for debt at Westminster in the late 1430s and the early 1440s. These suits related to debts that Dauntsey was said to have owed, as well as to sums due to his estate, and in Trinity term 1438 Richard Jay* began an action against Hasard and the other executors over a debt of five marks that allegedly Dauntsey had contracted in Sussex. Having neglected to answer Jay’s suit, Hasard was outlawed at Chichester in September 1439 but he was just as leisurely in freeing himself from his outlawry. It was not until late October 1444 that he gave himself up in King’s bench. He was sent to the Marshalsea prison but, taking advantage of a technical error in Jay’s case, he sued a writ of error soon afterwards and was released sine dine. CP40/680, rot. 410d; 688, rot. 112; 698, rot. 101; 715, rots. 154d, 368, 365d; 721, rot. 235d; KB27/690, att. rot. 1; 734, rots. 40, 40d.

Apart from Dauntsey, Hasard was associated with the abbot of Malmesbury (who in the spring of 1450 considered using him as an attorney in King’s bench), KB27/756, att. rot. 1. with those local gentry for whom he acted as a surety, feoffee and witness, Collectanea (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xii), 169-73; Suff. RO (Bury St. Edmunds), Hengrave mss, 449/2/764. and with John Nanfan*, one of the most prominent esquires of south-west England. During the early 1450s, he, Nanfan, Richard Hasard and others were indicted for ‘divers felonies, trespasses and other misdeeds’ in Wiltshire. More specifically, he and Nanfan were presented for maintenance when sessions of the peace were held at Malmesbury in June 1452. The jury found that in the previous month they had illegally supported Robert Attilburgh, John Borne and others from the town, all of whom a previous jury had indicted for trespass. On the following 28 June, Nanfan and Hasard appeared in person in King’s bench to deny the charge and put themselves on the country and in due course they were both found not guilty. At that date Nanfan was sheriff of Wiltshire, meaning that the writs relating to the case were directed to one of the coroners of the county rather than to him. KB27/765, rex rots. 22d, 7d. Hasard remained associated with Nanfan after the latter’s term of office expired in November 1452, acting for him in the following year as his attorney in the common pleas. CP40/768, rot. 207d.

It is possible that Hasard had acted as a deputy or some other subordinate officer under Nanfan as sheriff. Generally, his career in county administration was relatively limited. He served on just one ad hoc commission, an appointment relating to a tax that he and other Members of the Commons had granted in the Parliament of 1449, and previously as verderer of the royal forest of Braydon near Malmesbury and as one of Wiltshire’s coroners. Hasard was twice dismissed from the position of verderer, on the grounds that he was too occupied with business elsewhere (presumably at Westminster) to exercise it. He had served only a few months in that position when in February 1437 the sheriff of Wiltshire was ordered to hold an election for his replacement. Walter Everard* of Malmesbury, with whom he was to sit in the Commons of 1442, was elected in his stead but just weeks later the Crown decided that Everard was disqualified to serve as verderer, on the grounds that he was not then living within the forest’s bounds, nor even in the county. Everard subsequently recovered the office (exactly when is not clear) but in July 1443 he was replaced once more, after Hasard had informed the Chancery that he was still disqualified, again because he was non-resident and, implausibly, because he was illiterate. Either the two men were at odds or Hasard was helping Everard to relinquish an office that he no longer wished to hold. Whatever the case, it appears that Everard’s immediate successor was none other than Hasard, who was again verderer in April 1445 when the sheriff of Wiltshire was ordered to replace him, once more because he was too busy elsewhere to perform his duties. CCR, 1435-41, pp. 83, 89, 97, 256. If he and Everard had fallen out with each other, they had resolved their differences by early 1447 when Everard stood surety that the newly elected Hasard would take up his seat in the Parliament of 1447. C219/15/4. Just a month after that Parliament was dissolved, Hasard was elected as one of the coroners for Wiltshire, and he was still in office in late November 1449 when he and his fellow coroners returned a certificate to the Chancery. CPR, 1446-52, p. 306. In the following decade, Hasard served as a juror in the county, at sessions of oyer and terminer at Salisbury in July 1451 (hearings chiefly concerned with the murder at Edington of the unpopular Bishop Aiscough of Salisbury at the time of Cade’s rebellion), and at the inquisition post mortem held in Wiltshire for the late John Lye* in June 1453. KB9/133/23d; C139/149/25.

The inquisition was held during the second session of the Parliament of 1453, meaning that Hasard would have left Westminster to attend it, but as it happened he had already missed the whole of the previous session, which took place at Reading. The elections to the Parliament were held in February 1453 when his putative son Richard was also returned, as one of the burgesses for Wootton Bassett. Hasard was elected on 24 Feb. and Richard two days later but both of them were returned in their absence, since at that time they and 18 associates were prisoners in Gloucester castle, where they remained until their release a month later. Save for Nicholas Jones*, who resided near Tetbury in Gloucestershire, the Hasards’ fellow prisoners, who also included John Cricklade, were from Malmesbury or elsewhere in Wiltshire. It is not known why the electors of Malmesbury and Wootton Bassett should have elected men not then at liberty, or why their counterparts at Cricklade should likewise have returned Jones as a burgess for that borough to the same Parliament. C219/16/2; CPR, 1452-61, p. 62; KB27/774, rot. 73.

The plea rolls of King’s bench show that the Hasards’ imprisonment was linked to a quarrel between them and the Gloucestershire esquire, Giles Brydges*, and others. The cause of this dispute is not known but it may have had some connexion with John Nanfan, since the prisoners at Gloucester included some of those whom Nanfan and Thomas Hasard were alleged by the Malmesbury indictment of 1452 illegally to have maintained. Soon after he was freed, the MP began legal action against his opponents. In Easter term 1453 he sued Brydges, his son Thomas*, James Clifford of Frampton-on-Severn and Thomas Felpottys of Minety, ‘franklin’, in King’s bench for trespass and conspiracy. For whatever reason, he failed to pursue the suit although early in the following year he began a like action in the same court against Giles Brydges and five other Gloucestershire men. His case against three of these opponents, John Hervy and Thomas Yonge of Gloucester and John Mede of Stonehouse, all ‘franklins’ like Felpottys, reached pleadings in Michaelmas term 1454. Hasard asserted that they, along with Brydges, Thomas Stotard of Whittington, yeoman, and William Dyer of Dowdeswell, had conspired to bring about the arrest and imprisonment of him, Richard Hasard and the others incarcerated at Gloucester. According to him, the defendants had claimed falsely that he and his associates had broken into Felpottys’s close at Minety, a parish near Gloucestershire’s boundary with north Wiltshire, in February 1452 and stolen a sheep. For this supposed crime a jury had indicted them in Gloucestershire in the autumn of that year, at sessions of oyer and terminer where none other than Giles Brydges was one of the justices. As a result, he had spent nearly four months in Gloucester castle, from 1 Nov. 1452 until the following 27 Mar. when he and his fellow prisoners had secured their acquittal before Sir Maurice Berkeley II* and other justices of gaol delivery. The three defendants responded to Hasard’s plea and his demand for damages of £200 by obtaining permission to treat with him out of court but with what outcome is not known. As for Brydges and the others, it appears that they never answered the suits he had brought against them. Another of the erstwhile prisoners, Robert Attilburgh of Malmesbury, also went to law over his imprisonment, although his suit was directed against different defendants, Wibert Charlton and others not named in Hasard’s suits. KB27/768, rots. 53d, 55d; 769, rots. 7, 47, 63; 770, rot. 27d; 771, rots. 58, 67d; 772, rot. 16; 773, rots. 17, 54; 774, rots. 73, 73d; CPR, 1452-61, p. 62.

During the same Michaelmas term of 1454, Hasard also appeared in King’s bench on behalf of John Borne, yet another of his fellow inmates at Gloucester. By then the authorities had sent Borne back to prison, this time to the Marshalsea, after he had quarrelled with one William Hille. To win bail, Borne and his sureties (who also included Thomas Winslow I*, John Cricklade and Edward Basyng*) were obliged to enter bonds for his good behaviour, he in £40 and each bailsman in £20. KB27/774, rex rot. 5. Evidently the Hasards were on good terms with Borne, for whom three months later Richard Hasard witnessed a charter. CCR, 1454-61, p. 55. Richard maintained an association with Borne in later years, since in the early 1460s they were co-defendants in a suit for debt that John Seymour II* brought in the common pleas. CP40/800, rot. 135.

In spite of his election for Wootton Bassett in 1453, Richard Hasard was referred to as ‘of Malmesbury’ in Seymour’s suit and it was at Malmesbury and nearby Charlton (where the MP himself possessed lands) that he ordinarily resided. His connexion with Malmesbury raises the possibility that it was he rather than Thomas Hasard who sat for the borough in 1455 since, while it was still extant, only the surname ‘Hasard’ was visible on its damaged indenture of election for that year. On the other hand, Thomas was definitely still alive at this date, and the fact that he had already represented Malmesbury in at least five Parliaments might make him the more obvious candidate. Assuming that he did sit again in 1455-6, he did so late in life. During 1456 he was in dispute with Nicholas Jones, his fellow prisoner of three years earlier, whom he sued in King’s bench for trespass. The suit, which perhaps related to his holdings at Charlton, Jones’s then parish of residence, had yet to reach pleadings at the end of 1456. KB27/780 rot. 63d; 781 rot. 9d; 782 rot. 10. If he lived beyond that year, Hasard died soon afterwards since he was referred to as no longer alive in a deed of 6 June 1457. Collectanea, 173.