HELPERBY, William (d.1477), of Scarborough, Yorks.

Helperby’s father was bailiff of Scarborough in 1415-16 and had a significant interest in the town’s fishing industry when that industry was prospering. In 1416-17, for example, he paid fish tithes to the town’s church of St. Mary on catches worth over £200. C219/11/7; E101/514/31, ff. 22-23. He seems also to have supplemented his wealth by marriage to the heiress of a minor gentry family. By the time our MP inherited the family lands they included a small manor at Killerby in Cayton, about four miles south of Scarborough and held of the Percy earls of Northumberland, with other more distant holdings at Goodmanham, Bainton and Middleton-on-the-Wolds in the East Riding. It is very likely that the manor, in the hands of William Killerby until at least 1417, was the inheritance of our MP’s mother, Joan, who was probably Killerby’s heiress. VCH Yorks. (N. Riding), ii. 432; CIPM, xx. 696. It was, however, another lesser holding, the two messuages in Goodmanham, which led to dispute on the death of our MP’s father, leaving William as a minor. In Hilary term 1425 a local esquire, Thomas Grimston of Grimston, of whom the two messuages were held, sued Joan for abducting William from his custody at Goodmanham. The outcome of this action has not been traced, but the two parties were still in contention two years later when Joan sued Grimston for close-breaking at Scarborough. CP40/656, rot. 269; 665, rot. 158d.

Helperby was of age by 1436, when he was sued along with two other Scarborough burgesses, Thomas, son of Robert Wardale*, and John Robinson*, by John Patryk for false imprisonment. KB27/702, rot. 56d. Here he is described as a merchant, and it is clear that he pursued commercial interests to supplement his landed income. His mother had continued the family’s fishing business, paying tithes on a catch worth over £90 in 1435-6, and by 1441-2, the last year for which the record of fish tithe payments survive, our MP had taken over, paying on a catch valued at about £50 in that accounting period. E101/514/32, ff. 20-21, 36v. By this time, however, the town’s fishing industry was in decline, and fish were only one commodity in which Helperby traded.

Cases in the common pleas offer occasional glimpses, albeit unsatisfactory ones, of his other interests. In 1441, for example, he and John Sage, both described as merchants, were sued for debts of £5 each by a tailor of York, and he and his mother were sued for over £26 by a merchant of Beverley. Later, in Hilary term 1445, a prominent merchant of York, John Marton*, secured a writ of outlawry against him for a debt of £5, and at some date before November 1453 he was outlawed for failing to satisfy two merchants of Kingston-upon-Hull for debt and damages they had recovered against him. CP40/720, rot. 20; 723, rot. 171; 736, rot. 64d; CPR, 1452-61, p. 136.

Helperby’s outlawry suggests that his affairs did not flourish, and one reason may have been difficulties associated with his mother’s putative inheritance. She was still alive when, by a final concord levied in Easter term 1444, he conveyed his manor of Killerby and his lands at Middleton-on-the-Wolds and Bainton to a group of gentry closely associated with the Nevilles, headed by the rising lawyer, Robert Danby (later c.j.c.p.), and Christopher Conyers. The feoffees were to hold the property for the lives of Thomas Conyers and his wife, Alice, saving the reversion to our MP and his heirs. It is not certain what lay behind this transaction. If Helperby’s mother was the heiress of these properties, it is curious that her interest was not mentioned, but she may have alienated that interest to her son. Alice was perhaps the jointured widow of a childless brother of Joan, and Conyers, as her second husband, may have prevailed upon Helperby to extend her interest to cover his own life. How long Helperby was kept out of these lands is not known. In Hilary term 1447 he sued a husbandman of Killerby for depasturing his grass there, implying that the property was once more in his hands. CP25(1)/280/159/22; CP40/744, rot. 148.

If and when Helperby secured his maternal and paternal inheritances in their entirety he would have had a very significant estate, at least when judged by the standards of a burgess of Scarborough. It was described in a fine of 1487 as consisting of the manor of Killerby with 30 messuages, six tofts, and 1,080 acres of land, meadow and pasture in Killerby, Cayton, Scarborough, Falsgrave, Middleton-on-the-Wolds and Goodmanham. Even this may not have fully described all the lands our MP held at some point at least of his life. No mention is made of holdings in Bainton; and in the early 1460s he claimed that lands in ‘Afferton’, worth about five marks, were being withheld from him by Joan, widow of one Simon Kighley and possibly his own daughter. ‘Afferton’ is probably to be identified with Brafferton (near Ripon), and it may therefore be that the family’s origins lay at Helperby, a vill in that parish. CP25(1)/281/67/Hen. VII; C1/28/219.

None the less, whatever the doubts and difficulties surrounding Helperby’s outlying lands, it is clear that Scarborough remained the centre of his interests throughout his career. It is not known what he inherited there, but much later the family estate was said to comprise five messuages in the town with a further messuage, 30 acres of land and 7s. of annual rent in neighbouring Falsgrave. C1/122/9. This alone, even leaving aside his manor of Killerby, was enough to make him one of the most substantial property holders resident in the town. Although he is not recorded as serving as bailiff, it is probable that he did so (only a partial list of the town’s office-holders can be compiled from the surviving records), and he did serve, on at least two occasions, on the first of three councils of 12 elected each year to assist the bailiffs. Scarborough ct. bk. 3, unfoliated. Further, he was well connected with the town’s other leading men. In the early 1440s John Daniell*, John Collom* and John Acclom* offered surety when he was distrained to answer for debts in the court of common pleas, and when he was elected to represent the town in the 1447 Parliament Robert Carthorpe* and John Robinson were his pledges. CP40/723, rot. 171; 737, rot. 61d; C219/15/4. At the next election, made to the Parliament of February 1449, he was himself surety for one of those returned, Henry Euer*. His relations with Euer had seemingly not been compromised by the actions of debt sued against him by Euer’s father, Sir William Euer*, in 1445 and 1447. C219/15/6; CP40/737, rot. 61d; 744, rot. 22d.

What precise part Helperby played in the civil war of 1459-61 is unknown. None the less, the rewards that came to him after the Yorkists assumed control of government in July 1460 leave no doubt that he offered some significant support to their cause, presumably, like two other Scarborough burgesses, John Robinson and Thomas Sage II*, as a follower of the Nevilles. On 25 Oct. 1460 he and a local lawyer, John Wenslagh of Brandesburton, secured a grant of the wardship and marriage of Robert, son and heir of another Scarborough MP, William Paulyn*. Although, on 26 Nov. 1461, this grant was superseded by another to the Chancery clerk, Thomas Ive, Helperby, who the first grant was presumably intended to benefit, was quickly able to reassert his claim, securing a new grant on 6 Feb. 1462: C139/178/52; CFR, xix. 295; xx. 57-58; CPR, 1461-7, p. 115. The grant also recognized a tenurial connexion in that the Paulyns held of Helperby a bovate of land in Killerby: C139/133/15. After the change of regime, more substantial rewards came his way, although not without complications. On 27 July 1462, in recognition of the great costs he was said to have incurred in the new King’s service, he was granted £20 p.a. to be taken for five years from the duchy of Lancaster manors in the North Riding honour of Pickering Lythe. This was compensation for an earlier undated grant that had proved ineffectual: he had been given £27 p.a. to be taken over the same period from the fee farm of his native borough, but over-assignment had made that grant of little value. DL37/31/23. Other grants more than reimbursed him for the difference. On 6 Feb. 1462 he had been granted £4 p.a., payable at the cross in the horse market at York, by the royal tenants in the Yorkshire forest of Galtres. More significantly, on 15 Sept. of the same year he had a life grant of £7 15s. p.a. assigned on the Scarborough fee farm. This was increased to £10 15s. in April 1465, compensating him, whether intentionally or not, for the loss of the Paulyn wardship (as Robert proved his age in the same month). CPR, 1461-7, pp. 118, 213, 438; CCR, 1461-8, p. 283; C140/18/55.

These were considerable rewards for a man of Helperby’s very modest rank. Yet the surviving records reveal little of his activities at a time when his fortunes should have been at their height. The most interesting of the few facts that can be discovered about him concerns an enfeoffment. The life interests bestowed by the final concord of 1444 had been extinguished by the early 1460s, for, at an unknown date after 1461, he conveyed all his lands (with the possible exception of those in Scarborough) to three local gentry, (Sir) Robert Constable*, Wenslagh and William Brigham, who, in turn enfeoffed Thomas Mountfort of Hackforth (North Riding), Thomas Wanceford, and two brothers, Thomas and William Chamberlain†, the latter of whom represented Scarborough in the Parliament of 1478. This last conveyance may have been connected with the marriage of our MP’s son and heir, Thomas. In his will of 1483, Thomas named the two Chamberlains as his executor and supervisor, and it is thus probable that his wife was of the same family. C140/60/13; Borthwick Inst., Univ. of York, York registry wills, prob. reg. 5, f. 208.

Helperby lived on until 10 Dec. 1477 and was buried in the aisle of Corpus Christi in the church of St. Mary. Following the death of his son Thomas the family lands descended to our MP’s two daughters, Margaret and Joan. The division of the lands was complicated by the survival of their sister-in-law, Isabel. She took as her second husband, Richard Byelbye, and this probably explains the marriage of Margaret to his kinsman (and perhaps his brother), Robert Byelbye†, a lawyer of Lincoln’s Inn who went on to represent Scarborough in the Parliament of 1491. By the final concord levied in February 1487 (and mentioned above) the Helperby estate was divided. Isabel and Richard Byelbye were to hold a moiety of the lands for the term of their lives, and on their deaths that moiety was to pass to Robert and Margaret and their issue. The other moiety was settled on Robert Byelbye, Margaret and Joan to hold for the lives of Richard and Margaret before passing to Joan and her issue. The remainder interest settled on the Chamberlain brothers adds to the evidence that Isabel was related to them. Some minor contention seems to have arisen over the division of the lands. Margaret and her husband brought bills in Chancery for detinue of charters against both a local chaplain, Master Robert Harom (d.1516), with whom Helperby is said to have deposited his evidences, and against Joan (who is perhaps to be identified with her sister) and Joan’s husband, Richard Herryson of Scarborough. C140/60/13; York registry wills, prob. reg. 5, f. 208; C1/119/48; 120/5; 122/9.