The Hervys were a Lostwithiel family of some antiquity, with a putative ancestor recorded there as early as the twelfth century. For much of the fourteenth century, the family traded in tin, but Nicholas’s father opted for a different career and acquired legal expertise sufficient to allow him entry into the lower ranks of the administrative hierarchy of the duchy of Cornwall. Richard Hervy’s offices as clerk of the statute merchant at Lostwithiel and sub bailiff of Blackmore stannary were in character practical, rather than honorific, but nevertheless seem to have allowed their holder sufficient social advancement to permit his son entry into gentry society outside the narrow confines of Cornwall. Another factor in Nicholas’s advancement was his training in the law. While no details of his education have come to light, he was by the end of his life styled an ‘apprentice at law’.
On his father’s death in 1429 Nicholas succeeded to the family property in Lostwithiel and nearby Bridgend, and by the end of his life he also owned further property in nearby Bodmin. There were some initial difficulties over the inheritance, as Hervy’s mother had placed some of the family muniments in the hands of trustees from whom the local lawyer William Hoigge acquired them by fraud, but eventually Nicholas gained control of his patrimony.
From the 1440s, Hervy began to build up an increasingly extensive legal practice, initially focused on Somerset and Bristol, but – following his move to Godalming – also took in Surrey and Sussex. His early clients included the landowner Sir John Frampton and the later royal justice Richard Chokke, while among his associates in his activities were John Fortescue*, John Austell*, Thomas and John Burton I*, and William Philipps*.
In view of Hervy’s move away from his native Cornwall, it is uncertain how he came to be returned for the Cornish county town of Launceston in the spring of 1449, but it is possible that the sheriff, the courtier John Trevelyan*, played a part. If there were no pre-existing ties between the two Cornishmen, they developed close links within the next few years. In the summer of 1453 Hervy and Trevelyan were both among the trustees of the London brewer Robert Ocle, and three years later he served Trevelyan as an arbiter in a dispute with the Surrey esquire Thomas Ledered over the latter’s lands in Leatherhead, Effingham and Shere.
As a feoffee of the Hussey estates Hervy had been associated with William Waynflete, bishop of Winchester, and this link proved useful in the late 1450s, following Waynflete’s appointment as chancellor. He probably owed his appointment to the quorum of the Surrey bench in July 1458 as much to the bishop’s patronage as to his legal qualifications. By that date, the last ditch attempt to reconcile the quarrelling factions among the lords at the love-day of that March had manifestly failed, and the country was slipping into open civil war. Associated like Waynflete with the administration dominated by Queen Margaret, Hervy was appointed to the partisan commissions of array of September 1458 and December 1459. Likewise, his return for the bishop of Winchester’s borough of Hindon to the highly partisan Coventry Parliament was clearly arranged in the government’s interest: Hervy’s name was added to the schedule listing the representatives for the Wiltshire boroughs, replacing that of another man which had been erased.
The Yorkist victory at Northampton in the summer of 1460 spelled the end of Waynflete’s chancellorship, and in the immediate term also of Hervy’s career of office-holding under the Crown. He was removed from the county bench, and had to wait until late 1464 before he once more began to be included in judicial commissions. He was nevertheless kept busy by his other professional activities. His old patron, Bishop Waynflete, now employed him as justiciar of his court of pavilion at the St. Giles’ fair at Winchester, and probably played his part in once more finding Hervy a Hindon seat in 1467 (when a number of other members of Waynflete’s circle secured election elsewhere). Moreover, through his connexion with Waynflete Hervy was drawn into the complex affairs of the deceased Sir John Fastolf, and had to play his part in the various disputes, agreements and land settlements between Fastolf’s executors and the would-be beneficiaries including John Paston* and the duke of Norfolk.
There were also numerous other clients across the south and south-west of England. In Cornwall and Hampshire Hervy was named as a feoffee by wealthy landowners like Thomas Wyse* and William Dingley,
The urban politics that saw the authorities at Bristol throw in their lot with Queen Margaret in the spring of 1471 have not yet been fully unraveled. What is clear is that whereas a year earlier it had allegedly been the son of the mayor, John Shipwarde*, who had led an armed contingent to Nibley Green to fight for Lord Berkeley, in 1471 it fell to the recorder Hervy to take command of the town’s fighting men and lead them to the battlefield of Tewkesbury.
De Vicestre y morut ce jour,
Le conte et sire Emond Auldain,
Pheldin, Gervas en cel estour,
Furent mis à leur jour derrain,
Et Vuiteghen n’y dura grain,
Hervy et Vaulx,
Wenloc aveuc maint barons haulx,
Dieu leur pardoinst tous leurs deffaux!
Chants Historiques ed. Le Roux de Lincy, 169.
In spite of Hervy’s death on the Lancastrian side, his family escaped the more serious consequences of parliamentary attainder and forfeiture.
Hervy is not known to have left a will, but a fifteenth-century chronicle of Tewkesbury abbey indicates that his body was identified and buried in the abbey church with many other casualties of the battle.