HEWSTER, Thomas (d.1439), of Worcester and Cowsden, Worcs.

Hewster enjoyed a long and successful career and was the father of one of the most notable judges of the fifteenth century, Thomas Lyttleton (d.1481). His own father was a tradesman from Lichfield, but modest origins did not hold him back. By Michaelmas term 1398 he was active as an attorney in the court of common pleas, acting principally in cases originating in his native shire. CP40/551, att. rots. 2d, 4, 6; 553, att. rots. 4d, 6; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xv. 90. He does not appear among the attorneys in the previous Mich. term: CP40/547, att. rots. Soon after, he made the sort of minor property purchase typical of a young lawyer: by a final concord levied in Easter term 1401 he acquired 6d. p.a. of rent and the reversion of a messuage in Lichfield from a Shrewsbury skinner and his wife. CP25(1)/211/21/11. A fine of 1412 may represent a further purchase by our MP of a messuage and two cottages in Lichfield: CP25(1)/211/21/70. Within a couple of years of this transaction he added to his holdings in the town by marriage to the widow of Henry Brown, master of the town’s guild of St. Mary in 1400-1. CP40/579, rot. 658d; Harwood, 401. Much more important, however, as a determinant of his future career, was his appointment in Easter term 1403 as the junior of the two prothonotaries of the court of common pleas. CP40/569, rot. 2. No early patron can be identified, and it may be that, finding a place on the staff of the prothonotaries, his own early promise was the chief reason for what seems to have been a rapid promotion.

With promotion in the lower reaches of the legal profession came advancement of another kind. Hewster was drawn into the complex legal affairs of the Worcestershire esquire, Thomas Lyttleton. Beginning in 1402, Lyttleton brought a series of actions designed to secure the manor of Frankley against the two daughters and coheiresses of William Spernore alias Durvassell† (d.1401). Our MP was involved in this case in two capacities: between 1405 and 1410 he acted as an attorney for several of the defendants, and, this apparently compromising function notwithstanding, on 1 Mar. 1406 he sat as an associate assize justice at Worcester at one of the case’s several hearings. Eventually, in 1410, judgement was awarded for Lyttleton, and by 1417 his daughter and heiress-presumptive had become Hewster’s second wife. This was a strikingly good match for a man of our MP’s modest origins and a significant improvement, in social terms, on his first. It is tempting to conclude that his involvement in the case, albeit on the side of Lyttleton’s opponents, was its context. CP40/577, rot. 192; Genealogist, n.s. xxxvii. 14-15, 22. They were married by Jan. 1417 but probably not long before: Birmingham Archs., Lyttleton of Hagley Hall mss, 3279/351325. A birth date of c. 1417 is consistent with what is known of the career of Thomas Lyttleton, their eldest son, who became a serjeant-at-law in 1453.

This marriage is the most obvious manifestation of the new standing brought to Hewster by his high clerical office in the court of common pleas, but equally revealing is the range of important men ready to employ him. In 1409, for example, he stood surety in an important royal grant made to one of the leading gentry of his native shire, Sir Humphrey Stafford*; in 1415 John, Lord Talbot, about to depart to Ireland as royal lieutenant there, named him as one of his attorneys in England (as he did again in 1424); and by 1417 he had a fee of 40s. p.a. from an even more important man, Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, as his attorney in the court of common pleas. CPR, 1408-13, pp. 52-53; 1413-16, pp. 186, 378; 1422-9, p. 263; CCR, 1405-9, p. 492; Egerton Roll 8773, m. 1d. He was still acting as the earl of Warwick’s attorney in 1429: CP40/673, rot. 101. His promotion to first prothonotary in 1417 must have added to his recommendations, and he acquired over the years several similar fees. By 1419 the borough of Shrewsbury had retained him as its attorney in the common pleas at an annual fee of one mark; in 1425-6 he had a 40s. annuity from Joan Beauchamp, Lady Abergavenny; and by 1429 he had a more modest fee of 6s. 8d. p.a. from the dean and canons of Windsor. Salop Archs., Shrewsbury recs., bailiffs’ accts. 3365/359; SC11/25; St. George’s chapel, Windsor, recs. XV. 48.9, m. 8d. He acted for Shrewsbury until his death: bailiffs’ accts. 3365/375, m. 2d. Better records would no doubt show that all those men and institutions with business in the common pleas significant enough to justify the expense, retained him annually, paying fees between these two sums (which appear to have represented the highest and lowest market rate for such work). In the early 1420s, for example, he acted as attorney for the city of London and John, duke of Bedford, who no doubt paid him the higher sum. CP40/647, att. rot. 1; 662, rot. 454. He also occasionally acted as an attorney in the ct. of KB: e.g. KB27/632, rex rot. 14d (for the prior of Malvern, Worcs.). Such connexions may also have brought him reward of another sort. On 27 May 1422 he received a grant of royal patronage, albeit a modest one: he and another lawyer, Simon Hadyngton, were entrusted with the keeping of the manor of Albrighton in Shropshire during the minority of a royal ward. CFR, xiv. 431.

Hewster’s local role developed alongside his professional career in the common pleas. From early on he was routinely employed by the Crown as a commissioner of gaol delivery and an associate justice of assize and was active as a j.p. in Staffordshire. e.g. KB27/618, rex rot. 31. He also found time to involve himself in the domestic affairs of his native town, serving as master of the guild of St. Mary there. In 1413 Thomas Belne†, a leading citizen of Worcester, chose him as one of his executors, the first documentary evidence of what was to be a recurring association between our MP and that city. Harwood, 401-2; CP40/654, rot. 101d; 776, rot. 508. More importantly, in the early 1420s Hewster began to take part in Worcestershire affairs: added to the county bench in 1422, he attested the county’s parliamentary election in 1425. C219/13/3. It is tempting to conclude that this new role arose from his wife’s succession to her patrimony there. His father-in-law, Lyttleton, was certainly dead by 1423. Yet the principal part of that inheritance, the hard-won manor of Frankley, was the jointure of her mother, and did not come to Hewster’s wife until after his death. In 1429 his mother-in-law granted the manor of Frankley to her second husband, John Massy, who in 1430 enfeoffed Edmund, Lord Ferrers, John Sutton, Lord Dudley, and others: Lyttleton mss, 3279/351365, 351370. The manor is not known to have been in the hands of our MP’s widow until 1448, when she had an action pending against Thomas Massy, a kinsman of her mother’s second husband, for breaking into her park there: KB27/747, rot. 13d; 749, rot. 46. His wife appears, however, to have inherited property at Cowsden in Upper Snodsbury, where the Lyttletons once resided, and the couple appear to have taken up residence there (our MP is occasionally described ‘of Cowsden’). VCH Worcs. iv. 210; Lyttelton mss, 3279/351377, 351380.

The lands that underpinned his place as a Worcestershire gentlemen came by purchase and lease as well as by his wife’s inheritance. In 1420 he bought the reversion, expectant on the death of the life tenants, of two messuages, a carucate of land, six acres of meadow and 11 marks of rent in Lickhill, Lower Mitton and Kidderminster, from another Worcester citizen, Robert Nelme*; in 1427, he purchased the reversion, again expectant on the death of a life tenant, of two messuages, a carucate of land, 40 acres of meadow and 20 acres of wood in Tyberton; and in the following year he leased property in Warley from the abbey of Halesowen. No doubt other purchases have gone undocumented – a later lawsuit shows that he also acquired seven messuages and a garden in Worcester – and there can be no doubt that he made himself an important figure in the county. CP25(1)/260/27/10, 16; Lyttelton mss, 3279/351361; KB27/804, rot. 75. When assessments were made there for the subsidy of 1435-6, Hewster’s income was put at £40 p.a., and since he himself was one of the commissioners before whom the assessments were taken, this may have been a conservative estimate of his wealth. Even allowing for the fact that a significant part of his income must have been derived from taxable annuities, his landholdings in the county cannot have been negligible. CFR, xvi. 260; E179/200/68.

On 14 Sept. 1429 Hewster attested his second Worcestershire election, on this occasion standing surety for one of those returned, John Wood I*, another lawyer who, like our MP, was employed by the earl of Warwick. He himself was returned at the next hustings, held on 3 Jan. 1431, a sure sign that he had successfully established himself in the county. Whether he played much of a part in the Commons must be doubted. The assembly corresponded with the Hilary law term, when his attentions must have been significantly engaged by his duties as first prothonotary. C219/14/1, 2. However this may be, election to Parliament for a shire marked Hewster out as a country gentleman as well as a professional, and this new status is a possible explanation for his mysterious acquisition of the alias of Westcote. He is first described as such in 1428 in his lease from Halesowen abbey, and, although in official sources he continued to be described only as Hewster, in private deeds the alias generally appears. In April 1436, for example, he was named as Westcote alias Hewster when he purchased land in Warley and Ridgeacre. Lyttelton mss, 3279/351377. Interestingly, in the 1438 final concord completing the purchase he is described simply as Hewster: CP25(1)/260/27/32. Of even more significance, after his death, the name ‘Hewster’ itself was dropped. In the south window (now unfortunately lost) of Frankley church, he was portrayed in the arms of Lyttleton below the scroll, ‘Orate pro animabus Thome Westcot et Elizabethe uxoris eius’, and his younger sons all appear in the records as Westcotes. Hewster’s desire to lose the name of his birth, with its association with the trade of dyeing, is understandable, but it is more difficult to explain why he did not simply adopt the name of his heiress wife, as his famous eldest son was to do, and why, in rejecting that solution, he should have chosen the name ‘Westcote’. Genealogist, n.s. xxxvii. 19, 22-23.

Hewster remained in office as first prothonotary until his death in 1439. His last term in office was Trin. 1439; in the following term John Wydeslade* superseded him: CP40/714, rot. 1; 715, rot. 1. The appointment of a new c.j.c.p., Sir Richard Newton, in Sept. raises the possibility that Hewster was replaced not because he was dead, but because Newton preferred Wydeslade. However, our MP does not appear in the records after 1439, and it was not common practice for a new c.j. to remove any of the court’s clerks. Curiously for an elderly lawyer, he appears to have died intestate, for his widow and eldest son are found suing as his administrators. His eldest son had probably already adopted his mother’s surname: in a deed of 1440 he is described as ‘Thomas Lyttleton, son of Thomas Hewster’. CP40/743, rot. 169d; Lyttelton mss, 3279/351388. He built considerably on the foundations laid down by his father, and in 1480 he remembered his parents in a chantry foundation in the priory of Bromsgrove, a few miles from Frankley. Genealogist, n.s. xxxvii. 21; Worcester Chs. (Worcs. Hist. Soc. 1909), 94-95. But he was not the only one of our MP’s sons to become successful. Another, Edmund, who adopted the name Westcote, made his career as a Bristol merchant, and died a very wealthy man. He bequeathed as much as £500 and 30 pipes of woad to his wife and children: PCC 18 Logge (PROB11/7, f. 133d).