JEWE, John, of Ilchester, Som.

The MP was a namesake of a man whose lands at Bere Hall in Devon, Pilsdon, West Chickerell and Dorchester in Dorset, and Whitefield and elsewhere in Somerset were estimated in returns for the subsidy of 1412 to be worth £52 13s. 4d. p.a. Feudal Aids, vi. 30, 506. At the time of his death in 1416, this landowner had five surviving children, of whom another John, the eldest of the three sons, stood to inherit the ‘grete maser’ handed down through successive generations of the family. Reg. Chichele, ii. 89-91, 94. Yet it would appear that young John never inherited the family estates as might have been expected. Instead, one of the daughters, Elizabeth, took a moiety of them in 1430 to her husband John Hody*, the future chief justice, and by the time of her death many years later, in 1473, she had also acquired the other moiety too. The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 384-5; VCH Som. iv. 90; CP25(1)/292/67/104; J. Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 236. After Elizabeth’s death the Jewe estates passed to her sons John and William Hody† and James Cappes: C140/47/60. It would therefore seem that John and his two brothers all died young, and if the MP for Bridport was related to the Jewes of Pilsdon, then it was as a member of a junior branch of the family.

As Jewe’s talents lay in administration, he was regularly employed by the sheriffs of the joint bailiwick of Somerset and Dorset to assist them in their duties, and provide continuity in local government as sheriffs succeeded one another on an annual basis. He became a sheriff’s officer to William Stafford* during his shrievalty of the two counties in 1438; E5/510. subsequently served as receiver for John St. Loe*, the sheriff of 1442-3, and acted as attorney in the Exchequer for Sir Edward Hull*, St. Loe’s successor. He took up residence at Ilchester, the county town where the sheriffs conducted their business in Somerset. SC6/1119/17, rot. 11; E13/143, rot. 44. As ‘of Ilchester, gentleman’ in February 1441 he entered recognizances at the Exchequer to guarantee that collectors of the subsidies in the neighbouring county of Wiltshire would pay the sum due at the following Easter. E159/217, recogniciones Hil. During the same period of the early 1440s he accepted the post of bailiff of the liberties of Glastonbury abbey in Somerset and Dorset, which he was to occupy almost without break for 30 years, until 1472. It may be speculated that he had come to the attention of the abbot because the Jewes’ manor at Pilsdon was held of the abbey. Feodary of Glastonbury Abbey (Som. Rec. Soc. xxvi), 49n.

Jewe’s connexion with the wealthy and influential Staffords of Hooke was to prove long-lasting. In July 1443, following the death of Sir Humphrey Stafford* he was granted an Exchequer lease of the manor of Seavington Denis in Somerset, which Stafford had held for life, CFR, xvii. 257; E159/223, brevia Easter rot. 5. and his continued links with the knight’s younger son, William, were such that he became involved in the violent events of the following summer which seriously disrupted the peace in Dorset. The heiress to the principal Stafford estates was Sir Humphrey’s grand-daughter Avice, wife of Sir James Butler (afterwards earl of Wiltshire and Ormond), but William took exception to the newcomer, and their armed followers clashed at Toller Porcorum and Lower Kingcombe, resulting in at least one death, that of Butler’s man, John Yerdeley. Jewe, numbered among Stafford’s party, was afterwards named by Yerdeley’s widow, as an accessory to the murder of her husband, of which Stafford stood accused. E13/144, rots. 19, 20. He was also among those whom Butler charged in the court of common pleas of helping Stafford to steal livestock and goods worth £40, and of assaulting his servants at Lower Kingcombe. CP40/738, rot. 339d. Court proceedings continued throughout 1445, until on 11 May 1446 a number of Stafford’s men succeeded in obtaining royal pardons. Jewe himself was not among those so pardoned, and it is unclear how he extricated himself from the charges. CPR, 1441-6, pp. 438-9.

That he did so before too long is clear from his regular appearances at the Exchequer for the abbot of Glastonbury and attendance at the county courts held at Ilchester for the Somerset elections to the Parliaments of 1449, 1453 and 1455. Perhaps he did so in the capacity of one of the sheriff’s officers. After his patron William Stafford was killed by Cade’s rebels in 1450, he offered assistance to his widow Katherine, as a feoffee of lands settled on her. In August 1458 she and her second husband, John Arundell, leased to Jewe and others several manors in Dorset, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, including the Stafford seat at Southwick, for 60 years, at a rent of £100 p.a. Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR1/941. The heir to these estates was now Humphrey Stafford IV*, to whom Jewe became attached. In the aftermath of the Yorkist victory at the battle of Northampton in July 1460, the young Humphrey was returned as knight of the shire for Somerset to the Parliament summoned to meet on 7 Oct., and Jewe joined him in the Commons as MP for the borough of Bridport. He is not known to have held any property in the town, or to have had links with the burgesses, even though the borough was not far from the manor of Pilsdon, which had once belonged to his family. While up at Parliament, on 7 Nov. Stafford was appointed sheriff of Somerset and Dorset, and Jewe assumed the role of one of his officers. Yet he did go back to Westminster for the second session of the Parliament, which began on 28 Jan. 1461, for at the very beginning of the Hilary term he joined with Stafford’s former guardian, Sir William Bonville*, Lord Bonville, in bringing suits for debt in the common pleas against several men from Wimborne St. Giles, Dorset. CP40/800, rot. 24. Bonville died shortly afterwards, executed by vengeful Lancastrians after the second battle of St. Albans, but Jewe’s master, Stafford, was befriended by the new King, Edward IV, who subsequently elevated him to the earldom of Devon. In the years before his death in 1469 Stafford made several wills. A striking feature of the one he wrote on 3 Sept. 1463 was the provision for righting a catalogue of frauds and extortions of which he expressed guilt. The earliest of these had occurred when he was sheriff in 1460-1; his officers, Jewe and ‘Clavilsey’, knew who had been ‘wrongfully hurt’, and could carry out his instructions to see that full restitution was made. Som. Med. Wills (Som. Rec. Soc. xvi), 197. In the 1460s Jewe also did Stafford service as a feoffee of estates in Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset for the performance of his will, and was still acting as such when the earl was put to death by the townsmen of Bridgwater on 17 Aug. 1469. C140/32/30. Whether he had accompanied Stafford and his retainers to the battle of Edgcote three weeks earlier is not recorded, but he clearly survived his master, for on 20 Nov. 1472 he was among the late earl’s feoffees, headed by the bishop of Winchester, who purchased a royal pardon. C67/49, m. 14.