Of obscure origin but apparently a Welshman, Kemys owed his standing to his extremely advantageous marriage to Margaret Russell, the daughter of a substantial landowner in south-west and southern England. By virtue of a 14th-century entail, she and her younger sister Isabel, then respectively the wives of Sir Gilbert Denys and Sir John Drayton†, had inherited the Gloucestershire manors of Dyrham, Haresfield and Hinton, which had been partitioned between them after the death of their father Sir Maurice Russell in 1416. Denys died in March 1422, and on the following 12 Dec. the Crown granted Margaret a licence to marry Kemys, who no doubt became her husband before the year was out.
Probably another Welshman, Denys had owed his connexion with Gloucestershire to his earlier marriage to another Margaret, the sister and heir of William Corbet. This Margaret’s inheritance comprised the manors of Siston, Alveston and Earthcott and the hundred of Langley in that county, along with the hamlet of Hope in Shropshire. Although she had not borne Denys any children, arrangements made during her lifetime had enabled him not only to retain them for the rest of his life but also to pass them on to his second wife and his children by her. As a result, Margaret Russell, already in possession of a share of her late father’s holdings in Gloucestershire, was to retain for life the manor of Siston, where Kemys took up residence with her, and to enjoy dower rights in the other Corbet estates in the county.
The heir to the greater part of the Russell inheritance was Margaret Kemys’s half-brother Thomas Russell, Sir Maurice Russell’s son by his second marriage, but he died, still a minor, in May 1431. Thomas’s posthumous baby daughter, Margery, did not long survive him since she died in March 1432. The infant’s nearest heirs by blood were her aunts, Margaret Kemys and Isabel, by then the wife of Stephen Haytfeld*. Deciding to which of the Russell estates the two women should succeed was not a simple task. First, there were the dower interests of their stepmother, Sir Maurice Russell’s second wife Joan Dauntsey, now married to Sir John Stradling, and of Thomas Russell’s widow – another Joan – to consider. Moreover, the heir general, their cousin John Haket, and the heir male, Sir Theobald Gorges*alias Russell, each had a right to a part of the inheritance. A series of inquisitions held after the deaths of Thomas and Margery Russell decided the respective shares of all four heirs. In Somerset, Margaret and Isabel received assigned lands at Horsington and the advowsons of Horsington parish church and the chapel of South Cherington, and in Dorset the hundred of Redhone and Beaminster Forum. In November 1432, the Crown directed the escheator of the two counties to partition these estates between Margaret and Kemys on the one part, and Isabel and Haytfeld on the other. The Russell manor of Horsington was divided between Gorges and Haket, although Joan Dauntsey retained a third of Haket’s share in dower. Haket also received the manors of Kingston Russell and Bradpole in Dorset and lands at Dyrham in Gloucestershire, again properties in which Joan held a like interest.
As it happened, Margaret, Isabel and their husbands were also able to take possession of other parts of the Russell inheritance not assigned to them by the inquisitions. Not long afterwards, they acquired Kingston Russell and Bradpole from Haket, the manors of Yaverland, Roburgh and Wathe on the Isle of Wight (subject to Joan Dauntsey’s dower share) and moieties of those of Lytton in Dorset and Aust in Gloucestershire, both later regarded as complete manors. Having secured these properties, they agreed between themselves that Isabel and her husband should have the Isle of Wight manors and Bradpole, while Margaret and Kemys should take Kingston Russell, Lytton and Aust. Among the parties to these arrangements were John Kemys clerk and Maurice Kemys, evidently two of Kemys’s relatives.
If Kemys himself had inherited lands there is no evidence for them, and any such inheritance would have paled into insignificance beside that of his wife. It was to Margaret that he owed his status in Gloucestershire, where he was among the gentry required to uphold the peace in 1434. There is no sign of his having acquired any major properties on his own account, whether in Gloucestershire or elsewhere, although it is possible that he bought a tenement and other holdings in Siston in the spring of 1465. He was also a party to conveyances of properties at Stapleton and Oldbury near Bristol in the previous two decades, but it is not entirely clear whether these transactions were for the benefit of himself or another of the parties, his son Roger, who was certainly in possession of both properties at the beginning of the 1480s. Kemys was also associated with another relative, Thomas Kemys – apparently his brother – to whom he made conveyances of property in Bristol in the 1460s.
Over the years, Kemys had many dealings with various men and institutions from Bristol, which lay within easy range of Siston and several of the other manors he held in his wife’s right and where in the mid fifteenth century a namesake was rector of the parish church of St. Mary le Port. In the spring of 1427 he and another namesake, from Newport in south Wales, entered a statute staple for no less than £400 to the merchant John Newton† of Bristol, to guarantee they would pay for merchandise acquired from him in the town’s staple. Twenty years later, the statute, in which Kemys is styled ‘the younger’ and his namesake – possibly his father – as ‘the elder’, provided the basis of a lawsuit concerning their alleged failure to settle their debt with Newton. Kemys also had disagreements with the abbot of St. Augustine, Bristol, whom he and his wife sued in the late 1420s for detaining chattels belonging to them, and with John Joce, a merchant from the town against whom he began an action of trespass in the mid 1450s. Within Bristol, Kemys had a connexion with the parish church of Saint Philip and Saint Jacob. In April 1467, he and his son Roger conveyed a messuage and other properties in King’s Barton near Gloucester to trustees acting for the church, where he endowed a chantry and a fund for the poor. Roger also had his interests at Bristol, where he held property in the right of his wife.
It was not until some years after his wife had inherited a share of the Russell estates that Kemys held any public office. In the event, his role in local government was restricted to a term as escheator of Gloucestershire and membership of just two ad hoc commissions, all of which predated his only known Parliament. The Commons in the Parliament of 1450 is generally considered to have contained a significant number of men sympathetic to the duke of York, who had actively canvassed for the return of his supporters to the Lower House and whose servant, Sir William Oldhall*, was chosen as Speaker after it had opened. Kemys’s fellow knight of the shire was another of York’s men, Sir John Barre*, but there is no evidence that he himself was likewise a follower of the duke.
A lord with whom Kemys certainly had links was William, Lord Botreaux, whose estates lay predominantly in south-west England and included holdings at Bristol. He was a feoffee and executor for Botreaux, although it is not clear whether he already had a connexion with that lord when elected to the Commons.
In spite of this episode, Kemys had later dealings with other members of the Stanshawe family. Within a few years of Stanshawe’s death in the spring of 1447, a young bride was found for his younger son, Henry Stanshawe. Kemys participated in the match-making as one of the ‘gouvernours’ of the girl in question, an orphan of unknown parentage named Margaret. The marriage, which appears to have taken place in 1450, proved short-lived for by 1453 at the latest Henry was dead and Margaret was the wife of Hugh Mille*. She was the heir to lands in Gloucestershire worth nearly £20 p.a., although when she married Mille her inheritance was in the hands of Isabel, Nicholas* and Robert Stanshawe, respectively the mother, uncle and elder brother of the late Henry, who had held it in trust for her since her first marriage. At the time of that previous match, these trustees had entered into obligations in the large sum of 400 marks with Kemys and her two other guardians, John Sharp III* and Thomas Exeter, to guarantee that they would settle the lands on her and Henry before Christmas Day. According to a bill Margaret and her new husband submitted to the chancellor following their marriage, her former in-laws had reneged on this undertaking and were retaining the lands. The Milles complained that they were powerless to take action at common law over the matter because Margaret’s erstwhile guardians, against whom they directed the bill, were refusing to hand the obligations over to them. Taken at face value, the Chancery suit suggests that Kemys and his two associates had connived with the Stanshawes to withhold the lands from the Milles, but this is far from certain since the suit’s outcome is not known. It is likewise not clear whether Kemys’s purchase of a royal pardon in early 1455 was in any way connected with the same dispute.
Some three decades after the confrontation at Siston, Kemys was still associated with Sir Maurice Berkeley, since the knight was the other executor of Lord Botreaux, who died in the spring of 1462.
By the time Edward took the throne, Kemys had lost his wife, who had died in early 1460. It is uncertain whether he married again, although a John Kemys and his wife Isabel sued a miller for debt at Westminster in 1465, in a lawsuit emanating from Gloucestershire.