LEWESTON, Philip, of Stratton and Dorchester, Dorset and Wimbledon, Surr.

A lawyer from Dorset, Philip was related to John Leweston* (who like him represented boroughs in this county), and to William Leweston of Lewston, esquire, the head of the main branch of the family who towards the end of Philip’s life was to be assigned the final remainder in the entail of his property in Surrey. Perhaps they were all brothers or cousins. Philip is first found in the records in Michaelmas term 1423, when as a ‘gentleman of Stratford’ (probably a mistake for Stratton, near Dorchester), he stood surety in the court of common pleas, so it looks as if his career, focused on the central courts in Westminster, had already begun. Although in January 1426 he acted as a juror at the inquisition post mortem for Edmund, earl of March, conducted at Hooke in west Dorset, CP40/651, rot. 376d; CIPM, xxii. 488. He was called ‘of Stratton’ in 1450: CP40/758, rot. 279d. for the most part he busied himself as an attorney in the common pleas, and in the following year he took on briefs there for John Newburgh II* and other landowners from his home county. CP40/661, rot. 322; 667, rot. 329d. In 1428 he acted as attorney for Henry Sherard* and the defendant in a suit brought by John Stikelane*: CP40/670, rots. 129d, 493. In September 1427 Leweston attested the shire elections held at Dorchester. He was currently acting as an executor for another local lawyer, John Jordan* of Wolfeton, a commitment which required him to deal with Jordan’s property in the county town and to be a trustee of the inheritance of his widow. Dorchester Recs. ed. Mayo, 272; J. Hutchins, Dorset, i. 413. Leweston himself acquired a burgage on the west side of South Street in Dorchester in February 1432, although he permitted the previous owners, John and Alice Shyrewood, to occupy the house for the rest of their lives, while reserving for his own use a chamber and a stable with a solar above it for his horses and their fodder. The Shyrewoods were to maintain the buildings, with the lawyer paying a quarter of their costs. Dorchester Recs. 274-5. This arrangement provided Leweston with somewhere to lodge when he was in Dorset, and also meant that he conformed with the statutory requirements when it came to his election for Dorchester to the Parliament of 1435. Whether he had complied with the rules at the time of his two earlier returns to Parliament, for Melcombe and Bridport, is not known. He gave up his interest in the Dorchester property in 1444. Ibid. 289.

That he did so was because his growing reputation in the law-courts at Westminster necessitated his regular presence there. The dean of St. Paul’s cathedral, Reynold Kentwood, had engaged him as his attorney in a suit brought by the duke of Gloucester in 1429, CP40/673, rot. 1d. and having secured the post of filacer in the common pleas in 1431 (just a few months after he first sat in the Commons), he occupied that office for nearly 20 years. During his term he continued to act as an attorney for litigants from Dorset, such as the warden of the house of friars minor at Dorchester, CP40/691, rot. 63; 696, rot. 101. while also offering his services to official bodies from elsewhere. For instance, from 1429 to 1437 he was employed in the royal courts by the dean and canons of Windsor, initially for an annual fee of just 6s. 8d., which was doubled to one mark by 1434. St. George’s Chapel, Windsor recs., stewards’ accts. XV.48.9, 12-15. In his own interest, in Michaelmas term 1439 he initiated more than 20 pleas against individuals, predominantly from Dorset, for sums of money ranging from £2 to £8, presumably the fees owing to him for his services. The suits were enrolled on the part of the plea roll for which he held direct responsibility. CP40/715, rot. 298. Leweston also assisted a number of citizens of London in their business transactions, notably as a recipient of ‘gifts’ of their goods and chattels, CCR, 1429-35, p. 348; 1435-41, pp. 231, 485. and, described as ‘home de loye’, he joined the fraternity of St. John the Baptist founded by the Tailors’ Company. Guildhall Lib. London, Merchant Taylors’ Co. accts. 34048/1, f. 258. Briefly, he took on the role of under sheriff in the capital.

On behalf of one of his fellow filacers, William Markeby II* of Lincoln, Leweston was enfeoffed of property in London in 1438. Corp. London RO, hr 165/48; 167/10. The two men had sat together in the Parliament of 1435, with Markeby representing his native city. While that Parliament was in session at Westminster (from 10 Oct. to 23 Dec.), Leweston did not neglect his legal practice: at least some of the time that he should have been attending the Commons he was in Westminster hall appearing as an attorney for prominent litigants from Dorset, including Sir Humphrey Stafford*, Elizabeth, widow of Robert Lovell*, William Turberville* and Edward Stikelane†. CP40/699, rots. 132d, 458, 525, 527, att. rots. 4d, 5. For several years more he continued his connexion with the county’s landowners, for example lending his assistance to John Newburgh for his acquisition of the manor of Winterborne Quarrelston; and he also accepted briefs from the bailiffs of Weymouth, on whose behalf he rendered an account at the Exchequer in 1440. In 1445 he sued a man from Maiden Newton for so badly assaulting one of his servants the man had to leave his employment. Hutchins, i. 332; E159/217, recorda Mich. rot. 29; CP40/738, rot. 352d.

Together with John Leweston (perhaps the former MP) in 1439 Philip was accused by (Sir) William Estfield* of illegal intrusion into his house in the London parish of All Hallows at the Hay, while he himself appears to have had property in that of St. Clement Danes, outside the bar of New Temple, Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, p. 18; CP40/759, rot. 120. and when in 1441 with his first wife he obtained papal indults to have their own portable altar and to employ a priest as their confessor, they were said to be dwelling in the capital. This first wife, Joan, was the widow of a Yorkshireman, Ivo Etton (the son of Sir John Etton†), a former member of the King’s household, who had engaged Leweston as the couple’s attorney in the great hall at Westminster five years earlier. CPL, ix. 236-7; CP40/755, rot. 659; 775, rot. 543. The marriage did not prompt him to move to the north of England. He had invested some of the profits of his profession in property in Surrey, notably in Wimbledon, and was appointed to the county bench as a member of the quorum in 1439. In Surrey he formed a close acquaintance with the Household esquire John Stanley I*, a fellow j.p. with whom he acted as a co-feoffee when the treasurer of the Household, Sir Roger Fiennes*, and his brother James Fiennes* purchased property in the county. CCR, 1435-41, pp. 378, 460, 462. He witnessed a deed for Stanley in 1455: CCR, 1461-8, p. 58. Leweston attested the Surrey electoral returns of 1442 at the shire court at Guildford, and a number of ad hoc royal commissions also took him to the county town. CIMisc. viii. 159. He witnessed deeds in Wimbledon and Mortlake, as well as acknowledging a grant in April 1443 by the prior and convent of Merton priory. Later that year, together with a kinsman, he acquired from Katherine, widow of John Burgh†, a former knight of the shire, a lease for 12 years of certain properties in Wimbledon, including stews and fisheries. CP40/728, rot. 139d; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 135, 137, 388.

The cause of Leweston’s conflict with William Bovy* and his wife Lucy, who lived at Montacute ‘Burgh’ in Somerset, is unclear. He alleged that in January 1449 the Bovys and a servant, Robert Sherard, had taken silver plate worth £40 from him in the parish of St. Clement Danes, while in their turn Bovy and his wife accused the filacer of breaking into Lucy’s house at Montacute and physically assaulting her. In August 1450 the dispute was submitted to arbitration at Glastonbury, but no settlement was achieved, and further litigation followed, in the course of which Sherard was found guilty of the theft, before the Bovys were cleared of all charges. CP40/754, rot. 50d; 757, rot. 424; 758, rots. 16, 279d, 282d; 759, rot. 120. Although Leweston ceased to be a filacer in 1451, he was associated with justices of the common pleas in conducting an assize of novel disseisin in Kent in 1454, probably at the instigation of the plaintiff (his longstanding client John Newburgh), and he maintained links with former colleagues such as Walter Moyle*, now promoted as one of the justices, with regard to their shared interest in a hostelry in Southwark. C66/478, m. 18d; CAD, ii. B3324-5. On 13 Nov. 1455 he sued out a royal pardon, in which he was described as ‘of Wimbledon, gentleman’ and as tenant of the lands and tenements of Ivo Etton, his late wife’s former husband. What part of the Etton inheritance still remained in his possession is unclear. A year earlier he had been accused by his brother-in-law, Alexander Etton, clerk, of wrongfully detaining a pyx containing charters and other muniments relating to the family estates in Yorkshire which Alexander had inherited after his brother Ivo’s childless death, yet had appeared in court to declare his willingness to hand it over. C67/41, m. 20. Leweston made arrangements for the settlement of his own property, which now included lands in West Sheen, acquired in 1451 with the assistance of John Stanley. In 1453 his property in Wimbledon, Maldon and Wandsworth was settled on him and his second wife in jointure, with the stipulation that in the event of their deaths without issue, these holdings were to pass to a clerk named Thomas Swift for his lifetime, with successive remainders in tail to John Leweston ‘of Stratton’, Robert and Edith Vaux of Odiham, John Leweston ‘of Keyhaven’ and finally to William Leweston of Lewston (the head of the main line of the family in Dorset), and the latter’s right heirs. CP25(1)/232/73/35; 74/5. The lawyer was still living in early January 1458, when John Stockton and Robert Overton of London separately entered bonds to him in £10, payable at the following Easter. Neither man paid Leweston before his death, or satisfied his widow, Margaret. By 1462 the widow had married William Baret. CP40/803, rot. 115.