LYTE, Thomas (c.1410-c.1468), of Oakley and Lytes Cary, Cornw.

The name ‘Thomas Luyt’ has been squeezed into too small a space left on the parliamentary indenture for Heytesbury and written in a different ink from the rest of the document. C219/16/3. It has been suggested that the MP was the obscure Thomas Lyte who died on 29 Mar. 1476 possessed of a small amount of land of little value at Langley and Titchbourne near Redlynch, and that his son and heir Robert (b.c.1442) was the Heytesbury MP of 1478. C140/55/11; HP Biogs. ed.Wedgwood and Holt, 564. An alternative and also credible suggestion is that the MP of 1455 was Thomas Luyt* of Shrewsbury and London, who as one of the filacers in the court of King’s bench took special responsibility for Wiltshire, and, indeed, was often named in the 1440s and 1450s by successive sheriffs of the county to act as their attorney. That Thomas also left a son and heir named Robert.

Yet a strong case may also be made that the MP was Thomas Lyte of Lytes Cary. When the Parliament was summoned to meet on 9 July 1455 Heytesbury was still owned by Eleanor, dowager countess of Arundel, who held the valuable estate in jointure by gift of her third husband Walter, Lord Hungerford† (d.1449). It is likely that Eleanor was then known to be dying: she died just three weeks later on 1 Aug., the day after the first parliamentary session ended. At the post mortem conducted at Downton on 7 Nov. both the Heytesbury MPs were present as jurors: Richard Hayne II* and Thomas Lyte. Furthermore, Lyte had also been a juror at the inquisitions held previously, on 28 and 31 Oct., respectively at Sherborne in Dorset and Yeovil in Somerset. He had evidently ridden to the three places in turn to ensure that the escheators were correctly informed about the countess’s heirs. C139/159/35. There is a high probability, therefore, that the MP was a local man and probably a member of the countess’s household or else one of her estate staff. Someone of the standing of Thomas Lyte of Lytes Cary would fit the bill, especially as his mother’s family had been associated with Lady Eleanor’s first husband, John, Lord Mautravers and de jure earl of Arundel, through their tenancy of land at Loders in Dorset, and their military service under his command in France.

The history of the Lytes of Lytes Cary in Charlton Mackrell depends to a notable extent on a ‘commonplace book’ compiled in about 1611 by a later Thomas Lyte, using documents including a number of deeds dating back to the thirteenth century which are now lost. Lyte mss, DD\X\LY/3. According to this account, by Richard II’s reign the head of the family, Edmund Lyte (d.1418), had acquired property centred on Lytes Cary near Ilchester, at Draycott, Yeovilton, High Ham, Chilton and Middleton Podimor. He married his son and heir John (the child of his first wife, Thomasina, a sister of William Carent* of Toomer), to Agnes Aysshe, the daughter of his second wife, Agnes Marlborough, initially settling on the young couple his lands at Brixton English in Devon. Thus, John’s stepmother, who died in 1428, was also his mother-in-law. Maxwell-Lyte, 14, 19-22; Som. Med. Wills (Som. Rec. Soc. xvi), 124-5. John presented a chaplain to the chantry at Lytes Cary in 1421 and 1433 and was a witness to the charter by which Robert Veel† founded his almshouse at Ilchester. On his younger son, another John, was settled his wife’s inheritance in Dorset, acquired as coheir of her uncle Gregory Marlborough, and also her patrimony from her father John Aysshe in Devon, at Otterton, Wolshill and Budleigh. However, the younger John appears to have died childless (certainly by 1464), as these properties afterwards descended in the main line of the family, through his older brother Thomas. Maxwell-Lyte, 22-24; Lyte mss, DD\X\LY/3, p. 32; Reg. Stafford, i (Som. Rec. Soc. xxxi), 431. But it may be that their mother was the wid. named Agnes who did not die until c.1475: writs de diem clausit extremum sent to the escheators of Som., Dorset and Devon, 5 Nov. 1475: CFR, xxi. nos. 281, 282.

During his father’s lifetime Thomas was sometimes described as living at Oakley (not far from Lytes Cary), and styled either as ‘gentleman’ or ‘esquire’. He has been distinguished from his uncle Thomas, who had an interest for life, from 1421, in family lands in Draycott: Lyte mss, DD\X\LY/3, p. 31. The muniments at Lytes Cary in the seventeenth century included a document of 1439, described in the ‘commonplace book’ as a papal bull, wherein the pope gave full remission or absolution of sins to Thomas Lyte and his wife Joan. This, perhaps a pardon for marriage within the prohibited degrees of kinship, cannot now be traced, but it was about this time that Thomas’s father conveyed to him and his wife certain lands in Draycott, to which Thomas himself subsequently added holdings elsewhere in Somerset, at Babcary, Taunton and West Bagborough. A few years later, in 1442, he was in possession of premises in Devon at Brixton. From his cousin Alice Cokers, the daughter and heir of John Fauconer, he acquired in 1444-5 lands in Kingston and Yeovil and pastures in Marsh, and in 1453-4 Alice’s feoffees, headed by members of the Courtenay family, conveyed to him and his wife lands in Chilthorne Domer and Stoke Denis. Ibid. pp. 32, 33, 35. In the family pedigree Joan Lyte is stated to have come from the family of Fitzjames of Redlynch. This is perhaps lent weight by the appearance of John Fitzjames as a feoffee of the Lyte estates and the arms of Lyte impaling Fitzjames figured in ancient glass formerly at Lytes Cary. The building of the hall in the manor-house there may perhaps be ascribed to the MP. Ibid. p. 34; Maxwell-Lyte, 25.

Lyte took part in the wars in France, and in June 1436 safe conduct was issued for certain prisoners he had taken in conjunction with another Somerset man, Thomas Blandford of Bruton, to sail to St. Mâlo in Brittany to obtain money for their ransoms. DKR, xlviii. 313. Over an undefined period he was connected with the priory at Bruton, apparently as an official on its estates, and in consideration of his good service in 1443-4 the prior granted him an annuity of £2 from the manor of Charlton Adam for the rest of his life. Later on he was recorded as bailiff of the hundred of Bruton. Lyte mss, DD\X\LY/3, pp. 33, 35. Lyte was often called upon to serve as a juror at inquisitions post mortem in Somerset and Dorset, doing so from 1437 until his death. CIPM, xxv; xxvi. In much more discreditable circumstances he was associated in a brawl involving bloodshed. This came about through his links with William Stafford*, of the prominent Dorset family. When, in August 1444, Stafford’s men clashed with those of Sir James Butler, the earl of Ormond’s heir, over possession of former Stafford estates which Butler claimed by marriage, Lyte stood with them in the armed confrontation at Lower Kingcombe. In the fight one John Yerdeley was slain; his widow later appealed Stafford and three others of the murder, and more than 30 men, including Lyte, as accessories to the crime. Butler later alleged in the common pleas that Lyte had been among those who stole his horses and other goods at Lower Kingcombe, and assaulted his men a month later. Nevertheless, in May 1446 several of Stafford’s associates, including Lyte, were able to obtain royal pardons for any felonies, murders or riots they had committed. E13/144, rots. 19, 20; CP40/738, rot. 339d; CPR, 1441-6, p. 438. It is indicative of Lyte’s continued friendship with Stafford that he asked him to be a feoffee of the family estates. As a postscript to the events of the 1440s, in 1451-2 one of Butler’s men, Thomas Bristow, a yeoman from Hooke, released Lyte and the prior of Bruton from all legal actions. Lyte mss, DD\X\LY/3, pp. 34, 35.

Lyte established other connexions of note. His maternal uncle Gregory Marlborough had once held the post of bailiff of Grovely forest in Wiltshire, and at some point in the early 1440s he himself obtained it for life by grant of John Holand, duke of Exeter, who called him his ‘dear servant’. CIPM, xxvi. 539; Maxwell-Lyte, 22. He seems to have been close to his kinsmen the Carents, for in 1446 he gave formal testimony about the parentage of Master Nicholas Carent in the proceedings governing the latter’s election as dean of Wells, and he acted with the dean’s brother William Carent in a commission of inquiry in Somerset three years later. Reg. Bekynton, 1637; CFR, xviii. 150, 203. Lyte appeared at the Somerset elections to the Parliaments of 1449 and 1450 (when Carent was one of those returned), but although he was appointed a coroner in the county he was disqualified at the end of the latter year, although on what grounds does not appear. Early in 1452 he was allegedly party to the depredations carried out in Somerset by the earl of Devon’s men in their feud against Sir William Bonville*, Lord Bonville, and his allies who, significantly in view of Lyte’s earlier escapades, included Sir James Butler, now earl of Wiltshire. Indictments linked him with Thomas Holland* of Tiverton, one of the leaders of the Courtenay earl’s army, in episodes of house-breaking and the theft of money. KB9/105/1/23; 270A. There is no evidence that he was part of the company which joined the massed forces of the duke of York and Sir Edward Brooke*, Lord Cobham, to confront their enemies at Dartford in Kent, but he did see fit to procure a royal pardon, naming him variously as ‘of Lytes Cary, Oakley, Charlton Adam and Bruton’, on 21 June that year – one of the many general pardons issued in the aftermath of the uprising, from which Devon and Cobham were excluded. C67/40, m. 15. It is significant too that the earl of Devon’s son and heir Sir Thomas Courtenay was later a feoffee of Lyte’s family lands. Lyte mss, DD\X\LY/3, p. 35.

Lyte again attested the Somerset electoral indenture in 1455, when he himself apparently secured election for the Wiltshire borough of Heytesbury. The explanation for this, as already suggested, may lie with an otherwise unrecorded link with the lady of Heytesbury, the dowager countess of Arundel. Although after the Parliament his interests continued to be focused on Somerset, he did serve at Salisbury as a juror at the inquisition post mortem on the dowager duchess of Exeter (whose husband he had served earlier) in June 1458, and later that year he was party to transactions with a prominent merchant of that city, William Swayn*, from whom he and others purchased merchandise worth 400 marks. C139/170/41; C241/248/7; 254/114. Furthermore, Lyte was pricked for a jury at sessions of oyer and terminer held at Salisbury in May 1462, after the accession of Edward IV. KB9/135/51, 56.

Lyte’s political stance in the civil-war years is difficult to determine. In August 1460 he was supposedly linked with the Yorkist earls, fresh from their victory at the battle of Northampton, in a transaction completed by his brother-in-law Richard Page of Devizes, but peculiarities in the wording of the deed, which was written down by the lawyer Thomas Tropenell* in his cartulary in an attempt to prove his own title to the property concerned, must cast doubt as to its legitimacy. The source is unreliable, to say the least. Tropenell Cart. ed. Davies, ii. 73. His feoffeeship for Page in property in Chicklade and Hindon, Wilts., in the early 1460s, brought him to the King’s bench at Tropenell’s suit: ibid. 68-73. For Tropenell’s evidences against Page, including allegations of deception on the part of the Lytes, see 32-51. Three months later Lyte was associated with John Sydenham* of Somerset and Walter Ralegh* of Devon in recognizances for £300 to the prior of Lewes in Sussex, but the background to this obligation is similarly obscure. CCR, 1454-61, p. 485. Lyte had again attested the Somerset elections to the Parliament of that autumn, and was to do so once more in 1467. In the early 1460s he became involved in the long-running disputes over the former Romsey estates in Hampshire and elsewhere, in the course of which he was accused in the King’s bench of close-breaking. His interest in the lawsuits seemingly had to do with his property at Oakley. Kingsford’s Stonor Letters and Pprs. ed. Carpenter, p. liii; KB27/807, rot. 376d; CPR, 1467-77, p. 33.

Lyte is last recorded in the early months of 1468. In Hilary term he sued his sister-in-law Joan, widow of John Lyte, for debt, and in April he was pardoned the sum of £100 in which he had stood bail for John Walford, a yeoman of the King’s chamber who had failed to appear as required before the justices of gaol delivery. CP40/826, rot. 40; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 84, 86.Maxwell-Lyte, 24. He was succeeded before 1470 by his son John. Maxwell-Lyte, 27; Lyte mss, DD\X\LY/3, p. 36. The manor of Lytes Cary was to remain in the family until the late eighteenth century. VCH Som. iii. 100.