Nanfan was born, probably at some point in the final years of Richard II’s reign, into an ancient gentry family from western Cornwall which had for several generations provided MPs for the county’s boroughs.
Nanfan embarked on the first of these in July 1417 in the retinue of Richard Beauchamp, Lord Abergavenny.
Throughout the 1420s Warwick served as governor to the young King Henry VI, and it was natural that the members of his inner circle should come into contact with the monarch, develop personal ties with him, and ultimately be taken into his household. In an early display of royal favour, in 1430 Nanfan received a grant of lands in Normandy worth some 800 livres tournois, by 1435 he was accorded the status of a King’s esquire, and he would continue to receive robes in this capacity until he was taken into the King’s inner household as an esquire for Henry VI’s body at some point prior to the autumn of 1447.
Important though Nanfan’s bonds with the royal household and the earls of Warwick were, they did not prevent him from playing his part as a member of county society both in his native Cornwall and in his adopted county of Worcestershire. In Cornwall, where he held the shrievalty four times, he was added to the bench in 1442. He had previously served for several years as sub-bailiff of the hundred of Penwith for the powerful Sir John Arundell I* of Lanherne, who held the hundred in fee from the duchy of Cornwall, and with whom Nanfan’s family was connected by ties of feudal tenure. Arundell appears to have placed considerable trust in Nanfan, who in 1429 had been among the witnesses to Sir John’s complicated settlement of his vast estates.
Perhaps the most important of Nanfan’s south-western connexions was Sir William (later Lord) Bonville*, for whom he found sureties at the Exchequer in 1443, while among the lesser (albeit in Cornish terms not insignificant) gentry with whom he associated were men such as Richard Kendale*, Thomas Bodulgate* (a fellow member of the royal household), Richard Joce* and John Treworgy, who in their turns served as Nanfan’s mainpernors, Thomas Penarth*, who would serve under him in the Channel Islands in the early 1450s, and John Bassett for whom he attested property transactions later in the decade.
Among his immediate relatives, Nanfan seems to have maintained close contacts with his kinsman James Nanfan*. In the early 1440s, the two men had been associated with the young earl of Warwick in the acquisition of the Bodrugan wardship, and some 25 years after John’s death the Cornish esquire Richard Flamank would claim that the two Nanfans had colluded in disseising his grandfather (another Richard Flamank) of certain family estates in ‘Treburthek Pye’.
Nanfan’s ties in Worcestershire are rather less well documented, but it appears that he was closely acquainted with the local landowner Sir William Peyto‡, for whom in 1445 he found substantial sureties of 250 marks for debts owing to the executors of Thomas Beaufort, duke of Exeter, and who in turn stood surety for him in the acquisition of the custody of the Trenewith heir the following year. Other local men with whom he maintained at least professional contact were the lawyers Thomas Portalyn* and William Menston, and the local landowner Thomas Charlecote alias Pratte (who through his marriage had some claim to Nanfan’s property at Berrow), while he must have been in frequent contact with other prominent members of the Beauchamp circle such as John Vampage*, John Throckmorton I* and Sir William Mountfort*.
As an esquire for the body ‘attending about the King’s person’ Nanfan enjoyed Henry VI’s personal trust,
Despite Nanfan’s proximity to the King, he experienced the same difficulty in securing payment (both of his wages for his service in France and of his annuities) from Henry VI’s increasingly desperate regime as less favoured men. While serving at Meaux he had to agree with the duke of York to accept just half of the £2,700 owing to him for the wages of himself and his retinue, and the exchequer process over the outstanding sums dragged on for several years after he had relinquished his captaincy. Over the years a number of tallies issued to him had to be reassigned, and in 1444 he was still owed over £1,600, for which he received an assignment on the customs of London, Hull, Ipswich and Boston. These customs were, however, already committed far into the future, so just a few months later Nanfan was granted exemption from the payment of coinage and customs on tin from his Cornish estates.
By 1449 the English position in Normandy had grown untenable, and a year later the duchy was lost to the French in its entirety. Nanfan was still formally captain of Touques in September 1449, but left the humiliating task of surrendering the castle to Edward Bromfield, who had perhaps previously served as his deputy. He himself soon found himself redeployed elsewhere. In March 1450 Richard Neville, the new earl of Warwick, was put in control of the islands of Guernsey and Jersey, the last bastion which stood between England and France, once the last English foothold on the Norman mainland had been lost. Not much over two years later, in July 1452, he was replaced by Nanfan, who was appointed warden and governor of the islands for a period of five years to run from 24 Sept., and who mustered with a force of 130 archers, four ships for the crossing having been arrested in the port of Poole.
In view of Nanfan’s earlier close relations with the Beauchamps and his military record, there is no reason to suppose that his appointment did not meet with the earl of Warwick’s approval. He already possessed ties with the Nevilles: Earl Richard’s sister, Cecily, had been Henry Beauchamp’s wife, and in 1447 Nanfan had been associated with their father, Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, in an enfeoffment of lands in Berkshire. By that time he was also a feoffee for Salisbury’s brother, Edward Neville, Lord Abergavenny, and within a few years he was attesting charters for Warwick himself alongside other prominent members of the earl’s retinue.
The government attributed great importance to the Channel Islands and – by the standards of Henry VI’s reign – made exceptionally generous financial provision for Nanfan and his retinue. Not only was the Exchequer ordered to pay the wages of the garrison for the first quarter of its half-year term in advance, but the new governor was in addition granted all customs dues from the islands and given full powers of search and arrest to ensure that he might be able to enforce his claim. Nevertheless, Nanfan’s task proved fraught from the outset. On his arrival, he found Jersey in ‘grete poverte, myserye and simple state’ on account of a recent French invasion, and before long the supply of money from England dried up. In a state of some exasperation he returned to England in time for the final session of the Parliament of 1453-4, and presented his plight to the Lords. These were in the first instance preoccupied by the need to make provision for the government of the realm during Henry VI’s incapacity, and only in March 1454 did they agree that the King’s agreement with Nanfan ought to be honoured. Nevertheless, John’s performance in office evidently satisfied the authorities, for in September 1457 he was reappointed as warden and governor and his grants of customs were renewed.
Nanfan’s removal from the Cornish bench in February 1459 was probably a recognition of his heavy responsibilities outside the county, rather than a symptom of any mistrust on the part of the administration, for only a month earlier he had been confirmed once more as a j.p. in Worcestershire.
Nanfan was succeeded by his eldest son, Richard, then a minor, who was still being prosecuted for the unfinished business of his father’s shrievalties as late as 1483, even though the older Nanfan had been granted a general pardon in January 1458.