RADFORD, Nicholas

More may be added to the earlier biography. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 168-70.

One of Radford’s earliest professional connexions was that with the city of Exeter which annually paid him a reward of 13s. 4d. even in the latter years of Henry V’s reign, a period which frequently saw Radford active as a pledge in the court of Chancery. Devon RO, Exeter city recs., receivers’ accts. 7-10 Hen. V; C1/4/11; 5/5, 135. His links with the earl of Devon’s household made him indispensible to Thomas Courtenay, once he had come of age, as more than a mere legal advisor. The whimsical young earl was clearly in the habit of summoning him at all hours and for a variety of purposes: thus, on 6 Oct. 1438 a messenger from the earl arrived at Radford’s house at Upcott between 6 and 7 in the morning, and when the lawyer descended from his chamber ungirt and with his hose around his knees, informed him that the earl required his attendance with his hounds for the day’s hunt. Chancery Case between Radford and Tremayne (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. n.s. lv), 26.

By his wife, the sister of a fellow member of the Courtenay circle, the lawyer Roger Wyke, Radford had at least one daughter who married another member of the legal profession, John Wolston* of Staverton. She, however, evidently predeceased her father, since his eventual heir was his distant cousin, John Radford*. Ibid. pp. lxxv, lxxxvii; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 919.

In spite of the expressions of horror which followed Radford’s murder he may not have been universally popular among his fellow gentry. He was prepared to use all means available to win a case for his clients, resorting even to forgery if necessary. Furthermore, he had an arrogant trait to his character and was excessively conceited about his own professional abilities, in spite of his failure ever to take the coif. Both of these tendencies came to the forefront in an acrimonious quarrel with another Devon MP, Sir John Speke* of Haywood. The two men had first become associated in 1421, when they both acted as mainpernors for the prior of Cowick over the custody of his priory estates. CFR, xiv. 385. By 1439 Speke and Radford were engaged in a complex dispute, the different threads of which are difficult to disentangle. At least one of the bones of contention was the possession of certain lands in Dulverton held by Speke. He accused Radford of not only having broken into his close and houses there and taken his goods, but of having forged certain muniments in order to deprive him of title. CP40/713, rots. 170d, 249; 714, rots. 135, 336, 363; 715, rot. 36. Moreover, Radford was not above using his position as a j.p. to put pressure on his opponent: when he sat in judgement over accusations of a savage assault brought against Speke in August 1439, the jury found against the latter, prompting an inquiry, to which Radford failed to respond. C244/25/46. To make matters worse, both Radford and Speke were simultaneously retained as legal counsel by opposed parties in a dispute between two cadets of the Tremayne family. Thomas and William Tremayne were contesting ownership of the manor of North Huish, which Nicholas Tremayne, Thomas’s father, was supposed to have settled on William, thereby depriving Thomas, his heir, of part of his inheritance. However, when the dispute reached the royal courts, its cause faded into the background, as the mutual recriminations between Speke and Radford grew increasingly acrimonious. Radford sued Speke for breach of the statute against maintenance. Although he acknowledged that Sir John had attended Lincoln’s Inn as a young man, he claimed that he should be considered only a layman and hardly learned in land law. He also accused Speke of having falsified the evidence he brought against him. Central to this evidence was the testimony of an Exeter goldsmith, whom Radford had employed to make an exact copy of the signet of Nicholas Tremayne, with which the lawyer had then sealed a forged deed. CP40/714, rot. 320; 715, rot. 247d. A jury was summoned, but Radford was not prepared to let the law take its normal course. Instead, he induced the sheriff of Devon, James Chudleigh, to send Speke a list of 24 neutral jurors, but to return 38 names, the majority of whom were partial to Radford, into Chancery. C1/45/236. In another, earlier, instance of brutality towards a fellow lawyer Radford was convicted alongside Thomas Carminowe* of Ashwater and John Palmer* of Launceston of assaulting John Cork* of Paderda, whom they claimed as a villein. KB27/683, rot. 39.

It is indicative of Radford’s prominence as a lawyer that he was admitted to the London Tailors’ fraternity of St. John the Baptist in 1438-9, the normal entry fee of 20s. being waived. Guildhall Lib. London, Merchant Taylors’ Co. accts., 34048/1, f. 305v. Similarly, his professional activities brought him into contact with a wide range of the gentry and merchant classes of the south-west and beyond. Among the numerous clients whom he served as legal counsel, feoffee or arbiter, or whose deeds he attested, featured fellow lawyers like John Coppleston*, greater and lesser gentry such as the Carminowes and the Kendales of Lostwithiel and Treworgy, and senior clergy including William Shire, prior of Launceston. C254/140/20; E5/495; C236/1A/1/22; KB27/649, rot. 103; 735, rot. 89; Harvard Law School Lib., English deeds, BEX8592; Plymouth and W. Devon RO, Woollcombe mss, 710/49-50; Devon RO, Shelley mss, Z1/17/1/2/6, 20/1/3. Despite this busy private practice Radford nevertheless found time to attend to government business, serve on royal commissions and regularly attend the sessions of the peace. E199/9/10, mm. 1-2; C244/24/109; 25/46; C254/138/70; KB9/271/11, 83; 277/72-73; KB27/735, rex rot. 5; 736, rex rot. 9; 752, rex rot. 8d; 771, rex rot. 7d.

Not all of Radford’s considerable wealth was represented by the substantial store of plate which the earl of Devon stole from Exeter cathedral in 1455. A proportion had been invested in lands, such as those in Stockleigh English which Radford bought from the Bynneford family in 1423. Shelley mss, Z1/30/13-16.

There is some indication that Radford’s relations with the earl of Devon had been strained for a length of time before his murder. Thus, in late 1454 a Somerset yeoman, Richard Ashlegh, appeared in the court of King’s bench at Radford’s suit. Radford claimed that as long before as the autumn of 1444 Ashlegh had disseised him of holdings at Bulverton, but the defendant claimed to have acted as the earl’s servant. He asked to be allowed his master’s aid, and the following spring the earl’s attorney duly appeared in his support. KB27/774, rot. 26.