GIFFARD, John

More can be added to the earlier biography.2 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 182-3.

During the late 1440s, the executors of Richard Skernyng, a draper and tailor from London, pursued a suit for debt at Westminster against William Giffard of Leckhampton, Gloucestershire, the executor of John Giffard, but it is unclear whether this John was the MP or, indeed, whether William was the William Giffard* who sat for Gloucestershire in the Parliament of 1449-50.3 CP40/755, rot. 369.

In the mid 1480s, the MP’s grand-daughter Alice made a further attempt to gain the manor at Whaddon that had passed to her uncle, the MP’s younger son and namesake. With her then husband, Richard Hayton, she took action in Chancery against Thomas Pygot, a lawyer of Furnival’s Inn. In their bill, the Haytons alleged that Pygot had secured the arrest and imprisonment of Richard in London over a supposed bond for £100, in an attempt to coerce them into acknowledging his ‘false’ title to Whaddon. In fact, Pygot’s claim, which they were obliged to acknowledge soon afterwards, was perfectly valid, for Alice’s cousin Margaret (the daughter and heir of the MP’s younger son and namesake) had brought the manor in marriage to the Pygot family.4 C1/77/69; VCH Bucks. iii. 439.