GILES, John

More has been discovered about Giles to add to the earlier biography,4 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 187-8. not least that he sat in the Parliament of 1439, bringing the total number of his Parliaments to at least nine. It seems very likely that in the early years of his career as a lawyer he was the man who was named in 1411 as executor of the will of the elderly Elizabeth Juliers, dowager countess of Kent, who was buried in the Greyfriars’ church at Winchester,5 CP, vii. 150. for a year or so earlier, in 1409-10 he had been a ‘locum tenens’ for the steward of Winchester College, and the college paid him a fee of 13s. 4d. p.a. then and in 1410-11.6 N. and Q. ser. 12, i. 361-3. That the prominent Hampshire esquire John Uvedale* asked him to be a feoffee of his estates is also explained by Giles’s employment at the college, for Uvedale, a kinsman by marriage of the late William of Wykeham, bishop of Winchester, and one of the first fellow commoners of the college which Wykeham founded, long retained contact with the school and its benefactors.

Yet despite these links with Winchester, Giles’s career came to be focused on Wiltshire. He appeared regularly as an attorney at the assizes held there from 1417 to 1429,7 JUST1/1531, rots. 46, 47d; 1536, rot. 36; 1540, rots. 110, 115, 116. and was clerk to the Wiltshire bench for at least 23 years from 1421. This was probably enough to commend him as an MP to as many as five boroughs in the county. But added to this was his willingness to take on the briefs of litigants from the region in the court of common pleas, where he often acted as an attorney for Wiltshire landowners.8 e.g. Hungerford Cart. ii (Wilts. Rec. Soc. lx), 986-7; CP40/647-740, att. rots; 657, rots. 266, 373; 680, rots. 137, 193. His appearances in the law courts often coincided with service in the Commons, such as in 1422. In Michaelmas term 1423, when Giles was again up at Westminster, as parliamentary representative for the borough of Calne, he appeared as an attorney in the common pleas for none other than the Protector, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, in a suit brought against the duchess of York.9 KB27/646, rex rot. 24d; CP40/651, rot. 492. At the elections to that Parliament, held at the shire court in Wilton, he had stood surety for Robert Long*, elected one of the shire knights.10 C219/13/2. Giles found more permanent employment in the common pleas with his appointment as one of the filacers of the court, a post he held for 21 years, starting at the beginning of 1426. Filacers often had the pick of the wealthiest and most influential litigants; Giles found himself frequently the choice of Sir Walter Hungerford†, Lord Hungerford, the bishop of Salisbury and the abbess of Wilton.

Giles sometimes served as a juror at inquisitions post mortem conducted in Wiltshire, doing so, for example, in 1425 following the death of Elizabeth, dowager duchess of Norfolk.11 CIPM, xxii. 161, 421; xxiii. 579. Although not perhaps of the intimate circle of the Hungerfords, members of the family called on him for assistance in legal transactions. He was asked in 1425 by John Juyn, the chief baron of the Exchequer, to deliver seisin to Sir Walter of the manor of Highchurch, and of that of Great Durnford in the following year, so he was well qualified to take the brief of Hungerford and his co-feoffees as defendants in a suit brought over the latter manor in 1429.12 Hungerford Cart. ii. 1203, 1382, 1198. Such close contact with a member of the Council of Regency and treasurer of England may well have worked to Giles’s advantage.

Giles is last known to have been returned to Parliament in 1439, when he was elected for Wilton. The borough’s steward made a payment to him and his fellow MP Richard Whithorne* of £2 in the mayoral year 1439-40, but it is unclear whether this was the total amount they received for their services.13 Wilton stewards’ accts. G25/1/88. Described as ‘literatus, Giles was a proctor in November 1443 for the presentation of William Mercer, canon of Maiden Bradley priory, to Lord Hungerford and the bishop of Salisbury for his confirmation as the new prior.14 Hungerford Cart. ii. 1298. He was replaced as clerk of the peace in Wiltshire by John Uffenham* at some point in 1444-5, that is before September 1445, and is last recorded in July 1446 when he and his son Robert were among those for whose welfare prayers were to be said in the chantry founded by John St. Loe* in St. Mary’s church, Calne.15 CPR, 1441-6, p. 459. He ceased to be a filacer in the common pleas a few months later, and may have died about then. It was as his widow that Alice Giles was assessed for taxation on lands worth £11 p.a. early in 1451.16 E179/196/118.

John and Alice had held in her right the manor of Ugford St. James near Wilton, once belonging to her grandfather Robert Burdeyn. Feoffees made a quitclaim to them in 1441.17 Wilton deeds, G25/1/210. The couple also opportunistically laid claim to an estate in Kemble, Morley and Malmesbury, Wiltshire, which together with a moiety of the manor of Arlington by Bibury in Gloucestershire had been entailed on the descendants of Alice’s ancestor Roger Normand† of Southampton more than a century before, in 1333. In June 1445 they alleged in the common pleas that they had been unjustly dispossessed of the Wiltshire property by the abbot of Malmesbury.18 CP40/738, rot. 404; Wilts. Feet of Fines, Edw. III (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xxix), 127. The Glos. manor was in the possession of Oseney abbey at this time: VCH Glos. vii. 28.