HUNT, Roger

More may be added to the earlier biography.4 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 455-60.

A year after the dissolution of the Parliament of 1423, Hunt began legal proceedings in the Exchequer against Sir Walter de la Pole*, the sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, for his wages as an MP in that assembly. In response, de la Pole obtained licence to treat with his opponent out of court but with what outcome is unknown.5 E13/136, rot. 18d.

An analysis of the Parliament of 1426 suggests that Hunt led the deputation from the Commons to the duke of Bedford after the election of Sir Richard Vernon* as Speaker, rather than before as previously stated.6 A. Curry, ‘Introduction to 1426 Parl.’, PROME, x. 279.

In the later 1420s Hunt was involved in a dispute over the inheritance of John Laurence*, the teenage son and heir of Richard Laurence, a minor landowner from Northamptonshire. A year after Richard’s death in the autumn of 1425, an inquisition found that he had held properties at Barnwell in that county directly from the Crown, which granted the boy’s wardship to a local lawyer, William Weldon, in July 1427. Before the end of the decade, however, Hunt and several associates, presumably acting in the capacity of Richard’s feoffees, challenged the findings of the inquisition. They did so through a petition, possibly presented to the Parliament of 1427, in which Hunt sat as a knight of the shire for Huntingdonshire. They claimed that the escheator of Northamptonshire had wrongly dispossessed them of the lands in question, since they held them of the abbot of Peterborough rather than the King. In due course, the inquisition’s findings were overturned, indicating that the petition was successful and that Weldon lost the wardship.7 CIPM, xxii. 836; CFR, xv. 197-8; E159/204, brevia Trin. rot. 12d; 206, brevia Mich. rot. 8, Hil. rot. 5d; SC8/117/5832. There is no evidence that Hunt and his associates subsequently took over the responsibility for the boy’s upbringing, but it was perhaps through the MP’s patronage that John pursued a career in the law. It is also conceivable that the latter became a retainer of Reynold, Lord Grey of Ruthin, through Hunt, who served that peer as an estate official.

It is possible that Hunt did not willingly assume the office of Speaker when elected to that position for the second time. It was not until the fourth day of the Parliament of 1433 that he was presented as Speaker, suggesting either that it had taken time to settle on a candidate or, perhaps, to find a volunteer for that role.8 A. Curry, ‘Introduction to 1433 Parl.’, PROME, xi. 68.

Later that decade Hunt faced litigation in the Exchequer over an episode that had occurred during his term as sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire. The plaintiff was William Cristemasse of Trumpington, who brought his bill against Hunt in early 1436. Cristemasse claimed that Alexander Barbour, one of Hunt’s officers, had wrongfully seized his horse; Hunt riposted that he had distrained the beast because of Cristemasse’s failure to pay rent for his lands at Trumpington, which he held of the royal castle at Cambridge. Cristemasse won his suit and, in November 1437, a Cambridge jury assessed his damages at £20, a not insubstantial sum, even for a gentleman of Hunt’s means.9 E199/4/28.

During the early 1440s, Hunt supported his old friend Sir John Tiptoft†, by now Lord Tiptoft, in a quarrel apparently connected with that peer’s feud with Sir James Butler, son of the earl of Ormond. On 22 Feb. 1441, a jury indicted Henry Brokesby, a tenant of Butler’s manor at Fulbourn, Cambridgeshire, of murder, but Brokesby immediately claimed that the indictment had arisen from a conspiracy at Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, among Tipftoft and his adherents. Duly acquitted before a special commission of gaol delivery on 6 Apr. 1441, Brokesby subsequently sued Tiptoft and his ‘coterie’, including Hunt, for conspiracy.10 CP40/727, rot. 600; KB27/730, rot. 141.

The records of the common pleas show that Hunt married at least twice, and that Alice, the second of his known wives, was the mother of his children, including his eldest son and namesake. While revealing nothing of her family background, the rolls of that court also tell us that Hunt awarded her a life interest in the manor of Chawston and that she remarried after Hunt’s death, finding a new husband in Thomas Wychard*. Through this match, Wychard acquired an interest in Bedfordshire, the county he represented in the Parliament of 1453.11 CP40/816, rot. 223. Some years later, Wychard was to appoint Alice and John Hunt, her youngest son by the late Speaker, as his executors, in which capacity the pair pursued several suits against his debtors in the late 1460s.12 CP40/825, rots. 56, 215; 826, rot. 136; 827, rots. 341,427d; 828, rot. 188; CPR, 1467-77, p. 143.

While Wychard was still alive, Thomas Rede began a suit in the common pleas against him and Alice over Chawston, claiming it as part of his inheritance. The justices summoned the parties there for the quindene of Trinity 1465, when Rede appeared through his attorney, Alice came in person and Wychard (who had perhaps followed his Lancastrian patron, Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, into exile abroad) defaulted. Rede claimed the manor through his descent from the Grymbaudes, earlier lords of Chawston. The case dragged on for a number of years and Wychard died before it was resolved. In the autumn of 1467, the sheriff of Bedfordshire was ordered to take the manor into the King’s hands after Alice, by then again a widow, had failed to appear in the common pleas on a given return day. Ultimately, Rede was unsuccessful in his claim and in due course Chawston descended to Roger Hunt, her eldest son by the late Speaker.13 CP40/816, rot. 223; 825, rot. 258; 827, rot. 85; E150/13/7.