LAVYNGTON, Thomas

More may be added to the earlier biography.4 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 566-7.

Lavyngton may have been a fellow of the Inner Temple, for another fellow, Thomas Wayte, named him among the executors of his will. The bequest of 40 marks left to Lavyngton in 1432 by his kinsman Bishop Polton of Worcester (for whom he also acted as an executor), was intended to help him continue and exercise his learning at court (ut ... curiam continuare et exercere valeat ad eruditionem suam’).5 Baker, ii. 999, 1637; Reg. Chichele, ii. 494. He never held office as mayor of Reading, as was once supposed,6. C. Coates, Hist. Reading, app. xiv. He was not mayor in 1421-2 (C219/12/6), nor in 1426-7 (Berks. RO, Reading recs., cofferers’ accts. R/F/2, no. 16). confining his service to the borough to matters in which his legal training made him especially useful. In addition, he sometimes acted as attorney for the borough’s lord the abbot of Reading in the court of common pleas, for instance in 1439 in a plea against a London wood-monger for money owing to the abbey.7. CP40/715, rot. 155. On his own account he appeared in the court in person to conduct suits against his debtors or for theft of goods, and in the Trinity term of 1449 he alleged that Thomas Beke* had breached the statutes when he was bailiff of Reading by seizing and selling some wine of his worth £40.8. CP40/754, rot. 287; 757, rot. 197d. While in Westminster in the late 1430s Lavyngton assisted William Baron*, one of the tellers at the Exchequer and his companion in the Parliament of 1431, to make settlements of property in the London parish of St. Nicholas Shambles,9 CAD, ii. B2226-7. and he himself invested in a messuage and shops across the river in Southwark.10 CP25(1)/232/73/6.

Besides his other property in Reading and nearby, Lavyngton also farmed land from the Stonor family.11. SC6/750/10; 1122/19. It was only after his impressive parliamentary service for Reading was over that he took his place among the shire gentry as a member of the quorum on the bench. His attachment to John Norris*, the influential courtier, led in 1447 to his involvement in lawsuits against men of Maidenhead for depasturing Norris’s fields. In this plea he was associated with the powerful marquess of Suffolk and other of Norris’s feoffees.12. CP40/744, rots. 32, 239d. Assisting Norris in his many purchases of land in Berkshire kept him busy in the late 1440s and into the next decade,13. CP25(1)/13/85/4-7, 20, 21. and it may have been through the courtier’s recommendation that he entered the service of the diocesan, Bishop Aiscough of Salisbury, with whom Norris was on friendly terms, as bailiff of his liberties in the region. How long he served Aiscough’s successor after June 1450 (when the bishop was murdered) is uncertain. Lavyngton is not recorded after 1453, and was dead by February 1459.14. E326/5620.