TYRELL, John

More may be added to the earlier biography.5 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 683-6.

By 1409 Tyrell was one of the many creditors of John Burgess I*. A merchant from Maldon, Burgess had entered into a bond in statute staple for 100 marks with the MP and William Spencer of London late in the previous year, although in what circumstances is unknown.6 C241/200/11.

As a member of the retinue of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, Tyrell was present at the siege of Harfleur in 1415. He fell sick at the siege, so it is likely that he was sent home and did not fight at Agincourt.7 E101/44/30 (1). Perhaps already the steward of Gloucester’s Essex estates by this date, he afterwards served the duke as his chief steward at Cookham and Bray in Berkshire. It was through his association with another of his noble patrons, Joan Beauchamp, Lady Abergavenny, that Tyrell became involved in a bitter property dispute that began late in Henry V’s reign between John Sumpter* of Colchester on the one hand and Robert Arneburgh (uncle of Reynold*) and his wife on the other. Like other Essex gentry members of Joan’s circle, he supported Sumpter and he features as an enemy in a partisan account outlining the Arneburghs’ version of events.8 C. Carpenter, Armburgh Pprs. 16, 63.

Early in Henry VI’s reign, Tyrell was involved in another quarrel, this time in support of his younger brother, Edward, who had succeeded to their mother Eleanor’s estates in Cambridgeshire. During the later years of the fourteenth century Ralph Bateman, another landowner in that county, had incurred a debt with the Tyrell brothers’ maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Flambard (d.1394). He had failed to repay it, and in 1421 their mother Eleanor had won a verdict against Bateman at law in her capacity as Elizabeth’s daughter and executrix. This awarded her possession of Bateman’s manor in Harlton until she had recovered the sum in question and her legal expenses. Refusing to accept the verdict, the by then elderly Bateman contested it after Eleanor’s own death in late March 1422, through several petitions he submitted to one or more of Henry VI’s first four Parliaments. Bateman claimed that Eleanor, and afterwards Edward Tyrell as his mother’s executor, had taken far more from Harlton than he had owed and appealed for the manor’s return. He further alleged that Edward and John had ousted him from another two manors, that they had used threats to stymie a suit he had subsequently brought against them, that they had exerted their influence to have him falsely indicted for various crimes and that they were now seeking a commission of oyer and terminer against him. He also accused the brothers of having used force and threats in the taking of an assize between him and them, of having assaulted him and, in collusion with Nicholas Caldecote*, Warren Ingrith and John’s friend Sir John Tiptoft†, of having brought false accusations against him, so that he was on the point of being outlawed for felony.9 CIPM, xxi. 935; SC8/199/9918-19, 9927.

Later in the same decade, Tyrell was himself on the receiving end of a suit for debt, brought by a London saddler named John Lever against him and his second wife, Katherine, at Westminster. Lever sought just over £21 from the couple, claiming that Katherine’s previous husband, John Spencer, of whom she was executrix, had died owing him that sum. According to Lever, the debt arose from a bond that Spencer had entered into with him at London in 1415. While Lever’s claim has all the appearance of a matter of no great significance, his suit does reveal that the East Anglian Spencer had a connexion with the City not hitherto realised, since it referred to him as ‘of London’.10 CP40/664, rot. 110.

Early in their marriage, Tyrell and Katherine counted another recently-married couple, the MP’s nephew Thomas Torell* and his wife, among the members of their household at East Horndon, where Torell’s son and heir, John*, was born in October 1423.11 CIPM, xxvi. 351. Just under seven years later, Thomas was elected to the Commons for the first time, as Tyrell’s fellow knight of the shire in the Parliament of 1429. As a novice MP, he is likely to have looked to his uncle, already one of the most experienced parliamentarians of the first half of the fifteenth century, for his help and advice during that assembly. The process by which Tyrell was selected and confirmed as Speaker of the Commons in the Parliament of 1431 was a little more prolonged than might normally be expected. Having chosen him for the role by the second day of that assembly, 13 Jan., they sought a postponement of his presentation until two days later. The request – the reason for which is unknown – was accepted by Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, the ‘custos Anglie’ during the young King’s absence in France. When Tyrell was duly presented on 15 Jan., it was his friend, Sir John Tiptoft, now Lord Tiptoft, the steward of the King’s household, who accepted his protestation at Gloucester’s command.12 PROME, x. 439-40.

Shortly before the Parliament of 1433, in which he was again Speaker of the Commons, Tyrell negotiated a marriage for his daughter, Eleanor, with John Wodehouse, a younger son of the influential and very wealthy John Wodehouse*. The elder Wodehouse had sat with Tyrell in four earlier Parliaments as a knight of the shire for Norfolk, although it is impossible to tell whether such a match was agreed before the former’s death in 1431. The couple are likely to have wed in May 1433 when the Wodehouse manors at Litcham in Norfolk were settled on them.13 Norf. RO, Wodehouse mss, KIM 2F/2. Another of the MP’s daughters, Elizabeth, is said to have married Thomas Skargill*: Vis. Essex, ii (Harl. Soc. xiii), 113. A close associate of the Tyrells, Skargill joined the Household in the 1430s, while Tyrell was its treasurer.

By virtue of his second marriage, Tyrell already possessed lands in Norfolk. Just under three weeks after the Parliament of 1433 opened, the Crown augmented his interests there by committing to him the wardship of Margaret, daughter and heir of John Mautby, an esquire from that county who had died in 1432. In the event this grant was short-lived, since the wardship was re-assigned to Sir John Radcliffe* in April 1434.14 CFR, xvi. 162, 198.

Following Tyrell’s death, his widow Katherine married again, taking as her fourth husband Richard Shipley of London, a filacer in the court of common pleas, but she did not survive the Speaker long, since Shipley had taken another wife by February 1440. He himself died just over five years later. His will, dated 26 Jan. 1445, indicates that he was the executor of both Katherine and Tyrell, the performance of whose wills – to his great regret – was far from complete. He bequeathed to the church of St. Bartholomew’s hospital, his burial place, a mass book, chalice, candlesticks and other items in memory of the couple, who had ‘aghte thes juelx’. Shipley also directed his own executor, his then wife Alice (previously the wife of William Markeby II*), to pay off Tyrell’s debts and he included the MP among those who should benefit spiritually from a chantry he asked her to found. Furthermore, he instructed her to spend £40 on alms in return for prayers for John Southam, Tyrell and Katherine, a sum that Tyrell had bequeathed to Southam (possibly the archdeacon of Oxford and civil lawyer of that name who died in 1441) in his own will.15 PCC 32 Luffenham (PROB11/3, ff. 253v-54); Biog. Reg. Univ. Oxf. ed. Emden, iii. 1732.