WORTHY, John II

A servant of Henry Bourgchier, Viscount Bourgchier, Worthy enjoyed the status of a ‘gentleman’ and was steward of Stansted Hall, Bourgchier’s manor in Halstead. It is unclear exactly when he exercised this office but probably he had entered the peer’s service by 1446, when he became an executor of another Bourgchier servant, John Cornwall.3 Trans. Essex Arch. Soc. n.s. xvii. 258; CPR, 1461-7, p. 413; L.S. Woodger, ‘Hen. Bourgchier’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1974), 263. A John Worthy was in the retinue that Bourgchier brought to France in 1441 but he was a lowly archer, so it seems unlikely he was the future MP: E101/53/33. After Bourgchier became treasurer of England for the first time in 1455, he employed Worthy as a messenger and one of his agents at the Exchequer. Worthy was also one of those upon whom the peer enfeoffed his paternal inheritance at the end of the same decade, and he stood surety in the Exchequer for Sir John Bourgchier, his master’s son, three years later.4 Woodger, 274; E403/805, m. 2. Presumably Worthy’s membership of the Bourgchier nexus explains how he came to stand surety (at some stage before the end of 1461) for John Berners, upon that esquire’s marriage to Alice, one of the daughters and heirs of (Sir) Henry Bruyn*.5 C1/31/69. Bruyn had served under Bourgchier in France in the early 1440s, and Alice’s sister and coheir, Elizabeth, was married to a son of the peer’s associate, (Sir) Thomas Tyrell*. Furthermore, the girls’ mother was a daughter of Robert Darcy I*, a feoffee of Bourgchier’s estates.

It is likely that Worthy owed his parliamentary career to the influence of Viscount Bourgchier, who was lord of the manor of Little Maldon.6 Essex Archaeology and Hist. xxxi 150. In spite of his family connexion with Maldon, there is no evidence that he played a significant part in the borough’s affairs. He was party to a conveyance of property there in 1459, but probably only as a feoffee for Walter Writtle*, another Bourgchier servant.7 Essex RO, Maldon bor. recs., deed, 1459, D/B 3/11/17. In the spring of the following year, Worthy and the abbot of Walden in Essex exchange bonds, each bearing a penalty of £40, in London, presumably prior to submitting a dispute that had arisen between them to arbitration. Whatever the circumstances of the exchange, these securities subsequently featured in a lawsuit brought by the abbot against Sir Thomas Tyrell in the court of common pleas. In pleadings of Trinity term 1462, the abbot claimed that the knight, an associate of Henry Bourgchier (by now earl of Essex), had refused to return the bonds after taking delivery of them for safe-keeping. Evidently bearing no malicious intent, Tyrell responded by declaring his willingness to obey the order of the court with regard to this matter, while pointing out that he was supposed to keep the bonds until certain conditions had been met. The court therefore ordered that Worthy should be summoned, in case he could show why the abbot should not take possession of the bonds. He duly appeared at Westminster in the person of his attorney early in 1463 but the case was adjourned until later in the year.8 CP40/805, rot. 353.

Later in the same decade, Worthy himself was a party to a couple of other lawsuits heard in the common pleas. One related to two bonds, each for £15, which he had given Thomas Heynes of Royston at some stage before the autumn of 1460. In pleadings of early 1466, Heynes’s executors claimed that Worthy had retaken possession of the bonds in London by force, in breach of the peace and to the hindrance of the testator’s will. Although Worthy denied these claims, he failed to appear when the matter came to trial at St. Martin le Grand, London, in November 1466. The jury found against him and the plaintiffs were awarded costs and damages of nearly £40. Worthy also lost the other lawsuit in the same year. It arose from his dealings with the plaintiff, a pinner from London named Geoffrey Wade, to whom he had given a bond and from whom he had purchased cloth as far back as 1449-50. In due course, Worthy admitted that he owed Wade over £5, and the court ordered him to pay his opponent that sum and damages of 13s. 4d.9 CP40/818, rots. 138, 478.

There is little evidence for the MP’s activities in later years, although in May 1479 he collected money from the Exchequer on behalf of the earl of Essex and in the latter’s third term as treasurer. At this date, however, he was regarded as the servant of the earl’s agent, Robert Plomer†, rather than of Bourgchier himself, since he is described as Plomer’s man in the Exchequer issue rolls.10 E404/850/5. Plomer features prominently in Worthy’s will, in which the MP referred to him as his ‘maistre’ and appointed him one of his executors. The will, dated 19 July 1479 and proved on 28 Apr. 1482, indicates that Worthy was living in London at the end of his life. It does not mention a wife or children, so he may never have married. He asked for burial in the church of the Blackfriars, from whom he requested a dirige and requiem mass. His London residence was in the City’s parish of Holy Trinity the Less, and he left a small sum towards works on the church there. Worthy made bequests to Robert Plomer’s children, leaving his son a small primer with a decorated cover and his daughter a ‘lace of gold’ with a small Agnes Dei, and he gave gowns to several of Plomer’s servants. He also directed his executors (Plomer and John Tynt) to pay two labourers for their hedging and ditching work at Halstead and to dispose of the £20 that his grandfather, Simon Tynt, had bequeathed to him. They were to use half of this sum to found a chantry in St. Peter’s church, Colchester, where a priest was to sing for the souls of himself, his parents and Simon, and the other half for performing his will as to lands.11 C146/9593. The will for his lands no longer survives but he appears to have held a manor (‘Blamsters’) at Halstead, a parish where he farmed the parsonage lands in the early 1460s.12 CAD, i. B541. It is not clear whether the medieval graffito in Halstead church – ‘John Worth let be yowr nyce legs’ – refers to the MP or to a relative and namesake.13 Trans. Essex Arch. Soc. n.s. xvii. 258.