CLAY, Robert

Although Clay’s parentage and early life remain largely obscure, it seems that he was probably of Cornish origins and trained as a lawyer. From the early 1430s onwards he regularly practiced as an attorney in the court of King’s bench, and his clients, who were almost uniformly drawn from the ranks of the south-western gentry, included men like John Colshull*, Roger Champernowne*, John Jaybien† and John Cork*.5 KB27/679, rot. 25d; 683, rot. 39; 686, rot. 74; 693, rot. 58; 702, rot. 90; 708, rot. 41d; 709, rot. 57d; 717, rot. 21; 750, rot. 5d; CP40/685, rot. 432; 701, rot. 434d; 710, rot. 493d; 727, rot. 401; KB146/6/12/3. Clay probably owed his professional advancement to the patronage of the prominent Cornish lawyer and later judge Nicholas Aysshton*, to whose household at Callington he appears to have been attached in the early 1430s, and whom he later served as a general factotum.6 KB27/690, fines rot. 1; KB9/278 dorse. In 1431, when Aysshton was elected to Parliament by the burgesses of Launceston, Clay stood surety for his master’s attendance;7 C219/14/2. six years later he went to Westminster alongside Aysshton, who that year had been elected one of the shire knights for Cornwall, while in later years Clay sat in the Commons while Aysshton attended the Lords in his judicial capacity. Clay was to maintain his connexion with his patron throughout his life. Alongside Aysshton in 1438 he formed part of the panel of prominent lawyers witnessing settlements following the marriage of Elizabeth, one of the daughters and coheiresses of the late (Sir) Edmund Cheyne* to John Colshull*, to guarantee the dower interests of her mother.8 CCR, 1435-41, p. 184. Likewise, it was in association with the judge that Clay was accused by a Liskeard yeoman, William Symond, a servant of the earl of Huntingdon, of having forged a letter in an attempt to deprive him of a certain rent.9 C1/39/158. Later he witnessed settlements of lands for the judge himself, and from 1448 served as an associate assize justice with him. Eventually, he acted as one of Aysshton’s executors following his death in 1466.10 CCR, 1441-7, p. 290; CP40/760, rot. 110; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 91.

It is unlikely that Clay (of whose landholdings – if any – nothing is known) fulfilled the statutory requirement for residency in any of the boroughs he represented in Parliament. There can be little doubt that it was Aysshton (who had represented Helston four times between 1422 and 1427) who engineered his servant’s first return for the same borough in 1433. Likewise, Clay probably had his master to thank for his election for Liskeard in 1437, although he evidently also possessed independent connexions locally, for in the months after the dissolution he appeared in the court of King’s bench as attorney for members of the Trethewy family who were of some importance in Liskeard and its hinterland.11 KB27/706, rot. 124.

It is more difficult to explain Clay’s two successive returns in November 1449 and 1450 for the Devon borough of Plympton Erle, a pocket borough under the control of the earl of Devon, Thomas Courtenay, who at this time was taking an active part in parliamentary politics, securing the return of his retainers for a number of urban constituencies. By contrast with these comital servants, Clay is not known to have had direct links with Courtenay, but it is possible that it was once again Aysshton (by now a justice of common pleas) who through his professional connexions with some of the leading members of the earl’s council, such as Nicholas Radford* and John Copplestone*, was able to recommend him for election.12 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 91. If Clay had been returned as part of a lordly faction intended to play a particular part in the proceedings of the two turbulent Parliaments which met in the shadow of the loss of the English possessions in Normandy, he had perhaps completed his task by the time of the final session of the Parliament of 1450, for a day after the Commons reassembled after Easter on 5 May 1451, he was still sitting as an assize justice at Ilchester.13 CP40/760, rot. 110.

On other occasions, too, Clay conducted his private business alongside his parliamentary duties, and while the Commons were in session he was often found in the law courts in Westminster Hall. Although initially employed by the gentry and nobility chiefly in conjunction with Aysshton, by the later 1440s Clay was established as a lawyer in his own right, and regularly acted for the landowners of south-western England.14 CP25(1)/46/87/215, 223, 89/256; Cornw. Feet of Fines (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. 1950), ii. 1090, 1113, 1138; CP40/740, cart. rots. 1, 1d, 2; KB27/742, rots. 112d, 117; C60/261, rot. 26; Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xxii), 117, 204; CP25(1)/294/74/22; Warws. RO, Fetherston-Dilke mss, CR2981/Dining Room/Cabinet/Drawer 4/1. In general terms, Clay’s career was the largely uneventful one of a professional man of law. Even by the end of the 1430s he was normally resident at London for part of the year,15 KB27/717, rot. 21. and he found repeated employment as receiver of writs for one or other of the sheriffs of Cornwall. Formal recognition of his professional skills followed from the late 1440s, when he first sat in a judicial capacity as an associate justice of assize in his native south-west. Following a fifth and final return to Parliament as a burgess for the borough of Truro in 1455, Clay served clerk of the peace for his native county for much of the 1460s. He is last recorded as an executor of Aysshton’s will in 1466, and may have died not long after, for he had been superseded as clerk of the peace by 1468.