COLPAYS, Robert

Colpays, who came from East Meon in Hampshire, was admitted to Winchester College as a scholar in 1398. His brother John joined him there in 1403, and then went on to New College and a career in the Church,6 Winchester Scholars ed. Kirby, 25, 30. but Robert himself trained to be a lawyer, building up a successful practice not only in the locality but also in the central courts of law. His chamberlainship of Winchester marked the beginning of an involvement in civic affairs which lasted until his death. In 1417 he was paid 3s. 4d. for making a copy of the city’s charter, and in 1418-19 he entertained the auditors of the city’s accounts to dinner at his house (at the cost of 7s.).7 Chamberlains’ accts. W/E1/14, no. 5. Colpays made regular appearances in the city courts as an attorney for Titchfield abbey, Southwick priory and the cathedral priory,8 D.J. Keene, Surv. Winchester (Winchester Studies 2), ii. 1199. and he was also active at the assizes held in Winchester, notably in representing the widow of Thomas Armorer†, a former burgess of Southampton, in 1429 and the abbot of Titchfield a year later.9 JUST1/1540, rots. 114, 115d, 116, 116d. Naturally, his work often took him to the courts at Westminster. In the 1420s and 1430s he frequently accepted briefs from litigants from Hampshire and Wiltshire engaged in suits in the court of common pleas, including the vicar of Kingsclere and the abbess of Wherwell.10 CP40/657, rot. 131; 661, rot. 110, att. rot. 5; 686, rot. 292; 699, rot. 76; 715, att. rot. 8. He also made appearances in the King’s bench, for instance as an attorney for John Norton of Nutley in a dispute over property which lasted from 1441 to 1444 or later, and resulted in him being fined £6 13s. 4d. at the Exchequer for failing to fulful the court’s requirements. An even more substantial fine, of £20, was levied on him for certain defects and offences committed by him as an attorney in the common pleas in 1445.11 KB27/746, rot. 7; E401/792, 20 Nov.; E159/222, brevia Hil. rots. 3d, 8d.

Despite his apparent failings, Colpays was retained by his old school as its attorney in the common pleas from 1428 until his death, initially at an annual fee of 10s., but from 1433 for 13s. 4d. a year ‘ex speciali gratia’.12 N. and Q. ser. 12, i. 361-3. Then, too, he was employed by the burgesses of Southampton. In July 1434 the mayor and commonalty named him in association with the rising apprentice-at-law John Fortescue* as an arbiter to resolve their dispute with the prior and convent of St. Swithun’s, Winchester, over a toll levied in the port,13 Reg. Common Seal (Hants Rec. Ser. ii), no. 235. and at least from Michaelmas that year until 1442 or later he received a yearly fee of 13s. 4d. from the town for his legal counsel.14 Stewards’ Bks. 1434-9 (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1939), 44, 78, 84; Southampton City Archs., stewards’ bks. SC5/1/5, ff. 5v, 9v; 6, f. 7.

Colpays’s familiarity with the courts at Westminster made him a likely candidate for election to Parliament, and his evident ability as an advocate accounts for his four returns. He took the opportunity of time spent at Westminster to balance attendance in the Commons, representing the interests of his home city, with business undertaken on behalf of his private clients.15 e.g. CP40/691, rot. 334. After his third Parliament he was made bailiff of the commons in Winchester, but it was agreed in convocation that he might be excused from ever occupying the senior bailiffship.16 Black Bk. Winchester ed. Bird, 75, but there misdated 19 Feb. 1439. Nevertheless, he continued to be involved in the affairs and government of the city even after his last election to Parliament in 1442, and on 20 Aug. following was among the 12 citizens who together with the mayor and bailiffs ordained that henceforth the mayor should have an allowance of ten marks a year to be taken from the royal grant from the alnage.17 Ibid. 79.

Over the years Colpays had provided other useful services for his neighbours. In June 1432 he stood surety for the mayor John Wryther* when he shared a grant at the Exchequer of the farm of alnage in Winchester and Hampshire, and subsequently acted as a feoffee of property at Otterbourne on Wryther’s behalf.18 CFR, xvi. 73; CP25(1)/207/33/11. He established a long association with William Chamberlain*, the recorder of Southampton (who sat with him in the Commons in three of his Parliaments), beginning in 1425, when he was an attorney to deliver seisin of land in the Soke and of the manor of Hinton Daubney to him and his first wife, Margery, and continuing with his enfeoffment in 1438 of Chamberlain’s property in Southampton and Winchester for settlement in jointure on his second wife. In the following year he assisted his colleague in transactions regarding more extensive holdings, in which the Wiltshire lawyer William Alexander* and his wife had a life-interest. He was obliged to get the Alexanders summoned to the court of common pleas to acknowledge the settlement. Further arrangements regarding Chamberlain’s property were made in 1444 when Robert Chamberlain, William’s brother, relinquished to him all his Southampton inheritance, with the provision that if the feoffees (including Colpays) were ever troubled in their possession by him or his heirs they might have a rent of £10 p.a. from the family’s Cornish estates.19 Winchester Coll. muns. 1372, 17871, 20259; Queen’s Coll. Oxf., God’s House deeds, 438; CP25(1)/292/69/230; CP40/715, rot. 318; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 205-6. Colpays attested deeds for another prominent Southampton lawyer, John Fleming*, and in 1436 he was made a feoffee of a block of nine messuages at the New Corner in the town, quite likely on behalf of William Marche*, to whose widow, Joan, he eventually conveyed them in 1445.20 CCR, 1435-41, p. 48; CP25(1)/207/32/43; Southampton City Archs., deeds SC4/2/267, 277.

Colpays sometimes brought actions in the common pleas on his own account, suing his debtors and those who had trespassed on his property at Otterbourne and stolen livestock and goods. Among the defendants were William Fromond* and William Welles, a ‘gentleman’ of Winchester who allegedly owed him £40.21 CP40/647, rot. 156; 699, rots. 177, 189, 494d; 715, rot. 189d; 739, rot. 89d. On one occasion, in 1425, he himself was the defendant in a plea regarding the unlawful detention of a pyx containing muniments, brought by William Byngham (another Winchester lawyer), though when attending his last Parliament, in 1442, he himself sued the executors of William Waryn†, the former mayor of Salisbury, for a similar offence.22 CP40/657, rot. 307; 724, rot. 247.

In the course of his career Colpays, generally referred to as a ‘gentleman’, came into possession of various parcels of land. At its start he had held property in the town and parish of Windlesham and a messuage in Guildford, Surrey, which were conveyed to Thomas Haseley†, the clerk of the Commons, in 1418.23 CCR, 1413-19, pp. 452, 454. But he principally lived in Winchester, where with his first wife, Alice, he held a tenement in the High Street, with a vacant plot adjacent to it and a pathway extending to Calpe Street, as well as a more substantial building between ‘Hoggeslane’ and ‘Houghleslane’, which he made his home. In addition, he acquired a great barn and two cottages in Calpe Street and property outside Southgate, and he leased ‘Bishop’s Meadow’ in the Soke .24 Keene, ii. nos. 199, 211-12, 609-10, 905; Winchester Coll. muns. 1371. Colpays’s first wife may well have been a kinswoman of John Gyles of Winchester, for from 1424 by Gyles’s grant the two of them had a reversionary interest in lands and tenements in Otterbourne and an annual rent of 10s. It was this property (a messuage, four tofts, 20 acres of arable land and 18 acres of meadow) which Colpays on 16 Jan. 1446 promised to give to Winchester College. In return the warden and fellows undertook to celebrate certain obits on 7 Apr. every year. Gyles and his wife, Maud, were among those so commemorated, along with Alice Colpays, who was now dead; while Colpays himself and his second wife, Joan, were to be remembered in the same way after their deaths. The property was included in March following in grants made to the college by Thomas Bekynton, bishop of Bath and Wells, Thomas Chamberlain* and others including Colpays’s brother, John, by licence of Henry VI.25 Winchester Coll. muns. 14669-70, 14674-6. Colpays had evidently been settling his affairs in preparation for his death, for at the same time, in January 1446, he had conveyed his Calpe Street properties, which had similarly once belonged to Gyles, to other feoffees, including Thomas Sylvester*, who were to arrange for an obit to be celebrated annually in the church of St. Thomas the Martyr for the souls of him and his two wives and for Gyles and his wife, on each occasion distributing 10s. among the priests, clerks and poor people present.26 Keene, ii. nos. 609-10; Stowe 846, f. 155v. Keene, ii. 1199, also states that Colpays had land at Greywell, Hants, but this is in mistake for Thomas Haydock* (VCH Hants, iv. 77), as too is the reference to Colpays acting as justiciar of Cardinal Beaufort’s ct. of pavilion in 1442 (Hants RO, bp. of Winchester’s pipe roll, 11M59/B1/182 - formerly 159437). Nor was Colpays a j.p. as Keene says: this was Robert Cappes, the former sheriff of Som. and Dorset (C66/459, mm. 26d, 27d).

Colpays died shortly afterwards, perhaps while the legal formalities with his old school were in the course of completion. His widow was assessed alone for the subsidy collected in Winchester in 1446 for the wages of the parliamentary representatives of 1445-6, who returned home at the beginning of April.27 Winchester recs. W/E4/4. She may have married again, for she was called Joan Denham in the will made by her brother-in-law John Colpays, by then rector of the local church of St. Peter Chesil, on 14 Nov. 1460. John left his tenement in Chesil Street to her for life, with reversion to Maud, wife of John Wynburn and her heirs, provided that the revenues would be used to maintain his obit in the parish church. If they failed in this commitment Winchester College was to enter the property and celebrate the obit in conjunction with that of his late brother. In 1475 Joan relinquished ownership of the tenement to the college.28 Winchester Coll. muns. 31, 39; Keene, ii. no. 1076. Robert Colpays’s obit was still being kept by the warden and fellows in the year of the suppression of the chantries by Edward VI.29 Winchester Coll. muns. 12.