FITZ, John

According to his own statement before a commission of inquiry in 1439, John Fitz was born about 1411.4 C4/49/31. Although he was clearly underestimating his age by several years (in 1422, when by his own reckoning he would have been just 11 years old, he kept his third Christmas at Lincoln’s Inn), he must nevertheless have been a comparatively young man when in 1427 he not only made his first appearance in the Commons, but was also chosen one of the governors of his Inn. His appointment to the office, which he continued to hold for a period of three years, may nevertheless be indicative of his considerable promise as a lawyer. In the autumn term of 1427 and Lent term of 1433 he held his readings,5 Readings and Moots, i (Selden Soc. lxxi), p. xii. and he was kept increasingly busy by a wide private practice, much of it in the service of his south-western neighbours, for whom he acted as a feoffee, arbiter or attorney, or attested property transactions.6 CP25(1)/46/87/201, 88/245-6; C1/4/58; Cornw. RO, Coode and French mss, CF2/215/51-53, 57-58, 60, 66; Bristol RO, Ashton Court mss, AC/D/11/17, 20, 22; Devon RO, Courtenay (Moger) mss, D1508M/Moger/365-6, 374, 382. Certainly, it seems that in these years Fitz spent at least some of his time in his native Tavistock. The extent of his property in the borough is uncertain, but it included a tenement to the south of the King’s highway, lands in Hurdwick, and probably also the 80 acres of land later held by his putative son Roger.7 Coode and French mss, CF2/215/57, 59, 71.

There is nothing to suggest that to Fitz service in the Commons represented anything other than an integral part of his professional activity. Although he accepted election to Parliament by the burgesses of Tavistock for a second time in 1431, and may have been substituted for Walter Person* as one of the town’s representatives in the following year, he was not a regular participant at the elections of the knights of the shire in the Devon county court, and is only known to have been present on a single occasion, in December 1436, when he found surety for the parliamentary burgesses for Barnstaple.8 C219/15/1.

It was not unusual for a man of law to become embroiled in litigation as a consequence of his service to one client or another, and Fitz was no exception to the rule. In 1439 he was caught up in the protracted dispute between Nicholas Radford* and Thomas Tremayne I* over the manor of North Huish, and the King’s commisioners of inquiry recorded his indignant assertion ‘He is nought corrupt, as he saith’.9 CP40/715, rot. 247d; C4/39/31. Eleven years later, John Cokeworthy* of Yarnscombe sued Fitz in the court of common pleas for the sum of £20 which he had purportedly failed to pay at the time when Cokeworthy had been receiver of the wealthy esquire Roger Champernowne*, another party to the Tremayne-Radford dispute. The quarrel between the two men continued for several years, and was eventually decided in Cokeworthy’s favour, before in November 1456 Fitz reopened the suit by a writ of error.10 CP40/756, rot. 403; 760, rots. 181, 309d; 766, rot. 55; 786, rot. 46; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 142, 246. It was in the context of this protracted law suit that Fitz sued out three successive letters of protection on the grounds that he was about to join the garrison of Guînes in Picardy under the command of Sir Thomas Fynderne*. It seems unlikely that he ever intended to set out, and the letters were all duly revoked, since had not left Tavistock. Conversely, in 1451 Fitz was among four men suing a group of Devon peasants for the forgery of muniments relating to lands in Okehampton, and it took until 1464 before the defendants were able to secure royal pardons.11 CP40/760, rot. 179; CPR, 1461-7, p. 314.

The identification of Fitz’s activities in the second half of his life is complicated by the existence of several namesakes, at least one of them probably his son, in the Tavistock region.12 The MP and his son were usually, albeit by no means always, distinguished as ‘senior’ and ‘junior’. The son can probably be identified with John Fitz of Alfington, ‘courtholder’, who was active by the 1460s: CP40/818, rot. 44. There was also a tucker of the same name recorded at Taviton in the late 1440s, and it was probably he, rather than the MP, who about that time sued the local merchant John Swetyng for failing to pay him for a quantity of white woolen cloth: KB9/311/112; CP40/768, rot. 313. Further afield, there were also a Salisbury merchant and two Bedfordshire gentleman of the same name, none of whom can be shown to have been related to the Tavistock family: Trans. Devon Assoc. lxix. 268; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 137, 374-5; 1436-41, pp. 246, 282, 298. It has been suggested that there were three, rather than two, successive John Fitzes, and that Roger Fitz, who represented Tavistock in the Commons in 1491 was in fact the grandson of the MP of Henry VI’s reign,13 Trans. Devon Assoc. lxix. 268. but there is no conclusive evidence to this effect, and it is entirely possible that the MP survived until 1474. Equally, it was probably he who served as one of the collectors of the taxes granted to Edward IV by the Parliament of 1463.

In 1468 Fitz clashed with his neighbour Richard Tankret* over property rights at Hurdwick (in Tavistock). He accused Tankret of unlawfully entering his close and killing his pigs.14 CP40/826, rot. 255d. More seriously, in 1472 the abbot of Tavistock accused the elder and the younger John Fitz of having been joint leaders of a mob of burgesses who had attacked several of the abbey’s servants gathering rents and carrying out other abbey business in the town, raised a cry of fire, rung the town bell and threatened to burn the abbey itself to the ground. As a result of the abbot’s indignant complaint to Edward IV, a high powered commission of oyer and terminer headed by Lords Fitzwaryn and Dynham was appointed, and following additional proceedings before the prince of Wales’s council the matter was eventually submitted to the arbitration of Peter Courtenay, bishop of Exeter, the royal justice John Catesby and John Byconnell* in early 1481.15 SC8/251/12531; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 376-7; KB27/843, rot. 52; CP40/866, rot. 48; CCR, 1476-85, no. 822.

Fitz did not see the affair come to a conclusion, for he died in the late summer or early autumn of 1474.16 CFR, xxi. 228. His final months seem to have been marred by a dispute with Christopher Tankret, a relative of the man with whom he had clashed six years earlier, who accused him and his putative son John of refusing to return lands of which he had been enfeoffed. In Easter term 1474 Chancery issued a writ of attachias against Fitz, who – perhaps on grounds of illness – had failed to appear.17 C1/48/474. Fitz was succeeded by the younger John, who made a career for himself as city attorney at Exeter, and later served as escheator of Devon and Cornwall in 1486-7, before dying in 1496.18 CFR, xxii. 130, 530; C67/52, m. 9.