FITZGEFFREY, John

The lack of a reliable Fitzgeffrey pedigree makes it difficult to distinguish John from his family namesakes, but he was probably a son of William Fitzgeffrey of Thurleigh. It is also likely that William of Thurleigh and William Fitzgeffrey of Sandon, Hertfordshire, were one and the same man, although it is not at all clear that the MP was the father of the John Fitzgeffrey of Sandon who died late in Edward IV’s reign.4 CAD, iii. D395; VCH Herts. iii. 271-2; C140/75/53.

A follower of Reynold, Lord Grey of Ruthin, Fitzgeffrey participated in his patron’s quarrel with John Cornwall, Lord Fanhope. During the late 1420s and early 1430s, before the quarrel began, he acted as a feoffee for Cornwall and his retainers, William Ludsopp* and William Partsoil of Riseley,5 Corp. London RO, hr 158 (61), 159 (61), 163 (22-23); S. Tucker, Ped. Fam. Chetwode, 19; C1/10/100. but by the late 1430s the two lords were seriously at odds, primarily because Cornwall was challenging Grey’s pre-eminence in Bedfordshire. Both Fitzgeffrey and John Fitzgeffrey the younger (certainly a relative and perhaps his son) were among the Grey supporters who attended the controversial sessions of the peace held at Bedford in January 1439, at which there was a confrontation between Grey’s men on the one hand and Cornwall and his followers on the other. During the initial verbal exchanges, Grey’s men claimed that John Hamond, a local constable and one of Cornwall’s men, had freed a woman felon and sold the goods she had stolen from Stephen Crewker for his own profit. Crewker was apparently a relative by marriage of Fitzgeffrey, who was at the forefront of Hamond’s accusers. Hamond responded angrily, shouting that the charge ‘was fals and so lyued... John Fitz Geffray’. In the end, the heated squabbling led to the drawing of weapons, provoking panic in the shire hall. In the ensuing stampede, at least 18 men fell down the stairs; several were badly hurt and others died. Afterwards each side blamed the other for precipitating the violence, but neither was blameless. Cornwall purchased a general pardon for himself and his men in the following March, but Grey’s followers, including both Fitzgeffreys, did not acquire a like pardon until nearly three months later.6 CPR, 1429-36, pp. 246, 282. The delay in issuing this second pardon suggests that Cornwall and his supporters had come out best in the wake of the disturbances, as does the removal of two of Grey’s most prominent retainers, Sir Thomas Waweton* and John Enderby*, from the commission of the peace in Bedfordshire.7 P. Maddern, Violence and Social Order, 209, 211; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 571-2. William Partsoil was among those included in the March pardon. In spite of his own association with Grey, Fitzgeffrey had remained a feoffee for Partsoil, who died shortly after the granting of this pardon. At about the end of 1440, however, Partsoil’s two sisters and coheirs sued him in Chancery for refusing to release their family’s manor at Riseley to them. The basis for their case is not clear, since the close rolls record that he had made such a release in the previous November.8 C1/10/100; CCR, 1435-41, p. 466.

By 1441, Fitzgeffrey’s patron had died, but Fitzgeffrey probably remained attached to the Greys in the person of Grey’s grandson and heir, Edmund, Lord Grey of Ruthin. A year after the violence at Bedford, he witnessed several deeds on behalf of the Ragons, a family long associated with the Greys, and in the mid 1440s he acted as a feoffee of John Enderby.9 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 54, 56, 58, 63; E159/220, commissiones. Fitzgeffrey was also associated on an official basis with Enderby, his fellow knight of the shire in all but one of his known Parliaments. The exception was the Parliament of 1432, to which he gained election alongside Sir Thomas Waweton. Both Enderby and Waweton were already very experienced MPs when Fitzgeffrey first entered the Commons, but as a Member of at least five Parliaments, three of them consecutive, he became a seasoned parliamentarian in his own right. It is possible that he benefited from the support of the Greys on at least some of the occasions when he stood for election, since he was never foremost among the gentry of Bedfordshire. He was nevertheless a man of some substance, for he held manors at Thurleigh and Milton Ernest (and, perhaps, Great Barford) and was distrained for knighthood in 1458.10 VCH Beds. iii. 105, 183; Feudal Aids, i. 38, 40.

The evidence for Fitzgeffrey’s estates is incomplete, for want of a surviving will or inquisition post mortem. Notwithstanding the lack of such records, he must have died in the spring of 1460 since the Chancery issued a writ of diem clausit extremum for John Fitzgeffrey of Bedfordshire on 24 May that year.11 CFR, xix. 246. Furthermore, the records of the court of common pleas reveal that he made a will of which he appointed his stepson, Robert Rufford*, John Fitzgeffrey ‘junior’ (perhaps his son) and the clerk, John Portereve, his executors. During the mid 1460s, Rufford and his two associates brought suits for debt against William Herteshorn* and Thomas Dale of Berkshire, asserting that both of them owed sums to their testator’s estate.12 CP40/817, rot. 178d. Fitzgeffrey’s widow, Joan, was likewise a plaintiff in the common pleas, where she sued John Fitzgeffrey ‘senior’ (again, perhaps a son of the MP) in 1461, alleging that he was preventing her from taking possession of her dower, comprising third parts of Milton Earnest and Thurleigh.13 CP40/802, rot. 239d. Joan died in 1465. Along with her dower interest in Fitzgeffrey’s real estate, at her death she held lands at Potsgrove, Bedfordshire, and Edlesborough, Buckinghamshire, in jointure from her previous marriage, properties that passed to the MP’s executor, Robert, her son by Thomas Rufford.14 C140/17/25. William Fitzgeffrey, either a son or grandson of the MP, subsequently held Milton Earnest and Thurleigh, of which the latter manor remained in the Fitzgeffrey family until the mid seventeenth century.15 VCH Beds. iii. 105; C142/58/69. As a result of his marriage to a Wiltshire heiress, William also came into property in that county, and he held part of the manor of Huish there by the courtesy of England following his wife’s death in 1478.16 C140/65/15; VCH Wilts. viii. 78.

The MP’s namesake, John Fitzgeffrey of Sandon, lived until 1480. Along with his holdings at Sandon, he also possessed an estate in Bedfordshire, consisting of manors at Clapham and Roxton and a moiety of another at Barford.17 CP25(1)/6/81/22; C140/75/53. Both Roxton and his share of Barford had once belonged to his father-in-law, the lawyer John Durem*, from whose executors he had bought them.18 PCC 14 Wattys (PROB11/6, f. 100). The tomb of John of Sandon, perhaps the John Fitzgeffrey admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in 1468,19 L. Inn Adm. i. 16. is at Sandon parish church, where a brass depicts him, his wife Elizabeth and their six daughters. His heir was his nine-year old son, yet another John Fitzgeffrey.20 Add. 32490, N (26); C140/75/53.