HASARD, Richard

If not the son of Thomas Hasard, a lawyer who sat for Malmesbury in several Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign, Richard was almost certainly Thomas’s near relative, not least because they shared the alias Short as well as their usual surname.2 KB27/774, rot. 73. Like Thomas, he enjoyed the style of ‘gentleman’, suggesting that he was also a member of the legal profession since he was not a landowner of any significance.3 Although he was referred to as a ‘yeoman’ in a suit for debt that a fellow burgess brought against him at Westminster in the late 1450s: CP40/794, rot. 164. Known as ‘of Malmesbury’ at the end of Henry VI’s reign, a royal pardon he obtained in 1469 indicates that by that date he was residing at Lipe in the neighbouring parish of Charlton, where Thomas had possessed lands.4 CP40/739, rot. 437; 800, rot. 135; C67/46, m. 3. First heard of in 1451, a subsidy assessment of that year found that he held real property in Wiltshire valued at just £2 p.a. His holdings were worth significantly less than the £18 p.a. in lands that Thomas Hasard was estimated to hold in the county for the purposes of the same tax, as were those of William Hasard (possibly Richard’s brother), who was assessed at £5.5 E179/196/118.

Owing to the loss of Malmesbury’s municipal records, there is no evidence that Richard played a part in local administration. There is also no sign of his having held office in the wider county of Wiltshire, although he was called upon to serve as a juror at the inquisitions post mortem held there for Sir William Fitzhugh in 1453, Sir John Popham* in 1476 and (Sir) John Butler* in 1477.6 C139/151/43; C140/56/39; 61/25. The authorities also considered him for jury service at sessions of oyer and terminer held at Salisbury in 1462, although in the event he was not pricked.7 KB9/135/27a. In short, the only office he certainly exercised was that of an MP.

It would appear that Richard had no connexion with Wootton Bassett before his election to the Parliament of 1453 but, if a lawyer, its burgesses may have chosen him for his professional expertise. He was returned to the Commons on 26 Feb. that year,8 C219/16/2. two days after Thomas Hasard was chosen to sit for Malmesbury. They were elected in unusual circumstances, since at the time he, Thomas and 18 associates were prisoners in Gloucester castle. Among the 18 was Nicholas Jones*, who was also returned to the same Parliament, as one of the burgesses for Cricklade. It is striking that the electors of three Wiltshire boroughs were prepared to elect men who were not then at liberty, for it seems unlikely that they were unaware of the predicament of their chosen representatives. The prisoners were not released until a month later, meaning that the Hasards and Jones missed the entire first parliamentary session, held at Reading.9 CPR, 1452-61, p. 62; KB27/774, rot. 73.

The Hasards’ imprisonment arose out of a quarrel with the Gloucestershire esquire Giles Brydges* and others from that county. The reason for the quarrel is not known but it may have had some connexion with John Nanfan*, one of the most prominent esquires of south-west England, with whom in the early 1450s the Hasards and others were indicted for ‘divers felonies, trespasses and other misdeeds’ in Wiltshire. According to the Hasards, Brydges and his associates had falsely accused them of having in February 1452 broken into the close of Thomas Felpottys of Minety in Gloucestershire, ‘franklin’, and stolen a sheep. They added that a jury from that county had indicted them for the supposed crime in the following autumn, and that the authorities had kept them in Gloucester castle for nearly four months, from 1 Nov. 1452 until 27 Mar. 1453, when they had been acquitted before Sir Maurice Berkeley II* and other justices of gaol delivery. By late 1454, one of the Hasards’ fellow prisoners at Gloucester, John Borne, was again in custody, for the authorities had sent him to the Marshalsea prison after he had quarrelled with one William Hille. He must have enjoyed a good relationship with the Hasards, since Thomas helped him to gain his release by standing bail for him in November 1454, and three months later Richard witnessed a charter on his behalf.10 KB27/765, rot. 22d, rex rot. 7d; 769, rots. 7, 47; 770, rot. 27d; 771, rot. 58; 772, rot. 16; 773, rots. 17, 54; 774, rots. 73, 73d; CCR, 1454-61, p. 55. Richard was again associated with Borne at the beginning of 1461, this time as his co-defendant in the court of common pleas at Westminster, where John Seymour II* alleged that each of them owed him £20.11 CP40/800, rot. 135.

Given his connexion with Malmesbury, it is conceivable that Richard sat for the borough in the Parliament of 1455. Only the surname, ‘Hasard’, of one of those returned is visible on the borough’s damaged election indenture of that year, although it seems likely that the MP in question was his putative father, who had already represented Malmesbury in at least five Parliaments. Whenever he completed his parliamentary career, Richard appears to have survived until late in Edward IV’s reign. For lack of evidence that he had a younger namesake, he was probably the Richard Hasard who, with his wife Joan, featured in a settlement of 1481 and a conveyance of the following year. Through the earlier transaction, eight messuages and various lands and rents in Malmesbury, Milbourne and Thornhill were settled on Richard and Joan and another couple, Richard Warneford and Agnes his wife, with successive remainders to the Warnefords’ children, to the offspring of the Hasards and then to Agnes’s right heirs. The settlement’s wording does not reveal the relationship between the Warnefords and Hasards but possibly Joan and Agnes were sisters. In November 1482 Richard and Joan Hasard conveyed a messuage and lands in Charlton and Stonehill to Sir Roger Tocotes†, apparently after having sold these properties to him.12 Wilts. Feet of Fines, 707, 712.

Possibly Richard died without male heirs. Either late in Henry VII’s reign or early in that of Henry VIII, Joan and Sibyl, the daughters and coheirs of Richard Hasard, and their respective husbands, William Lauerans and John Adams, sued John Hille, formerly the feoffee of their childless late uncle William Hasard, in the Chancery. They claimed that they should have succeeded to a messuage and land that William had held in the lordship of Longdon, Worcestershire, which Hille was wrongfully withholding from them. Hille answered that he had already released these properties to the rightful heirs, whom he named as Thomas Hasard (another of the women’s uncles and evidently a younger namesake of the MP’s putative father) and Thomas’s son John.13 C1/334/69-70.