HERVY, Nicholas

The Hervys were a Lostwithiel family of some antiquity, with a putative ancestor recorded there as early as the twelfth century. For much of the fourteenth century, the family traded in tin, but Nicholas’s father opted for a different career and acquired legal expertise sufficient to allow him entry into the lower ranks of the administrative hierarchy of the duchy of Cornwall. Richard Hervy’s offices as clerk of the statute merchant at Lostwithiel and sub bailiff of Blackmore stannary were in character practical, rather than honorific, but nevertheless seem to have allowed their holder sufficient social advancement to permit his son entry into gentry society outside the narrow confines of Cornwall. Another factor in Nicholas’s advancement was his training in the law. While no details of his education have come to light, he was by the end of his life styled an ‘apprentice at law’.11 C254/152/50.

On his father’s death in 1429 Nicholas succeeded to the family property in Lostwithiel and nearby Bridgend, and by the end of his life he also owned further property in nearby Bodmin. There were some initial difficulties over the inheritance, as Hervy’s mother had placed some of the family muniments in the hands of trustees from whom the local lawyer William Hoigge acquired them by fraud, but eventually Nicholas gained control of his patrimony.12 C1/71/132; Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR1/811. Already, he had his sights set beyond the boundaries of Cornwall, and was able to contract a profitable marriage to one of the coheiresses of the ancient Somerset family of Scoville. In the first instance, Elizabeth Scoville’s inheritance was diminished by the survival of her widowed mother, who took a dower portion to her second husband, William Gascoigne II* of Bridgwater.13 Feudal Aids, iv. 297, 308, 353, 358, 368; 374; Vis. Som. 47; Reg. Bekynton, i. 1251; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 158, 373; HMC Wells, ii. 686; Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xxii), 206. It is uncertain how Hervy came to take up residence at Godalming in Surrey, but it is just possible that a marital tie with the Brocas family, into which his sister-in-law, Eleanor Scoville, had married, played a part.14 HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 448; Vis. Som. 47; C1/116/15.

From the 1440s, Hervy began to build up an increasingly extensive legal practice, initially focused on Somerset and Bristol, but – following his move to Godalming – also took in Surrey and Sussex. His early clients included the landowner Sir John Frampton and the later royal justice Richard Chokke, while among his associates in his activities were John Fortescue*, John Austell*, Thomas and John Burton I*, and William Philipps*.15 CCR, 1441-7, p. 37; 1447-54, p. 417; C1/71/132. Later, in 1450, he served as a feoffee for the dower settlement on the widow of the Sussex landowner Sir Henry Hussey*,16 CCR, 1447-54, p. 260-2; Add. Ch. 18748. the following year he arbitrated in a land dispute between his Surrey neighbour Nicholas Carew* and the husbands of his nieces,17 Add. Ch. 23656. and in 1453 he was attesting property deeds for some of his Somerset neighbours.18 CCR, 1447-54, p. 417.

In view of Hervy’s move away from his native Cornwall, it is uncertain how he came to be returned for the Cornish county town of Launceston in the spring of 1449, but it is possible that the sheriff, the courtier John Trevelyan*, played a part. If there were no pre-existing ties between the two Cornishmen, they developed close links within the next few years. In the summer of 1453 Hervy and Trevelyan were both among the trustees of the London brewer Robert Ocle, and three years later he served Trevelyan as an arbiter in a dispute with the Surrey esquire Thomas Ledered over the latter’s lands in Leatherhead, Effingham and Shere.19 CCR, 1447-54, p. 465; 1454-61, p. 122. At the same time, it is just possible that Hervy’s name continued to carry enough weight in its own right in his native county, for whereas the name of his colleague, Thomas Lymbery*, was inserted into the sheriff’s indenture as an afterthought, replacing a different name that had been erased, in Hervy’s case there is no indication of similar tampering.20 C219/15/6.

As a feoffee of the Hussey estates Hervy had been associated with William Waynflete, bishop of Winchester, and this link proved useful in the late 1450s, following Waynflete’s appointment as chancellor. He probably owed his appointment to the quorum of the Surrey bench in July 1458 as much to the bishop’s patronage as to his legal qualifications. By that date, the last ditch attempt to reconcile the quarrelling factions among the lords at the love-day of that March had manifestly failed, and the country was slipping into open civil war. Associated like Waynflete with the administration dominated by Queen Margaret, Hervy was appointed to the partisan commissions of array of September 1458 and December 1459. Likewise, his return for the bishop of Winchester’s borough of Hindon to the highly partisan Coventry Parliament was clearly arranged in the government’s interest: Hervy’s name was added to the schedule listing the representatives for the Wiltshire boroughs, replacing that of another man which had been erased.21 V. Davis, ‘Wm. Waynflete and the Wars of the Roses’, Southern History, xi. 6; C219/16/5.

The Yorkist victory at Northampton in the summer of 1460 spelled the end of Waynflete’s chancellorship, and in the immediate term also of Hervy’s career of office-holding under the Crown. He was removed from the county bench, and had to wait until late 1464 before he once more began to be included in judicial commissions. He was nevertheless kept busy by his other professional activities. His old patron, Bishop Waynflete, now employed him as justiciar of his court of pavilion at the St. Giles’ fair at Winchester, and probably played his part in once more finding Hervy a Hindon seat in 1467 (when a number of other members of Waynflete’s circle secured election elsewhere). Moreover, through his connexion with Waynflete Hervy was drawn into the complex affairs of the deceased Sir John Fastolf, and had to play his part in the various disputes, agreements and land settlements between Fastolf’s executors and the would-be beneficiaries including John Paston* and the duke of Norfolk.22 Paston Letters, ed. Davis, i. 423, 428; Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Misc. 224; CCR, 1468-76, no. 622; Norf. RO, Phillipps mss, Phi/539 578x2.

There were also numerous other clients across the south and south-west of England. In Cornwall and Hampshire Hervy was named as a feoffee by wealthy landowners like Thomas Wyse* and William Dingley,23 Cornw. RO, Coryton mss, CY1149; CPR, 1467-77, p. 182. while in Wiltshire William Temys* employed him to arbitrate in a dispute with Roger Fenamore over property in that county.24 Wilts. RO, Money-Kyrle mss, 1720/288. From 1464 until his death he was retained as counsel by Winchester College, drawing an annual fee of 13s. 4d.,25 N. and Q. (ser. 12), i. 384. and during the 1460s he was linked with the corporation of Southampton under a similar arrangement.26 C254/152/50. The abbot of Chertsey employed Hervy as steward of his estates,27 Chertsey Carts. i. 144; Hervey, no. 345. while most importantly of all about this time the merchants of Bristol chose him as their recorder, an office previously held by men of law destined to rise to the very top of their profession, such as the future chief justices John Juyn and John Hody*.28 CCR, 1468-76, no. 310.

The urban politics that saw the authorities at Bristol throw in their lot with Queen Margaret in the spring of 1471 have not yet been fully unraveled. What is clear is that whereas a year earlier it had allegedly been the son of the mayor, John Shipwarde*, who had led an armed contingent to Nibley Green to fight for Lord Berkeley, in 1471 it fell to the recorder Hervy to take command of the town’s fighting men and lead them to the battlefield of Tewkesbury.29 P.W. Fleming, ‘Making History’, Reputation and Representation ed. Biggs, Michalove and Reeves, 312; P. Fleming and M. Wood, Nibley Green, 89-90; Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner, v. 104. Certainly, by the early seventeenth century family tradition had it that Nicholas was knighted on the battlefield (if so, presumably on the eve or morning of the battle),30 Vis. Som. 47. and this tradition is supported by at least one contemporary chronicler.31 Warkworth, 18. Hervy was among the victims of the battle listed in a French ballad written not long afterwards:

De Vicestre y morut ce jour,

Le conte et sire Emond Auldain,

Pheldin, Gervas en cel estour,

Furent mis à leur jour derrain,

Et Vuiteghen n’y dura grain,

Hervy et Vaulx,

Wenloc aveuc maint barons haulx,

Dieu leur pardoinst tous leurs deffaux!32 Chants Historiques ed. Le Roux de Lincy, 169.

In spite of Hervy’s death on the Lancastrian side, his family escaped the more serious consequences of parliamentary attainder and forfeiture.33 John Benet’s Chron. (Cam. Misc. xxiv), 233; Chroniques de Belgique sous les Ducs de Bourgogne ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, i. 513. Nevertheless, on 12 May Edward IV wrote to the Bristol authorities, expressing his displeasure at their disloyalty, but magnanimously (if at a price) offering a full pardon to all those burgesses who would sue for it, except for the ‘principall sturrers of rebellion’, among whom Hervy was named first, and whose goods the King ordered seized.34 Little Red Bk. Bristol ed. Bickley, ii. 131.

Hervy is not known to have left a will, but a fifteenth-century chronicle of Tewkesbury abbey indicates that his body was identified and buried in the abbey church with many other casualties of the battle.35 C.L. Kingsford, Eng. Hist. Lit. 378. Nicholas was succeeded by his son, Humphrey, who married a daughter of the Wells cloth-maker John Attwater *, and represented the cathedral city in three Parliaments in the 1480s.