DEWALL, John

The origins of Dewall’s family are obscure, but its name, still occasionally rendered ‘de Wall’ even in the fifteenth century, may point to Welsh antecedents. John’s parentage has not been established with any degree of certainty, but he may have been a son or other namesake of an older man who held lands in and around Dewchurch, regularly served his Herefordshire neighbours as a feoffee or witness to property deeds in the reigns of Henry IV and Henry V, and served as a tax collector in that county in 1413.5 CFR, xiv. 28; CPR, 1422-9, p. 27; CCR, 1413-16, p. 459; Herefs. RO, Rotherwas mss, AD2/II/105-9; Kentchurch Court mss, AL40/484. This John was clearly still alive when, styled ‘junior’, Dewall was first returned to the Commons for the city of Hereford in 1433.

The later MP probably received some legal training which qualified him to serve as a justice of gaol delivery, as well as a j.p. of the quorum for much of his adult life. It is difficult to distinguish his early activities from those of his older namesake, but it may have been he who in June 1426 was appointed to a royal commission to inquire into the estates of the recently deceased earl of March, and who in 1429 served as an attorney at the Exchequer for Richard de la Mare*, then sheriff of Herefordshire.6 E159/206, recorda Mich. rot. 3d. Dewall now increasingly divided his time between London’s legal district and his native Herefordshire, where he intermittently served as a justice of gaol delivery in Hereford, and occasionally acted as a feoffee for his neighbours.7 CCR, 1429-35, p. 292; 1435-41, pp. 255, 278, 337; Rotherwas mss, AD2/II/39, 110. It seems, however, that connexions forged in the context of the inquiry into the earl of March’s estates in 1426 would shape the course of his later career. Among Dewall’s fellow commissioners were the local landowner William Stradling and his son, Sir Edward, and it was the widow of William’s first cousin, Sir John, that Dewall went on to marry at some point before the spring of 1439. The immediate result of this match was to embroil Dewall in the settlement of Sir John Stradling’s tangled affairs. Sir John had served in Glamorgan as an official of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, and litigation over his unfinished business was ongoing in 1446, when Dewall and his wife secured a royal pardon to put an end to the matter.8 C67/39, m. 16. Other problems arose from a disputed title to lands in Market Lavington, which Dewall and the rival claimants William Fowler* and Richard Quatermayns* submitted to the arbitration of the future justices Robert Danby and Robert Danvers* in 1443.9 CP40/732, rot. cart. Despite such early problems, the importance of the marriage to an impecunious lawyer from the Welsh marches was considerable. It brought him a jointure in his wife’s valuable paternal inheritance, encompassing the Wiltshire manors of Dauntsey, Marden, Smithcot, ‘Pertenale’, Trow, Bremilham, Wilsford and Winterbourne Dauntsey, and at least during her lifetime control of her dower lands from two previous husbands, which included a share in the manors of Horsington (Somerset), Yaverland, Roburgh and Wathe in the Isle of Wight, and Bradpole and Kingston Russell and the hundred of Redhone and Beaminster Forum in Dorset. The Wiltshire part of the lands alone was in 1451 said to be worth some £120 p.a.10 C138/45/37; C139/163/1, 6, 166/25; E179/196/118; CFR, xvi. 124-32; Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc., xli), 564, 573; VCH Wilts. x. 120; I.o.W. RO, Worsley mss, JER/WA/AppV/2.

Dewall took up residence at the ancient seat of his wife’s family, Dauntsey in Wiltshire, and assumed the place in county society traditionally reserved for the head of the family. In July 1443 he was added to the Wiltshire bench, and in subsequent years he was regularly appointed to royal commissions in the county, and periodically served his neighbours as a feoffee and witness to their property transactions.11 Hungerford Cart. (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xlix), 354; Som. Archs., Walker-Heneage mss, DD/WHb/1893. In late September 1449, when writs for a Parliament to meet at Westminster on 6 Nov. were issued, Dewall was serving as escheator of Hampshire and Wiltshire, and could reasonably have expected to have completed his term before the Commons were to meet. In terms of his income and experience, as well as his standing in Wiltshire society he was undoubtedly qualified for return as a knight of the shire without requiring the support of a powerful patron, but it is just possible that some external agency was at play. Both of the men who found sureties for his parliamentary attendance, Thomas Dysswall* and John Monmouth*, came – like him – from Herefordshire, and Dysswall at least was connected with no less a man than (Sir) Walter Devereux I*, the duke of York’s steward in the marches. Both Dysswall and Monmouth for their part secured seats for Wiltshire boroughs, and it is reasonable to speculate whether whatever power secured their election also played its part in Dewall’s return. In the event, the escheators of 1448-9 were not discharged until mid December, but since it was not uncommon for an escheator to conduct his official duties through a sub-escheator there is no reason to suppose that Dewall failed to attend the Commons during the first session. Certainly, at the dissolution he and his colleague, Richard Warre*, were issued the customary writ de expensis, instructing the sheriff to pay them each for the full 170 days at the statutory rate of 4s. per day. This, however, evidently caused some problems, for within a few years Warre appeared in the Exchequer of pleas and accused the sheriff, Philip Baynard*, of having refused to pay him the money. Baynard was found guilty of this failure, but it took until 1454 for Warre to secure his full wages.12 E13/145A, rots. 1d, 15, 15d.

It is rather less certain whether Dewall ever secured full payment, for he seems to have died at an uncertain date in late 1452 or early 1453. He was last appointed to a royal commission in August 1452, but may have been dead before a fresh commission of the peace for Wiltshire was issued in March 1453.13 A payment for Dewall’s attendance at four days of sessions of the peace held before 14 Nov. 1454 must relate to sessions held before Mar. 1453: E101/594/29, m. 8. He was survived by his wife, Joan, who on the occasion of this third widowhood chose not to marry again, and after her own death in the spring of 1457 was buried next to Dewall in the church at Dauntsey.14 CFR, xix. 168, 209; Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. l. 326-7. N. Pevsner, Buildings of Eng.: Wilts. 204 suggests that she was in fact buried next to her second husband, Sir John Stradling.