HEVERYNGTON, Adam

This MP has not been found in the records beyond the fact of his election, but he was one of several contemporary Heveryngtons. In 1427 John Heveryngton acted as a strawman when Thomas, Lord Dacre, settled several manors in tail-male; and he is presumably the same man who served on a gaol delivery jury at Carlisle in 1438 and went on to attest the Cumberland parliamentary elections in 1453 and 1455.1 CP25(1)/35/14/5; JUST3/11/10, m. 15; C219/16/2, 3. Another Heveryngton, Thomas, was among those Cumberland men considered of sufficient substance to be required to take the parliamentary oath against maintenance in 1434, and yet another, William, attested the county’s elections in 1442, 1453 and 1455.2 CPR, 1429-36, p. 383; C219/15/2 (misfiled between the returns for Oxon./Berks. and Rutland. All this suggests that the family were one of minor gentry, but the MP’s place in it cannot be traced. Nor is it possible to suggest why he should have been elected for Carlisle in 1429 unless he, like his kinsman John, was connected to the Dacres, who had significant property interests in the city. If he was a Dacre man then it is possible to suggest a speculative a context for his election. It came at a time of acute tension between Dacre and Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury. On 15 Sept. 1429, two days after the date of the indenture returning the Cumberland and Carlisle MPs, the two lords entered into mutual bonds in £2,000 to keep the peace one to the other. Perhaps significantly, Heveryngton’s fellow MP, Thomas Derwent*, was an associate of Neville, so perhaps their election reflects a compromise between Dacre and Neville.3 CCR, 1422-9, p. 448; C219/14/1.