HEWORTH, Robert

Heworth was one of a number of lawyers prominent in the parliamentary representation of Newcastle-upon-Tyne during the reign of Henry VI. He was almost certainly the son of a local merchant of the same name. The merchant does not seem to have been active in the government of the town, but in 1425 he was attached to answer the barons of the Exchequer for a debt of £10 18s. 5d. for customs owed from the reign of Henry V.8 E159/201, recorda Easter rot. 4d. The first mention of our MP dates from two years before, when he undertook to keep his first Christmas at Lincoln’s Inn. He was to be energetically engaged in the governance of the Inn for the rest of his life, from his first appointment as one of its four governors in the autumn of 1435. On 5 Nov. 1436 he was listed among the 19 fellows who agreed to remain at the Inn during vacations, probably with the intent of providing the quality of the legal education offered there. His particular promise was, ‘to contynwe a monthe euery Lenton this iij yere next comynge’ on pain of 20s.9 L. Inn Adm. i. 4; L. Inn Black Bks. i. 5, 6; E.W. Ives, Common Lawyers: Thomas Kebell, 41. Soon after, by the autumn of 1439, Heworth was serving as under sheriff of London, an office that was the preserve of young lawyers with bright professional prospects, but although London was very much the main focus of his interests, he maintained a presence in his native north-east. This is reflected in his nomination in May 1438 by Bishop Neville of Durham as one of the j.p.s in Norhamshire and Islandshire, and more particularly by his election, during his second term as a governor of Lincoln’s Inn, to represent his native town in Parliament. On 17 Jan. 1442 he was returned alongside another lawyer, Robert Rodes*.10 Ramsey, app. p. xliv; DURH3/42, m. 7; C219/15/2. This election may have marked a changing of the parliamentary guard in Newcastle’s representation. Rodes was an experienced parliamentarian, having probably attended every Parliament summoned since 1429, but it is likely that 1442 was the last occasion on which he sat in the Commons and possible that the burgesses of Newcastle considered Heworth as a suitable successor.

For the rest of his career Heworth continued to divide his time between

London and the north-east. He both served multiple terms as a governor of his Inn and was nominated to several ad hoc commissions of local government in Newcastle. No doubt this combination of interests made him, as Rodes had been before him, ready to serve as MP for Newcastle without troubling the townsmen for his wages. In his last Parliament, the long assembly convened in March 1453, he may have accorded his fellow townsmen a particular service, by presenting a petition on behalf of the inhabitants of the marcher counties and Newcastle concerning corrupt practice in the wardens’ courts.11 C219/16/2; R. Welford, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Gateshead, i. 331; PROME, xii. 311-12.

None the less, while Heworth maintained his northern interests, it is not surprising that most of his clients should have been drawn from the south.

From the mid-1430s until his death he was retained with an annual fee and livery by Westminster abbey. He also provided legal counsel to a number of London livery companies. From the early 1440s he provided legal advice to the Mercers and the Merchant Taylors, and in 1452 he was paid 3s. 4d. for his services attending to business at St. Mary Overy for the Cutlers.12 Ramsey, app. p. lx; J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), i. 870-1. More curiously, he also played an administrative role in the counties in the environs of London. Between 1454 and 1461 he was named to three sewer commissions in Essex, where, as his will shows, he had some land, and in December 1458, he was commissioned to inquire into the ravishment of a ward in Middlesex. Earlier he had been one of several lawyers, most of them senior to him, who in February 1451 were named to a high-powered commission, led by Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, to investigate complaints made against Lord Hoo by soldiers who had served under him in Normandy. 13 CPR, 1446-52, p. 444; 1452-61, pp. 220, 299-300, 491; 1461-7, p. 35.

Despite the varied responsibilities that came Heworth’s way, his career had not lived up to its early promise. When he made his will on 14 Aug. 1461 he was beyond the age at which he might have progressed to further promotion in his profession. His choice of burial place – the parish church of St. James, Clerkenwell – suggests that he identified himself principally with the London legal community rather the townsmen of Newcastle. None the less, he remembered his home town in his will, bequeathing 40s. to the works at the churches of St. Nicholas and All Saints there. He also acknowledged his origins in a more revealing way, instructing his executors to distribute, ‘in peny and penyworth’, 100s. among the most needy of his ‘pouere kyn in the North contre’. the largest of his cash bequests he reserved for his only daughter, Rose, who was to have 100 marks to her marriage with a further £10 in plate and household goods. He left detailed instructions in respect of the future of his lands, which must have largely, if not exclusively, come to him by acquisition. He gave his tenement in St. Sepulchre without Newgate to his widow, Joan, with the stipulation that, if she chose not to dwell there, it was to be rented to their son Robert at a rent one mark p.a. below the market rate. His two tenements in the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn, together with his northern property in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Kenton (Northumberland) and Gateshead (co. Durham), were jointly to be held by his widow and son, who was still under age, with provision that should the son die without issue then all would be entailed on Rose. His interest in a building called ‘The Cowhede’ in Cheapside was to be sold and the money put to Rose’s marriage, while son and daughter were to have the reversion, seemingly a distant one as it depended on the failure of the issue of the two sons of one Elizabeth Bugge, of unspecified property in Essex. His provision for his soul consisted of a bequest of ‘The Swan’ and nine cottages in St. Giles without Cripplegate to the master and wardens of the guild of St. Giles in the parish church. His wife was to be assisted in the execution of the will by his ‘brother’ the London alderman, John Lambarde (d.1487), as supervisor. The will was proved on the following 13 Nov., and, perhaps because of some dispute, that part which related to his lands was enrolled in London’s court of husting in February 1470.14 Guildhall Lib., commissary ct. wills, 9171/5, f. 316; Cal. Wills ct. Husting London ed. Sharpe, ii (2), 565-6.