HONYCHURCH, John

The Honychurch family took its name from a village near North Tawton in central Devon, but by the mid fourteenth century had become established in the western borough of Tavistock.4 Coode and French (Sawle) mss, CF2/215/19; Tavistock Parish Recs. ed. Worth, 69. John’s early activities are difficult to distinguish from those of his putative father, who appears to have reached adulthood by 1391, when he is first found as party to a property transaction. It was probably the older man who still held the family property in 1435, when he was in dispute with John Sawle over a ditch in Whitham, said to be improperly withdrawing water from ‘la Blakewylle’.5 Coode and French (Sawle) mss, CF2/215/52; Devon RO, Courtenay (Moger) mss, D1508M/Moger/368. The extent of the Honychurches’ holdings (which by the sixteenth century included lands in Tavistock, Honeychurch, Aveton Gifford and Broadwood Kelly) is likewise uncertain. The younger John inhabited a house in Tavistock known as ‘atte Wille’, and also owned a croft, garden and close in the town called ‘Hawkynys Ley’ (probably the same property later known as ‘Honychurchis Ley’) and ‘Bromepark’, a meadow called ‘Byllynges Bear’ and lands in ‘Shortes’ in Whitchurch.6 Devon RO, Fortescue mss, 1262M/T/1130-1, 1137-9; C1/415/10; Coode and French (Sawle) mss, CF2/215/70/1-2; Tavistock Parish Recs. 78.

Although Honychurch is not known ever to have held office either locally or under the Crown, he was evidently of some standing in Tavistock, and was regularly named as a witness to his neighbours’ property deeds, served as a feoffee, and was empanelled on juries as far afield as the county town of Exeter.7 KB9/311/111; C139/163/12, 167/1; C140/10/19, 42/51, 80/37; C47/37/22/90; SC1/46/49; Devon RO, Tavistock parish recs., 482A/PF52, 55, 58; Coode and French (Sawle) mss, CF2/215/66, 68; Plymouth and W. Devon RO, Bewes, Dickinson and Scott mss, 1278/7A-B; Tavistock Parish Recs. 77-80. In the troubled year 1470-1, the churchwardens of Tavistock recorded a payment of 10s. for his and William Webbe’s expenses in going to Exeter, but no further details of their mission are known.8 Tavistock Parish Recs. 13.

Little else is known of Honychurch’s personal affairs. In 1458 he was suing two Tavistock cordwainers for a trespass, the nature of which is obscure, while in 1468 he accused the clerk William Gamon of breaking into his house and attacking his servant and kinsman, Robert Honeychurch.9 KB27/789, rot. 83; 830, rot. 41. In the autumn of 1460 he was in dispute with the chief prothonotary of common pleas, John Wydeslade*, over a debt dating back to the days of his father-in-law John Julkin, for which he had become liable as executor of Julkin’s more recently deceased widow, Joan, and this dispute was evidently still ongoing at the time of Wydeslade’s retirement in 1467.10 CP40/799, rot. 511; 823, rot. 1d. At the time of Honychurch’s second return to Parliament, he was among a small group of townsmen who were being sued by the abbot of Tavistock for substantial sums of money, and it is possible that this private matter played its part in motivating him to seek election.11 CP40/866, rot. 48.

Honychurch is last recorded as witness to a property deed at Tavistock in 1488, although he may still have been alive two years later when he was named as one of the remainder-men of a barn and garden.12 C146/3168; Tavistock Parish Recs. 80-81. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Walter, who died in 1498.13 Tavistock Parish Recs. 81, 83; CFR, xxii. 591. The John Honychurch who between 1503 and 1507 served as bailiff of the Devon stannaries of Plympton and Ashburton was evidently a younger namesake: SC6/HenVII/1082, rot. 20; 1083, rot. 18; 1084, m. 2. It was Walter’s son and heir, William†, a Lincoln’s Inn lawyer, who in the 1520s emulated John by entering the Commons. John’s second wife survived him and even in the second decade of the sixteenth century was still embroiled in litigation with her late husband’s grandson over his property in Whitchurch.14 J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), i. 893; C1/415/10.