HYMERFORD, John

The details of the career of the John Hymerford, who represented two Somerset boroughs in the Commons at an interval of some 30 years, are difficult to assemble, for there were two closely related men of this name alive and active in the south-west during the period.6 It is not clear whether the younger John Hymerford, who died in 1507, leaving as his heir his young da. Mary, was the same man as the John Hymerford ‘of Bradyng in thisle of Wyght gentleman’, who by 1499 (then aged about 40) was married to Joan: C142/27/140; C1/206/56-57; STAC1/2/108. On chronological grounds, it seems probable that the MP was the elder of these two. No definite details of his parentage or early life have come to light, but he evidently descended from the Robert Hymerford who in the early fourteenth century held lands at North Curry in Somerset from the dean and chapter of Wells cathedral, and may have been the son of another Robert who in 1434 was of sufficient standing in Dorset to be required to take the general oath against maintenance.7 HMC Wells, i. 329, 333. If so, he came from the same branch of the family as the 16th-century MP for Minehead, Andrew Hemmerford alias Hymmerford*: CPR, 1429-36 p. 382; C142/68/58. The full extent of his landholdings is likewise uncertain, but they included apart from some 300 acres of land in North Curry a share in several messuages and 120 acres of land in East Coker on the Somerset border with Dorset, all of which were settled on him and his wife in 1450 by their putative parents, perhaps as part of a nuptial settlement.8 Som. Feet of Fines, 113-14.

In spite of the family’s tenurial connexion with the cathedral chapter of Wells, the background to John’s return to Parliament for the city in the spring of 1453 alongside John Attwater*, a leading citizen, nevertheless remains obscure, for uniquely among the city’s MPs in the period he was never admitted to the freedom. Equally, nothing is known of his contribution (if any) to the deliberations of the Commons, but by the end of the Parliament he had evidently attracted the attention of an influential patron in James Butler, earl of Wiltshire, for only a few months after the dissolution in 1454 he became the joint beneficiary (with Henry Filongley*, one of Wiltshire’s principal retainers and a Warwickshire Member in the Parliament) of a grant of custody of some of the west-country estates of Sir Edward Brooke*, Lord Cobham, that had been taken into the Crown’s hands following Cobham’s participation in the military exploits of Richard, duke of York, and Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, three years earlier.9 CFR, xix. 115-16. An incident that same summer provides a rare insight into Hymerford’s personal life: on 12 Aug., so he claimed, the Sherborne baker John Derneford had a violent disagreement with one of his servants, one Henry Dutyssheman, and had killed a valuable hawk belonging to Hymerford, worth no less than ten marks.10 CP40/779, rot. 508.

If Henry VI’s repeated mental incapacity briefly provided an opportunity for the duke of York to grasp the reins of government, the King’s recovery in 1456 once more saw the court party in the ascendant. Hymerford’s connexions now stood him in good stead. In the first swathe of official appointments after the end of York’s second protectorate he was preferred to the escheatorship of Somerset and Dorset, and in January 1459, when Wiltshire had replaced the earl of Shrewsbury as treasurer, he was appointed one of the collectors of customs in the port of the politically volatile city of London. He was evidently ranked among the pool of gentlemen trusted by Queen Margaret’s administration, for in the wake of the Yorkist lords’ invasion in the spring of 1460 he was ordered to take musters in the south west, and it seems that at some point in the final years of Henry VI’s reign he also acted in the capacity of a receiver of some of the revenues of the duchy of Cornwall.11 C67/45, m. 18.

The Yorkist victory at the battle of Northampton brought Hymerford’s career of office holding under the Crown to an abrupt end. He secured a general pardon from Edward IV in April 1462, but withdrew into private life. It is not clear when he first formed a connexion with the Stafford family of Hooke, but by the mid 1460s he was serving as receiver-general of the Chideock inheritance of Katherine, the widow of William Stafford* (d.1450), a former esquire of Henry VI’s household. The Staffords were connected to the earl of Wiltshire by virtue of his marriage to the heiress of the senior line of the family, William’s niece Avice, the daughter of Sir Richard Stafford*, and it is possible that the earl played a part in securing Hymerford’s entry to their service. Over time, his responsibilities came to extend further: after the judicial murder in 1469 of Katherine’s son, Humphrey Stafford, earl of Devon, he also acted as receiver for the feoffees of the executed earl’s lands, and he remained in his mistress’s service throughout her two later marriages to Sir John Arundell of Lanherne and Sir Roger Lewknor until her death in 1479.

The Staffords aside, Hymerford also maintained links with other members of Wiltshire’s former circle, not least among them John Byconnell*,with whom he had ben acquainted since at least 1454, when the lawyer had found sureties for him and Filongley at the Exchequer. In May 1480 Hymerford joined with Byconnell and John Morton, bishop of Ely, in the purchase of a royal licence to found a chantry in the parish church of Yeovil, Somerset, where prayers would be said for them and the King and queen.12 Arundell mss, AR19/15; 20/30; 37/27-29; C1/56/268; 59/123; C142/12/69; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 865; CCR, 1476-85, no. 474; CPR, 1476-85, p. 201; Reg. Stillington, 751. Likewise, it was in association with Byconnell and the royal servant Morgan Kidwelly that in 1498 Hymerford was granted custody of the lands and heir of John Huntley, a landowner heavily indebted to him.13 CPR, 1494-1509, p. 135; CIPM Hen VII, i. 1202; ii. 111, 540.

Although Hymerford took an interest in parliamentary affairs at least in so far as to attend the Somerset shire elections of 1467, 1472 and 1478, he is not himself known to have been returned again until Edward IV’s final Parliament in 1483, this time as a burgess for the borough of Bridgwater. It is likely that the Chideock interest played a part in his return: like him, his colleague, the prominent lawyer William Hody†, had in the past found employment with Lady Katherine.14 C219/17/1-3; Bridgwater Bor. Archs. 1468-85 (Som. Rec. Soc. lxx), 1025. Hymerford for his part had transferred into the service of the feoffees of the Chideock lands after the death of his patroness, and he was to continue as their receiver almost until his own death.15 Arundell mss, AR19/29. By virtue of the childless demise of Katherine’s eldest son, the former earl of Devon, her son by her second husband, Thomas Arundell, had become sole heir to her property. In the turbulence that followed the death of Edward IV and the deposition of Edward V in the late spring and early summer of 1483 Arundell took part in the south-western uprisings against Richard III, and subsequently joined the earl of Richmond in exile in Brittany. He soon became part of Henry Tudor’s inner circle, and although he fell victim to the epidemic disease that swept England in the aftermath of Henry’s successful invasion in the autumn of 1485, his family’s former servants secured preferment from the new King. Thus, in April 1486 Hymerford was commissioned to draw up a full extent of Arundell’s former possessions, and that autumn he was rewarded with an appointment as controller of customs in the Dorset port of Poole, a post which he retained until his death.

In November 1500 Hymerford made a short will, asking to be buried in the parish church of East Coker. He left small bequests to that church and the neighbouring chapel of St. Mary, as well as to Wells cathedral, but otherwise left all provisions to his wife, Joan, whom he appointed sole executrix. He survived for some weeks, but had died before the end of the following January.16 Som. Med. Wills, 396; CFR, xxii. 687. Hymerford’s da. Edith later married John Peryman, one of the gt.-nephews and heirs of William Dodesham*: Som. Archs., Kemeys-Tynte mss, DD\S\WH/116.