CHESTER, John

In common with most fifteenth-century officers of arms, John Wryxworth is an obscure character. Nothing is known of his parentage or of the nature of his connexion, if any, with the city of Rochester, but in Hilary term 1442 John Wryxworth of London, gentleman, stood surety for one John Lawrence of Rochester who had been pardoned outlawry in King’s bench.6 KB27/723, rot. 7. By this time Wryxworth was already a member of the royal household, serving as one of the messengers of the King’s chamber. The first reference to him in this office was in November 1438 when he carried a message to Calais,7 E404/55/122. but he had probably served as a messenger since at least 1436.8 Although the claim that he had been Antelope and Bluemantle pursuivants during the reign of Hen. V seems unlikely: College of Arms (Surv. London mono. ix), 263. In May 1440 he presented a petition detailing how, not having long been in royal service, he had been sent to Normandy and had been captured at sea and held prisoner in the town of Mont. St. Michel for more than two years. Wryxworth claimed to have had to sell most of his lands, ‘which was his enheritaunce’ to pay his ransom. Having secured his release, he was again sent to Normandy, this time carrying a message to the earl of Warwick at Rouen. Unfortunately, he was captured a second time and, although released soon afterwards, was required to find 430 ‘salus’ by 13 June 1440 or return to captivity. He secured a gift of £20 from the Exchequer to help pay this sum.9 E404/56/270. Wryxworth’s tribulations as a King’s messenger did not end there: in August the following year he presented another petition outlining how he had been sent by Cardinal Beaufort to the duke and duchess of Burgundy to secure a safe conduct for the bishop of Rochester. Pirates and a lack of wind kept him waiting for a ship to carry him to Calais for five weeks and two days; finally, at his seventh attempt he crossed the Channel and eventually arrived in Ghent, where he presented his request to the duchess. She ordered him to await the arrival of the chancellor of Burgundy to seal the safe conduct, and Wryxworth then spent a further six weeks following the Burgundian court to Sluys, Bruges and then back to Sluys before the safe conduct was sealed. Having finally arrived back in England (following a further two-week delay in Calais), Wryxworth successfully asked for his costs, which amounted to £10 6s. 8d.10 E404/57/322.

On 1 Nov. 1437 Henry VI had created the title of Collar Pursuivant and in Easter term 1445 Wryxworth was described as such when the payment of his expenses in the Netherlands in 1441 was recorded on the issue roll. It is unclear whether he was the first individual to hold this title, although the journeys to Calais and Normandy in 1438-40 for which he petitioned for payment correspond closely to those for which payments to Collar were recorded on the roll. In 1443-4 he also received robes from the keeper of the wardrobe as a yeoman of the chamber. In 1446 he was present, in his capacity as an officer of arms, at Tours to witness the duel between John Chalons and Louis de Beul.11 College of Arms mss, O.A.III, pp. 171-5. His last duty as Collar, in June 1447, was to attend upon the French ambassadors in London to negotiate the surrender of Maine and a proposed meeting between Henry VI and Charles VII of France, for which he received £20.12 E404/63/133, 65/192. Soon afterwards Wryxworth was appointed Chester Herald of Arms, succeeding William Tyndale (perhaps also his predecessor as Collar) who had been promoted to be Lancaster King of Arms.13 College of Arms mss, O.A.II, p. 507. College of Arms, 120 suggests that this Chester Herald may have been John Tyndale, a possible kinsman, even son, of William Tyndale, formerly Chester Herald and later Lancaster. This identification is based upon a slipped trefoil which Chester Herald appended to the return of a commission to inquire into pirates in Oct. 1448 and which is similar to one that usually ended William Tyndale’s signature as Lancaster. Wryxworth, however, employed an identical slipped trefoil on a grant of arms made while Guyenne King of Arms: College of Arms, 264. In June 1448 he was appointed, alongside Richard George† to investigate certain alleged cases of piracy in the south-west. This resulted from petitions presented to the King by a group of French merchants who claimed their ships had been taken by pirates operating out of Fowey. The resulting inquisitions, held at Fowey on 19 July and Portsmouth on 1 Oct. that year, revealed that a quantity of wheat and 39 tuns of wine had been taken from the French ships by a balinger called the Le Cunger of Falmouth, taken to Fowey and distributed among local merchants and officials, including the former MP for Portsmouth, John Versy*, and the earl of Northumberland’s butler. The execution of this commission clearly caused Wryxworth some difficulty: this is suggested by the fact that he was engaged upon it from mid July until the first week of October, only making his return in Chancery on the seventh of that month. The course of investigations took him to Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Hampshire and the Exchequer reimbursed him with £5 13s. 4d. for his costs.14 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 140-1, 188; CIMisc. vii. 207-8; E403/771, m. 7; 773, m. 1; 775, m. 1.

Whatever the circumstances of his election as an MP for Rochester, Wryxworth used his return to Parliament in November 1449 to present a petition concerning the difficulties he had experienced in the execution of his commissions the previous summer. Wryxworth’s petition, dated 28 May 1450 during the Parliament’s second session at Leicester and signed ‘Chester the Kynges herrald’, outlines how, while he was at Bodmin, a Spanish merchant had complained to him that his ship had been also been seized by pirates out of Falmouth and arrested in the King’s name by John Arundell of Lanherne, then sheriff of Cornwall. Wryxworth had demanded that Arundell and the justices of the peace hand the ship over to him, but Arundell had pointed out, quite correctly, that Wryxworth’s commission did not extend to acts of piracy involving this particular vessel and refused to hand it over. Wryxworth decided that discretion was advisable and ‘spak no more thereof’, leaving the ship in Arundell’s possession.15 C49/50/8. The outcome of his petition is not recorded.

As Chester Herald, Wryxworth continued to be employed on diplomatic missions. In June 1449, shortly before his election to Parliament, he had been paid £10 by John Poutrell, collector of the petty customs in London, when embarking upon a journey to the duke of Burgundy.16 E404/65/192; College of Arms mss, O.A.II, p. 507. In Easter term 1452 he received a payment for taking letters from the King’s council to the King himself.17 E403/789, m. 4. In the following year he was sent to Normandy to secure the release of Sir Robert Hungerford, Lord Moleyns, who had been captured in the aftermath of the battle of Castillon. Later Moleyns’s mother, Margaret, Lady Hungerford, recalled paying as much as £140 to Wryxworth for travelling to France ‘sundry times’ over the space of seven years and 16 weeks to secure her son’s release.18 W. Dugdale, Baronage (1675-6 edn.), ii. 209.

By December 1460, when the King granted him and Garter King of Arms the large sum of £243 in arrears of wages, Wryxworth had been appointed Guyenne King of Arms. The date of his appointment is not known but by 1455 John Walter was occupying Wryxworth’s previous office of Chester Herald.19 College of Arms, 120. The only other references to Wryxworth as Guyenne are several grants or confirmations of arms ostensibly made by him. The earliest one is a confirmation of arms to John Oxenden of Kent, dated 6 Feb. 1446, and would suggest that Wryxworth was simultaneously Guyenne and Chester. This is possible as Guyenne seems to have been considered an officer of arms of Henry VI as duke of Aquitaine. The Oxenden grant, like all but one of Wryxworth’s grants, survives only in a seventeenth-century copy which Oxenden’s ancestors showed to Garter King of Arms and Windsor Herald in 1664. They, apparently, ‘were much pleased at the sight thereof, and said the like was not easily to be seen’.20 Archaeologia Cantiana, vi. 277. In all, ten grants or confirmations of arms have been identified as being made by Wryxworth between 1446 and 1463. All could have rightly have been considered ultra vires as the grants were made in the province of Clarenceux King of Arms. However, the confirmation made in March 1447 to Ralph West of Sudbury, Suffolk, was made by Wryxworth acting together with Roger Legh, Clarenceux King of Arms.21 College of Arms, mss, G. 7, f. 4. Kings of Arms did not usually act together in such matters and it may be that Wryxworth made grants under special dispensation from Clarenceux Legh during the latter’s incapacity or absence. Certainly, when Legh died, probably in late 1460, he did so in great poverty, suggesting some long-running problem that had prevented him from exercising his office in person.22 College of Arms, 54; A.Wagner, Heralds of Eng. 159. Wryxworth’s actions, whether as Legh’s deputy or on his own authority, seem to have been open to challenge: on 31 May 1461, perhaps after Legh had died, he made a grant of arms to the Cooks’ Company of London; six years later Clarenceux Hawkeslowe appears to have questioned the validity of the grant and the Cooks’ accepted a new grant of arms from him.23 Coat of Arms, iv. 330-1; J. Bromley and H. Childs, Armorial Bearings of the Guilds of London, 53. The last grant apparently made by Wryxworth was that to John Wybarne of Kent in May 1463, but his authority for so doing is not known.24 Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, ser. 5, v. 238. Wryxworth was dead by 13 Oct. 1473 when Richmond Herald, possibly William Brereton, was created Guyenne King of Arms.25 College of Arms, 264.