JANE, Stephen

By the 1470s the Jane family was of sufficient prominence in Launceston for its members to be chosen as stewards and mayors of the town.2 Cornw. RO, Launceston bor. recs., B/Laus/163, 164, 166. Earlier in the century, however, they had probably been of rather less importance, for a duchy of Cornwall rental of Launceston and its region compiled in 1463 makes no mention of any Janes, and while Stephen’s putative kinsman William Jane* was assessed for the income tax of 1451, he himself was not.

While it is possible that Stephen was related to William (who represented Truro in the same Parliament of 1447), he is difficult to identify, for there were a number of men of that name active in Cornwall in the first half of the fifteenth century. The most prominent of these served as reeve of Lostwithiel in 1393-4, held office as mayor of the borough in 1402-3, and is regularly found attesting local deeds in the reigns of Henry IV and Henry V.3 E13/125, rot. 8d; CP40/632, rot. 418; Cornw. RO, Wynell-Mayow mss, WM351-4; Tremayne mss, T490; Carlyon mss, CN 789, 847. In 1414 Stephen Jane of Lostwithiel received a grant of lands in St. Austell, St. Mewan, St. Just in Roseland and Tregony for the lifetime of another Stephen, the son of Robert Jane,4 Cornw. Feet of Fines, ii (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc., 1950), 919. and a few years later, in 1422, the remainder of other lands in Grampound, Bodmin and elsewhere was settled on John, son of Stephen Jane of ‘Penmyne’, among others.5 CAD, iv. A9992.

It is tempting to identify the MP with the man who in February 1431 as one of ‘the King’s officers’ in Launceston was instructed to arrest Richard Yurle, a canon of Launceston priory, and John Lovell alias Leche, a local medical practitioner, who were said to have conspired to murder the prior of Launceston, John Honiland, in order that Yurle might take his place.6 KB145/6/9. It does, however, appear that in 1447 considerations other than local credentials informed the choice of parliamentary representatives, and it thus seems likely that Jane was in fact a man who by 1448 was said to hail from Ashwater in Devon.7 CP40/748, rot. 417d. This manor had until 1442 been the seat of the important landowner Thomas Carminowe*, and some ten years earlier a Stephen Jane, as a servant of Robert Hill* of Shilston (Carminowe’s brother-in-law), had come to blows with John Tolk of Croft (in Charleton) in the same county.8 C1/75/91; KB27/685, rot. 10. After Carminowe’s death the ownership of his estates was disputed between his two daughters and their husbands. One of these, the earl of Devon’s cousin Hugh Courtenay* of Boconnoc, was returned to the Bury Parliament of 1447 as a knight of the shire for Cornwall, and it is reasonable to suppose that Jane, the Member for Launceston, was an associate returned in his interest.9 CP40/788, rot. 411.

In early 1448 Jane was among a group of men from Ashwater who were sued by the chancellor, Archbishop John Stafford, Sir William, soon to become Lord Bonville*, and a clerk, Richard Bere, for breaking their close at Henford and Foxhole, while ten years later he was charged with a similar offence, said to have been committed on the property of Sir William Paulet in September 1446.10 CP40/748, rot. 417d; 788, rot. 411.

It may have been this Stephen Jane who was murdered by one William Moppe, a servant of Christopher Worsley of Shute, at an uncertain date prior to Michaelmas 1463. That autumn the dead man’s widow Joan brought an appeal in the court of King’s bench against Moppe and his associates, but predictably without much immediate success.11 KB27/810, rot. 47d.