JOSKYN, John

This MP appears to have belonged to the Joskyn family living at Cobham in Kent,1 He had land there in the late 1440s (CP40/755, rot. cart; 768, rot. 365), and namesakes had interests at Cobham in the 1420s: Harl. Chs. 51 C 43; 52 B 50, 52; 53 D 35. But it was not our MP who was living there in the early 1460s (Harl. Ch. 54 G 3, 4) and made his will on 10 Nov. 1469: Harl. Chs. 52 B 47, 48. and rose from obscurity to armigerous status through service to the Crown. He and his kinsman Richard Joskyn were already actively engaged about the business of the Household at the time that Henry VI came of age. Richard then seemed destined for the Church, for in November 1437, as one of the clerks in the Household, he was granted a corrody at Gloucester abbey, to hold until the abbot presented him to a suitable benefice. However, he subsequently changed course, and remained at Court for at least 17 years longer, although without gaining significant promotion.2 CCR, 1435-41, p. 167; CPR, 1436-41, p. 230; E101/409/11, 16; 410/1, 3. John Joskyn, the future MP, proved the more successful of the two kinsmen, albeit on a modest scale. Starting off as a groom in the royal bakery, he was given the minor office of porter of St. Katherine’s by the Tower, and then, in the spring of 1438, granted for life the keeping of Birtley hall, but this, being geographically remote in Northumberland, must have been difficult to administer and probably offered little by way of revenues. Besides his normal fees as a member of the Household, he occasionally benefited from other gifts from the King, such as the goods of a traitor forfeited in 1442, although he had to share them with many of his fellows.3 CPR, 1436-41, p. 161; 1441-6, p. 43. In a prolonged break from his regular duties, Joskyn was among the royal servants sent over to France in July 1444 to provide the King’s consort, Margaret of Anjou, with a suitable escort for her journey to England. For the duration of his absence he was paid wages of 6d. a day.4 Add. 23938, f. 15. Subsequent promotion, whereby he rose in status from yeoman to serjeant,5 E101/409/11, 16; 410/1, 3, 6, 9. led to Joskyn’s regular employment in the course of the two years from April 1451 as an agent for the treasurer of the Household, John Stourton II*, Lord Stourton, and on occasion he received assignments at the Exchequer for the Household’s expenses.6 E403/781, m. 11; 786, mm. 1, 2, 9, 10; 788, mm. 3, 6; 791, mm. 3, 11; 793, m. 2.

Although Joskyn’s duties at court continued to occupy most of his time, he sought to extend his private interests in Kent. On 7 Nov. 1449, styled ‘esquire of the King’s household’, he came to the court of common pleas to have enrolled a deed of the previous 23 Oct. whereby he confirmed to Edward Lymsey esquire and his wife Rose in tail, ‘his’ manor and advowson of Ifield and land at Cobham, Shorne and elsewhere.7 CP40/755, rot. cart. Rose was the daughter and heiress of the previous owner of Ifield, William Rickhill†, and how Joskyn had come to have an interest in it is not explained.8 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 210-11. Even more curiously, it was later to be alleged that just a few days earlier, on 17 Oct., Stephen Slegge* (the then sheriff of Kent), Robert Est and others unknown, but numbering 200, had broken the closes of Edward Neville, Lord Abergavenny, at Shinglewell in Ifield, made off with quantities of wheat, oats and fish, and assaulted Joskyn, who was said to be one of Neville’s servants.9 KB27/765, rex rot. 23d. In the early 1460s it was to be alleged that in November 1457 Joskyn had been party to the forgery of a deed whereby John Lymsey (son of Edward and Rose) quitclaimed Ifield to him and John Rous, another Neville servant: KB9/145/7/43. In the following year Slegge and Est were identified by Cade’s rebels among the ‘grete extorcyoners’ and ‘fals traytoures’ principally responsible for the oppression of the commons of Kent under the malign rule of James Fiennes*, Lord Saye and Sele.10 John Vale’s Bk. ed. Kekewich et al., 206. If that were the case, then Joskyn may opportunistically presented himself as one of their victims. Either he or a kinsman, described as a ‘yeoman’ of Cobham, joined many others from the locality in purchasing a pardon in July 1450 in the immediate aftermath of the rebellion.11 CPR, 1446-52, p. 372. It was not until February 1452 that indictments of Slegge and Est with regard to the alleged close-breaking at Ifield were presented before the j.p.s in Canterbury, and not long afterwards Lord Abergavenny brought his own prosecution against them in the court of common pleas. Nevertheless, the two were acquitted in the King’s bench in Michaelmas term,12 CP40/765, rot. 54; KB9/267/70; KB27/765, rex rot. 23d. and early in 1453 Joskyn sued them for breaking his close at Cobham and stealing goods worth £40, this may have been to no avail.13 CP40/768, rot. 365.

Meanwhile, Joskyn had been assigned administrative tasks in the localities, initially, in December 1451, as a commissioner to arrest a number of men, mainly from Standon in Hertfordshire. The commission was politically motivated, for the manor at Standon pertained to the duke of York, who had given it for life to his retainer Sir William Oldhall*, currently in sanctuary for protection from the enmity of the duke of Somerset. Two months later York and his allies confronted a royal army at Dartford, before submitting to the King. In June 1452 Joskyn was instructed to escort a condemned traitor, John Wilkins, held responsible for stirring up a sizeable revolt in Kent in support of York’s army, from the Tower back to Dartford for his execution. It was subsequently alleged by a priest named Robert Collinson that while making a confession Wilkins had directed serious accusations of treason against Ralph, Lord Cromwell; but in testimony given on 31 Oct. the vicar of Dartford said that when the King’s officers had laid Wilkins on ‘le hurdill’ to draw him to the gallows he had asked Joskyn whether the condemned man should be confessed, whereupon Joskyn had replied that it was not necessary as Wilkins had had a confessor (not Collinson) at his side all day. This reported conversation had a part to play when Cromwell defended himself against the priest’s charges.14 CPR, 1452-61, p. 95. Greater responsibilities were heaped on Joskyn that autumn, when he was appointed escheator of Kent and Middlesex. He was thus holding office when returned to the Parliament summoned to meet at Reading on 6 Mar. 1453. There can be little doubt that it was his position as a royal servant that led to his election for the Sussex borough of Steyning, for he had no recorded connexion either with the local burgesses or with the principal landowners there – Syon abbey and the duke of Norfolk. The fact that the Commons contained an unusually large number of men associated with the Court is well attested.

Joskyn failed to comply with the statutory requirement for MPs to be resident in the places they represented, for on 6 Feb. 1453, just four weeks before Parliament assembled, he had been designated ‘of Braughing, Hertfordshire, esquire’. This was when he had provided securities in £200 that John Hill, to whom the King had granted letters of safe conduct to bring a Spanish vessel to England, would guarantee that the letters would not be abused, allowing other ships to enter English waters.15 CCR, 1447-54, pp. 419-20. Further proof that Joskyn was not resident in Sussex at the time of his election is provided by his appearance not only at the shire court at Canterbury on 19 Feb. to attest the indenture of return of the MPs for Kent, but in a similar capacity at the hustings at Hertford on 1 Mar. He was thus party to the return for Hertfordshire of the former Speaker, John Say II*, and of a fellow Household servant, Bartholomew Halley*.16 C219/16/2. Joskyn was again called ‘of Braughing, esquire’ in November that year, when he appeared in the Exchequer as surety for Robert Walter, given keeping of some land in Kent on a unusually long lease of 50 years.17 CFR, xix. 69. While it is possible that he had family links with Hertfordshire, for one Ralph Joskyn had attested the shire elections three years earlier,18 C219/16/1. his landed holdings in the county were all acquired through his marriage to one of the coheirs of Adam de Gatesbury – his wife Elizabeth perhaps being Adam’s sister of this name (who had earlier been married to John Tuwe), or else her daughter. At Michaelmas term 1456 the Joskyns and Elizabeth’s coheir, Henry Elveden, levied a fine of the manor of ‘Maysters’ in Westmill and of 340 acres of land in Braughing, as well as £4 p.a. rent, and Joskyn was subsequently possessed of a moiety of the manor of Gatesbury and the whole manor of Uphall in the same neighbourhood.19 CP25(1)/91/117/180; VCH Herts. iii. 311-12.

In the meantime, Henry VI’s mental collapse had led to a reduction in the size of the Household, and when ordinances were drawn up for its regulation in November 1454 Joskyn was removed from his post as serjeant of the bakery, at least temporarily.20 PPC, vi. 227. His absence from court proved to be of relatively short duration. A year later he obtained a pardon, which referred to his former office as escheator,21 C67/41, m. 29. and before too long he was back in his post in the Household. Once again he benefited from Crown patronage, albeit on a small scale: on 12 Dec. 1456 he received a share in the custody of the castle and lordship of Wressle in Yorkshire, which had been resumed into the King’s hands.22 CFR, xix. 183. Within 15 months he had been reinstated as serjeant of the bakery,23 C67/42, m. 24; E159/235, recorda Hil. rot. 9d. and there can be no doubt about his loyalty to the house of Lancaster. Following the Coventry Parliament of 1459, which attainted the Yorkist lords, he was appointed to a commission sent into Kent in January 1460 to resist the forces of the earl of Warwick which threatened Sandwich, and for his good service against the rebels he was granted for life the parkership of North Weald Bassett park in Essex, which had been forfeited by the earl of Salisbury. With the rewards also came fresh responsibilities, for on 10 Feb. he was appointed receiver of the lordships of Standon, Hitchin, and Ansty, in Hertfordshire, and of other estates there and in Essex which had been confiscated from York, Salisbury and another traitor, John Clay.24 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 546-7. He can have kept neither office for long; both must have had to be relinquished after the Yorkist victory at Northampton in the following July. Whether Joskyn participated in that particular battle is not recorded. That he took to the field on the Lancastrian side at Towton eight months later on 28 Mar. 1461 is certain, and perhaps he died there. His lands in Hertfordshire were forfeited to the new King, Edward IV, who on 24 July appointed one of the clerks of the signet, Nicholas Harpisfield, to approve and demise them at farm, and in Edward’s first Parliament Joskyn was attainted for having traitorously ‘rered werre’ against him. In November 1464 Harpisfield was granted for life Joskyn’s moiety of the manor of Gatesbury, and ‘Maistres’ in Westmill, as well as the manor of Uphall, a grant which was exempted from the Act of Resumption passed three years later. After Harpisfield left the country, following his killing of John Blakeney*, in December 1472 Joskyn’s lands in Hertfordshire were granted to Sir Roger Ree†, one of the Members of the Parliament then in recess.25 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 129, 356; 1467-77, p. 363; PROME, xiii. 42-46, 49-51, 291. Even so, the attainder did not spell permanent ruin for our MP’s descendants. Edward Joskyn, John’s eldest son, petitioned the same Parliament of 1472-5, protesting his own loyalty to Edward IV and asserting that he was unable to do him such service ‘as his hert and will wold’, owing to the forfeiture of his inheritance. His petition for the reversal of his father’s attainder was granted.26 PROME, xiv. 73-74. Edward appears to have died in 1479, whereupon the Joskyn estate at Braughing descended in the female line.27 CFR, xxi. no. 514 (writ de diem clausit extremum; no post mortem survives); VCH Herts. iii. 311-12. Edward’s wid. Agnes, sometime wife of Charles Nowell†, died in1497: C67/53, m. 25; CFR, xxii. no. 590.