CLAVYLE, William

According to Dorset’s historian, Hutchins, the family of Clavyle boasted an antiquity not equalled in the county, its name deriving from the place in Normandy from whence Walter de Clavyle set out for England with the Conqueror. A number of branches of the family descended to the fifteenth century, of which the line at Leston in Langton Matravers in the south-east of the county is especially well documented, particularly after it acquired lands in Whitecliff through the marriage in the early 1420s of Walter Clavyle, and at Smedmore, Barneston and a number of other places in the Isle of Purbeck by that of Walter’s younger brother John to the heiress Joan Wyot.4 Hutchins, i. 564, 566-7, 570-1, 662-8, 718, 720. The lands at Whitecliff (near Swanage) were entailed in 1421-2 on Henry Whitecliff for life with remainder to his daughter and heiress Joan and her husband Walter Clavyle, and then to their sons William, Richard and John. In 1468 William Clavyle ‘the elder’ successfully sued Richard Clavyle, son of Walter and Joan, for these lands, claiming he had a grant for life: CP40/829, rot. 553. It was prob. this William who was buried at Swanage with his wives Margaret and Alice: Hutchins, i. 678. The Leston branch numbered among its members several namesakes of our MP (notably Walter’s grandfather, father and one of his sons, as well as John’s son, living in 1461, and grandson and heir, who died in 1537). Yet although these Clavyles did hold property in Wareham,5 Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 336-7. it was not one of them but rather William Clavyle of Ferne who represented the borough in the Parliament of 1429.

The MP’s father, Peter Clavyle of Quarr, also had links with Wareham, and served as a juror there in 1391.6 Hutchins, i. 695; CPR, 1391-6, pp. 228-9. Peter died within the next ten years, leaving among his possessions 60 acres of land in Redelyngton, which were seized into the King’s hand by the constable of Corfe castle because the mayor and commonalty of Corfe claimed common of pasture there. In May 1401 this seizure was reckoned to be unjustified, and William was noted as being Peter’s son and heir.7 CCR, 1399-1402, p. 337. In the previous month the young man, aged 18, had also inherited other properties, whose descent was governed by the terms of two final concords made long before, in 1358. By these fines the manors of Ferne by Wimborne St. Giles and ‘La Hyde’ in Tarrant Hinton near Pimperne (both in the north-east of the county) had been settled on his uncle William Clavyle for life, with remainder to the latter’s bastard son, William junior, his wife Edith de la Hyde, and her issue, and, failing such issue to the right heirs of William senior. Since Edith died childless, when William the bastard died on 2 Apr. 1401 the manors duly fell in accordance with the entail to our MP.8 Hutchins, i. 315, 527-8; CP25(1)/50/43/231, 236. In CIPM, xviii. 648 the post mortem, C137/33/39, has been wrongly transcribed, to give Peter, brother of William senior, as the heir. The two manors were then valued at ten marks a year (£6 13s. 4d.), but according to the tax assessments made in 1431 William Clavyle of Ferne, ‘gentleman’, was also then in possession of lands and tenements in Worth, Kingston and Arfleet Mill (in Corfe) worth £5 p.a.9 Feudal Aids, ii. 110. At the same time the brothers Walter Clavyle of Leston and John Clavyle of Barnston, both gentlemen, also each possessed lands worth £5 p.a. Some of the holdings of his bastard cousin had passed in 1401 to Edith de la Hyde’s kinsman John Stokland, whose estate was in the hands of the Bonvilles. However, in 1435 our MP came to an arrangement with Sir William Bonville* that he and his descendants might occupy the mill, a carucate and 60 acres of land in Tarrant Hinton and at Arfleet in return for an annual payment of 15s.10 CIPM, xviii. 648; CFR, xiv. 397; Dorset Feet of Fines, 347-8.

Clavyle had been returned by Wareham to the Parliament of 1429 when aged about 46. What prompted the burgesses to elect him remains obscure, although his standing as a ‘gentleman’ with property nearby must have counted when they made their decision, and he had witnessed deeds in the town in the previous year. Three years after his appointment as a tax collector in the county in 1431, he was named among the men of Dorset required to take the generally-administered oath not to maintain those who broke the law.11 Dorset Nat. Hist. and Antiq. Field Club Procs. lxv. 96; CPR, 1429-36, p. 383. Clavyle was asked to serve as a juror at the inquisition post mortem held at Shaftesbury in July 1434 following the death of Joan, wife of Sir William Cheyne the judge.12 C139/65/39. His local standing led to an association with a much more prominent figure in south-east Dorset, the lawyer John Newburgh II*, for whom he acted as a feoffee in the course of the following seven years,13 Hutchins, i. 332; Dorset Feet of Fines, 358-9. and he was called upon to witness deeds regarding the manor of Long Critchell, of which Bishop Stafford of Bath and Wells was enfeoffed.14 CCR, 1435-41, p. 483. Of his private affairs little is recorded save that in 1443 he sued a husbandman of West Tyneham for a debt of ten marks, and in August 1445 he made settlements of land in the same neighbourhood, notably at Egliston, in the interest of his wife, Emmota, and their sons Richard and John.15 CP40/728, rot. 135; Smedmore (Clavell) mss, 60; Hutchins, i. 620.

It is possible that these settlements marked the end of our MP’s career. The identity of the William Clavyle who appeared as a mainpernor for the knights of the shire elected at Dorchester prior to the first Parliament of 1449 and as an attestor to the shire elections of 1453 and 1455,16 C219/15/6, 16/2, 3. is uncertain. This other, younger William also became involved in the affairs of John Newburgh, being active in this regard throughout the 1450s and 1460s and until as late as 1476, by which date he was living at Christchurch in Hampshire.17 Dorset Feet of Fines, 374, 386-7, 400-1, 402, 404; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 258-9, 273; 1476-85, no. 140; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 38. It was probably he who was the subject of a writ de diem clausit extremum issued in July 1477.18 CFR, xxi. no. 404. Perhaps he was William s. of Walter Clavyle of the Leston branch.

John Clavyle of Ferne, appointed a tax collector in June 1468, may have been our MP’s son of that name, although whether he is to be identified with the mayor of Wareham of 1482-3 and the borough’s representative in the Parliament of 1491 is open to speculation. Our MP appears to have had a third son, Thomas, not mentioned in the settlements of 1445, and it was in his line that most of the property of this branch of the Clavyle family descended.19 Thomas’s son Richard died in 1510 possessed of lands in Quarr, Arfleet, Corfe, Egliston, Pymperne, Alfrington and Tyneham: Cal. Dorset Deeds, no. 1429; Hutchins, i. 695.