KERDISTON, Sir Thomas

An old East Anglian family, the Kerdistons attained the peerage in 1332 but died out in the legitimate male line in the person of William, Lord Kerdiston, nearly 30 years later. According to modern theory, the peer’s heir was his grandson, Sir John Burghersh† (son of Maud, his only legitimate child) but he had preferred to leave most of his lands to his bastard sons, Roger and Sir William Kerdiston†. Following Lord Kerdiston’s death, Burghersh and Sir William went to law over his estates. At a trial at Lincoln in 1370, the latter managed to persuade the court that he was in fact legitimate, so winning a verdict in his favour. Although Burghersh appealed against the verdict, the parties reached an out-of-court settlement in November 1371, by which Sir John was to have a manor and other lands in Lincolnshire and the manor and advowson of Stratford in Suffolk. Kerdiston was nevertheless able to gain Stratford in 1372, after his opponent failed to appear during further litigation in Chancery. Having obtained the Kerdiston lands in East Anglia, he was able to pass them on to his son, Sir Leonard, whose own successor was his son, Thomas, the subject of this biography. The existence of other claimants to these properties meant, however, that Thomas’s hold on his inheritance was never completely secure.7 CP, vii. 190-8; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 426; Feudal Aids, iii. 564, 568, 573, 576, 592.

Evidence for Kerdiston’s early career and knighthood is lacking, but the fact that he associated with noted soldiers like Thomas, Lord Morley, Sir Thomas Erpingham KG, Sir John Keighley and Sir Brian Stapleton strongly suggests that he himself served in the King’s wars.8 CAD, iii. D1020; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 109-10, 114-15; CP25(1)/169/187/51; 224/115/10. He had succeeded Sir Leonard by June 1422, when he settled moieties of his Norfolk manors of Syderstone and Bircham Newton on a powerful group of feoffees, including Humphrey Stafford, earl of Stafford, William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, Lord Morley and Sir Thomas Erpingham. In the following month he demised his manors at Bulcamp and Henham in Suffolk to most of the same feoffees.9 CAD, iii. D426, 429, 433-4, 1020. If his mother, Margaret, was still alive in mid 1422, he may not have taken immediate control of all of his estates. In a will he had made prior to embarking abroad in the later 1380s, Sir Leonard had assigned to Margaret a third part of each of his Norfolk manors of Kerdiston, Claxton, Hillington, Syderstone and Swanton Novers, along with the reversion of his own mother’s interest in that of East Ruston, for her dower.10 E210/5741. It is not known whether these arrangements still stood when he died, since he may have altered these arrangements in a subsequent will.

It is likely that Kerdiston was a retainer of one of his most important feoffees, the earl of Stafford. He again chose the peer for that role – along with two Stafford retainers, John Harper* and John Heton* – in early 1444, and he would appoint Stafford, by then duke of Buckingham, the supervisor of his will.11 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 270-1; Norf. RO, Norwich consist. ct., Reg. Wylbey, f. 137. It is unclear, however, whether he continued to remain on good terms with another of his feoffees, the earl of Suffolk, whose aunt he married in about 1425. Elizabeth was the widow of Sir Edward Burnell, himself a cousin of William de la Pole. Burnell, who had died of disease alongside her father at the siege of Harfleur in 1415, had held property at East Ruston in north-east Norfolk where Kerdiston owned a manor.12 CP, Addenda and Corrigenda, 126; F. Blomefield, Norf. ix. 337-8. Yet, however cordial the initial relationship between Earl William and the subject of this biography, the former’s own marriage in 1430 to Alice Chaucer, grand-daughter of Sir John Burghersh and a direct descendant of William, Lord Kerdiston, would have important and deleterious consequences for the latter.

Either soon before or shortly after his father’s death, Kerdiston become embroiled in a dispute with Sir John Howard*. At one point their quarrel threatened to spill over into violence, prompting Sir Thomas Erpingham, one of the most important servants of the Crown in East Anglia, to write to the chancellor, Thomas Langley, bishop of Durham. Noting that the chancellor was probably aware of a ‘certayne travace’ between the two knights, Erpingham informed him that an assize in Suffolk would hear their dispute in a few days time. As both parties were planning to bring considerable numbers of supporters (who included lords as well as knights and esquires) to the assize, he feared a riot unless the bishop and other councillors took action. He suggested that the duke of Gloucester should intervene to ensure that the law took its course. The Council responded to the information from Erpingham by despatching privy seal letters to Kerdiston and Howard ordering them to behave peaceably at the assize.13 PPC, ii. 272-4. Erpingham’s letter was dated 10 July but the year is uncertain; the editor of the PPC suggests ‘1420’. Langley was chancellor from July 1417 to July 1424. Since Erpingham was one of his feoffees,14 CAD, iii. D426. Kerdiston might have expected him to take his side in the quarrel, but his fellow knight did him a service by preventing it from getting out of hand. Erpingham’s intervention appears not to have damaged his relationship with Kerdiston, who witnessed his will in 1427.15 De Antiquis Legibus Liber (Camden Soc. xxxiv), p. clviii.

The Kerdiston-Howard dispute was almost certainly about the Kerdiston estates. Howard’s wife, Alice, was a descendant of Margaret, an illegitimate daughter of William, Lord Kerdiston, and she may have laid claim to some of the Kerdiston lands, in spite of her ancestor’s illegitimacy. Although any such claim was probably frivolous, it is possible that Lord Kerdiston had provided for his bastard offspring with land.16 CP, vii. 197. It is worth noting that Kerdiston sued Howard and Alice, along with Sir William Wolf*, Robert Tey† and other gentlemen, in the court of King’s bench in April 1424, for trespassing on his manors at Bulcamp and Henham. In turn, Wolf, Tey and others challenged Kerdeston’s title by suing him in the following year for dispossessing them of the same properties. Kerdeston’s suit was referred to a jury, but this was disbanded after the defendants alleged that he and his councillors had directed the under sheriff to select jurors favourable to him. In early 1426, however, a fresh jury found the Howards and Tey guilty, but Kerdiston declared that he did not wish to pursue his suit against Wolf and the other defendants. The court awarded him damages of £40, which his attorneys collected the following month. This was not the end of the affair because the Howards and Tey challenged the jury’s verdict, although their appeal was still pending when both Alice and Tey died in the autumn of 1426.17 KB27/654, rot. 105d; 655, rot. 21; 661, rot. 71; JUST1/1539, rot. 6d.

The Howards and their associates were perhaps not the only members of the gentry with whom Kerdiston quarrelled in the 1420s, for he entered a recognizance for £100 to Lewis John* in 1426, possibly in connexion with another dispute.18 CCR, 1422-9, p. 267. In the following decade he certainly clashed with a chaplain, John Clerk, who sued him in King’s bench for assaulting him at Southrepps and Trimingham in north-east Norfolk in October 1434. At the beginning of 1438 a local jury found for Clerk, who was awarded five marks in costs and damages. Although Kerdiston paid over that sum, it was not the end of the matter, since he subsequently began an action against the jurors for delivering a false verdict.19 KB27/713, rot. 95d. By the first half of the 1440s Kerdiston had also fallen out with a former counsel of his, William Norwich, whom he had retained as his attorney at Westminster for three years beginning at Michaelmas 1429, with a fee of 20s. p.a. The quarrel led to Norwich taking action in the court of common pleas, where in Hilary term 1444 he accused Kerdiston of having failed to pay him 60s., his total fee for the three years, and sought a further £4 13s. 4d. he had incurred in costs and expenses in pursuit of the knight’s affairs.20 CP40/732, rot. 484d.

More constructively, the disputatious Kerdiston also sometimes helped to resolve disagreements among his fellow gentry. When, for example, an attempt was made to end a quarrel between Walter Tailboys* and Sir John Keighley in 1427, he was one of those who received a recognizance from Tailboys and his feoffees on Keighley’s behalf, and he was a party to the settlement made when this dispute was eventually resolved.21 CCR, 1422-9, pp. 335-6; 1429-35, pp. 109-10, 114-15. Later, in 1437, he pledged in his capacity as a trustee for the Norfolk esquire Ralph Garneys that Ralph would observe any arbitration award made between him and his uncle, Peter Garneys.22 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 109, 111.

As a knight with considerable estates, Kerdiston was well qualified to sit in Parliament, to which he was first returned alongside one of his feoffees, Sir John Carbonel*,23 CAD, iii. D429. in 1423. He was re-elected for Norfolk in 1425, when his fellow Member was another of his trustees, Sir Henry Inglose*,24 CCR, 1441-7, p. 140. and again to the Parliament of 1431. Outside Parliament, he held few public offices but was nevertheless a substantial local figure. He was among the Norfolk gentry expected to swear an oath to keep the peace administered throughout the realm in 1434, and the Crown asked him for a not insignificant loan of £40 two years later, when the government was equipping an army for France.25 CPR, 1429-36, p. 404; PPC, iv. 328.

During the early 1440s, Kerdiston’s most immediate concern were his estates. His father had apparently enjoyed undisputed possession of the lands in East Anglia that the illegitimate Sir William Kerdiston had won for himself, but he faced a serious challenge to his own title. In 1425 he had come to an arrangement with Maud, the surviving daughter and coheir of Sir John Burghersh, and her husband, Thomas Chaucer*, by which he had conveyed his estates to them and they had re-conveyed them back to him, to hold from them as their feudal tenant.26 CP25(1)/169/186/16; JUST1/1543, rots. 2, 15d. After Maud’s death in 1437, her claim to the Kerdiston lands had passed to her daughter, Alice de la Pole. In March 1442, Kerdiston reached a compromise with Alice and her powerful husband, the earl of Suffolk, by which he surrendered his manors of Bulcamp and Henham in Suffolk to them, but they allowed him to retain possession of the Kerdiston lands in Norfolk. By now his first wife Elizabeth was dead, so he also gave the de la Poles a recognizance for £500, to guarantee that he and any future wife would formally acknowledge Alice’s title to the Suffolk manors (something which he and his second wife, Philippa, were to do a few years later).27 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 55, 57-58. Kerdiston suffered a further blow the following November, when he had to mortgage his manor at East Ruston to the lawyer, Nicholas Ovy, who had made him a loan and settled debts he had owed to men in the city of London.28 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 119-20; CAD, iii. D1022. In early 1446, moreover, he was obliged to convey East Ruston and his other Norfolk manors to the de la Poles, who re-enfeoffed him as their tenant while retaining reversionary rights in all these properties. As a result, Kerdiston, Claxton, Hellington and Swanton Nowers were settled on him and any future male issue, Syderstone and Bircham Newton were settled on him and his children of either sex and East Ruston was granted to him to life, with remainder to Sir Thomas Tuddenham* and other de la Pole feoffees.29 CP25(1)/170/190/209-10; 224/118/18.

It was perhaps some consolation to Kerdiston that both his wives had property interests, although there were disputes over those of his second wife. During his first marriage, he must have enjoyed possession of the Burnell manor of Great Holland in Essex, a lordship which Elizabeth Kerdiston held in jointure by reason of her first marriage.30 CCR, 1435-41, p. 322. As for Philippa, she claimed to be heir to her father’s considerable estates. Although her brother John had succeeded their father Sir John Trussell in 1424, she claimed that Sir John, worried by his son’s ‘sympylnes’, had earlier placed the Trussell lands in Northamptonshire and Leicestershire in the hands of a group of feoffees, to hold to the use of the younger John and his issue, with remainder to her and her heirs.31 C1/11/140. After her brother died childless, she had quarrelled with her widowed mother, Lady Margaret Trussell, for control of these estates. Despite the entail made by her late husband, Margaret had settled the Trussell properties on a new set of feoffees, and had managed to retain possession of nearly all of them until her death in November 1442.32 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 668. One of these properties, an inn called The Grehound in Northampton, featured in a bill Kerdiston and Philippa filed in Chancery the following year. They stated that Margaret had alienated it to Robert Pynkard but that Philippa’s previous husband, Alexander Bozoun, and John Mauntell had managed to retake possession from Pynkard’s son, Richard, whom they had compensated for his loss. The purpose of the bill was to force Mauntell to give up any right he had in the property by making a formal release to them.33 C1/9/16; Northampton Recs. ed. Markham and Cox, ii. 307.

Much more significant was the manor of Flore in Northamptonshire, one of the principal Trussell holdings. A lawsuit heard in King’s bench in 1443 indicates that the Kerdistons had obtained possession of it by this date. The suit, which took the form of an appeal made against Kerdiston by the widow of a murdered man, came to pleadings in Michaelmas term 1444. The widow alleged that early in the previous year he had provided shelter at Flore for the killers of her husband, William Birche, after they had shot him in the head and stomach with their bows and arrows. Kerdiston appeared in person in King’s bench to declare himself not guilty of this charge and to opt for a trial by jury, but there is no record of any such trial in the plea rolls, suggesting that the suit ended in a settlement out of court.34 KB27/734, rot. 44. Late in his life the MP was the defendant in another lawsuit which shows that the Kerdistons’ hold on Flore was far from secure. The plaintiffs were feoffees of the now deceased Margaret Trussell, a powerful group including Robert, Lord Willoughby, William, Lord Lovell, and William, Lord Zouche. They brought their action in the common pleas, where they alleged that the Kerdistons (represented in court by their attorney Nicholas Ovy) had unjustly disseised them of Flore. Having heard pleadings from both sides in Trinity term 1445, the judges delayed further process while they sought legal advice.35 CP40/738, rot. 503.

In the meantime, the Kerdistons appear to have surrendered their claim to Gayton, another Trussell manor in Northamptonshire, since that autumn they formally conveyed it to Zouche and two other feoffees of Margaret Trussell, Sir Thomas Green* and James Swetenham.36 CP25(1)/179/95/116. In the following spring, the common pleas gave directions for Flore to be taken into the King’s hands because the Kerdistons had defaulted on a given return day, and ordered them to appear for a judgement in Michaelmas term 1446. When that term opened, the plaintiffs took out a new writ against Philippa alone, for by then the MP was dead.37 CP40/738, rot. 503.

Kerdiston died on 20 July 1446.38 The inqs. post mortem held after his death mistakenly state that he died on 20 July 1447, for his wife, Philippa, was already a wid. the previous Nov.: C139/143/31; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 441, 443. He had made his will, dated the previous 1 July, at Norwich, where he appears to have taken up residence near the end of his life.39 Reg. Wylbey, f. 137. His association with the city was neither recent nor passing, for he had joined its guild of St. George in 1427 or early 1428, paying an admission fee of 13s. 4d.40 Norf. RO, Norwich city recs., guild of St. George acct., NCR 8e. Norwich was also probably the place of production of a book he appears to have owned. The Kerdiston arms occur throughout this volume, apparently of the late 1430s and containing two treatises on falconry, and on one of its folios shows them impaling those of de la Pole and Wingfield, the families of his first wife’s parents, quarterly.41 Gothic Art for Eng. ed. Marks and Williamson (Victoria and Albert Museum cat.), 302-3. In his will Kerdiston sought burial in the church of the Austin friars at Norwich and left the friars 300 marks if they would find three priests to sing for the souls of himself, his two wives and his ancestors in perpetuity. To raise the money for this bequest he instructed his executors to sell his share (a third part) of the right of passage at Buckenham Ferry, along with certain properties in Claxton and elsewhere that he had bought from William Claxton, the advowson of Carleton church and a salt rent. Furthermore, the friars were to have a silver cross, for use in processions, a pair of silver basins bearing the inscription ‘Orate pro animabus Thome Kerdeston Militis et Phillipe Uxoris sue Filie Johannis Trussel Militis’, a missal, vestments, a chalice and other items of silver. He also directed that a silver thurible should be made for them to use at his funeral. Apart from the friary, the only other religious institution to which he made a specific bequest was the chapel of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Langley, to the altar of which he left another chalice. He remembered several individuals outside his immediate family in his will. Thomas Berney was to have a horse, provided he conducted himself honestly in the future, as too was Humphrey, duke of Buckingham. Berney later expressed his discontent with this bequest by filing a bill in Chancery against Kerdiston’s widow. Calling himself the MP’s ‘cousin’, he claimed that the testator had promised in the presence of her and other witnesses to leave him not one but two horses, as well as a gown of ‘blewe furred with beuer’, and that she had refused to keep this promise because it had not featured in the will.42 C1/16/248. For Nicholas Ovy, providing that he co-operated with the executors, Kerdiston set aside an annuity of 40s. for a term of six years, to help him continue his legal studies in London. (Later, Ovy would marry Kerdiston’s stepdaughter, Anne Bozoun.)43 G. Baker, Northants. i. 154. He also asked his executors to reward John Boteler and four other servants, and he gave Boteler and his wife, Agnes, life interests in lands he possessed at Hales next Langley. To his wife Kerdiston left some plate and vestments, along with a missal, a chalice, a phial and a silver pax, with the proviso that his daughter, Elizabeth, should afterwards inherit these items. With regard to the residue of his personal estate, he requested his executors to dispose of it on charitable works, paying off his debts and fulfilling his will. He chose four executors, Philippa, William Yelverton*, Master Thomas Gerton (probably Thomas Gerston, the Austin friar and theologian), and the Augustinian, John Holkham, and, as already noted, he appointed the duke of Buckingham to oversee their work.44 Biog. Reg. Univ. Cambridge to 1500 ed. Emden, 256.

Kerdiston’s heir was Elizabeth, his daughter by his first wife, since his only son, William, had predeceased him.45 Certainly dead by Jan. 1444 (CCR, 1441-7, p. 271), William was probably no longer alive when the MP and the de la Poles made their releases of 1442. In November 1446 his widow surrendered all of the Kerdiston manors in Norfolk to the de la Poles, in apparent disregard of Elizabeth’s title to the manors of Syderstone and Bircham Newton.46 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 441, 443. Philippa appears to have retired to Northamptonshire after his death, since it was as ‘lady of Flore’ that she obtained a licence from the Pope to keep a portable altar in 1448.47 CPL, x. 383. Said to have taken a third husband, Thomas Michell, she was dead by the spring of 1457 when William Staverton of Daventry, named as her executor, was obliged to answer a suit for debt at Westminster.48 Baker, i. 154; CP40/785, rot. 435d.

In January 1451 the escheator in Norfolk and Suffolk presided over inquisitions for the lands Kerdiston had held in those counties. The juries found that he had not died seised of any of the properties listed and that the MP, the grandson of a bastard, had unjustly intruded on to the Kerdiston estates. They also declared that the de la Poles had taken possession of Kerdiston’s lands in Suffolk during his lifetime (in accordance with the arrangement of 1442) and that they had entered those in Norfolk after his death. Finally, they stated that the heirs to the estates were Alice de la Pole, by now the dowager duchess of Suffolk, and John Howard*, even though the latter (the grandson of the Sir John Howard with whom Kerdiston had squabbled in the 1420s), was also descended from a bastard child of William, Lord Kerdiston.49 C139/143/31. By the time of the inquisitions of January 1451, however, the duchess and Howard, neither of whom was prepared to acknowledge the other as a coheir, were already quarrelling over the Kerdiston estates. For a time Howard appears to have gained temporary control of at least part of the late MP’s holdings in Norfolk but eventually the dispute went the way of his powerful opponent. While Alice would permit Sir Tierry Robbesart, who had married Kerdiston’s daughter, Elizabeth, to occupy the manors of Bulcamp, Henham, Syderstone and Bircham Newton, it was as her tenant only. Again Elizabeth’s title to the latter two properties was ignored, and the duchess’s grandson, Edmund de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, retook possession of them after Robbesart’s death in 1496.50 KB27/766, rot. 71d; 767, rots. 30d, 65-66d; CP40/771, rot. 475d; CP, vii. 197-8; Blomefield, vii. 180-1; viii. 243; ix. 338, 443-4; x. 289; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 54-55; iii. 744, 985.