CONYERS, Sir Robert

A soldier of obscure background who made his name in the French wars, Conyers came into a negligible inheritance, comprising three small manors at Great Barton, Hepworth and Finningham in west Suffolk.15 C140/77/74. His family were living in that part of East Anglia before the end of Edward III’s reign, since Nicholas Conyers of Finningham made his will in August 1375.16 Norf. RO, Norwich consist. ct., Reg. Heydon, f. 121. No longer alive by the following 6 Feb., this Nicholas was probably Conyers’s grandfather. His son and namesake, Conyers’s father, was a figure of little importance. A tax collector in Suffolk shortly after the accession of Henry V, he appears otherwise to have played no part in the administration of that county.17 CP25(1)/223/110/29; CFR, xiv. 26; Peds. Plea Rolls ed. Wrottesley, 280-1. There is no evidence of any connexion between the Conyers family of w. Suff., of whom the MP was the first significant figure, and that of Hornby, Yorks., which also numbered a Sir Robert Conyers in its ranks. This Sir Robert’s knighthood predated the MP’s: CPR, 1422-9, p. 28.

The subject of this biography had become a participant in the French wars while Henry V was on the throne, for he cited his military service across the Channel under that King when petitioning the Crown shortly before his election to Parliament.18 E28/79/20. Yet the earliest definite details of his soldiering are from the succeeding reign. By the autumn of 1423, he was one of the mounted men-at-arms in the retinue of the soon to be knighted John Harpley, who married his sister Alice Conyers and under whom he served during the conquest of Maine.19 Fr. mss, 25767/49; Add. Ch. 1419; Archives Nationales, Paris, Nouvelles Acquisitions Francaises, 59/10; 62/11/19; Norwich consist., ct. Reg. Doke, ff. 74-75. Harpley fought at the battle of Vernueil in August 1424, so it is likely that Conyers was also present at this famous English victory.20 Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, ii. 394. Harpley had also participated in Hen. V’s Agincourt campaign (E101/69/7/498), so it is possible that Conyers had as well. In the later 1420s Conyers, by then a knight, was lieutenant of the garrison at Falaise under Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury, and in early 1430 he was serving his brother-in-law in a like capacity at Avranches, with a retinue of his own of 41 men.21 Fr. mss, 25769/465. By December 1432, Conyers was one of the lieutenants of the duke of Bedford at Cherbourg, where in 1433-4 he and Harpley commanded five mounted men-at-arms, 19 foot soldiers and 72 archers. He took over as captain of the garrison at Cherbourg immediately after the duke’s death in September 1435, holding temporary command until Thomas, Lord Scales, took over on the following 19 Dec., after which he continued for some time at least to serve there under that peer.22 Wars of English, ii. [541]; Fr. mss, 25772/945, 998, 1036. Conyers also served in Normandy under the King’s lieutenant-general, Richard, duke of York, with a retinue of nine men-at-arms and some 30 archers during the early 1440s, but he had returned home, perhaps for good, by 1443.23 E101/53/33; 54/9; KB27/734, rex rot. 3; 735, rex rot. 37. At the end of the same decade, he cited his long record of military service in France in the previously mentioned petition to the King, in order to gain exemption from holding any office under the Crown against his will.24 E28/79/20.

It is likely that Conyers owed his second marriage to his long military career. His second wife, Elizabeth, was the widow of Sir John Blaket, another veteran of the French wars, and by her first marriage to William Wilcotes she had borne two sons, both of whom had campaigned in France and predeceased her.25 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 865. The heir to a substantial estate spread over Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire, and valued at some £107 p.a. shortly after her death, she in addition enjoyed important dower rights in the Wilcotes estates. While she was alive, Conyers resided for at least some of the time on her lands (it was as ‘of Wilcote’, Oxfordshire, where she had a manor, that he was sued for debt by Nicholas Danyell of London in the late 1430s), but after her death these properties passed to her heirs in the female line of her first marriage.26 Ibid. ii. 249; iv. 864, 866; VCH Oxon. xii. 299; CP40/710, rot. 366d; 711, rot. 156; CIPM, xxvi. 403. One of these heirs was her grandson, Thomas Conyers, the son of her late fifth daughter, Anne. Possibly this Thomas was none other than the MP’s eldest son of that name, meaning that Anne had been the (otherwise unidentified) first wife of Sir Robert and that subsequently the latter had married his mother-in-law.27 Although there is no evidence of any dispensation from the Church for such a match. Thomas, son of Anne, was born c.1428. Even if he was not Sir Robert’s son, it is extremely unlikely that the MP had any children by Elizabeth, who was of advanced years when he married her. Although Conyers’s own inheritance, of which the manors at Hepworth and Great Barton appear to have come to him from his mother Joan Crulle, was small, his third wife, Matilda Fitzralph, brought to him further interests in East Anglia, the manors of Ellingham, Scoulton and Tottington in west Norfolk. Matilda’s right to these estates is unclear, since the heir at common law of the Fitzralphs was her niece Elizabeth, the daughter and heir of her deceased brother, John Fitzralph. Whether valid or not and whatever its basis, it would come under challenge several decades later.28 C140/77/74; W.A. Copinger, Suff. Manors, i. 309-10; CP25(1)/223/110/29; Blomefield, i. 483. It is unclear whether Conyers also came by his property at Horsham St. Faith, just north of Norwich, through marrying Matilda. He certainly held a house there by the early 1460s, since in September 1462 a jury at Norwich indicted William Felmyngham, a yeoman from that parish for breaking into that property in March the previous year and taking gold and silver jewelry and fine cloths worth over £50. (In the event, Felmingham escaped any serious consequences, for he purchased a pardon three weeks after his indictment.)29 KB27/819, rex rot. 4. Not long before his death, Conyers acquired a temporary interest in yet more property through his final marriage, for his last wife, another Elizabeth, had a life interest in certain holdings in London and at Faversham, Kent, which had belonged to her previous husband, the wealthy London merchant, Sir William Cantelowe.30 PCC 4 Godyn.

Conyers was active in East Anglian affairs before his second marriage. By the early 1440s, he had joined the affinity of John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, and he and other Mowbray men were involved in disturbances at Hoo in Suffolk in the late summer of 1443. These were connected with a manor that Mowbray’s estranged retainer, Sir Robert Wingfield*, held at Hoo, a property the duke’s father had granted to Wingfield for life, but which Mowbray was now trying to take back from him. According to a subsequent indictment, on 21 Aug. that year Conyers and other members of the Mowbray affinity, including Thomas Sharneburne*, William Brandon†, John Wymondham*, Thomas Montgomery† and John Timperley I*, had forcibly entered Hoo, where they had assaulted Wingfield and seized his crops. The presenting jury also referred to further raids on Hoo, and alleged that Brandon, Timperley and others (although not Conyers) had assaulted Wingfield’s wife and children and attempted to abduct his daughter, Elizabeth. The indictment led to a hearing in the court of King’s bench (where the accused stated that the duke of Norfolk had enjoyed seisin of the manor at the time of the supposed trespasses and that they had taken the crops on his orders) followed by a trial in Suffolk. Whatever the true version of events, the trial jury, which sat at Bury St. Edmunds in July 1445, found them not guilty of the alleged trespasses with which they were charged, and after due consideration the court permitted them to go sine die the following Hilary term.31 KB27/730, rex rot. 48; 734, rex rot. 3; 735, rex rot. 37; R.L. Storey, End of House of Lancaster, 226.

Later that decade Conyers witnessed two charters for his old commander, the duke of York.32 CPR, 1446-52, p. 231; R. Virgoe, ‘Parl. of 1449-50’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1964), 271. By the late 1440s discontent with the government and its policies, both at home and in France, had grown, and like other veterans he was associated with York in his opposition to the King’s chief minister, William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk. In East Anglia the elections to the Parliament of 1449-50, which impeached the duke of Suffolk, marked a general reaction against the minister and the Court interest, and Conyers stood for election as a knight of the shire for Norfolk, presumably claiming eligibility to stand by virtue of his third wife’s lands in that county.33 R. Virgoe, ‘Three Suff. Elections’, Bull. IHR, xxxix. 186-7. His links with the duke of York made him a suitable opposition candidate, and he could expect support from local opponents of the de la Poles like Sir John Fastolf. Fastolf, a fellow veteran of the French wars, was one of York’s councillors as well as a relative of Conyers’s second wife, Matilda Fitzralph.34 Norf. Archaeology, xxi. 21. Although it is possible that his relationship with Conyers cooled subsequently, three months before Parliament opened he asked Sir Robert to witness a settlement of his estates, and both men were associates of Sir Henry Inglose*, another old soldier who had fallen out with William de la Pole.35 Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, ii. 239-40; CCR, 1447-54, p. 229; CAD, iv. A7907, 7936. Conyers succeeded in gaining election but his fellow MP was a courtier, the erstwhile Mowbray retainer, Thomas Sharneburne. Yet the knights of the shire for Suffolk, Thomas Cornwallis* and John Howard*, were linked with the dukes of York and Norfolk respectively rather than the Court.36 Virgoe, ‘Three Suff. Elections’, 186-7.

During the early 1450s, Conyers himself continued to maintain a connexion with the duke of Norfolk, who had allied himself with York. It appears that on one occasion the duke proposed him as a candidate for the shrievalty of Norfolk, to prevent the office falling into the hands of one of the de la Pole affinity. Furthermore, he attested the return of the Mowbray retainers, Sir Roger Chamberlain* and John Howard, as the county’s MPs for the Parliament which met in the aftermath of the Yorkist victory at St Albans in 1455. Despite his association with York, there is no evidence that Conyers participated in any of the military manoeuvres or battles of the last decade of Henry VI’s reign. By the early 1460s, he was of relatively advanced years, although not too old to marry for a fourth time, or to become a j.p. in Norfolk after the accession of Edward IV. He was a figure of some significance in the county in the early years of Edward’s reign. As he informed Margaret Paston when he dined with her in early 1463, he and other East Anglian gentry who were ‘of any repetacion’ had received letters from the King requesting them to wait upon his brother-in-law, the young duke of Suffolk, at the forthcoming parliamentary election of Norfolk’s knights of the shire.37 Paston Letters ed. Davis, i. 284; ii. 83.

Still alive in early 1466, Conyers had died by mid 1468. In Hilary term 1466, he was the defendant in a lawsuit that the Londoner Thomas Bygge had brought in the court of common pleas. Bygge claimed that he had taken a bond for £20 from the knight in London in July 1464, only for Conyers to fail subsequently to pay him that sum. In response, Conyers sought and obtained permission to treat with his opponent out of court. The matter may have arisen out of his fourth wife’s affairs, since Bygge had also sued her previous husband, William Cantelowe, in the same court over a like security.38 CP40/818, rot. 154. Conyers was certainly dead by 8 July 1468 when he was named as a deceased feoffee of his late stepdaughter, Isabel, wife of Sir Robert Shotesbrooke*, one of his second wife’s daughters by William Wilcotes.39 CPR, 1467-77, p. 122. His heir was his eldest son, Thomas. It is possible that Thomas never entered the Conyers manors in Suffolk, before he died in 1479, since his father had awarded his last wife, Elizabeth Cantelowe, a jointure interest in the estates in question.40 C140/77/74. But if Thomas’s mother was Anne Wilcotes, he would have enjoyed a share of the substantial estate of the MP’s second wife, Elizabeth. In 1469, for example, the Thomas Conyers who was one of Elizabeth’s heirs was in possession of part of her manor at Seacourt, Berks.: VCH Berks. iv. 422. After Elizabeth’s death, these properties passed to Thomas’s daughter and heir, Ela, who married Sir Robert Lovell, a brother of Sir Thomas Lovell†, KG. Thomas’s inquisition post mortem valued them at a mere 22 marks p.a.: although probably an underestimate, this figure at least indicates that the MP had inherited an estate of little significance.41 C140/77/74; Blomefield, viii. 345. By his third wife, Matilda, the MP had a younger son, John, who had married Eleanor, one of the daughters of William Yelverton*, in his father’s lifetime, and who succeeded to her Fitzralph lands.42 Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 333; PCC 19 Godyn. John’s hold on these lands was probably never completely secure, for during the late 1470s Sir Robert Chamberlain†, who had married Matilda’s niece, Elizabeth Fitzralph, entered and temporarily occupied the manor of Scoulton.43 Paston Letters ed. Davis, i. 511; Norf. Archaeology, xxi. 23. Following John’s death in about 1484, Chamberlain acquired the wardship of his young son and heir, Thomas, from Richard III.44 CFR, xxi. no. 739; CPR, 1476-85, p. 496. It is likely that this Thomas never attained his majority, since he died before the end of the century. The Fitzralph lands to which he was heir passed to his sister, Anne, and her husband, Thomas Spelman.45 CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 359. The account of Conyers’s descendants in Blomefield, i. 483-4; viii. 345, is extremely confused and, among other errors, refers to John Conyers as the MP’s eldest son.