LAWESHULL, William

A minor household servant not previously connected with Maldon, Laweshull owed his seat in the Parliament of 1459, a partisan assembly packed with government supporters, to his connexion with the Lancastrian Crown. Perhaps originally from Great Cornard in Suffolk, his place of residence when not at court,2 John Rouge* of Colchester and others released their claim to a minor rent at Bures St. Mary, immediately to the south of Great Cornard, to John Prentys alias ‘Lawsell’ in 1430: Essex RO, Colchester bor. recs., ct. roll, 1429-30, D/B 5 Cr50, m. 17d. he had joined the Household by the late 1440s when he and the other pages of the King’s chamber received liveries of cloth. His particular responsibility was to look after the King’s beds.3 E101/409/18; E361/6, rot. 44d. In 1452 the King ordered the Exchequer to assign £40 to him and his fellow pages, in return for their past and future service,4 E404/69/20; E403/793, m. 7. and in the year following he obtained the keeping of lands at Great Wratting, Suffolk, which had belonged to the late Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, for 30 years at a rent of £30 p.a. Previously the Crown had committed them to Hugh atte Fenne*, who had afterwards lost his farm to the Act of Resumption passed by the Parliament of 1450.5 CFR, xviii. 156; xix. 31. A decade later, atte Fenne sued Laweshull at Westminster for detaining £10 from him, although whether the suit had any connexion with Great Wratting is unknown: CP40/799, rot. 75d.

In the autumn of 1454, during the first protectorate of Richard, duke of York, there were attempts to reduce the size and expenditure of the Household but Laweshull, by now a groom of the chamber, was able to retain his position there.6 PPC, vi. 225. Whether he accompanied the King to the battle of St. Albans in May 1455 is unknown, but he took the precaution of acquiring a pardon a few months afterwards.7 C67/41, m. 4 (17 Oct. 1455). Yet during the Parliament that opened later that year he lost his farm at Great Wratting through another Act of Resumption, in spite of having petitioned for an exemption from this legislation.8 SC8/28/1369. Still a member of the Household in the final years of Henry VI’s reign, Laweshull went to the Exchequer on several occasions in the later 1450s to collect instalments of sums that the King had granted to him and his fellow grooms and pages and, before the end of the decade, he held the position of yeoman of the chamber.9 E403/807, m. 10; 809, m. 5; 816, m. 3; E361/6, rot. 51d. At the beginning of 1461, however, by which date the Yorkists had control of the King and government, a commission was issued for the arrest of Laweshull and a number of gentlemen from Essex who had taken part in unlawful gatherings and ‘insurrections’.10 CPR, 1452-61, p. 655.

In the light of this commission, it is inevitable that Laweshull should have lost his place in the Household at Edward IV’s accession. In July 1461 the new King sent letters to the Augustinian canons at Barnwell, Cambridgeshire, to request that they should admit his servant Robert Freville to such corrody or maintenance that the MP had previously received from their priory.11 CCR, 1461-8, p. 103. Laweshull benefited from the restoration of Henry VI in 1470, although it is impossible to tell if he re-entered the Household. In November that year, the Crown granted him and Henry Turnowe a 21-year lease of the manor of Great Wratting, in the Suffolk parish where he had previously held lands.12 CFR, xx. 278. It is not clear when Laweshull died although an inquisition held before the Essex escheator in 1486 found that the recently deceased ‘William Lawsyll’ had held lands at Great Stambridge in that county.13 CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 611. Both the calendared version and the original of the inquisition (C142/23/44) state that the William Lawsyll in question died on ‘1 May 3 Richard III’, a date that does not exist. Presumably, this is an error for 1 May 1485. A William Laushull was a feoffee for Roger Darcy in the late 1490s: CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 555. Conceivably, this William, whose successor was his young son John, was the MP: the MP took part in conveyances of property in Essex, and Great Cornard was near the Essex-Suffolk boundary.14 CCR, 1454-61, p. 338; 1476-85, no. 994; Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 59.