LEVEDON, Roger

Of uncertain antecedents, Levedon was probably related to John Levedon, one of the executors of John Vyel† (d.1399) of Bristol.6 Bristol Wills (Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. 1886), 57. He himself was active in the town by May 1413 when he and John Talbot received a conveyance of a messuage and garden in Redcliffe Street from two other townsmen, John Frere and Richard Marche. Twelve years later, he and Talbot conveyed the same properties to Thomas Young II* and John Burton I*.7 Bristol RO, St. Thomas the Martyr parish recs., P/St.T/D/45, 47. While the purpose of these transactions is unknown, Levedon regularly acted as a feoffee and witness for his fellow burgesses and the gentry of Somerset and Gloucestershire.8 CCR, 1419-22, p. 111; 1429-35, p. 162; Recs. All Saints Bristol, iii (Bristol Rec. Soc. lvi), 400, 401, 413; St. Thomas the Martyr parish recs., P/St.T/D/134-5, 138; Bristol RO, Ashton Court mss, AC/D/1/47-48; CIMisc. viii. 64; CFR, xvi. 277; CPR, 1436-41, p. 164; E159/211, commissiones Mich.; Som. Feet of Fines, ii (Som. Rec. Soc. xxii), 94. He was also an executor of William Pays of Bristol (d.1420), Richard Clerk (who appears to have died before 1422) and the prominent Bristolian lawyer, Sir John Juyn (d.1440).9 Bristol Wills, 107; CP40/647, att. rot. 1d; Reg. Stafford, ii (Som. Rec. Soc. xxxii), 253-5. His connexion with the Clerk family, from Pensford in Somerset, proved a longstanding one, for he enjoyed a good relationship with Richard’s son and namesake. A Bristol merchant, the younger Richard Clerk served Levedon as a witness, feoffee and surety.10 CP25(1)/291/65/25; Ashton Court mss, AC/1/52, 59, 60/a-b, 63, 90/a; Som. Feet of Fines, ii. 87; E159/208, recorda Trin. rot. 6. Yet Levedon was not always on good terms with all his fellow townsmen, for in the late 1420s or early 1430s Thomas Young II sued him and others in the Chancery in relation to a debt due to the estate of his late father, Thomas Young† (d.1427).11 C1/7/147.

In Bristol Levedon was a parishioner of St. Thomas the Martyr,12 PCC 35 Luffenham. but there is no evidence for his holdings in the town, even though he was a prominent office-holder there. Elected one of its bailiffs in 1417, he attended meetings of the common council from 1419,13 Little Red Bk. i. 86-88, 138-40, 149-53; ii. 118, 144, 169. and began a term as sheriff in the following year. Having sat in the first two Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign, he was subsequently twice mayor. His first term in the mayoralty coincided with a year as mayor of the Bristol staple, a body he also served as a constable. Levedon’s leading role in municipal affairs suggests a man of considerable wealth. Referred to as a ‘merchant’ in a royal pardon that he received in early 1416,14 C67/37, m. 16 (12 Jan.). he certainly traded in grain and very probably in other commodities as well. For example, he obtained licence from the Crown to export grain from Worcestershire, Gloucestershire and Somerset to Gascony in 1431. In the following year the Exchequer demanded that he certify the port from which he had shipped it.15 E159/208, recorda Trin. rot. 6.

Levedon’s income from trade gave him the resources to invest in real property outside Bristol. At various stages during the 1420s, he bought lands at Olveston, Tockington and Hambrook in Gloucestershire, Hampreston in Hampshire, and Long Ashton in Somerset from Edward Brydges and his wife,16 CP25(1)/79/87/24; 291/65/25. and in 1425 Richard Weston of Ashton mortgaged a moiety of his manor at Long Ashton to him for £20, repayable within ten years.17 Ashton Court mss, AC/D/1/56. In late 1429 Levedon conveyed all his properties in Long Ashton to feoffees, headed by Sir John Juyn (who held another manorial moiety there) and also including Stephen Forster* and Thomas Fish*, to hold on his behalf.18 Ibid. AC/D/160/a-b. Afterwards, in the autumn of 1434, he and his feoffees received a quitclaim of the mortgaged manor from Thomas Boucher and his wife, presumably to forestall any claim that the couple might have had to it.19 Som. Feet of Fines, ii. 87. In the same autumn, he alone received a like release from John Weston, a husbandman from Edington in Wiltshire, evidently one of Richard Weston’s relatives.20 Ashton Court mss, AC/D/1/63.

By now, however, Levedon had fallen out with Weston over the mortgage of 1425. In about 1434 or early 1435 Richard sued him in the Chancery, claiming that it had arisen from an arrangement forced upon him by John, Lord Tiptoft†, who had ‘pretended’ a title to the manor of Long Ashton. Powerless to withstand such a great lord, he had bought Tiptoft off with £40 in hand and the promise of a like sum in the future. Later, as the date of payment of the second instalment had loomed ever closer, he had found himself £20 short of the money needed and so had turned to Levedon for the mortgage. His complaint was that Levedon had unfairly exploited the situation by also demanding, in return for the mortgage, an estate for the lives of himself, his wife and their two daughters in other lands belonging to the manor. So far, he added, Levedon had enjoyed possession of both these lands and the mortgaged moiety for nine years, during which period he had derived a total income of £25 10s. from them. The Chancery referred the matter to Sir John Juyn and the serjeant-at-law Richard Newton for arbitration, and the two lawyers announced their award on 16 Mar. 1435. They ordered Levedon to convey the properties that had fallen into his hands to the baron of the Exchequer, John Fray†, and other trustees who were to settle them on Weston’s son and heir John when he attained his majority. Should John die without issue before reaching the age of 21, they were to pass to his younger brother William, while Levedon was named as a remainderman, meaning that he and his heirs would succeed to them were William also to die childless. Furthermore, the arbitrators directed that he should receive full repayment of his loan from the issues of Long Ashton over the next 11 years. In the event, this attempt to resolve the dispute out of court failed and Levedon retained the properties in question.21 C1/9/184-5; 68/56; Ashton Court mss, AC/M/3/6.

By virtue of his continued possession of the moiety, Levedon and his wife Isabel leased out the reversion of a tenement at Long Ashton to a married couple from that parish in mid 1437.22 Ashton Court mss, AC/D/1/64. By then Weston was dead, but his widow Elizabeth continued the dispute with Levedon, and in Michaelmas term that year a suit that she had brought against him in the court of King’s bench at Westminster came to pleadings. Appearing in person, Elizabeth alleged that on 14 Apr. 1435, within a month of the arbitration award, Levedon had assaulted her with a sword and stick in the parish of St. Lawrence Jewry, London. Represented by his attorney, Levedon sought and obtained licence to treat out of court with his opponent until Hilary term 1438 and then again to the following Easter term. In the meantime, Elizabeth also sued Levedon in the Chancery. In a bill of January 1438 she repeated her late husband’s previous complaint to the same court, while adding that Levedon had also attempted to force Weston to transfer the lands that were not part of the mortgage to him in fee. She also blamed Levedon for the failure of the arbitration process, accusing him of having refused to accept the award. The outcome of Elizabeth’s Chancery suit is not known but her action in King’s bench failed. When the parties appeared there in Easter term 1438, Levedon pleaded not guilty and both parties agreed to a trial by jury. In the following term, however, Elizabeth failed to reappear in court and lost her case by default.23 KB27/706, rot. 120d; 708, rot. 26d; C1/9/184-5. Levedon remained in possession of the disputed lands for the rest of his life. He had a rental made for his holdings at Long Ashton in September 1442, and he settled various former Weston properties on his daughter Joan and her husband Richard Wymbyssh three years later.24 Ashton Court mss, AC/M/3/23; AC/D/1/67.

None of Levedon’s real property features in his will, dated 18 July 1447. In the will he asked to be buried in the parish church of St. Thomas the Martyr and set aside £10 for the poor, blind and lame, an act of charity intended for the benefit of the souls of himself, of the elder Richard Clerk and Clerk’s wife and of ‘Sir’ John Fountekke, probably a priest. Levedon also bequeathed half a mark, vestments, a mass book, a chalice and an altar cloth to St. Thomas’s, 2s. to the cathedral church at Wells, a mark to the chapel on the bridge at Bristol and all his household ‘stuff’ to his wife Isabel. Finally, he appointed as his executors Isabel, Richard Wymbyssh and his other son-in-law, John Withyford, the husband of his daughter Agnes, and directed them to dispose of any non-bequeathed moveable goods for the welfare of his soul. He had died by 20 June 1448, when the will was proved.25 PCC 35 Luffenham.

Both Withyford and Wymbyssh were also dead by mid 1453, the date of a settlement in favour of Levedon’s widow. The settlement assigned the manorial moiety at Long Ashton to Isabel for life, with remainder to her widowed daughters and their issue. Should Agnes Withyford and Joan Wymbyssh die childless, the property was to pass to John Cole and his wife, another Agnes, and her children.26 Som. Feet of Fines, ii. 116-17. Presumably, Agnes Cole was in some way related to the Levedons. By the later fifteenth century the other moiety of Long Ashton – that part of the manor not held by the MP – was in the hands of Thomas Withyford. Probably Levedon’s grandson, Thomas fell into dispute over it with Humphrey Seymour. Seymour won the property from him by means of an assize of novel disseisin in 1490, and in Hilary term the following year Withyford appealed unsuccessfully against this judgement in King’s bench.27 CP40/913, rots. 15, 166, 354, 354d; KB27/918, rots. 31, 31d. This was not the end of the matter, for the quarrel went to arbitration a year later.28 Ashton Court mss, AC/D/1/94. The terms of the award are unknown but they must have favoured Withyford since he appears subsequently to have retaken possession. His was a somewhat Pyrrhic victory, however, for his legal battles appear to have caused him some financial distress. In an uncanny echo of the agreement made between the MP and Richard Weston nearly 70 years earlier, by July 1492 he had mortgaged the moiety he had disputed with Seymour, along with a half share of that part of the manor once held by the MP, to the Bristol merchant Richard Ameryk for £160.29 Ibid. AC/D/1/90/a; AC/D/1/95. Later, in the mid 1520s, the lands that Levedon had once held at Long Ashton featured in a Chancery suit brought by John Fyssher against the widowed Joan Broke. Fyssher claimed them by descent, saying that he was the son of Agnes, daughter of Elizabeth Chadworth ‘alias Lyveden’. Possibly this Elizabeth was Isabel Levedon: if so, she would appear to have remarried after the MP’s death. Similarly, if Fyssher’s mother was Levedon’s daughter then Fyssher was Agnes Withyford’s son by a later marriage.30 C1/506/29-36.