LOWYS, John I

No details of Lowys’s parentage have been discovered, but by the time of his return at the latest he may have had a claim to being a local man.3 The glover Robert Lowys, who was active in the mid 1440s and still recorded as holding property in Launceston in a rental of 1463, may have been the MP’s brother: KB27/737, rot. 23; SC11/968. Originally, the family seems to have come from the nearby parish of Altarnon, and it was probably he who at some point in the later years of Henry V’s reign was accused by one John Shirman of disseising him of lands in Tremayne.4 C1/5/181. Lowys trained in the law, and by the 1440s was frequently acting as an attorney for his neighbours in the courts of King’s bench, common pleas and Chancery.5 CP40/733, rot. 301; 739, rot. 320; 740, rot. 107; 743, rot. 411d; KB27/753, rex rot. 22d; C1/9/408; C254/145/9; CFR, xvi. 276. It cannot be ascertained with absolute certainty where he received his early training, but by the mid 1450s he had joined the distinguished fellowship of Lincoln’s Inn.6 Baker, ii. 1014.

On the whole, Lowys appears to have enjoyed cordial relations with his neighbours, although in the spring of 1444 he clashed with one of them, William Skenock*, who like him was a lawyer active at Westminster. The background to the alleged offence is unclear, but on 12 Apr. Skenock procured a writ claiming that two weeks earlier, on Passion Sunday, Lowys, his wife, and an associate, Isabel Trenger, had broken into his house, brutally attacked him, and not only relieved him of a selection of valuables, including ‘a rope of perll orient’, a box of ‘perll orient’, two gold rings and six silver spoons, but also on departing had taken a female servant, Mariota Rovea, with them, causing him a total of £500 in damages. Lowys denied these charges, asserting that he had merely acted in self defence when attacked by Skenock, and that under the terms of Mariota’s contract she had been entitled to withdraw from Skenock’s service, which she had done, leaving her free to enter his own employ.7 CP40/734, rot. 401; 736, rot. 339. It is possible that it was this dispute with the influential Skenock, who had only recently relinquished the under shrievalty of Cornwall, which motivated Lowys to seek election to Parliament. In the first half of the 1440s the burgesses of Dunheved experienced considerable difficulties in finding men willing to serve as their representatives at a moderate wage, and three years earlier, in 1442, the sheriff had even been forced to return two fictitious names to Westminster. Lowys’s readiness to serve at a fixed rate of pay must thus have been welcome to the authorities, who in acknowledgement of his professional status agreed to give him a whole mark in wages, whereas his colleague, John Bale*, had to content himself with half that sum.8 Cornw. RO, Launceston bor. recs., B/LAUS/138, f. 6v. Nevertheless, both men probably came to regret their modest demands, for the Parliament continued into 1446, and turned out to be one of the longest and busiest of Henry VI’s reign.

Little else is heard of Lowys after his spell in the Commons. In October 1455 he availed himself of the general pardon issued that year.9 C67/41, m. 28. He was certainly still alive in June 1464, when he was among the beneficiaries of a gift of goods and chattels by his son, William, a London haberdasher, but it is less certain whether it was he who in October 1469 was trading in tin at Lostwithiel, for there was at least one other namesake, a London tailor, active at the time.10 This yr. Lohn Lowys was William Lowys’s cousin, and thus probably the MP’s nephew: CCR, 1461-8, p. 239; C1/32/389-90.