DENYS, Thomas

A lawyer and ‘gentleman’,7 He is not to be confused with his namesake, another East Anglian lawyer who was murdered in July 1461. Denys was active by 1414. Of unknown antecedents and perhaps not a native of Ipswich, he was certainly involved in the town’s affairs by June 1420 when he was a mainpernor for one of its bailiffs, William Debenham*.8 CCR, 1419-22, p. 115. Not long afterwards, he was a surety for John Deken*, an Ipswich mercer whom John Sperlyng, a prisoner in the Marshalsea turned appellant, had accused of robbery. In November 1423 Deken appeared in the court of King’s bench, where Denys and others stood bail for him, and he was found not guilty by a jury sitting in the following February. Denys likewise stood surety for William Kecche, an Ipswich baker whom Sperlyng had accused of a similar crime.9 KB27/650, rex rots. 21d, 27, 27d. In February 1425, Denys and four associates (a merchant and three tradesmen from Hadleigh and its vicinity) formally acknowledged that they owed £10 to the baron of the Exchequer, Thomas Banaster, although for what reason is unknown.10 E159/201, recogniciones Hil.

Denys began his career as an office-holder at Ipswich at the end of the 1420s. Appointed a j.p. in February 1428, in the following year he was one of the portmen who helped to make ordinances for the borough. In early 1431, he sat as an MP for the first time, and later that year he became treasurer of Ipswich, an office that he still held when elected to his second Parliament. He served at least nine terms as a bailiff of the borough, during the third of which he and his co-bailiff, John Caldwell*, were featured in a Chancery suit brought by Robert Smith, a local merchant. This concerned a debt of £9 13s. 4d. that John Smith, an Ipswich vintner, claimed from Robert in the borough court. Robert alleged that the debt was not his responsibility, since it arose from a tun of wine that Denys and Caldwell had sent him to John to buy.11 C1/46/363. It is unclear whether Smith was John Smith II*. By the later 1440s, Denys held the position of Ipswich’s attorney in the common law courts, with a fee of 20s. p.a. This fee features in the borough chamberlains’ account of 1446-7, which also records that Denys and Roger Stannard were paid 26s. 8d. during the same accounting year for having the town’s charter enrolled at Westminster. It is probable that Denys remained Ipswich’s attorney until the end of his life, since the municipal authorities ordered the payment of his fee at a borough court held in October 1459. The same court also appointed him and Richard Felawe* to go to London, to represent the burgesses in a suit between the borough and the King.12 Chamberlains’ acct. C/3/3/1/1; Add. 30158, f. 23. The surviving borough records also provide further evidence of Denys’s activities at Ipswich. In July 1434, for example, he and other burgesses contributed a loan of £24 to the Crown,13 E401/737, m. 20. and in August 1443 the borough entrusted him and several associates with the profits of certain properties for three years, for them to spend on maintaining the ‘pageants’ of the local guild of Corpus Christi. Later, during his fifth term as a bailiff, Denys helped to audit the accounts of Ipswich’s chamberlains, a duty which he again performed in the late 1450s, and he was present in the borough court in July 1454, to witness the admission of Sir Roger Chamberlain* as a burgess of Ipswich.14 Add. 30158, ff. 8v, 13v, 17v, 20v, 22.

Although busy at Ipswich, Denys pursued a parallel career at Westminster. By the early 1420s, he was acting as an attorney and surety in the court of common pleas, where he was still an attorney well over two decades later. Probably the most important of all of his clients was William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, for whom he was attorney in several common pleas suits of the 1440s. In one of these cases, which came to pleading in Michaelmas term 1442, the earl succeeded in winning damages from John Jenney and his sons, William* and John*, for breaking into his warren at Benhall and ‘Blykkyng’ in east Suffolk. From time to time, Denys was himself a litigant in the same court, in connexion with debts others had contracted with him.15 CP40/644, rot. 322; 648, rot. 150d; 655, rot. 84d; 657, rot. 151d; 660, rot. 302; 661, rot. 327; 662, rot. 328d; 667, rot. 307; 687, rots. 87, 260, 293, 496; 727, rots. 279d, 475; 739, rot. 120; 742, rot. 173d; 744, rot. 340; 746, rot. 487d; 752, rot. 433; 754, rot. 320d; 785, rot. 332; 799, rot. 391d. He also practised as an attorney in King’s bench, although initially not without controversy. In late 1433, the Crown ordered the sheriff of Suffolk to secure his appearance in that court, to answer the charge that he had acted as an unlicensed attorney there in a trespass suit. This order was evidently to no avail, for successive sheriffs of Suffolk received similar writs over the next 20 years and it would appear unlikely that he ever had to account for himself in this matter.16 KB27/690, rex rot. 13d; 706, rex rot. 16d; 714, rex rot. 16d; 726, rex rot. 12; 742, rex. rot. 16d; 758, rex rot. 11; 770, rex rot. 16. He must have acquired a licence before the end of the 1430s, however, for he represented clients in lawsuits emanating from Essex that came before King’s bench in 1439 and 1449, and is included among the lists of attorneys in the relevant plea rolls for these years.17 KB27/711, 753.

Not surprisingly for a lawyer, Denys was frequently a feoffee in Ipswich and elsewhere in Suffolk, and acted as such in a number of settlements concerning property at Harwich as well. One of those with whom he was associated as a feoffee was William Debenham, the man for whom he had stood mainpernor early in his career.18 CP25(1)/224/114/19, 115/3, 117/8, 25; Add. Chs. 10142-3, 10145; CCR, 1429-35, p. 63; 1441-7, p. 142; 1447-54, pp. 519-20; Stowe Ch. 412; CAD, ii. A3474, 3717; Cal. Muns. Harwich, 52, 53, 54. He participated, possibly on Debenham’s behalf, in a quitclaim of properties in Monk’s and Earl’s Stonham, in October 1434, and in the same month he stood surety when the Crown granted Debenham the keeping of two properties in Ipswich.19 CP25(1)/224/116/15; CFR, xvi. 218-19. Two years later, he and Debenham were among those to whom John Andrew III* made a release of land in Sproughton which he had recently inherited from his father, James Andrew†.20 CCR, 1435-41, p. 107. In the following decade Denys and Andrew were associated with (Sir) Philip Wentworth* as co-plaintiffs in a minor trespass suit filed in King’s bench, probably because they were Wentworth’s feoffees.21 KB27/750, rot. 64. On at least two occasions Denys’s work as a trustee caused him trouble. At some stage in the 1430s or early 1440s, John Chestan of Ipswich sued him and John Felawe (a relative of Richard) in the Chancery for failing to convey to him lands and tenements that they had allegedly held in trust for his father.22 C1/10/70. Later, in 1456, Thomas Sawcer filed a bill in the same court in an effort to gain possession of properties in the town that were in the hands of Denys and other feoffees.23 C1/25/184.

Denys was himself a landowner of some substance. Near Ipswich he possessed lands at Whitton and a manor in Sproughton and Bramford (probably acquired in the late 1430s), and by his death he also held two properties located further afield, the manor of ‘Ramsholthall’ in Ramsholt and the moiety of another manor at Whatfield.24 CP25(1)/224/117/8; W.A. Copinger, Suff. Manors, vi. 93; Reg. Jekkys, f. 2. Despite this, he appears to have remained resident in the borough, since he was ‘of Ipswich’ when he took out royal pardons in 1437, 1446, 1451 and 1455.25 C67/38, m. 17; 39, m. 8; 40, m. 5; 41, m. 20. He owned several properties in Ipswich itself, where he also farmed lands from the corporation.26 CP25(1)/224/221/4; C5/11/8, m. 4d; Reg. Jekkys, f. 2; Add. 30158, f. 6v; Bacon, 99, 108, 124; HMC 9th Rep. pt. 1, p. 234. Some of his property in the town came from the Crown, since in 1445 the King granted him the keeping of a cottage and tenement there for ten years, in return for a rent of 6s. 8d. p.a.27 CFR, xvii. 322-3. Apart from whatever income he derived from his lands and profession, Denys had commercial interests as well, for he was a seller of ale at Ipswich in the early 1420s.28 Amor, 246. Furthermore, one of his closest associates was the prominent merchant, Richard Felawe, with whom he took bonds from Londoners on at least two occasions, very probably in connexion with business dealings.29 CP40/754, rot. 320d; E13/150, rot. 5.

Denys displayed his trust in Felawe by appointing him one of his executors. He died during his ninth term as bailiff of Ipswich, in the spring of 1464 and, on 12 Apr. that year, John Walworth† took over from him for the remainder of that term. In his will, made in the summer of 1460, Denys asked to be buried in the parish church of St. Margaret, near the sepulchre of his second wife, Ellen. He presented a cope to the same church, as well as 20s. towards its upkeep, in return for prayers for the souls of himself and his parents, and he left 40s. to each of the houses of the Dominicans, Franciscans and Carmelites in Ipswich. He also provided for three chaplains to sing in St. Margaret’s for three years, for the benefit of the souls of himself, Ellen and Joan, his first wife, and he requested prayers from the Austin nunnery at Campsea Ash, to whose prioress he left 6s. 8d. and to each of its nuns 40d. To his third and surviving wife, Margery, he awarded a life interest in his chief messuage and two closes in the borough, with remainder to his daughter, Elizabeth, when she attained her majority. He also directed that Margery should receive for life an annual pension of 16 marks, charged upon the issues of lands he held in the parishes of St. Mary at the Tower and St. Laurence, as well as £20 of money from his chest and various other items, including silver plate and half of all his household goods and utensils. He was largely even-handed towards his children, possibly because they had not all been born to the one wife. His son and heir, Thomas (like his daughter, still a minor), was to have his manorial properties in Ramsholt and Whatfield and a messuage in St. Mary at the Quay, when he reached his majority, but his manor in Sproughton and Bramford was destined for Elizabeth. He left property in St. Mary at the Tower and St. Laurence to another son, William, to take possession after Margery had died and he had come of age. Denys also provided for his bastard son, Henry, directing that he should have another messuage in St. Mary at the Quay if he attained his majority.30 Reg. Jekkys, f. 2; Add. 30158, f. 26.

Apart from Richard Felawe, Denys appointed another Ipswich burgess, John Drayll, to act as his executor. In the event, Drayll did not long survive him,31 HMC 9th Rep. pt. 1, p. 229. meaning that it fell to Felawe alone to administer his estate, a far from trouble-free task. During the late 1460s or early 1470s, Felawe sued Robert Hopton* and John Hoo in the Chancery, over a debt secured upon a messuage at Southwold. In 1461, Denys had come to an arrangement with Richard Skylman of that town, who owed him 40 marks. Skylman had agreed to enfeoff that property on Hopton, Hoo and others, on the understanding that, if necessary, these feoffees were to sell it, using the proceeds to satisfy Denys. The debt remaining unpaid, within a few years Hopton had married Skylman’s widow and had refused to relinquish the messuage to Felawe, so prompting the latter’s Chancery suit.32 C1/41/152. Felawe was also the defendant in another Chancery suit, again in his capacity as Denys’s executor. Soon after the MP’s death, his widow, Margery, had married Thomas Wath and, after Wath had died a few years later, William Wade, esquire, and she and Wade began proceedings against Felawe in that court at some stage in the early 1470s. Both their bill and Felawe’s answer are now faded and difficult to read, but they show that the Wades’ complaint concerned Felawe’s conduct as an executor. He was alleged to have not only promoted Margery’s marriage to Wath (from whom she later became estranged), in return for a reward from him for helping to secure her hand, but also to have withheld a jointure of £20 p.a. which Denys had provided for her. In reply Felawe claimed that Denys’s lands could not have supported such a jointure and that the administration of the Denys estate had already been settled, following an earlier quarrel between him on the one hand and Margery and Wath on the other. According to him, this settlement, imposed by a local magnate who had intervened in the quarrel, had awarded him 100 marks from the estate to dispose of for the good of Denys’s soul.33 C1/40/64. Only the magnate’s first name, John, is visible in Felawe’s badly faded answer. Later, in the spring of 1475, the Wades were allotted a life interest in various Denys properties after they had conveyed them to Felawe and another lawyer, Roger Townshend†, and three years later the couple made a release to the two lawyers of lands which Denys had held in Ipswich and Whitton.34 CP25(1)/224/221/4; Ipswich recs., composite roll, 1478-9, C/2/10/1/8. Felawe would appear, therefore, to have won his argument with the Wades, although whether the MP’s will was ever fully performed is highly questionable.