EVERDON, Thomas

Everdon was a lawyer from a family of middling gentry, long established at Bushbury near Wolverhampton.5 S. Shaw, Staffs. ii. 186. His nomination to the quorum of the peace and the general pattern of his career marks him out as a lawyer. He is not, however, to be confused with his namesake and contemporary of the lawyers’ parish of St. Clement Danes: CCR, 1461-8, p. 326; KB29/73, rot. 33d. Early references to him show him in association with one of the most important men in Staffordshire, John Hampton II*, an esquire of the King’s body and a near-neighbour of the Everdons. In Easter term 1438 he and his father were defendants in a collusive action of formedon sued by Hampton, and a year later he offered surety when the Crown granted Hampton the custody of a Shropshire manor.6 CP40/709, rot. 301; CPR, 1441-6, pp. 239-40. These instances of co-operation were either underpinned by or a prelude to a tie of kinship between the two families, for there is strong evidence that Hampton’s brother, Boyce, took as his wife our MP’s sister, Elizabeth. This match had probably taken place by June 1441, when John and Boyce Hampton acted in the settlement of a jointure on Elizabeth’s sister, Clemence, and her husband, Nicholas Warynges†.7 Shaw, ii. 186; Staffs. RO, Sutherland mss, D593/B/1/26/6/12. Another of Everdon’s early patrons was the Staffordshire peer, John Sutton, Lord Dudley. In 1442 Dudley named him as his attorney to sue out of royal hands services due to him from the manor of Birmingham, and a year later he stood mainpernor when Dudley was granted the keeping of the castle and manor of Shrawardine (Shropshire).8 KB27/724, att. rot. 2d; CFR, xvii. 260.

Such connexions were important to a young lawyer, but, without property of his own, Everdon could not expect to play a part in county administration. His father was still alive in Trinity term 1445, when father and son joined together, as feoffees, in making a jointure settlement upon their neighbour, Thomas Swynnerton of Hilton, and Elizabeth, his wife.9 Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xi. 234. This, however, is his father’s last appearance in the records, and Everdon is likely to have inherited soon afterwards. Everdon’s inheritance, to judge from his will, was worth about 56 marks p.a., and consisted of property in Worcestershire as well as Staffordshire.10 His patrimony was burdened by his mother’s survival until at least 1449, when she was farming property at Kidderminster from the priory of Maiden Bradley: SC6/1054/11. Allied with his legal training, this was enough to make him a man of some substance, and it is not surprising that he should have attracted further patrons. On 14 Oct. 1448 Sir James Butler, who was to be promoted to the earldom of Wiltshire in the following July, named him among his feoffees in the manor of Ashby de la Zouche (Leicestershire); by 1449 he was steward and farmer of the Kidderminster property of the priory of Maiden Bradley; and by 1453 he was in receipt of an annual fee of two marks from one of the greatest of the Worcestershire gentry, Humphrey Stafford III*.11 CIMisc. viii. 387; SC6/1054/11; Add. Roll 74173. These connexions with Butler and Stafford, together with his longer-standing association with Hampton, provide the context for his election for Newcastle-under-Lyme to the Parliament of 1449 (Feb.), in which Hampton and Stafford’s father, (Sir) Humphrey Stafford I*, represented Staffordshire. When in Parliament, Everdon involved himself in Butler’s affairs. On 25 Mar., while Parliament was in session, the King’s esquire, Nicholas St. Loe, secured a royal licence to grant the keeping of Gillingham forest in Dorset to our MP and others, several of whom numbered among Butler’s intimates.12 C219/15/6; CPR, 1446-52, p. 242.

Most of the evidence of Everdon’s activities in the 1450s shows him busy promoting the concerns of the earl of Wiltshire and Humphrey Stafford III, who succeeded his father in 1450. By Trinity term 1450 he was one of the earl’s feoffees in a Warwickshire manor; and in May 1454 he joined with another of these feoffees, Henry Filongley*, in offering mainprise for the earl in an Exchequer grant.13 CP40/758, rot. 7d; CFR, xix. 89. The surviving account of Stafford’s receiver for 1454-5 records payment to Everdon beyond his fee. He was paid 6s. 8d. for prosecuting writs against Sir William Trussell†; and, more interestingly, he was reimbursed for the 30s. that he had paid to the sheriff and escheator of Wiltshire and incurred as costs in the Exchequer in connexion with the Staffords’ manor of Ditchampton (Wiltshire), resumed into royal hands by Act of Resumption.14 Add. Roll 74174.

Everdon’s high standing in the late 1450s is reflected in his appointment to the quorum of the Staffordshire bench in 1456 and to that of Worcestershire two years later.15 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 677, 681. He was active as a Worcs. j.p. in the summer of 1459: KB27/795, rex rot. 32d. The latter appointment was probably prompted by the augmentation of his lands in that county through marriage, in about 1457, to the widow of Thomas Rous of Rous Lench, although it is not clear what lands she brought him. A dispute with her stepsons, Rous’s sons by an earlier marriage, may have diminished her interest in the Rous estates, but she is unlikely to have come to Everdon without some provision for her widowhood. A later agreement, made in February 1468, suggests that she had an interest in the manor of Rous Lench, which she leased to her stepson, Thomas Rous.16 Wm. Salt. Arch. Soc. ser. 3, 1928, pp. 87, 92; C1/24/205; PCC 9 Wattys (PROB11/6, f. 71). She was also the wid. of William Fitzwilliam, but nothing is known of him.

During the crisis years of 1459-61 Everdon had strong reasons to favour the house of Lancaster: he was of the affinity of the militant Lancastrian earl of Wiltshire and he was a friend of Henry VI’s old servant, John Hampton.17 This connexion between the Everdons and Hamptons explains the presence, from the mid 1440s, of two Everdons in the royal households: our MP’s brother Roger was one of the pages of the queen’s robes, and John Everdon, whose relationship to Thomas is unknown, was cofferer of the King’s household: CPR, 1441-6, p. 433; A.R. Myers, Crown, Household and Parl. 189, 226, 228. Tellingly, in this regard, he was appointed to the Lancastrian commission of array of December 1459 in both Staffordshire and Worcestershire. None the less, although the change of regime meant the loss of an important patron (Wiltshire was executed after the battle of Towton), Everdon was otherwise largely unaffected. He makes fewer appearances in the records during the last decade of his life, but that this was not a function of political disfavour is implied by his continued appointment to the local bench in either Worcestershire of Staffordshire (although, curiously, not both: in 1464 he was moved from the quorum of the one bench to the other).18 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 558-9; 1461-7, pp. 572, 575.

Everdon was probably seen as politically neutral, a conclusion consistent with his appointment to a commission of array in March 1470 and his retention on the Worcestershire bench during the Readeption.19 CPR, 1467-77, p. 636. His few other appearances in the records are such as might be expected of a lawyer with a local practice. In the autumn of 1461 he was co-defendant with two more prominent lawyers, Thomas Lyttleton and Richard Neel*, as they attempted to protect their title as feoffees of the late earl of Wiltshire in the manor of Bordesley (Warwickshire) against Sir Thomas Erdington*; and on 16 Nov. 1461 he witnessed a deed at Westminster for Ralph Wolseley*, a Staffordshire lawyer who had actively supported the Yorkists. Later, in 1466, he brought an action for debt as an executor of Nicholas Ashby*, who had been MP for Stafford in the Parliament in which he himself had sat, and he acted as arbiter in a dispute between two farmers of Halesowen (Worcestershire) over a croft there.20 CP40/802, rot. 125; 818, rot. 217d; CCR, 1461-8, p. 82; Birmingham Archs., Lyttleton of Hagley Hall mss, 3279/351437.

Everdon last appears in an active role early in 1471 when he acted in a fine for Richard, son and heir of another local lawyer, Richard Blike*.21 CP25(1)/294/75/38. Later in the same year, on 21 Sept., ‘eger in corpore’, he made a will that tells us much about his family. The feoffees in his lands in Staffordshire and Worcestershire, his brother, Roger, and Thomas Swynnerton, were to provide portions totalling 130 marks for his three daughters, and, more interestingly, to apprentice one of his sons, Richard, to the mercers in London or to some other ‘artem honestam’. His wife Elizabeth was to have for her life his manor of Seawall with lands in Bushbury and Wolverhampton, which he had previously assigned to her. On her death his feoffees were to settle lands worth 40 marks p.a. on his son, Humphrey, and his issue, with successive remainders in tail to Humphrey’s brothers, Nicholas and Henry, each of whom, if resources sufficed, was to have lands worth eight marks p.a. The two feoffees, who were also named as executors, did not have to wait long to implement these instructions. The will was proved a month and a day after its making.22 PCC 3 Wattys (PROB11/6, f. 20v). Chancery was slow to absorb the fact of his death. He was appointed to Worcs. comms. in Mar. 1472 and Aug. 1473 and to the bench there in Feb. 1473: CPR, 1467-77, pp. 350, 406, 636.