FALK, Richard

Richard was probably the younger brother of both Nicholas Falk, with whom he represented Hereford in the Parliament of 1435, and John Falk, one of the attestors to their election. His kinship with the former is implied in two suits of 1433: Sir John Skydemore* sued his putative mother for £20, and, in a separate action, our MP and Nicholas for £10 each.2 C219/14/5; CP40/688, rot. 433d. Richard was the poorest of the three putative brothers. In the subsidy return of 1451 Nicholas was assessed in the city of Hereford on an income of £5 p.a. and John on one of £4, but no assessment is recorded against Richard. None the less, other evidence shows that he was not without resources of his own. In 1428, very early in his career, he leased a messuage, 72 acres of land and eight acres of meadow (which he held by customary tenure in the cathedral chapter of Hereford’s manor of Gorwall in Hereford), to David Shepherd at £3 p.a. for the term of nine years.3 E179/117/64; C1/9/306.

Such holdings gave Richard substance enough to take an active part in local affairs. On 26 July 1444 he served on an inquisition post mortem jury, assembled at Hereford and headed by Nicholas Falk, in respect of Thomas Walwyn† of Stoke Edith.4 CIPM, xxvi. 167. More significantly, when Nicholas was elected as mayor in the following October, Richard was chosen to the lesser office of King’s bailiff, an office he subsequently held for at least two further terms. He also took part in a mayoral election on at least one occasion: on 21 Oct. 1448 he was one of the electors assembled in the church of St. Peter when their deliberations were, according to a later indictment, violently disrupted by a group of disaffected citizens headed by John Weobley*. Interestingly, our MP headed the city jury which, in August 1452, made this and other politically-charged indictments before royal justices sent to the county to investigate recent Yorkist-inspired risings there. Among those they indicted was the duke of York’s steward, (Sir) Walter Devereux I*, who was accused of giving livery to Weobley and his men.5 KB9/34/14/5, 5d. This is unlikely to have endeared Falk to the powerful Yorkist faction in the county and helps to explain why he was drawn into the dramatic events which overtook Hereford in the spring of 1456.

Our knowledge of this violent episode depends on indictments taken before royal commissioners a year later, indictments which, given the prevailing political divide in nation and county, must be regarded as an ex parte source and which some of the indicted later claimed were secured by conspiracy; none the less, the story they tell is unlikely to have been pure invention. They claim that on 15 Mar. a Yorkist gang, headed by Sir William Herbert* and Devereux’s son, Walter II*, intent on revenge for the killing of Herbert’s kinsman, Walter Vaughan, a few days before, intimidated the local j.p.s into taking an indictment of murder against six citizens and promptly hanged the indicted. Our MP (at least if we are to follow the story of the indictments) may have been lucky to escape the same fate, for on 1 Apr. Herbert, allegedly at the head of 1,500 men, forced a county coroner’s jury to lay an indictment for Vaughan’s murder, naming Falk, described as ‘of Hereford, gentleman’, as one of the accessories. Four days later, Falk is said to have suffered more directly: John ap Harry and other of Herbert’s adherents broke into his house, imprisoned him for a day and extorted 20s. from him.6 KB9/35/44, 60, 61, 70, 72. If the indictments are taken at face value, he was an innocent victim. Significantly, however, his name appears among the several citizens and others sued, in 1460, for conspiracy to have innocent men indicted for the murders of 15 Mar.; further, slight suspicion attaches to the fact that Nicholas Falk headed the Hereford jury, a jury which also included one of the alleged conspirators, Thomas Chippenham. The truth of the matter is beyond recovery; all that can be safely said is that our MP belonged to a faction in the town opposed to the Yorkists.7 KB27/798, rot. 40d; 809, rot. 60d; KB9/35/72d.

The events of March 1456 caused Falk legal difficulties. Although the indictment laid against him by the coroner’s jury was invalid, even leaving aside the question of coercion – the county coroner had no jurisdiction in Hereford, the indictment was taken at Bredwardine, many miles from the scene of the murder, and it was falsely dated to 15 Mar. – these facts were not established until the arrival of the royal commissioners in April 1457. Falk was therefore put to the considerable trouble of answering in the court of King’s bench. On 31 May 1456 he appeared in person there and was dismissed to the bail of his putative brother, Nicholas, Henry Oldcastle*, John Chippenham and John Dryver of Clehonger, probably a servant of Sir John Barre*, one of the leaders of the Lancastrian faction in the county. Thereafter he was troubled by the conspiracy action, which continued until at least 1463, although this appears never to have come to trial.8 KB27/810, rot. 50d.

The few other facts that can be gleaned about Falk’s career are much less dramatic. As a juror before the royal commissioners in 1452, he pressed a matter of his own, claiming, by bill, damages of 200 marks against Henry Chippenham*, for frustrating an action he had brought in the mayor’s court when Chippenham was mayor as long before as 1437. He was fined for failing to prosecute the bill. Earlier he may have used his own influence in the same court to an illicit purpose: according to a Chancery petition of about 1435, during the mayoralty of his putative brother, John, he had sued the lessee of his property at Gorwall, David Shepherd, for arrears of rent, and had him condemned, even though the lease had been terminated by the lord of the manor as against manorial custom.9 KB9/34/2/29, 101; C1/9/306.

In view of what is known of Falk’s political sympathies, it is not surprising to find him among the attestors to the Hereford election to the Coventry Parliament of 1459. Both of those returned, Otto Cornwall* and John Holland* , were among his fellow defendants in the conspiracy action, as were the mayor who conducted the election, John Chippenham, and two of the other attestors, Thomas Breinton* and James Mey. Too much should not, however, be made of this, since largely the same group of attestors, among whom was Falk, witnessed the election held in the very different political conditions of September 1460, when the Yorkist, John Welford*, was elected. In any event, Falk was too insignificant a figure to suffer for his political allegiances, and he weathered the change of regime without apparent consequences. He continued to play a part in the city’s affairs during Edward IV’s reign, last appearing in the records as attestor to the Hereford election of 25 Sept. 1472.10 C219/16/5, 6; 17/2.