FITZALEYN, John

Possibly a lawyer rather than a typical townsman,6 He is referred to as a lawyer in VCH Oxon. iv. 64, an assertion apparently based on the long robe he is depicted wearing on his brass. Confusingly, the same volume of the VCH also describes him as a ‘civil lawyer’ (p. 60), but there is no evidence that he was a notary or in minor orders. Fitzaleyn appears to have settled in Oxford relatively late in life. He was a landowner in north Oxfordshire, and resided at Sibford in that part of the county during the 1420s. Probably it was in defence of interests in that parish that he sued William Reve of nearby Great Rollright two decades later, for which action he employed the Warwickshire lawyer, Edward Duraunt*, as his attorney.7 KB27/749, att. rot. 1. Fitzaleyn also possessed interests at Sandford-on-Thames a few miles south of Oxford and was sometimes described as ‘of Sandford’ after he had moved to the town, at an unknown date before 1442.8 VCH Oxon. iv. 60; CFR, xiv. 417; xv. 7, 220; Feudal Aids, iv. 185; E159/226, brevia Trin. rot. 4d. From the middle of the previous decade until the later 1440s, Fitzaleyn was associated with Thomas Adderbury, a landowner in Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire, in a series of conveyances. Initially at least, this was as a feoffee on Adderbury’s behalf, although it would appear that he purchased Thomas’s manor at Walton, Northamptonshire, and his lands in Adderbury in north Oxfordshire in about 1447. Shortly before his death, he conveyed these estates away to John Goylyn of Sandford-on-Thames, but it is far from clear that the latter had bought them from him. It is possible that the two men were relatives since several decades later Goylyn (or perhaps his son) was referred to as ‘Fezalen alias Goylyn’.9 Egerton 1938, ff. 86v-95; Cart. Oseney Abbey, iii (Oxf. Historical Soc. xci), 248. VCH Oxon. ix. 21 assumes that Fitzaleyn bought from Adderbury and sold to Goylyn, but the evidence provided by the deeds recorded in Egerton 1938 is far from clear-cut.

The earliest known connexion between Fitzaleyn and Oxford is a deed of November 1440 by which Thomas Wilde* and the town clerk, Michael Norton, conveyed various properties to him, his wife Joan and his heirs. These properties comprised Ducklington’s Inn, the advowson of Ducklington’s chantry, a cottage and various shops and cellars, all in the Oxford parish of St. Aldate, ‘Soler Hall’ in that of St. Edward, and holdings elsewhere in the town and its suburbs. The conveyance probably followed Fitzaleyn’s purchase of the same properties, perhaps from the executors of the alderman, Thomas Gybbus. Gybbus was the former owner of the inn, advowson and ‘Soler Hall’ (and perhaps the other holdings as well), and Norton at least was one of the executors in question.10 Wood’s Surv. Antiqs. Oxf. iii (Oxf. Historical Soc. xxxvii), 20; Cart. Hosp. St. John the Baptist, ii (Oxf. Historical Soc. lxviii), 182-3; Surv. Oxf. ii (Oxf. Historical Soc. n.s. xx), 93, 95. It is unclear when Fitzaleyn adopted Oxford as his main residence, although he did not hold office there until the later 1440s. Lawyer or no, his fellow burgesses must have had a hearty respect for his abilities, for he rose extremely rapidly through the municipal hierarchy. He appears to have become an alderman at the same time as he was elected as one of the town’s bailiffs and he began the first of two consecutive terms as mayor as soon as he had completed his year as bailiff. During the first of these terms, the burgesses submitted a petition to the Parliament of November 1449, seeking an exemption from a statute of 1406 restricting apprenticeships to children of 20s. freeholders. They claimed that the statute had caused members of the university to leave Oxford for lack of tradesmen to serve them, and that this exodus was hurting the town’s economy. After the petition went to the Lords, the King replied that he would consider the matter. This was not the first time that Oxford had sought such an exemption from the statute, and it would appear that the burgesses were again unsuccessful since they were to submit a similar petition in 1455.11 SC8/28/1388; 132/6599; RP, v. 205, 337-8 (cf. PROME, xii. 157, 444); M. Davies, ‘Lobbying Parliament’, in Parchment and People ed. Clark, 146.

It was also during Fitzaleyn’s first term as mayor that the Crown sent a writ to the Exchequer commanding it to cease pursuing him over escapes of felons, over goods and chattels belonging to felons and outlaws and other demands it was making against him. Although dated 24 May 1450, the writ can have had no connexion with his conduct as an office-holder at Oxford since it related to matters predating 9 Apr. 1446 and referred to him as ‘of Sandford’. Evidently, it applied to a position he had once held elsewhere, but what this office was is unknown.12 E159/226, brevia Trin. rot. 4d. Shortly after beginning his second term as mayor, Fitzaleyn gained a seat in the Commons. The Parliament of 1450 lasted for three sessions and did not dissolve until late May 1451, and he must have relied on a deputy to exercise his duties as mayor in his absence. Yet, in spite of that absence, his fellow burgesses chose him, during the second of those sessions, to arbitrate in a dispute that had come before the university chancellor’s court at Oxford. No other arbitrator was nominated, so the court authorized him to make his award upon his return from Westminster (‘ad quintum decimum diem inclusiue post adventum eiusdem maioris proximo ad villam Oxonie’). By the end of the Parliament Fitzaleyn had concerns of his own to attend to, for on 26 May 1451 Edmund Rede*, the sheriff of Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, seized one of his messuages into the King’s hands. One authority suggests that he had suffered this sanction after becoming caught up in the political upheavals of 1450-1, but the reality is more prosaic. Exchequer records indicate that the seizure related to his activities as a royal tax collector in Oxfordshire, specifically his commission of August 1449; presumably, he had failed to render an adequate account.13 Registrum Cancellarii Oxoniensis, i (Oxf. Historical Soc. xciii), 231;

Having stepped down as mayor for the last time, Fitzaleyn survived for just over a year. When he died in the autumn of 1452, he held the office of verderer of Shotover and Stowood, the royal forests situated just to the east of Oxford, and six days later the Crown ordered the sheriff of Oxfordshire to hold an election for his replacement. He was buried in the priory church of St. Frideswide, now Oxford cathedral, where his brass, still extant but damaged, depicts a single figure in long robes. The seventeenth-century antiquary Anthony Wood viewed the brass while it was still fully intact, noting that it recorded 22 Nov. 1452 as the date of Fitzaleyn’s death.14 Wood’s Surv. Antiqs. Oxf. ii (Oxf. Historical Soc. xvii), 174; CCR, 1447-54, p. 382; Add. 39993, ZZ; RCHM Oxf., 41; N. Pevsner, Buildings of Eng.: Oxon. 120. Fitzaleyn made a will, but only that part of it relating to his real property at Oxford has survived. Preserved in Oxford’s ‘Liber Albus’, this extract bears no date, save that of probate, before the mayor, on 12 Sept. 1454.15 Liber Albus Oxoniensis ed. Ellis, no. 218. Fitzaleyn had not fathered any surviving children, and he instructed his executors to sell his holdings in the town and to use the money thereby raised to pay off his debts and perform good works. He appointed three executors, his wife Joan, John Goylyn (perhaps his old associate) and Richard Bounde, and charged Dr. Thomas Balscote with the task of overseeing their activities. A canon lawyer, Balscote was one of the brethren of Wroxton priory, an Augustinian house situated near Fitzaleyn’s estates in north Oxfordshire, and bishop of the Irish see of Annaghdown.16 Biog. Reg. Univ. Oxf. ed. Emden, i. 100-1; Egerton 1938, f. 87. Among those who witnessed the will were Fitzaleyn’s other associate Thomas Adderbury and John Goylyn ‘junior’, probably the elder Goylyn’s son.17 It is not clear which John Goylyn, the executor or the witness, sat for Oxford in the Parl. of 1472. In spite of Fitzaleyn’s instructions, his widow retained Ducklington’s Inn, the advowson of Ducklington’s chantry, ‘Soler Hall’, a tenement in the parish of St. Michael at the North gate and another in that of St. Martin. Joan was still alive in April 1474, when she conveyed the latter tenement to John Goylyn ‘senior’ and others. By the later fifteenth century most, if not all, of the late MP’s properties in Oxford and elsewhere in Oxfordshire had passed to the Goylyn family.18 Wood’s Surv. Antiqs. Oxf. iii. 79; Cart. Oseney Abbey, iii. 248, 251, 259; Surv. Oxf. i (Oxf. Historical Soc. n.s. xiv), 220; ii. 93, 95; Egerton 1938, f. 94v; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 46; iii. 301, 306.