GERNET, William

Gernet’s antecedents are uncertain. It is possible that he was a descendant of the Gernets of Halton in north Lancashire, a prominent family whose estates had passed by marriage to the baronial family of Dacre in about 1300. The Gernets, who established themselves in the first half of the fourteenth century at Rainhill near Prescot in the south Lancashire hundred of West Derby, were probably a junior branch of this family, and it may be that our MP was from Rainhill.12 VCH Lancs. iii. 370-1; viii. 120. However this may be, he made his career as a lawyer. He was already well established in his profession when he first appears in the records. On 11 June 1416 he was named as one of the King’s serjeants-at-law in the counties of Cheshire and Flint during pleasure with an annuity of five marks; and less than two years later he was added to the bench in his native Lancashire.13 DKR, xxxvii (2), 303; Lancs. Knights of the Shire (Chetham Soc. xcvi), 174. His local importance was both emphasized and expressed by his close ties with one of the leading Lancashire gentry families, the Botelers of Warrington. A month after his nomination of serjeant he was one of four local men to whom the Crown entrusted the wardship of the lands of Sir William Boteler†, who had died at the siege of Harfleur. Doubts about the legitimacy of Sir William’s young son, John Boteler I*, made the grant a potentially contentious one, and it is likely that our MP and his fellow grantees had sought it, in part at least, to protect the interests of the young heir.14 Lancs. Inqs. i (Chetham Soc. xcv), 114. In Aug. 1418 Gernet joined with the young heir in taking a bond in £200 from Sir John Stanley† and others: DKR, xxxiii. 23. This, in turn, seems to have brought him further modest advancement: by 12 Nov. 1420 he was acting under Sir William’s brother, another John Boteler, usher of the chamber, as deputy steward of Halton. The two men were on close personal terms. The usher named Gernet as one of his executors in his will of February 1421, and on Boteler’s death he succeeded him to the stewardship.15 Reg. Chichele, ii. 221.

The other references to Gernet in these early years of his career are typical of those relating to local lawyers. On 12 Sept. 1418 he was present in the chapter house of the abbey of St. Werburgh, Chester, when Thomas Langley, bishop of Durham, paid 800 marks for the farm of the abbey’s Derbyshire properties; on 29 Mar. 1420 he witnessed the contract for the marriage of Thomas, son and heir of William Assheton*, and Ellen, daughter of Thomas Urswyk I*; and on 12 June 1421 he was named by Sir Richard Molyneux of Sefton to act as an attorney in a conveyance.16 CCR, 1413-19, pp. 518-19; Brynmor Jones Lib., Hull Univ., Palmes mss, DD PA/14/1; Lancs. RO, Molyneux deeds DDM 17/47, 49. He also acted, seemingly only briefly, as Molyneux’s deputy in the stewardship of the hundred of West Derby, and in February 1425 he added the post of serjeant-at-law in the palatinate of Lancaster to his offices.17 Somerville, i. 482, 503. Gernet’s prominence in the profession was such as to attract patronage from outside his native locality. On 20 Mar. 1422 John, duke of Bedford, retained him as one of his legal counsel with an annuity of two marks assigned on the duke’s part of the lordship of Kendal in Westmorland. Later, in the spring of 1426 he acted as the duke’s attorney in the assignment of dower to Anne Stafford, widow of Edmund, earl of March (the duke had an interest in the matter as one of the guardians of the earl’s heir, Richard, duke of York).18 CIPM, xxiv. 541; CCR, 1422-9, pp. 222-3; CFR, xv. 128.

Gernet’s marriage is to be dated to this early part of his career, and provides another indication of his standing as a rising local lawyer. His wife was from a knightly family resident at Ashton-in-Makerfield, only a few miles from Rainhill. The match was, from his point of view, more important socially than materially, but she seems to have brought him some property. Her first husband, from a county family of middling rank, died in the lifetime of his father so she had no dower interest in the lands of the Langtons of Hindley (also near Rainhill), but she had no doubt benefited from a jointure settlement. The precise date of their marriage is unknown. Her son by her first marriage, Peter Langton, was said to be aged 24 on the death of his paternal grandfather in 1443, implying that the marriage took place after 1419. It had, however, been made by 30 May 1422 when our MP ‘and his present wife’ sued out a papal indult to have a portable altar.19 VCH Lancs. iv. 108; CPL, vii. 322.

In the 1430s Gernet’s career took an unexpected turn for which no obvious explanation suggests itself. In 1431 he began to play the sort of role in county administration that might be expected of a lawyer of his seniority. On 1 Jan. he was elected to represent Lancashire in Parliament, and in the months after the conclusion of the assembly he was named to three ad hoc commissions in the county, including one to take the musters of the force Sir Thomas Stanley, was about to take to Ireland as the new lieutenant there.20 Lancs. Knights of the Shire, 216-17; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 133, 140; Feudal Aids, iii. 91. Thereafter, however, he transferred his administrative activity and probably also his main residence to distant Kent. Why he should have done so is a mystery. The most that can be said is that he had associations with Lancashire men who also had interests in Kent. Those connexions are apparent in the agreement made in November 1431 for a divorce between the Lancashire lawyer, James Hopwode* of Hopwood, nephew of Bishop Langley, and Joan, daughter and heiress of John Rickhill* and grand-daughter of the Kentish judge, Sir William Rickhill (d.1407). This agreement was witnessed by several lawyers, among whom was Gernet.21 Lancs. RO, Hopwood deeds DDHP39/35. Such connexions, however, form only the scantest explanation. All that can be certainly said is that, in November 1430, our MP made the first of a series of small property acquisitions in the parish of Aylesford and its near vicinity.22 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 97-98, 102. His move south was also prefigured in two transactions of the early 1430s. At some date shortly before July 1433 he was named as a feoffee of Hugh Hasilden† of Goldington Bury (Bedfordshire); and in the following month he stood as a feoffee in the Essex manor of Little Bentley lately of Elizabeth, Lady Bourgchier, widow of Sir Hugh Stafford and Sir Lewis Robessart.23 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 250-1, 258-9.

Once he had moved to Kent, Gernet came quickly to play a significant part in its affairs. The first indication of his involvement there was his appointment to the quorum of its bench in 1433, and in the following year he was named on the Kent list of those to be sworn to the peace.24 CPR, 1429-36, pp. 388, 619. He was one of the most active of its j.p.s. Between 3 Sept. 1435 and 28 July 1439, for example, he sat on as many as 20 of the 37 days on which the j.p.s. convened; and he remained equally active until his removal in the summer of 1443.25 E101/567/3/1-5. On 10 Jan. 1440 he sat at Maidstone, near his home at Aylesford: CPR, 1436-41, p. 496. His residence in the county is further demonstrated by his appointment to several ad hoc commissions there, including one of array in December 1435.26 CPR, 1429-36, p. 519. To justify his local role he extended his property holdings around Aylesford. In June 1434 Robert Wotton and Elizabeth, his wife, granted him the lands in Preston and Siffleton that she had inherited from her father, Sir Thomas Cobham of Rundale, a transaction that was confirmed by a final concord levied in 1437; and in November 1440 Edmund Halstede, resident at distant Ilminster in Somerset, granted him lands in these two hamlets and at Aylesford. These holdings combined with other acquisitions did not make a particularly extensive estate. When he came to sell them in 1443 they were enumerated as three messuages, four cottages, two dovecots, two ponds, 428 acres of land and wood, and an annual rent of 10 hens and two marks in Aylesford, Preston, Siffleton and Ditton.27 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 317; 1435-41, p. 442; CP25(1)/115/311/435; 317/581. None the less, it was enough to give him a respectable landed estate in the county.

Gernet augmented his status there by establishing some significant local connexions. By far the most important of these was with Humphrey Stafford, earl of Stafford, who as lord of Tonbridge had extensive interests in Kent. In March 1441 the earl granted him an annuity of five marks, which was paid until after 1446 but discontinued before 1450 (probably because Gernet was then no longer active in the county).28 C. Rawcliffe, Staffords, 238. He formed a different sort of relationship with another local lord, Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor, who held the lordships of Hoo and Aylesford: on 30 Sept. 1440 Grey, facing financial ruin due to his unequal dispute with Ralph, Lord Cromwell, mortgaged his manor of Aylesford, of which our MP was probably a tenant, to Gernet and others for £213 11s. 10d.29 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 252-3. More modestly, in 1441 Gernet acted alongside another lawyer Richard Bruyn*, who had married Hopwode’s divorced wife, as a feoffee of her uncle, William Rickhill† of Ifield. This transaction may reflect the connexions that had brought him to the county.30 CP25(1)/115/315/534.

In the early 1440s Gernet left Kent with the same suddenness as he had appeared there. By a final concord levied in Easter term 1443 he alienated all his lands there to Hugh Stanlowe, and he was removed from the bench in the following June. This disengagement, not surprisingly, coincided with a period of renewed administrative activity in his native county. The Lancashire bench was reissued in August 1442 with the sole purpose of restoring him (he was the only change from the commission issued six months before).31 DKR, xl. 537. Despite his absence in Kent, he had been named to the Lancs. bench on 15 Dec. 1435: ibid. 533. More significantly, he soon found new promotion within the administration of the duchy of Lancaster, and it may be that the prospect of such promotion was a factor in his return to his native county. By November 1446 he was acting as deputy to the chancellor of the duchy, Walter Shirington, clerk. In a letter dated 18 Nov. Shirington thanked him for his diligence ‘as is of you here alday reported’ and also for what he had sent him (unspecified) by the hands of his son, Robert.32 PL14/155/7/65.

Soon after returning to Lancashire, Gernet, as if to mark that return, contracted his daughter Joan in marriage. In August 1446 he paid a respectable portion of 110 marks to secure the hand of Adam, son of William Lever (d.1447) of Great Lever, some 20 miles from Rainhill and only a few miles from Hindley. This soon led him into dispute with his son-in-law’s paternal uncle, Henry Lever. Its settlement, by an award returned on 28 Jan. 1448, had a certain incongruity in the discordance between the apparent triviality of the point at issue, a rent of 25s., and the high standing of the six arbiters, headed by two local knights, Sir John Pilkington and Sir Geoffrey Massy. Their award, sealed in the presence of many ‘Gentiles’, was that Gernet should make Henry sure of a rent of 16s. 8d. until Adam reached the age of 14.33 Add. 32103, ff. 39v-40.

Gernet had been conspicuous by his absence from the litigants at the Lancashire assizes during his sojourn in Kent. On his return he brought several actions that give some indication, albeit rather imprecise ones, of his landed interests. Some of these relate to property at Hindley, the home of his first wife’s husband, and its near neighbourhood, and there is little doubt that he held this property in her right. At the Lent assizes of 1446 he sued the mayor and community of Wigan for £14 as an arrears of a rent of £2, suggesting that he had property in that borough; three years later he had an action of waste pending against a widow in respect of property at nearby Westleigh and Abram demised to her for term of years; and in 1451 he sued three husbandmen for close-breaking and depasturing at Hindley itself.34 PL15/9, rot. 9d; 13, rots. 7d, 10d; 17, rot. 4. Another action probably relates to lands he held temporarily as a result of his daughter’s marriage: in 1450 he sued an action for close-breaking at Anderton, a few miles north of Wigan, against a local gentleman, Ralph Pilkington of Rivington. This may relate to the land conveyed to him and others by William Lever shortly before his daughter’s marriage to Lever’s son.35 PL15/15, rot. 2; Add. 32103, f. 36. Frustratingly, however, this series of suits reveals little or nothing about our MP’s ancestral holdings, with nothing to confirm the likely supposition that he came from Rainhill. His wealth is similarly difficult to evaluate, although, even discounting the profits of his profession, it was not negligible. In the subsidy returns of 1436 he was assessed on an income of £27 drawn from lands in Kent as well as Lancashire.36 E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14 (iv)d.

Little is recorded of the last years of Gernet’s long career beyond routine involvement in administrative affairs. He was tirelessly active as a j.p. In the last three months of 1446, for example, he sat at Bolton, Wigan, Preston, Ashton-under-Lyne and Prescot, and it is probable that he routinely attended the sessions held in the south of the county. In May 1451 he sat as a commissioner at Chorley and Manchester to assess contributions to the subsidy voted in the Parliament of November 1449.37 DL29/117/1936; PL3/3/28-31; Somerville, i. 458. More interestingly, on the following 5 Mar. the Crown deferred the Lent assizes sessions to Ascension and deputed Gernet to act, for this occasion only, as one of the assize justices. Given his advancing age it is not surprising that this was not the prelude to further advancement. He was alive as late as 30 Jan. 1459, when he sat as a j.p. at Manchester, but probably died soon afterwards. Nothing is certainly known of his descendants, save that he had at least two sons, William and Robert, and a Gernet was resident at Rainhill as late as 1600.38 PL15/21, rot. 42d; VCH Lancs. iii. 371.