KEMYS, Roger

A lawyer like his father, Roger received his training at the Middle Temple. Of obscure origins, John Kemys enjoyed a successful professional career, although his chief means of advancement was his extremely advantageous match with Roger’s mother. John’s wife, Margaret Russell, was the widow of Sir Gilbert Denys† of Siston and the daughter and eventual coheir of Sir Maurice Russell†, a substantial landowner in south-west and southern England. John married in or shortly after December 1422, so it is likely that Roger had only recently attained his majority when named as one of the elder man’s feoffees in September 1444.8 CCR, 1476-85, no. 499. Two years later, he and his father received a conveyance of property at Stapleton, Gloucestershire, from John Averay and his wife, and he stood as a mainpernor for John Denys, possibly the son of his half-brother, Maurice Denys, in May 1449.9 CP25(1)/79/91/108; CFR, xviii. 119; Vis. Glos. 50. At the latter date, he was residing at Siston, where his mother held one of the late Sir Gilbert Denys’s manors for life. Although a Denys manor, John and Roger Kemys enjoyed successive life interests in Siston after Margaret’s death as well. The circumstances giving rise to this unusual arrangement are unknown.10 C140/57/56. As a result, it only reverted to the Denys family, in the person of Sir Gilbert’s grandson Walter Denys, at Roger’s death. Owing to John’s longevity, however, Roger enjoyed possession of the manor for less than a decade.

It is unlikely that Roger always lived at Siston, for he was referred to as ‘of Bedminster’ on one occasion in 1453-4.11 Bristol RO, Ashton Court mss, AC/D/12/15. It appears that he owed his connexion with that Somerset parish to his first marriage with Alice Arthur. During the 1450s and 1460s, he was involved in a number of conveyances of land in and around Bedminster, sometimes on his own account and on occasion as a witness or feoffee on behalf of others. In several of these transactions he was associated with John and Nicholas Arthur, evidently his in-laws.12 Ibid. AC/D/12/8, 10a, 16-17; 14/11, 12; 15/20a. Bedminster lay immediately to the south of Bristol, a town with which he had strong personal and professional connexions. His father had long been associated with Bristol and was an executor of one of its most prominent merchants, Thomas Parkhouse, who died in 1449. The Kemys family must have enjoyed a good relationship with Parkhouse, who left a fur to John Kemys and provided for Roger to succeed to property at Bristol, should his nephew, William Parkhouse, and others die without issue.13 PCC 18 Rous; Griffiths, 147.

Some years later, John Kemys founded a chantry in the Bristol parish church of St. Philip and St. Jacob, and in the spring of 1467 Roger was party to a conveyance by which his father endowed his foundation with lands at King’s Barton near Gloucester.14 Bristol RO, St. Philip and St. Jacob parish recs., P/St.P and J/D/7(a), 7(d)**E**; Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. viii. 236. Roger himself was to form connexions with two other Bristol parishes, St. Ewen’s and All Saints’, both of which retained him for his counsel. He had secured his retainer from St. Ewen’s by the early 1460s, and during the first half of that decade he helped the church to pursue a claim against John Sharp III* for an annual rent of 30s. from premises in Bristol’s Old Corn Street. He played a leading role in promoting the suits that its priest and churchwardens brought against Sharp in the Chancery and elsewhere and, in due course, he was among those who arbitrated between the parties out of court. The arbiters awarded the rent to St. Ewen’s, although they did not leave Sharp empty-handed since they also directed the church to pay him a sum of money. The parish’s accounts for this period show that during the dispute its churchwardens made numerous payments in cash and kind to Roger and his clerk, William Lewellyn, as well as to other lawyers, including the recorder of Bristol, Thomas Young II*. While soliciting on behalf of the parish Kemys enjoyed ‘dyuers dyners and dyuers drynkynges at wyne’ at its expense, and the churchwardens presented his wife with two bottles of malmsey on one occasion.15 Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. xv. 173-5, 178; C1/28/344. Perhaps on the strength of his work for St. Ewen’s, Kemys also obtained a retainer with All Saints’. In the later 1460s and the earlier 1470s he advised that church in various matters, including its disputes with John Shipwarde* (over a rent), William Canynges* (over John Pynner’s ‘place’) and Richard Haddon.16 Recs. All Saints Bristol, i (Bristol Rec. Soc. xlvi), 110-11, 116-17; ii (ibid. liii), 63, 74, 77, 82, 142, 150; iii (ibid. lvi), 414-15. He also came into contact with the latter, a Bristol merchant, as an arbiter, helping in July 1468 to make an award between Haddon and Richard Carew, priest of the church of Holy Trinity, Bristol, who had quarrelled over a rent.17 Bristol RO, All Saints parish recs., P/AS/D/BS B 10.

Among the other lawyers responsible for the Haddon-Carew award was William Mauncell of Bristol, whose widow Agnes had become Roger’s second wife by the early 1470s. At some point in 1471-2, Humphrey Forster† and his wife Sibyl sued Kemys and Agnes in the Chancery. In their bill, the Forsters referred to an earlier quarrel (concerning 31 messuages and a rent of 24s. p.a. in Bristol) between Sibyl and her former husband Robert Poyntz on the one hand, and Agnes and her own previous spouse, William Mauncell, on the other. According to the Forsters, a panel of arbiters had awarded title to Agnes and Mauncell, while at the same time directing that Sibyl and Poyntz should receive a rent of £15 p.a. from the same properties. The Forsters complained that Kemys and Agnes were now refusing to pay this annuity and that Poyntz’s executor Humphrey Cuderington had connived with Roger to preclude Sibyl’s rightful claim to it.18 C1/41/21. Whatever the outcome of this suit, Roger certainly held property at Bristol in the right of Agnes, through whom he had likewise come into possession of land at Butcombe in north Somerset, by mid 1473.19 CCR, 1468-76, no. 1568. Later that year, the couple conveyed away a moiety of the manor of Tatwick near Bath, presumably another part of her inheritance, to William Stowford.20 CP25/1/294/76/92; CCR, 1468-76, no. 1135; C1/96/34-35. After the MP’s death, the Kemys family retained strong links with Bristol, where Roger’s son Arthur, another lawyer who trained at the Middle Temple, resided in the early sixteenth century.21 CFR, xxii. no. 841; Baker, 962.

Even if Roger found much of his work as a lawyer in Bristol, he must also have frequently visited Westminster and his inn of court in pursuit of his legal duties. Among his acquaintances was the cordwainer Henry Williams, a parishioner of St. Clement Danes near the Middle Temple. In June 1450 he became one of Henry’s trustees, along with none other than (Sir) John Fortescue*, chief justice of King’s bench, and the Chancery clerk, William Normanton.22 CCR, 1447-54, p. 189. Kemys certainly spent time Westminster later in the same year and the earlier months of 1451, for both he and his father were elected to the Parliament of 1450-1, he as a burgess for the small Wiltshire borough of Westbury and John as a knight of the shire for Gloucestershire. Not enfranchised until 1449, the borough appears to have covered only the area in which the burgage tenements lay, meaning that it was not synonymous with the larger town of Westbury. There is no evidence that any lord or other influential outsider influenced its parliamentary representation in this period, and it was perhaps easier for a stranger to gain election there than in other Wiltshire boroughs.23 The Commons 1509-58, i. 232; VCH Wilts. viii. 185. It would appear, therefore, to have made a particularly suitable target seat for an ambitious young lawyer. The Commons of the Parliament of 1450 are generally considered to have included a significant number of men sympathetic to the duke of York, who had actively canvassed for the return of his supporters to the Lower House, including its Speaker, Sir William Oldhall*. While it is impossible to prove that Kemys identified with York, it is worth noting that he became escheator of Gloucestershire in the wake of the Yorkist victory at the first battle of St. Albans and a j.p. within a year of Edward IV’s accession. Soon after becoming a j.p., he served on a commission appointed to inquire into the forfeited estates of the Lancastrian Mille family following the attainder of Sir William Mille in the Parliament of 1461. Furthermore, he was removed from the commission of the peace at the Readeption of Henry VI (although retained as a justice of gaol delivery) but restored as a j.p. once Edward had recovered the throne.

Aside from York, it is also difficult to find any conclusive evidence linking Roger with other lords. As a deputy justiciar of South Wales in 1455, he was subordinate to John, Lord Beauchamp of Powick, then the nominal justiciar of that lordship. The extent of his dealings with Powick is unknown and he perhaps associated more regularly with another peer, James, Lord Berkeley, and his family. In January 1461, James’s younger son Maurice Berkeley conveyed away the Gloucestershire manor of Little Marshfield to him, and Richard Arthur – presumably one of Kemys’s in-laws – married Maurice’s sister Alice in about 1465. Roger did not acquire Little Marshfield on a permanent basis, for he re-conveyed it to Berkeley, who may have mortgaged it to him, at the beginning of 1470.24 Procs. Som. Arch. Soc. lxxxiv. 35; Cat. Med. Muns. Berkeley Castle ed. Wells-Furby (Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc.), ii. 663.

Whatever his ties with the nobility, Kemys must have associated more often with his fellow gentry, for whom he was sometimes a witness and trustee, roles he also performed for others lower down the social scale.25 CCR, 1454-61, p. 438; Ashton Court mss, AC/D/14/11-12, 15/20/a; CAD, iv. A8298. Another of those for whom he was a witness was his fellow lawyer John Newburgh II*. In February 1467, he attested a transaction by which Newburgh took possession of the manors of Castle Combe, Wiltshire, and Oxendon, Gloucestershire, from Stephen Scrope, the stepson of the East Anglian knight Sir John Fastolf. Newburgh received the manors as a security for an agreement by which Scrope was to sell to him the wardship and marriage of his son and heir John Scrope for £200.26 CCR, 1461-8, pp. 441-2. In the following decade, Roger came into contact with Edward Grey, Lord Lisle. In the spring of 1476 he met that peer at Cheddar in Somerset, to discuss a vintner’s undertaking that Grey and his wife should receive an annual rent from certain properties in Bristol.27 CP40/882, rots. 459, 459d. Baker, 962, mistakenly states that he participated in the discussions as the peer’s counsel. In fact, he was acting on behalf of the vintner. It was also about this time that Morgan Jenkyn ap Philip and Margaret his wife sued Roger in the Chancery. Kemys’s eldest son, John, had married the couple’s daughter, Joan, and the suit related to the marriage settlement made for the young couple. According to Morgan and Margaret, they had agreed to pay £100 to Roger, who in return had undertaken to set aside lands worth at least 100 marks p.a. for John and Joan to take possession after his death. The purpose of the suit was to enforce the settlement, for they complained that Roger had failed to perform his side of it while they had already paid over £80 of Joan’s marriage portion.28 C1/54/116.

After the mid 1470s, Kemys ceased to serve as an ad hoc commissioner, although he retained his position as a working j.p. in Gloucestershire. He finally lost his place on the commission of the peace in the spring of 1481, possibly through ill health since he suffered a serious mental breakdown just a few months later. An inquisition held by the Gloucestershire escheator in February 1482 revealed that he had suffered from a state of lunacy, albeit with occasional lucid intervals, since the previous 1 Aug. In response to this finding, the Crown granted the custody of his person and estates to his son Arthur in April 1482. Roger survived until 3 Jan. 1485, but another year passed before an inquisition post mortem was held for him in Gloucestershire. His heir was his eight-year old grandson, John Kemys, son of his late eldest son of the same name. The boy inherited a small estate in Gloucestershire, comprising two third shares of the manor of Oldbury acquired in the 1450s and 1460s, a manor or messuage at Wick and messuages in Stapleton, Dyrham, Hinton and Barton Regis. According to the inquisition evidences, these lands produced an income of no more than about £15 p.a., although the Denys manor of Siston, which had passed to Roger following his father’s death in mid 1476, was worth at least another £18 p.a.29 CIMisc. viii. 474; CPR, 1476-85, p. 302; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 66; CP40/756, rot. 29d; CP25(1)/79/92/132; 93/9.