LUYT, Thomas

Luyt enjoyed a long and successful career as a lawyer of the second rank. The evidence of his origins is contradictory. He was clearly a near kinsman of a namesake of Enfield in Middlesex. This Thomas was a servant of Sir William Cheyne, who retired as c.j.KB in 1438.4 In his will of 26 Mar. 1443 Cheyne named him as an executor and bequeathed him all his books and £20: PCC 15 Rous (PROB11/1, f. 114d). When Luyt came to make his own will on 28 Aug. 1447 he named the serving c.j.KB, (Sir) John Fortescue*, as its supervisor: PCC 28 Luffenam (PROB11/3, f. 225v). Luyt’s will mentions his wife Elizabeth and his father John, who was named as an executor, but names no children. Since our MP made his career in that court, this provides strong indirect evidence of their kinship; as does our MP’s nomination early in his career as clerk of the peace in Middlesex and his own connexion with Enfield. Yet he also had associations with distant Shrewsbury. In 1441, that is, a few years before his marriage to an heiress of the town, he brought an action of trespass against a Shrewsbury weaver, and his early friendship with William Bastard*, a Shrewsbury lawyer, is a further indication of his links there. In Trinity term 1441 the two men acted together as sureties for a Shropshire husbandman, and it is a reasonable speculation that they were educated together. As a surety is described as ‘of St. Clement Danes, gentleman’, no doubt because he was then resident at one of the three inns of Chancery located there, Clement’s, Lyon’s or New Inn. Since Bastard is known to have been of New Inn, it is likely that Luyt was also.5 KB27/721, rot. 74, rex rot. 5d. The most likely resolution of these contradictory references is that came from Shrewsbury but was a kinsman of his Enfield namesake. The latter’s connexions in the legal profession may have provided the opportunity for both Luyt and his local friend Bastard to embark on careers in the law.

Thankfully, the pattern of Luyt’s early career is clearer than his origins. By 1434 he was acting, albeit only occasionally, as an attorney in King’s bench.6 KB27/692, att. rot. It is possible that these early references relate to the er. Thomas, but the probability is that only one career is involved. There he came under the tutelage of John Hengstecote, the filacer responsible for cases from Somerset, Hampshire and Wiltshire.7 Hengstecote named our MP and a more senior King’s bench clerk, John Wydeslade*, as his executors: CP40/720, rot. 114. Hengstecote relinquished office in Trinity term 1436 and the young Luyt moved into the service of his successor in that filacership, Richard Bye.8 KB146/6/16/1. Significant advancement followed a few years later: late in 1439 or early in 1440 he was named as clerk of the peace in Middlesex; and, more importantly, in 1441 he filled the vacancy among the filacers occasioned by his master Bye’s death.9 KB9/232/2/54d; KB27/720, rot. 11. The filacership brought Luyt a variety of important clients, and he soon became one of the most active of the filacers, at least if activity may be judged by the number for whom he acted as attorney. During the 1440s he was retained at an annual fee of one mark by both the corporation of Southampton and the Goldsmiths’ Company of London to represent them in all their cases in that court.10 Southampton City Archs., Soton recs. SC5/1/7, f. 22v; 15, f. 13 (he was still acting for the corporation as late as 1474); N.L. Ramsey, ‘The English Legal Profession’ (Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), p. lxiv. In 1444 he was attorney for William Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, and in 1445 he represented Richard, duke of York, probably drawing similar fees from them.11 KB27/734, rots. 72, 83; P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 234. More significantly, he was also retained by the new queen, Margaret of Anjou, as her attorney in King’s bench at the more generous annual fee of 40s.12 A.R. Myers, Crown, Household and Parl. 194. He was acting for her at least as late as Hil. term 1460: KB27/795, rot. 19. His connexion with the queen raises another point of confusion with his elder Enfield kinsman. On 10 Nov. 1443 a Thomas Luyt was appointed during pleasure as collector of the duchy of Lancaster manor of Enfield, which subsequently became part of the new queen’s jointure: DL37/11/12. There can, however, be no doubt that the bailiff was the elder Thomas, for the office passed to Robert West* at Mich. term 1447, in other words, when the elder Thomas died: SC6/1093/14. Less happily, Luyt was also exposed to what may have been the normal hazards of the legal profession. In 1444 he secured a writ of outlawry against a yeoman of Uxbridge for wounding and imprisoning him at Westminster, and in 1446 he had a plea of trespass pending against several men of Towcester for assaulting him there, perhaps as he was travelling between Shrewsbury and Westminster.13 KB27/732, rot. 37; 739, rot. 36; 740, rot. 45d.

After Luyt had so successfully established himself in the legal profession, he made a marriage that extended his local interests. His wife was the daughter of Robert Whitcombe, one of the leading burgesses of Shrewsbury. On her father’s death in the mid 1440s, she inherited property in the town and at nearby Rodington, probably as a result of a jointure settlement made on her parents (her father’s heir was her putative half-brother, Thomas). As her father had been a prosperous merchant, the marriage also no doubt brought a worthwhile acquisition of goods, although over these, or at least over part of them, Luyt fell into dispute with Whitcombe’s widow, Mabel. The basis of the quarrel is not revealed in the surviving documents: it is known only that the dispute was put to the arbitration of Thomas Salisbury, archdeacon of Bedford, and the vicar of Newark, John Burton. The arbiters awarded that Mabel should give to Luyt an obligation in £73, arising out of a sale of wool, and certain goods, unspecified in the surviving records; in return Luyt was to pay £8 to pay for prayers for Whitcombe in Newark church and a vestment for its priest and to pay all Whitcombe’s debts in Shropshire expeditiously.14 C1/18/47-8, 140-3; C4/1/94; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 828.

Luyt’s marriage intensified, for a brief period, his interest in the affairs of what may have been his native town. His legal practice at Westminster recommended him to his fellow townsmen as a cheap and effective parliamentary representative, and they returned him to the successive Parliaments of November 1449 and 1450.15 C219/15/7, 16/1. This raised a tension between his local and professional interests. If he attended all the sessions of these Parliaments he could not have done his work as a filacer, an office which demanded attendance in court. When the Commons sat at Westminster there was no necessary clash of duty; but the last session of the Parliament of 1449 (Nov.) met at Leicester during the Easter law term of 1450, and Luyt must then have been absent from either the Commons or the King’s bench. Further, he was also burdened with other conflicting tasks. On 2 Oct. 1450, shortly before he had been elected to his second Parliament, his fellow townsmen expressed their confidence in him by electing him as bailiff; and two months later, during the course of this Parliament, the sheriff of Shropshire, Thomas Herbert†, chose him as his under sheriff.16 Salop Archs. Shrewsbury recs., assembly bk. 3365/67, f. 19; C254/146/131. This multiplicity of tasks was impossible for one man to discharge. For example, on 8 Oct. 1450 he was present as bailiff at the guild merchant at Shrewsbury, and he must, therefore, have missed the beginning of the Michaelmas law term which began on the following day. His recorded reward for this busyness was a modest one: on 6 Apr. 1451, during the last prorogation of his second Parliament, the Crown granted him the keeping of the meadow of ‘Sherevesmede’ in Shrewsbury for the term of ten years at 12d. p.a.17 Shrewsbury assembly bk. 3365/67, f. 97; CFR, xviii. 191.

Early in the following year the Shrewsbury authorities chose Luyt to head an important deputation. The bailiffs’ account for 1451-2 records the payment of 29s. 4d. to him and two other leading townsmen for riding to see the duke of York, almost certainly in response to the duke’s famous letter of 3 Feb. 1452 calling upon the town for support in his quarrel with Edmund, duke of Somerset. His employment as the duke’s attorney in King’s bench may have recommended him for this sensitive task. A year later, he was elected to represent the town in Parliament for the third successive occasion.18 C219/16/2; Shrewsbury bailiffs’ acct. 3365/80. A week after his election for the borough he attested the Salop indenture, a function he was qualified to undertake by his wife’s lands. Thereafter, however, Luyt’s ties with Shrewsbury weakened, perhaps because he felt himself too much in demand. After this long Parliament of 1453-4 he played no further recorded part in the borough’s affairs; further, he sued the borough’s bailiffs for their failure to pay him the parliamentary wages due to him. Their reluctance is easy to understand. It was the town’s custom to compound with its MPs for a flat rate, which, in any but the shortest of assemblies, was considerably below the standard borough rate of 2s. a day. In 1454 Luyt was not prepared to accept this, an indication perhaps of his desire to disengage himself from Shrewsbury affairs. On 12 July, three months after the end of the Parliament, he delivered to the bailiffs a writ for the payment of wages totaling £17 10s. Since the town had been accustomed to pay its representatives no more than a few marks, it is not surprising that the bailiffs did not pay, and on the following 21 Feb. Luyt sued them in the Exchequer of pleas. Judgement was duly given in his favour in Easter term 1456 when he was awarded the sum he demanded together with 20s. damages.19 Parliamentarians at Law ed. Kleineke, 377. His behaviour cannot have endeared him to the townsmen and it is not surprising that they did not elect him again.

On 12 Apr. 1454, six days before the end of his third Parliament, the London authorities granted Luyt a gown of the livery of mayor or sheriffs for as long as he remained clerk of the peace in Middlesex.20 Corp. London RO, jnl. 5, f. 160v. These other interests meant that he had little reason to regret the apparent cooling of his relations with the Shrewsbury authorities. Further, if he wanted a seat in Parliament, he was not dependent on the townsmen. There is a possibility that he was returned for the Wiltshire borough of Heytesbury to the Parliament which met in the aftermath of the Yorkist victory at the first battle of St. Albans, but this is impossible to prove.21 C219/16/3. The Heytesbury MP of 1455 has been identified as the insignificant Thomas Lyte of Titchbourne near Redlynch, Wilts., and his son, Robert, as the Heytesbury MP of 1478: HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 563-4. Another candidate is a more important man, Thomas Lyte* of Lytes Cary, Som., but the election returns of both 1455 and 1478 use the spelling ‘Luyt’ for both Thomas and Robert. Furthermore, as filacer Luyt had responsibility for Wilts. Certainty as to the identity of the MP of 1455, however, is elusive. If desire to sit in this assembly was prompted by sympathy with the duke of York’s cause, there is no more direct indication of such sympathy. At this stage of his career his legal service to Queen Margaret may have been a more important determinant of his loyalty. This service may explain the royal lease to him on 14 July 1456, after the end of the duke’s second protectorate, of property at Stamford (Lincolnshire) at an annual farm of 25s. 4d.22 CFR, xix. 164.

Yet, whatever his political loyalties, Luyt’s career was seemingly unaffected by the accession of Edward IV in 1461. On 5 May 1461 he was allegedly assaulted at Westminster by John Gybon, a former under sheriff of Middlesex, but this was no doubt the manifestation of a private quarrel.23 KB27/802, rot. 94d; KB29/92, rots. 9d, 21d. If his career did take on a different character after this date, it was not a result of the change of regime, but rather of his acquisition of manorial property in Middlesex in the year before. He had had property at Enfield, described in 1474 as comprising a messuage and 300 acres, probably since the death of his namesake and kinsman in the late 1440s, but he now added to it significantly. On 12 Feb. 1460 John Wetwang of London granted him the manor of ‘Halewyk’ in the parish of Friern Barnet, near Enfield, a sale confirmed by a final concord levied at the end of the year.24 KB27/759, rot. 48; 795, rot. 29d; CP40/852, rot. 447; CP25(1)/152/95/195. His new found status explains why he appeared as an attestor at the Middlesex election held on 25 Sept. 1460, when one of those who acted for him in the purchase, Thomas Frowyk II*, was elected.25 C219/16/6. He himself was returned by the county’s freeholders on 21 Mar. 1463, a clear sign of his acceptance as a gentleman of that county.26 The indenture does not survive. Luyt’s election is known from his recovery of his parlty. wages against the Mdx. sheriffs: E13/151, m. 58d; 157, rot. 50.

Although Luyt did not directly benefit from the accession of the new regime, he was quick to form connexions with some of its members. By Hilary term 1462 he was acting as attorney in King’s bench for Richard Neville, earl of Warwick; in 1465 he was retained by the new queen in the same role, just as he had been by her predecessor; and in 1469, if not before, he was also acting as attorney for the King’s brother, George, duke of Clarence.27 KB27/803, rot. 4d; 833, rot. 45; Myers, 298. Further, at the end of the 1460s he began to play the sort of part in local government that did not usually fall to minor legal officials. His election as a county MP had been a signal vindication of his success, a success that was underlined when he was appointed to his first ad hoc commission of county administration in 1469. During the Readeption he committed himself to neither one side nor the other, and thereafter his administrative career prospered further.28 On 18 Dec. 1471 he sued out a general pardon as ‘of London, gentleman, alias late bailiff of Shrewsbury’, but there is nothing to suggest that he had compromised himself politically during Hen. VI’s brief restoration: C67/48, m. 25. Particularly notable in this regard is his nomination to a commission of array in Middlesex in the spring of 1472. He was now clearly more than a filacer (although he continued to act in that role until his old age), he was also a significant member of the gentry community in the environs of the capital. He was also very well connected. This is evident not only from the clients for whom he acted in King’s bench but also from the royal grant made to him on 16 May 1474 of the collation to the next vacant canonry in the royal free chapel of St. Stephen, Westminster. His fellow grantees were drawn from the Yorkist elite, namely the chancellor, Laurence Booth, bishop of Durham, the royal chamberlain, William, Lord Hastings, the King’s secretary, Master Peter Courtenay, and a knight of the King’s body, Sir John Parr†.29 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 349, 439.

Luyt’s prominence continued into the last years of Yorkist rule. In November 1479 he had another grant of the next collation to St. Stephen’s, on this occasion with Hastings, Sir Thomas Montgomery† and the chapel’s dean, Henry Sharp. Soon after, he added to his responsibilities the role of attorney of the duchy of Lancaster in the King’s bench at a fee of 40s., and by Easter term 1480 he was acting for Richard, duke of Gloucester, in the same capacity.30 CPR, 1476-85, p. 174; KB27/874, rex rot. 8. He is named as the duchy’s attorney in the accts. for Feb. 1480-2, but, for an unknown reason, his fee was not paid: DL28/5/11, ff. 45, 57v. In the following summer he was added to the quorum of the peace in Middlesex, affirming his place among that county’s gentry, and he soon acquired further property there. On 21 Aug. 1481 a gentleman, William Norton of Ruislip, granted his manor of ‘Petyrwiche’ to our MP, Robert Luyt and three other lawyers in what was either a sale or a mortgage.31 E371/245, rot. 67; KB27/880, rot. 29d. This purchase, if such it was, had been balanced by a sale in Shropshire. In the autumn of 1479 he and his wife had sold her patrimony in Rodington to William Onslowe and Mary, his wife.32 Add. 30318, ff. 33-34. It is clear that Luyt now saw his future and that of his family as lying in Middlesex. The difficulties inherent in efficient long-distance estate management may have persuaded him to divest himself of some of his Shropshire lands.33 He was frequently troubled by offences against his property there: KB27/827, rot. 50; 838, rot. 15; 842, rot. 85; 844, rot. 100.

Little is known of the last years of Luyt’s career. He and his son, Robert, appear to have been considered favourably by Richard III. They were both appointed to the Middlesex commission of array issued in December 1484, and Robert joined his father on the county’s commission of the peace in the following April. This impression is strengthened by their removal from the bench on Henry VII’s accession, and, more strikingly, by Thomas’s loss of the King’s bench clerkship which he had held for more than 40 years.34 CPR, 1476-85, pp. 490, 560; 1485-94, p. 493; KB27/897. However, the fact that he was quickly restored to the Middlesex bench suggests that he was not seriously compromised by any support he may have offered the deposed monarch, and his retirement may simply have been a function of old age. Further, he seems to have had an indirect connexion with the new government. A later Chancery petition shows that his daughter married Adam Knight of Coventry, a merchant of the Calais staple and a servant of the new King’s uncle, Jasper Tudor, duke of Bedford. This match had presumably taken place by 5 Dec. 1486, when Knight granted all his goods to Luyt and two others.35 C1/210/49; CCR, 1485-1500, 157.

Luyt drew up his will on 20 Oct. 1487. He wanted to be buried in the chapel of St. Katherine in the hospital church of St. Bartholomew, Smithfield. This was a reflection not only of the degree to which he had left behind his Shrewsbury origins, but also of the part he had come to play during his last years in the affairs of the hospital, ‘one of the most important and best-loved centres of charity’ in London.36 A.F. Sutton and L. Visser-Fuchs, ‘The Cult of Angels’, in Women and the Book ed. Smith and Taylor, 243-4. Among his charitable bequests was a dole of 4d. to be paid to each of the hospital’s sick, together with 10s. in coal to be distributed to the poor householders of Smithfield. His family bequests reflect a special trust and affection in his wife, ‘whiche I thinke wol contynue sool’. His feoffees were to make estate to her to hold for her life, without impeachment of waste, of all his lands in London, Middlesex and Shropshire. She was also to have all his moveable goods ‘to hir propre use and behofe at hir pleasure to be disposed’, although on the understanding that she performed his will. She was thus to find 20 marks to be paid over five years to his nephew, Maurice Westbury, as he studied at Oxford university to be a priest; she was also to choose another scholar, ‘vertuously disposed entending to be prest’, to have the same sum at Cambridge university. The widow was to pay £40 for the marriage of their grand-daughter, Margaret, daughter of Robert (who had died early in 1486), and to hold in trust certain specified items of plate for delivery to Robert’s son, Thomas. The latter was presumably intended as inheritor of the bulk of the lands in which Luyt’s wife had a life interest, but one important property was to be alienated. After her death his ‘grete Brewhouse callid the Swanne vpon the hoop’ in St. Botolph without Aldgate was to pass to the priory of St. Bartholomew to pray for the souls of the Luyt family. To aid his widow in the task of executing this will he named Sir William Hody†, chief baron of the Exchequer, and Thomas Grafton of Shrewsbury, merchant of the Calais staple. His supervisors were drawn from the legal establishment, namely his ‘welbeloued frendes’, Edward Goldesburgh, one of Hody’s juniors in the Exchequer, William Danvers† , serjeant-at-law, and three of his colleagues from the King’s bench, Henry Harman, Thomas Holbeach and Edward Cheseman. They had begun their task by the end of the year for the will was proved on 15 Dec. 1487.37 CFR, xxii. 6; PCC 7 Milles (PROB11/8, ff. 53v-54v).

Luyt’s widow survived him for more than ten years. By the time of her death their grandson, Thomas, was dead without issue, probably before coming of age. This left Thomas’s sister, Margaret, as the heir, who before Joan drew up her will on 28 Aug. 1497 had been contracted in marriage to one of the sons of Edward Cheseman. Here Joan’s will contained a curious provision: Edward was to have the governance of her lands in Shrewsbury and Shropshire until Margaret reached the age of 21; Margaret was then to have them, not in fee simple or in fee tail, but only for life; on her death they were to pass to her kinsmen, the Biritons of Shrewsbury. The arrangement is hardly likely to have recommended itself to Edward’s son, Robert. The will made no reference to the lands our MP had purchased in London and Middlesex, and these presumably descended to Margaret as an estate of inheritance.38 PCC 28 Horne (PROB11/11, f. 226). Cheseman had begun his legal career under our MP’s son, Robert: KB27/888/1, rot. 2d; J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), i. 462-3.

Luyt’s career illustrates the profits available to a lawyer whose career was confined to the lower reaches of the profession. The fees he derived from his long service as an attorney and filacer gave him the resources for speculative investment. On 25 Mar. 1460 he leased the manor of Alkmond Park, a few miles to the north of Shrewsbury, from Sir Walter Trumpington and Margaret, his wife, for 31 years at £20 p.a. As this lease was made when he was relocating his principal local interests to Middlesex, it is likely that his motive was financial profit.39 KB27/819, rot. 80. On other occasions he is known to have leased property not with the intention of adding to his landed influence but as a commercial transaction. In the late 1450s, for example, he leased part of the parsonage of Ellesborough in Buckinghamshire from the priory of Sandwell in Staffordshire and then sub-let. This arrangement is known only because it led to dispute – in 1462 Ralph Verney* and Richard Fowler† awarded the property to lessees whose right predated our MP’s – and it is unlikely to be the only sub-letting in which Luyt engaged.40 C1/27/367; 28/326-7.

As in the case of other lawyers Luyt advanced many loans. In 1465, before the mayor of the Westminster staple, Robert Englefield of Englefield in Berkshire acknowledged a debt of £100 to him, and failure to pay resulted in the seizure of his Shropshire lands, principally the manor of Great Rossall near Shrewsbury, and these remained in Luyt’s hands for several years from 1469.41 CP40/845, rot. 356. Ironically, in 1457 Englefield had granted him, ‘pro bono consilio suo michi actenus impenso’, an annual rent of 20s. for life assigned on this manor: E210/5605. In the late 1460s or early 1470s he had William Ferys, a London mercer, imprisoned on an action of debt sued before the mayor and sheriff of Bristol: Ferys had stood surety for the repayment of £68 owed to our MP by Henry Astell, a London fishmonger, and when Astell entered sanctuary Luyt sued the full rigour of the law against Ferys, despite, as Ferys claimed in Chancery, having undertaken not to do so.42 C1/46/284. At about the same time, another London mercer, Roger Abendon, also accused him of behaving improperly in pursuance of a debt, claiming that he had used his influence in Mdx. to secure a partial jury: C1/45/329; KB27/828, rot. 92d. Further loans are probably disguised behind some of the gifts of goods made to our MP. These rarely state their purpose, but in 1483 a London vintner, Robert Holcombe, made such a grant to him, specifically in consideration of money due for arrears of rent and sums lent at diverse times.43 CCR, 1476-85, no. 1108.

Some of the many actions of debt Luyt brought in the court of common pleas add to this impression that he was a creditor on a significant scale. In 1458, for example, he claimed as much as £200 against the widow of a gentleman of Daventry; in 1460 he secured writs of outlawry against two Shropshire esquires on debts of £40 each; and in the following year he demanded the same sum from each of two Shrewsbury drapers.44 CP40/789, rot. 358; 798, rots. 41d, 249; 802, rot. 55. The combined profits of such enterprise and his fees as a lawyer enabled him to establish himself among the county gentry. It was his misfortune that the childless death of his grandson meant that he did not establish a landed family.