MAULEVERER, Avery

Avery Mauleverer was the representative of a junior branch of a family long established at Potter Newton in the West Riding of Yorkshire. In 1403 either his father or grandfather, both named John, had established an independent place among the gentry by purchasing the manor of Cusworth (in the parish of Sprotborough) near Doncaster. On the younger John’s death in 1451 this manor descended to our MP, to the apparent disinheritance of his elder brother, William.4 J. Hunter, S. Yorks. i. 349; Test. Ebor. ii (Surtees Soc. xxx), 148-9. By then Avery had already established himself as lawyer after admission to Lincoln’s Inn in the 1420s, and the context for his profitable marriage was a combination of local and legal connexions. The identity of his bride’s father is unknown, but her maternal grandfather, until his practical retirement in 1443, was a prominent man, who held office as chief baron of the duchy of Lancaster exchequer. Although his main estates lay in Lancashire, Urswyk also numbered among our MP’s neighbours in respect of his manor at Badsworth, a few miles to the north of Cusworth, and this, no doubt, was a factor in bringing about the match. The bride’s recommendations extended beyond her connexions. The contract for her marriage as a widow shows that she stood to inherit through her maternal grandmother lands in Richmondshire worth 40 marks p.a., and, although they descended to her only in part in Mauleverer’s lifetime, her expectations must have enhanced his standing.5 Brynmor Jones Lib., Hull Univ., Palmes mss, 14/2 (partially printed in Yorks. Arch. Jnl. xvii. 119-20).

A lawyer of means had little difficulty in recommending himself to the service of the great, and Avery duly found a place in the service of Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland. This, at least, is the best explanation for his election to Parliament, shortly before his father’s death, to represent Carlisle (a constituency with which neither he nor his family had any connexion) and it is consistent with his brief later career. The election came about in slightly irregular circumstances. In the indenture attesting the return of the Cumberland and Carlisle MPs, dated at the county court held at Carlisle on 17 Oct. 1450, the names of the borough Members – Mauleverer and the Exchequer officer, Richard Alanson* – have been written over an erasure, save for the final ‘r’ of ‘Mauleverer’. Further, the document is untidy, giving the impression of having been hurriedly compiled, and on the dorse of the writ although Alanson’s name appears in the same hand and ink as that of the county members our MP’s name has been added later in a much darker ink. One can only assume that Mauleverer was returned at the last moment and that neither he nor his colleague was the original choice of the citizens of Carlisle. The result of the elections for both county and city reflected the interests of Percy and Neville. Numbered among the county attestors were prominent retainers of both families and they returned one Percy man, Thomas Crackenthorpe*, and one Neville man, Thomas de la More*. The same influence probably explains the amended Carlisle result, with our MP representing Percy and his colleague, Neville.6 C219/16/1.

The early promise of Avery’s career was not to be realized. His seniority in his Inn was acknowledged by appointment as one of its governors in 1451-2, but death meant that the honour was not to be repeated.7 L. Inn Black Bk. i. 21. He survived his father by only four years, before, throwing off the natural caution of the lawyer, he fell victim to the growing dislocation in both local and national politics. In this growing conflict the Mauleverers committed themselves to the Percys. Avery’s cousin, Robert Mauleverer of Wothersome, was involved in the Percy rising of the spring of 1454, allegedly taking the principal part in a plot to murder the duke of York and other royal commissioners who had come to York to suppress the rebellion. A year later Avery made a similar commitment, following the earl of Northumberland into battle at St. Albans. As in the case of the earl it was the last act of his life: he was named in the register of the archdeacon of St. Albans among those killed there.8 R.A. Griffiths, King and Country, 348; C.A.J. Armstrong, ‘Politics and the Battle of St. Albans’, Bull. IHR, xxxiii. 71; John Vale’s Bk. ed. Kekewich et. al. 192. The governors of Lincoln’s Inn lost little time in reorganizing the Inn’s domestic arrangements to take account of his absence: in Trinity term they assigned the ground-floor chamber, in which Mauleverer ‘inhibuit et quievit’, to Herbert and John Sulyard* as two of the Inn’s best barristers. The unfortunate Avery left neither issue nor a will. On 5 July 1455 administration of his goods was granted to another Yorkshireman, Walter Calverley of Calverley.9 L. Inn Black Bk. i. 26.

The desirability of Avery’s widow as a bride is clear from the terms she was able to command on her marriage to William Vavasour, a younger son of one of the leading gentry families of the West Riding. By a contract dated 18 Dec. 1455, Vavasour undertook to provide her with a jointure of lands worth £20 p.a. together with the promise of a widow’s share of goods worth 600 marks. In return she was to bring Vavasour the solid prospect of an inheritance worth 40 marks p.a. from her grandmother, together with a life interest in the manor of Cusworth, which had been settled in jointure on her first marriage.10 Palmes mss, 14/2.