MEYNELL, Gerard

Gerard Meynell was the representative of a junior branch of an ancient family long established at Meynell Langley, a few miles to the north-west of Derby. The main estates of the family descended to the four daughters of Gerard’s uncle, Ralph Meynell (d.1388). According to a later tradition preserved by the Tudor antiquary, John Leland, these coheiresses divided a very considerable estate: ‘evrey one of them had a 100 markes by yere and a manor place’.1 J. Leland, Itin. ed. Toulmin Smith, ii. 14. This was clearly an overestimate. None the less, the Meynells were certainly rich enough to have made something more than a minimal provision for their surviving male line, and it is thus surprising that more was not done for our MP’s father. Sir William appears to have enjoyed only a life interest in the manor of Yeaveley near Ashbourne. Gerard’s prospects at birth were, therefore, poor. By 1431 he had acquired, largely or entirely by his own efforts, a modest landed estate. In the subsidy returns of that year he is said to have held property at Willington, a few miles to the south-west of Derby, Yeaveley and Rodsley. Since he is described in these returns as ‘of Osmaston’ near Derby, it is likely that he also had lands there, and a grant made after his death suggests that in addition he had an interest in property at Kirk Langley near Yeaveley.2 Feudal Aids, i. 297, 304; Derbys. Chs. ed Jeayes, 1526.

Although Meynell was a lawyer of some local standing, his career is a colourless one. He first appears in the records in November 1411 when, curiously, he was one of the attestors to the Nottinghamshire parliamentary election. In June 1415 he was among those chosen by Sir Ralph Shirley†, who was about to embark for France, as feoffees in his manor of Colston Basset and other property.3 C219/10/6; CP40/618, cart. rot. 3d; CAD, v. A11452. By the early 1420s he had established a significant local practice. In July 1423, for example, he offered mainprise for Thomas, younger brother of John Curson*, who faced trial before the justices of gaol delivery as accessory to murder.4 JUST3/56/20. A year later he was deemed of sufficient standing by the Crown to be appointed to the quorum of the Derbyshire bench, and it is not surprising that he is soon after found in the service of the local nobility. In May 1427 he was nominated with the ubiquitous John Curson to act as attorney for John, Lord Grey of Codnor (d.1430), during Grey’s absence in Ireland. In the following November he was one of those to whom the Crown entrusted the keeping of the lands lately held in dower by Elizabeth, widow of Henry, Lord Beaumont, to hold during the minority of her son and heir.5 CPR, 1422-9, p. 409; CFR, xv. 203-4, 211-12, 228-9. These keepers appear to have been nominees of the Beaumonts, and later evidence makes it clear that Meynell established a close relationship with the young John, Lord Beaumont. Such connexions were remunerative. By 1429 he was in receipt of an annuity of 13s. 4d. from Sir Richard Vernon*, the most important of the Derbyshire gentry, and by 1435 he had been granted 40s. p.a. by Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor. These and other unrecorded annuities explain why Meynell was assessed on an income of as much as £20 p.a. in the subsidy returns of 1435-6.6 S.M. Wright, Derbys. Gentry (Derbys. Rec. Soc. viii), 249; E163/7/31, pt. 1; E179/240/266.

It was at the beginning of this period in which he was establishing himself as a local lawyer that Meynell contracted a good marriage on favourable terms. On 20 July 1425 he entered into an indenture with John de la Pole, undertaking to take de la Pole’s daughter Cecily as his wife a month later. The bride’s father offered him a portion of as much as 200 marks for a jointure of £10 p.a.7 Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, Sackville mss, U269/T82. These terms probably reflect the view that Meynell was a rising man. As such, he was an obvious candidate to represent his native county in Parliament, and on 25 Aug. 1429 he was elected in company with his friend Curson.8 C219/14/1. Very soon afterwards, on 8 Sept., he was named to his first ad hoc commission of local government, namely, to deliver Derby gaol of one of the lesser county gentry, Robert Eyre of Padley, who had been indicted before both a coroner and the j.p.s for murder. His attendance at Parliament was one reason why he delayed acting on this commission. Not until 24 Apr. 1430 did he and another local lawyer, Peter de la Pole†, preside at Eyre’s trial.9 JUST3/13/2/1, 6.

Thereafter Meynell briefly became one of the main workhorses of royal administration in the county. With Peter de la Pole he was the most active of the local j.p.s.: between October 1428 and February 1434 he sat as a j.p. on as many as 25 occasions. He was also one of those who undertook the assessment of the abortive subsidy of 1431, and he was again returned to Parliament in company with Curson on 15 Sept. 1435.10 Wright, 252; Feudal Aids, i. 275, 276, 279, 308; C219/14/5. Soon after the conclusion of this Parliament he and others were appointed to deal with a matter which had probably been brought to the government’s notice during the assembly. The church of Beighton in the north-east corner of Derbyshire, to which the King had recently recovered the right of presentation, had reportedly been seized by an armed band. The commissioners were instructed to imprison those who refused to surrender the church and have them in Chancery to answer for the disseisin. Meynell’s appointment is probably to be explained by his connexion with Sir Richard Vernon who headed the commission.11 CPR, 1429-36, p. 527. At about this time he was also acted for Vernon in another context. A deposition taken in an action brought in Chancery against Vernon by Nicholas Fynderne shows that Meynell, through the agency of his ‘clerk’, William Hardy, had retained an attorney to act fraudulently in a land transaction.12 Derbys. RO, Harpur Crewe mss, D2375M/47/1; M. Jurkowski, ‘John Fynderne’ (Keele Univ. Ph. D. thesis, 1998), 469-70; CP40/699, rot. 112. Hardy had been one of Meynell’s pledges at the election of 1429.

All else that is known of Meynell’s career relates to the routine activities of a local lawyer. In 1427, for example, he acted for another lawyer, Thomas Palmer*, in a property purchase; in the mid 1430s he was a feoffee of the financially-embarrassed Sir Henry Pierrepont*; and, more significantly, on 29 Jan. 1437 he numbered among those to whom John, Lord Beaumont, had licence to grant two manors in Lincolnshire.13 CP25(1)/126/74/10; 179/93/43, 44; 292/68/156, 171; CCR, 1447-54, p. 110; Nottingham Univ. Lib. Middleton mss, Mi Db 2; CPR, 1436-41, p. 35. He was also called upon to serve as an arbiter. In 1430 he acted with Palmer in the settlement of a dispute involving the Wyvilles of Stonton Wyville in Leicestershire; and three years later Sir Lawrence Berkeley* nominated him and John Bowes* as his arbiters in his dispute with (Sir) Thomas Erdington† over a small rent claimed by Erdington from land held by Berkeley in Barrow-upon-Soar.14 CP40/679, rot. 307d; Huntington Lib. San Marino, Califonia, Hastings mss, HAD 23/399.

Meynell died when at the height of his career. He last appears in the records in January 1437 and was dead by the following July when he was omitted from the commission of the peace. His son and heir, Ralph, must still have been a minor at this date. Ralph’s recorded career was a very modest one: he attested the Derbyshire election of 1467 and served on the grand jury when justices of oyer and terminer visited the county in the following year. The family long survived in the male line, residing first at Willington and, in the seventeenth century, at Bradley near Ashbourne.15 S. Glover, Derbys. ii. 158-9; C219/17/1; KB9/13/55.