NYTER, John

Nyter’s family home was situated in the south of Somerset by the river Parrett. His father, Robert, took an active part in the wars in France, becoming by the autumn of 1439 a member of the garrison at Cherbourg in the retinue of its captain John Beaufort, earl of Somerset.2 DKR, xlviii. 331. Within five years he had moved to Coutances, under the command of Sir Theobald Gorges* alias Russell, and it was there that he remained until late in 1447, having spent at least a year as Gorges’s lieutenant. While Robert was left in charge at Coutances, another member of the family, Nicholas Nyter, accompanied Gorges to Rouen, when Sir Theobald took up the post of lieutenant to Richard, duke of York.3 Add. Ch. 1505; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, fr. 25777/1705, 1715; Archives Nationales, Monuments Historiques, K 68/18/27, 28. It seems likely that the Nyters’ links with Gorges had been cemented earlier at home in Somerset, where Sir Theobald was seated at Wraxall. Remaining strong, these links were destined to govern the course of our MP’s career.

Rather than engaging in military affairs like his father and Nicholas (who may have been his brother), John became a lawyer. Little is known of his early life, although his appearance in February 1450 as witness to a deed whereby the future jurist Thomas Lyttleton was enfeoffed of a manor in Gloucestershire may suggest that he had found an important mentor.4 CCR, 1447-54, p. 181. It is difficult to explain Nyter’s election to the Parliament summoned for 6 Nov. the same year as a representative of the Wiltshire borough of Heytesbury, which at this time pertained to Robert, 2nd Lord Hungerford. There is nothing to indicate that Hungerford had anything to do with the election, which saw the obscure Nyter, an outsider to the county, returned in the company of Richard Joynour*, a London grocer and financial backer of the Lancastrian regime. The Parliament met in the aftermath of widespread rebellion in England and with the King’s favoured councillors, notably Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, facing a challenge to their authority from the duke of York, recently returned home from Ireland. York is known to have actively promoted the election of his supporters to the Commons, so it may be that Nyter owed his seat to his family’s links with Sir Theobald Gorges and the latter’s son and heir Walter, who both numbered among the retainers of the duke. Two years later, in the late spring of 1452, Nyter’s father was among those who allegedly joined the Gorges, father and son, in breaking into St. Augustine’s abbey in Bristol, where they assaulted the abbot. This was an incident in the unrest following the failure of the armies of York and his allies to win the King’s confidence at Dartford, and the imprisonment of his captains from the West Country, the earl of Devon and Sir Edward Brooke*, Lord Cobham. On 1 Oct. both Robert and Nicholas Nyter stood surety so that the two Gorges might obtain royal pardons.5 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 581-2; CCR, 1447-54, p. 411; C237/43/81. John himself appears to have kept a distance from these dramatic events, probably spending his time in Gloucestershire, where that month he was named by Sir William Mountfort* and his son Edmund Mountfort* as an attorney to deliver seisin of the manor of Tortworth.6 CCR, 1468-76, no. 1025. He was among certain Gloucestershire men who made a loan to the Crown in the following April of £7 18s. 8d., but the background to this transaction is obscure.7 E401/831, m. 2; E403/793, m. 3.

It was through the Nyters’ connexions with the Gorges family that at some point in the late 1450s or early 1460s John moved to East Anglia, as a member of the household which Walter Gorges established in Norfolk. Shortly before his death in 1466 Walter named him as one of his executors. By then Walter’s sons Edmund and John Gorges had already been placed in the care of the wealthy and influential (Sir) John Howard*, whose wards they became, and as a consequence Nyter himself started to wear Howard’s livery. Over the next few years he undertook a number of tasks in Sir John’s service, and developed an amicable relationship with him.8 Howard Household Bks. ed. Crawford, pp. xv, xli; i. 583. On 27 Sept. 1466, as Walter Gorge’s executors, Nyter and John Boore received 20s. from Howard to cover their costs; he accompanied Sir John to London in the following January, and in February he was reimbursed the 7s. he had paid ‘fore a wrytte’.9 Ibid. i. 369, 387. This writ was no doubt connected with Howard’s purchase from the Crown that same month of the wardship and marriage of Walter’s heir young Edmund, who was also heir to the estates of his mother the heiress Mary Oldhall in Norfolk and elsewhere. The match between the youngster and Anne Howard (one of Sir John’s daughters) had already been arranged.10 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 527-8.

Meanwhile, in November 1466 Sir Theobald Gorges had commenced a legal action against Nyter in the ‘tolsey’ court of Bristol, claiming that as Walter Gorges’ executor Nyter owed him sums amounting to £40. The court found for Sir Theobald, but Nyter sued a writ of error out of King’s bench, insisting that the Bristol proceedings be sent to Westminster in the following Hilary term. Coming to the King’s bench on 30 Jan. he argued his own case, based on the unsatisfactory conduct of the Bristol authorities. Gorges failed to appear, and eventually Nyter went sine die.11 KB27/823, rot. 26. Sir John Howard paid Nyter’s expenses for going to Norfolk in March and for riding from there to Devon in late April, bearing the King’s signet letter to tenants of the Gorges manor of Brampton.12 Howard Household Bks. i. 390, 401-2. But on his way to the West Country he was arrested at Bristol to answer the suits of debt and trespass ‘ymagened’ by Sir Theobald. In a petition to the chancellor, Archbishop Neville of York, he denied being Walter Gorges’ executor or administrator of any of his goods; furthermore, he declared that he had not committed any trespass against Sir Theobald in Bristol. He requested a writ of corpus cum causa to be sent to the mayor and sheriffs of Bristol to come to Chancery and be directed by the chancellor according to conscience.13 C1/31/466.

Perhaps Nyter now sought election to Parliament in order to take advantage of the privilege of freedom of arrest accorded to Members of the Commons. Parliament assembled on 3 June 1467, with him sitting for the Surrey borough of Gatton. His return had undoubtedly been approved by John Timperley II*, who held Gatton by grant of the Mowbray dukes of Norfolk. Not only did Timperley, like Nyter, wear the livery of the Mowbrays’ kinsman Sir John Howard, but was shortly to negotiate a marriage between his son and heir and another one of Howard’s daughters. Sir John himself sat in the Parliament as a shire knight for Suffolk. During the first session, on 20 June, he paid for a dinner and supper which Nyter shared with him.14 Howard Household Bks. i. 407. That October Howard gave our MP a present of a black velvet doublet, and Nyter continued carry out administrative tasks such as collecting rents and making disbursements on his behalf. A year later he was supplied with a complete harness and an ostrich feather, worth £7, and given £2 to cover his expenses in Howard’s service, and he borrowed from his lord ‘a salet withoute a veser’. In December 1468 payments were made ‘fore certeyne vitales’ Nyter had purchased ‘fore my lord Scales arme’ (that is, for the force led by Anthony Wydeville, Lord Scales), at the cost of £18 16s.; and in the following March Nyter’s servant was given 5s. ‘to by gere fore his master’. He was apparently still a member of Sir John’s household in 1471.15 Ibid. 419, 426-7, 529, 537-8, 547, 568.

Other glimpses of Nyter’s activities were seemingly unconnected with Howard. For instance, in April 1469 he acted as attorney in the court of the Exchequer for Robert Stowell, the former sheriff of Somerset and Dorset.16 E13/155, Easter rot. 3. It is not known when his father died and he inherited some of the family lands, although this may not have happened until the 1470s, and it was in 1475 that he acquired some land, parcel of the manor of Burbache in Wiltshire, by grant of John Beaumont†.17 Wilts. Hist. Centre, Savernake Estate mss, 9/6/674. All this while Nyter had continued to be employed in the affairs of the Gorges of Wraxall, despite his brush with the late Sir Theobald, for in 1481 he took oath in Chancery that letters patent of six years earlier granting a pardon to Thomas Hogges, a husbandman who lived on the Gorges’ estates, had been accidently lost. It would appear that he had continued in the service of Edmund Gorges, who had now come of age and attained knighthood.18 CPR, 1476-85, p. 233. In the following year, during Michaelmas term 1482, he brought a suit in the common pleas against William Ruynon for possession of lands in and near Kingsbury Episcopi, at Over Stratton, Shepton Beauchamp and elsewhere which had been entailed on the issue of his great-grandparents. Ruynon claimed that Nyter’s great-uncle Baldwin had made a quitclaim of the premises in 1440 to John Ruynon, whose heir he was, and that Nyter, as Baldwin’s heir, was bound to warrant his grant. Nyter was unable to produce a valid case, and Ruynon went sine die.19 CP40/882, rot. 543. For other of Baldwin Nyter’s transactions in 1440, see CP40/716, cart. rot. It seems likely that the suit was collusive, and although its purpose remains uncertain it may be that Nyter, who had no surviving children, was seeking to control the descent of his family estates.

Nyter is not recorded thereafter. In a now damaged petition to the chancellor, perhaps delivered between 1487 and 1493, his nephew Simon Everdon (the son of his sister Joan), a clerk calling himself ‘cousyn’ and heir to our MP’s father, laid claim to the manor of Kingsbury Episcopi, but John’s widow had given the title deeds for safe-keeping to Sir Edmund Gorges, because of the great confidence she had in him, and Gorges refused to hand them over.20 C1/133/42. Later, during the chancellorship of Cardinal Wolsey (1518-29), Everdon’s own nephew George Acworth the younger (son of George Acworth†), asserted his claim to be heir of the Nyter estates, in particular the manor in Kingsbury and lands in Stratton and Shepton Beauchamp.21 C1/463/4. The Commons 1509-58, i. 293, conjectures (wrongly) that young George’s mother was a da. and h. of our MP. The identity of the widowed Agnes ‘Nyter’ (fl.1508) remains uncertain, although she was probably the wid. of one of our MP’s near relations. The da. and h. of John More of Butcombe, Som., by Alice, da. and h. of William Bierden, she had been married to William Mauncell (bro. of John Mauncell*), and from 1471 to 1485 was the w. of Roger Kemys* (d.1485): Gt. Red Bk. Bristol, ii (Bristol Rec. Soc. viii), 161-7.