PAVY, William

A prominent merchant, William is first heard of in 1426 when his father-in-law, Thomas Bewflour, appointed him overseer of his will. In the will, dated 18 Sept. that year and proved on the following 8 Oct., Bewflour assigned the ‘governance’ of his young son, John, to his widow and son-in-law.7 Bristol Wills, 116. William himself is of unknown parentage but he was probably related to Thomas Pavy of Bristol, a merchant who died while on business at Bayonne in the 1430s or early 1440s. Thomas left a widow Alice and four children, and she subsequently married another townsman, Thomas Parkhouse.8 C1/10/136.

Although a merchant, William was also described as a ‘gentleman’ in a royal pardon he received in October 1446, and a papal dispensation of 1455 referred to his younger son Hugh, who would rise high in the Church, as ‘of noble birth’.9 C67/39, m. 16; CFR, xix. 43, 54; CPL, xi. 194. Joan, one of William’s daughters, married Richard Chokke, a prominent lawyer. It is possible that her father also possessed legal qualifications, since ‘Pavy’ was among the lawyers retained as counsel by the Bristol parish of All Saints in the later 1430s (as indeed was Richard Chokke) and again in the mid 1440s.10 Recs. All Saints Bristol, i (Bristol Rec. Soc. xlvi), 68, 70-71, 74, 76, 82. In this respect, it is also worth noting that Pavy was appointed to several commissions of gaol delivery for the town in the last decade of Henry VI’s reign. Although a parishioner of another of the town’s parishes, St. Leonard’s, Pavy held property throughout Bristol where his residence was a house on the quay.11 Bristol RO, St. Leonard’s Vestry recs., 40365/D/2/32, 33, 36; Bristol Wills, 132; Topography of Bristol, i (Bristol Rec. Soc. xlviii), 53, 117, 121-2, 136; William Worcestre: The Topography of Med. Bristol ed. Neale (Bristol Rec. Soc. li), 205; Gt. Red Bk. of Bristol, iii (Bristol Rec. Soc. xvi), 160; iv (Bristol Rec. Soc. xviii), 24-25; CCR, 1441-7, p. 115; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 118-19. He may have possessed landed interests outside Bristol as well, for in late 1457 he quitclaimed a messuage in Dadington, Oxfordshire, to the clerk Thomas Tayllard.12 St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, recs. XV/32/37.

Pavy’s quayside residence was well located for his business interests, since he was extensively involved in the overseas trade. In November 1443, for example, he and three other merchants from the town, John Wythyford, William Damme and Maurice White, obtained a royal licence to trade with Iceland for four years, exporting staple wares and importing fish and other goods. Just under four years later, he, Damme, White and Richard Alberton received another such licence, this time permitting them to trade with Ireland for a like term. Pavy also had commercial dealings with Gascony, for in February 1452 the Crown issued a safe conduct to him, William Codur and John Shipwarde*, allowing them to ship home goods worth no less than £700 from Bayonne, by then in French hands. In the spring of 1455 the Crown granted another such safe conduct to Pavy and Codur, so that they might send a cargo of non-staple wares to Spain on a Spanish vessel. Two years later, Pavy and yet another trading partner, William Wadeyn, obtained a royal licence to trade with Spain, Brittany and Gascony for one year, using a ship from Bristol called the Christofre.13 Overseas Trade (Bristol Rec. Soc. vii), 79, 97-98, 105, 118. Such trading ventures were far from risk-free, and in the autumn of 1460 Pavy was one of a group of Bristol merchants who complained to the King about an act of piracy against a foreign vessel called Le Marie (variously described as ‘of Dordrecht’ or ‘of Danzig’) that had sailed from Bordeaux with wine and other goods of theirs worth over £2,700. According to him and his co-petitioners, Le Petir Courtenay, owned by Sir Hugh Courtenay* of Cornwall, and another ship called Le Galyot had seized Le Marie off the Isles of Scilly and plundered it of its merchandise. In October that year, John Arundell and the sheriff of Cornwall, John Trevelyan*, held an inquisition in that county which found that Le Galyot had taken wine and other goods from Le Marie on the previous 21 Jan. A week later, moreover, Le Petir had seized the unfortunate vessel and its remaining cargo (although lawfully as the King’s forfeiture) and brought it into the Cornish port of Fowey. The commissioners also returned that they had not found the ship, its cargo and captors in Cornwall and that it was impossible to restore the vessel and its cargo to the respective owners.14 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 612, 647, 649-50; CIMisc. viii. 255. In spite of his losses, Pavy was among a consortium of merchants to which Edward IV granted a licence to trade abroad in non-staple goods with an English ship of 800 tons or less in July 1461,15 Overseas Trade, 125. and in 1465 he imported a consignment of wine from Lisbon.16 E122/19/4, f. 4v. Edward sometimes used such licences to trade to reward his supporters among the mercantile community,17 Overseas Trade, 125. but Pavy is not known to have held office under the Yorkist Crown.

Earlier in his career, Pavy served terms as bailiff and sheriff of Bristol and as a constable of the local staple. He was also an active member of the town’s common council, and in September 1450 he was one of those who audited the accounts of John Shipwarde, to whom the municipal authorities had assigned the task of supervising Bristol’s defences.18 Little Red Bk. Bristol ed. Bickley, ii. 49-51; Gt. Red Bk. of Bristol, i (Bristol Rec. Soc. iv), 125, 128, 129-30, 131-2, 254-5; ii (Bristol Rec. Soc. viii), 48-52, 57, 67. Pavy was also associated with Shipwarde less than three years later, as co-burgesses in the Parliament of 1453. Presumably the Commons’ agreement to the levying of 20,000 archers to serve the King for six months was a matter of specific interest to them, since Bristol was expected to contribute 91 of these men. No doubt another matter of direct concern was an ordinance that Parliament passed just before it closed, namely that the leading towns and cities of the realm should provide loans for the keeping of the seas, £150 in the case of Bristol.19 PROME, xii. 236-8, 267; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 163-4. Of Pavy’s ad hoc commissions, that of June 1453 arose from his time in Parliament since it concerned taxation that he and his fellow Members in that assembly had granted to the Crown.

As a prominent figure at Bristol, Pavy was frequently called upon to act as an executor, witness and feoffee by his fellow burgesses and others. In the spring of 1434, for example, he was party to a transaction relating to the estate of the late Henry Gildeney*, perhaps on behalf of Sir John Juyn, an important Bristolian lawyer.20 E159/211, commissiones Mich. Later, in 1439, he and other townsmen joined Sir Maurice Berkeley I*, Sir Maurice Berkeley II*, Robert Greyndore*, John Kemys* and others in witnessing a quitclaim to John Blount esquire of pasture rights at Bitton to the south-east of Bristol.21 Cat. Med. Muns. Berkeley Castle ed. Wells-Furby (Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc.), ii. 844. Pavy was also an executor of Richard Trenode* (d.1442),22 Bristol Wills, 132. a witness and feoffee for his son-in-law Richard Chokke,23 CCR, 1447-54, pp. 118, 199; KB27/774, rot. 79; CFR, xxi. no. 874. and a feoffee and executor for Thomas Norton*.24 C1/19/323-6; Lambeth Pal. Lib., Reg. Stafford, ff. 184v-185.

Pavy was put to some trouble as a feoffee of Norton’s manor of Stathe in Somerset, since it was as such that he was caught up in litigation at Westminster. Following Norton’s death in late 1449, his brother and heir, Walter, immediately entered and occupied this holding, in breach of the deceased’s intentions. Pavy and another feoffee, Robert Joce, sued Walter at Westminster for forcible entry but in the same period one Joan Balle, asserting that Thomas Norton had left her an estate for life in part of Stathe (a claim verified by Norton’s extant will), sued Walter, Pavy and Joce in the Chancery. Her complaint against Pavy and Joce was that they had refused to re-enter Stathe after Walter had occupied it and make estate to her of her share. In answer to Joan’s suit, Pavy acknowledged that he was a feoffee, while claiming that after Thomas Norton’s death Sir Edward Hull* and Thomas Wake* had pretended a title to the property, entered it and conveyed it to Walter. He himself had dared not re-enter for fear of the consequences but he added that he was prepared to do what the court thought reasonable. Joce’s answer has also survived. He acknowledged that he had refused to make estate to Joan, although not out of malice but because Walter was blocking the fulfilment of his brother’s will.25 CP40/765, rots. 475, 475d; C1/26/323-6.

Pavy drew up his own will on St. George’s Day 1461. He sought burial in the crypt of St. Leonard’s, Bristol, and provided for a chaplain to pray for his soul in that church for three years after his death. He also bequeathed his best missal, a book called ‘Legenda Sanctorum’, a psalter and a pair of black vestments to St. Leonard’s, and the sum of 20s. to its vicar. To his wife Joan and his eldest son, another William, he left his dwelling house on the quay, all his property in St. Stephen’s parish, two messuages in Redcliffe Street, four shops in the parish of St. James, two messuages on ‘the Were’ and, outside Bristol, an inn called ‘Le Bere’ at Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire. In case the younger William should die without issue, Pavy awarded contingent interests in the same properties to three of his younger sons, Robert, John and Richard, to his daughters, Margaret (by then the wife of Edmund Westcote†), Ellen and Elizabeth, and to his son-in-law Richard Chokke. Pavy also left a cottage in Corn Street, Bristol, to his wife and the younger William and made further bequests to others of his children, leaving woad and silver cups to Ellen and woad to Richard and Robert, and settling 24 marks for John’s schooling for six years. It is not clear if he intended John to enter the Church like another son, the Oxford-educated Hugh, whom he named as overseer of the will. Pavy appointed three executors, his wife, his eldest son and his son-in-law Richard Chokke. Still alive in 1463-4, when he paid rents due to the corporation of Bristol for some of his holdings in the town, he was certainly dead by 5 Oct. 1466 when his will was proved.26 Bristol Wills, 132; Gt. Red Bk. of Bristol, iv. 24-25. Not named in the will is a fifth daughter Alice, the second wife of the Wiltshire esquire, William Beaushyn.27 Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. xxiii. 210-13; VCH Wilts. vii. 18. Pavy’s overseer and son Hugh enjoyed the most prominent career of all his children. Assisted in his advancement by his brother-in-law Richard Chokke, one of the patrons of his first living, the rectory of Dittisham in Devon, Hugh was appointed bishop of St. Davids in 1485.28 R.W. Dunning, ‘Patronage and Promotion in the Late Med. Church’, in Patronage, Crown and Provinces ed. Griffiths, 174-6.