RASYN, Robert

Nothing is known for certain about Rasyn’s origins. He may have come from a family with a long association with Nottingham – a namesake held property there, which, in 1320, was settled in remainder expectant on his death on the wealthy Pierreponts – but if so it was a family that played no traceable part in borough affairs before his time.4 Add. 70512, f. 196. Rasyn owed his prominence to a legal training. By Hilary term 1430 he was well-enough established in the court of common pleas to be appointed to a filacership there. Although he was responsible for cases from Essex and Hertfordshire, most of those he represented as an attorney were from his native county. Over the next two decades he represented most of the leading Nottinghamshire gentry, including Sir William Babington, Sir Thomas Chaworth*, Sir Gervase Clifton* and (Sir) Hugh Willoughby*, as well as leading citizens of Nottingham, such as John Plumptre*.5 CP40/678, rots. 209, 381; 691, rot. 393; 696, rot. 326; 705, rot. 304d; 722, rot. 263d; 728, rot. 352. His appearance for Babington, although it was not until as late 1441, is significant: Babington, who lived at Chilwell near Nottingham, had been chief justice of the common pleas when he became a filacer and it is probable that he owed his appointment to the justice’s patronage.

Some idea of the fees Rasyn drew for this work is provided by a suit of 1440 in which he himself was plaintiff. He claimed that on 13 Jan. 1430, in the same term as he became a filacer, Katherine, widow of Sir Thomas Hercy†, had retained him to act as her attorney in the central courts for a period of seven years at an annual fee of one mark, but that this fee had now fallen into arrears.6 CP40/718, rot. 520d; 721, rot. 446; 729, rot. 449d. Nor was it only in a legal capacity that his services were in demand. In May 1434 he stood surety in the Exchequer for Chaworth when he was granted the custody of the Roos manor of Orston, and five years later he did the same for Willoughby on his appointment to the shrievalty of Lincolnshire and for a Derbyshire esquire, John Statham of Morley, in a grant of the keepership of the royal castle of Horston.7 CFR, xvi. 199; xvii. 80, 115.

One of Rasyn’s closest associates was the other leading lawyer of Nottingham, John Manchester*. On 28 Jan. 1431 they were jointly granted at the Exchequer the keeping of a small estate at Gotham, a few miles to the south-west of Nottingham, during the minority of John, son and heir of Sir Robert Neville of Prestwold in Leicestershire. Manchester was sitting as an MP when this grant was made – as were the two men who stood as sureties, Thomas Makworth* and Robert Walsh* – and there can be little doubt that he was the prime mover in obtaining it. On 28 Oct. 1434 Rasyn, described as ‘of Nottingham, gentleman’, returned the favour by acting as a surety when his friend was granted the alnage of cloths in the county.8 CFR, xvi. 24, 223. At about this time their families became allied by marriage. Rasyn’s daughter and eventual heiress, Margaret, married into the Manchester family, probably to John Manchester’s son and heir, another John. If the younger John was the groom then, since he was of age before his father’s death in 1437, it is probably correct to assume that the marriage took place before that date.9 It is assumed here that Margaret was the issue of Rasyn’s unidentified first wife and hence a full sister of her two brothers, the younger of whom, Thomas, was of age by July 1439 when he appeared in Chancery with his father to aver the truth of a petition sued by Maud Stacy: C1/9/114.

On 12 Sept. 1435 Rasyn, in company with Manchester, was returned by the Nottingham burgesses to represent them in Parliament, a convenient arrangement from the point of view of both men since the parliamentary session coincided with the law term of Michaelmas. Shortly afterwards Rasyn made two significant additions to his property in the borough. In 1438 he purchased a messuage on the Hollow Stone with a cottage, four gardens and two acres of meadow from Elizabeth Swillington, who had inherited the property from Margaret, wife of Sir John Gra*, and these he settled on his second wife as jointure. In the following year he purchased the reversion of nine messuages in the town from Maud, widow of Walter Stacy†. Before this date the only property he is known to have held in the town was a tenement in Castlegate, but this may reflect the inadequacy of the sources rather than the paucity of his holdings.10 C219/14/5; Add. 70512, f. 194; C139/46/40; C1/9/114; Nottingham Recs. ed. Stevenson, ii. 359.

At about the time Rasyn made these purchases he served in two important offices. In 1439-40 he acted as under sheriff (in the shrievalty of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire), and it is likely that this was not the only occasion that he served in an office that was the preserve of local lawyers. Of longer term significance was his appointment to the clerkship of the statute merchant in Nottingham in succession to Manchester. Although the earliest reference to him as clerk dates from August 1441, there can be little doubt that he, then the leading lawyer in the town, took office on his friend’s death in April 1437.11 CP40/717, rot. 322d; C241/230/66; 235/112, 120. A few years later he played an indirect role in the dispute between the two local magnates, Ralph, Lord Cromwell, and Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor. As clerk of the statute merchant, it was before him that, on 29 Aug. 1441, Grey acknowledged a massive debt of £1,600 to Cromwell, and in Trinity term 1442 he acted as mainpernor in the court of King’s bench for servants of Grey indicted before commissioners of inquiry.12 C241/231/21; CP40/738, rot. 123; KB27/725, rot. 88, rex rots. 25d, 27.

In Hilary term 1442 Rasyn surrendered his filacership, perhaps because the holding of that office, which kept him at Westminster during law terms, had become incompatible with his growing involvement in the affairs of his native borough. It is probably not coincidental that his election to the mayoralty should have followed soon after that resignation and for the few years that remained of his life he was defined more by his local than his legal activities. On 26 Apr. 1446 he served on a jury composed of leading townsmen who sat before royal commissioners inquiring into who was responsible for repairs to the bridge over the river Leen. On the following 16 Jan. he was elected to the Parliament which met at Bury St. Edmunds. At the borough court of 16 Aug. 1447 he sued a local miller for 5s. 9d. as the rent due for a mill, one of the very few cases he brought in that court, and at the next parliamentary election on 14 Jan. 1449 he was present for the third time as an attestor.13 C219/15/1, 2, 4, 6; Nottingham Recs. ii. 228, 429; Notts. Archs. Nottingham recs., ct. rolls CA1336/II, rot. 9d.

As a lawyer who enjoyed a career of modest success, it is not surprising that Rasyn was assessed on an annual income of as much as £20 in the tax returns of 1435-6.14 E179/240/266. Part of this was derived from fees, but he also enjoyed a landed income not only from property in Nottingham but also from his second wife’s holdings outside the town. In the early 1430s, just as his career was beginning in earnest, he had married the widow of one of the lesser local gentry, John Thorpe. Thorpe is last recorded as living in September 1429, when he attested the county election, and he died while still a young man not long afterwards, seised of manors at Thorpe near Newark and Marfleet near Kingston-upon-Hull. According to his father’s tax assessment the family’s Nottinghamshire lands were worth a respectable £20 p.a., and, while their Yorkshire lands were no doubt less valuable, a Thorpe widow made a good marriage for a town lawyer.15 C219/14/1; Yorks. IPM (Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. lix), 165; S.J. Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian Eng. 224.

Rasyn is last recorded in an active capacity in August 1449, when, with his wife, he made a release of a messuage in the Saturday Market to a Nottingham ironmonger. He was dead by the following 20 Apr. when his widow granted his property in the town to an impressive group of six feoffees, headed by William Chaworth, William Babington* (the son of the former chief justice), Richard Willoughby*, William Wright, vicar of the church of St. Mary, and two tradesmen. Ten days later she was entrusted with the administration of Rasyn’s goods by virtue of his intestacy.16 Nottingham Recs. ii. 411; Add. 70512, ff. 194v-195; Borthwick Inst., Univ. of York, York registry wills, prob. reg. 2, f. 208. Although Rasyn left two sons, William and Thomas, his line did not long continue, for by 1478 his heiress was his daughter, Margaret Manchester. In November of that year she joined with her elderly stepmother in making quitclaims of their right in the property Rasyn had purchased from Elizabeth Swillington to Sir Henry Pierrepont†, one of the wealthy knights who lived on the outskirts of Nottingham and a direct descendant of the Pierrepont who had acquired the town property of an earlier Rasyn more than 150 years before. Since in these quitclaims our MP’s widow is named as ‘Alice Burton’ and his daughter is described as ‘of Burton Joyce’ it is probable that his widow had taken as her third husband a member of the lesser gentry family established in that vill which lay only five miles from Nottingham.17 Add. 70512, ff. 194v-195.