PULLESDON, William

In Henry IV’s reign the bishop of Worcester demised a meadow in his manor of Wyke near Worcester to William Pullesdon, but it is not clear whether the lessee was the MP or an elder namesake.7 Nash, ii. 311. The subject of this biography was certainly active by the late 1420s, when he was already associated with four prominent lawyers, John Throckmorton I*, John Wood I*, William Wollashull*, and John Vampage*, all retainers of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick.8 DKR, xxxvii. 156. It is likely that he was another lawyer (he was referred to as a ‘gentleman’ in a royal pardon he received in the mid 1440s),9 C67/39, m. 32 (1 July 1446). and follower of the earl. In October 1433 he and the other four men acquired the keeping of the temporalities of the bishopric of Worcester, vacated by the recent death of Bishop Polton.10 CFR, xvi. 171; E159/215, brevia Mich. rot. 29d. By March 1437 Pullesdon, Throckmorton, Vampage and Wood were acting as feoffees for Warwick’s son-in-law John, Lord Talbot, a role which they and Wollashull likewise performed for the earl’s retainer Sir Hugh Cokesey*.11 CAD, iii. C3722; DKR, xxxvii. 156; Cat. Med. Muns. Berkeley Castle ed. Wells-Furby (Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc.), ii. 703; CFR, xix. 278-81; CPR, 1436-41, p. 495; 1441-6, p. 391.

Pullesdon also found employment with another of Warwick’s retainers, the prominent Worcestershire knight Sir Humphrey Stafford I. By 1446 he was Stafford’s auditor, with a fee of 40s. p.a. Stafford had granted him this position for life but it is unclear whether he continued to hold it under the knight’s son and successor, Humphrey Stafford III*. In January 1447 Pullesdon was a feoffee of the settlement made when Humphrey I’s daughter Elizabeth married Richard Beauchamp† of Powick, a distant cousin of the Beauchamps of Warwick. During 1454-5, however, the couple sued him and two of his co-feoffees, Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley, and Thomas Holford in the Chancery, for failing to allow them possession of those estates that the settlement had set aside for them.12 CP, ii. 47; C1/24/186.

On a more mundane level, Pullesdon was also a trustee for Robert Nelme* of Worcester. As such, he was sued by Thomas Lyttleton, a fellow Worcestershire lawyer who was to achieve far greater eminence than he in their shared profession. In early 1450 Lyttleton initiated legal proceedings in the court of common pleas against Pullesdon and two other Nelme feoffees, John Vampage and Thomas Swyney*. Asserting that they ought to surrender three messuages in Worcester of which Nelme had wrongfully disseised his late father, Thomas Hewster*, Lyttleton had won his case against Pullesdon by the middle of the following year.13 CP40/756, rot. 110d; 759, rots. 50, 314d; 760, rot. 375d.

By this date Nelme, who had appointed Pullesdon his executor, was also dead. It was as Nelme’s executor that Pullesdon was sued in two other actions of the same period, one in the common pleas and the other in the Chancery. The plaintiffs in the common pleas suit, which concerned an alleged debt of £40, were the intestate Hewster’s administrators, his son Thomas Lyttleton and widow, Elizabeth.14 CP40/756, rot. 281d In the Chancery, the plaintiffs were Thomas Exeter of Bristol and his wife Agnes, Nelme’s niece. The Exeters stated that Nelme had agreed to settle goods to the value of 100 marks on them at the time of their marriage, of which they had received all but £40 worth when he died. On his deathbed he had arranged to make good the shortfall by selling lands worth £60 to Pullesdon, whom he expected to pay the couple £40 of this sum. The purpose of the Exeters’ bill was to secure that £40, which they alleged Pullesdon was refusing to pay them.15 C1/18/73.

Not heard of after the mid 1450s, Pullesdon was certainly dead by mid 1460. Inquisitions held after the death of Sir Hugh Cokesey’s widow Alice in April that year referred to him as a Cokesey feoffee, while also stating that he was no longer alive.16 CFR, xix. 278-81. He was succeeded by at least one son, Thomas.17 Genealogist, n.s. xix. 22; CP40/803, rot. 133. It is likely that the Eleanor Pullesdon of Worcester who pursued a lawsuit at Westminster in the later 1460s was formerly the MP’s wife. The plea rolls describe her as a widow, although without identifying her late husband. There is no sign that her suit, which she brought in the name of the King and herself and was still ongoing in the Easter term of 1468, ever came to pleadings. She had accused the defendants, the Bristol merchant, Richard Lewelyn, and the Londoners, William Hert, John Joce, William Corbert, Robert Skrayngham and Thomas Cok, of having broken a statute against the procuring of false indictments and appeals, presumably the Act passed by the Parliament of 1427.18 KB27/826, rot. 10; 827, rot. 4; PROME, x. 350.