THWAITES, William

Nothing is known for certain about this MP’s background, although his name might suggest that his family originated in Yorkshire. In his youth he may have lived at Horsted in east Sussex, where two brothers, William and Clement Thweyt, were said to be dwelling when they obtained royal pardons in May 1415.5 C67/37, m. 46. The future MP received training in the law and began to appear as an attorney in the courts of common pleas and King’s bench on behalf of litigants from Sussex and Surrey in the early 1430s. A popular choice as an advocate, he accepted briefs from such prominent local landowners as Sir Thomas Lewknor* and Richard Wakehurst†, as well as from the master of Trinity College, Arundel, William Snelling* of Shoreham and John Arderne.6 CP40/687, rots. 569d, 593d; 691, rots. 280, 635d; 708, rot. 184. Both Lewknor and Arderne were sometime sheriffs of the joint bailiwick of Surrey and Sussex and probably found Thwaites useful in helping them to carry out their duties. Their successors regularly engaged him as under sheriff, a position he is known to have occupied for at least five of the years between 1434 and 1445, by appointment of the brothers Sir Roger Fiennes* and James Fiennes*, Thomas Uvedale*, Roger Lewknor* and Nicholas Carew*.

It appears, however, that Thwaites was not actively serving as under sheriff at the time of his election to the Parliament summoned to meet on 21 Jan. 1437. Although he is not recorded as possessing property in Lewes, the borough he represented, he was undoubtedly well known to the inhabitants, for he had earlier acted as an attorney for a number of the townsmen, including Thomas White*, and in 1434 he had rendered an account at the Exchequer on behalf of their bailiff. Furthermore, he had often been employed in the law-courts by the prior of the great Cluniac monastery there.7 CP40/699, rots. 24, 25d, 89, 187, 270, 589; KB27/704, rot. 64; E159/211, recorda Mich. rot. 13d. Indeed, while the Parliament was in progress Thwaites appeared in the common pleas as the prior’s attorney, and he continued to be engaged by the monastic community throughout the 1440s.8 CP40/724, rots. 241d, 456d; 738 rot. 395d.

Fees paid for his legal services enabled Thwaites to accumulate a modest amount of property in the north of Sussex. In 1440 he acquired a messuage and some 128 acres of land in Rusper, a few miles from Horsham,9 CP25(1)/241/88/19. and he doubtless held more at Crawley, where he generally resided.10 KB27/774, fines rot. 1d. On one occasion he brought a plea against malefactors who had assaulted his servants at Hooe in south-east Sussex, claiming damages of £20, and this suggests that he had landed holdings in that part of the county as well, as is also implied by his dealings in property at Cuckfield.11 CP40/699, rot. 398d; CP25(1)/241/90/20, 23.

Thwaites attested the parliamentary election for Sussex on 11 Jan. 1442, when Sir Roger Fiennes (whom he had earlier served as under sheriff) was one of those returned. He continued to be associated with Sir Roger, now treasurer of the Household, in later years, notably as his co-feoffee for the conveyance of property in east Sussex from John Chitecroft* to Adam Levelord*.12 C219/15/2; CCR, 1441-7, p. 462. The busy attorney was also employed as a feoffee by Nicholas Carew and the wealthy Lewknors,13 CP25(1)/241/89/21; CAD, iv. A7126; CP40/736, rot. 468; 741 rots. 127d, 133d. and a pardon he obtained in July 1446 referred to his role as executor for Richard Aylard junior and John Blast, a kinsman of his wife. The pardon, styling him ‘gentleman alias attorney’, also made a point of mentioning his former office as under sheriff.14 C67/39, m. 37. That October Thwaites appeared as a witness to an important settlement of manors in Sussex and Norfolk on Robert Poynings*, son of the late Lord Poynings, and it is of interest to note that Poynings engaged him as his attorney in the King’s bench in Michaelmas term 1450 in his continuing litigation against his niece’s husband Sir Henry Percy.15 CCR, 1441-7, p. 435; KB27/758, att. rot. 1d. By then the bitter quarrels between Poynings and Percy had caused widespread unrest in Sussex and Kent, feeding into the social upheaval of Cade’s rebellion in the previous summer. Whatever the truth of the matter, Poynings was later alleged to have been Cade’s sword-bearer. Yet there is no sign that Thwaites was drawn into the conflicts. Throughout this period he continued to make regular appearances in the common pleas and King’s bench, bringing suits for debt on his own account and as a co-executor with Richard Jay* for the late Walter Contervynt, as well as acting as an attorney for leading landowners such as Richard Dallingridge* and for fellow lawyers like John Wody*.16 CP40/753, rot. 197; 754 rot. 38; 756, rots. 224, 349; 757, rots. 85d, 393, att. rot. 4d; 769, rot. 165d; KB27/747, rot. 72; 757, rot. 11.

Thwaites continued to be linked with the Fiennes family after Sir Roger’s death in 1449, for he served Fiennes’s son and heir Sir Richard (afterwards Lord Dacre), as an attorney, as his deputy in the shrievalty in 1452-3, and as an associate in conveyances of property in Southwark. It may be that he too acquired property in that town, for in 1455 he assisted Thomas Warham in his acquisition of a local inn called The Clement.17 CP40/780, rot. 83; CCR, 1447-54, p. 48; 1454-61, p. 107. Subsequently, Thwaites was included among the group of Sussex men whom Thomas Hoo II* asked for assistance in legal transactions regarding the barony, honour and rape of Hastings, which had been held by Hoo’s recently-deceased brother, Thomas I*, Lord Hoo and Hastings. Together, the new trustees received confirmation of their tenure from Sir John Pelham in 1455, but Thwaites died before his fellows formally conveyed the estate to William, Lord Hastings, in November 1461.18 Add. Chs. 23802, 30052; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 92-93; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 137-8. His death occurred at an unknown date between the autumn of 1458 (when he acted in the common pleas for the aunt of the prominent lawyer Bartholomew Bolney*), and Michaelmas term 1460. The prior of Lewes then brought a plea against his widow Alice for illegal possession at Crawley of a pyx containing the priory’s deeds and muniments. Perhaps this pyx had originally been placed in the MP’s safekeeping and Alice had refused to relinquish it.19 Bolney Bk. (Suss. Rec. Soc. lxiii), 76; CP40/799, rot. 467d.

A petition filed in Chancery after Thwaites’s death, at an unknown date between 1467 and 1473, reveals something about his first wife, Margaret, one of three daughters of Katherine Blast of Crawley and the mother of his first-born son, who was named William after him. It was stated that following Margaret’s death, when young William was aged about 12, his grandmother Katherine had placed a messuage and some 180 acres of land and 30s. rent in Twineham and Cowfold in the hands of feoffees including the boy’s father to hold in trust until he came of age. On reaching his majority William junior, who had been in ward to Lord Dacre, entered the lands and promptly sold them, but connived with the only surviving feoffee, his cousin Thomas Bradbridge, to prevent the purchaser from having seisin. Bradbridge told a different story. He testified that Katherine had had doubts about her grandson’s character, that the latter had sold the property to raise money to get out of prison, and that the sale was made contrary to the purpose of an entail.20 C1/39/241-6. Nor did the young man’s marriage turn out to be a happy union. Before 1466 Lord Dacre arranged a potentially lucrative match for him, by contracting him to wed Margery, the daughter of John Chaucy esquire and heiress of her maternal uncle John Benefeld, whose sizeable estate comprised the manors of Hangleton and Benfeld in Twineham, lands in Cuckfield, and the advowson of Twineham church, all in Sussex, as well as property in Newdigate in Surrey. However, all was not as it seemed. Although the couple apparently produced a son, known as John Thwaites, Margery later claimed that the marriage was invalid, since she had been previously contracted to Thomas Mone. She repeatedly requested the commissary-general of the bishop of Chichester to cause Thwaites to be cited before him to respond to her suit for divorce, and when the official refused to do so she appealed to the apostolic see. Eventually, in 1469 the Pope ordered three bishops to determine the case, which went in Margery’s favour, for not long afterwards she married Thomas Austyn a ‘servant to the Lord of St. Johns’.21 CP40/821, rot. 412; Cat. Wiston Archs. ed. Booker, 201-4; CPL, xii. 711-12.