ROYS, John

A member of an insignificant and probably non-gentle family that had lived at North Walsham for several generations, Roys made his way in the world as a lawyer. He was perhaps already active in the later 1380s, for John Roys, son of Roger Roys of North Walsham, entered into a bond for £20 with Robert Trotter of Norwich in September 1387.11 Vis. Suff. ii (Harl. Soc. n.s. iii), 252; CCR, 1409-13, p. 53; CFR, x. 20; xiii. 55, 62; C241/184/49. Yet the first certain reference to him is from October 1413, when John Hore* made him a feoffee of the manor of Raveley in Huntingdonshire.12 CAD, iii. D896. Just under five years later, Roys was appointed to a commission of inquiry into the Norfolk estates forfeited by the traitor and heretic, Sir John Oldcastle, and he and two of his fellow commissioners, John Lancaster* and William Paston, held inquisitions into these lands at the following October.13 CIMisc. vii. 560. The commission represents Roys’s first known association with Paston, a fellow lawyer. At this stage of his career at least, he was on friendly terms with the latter, for he was party to a settlement that Paston made for himself and his bride, Agnes Barry, in September 1420.14 Norf. RO, Dr. Schram’s colln., MC 170/5, 634 x 3(a). Three years later, a substantial East Anglian landowner, Sir John Carbonel*, named the two lawyers as feoffees to the use of his last will and chose Roys as one of his executors.15 Add. 19122, f. 204; Norf. RO, Norwich consist. ct., Reg. Hyrnyng, ff. 134-5. Paston and Roys were also among those whom Sir Brian Stapleton of Ingham chose to entrust several manors and advowsons at the end of the 1420s.16 CP25(1)/169/187/51. The good relationship between the pair did not last, since near the end of Roys’s life they were rival contenders for the same property. By then Paston had risen to the top of their profession while the greatest distinction that Roys (described simply as a ‘man of lawe’ when he gave a bond for £50 to William Goodred†, a future justice of King’s bench, in October 1424) would achieve was the office of recorder of Norwich.

Like William Paston, Roys married advantageously. His first wife, Margery, the heir of a cadet branch of a Northamptonshire family, had inherited the manor of Titchwell in north Norfolk after her childless brother, William, died in 1415, almost certainly at the battle of Agincourt. Upon succeeding her brother, Margery demised Titchwell to Roys and other feoffees. As it happened, Roys married her soon afterwards, meaning that he came into possession of Titchwell in her right. He would retain the manor after Margery’s death, although technically it was subject to entails made by the Lovell family in previous centuries. He cannot have remained in possession as a tenant by the courtesy, since Margery had died without issue, yet he managed to hold on to the manor, and then to sell it to Sir John Fastolf for £400 in 1431. Fastolf later suffered for his lack of care in buying Titchwell, since a decade after Roys’s death he became embroiled in a long and costly dispute with Sir Edward Hull* and Thomas Wake*, who had married the two female heiresses of the senior Titchmarsh branch of the Lovell family. As a lawyer, Roys must have realized that his right to sell the manor was dubious to say the least, although it is impossible to prove that he was deliberately guilty of sharp practice towards the knight, whom he served as a councillor. In any case, Fastolf should have known enough about the manor through his own family connexions to be aware that he was taking a chance in making the purchase, since by September 1421 his relative, John Fastolf* of Oulton, had married William Lovell’s widow, Margaret (who held dower interests in the property).17 Lewis, 1-20; Titchwell deeds, 2, 12, 46, 75, 78, 80, 82.

Within a few months of Margery’s death in 1424, Roys married the widow of William Waldern, a wealthy merchant from the city of London. On 11 Sept. that year he and Margaret, his new wife, gave an undertaking to the civic authorities, by means of securities of no less than £1,000, to protect the interests of Waldern’s children and to respect his will, and on the following 24 Oct. they obtained the guardianship of the four minors.18 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 746-7; Cal. Letter Bk. London K, 47; Corp. London RO, jnl 2, ff. 52, 53. Probably, Roys had met Margaret while working in London as a lawyer, and he must have spent much time in the City after their marriage. Known as ‘of London’ in the mid 1420s, he was involved in a conveyance of property to the Grocer’s Company in 1429, in which year he also sued a fishmonger from the City for abducting one of his servants there.19 C131/66/4; CPR, 1429-36, p. 78; CP40/674, rot. 514d. Roys himself may have engaged in trade, although not necessarily at London. Shortly before his death, he took action at Westminster against William Forthe, a merchant from Hadleigh, Suffolk, who had acted as his receiver in the spring of 1428. The purpose of the suit was to call Forthe to account for £40 entrusted to him at Horsham St. Faith, just to the north of Norwich, to invest to the MP’s profit.20 CP40/701, rot. 103d.

In July 1427 Roys and his second wife, acting in her capacity as one of the executors of her former husband, were among those who received £1,000 from the city of Genoa, in full payment of £6,000 which it had undertaken to pay William Waldern and other English merchants six years earlier. This sum was to compensate the merchants for a large cargo of woollen cloth confiscated by the Genoese in Henry IV’s reign, although it amounted to much less than the losses originally claimed.21 CCR, 1422-9, p. 405. Margaret Roys died not long after the payment of the last instalment of this £1,000, and Roys was obliged to provide the London authorities with further securities regarding Waldern’s estate after her death.22 Jnl. 2, ff. 107v-108. In May 1428 the escheator in Essex held an inquisition into the lands in that county in which her first husband had given her a jointure interest. These consisted of a manor and lands in Havering, Rainham and Bowers Giffard.23 C145/303/62. Later, in November 1442, there was an inquiry into Waldern’s properties at Braughing and Standon, Hertfordshire, in which Margaret had also enjoyed a life interest. It found that Roys had kept the issues of these holdings ‘by an unknown title’ from her death until they were demised to Sir Thomas Tuddenham* and Thomas Hoo I* in 1429.24 CIPM, xxvi. 18. This finding is hard to understand, for he had been entitled to the custody of these lands as guardian of Richard Waldern (Margaret’s eldest son by her first husband) until Tuddenham and Hoo had acquired a grant of Richard’s wardship in 1432, backdated to 1429.25 CFR, xvi. 121.

In 1430 Roys was one of those upon whom William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, enfeoffed in his estates in East Anglia and elsewhere prior to his marriage with Alice Chaucer in November that year.26 Harl. Chs. 54 I 9-12, 15; CAD, v. A10892; E210/5796; CPR, 1429-36, p. 346. This is the earliest known evidence of a connexion with de la Pole, but he was probably already ‘keeper’ of the earl’s lawsuits in the royal courts at Westminster (‘custodiens placitorum domini in curiam Regis’) by this date.27 C.F. Richmond, Paston Fam.: First Phase, 235n. During the early 1430s he and other de la Pole feoffees supported Alice’s claim to the Kerdiston inheritance, and he acted as a mainpernor when the Crown granted the custody of the former Bardolf estates in west Norfolk to his patron.28 JUST1/1543, rot. 2; CFR, xvi. 33, 60-61. On another occasion in the same period, he and (Sir) John Shardelowe* attended to matters at Gayton Thorpe in west Norfolk, where the local inhabitants had broken into the earl’s fold-course.29 Richmond, 235n. From time to time during the early to mid 1430s, Roys went to the Exchequer to receive assignments of money on de la Pole’s behalf,30 E403/712, m. 4; 715, m. 10; 717, m. 11. and he was one of the officials who presided over the manorial courts held on the de la Pole manor at Costessy during 1435-6.31 Richmond, 235n. Although the earl was his most powerful patron, Roys also served Sir John Clifton of Buckenham as a steward and another prominent East Anglian knight, Sir John Fastolf, as a councillor and auditor. In June 1434, he was associated with the earl, Clifton and others in making a loan of £100 to the Crown.32 E401/737, m. 17. In 1434 he assisted Fastolf in his purchase of the manor of Gorleston in Norfolk, receiving 20s. for his trouble, and when the indenture of sale was drawn up it was his clerk, John Elmham, who acted as the scribe. Elmham also wrote out the evidences when Fastolf bought the manor of Cotton and the neighbouring estate of Wickham Skeith in Suffolk from the earl of Suffolk in the same year. Roys himself was present in his capacity as one of Fastolf’s councillors when the latter purchase was discussed over dinner at Norwich with two of the earl’s agents.33 A.R. Smith, ‘Acquisition of Sir John Fastolf’s Estates’, in Rulers and Ruled ed. Archer and Walker, 142. Had he lived longer, however, he would probably have had to choose between his two patrons, since relations between the earl and Fastolf deteriorated sharply in the late 1430s.34 Richmond, 235n.

Roys’s connexion with the earl of Suffolk must have enhanced his local status and may have played a part in his election to Parliament in June 1433. Then escheator in Norfolk and Suffolk, he was certainly not among the leading gentry of his shire, although he probably qualified to stand for election in his own right. It is not possible to value the lands in North Walsham, Bradfield and elsewhere in north-east Norfolk which he held by this date,35 C131/66/4. but contemporaries acknowledged him as an ‘esquire’. His fellow MP, Sir Robert Clifton*, was a distant cousin of Sir John Clifton, and in late 1433 while Parliament was still sitting both of them took part in a conveyance of property in south-west Norfolk on Sir John’s behalf.36 CP25(1)/169/187/89. Also shortly before the Parliament dissolved, Roys entered into a recognizance with Robert Rolleston, keeper of the great wardrobe, as security for the payment of £56 13s. ½d. that Rolleston subsequently acknowledged receiving from him, but the circumstances of this debt are unknown.37 E159/210, recogniciones Mich. The problem of law and order and the quest for good government were important concerns for the Parliament of 1433. Upon its dissolution, Roys and Sir Robert Clifton were ordered to draw up a list of names of those in Norfolk who ought to swear a generally-proscribed oath to keep the peace, and both men were commissioned to administer the oath in the county the following May.38 CCR, 1429-35, p. 271.

Roys was active in the land market at this stage in this career, for he bought a manor in North Walsham from John Baxter of Honing in 1433. The fact that he had known Baxter for some time (both men had acted as Margery Lovell’s feoffees before she had married Roys) had no doubt put him in a good position to make a bid for the property when the opportunity arose. The purchase price was 350 marks and in October 1433, while he was sitting in Parliament, he paid Baxter a first instalment of 100 marks. Having pledged to pay off the outstanding balance at the rate of 40 marks p.a., he took possession of the manor, which he occupied until the summer of 1436, when William Paston, one of the now dead Baxter’s feoffees, entered the property and offered to buy it. Paston justified his action by claiming that Roys had defaulted on his payments (having handed over only one of the 40 mark instalments by that date), and had not repaid Baxter a separate debt of £80 incurred before the sale. He also recorded that the MP and his then wife, another Margaret, had come to him at Christmas 1435 offering to pay a further 20 marks. Roys was evidently seriously concerned that he was going to lose the property, for he also visited Paston on several other occasions at the end of 1435 and the beginning of the following year. Yet Paston was not interested in promises of more money. In October 1436 he paid Baxter’s executors everything that Roys still owed them and secured full control of the manor, which he was soon preparing to sell to ‘Lady Scarlet’. However, Baxter’s executors, apparently having second thoughts about what was happening, entered an agreement with William Roys, presumably the MP’s heir, the following Christmas. In response, Paston prepared a draft letter addressed to an unidentified lord, giving his side of the story and asking that he might have free disposition of the property. It is likely that he was able to get his way without having to send the letter, since Lady Scarlet took possession of it in January 1437.39 Titchwell deeds, 46; Paston Letters ed. Davis, i. 14-15; Richmond, 38-39. ‘Lady Scarlet’ is identified in C.F. Richmond, Paston Fam.: Fastolf’s Will, 11-12, as Elizabeth, wid. of Thomas Scarlet esq. It is difficult not to conclude, although impossible to prove, that Paston, a much more eminent lawyer than Roys, had cheated the latter out of the manor. If Roys’s part in Paston’s settlement of Oxnead in 1420 suggests that the two men had once enjoyed a cordial relationship, this clearly counted for nothing to the ruthless William.

Roys died in late 1436, soon after losing Walsham to Paston. While his will has not survived, the records of the court of common pleas reveal that he appointed his third wife as one of his executors and that he may have named his putative heir, William Roys, for the same role. William, identified as a London mercer in the plea roll in question, was the defendant in suits brought by Thomas Rose of Salle and Thomas Brigge, both of whom claimed that they were owed debts from the MP’s estate. In pleadings of mid 1440, William denied that he was one of the executors; to which Rose riposted that he had joined the other executors in assuming the administration of the deceased’s goods and chattels at Norwich.40 CP40/718, rots. 382, 383. There is also no extant inquisition post mortem for Roys, although another inquiry, of November 1443, recorded the property that he had held in the mid 1420s.41 C131/66/4. Besides the manor at Titchwell bought by Fastolf, his estate at this date had consisted of a moiety of a manor in Bradfield as well as other holdings in that parish, North Walsham, Swafield and Worstead. It is also likely that he held property in west Norfolk in the right of his third wife, with whom he won an assize of novel disseisin, upholding their title to a manor in South Lynn, in February 1435.42 JUST1/1543, rot. 7.

The inquisition of 1443 occurred after the Crown had ordered the sheriff of Norfolk to extend Roys’s estate for debt. The debt in question was a sum of £1,000 which the MP had acknowledged owing to four Londoners, Robert Otley, John Pattesley, Thomas Catworth* and William Burton†, in the staple court at Westminster 18 years earlier, shortly after he and his second wife, Margaret, had gained custody of her children’s inheritance. Probably there was a link between the debt and a bond that Roys gave the Londoners (who had acted as sureties when he and Margaret obtained the guardianship of the children), in connexion with William Waldern’s estate.43 Cal. Letter Bk. London K, 47, 222-3. Burton was one of those who helped to administer Waldern’s estate after his death: The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 444. It is unclear what happened to Roys’s own estate after the inquisition was taken and the exact relationship between him and William Roys is unknown.44 It is unlikely that William was the MP’s son, unless by an early, undocumented marriage or unless he was illegit. Margery Lovell died childless and Roys’s 2nd wife cannot have been William’s mother, since this would mean that William negotiated with Baxter’s feoffees in late 1436 while no more than 12 years of age. William married the widow of Sir Richard Veutre. Like the MP, he was one of Sir John Clifton’s feoffees and he acted in the same capacity for the knight’s son-in-law, Sir Andrew Ogard*, as well.45 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 59, 112; CChR, vi. 38; VCH Herts. iii. 367, 370.