ULVESTON, John

It appears that John was a descendant of Sir John Ulveston (d.1393), since he inherited the manor of Ulveston Hall in Debenham, Suffolk, a property once held by that knight.8 W.A. Copinger, Suff. Manors, vii. 134-5. According to Copinger, Sir John was the MP’s gdfa. He states that the knight died in 1332, but his will was in fact dated 1393 and proved in the same year: Norwich consist. ct., Reg. Harsyk, f. 184. Perhaps one of Sir John’s younger sons,9 The John ‘Ulston’ whose arms were depicted in a window at St. Michael in Conisford, Norwich, constructed by Sir Thomas Erpingham to commemorate those East Anglian gentry who died without male issue, was possibly Thomas’s brother: F. Blomefield, Norf. iv. 87. his father served for a time in the relatively lowly position of coroner of Suffolk. In 1411, however, the Crown ordered the sheriff there to hold an election for a new coroner because Thomas Ulveston was ‘insufficiently qualified’ to hold the office.10 CCR, 1409-13, pp. 153, 165. The obscure Thomas Ulveston was probably no longer alive when his wife, Isabel, conveyed Ulveston Hall to Sir William Phelip† and other feoffees in April 1422, to hold to her use during her lifetime and then to the use of their son.11 Ipswich Bor. Archs. (Suff. Rec. Soc. xliii), 431. She subsequently found a new husband in William Mekylffyld of Henham, whose sister Elizabeth married her son, putting the subject of this biography in the somewhat unusual position of being both William’s stepson and brother-in-law. The Mekylffylds were followers of William de la Pole, earl (later marquess and then duke) of Suffolk, lord of a manor at Henham, and early in his career John Ulveston likewise joined the de la Pole affinity.

John progressed far further in the law than his father, attending the Middle Temple and serving on the quorum of the Suffolk bench.12 Paston Letters, iii. 118. Active by the mid 1430s, he twice clashed with Sir Robert Wingfield* in 1435. Wingfield was a prominent retainer of the young duke of Norfolk, whose followers had become embroiled in dangerous rivalries with members of the de la Pole affinity in East Anglia. These came to the fore with the murder near Bury St. Edmunds in mid 1434 of James Andrew†, a lawyer closely connected with the de la Poles, a crime in which Wingfield was implicated. As a lawsuit that Ulveston began in early 1436 indicates, his hostile encounters with Wingfield were linked to Andrew’s death, for he had played some part in securing the knight’s indictment. Taking advantage of the fact that Wingfield was then a prisoner in the Marshalsea, in Hilary term that year Ulveston brought a bill against Sir Robert in the court of King’s bench. He alleged that Wingfield had assaulted him in the parish of St. Dunstan in the West in London on 1 July 1435, putting him in such fear that he dared not go about his business in the City, whether ordering armour (a sign, perhaps, that he was far from sanguine about his personal safety) or travelling between his inn of court and the Guildhall in pursuit of his clients’ suits, from the same 1 July until late the following October. In response, Wingfield denied using any violence against his opponent. He asserted that he had done no more than peacefully admonish Ulveston, upon encountering him at St. Paul’s cathedral, for helping to secure his indictment. Sir Robert also began legal proceedings of his own in the court of common pleas. He alleged that in November 1435 he had suffered an assault at the hands of Ulveston in the parish of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey, London. Ulveston pleaded not guilty and the matter was referred to a trial, only for Wingfield to fail to pursue his suit, suggesting that it had never been any more than a vexatious action.13 KB27/700, rot. 33; 701, rot. 9d; CP40/701, rot. 131; 702, rot. 158; 703, rot. 217d; R. Virgoe, ‘Murder of James Andrew’, Procs. Suff. Inst. Archaeology, xxxiv. 263-6.

In September the following year, Ulveston helped to resolve another quarrel, as an arbitrator between Robert Duke of Brampton, a neighbouring landowner from his own part of Suffolk, on the one hand and Robert Cuddon* of Dunwich on the other.14 Suff. RO (Ipswich), Iveagh (Phillips) mss, HD 1538/341/24. Later in the same decade, he featured in the will, dated 20 Sept. 1439, that his stepfather, William Mekylffyld, made while ‘purposyng towird þe holy lond’. The heir of the childless Mekylffyld, who died in mid 1441, was his younger brother, Robert Mekylffyld, but the testator chose to leave the most important part of his estate to Ulveston, to whom he assigned his manor at Micklefield, along with the right to buy the reversion of another, ‘Cravenes’ in Henham. The gift of Micklefield was made ‘in recompence and satisfaccion’ for 200 marks which Thomas Ulveston had advanced towards the testator’s own purchase of ‘Cravenes’, perhaps at the time of John Ulveston’s marriage to Elizabeth Mekylffyld. The will also shows that by 1439 Elizabeth had borne John his son Richard, to whom Mekylffyld bequeathed ten marks.15 Reg. Doke, ff. 145-7.

It was probably through the testator that Ulveston came to join the affinity of William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, on whose behalf he witnessed a quitclaim in March 1442.16 CCR, 1441-7, p. 57. Apart from clashing with Sir Robert Wingfield, he associated with prominent members of the de la Pole affinity, as well as those on its fringes like John Hopton of Blythburgh, a Suffolk esquire for whom he acted as an estate supervisor and steward in the 1440s and 1450s. Eight months after witnessing the quitclaim for de la Pole, Ulveston was appointed escheator in Norfolk and Suffolk, his first known office under the Crown. During his term as escheator, he was appointed to the Suffolk bench and placed on several commissions of inquiry relating to the possessions of religious houses as far afield as Wiltshire and Somerset. These were properties with which Henry VI intended to endow his college at Eton, of which Ulveston was perhaps already acting as receiver. The appointment had certainly been made by October 1444, probably through the influence of de la Pole, now marquess of Suffolk, who had helped the King to found the college. No doubt his links with de la Pole and the Crown explains the willingness of the Merchant Tailors of London to admit Ulveston to honorary membership of their company in 1443-4.17 Guildhall Lib. London, Merchant Taylors’ Co. accts. 34048/1, f. 372v.

In the autumn of 1444 the Crown awarded the valuable office of keeper of the writs in the common pleas to Ulveston and Thomas del Rowe, both referred to as ‘King’s servants’ in the grant.18 CPR, 1441-6, p. 316. It did so in complete disregard of the rights of its existing holders, Robert Darcy I* and Henry Filongley*, so provoking litigation between the rival pairs of appointees. Apart from going to law, Darcy and Filongley sought redress in Parliament, successfully petitioning the assembly of 1445 (of which Darcy was a Member) for the confirmation of their letters patent. On 1 Dec. 1445 they and their rivals released all actions one to the other, so bringing the dispute formally to an end.19 M. Hastings, Ct. Common Pleas, 131-3, 277; E361/6, rot. 17; E101/408/14, 19, 21; 409/4, 6; CP40/736, rot. 450; 738, rot. 528d; 739, rots. 337-9d; 740, cart. rot. 1. The following Parliament was Ulveston’s first. It is not clear why the burgesses of Great Yarmouth should have elected him in 1447 and again to the Parliament of 1449-50, but they may have felt it useful to have a lawyer to represent them. It is also possible, given his connexions with the Crown and the marquess of Suffolk, that outside pressure was brought to bear on the burgesses to elect a follower of de la Pole, who used the Parliament to bring about the downfall of his political opponent, the duke of Gloucester. Ulveston did not have far to travel to attend it, for it sat at Bury St. Edmunds, well away from Gloucester’s main areas of support.

Nine months after the dissolution of the Parliament of 1447, Ulveston and John Hopton acted as mainpernors for Robert Constable*. The occasion was the Crown’s grant of the wardship of Thomas Fastolf† of Cowhawgh to Constable, although in reality the latter was acting on behalf of his brother-in-law, (Sir) Philip Wentworth*, a Household man and follower of de la Pole to whom the grant was transferred in February 1453. Wentworth’s acquisition of the wardship was a direct challenge to the child’s relative, Sir John Fastolf, who had claimed it for himself.20 CFR, xviii. 79; CPR, 1452-61, p. 46; A.R. Smith, ‘Sir John Fastolf’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1982), 204; C.F. Richmond, Paston Fam.: First Phase, 241. The struggle for the child’s custody was, however, a subsidiary battle in the competition for the manors of Beighton in Norfolk and Bradwell in Suffolk, which Wentworth was trying to wrest away from Sir John. Wentworth’s chief ally in this dispute was John Andrew III*, a de la Pole follower whom Fastolf and his supporters viewed with particular opprobrium, but Ulveston was also heavily involved. According to subsequent indictments, he and Andrew broke into Fastolf’s house and close at Beighton in April 1449,21 KB27/790, rot. 58. and then forged two inquisitions supposedly held by the escheator, John Blakeney*, in the following summer. The false documents stated that the manors were the rightful inheritance of the ward and that Fastolf had gained possession of them by disseising the child’s grandfather, Sir Hugh Fastolf. Fastolf prevented the manors from entering Wentworth’s hands by challenging these findings but he was obliged to farm them from the Crown over the next few years, incurring heavy legal costs and losses of revenue as a result.22 A.R. Smith, ‘Litigation and Politics’, in Property and Politics ed. Pollard, 64, 68; KB9/267/20. Ulveston was evidently a willing tool of Wentworth in the quarrel, although there is no reason to suppose that, initially at least, he felt any personal animus towards Fastolf, with whom he had been associated in a land transaction earlier in the decade.23 CP25(1)/224/117/23. Yet, even if he had enjoyed good relations with Sir John in the past, his part in the forgeries ensured the knight’s future enmity.

Ulveston was returned to Parliament for the second time in October 1449. He himself attested the return of Suffolk’s knights of the shire to the same assembly, an election at which the followers of de la Pole, by now duke of Suffolk, were present in force. He cannot have had a comfortable time as an MP, since the Commons impeached the duke, who was subsequently murdered on his way into exile before the Parliament had ended. Apparently not immediately affected by the loss of his patron, Ulveston stood as a mainpernor for (Sir) Thomas Stanley II* and Hugh atte Fenne* (to whom the Crown had granted the keeping of lands in Norfolk) while still an MP.24 CFR, xviii. 155, 174-5. In October 1450, however, Ulveston lost his place on the Suffolk bench, and when a commission of oyer and terminer sat at Norwich the following month juries drawn from the city’s four wards drew up indictments against him, Sir Thomas Tuddenham*, John Heydon*, John Belley and other de la Pole men. After recounting various charges made against the late duke and his supporters in the Parliament of November 1449 and elsewhere, they accused de la Pole’s followers of having formed a conspiracy with the steward of the prior of Norwich in the mid 1430s, in order to corrupt justice in the city and the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk for their own profit. The juries also cited many examples of extortion and interference in the city’s affairs by the de la Pole affinity. Ulveston was one of those accused of having supported the election of William Grey as mayor of Norwich in 1436, in contravention of the custom and will of the city. Another charge related to a commission of oyer and terminer which had sat in 1443, after the citizens had rioted against Norwich cathedral priory. Tuddenham, Ulveston and others were said to have threatened the city with a loss of its liberties if their activities were reported to this commission, to have demanded that it pay de la Pole 1,000 marks in return for their own peace and quiet, and to have extorted 500 marks from an alderman, Robert Toppe*, by threatening to hang him. Partisan though they were, these indictments reflected the resentment felt towards de la Pole and his followers for their intervention in Norwich’s tumultuous affairs over the past two decades, during which the Crown twice confiscated the city’s liberties.25 KB9/272/4-5; R.L. Storey, End of House of Lancaster, 217-25.

Within two weeks of the oyer and terminer hearing of November 1450, a like commission sat at Beccles in Suffolk and Ulveston was again named in several indictments. As at Norwich, he was accused of having taking part in a conspiracy against the interests of that city. Another indictment, initiated by Sir John Fastolf, charged him and John Andrew with having forged the Beighton and Bradwell inquisitions. Ulveston was also indicted for having, along with his late stepfather, William Mekelffyld, and William’s brother, Robert, unjustly disseised the three young daughters and heirs of Roger Chestan of their father’s manor in Westleton, in the mid 1430s. It would appear that the property was subsequently restored to the Chestans, for the three men, supported by Tuddenham, Heydon and Belley, were said physically to have ejected the coheiresses from Westleton in July 1440. They were alleged to have seized the children (none of whom was aged over five) and thrown them violently onto a dung pit (‘sterquilium’) lying outside the manor’s gates. Following this episode, the Chestans, in the person of their guardian, John Lynton, had sued Ulveston and the Mekelffylds in King’s bench, but apparently with no success.26 KB27/717, rot. 35; 798, rex rot. 9. Another of the Beccles indictments charged Ulveston and the Mekelffylds with having pursued several legal actions in de la Pole’s name against William Jenney* and his brother, John*, the two lawyers who had helped the Chestans. Ulveston was supposed to have aided various opponents of the Jenneys, including the abbot of Leiston, whom he served as a steward and for whom he was said to have maintained several suits against the brothers. He was also alleged to have held a court in the abbot’s name on their manor at Theberton, Suffolk, in March 1449. Another indictment suggests that Ulveston became involved in a bitter, personal quarrel with the Jenneys. It charged him and John Belley with having procured a couple of men to smash a stained glass window in the chancel of Buxlowe parish church, an act intended to disparage the name and honour of the Jenneys, since William was patron of the church and the window depicted the arms of two of his ancestors. This particular indictment is likely to have had a basis in fact, since Jenney subsequently brought a civil action against Ulveston and one of the window-breakers, John Brame, a yeoman or husbandman from Buxlowe.27 KB27/762, rot. 68; 798, rex rot. 9; KB9/267/14, 18, 20. Nearly two years after the taking of the Beccles indictments, the sheriff of Suffolk was ordered to ensure that Ulveston and others indicted for numerous wrongdoings in the county appeared in the court of King’s bench.28 KB27/766, rex rot. 6. It would appear, however, that the MP never had to answer in court for the charges laid against him, since he was absent when others who had been indicted with him finally appeared in King’s bench in early October 1460.29 KB27/798, rex rot. 9.

Despite coming under sustained attack from the opponents of de la Pole, Ulveston was left relatively unscathed by the duke of Suffolk’s downfall. Although he lost his place on the bench, he enjoyed sufficient respect as a lawyer to attain the position of steward of the Middle Temple in late 1450 or early 1451. (Not surprisingly, Sir John Fastolf’s servant, John Bocking, viewed his promotion in a jaundiced light, reporting that ‘Vlueston is styward of the Mydill Inne, and Isley of the Inner Inne, be cause thei wold haue officz for excuse for dwellyng this tyme from her wyves’.)30 Paston Letters, iii. 118. Furthermore, the de la Pole affinity proved resilient, with the late duke’s followers regrouping around Alice, his widowed duchess. In June 1451 Ulveston and Humphrey Forster†, a de la Pole servant from Oxfordshire, stood as mainpernors when the keeping of Suffolk’s English estates (except those lands set aside as dower for the duchess) was committed with Alice’s agreement to Thomas, Lord Scales, and (Sir) Miles Stapleton* during the minority of his heir.31 CFR, xviii. 220. The account of the duchess’s receiver-general for 1453-4 reveals that by this date Ulveston was receiving an annual fee of £10 as her steward in Suffolk, an office he may previously have held under her husband. It also shows that he was one of the East Anglian gentry who came to Eye at her behest in August 1454, to discuss a dispute between her and Thomas Cornwallis*.32 Egerton Roll 8779. L.E. James, ‘William de la Pole, 1st duke of Suffolk’ (Oxf. Univ. B.Litt. thesis, 1979), 12, assumes that Ulveston was already the duke’s steward when he was appointed receiver of Eton, but it is not clear upon what he bases this assumption.

In the meantime, Ulveston attested the return of Suffolk’s knights of the shire to the Parliament of 1453, an assembly called as the government and Court were recovering after the crises of 1450-2. The de la Pole affinity used the change of political fortune to take action against their opponents before Parliament met. When John Prysote* and other commissioners of oyer and terminer sat at Ipswich in February 1453, the duchess of Suffolk, with Ulveston and Edward Grimston standing as her pledges, laid a deposition against the Mowbray retainer, John Howard*, and others for poaching her deer and menacing her servants.33 James, 235. At the same oyer and terminer hearings, John Dowebiggyng, ‘late of Framlingham Castle’, and 23 other Mowbray retainers were indicted for plotting to kill Ulveston. The jury, including leading de la Pole men like Sir Miles Stapleton and John Andrew, found that Dowebiggyng and his fellows had surrounded Ulveston’s house at Henham on 12 Aug. 1452. On discovering that only his wife and son, Richard, were at home, the would-be malefactors were alleged to have remarked that it was ‘a shrewed turne that he is not at home our iourney is evyll lost. But as for him we shull have our purpose an othyr tyme well Inowe. And as for his sone late us smyte of his right arme and than he shalle neuer do so moche harme as his fader hath do.’ In the event, Richard Ulveston managed to make his escape, but following this incident he and his father were said to have dared not return home before the following 20 Sept.34 KB9/118/1/36.

While it is impossible to gauge the truth of the jury’s findings, there is little doubt of the bad blood existing between the de la Pole and Mowbray affinities at this time, and in 1453 Ulveston, John Andrew and others sought securities of the peace from the duke of Norfolk, John Howard, Charles Nowell† and other Mowbray retainers. The indictment against Dowebiggyng and his accomplices appears more credible than another taken at the same Ipswich hearings. The presenting jurors, who included Ulveston, Andrew, Grimston and another de la Pole retainer, William Harleston, alleged that leading supporters of the duke of Norfolk were among those who had conspired in March 1450 to put the duke of York on the throne. The indicted men were also said to have helped bring about the murder of the duke of Suffolk by promoting the rebellions in Kent and Sussex later in the same year.35 KB9/118/2/30; J.R. Lander, Wars of the Roses, 63-64.

Five months after the Yorkist victory at the battle of St. Albans in May 1455, Ulveston took the precaution of securing a royal pardon.36 C67/41, m. 20. Later that decade, he attested the return of Suffolk’s knights of the shire to the partisan Lancastrian Parliament which opened at Coventry in November 1459, and the following month he was placed on an anti-Yorkist commission of array in the county. Thereafter he disappears from view, probably because he was persona non grata after Edward IV seized the throne.

Still alive in March 1461,37 CP40/860, rots. 127, 127d. Ulveston was certainly dead by the latter part of 1463. In Michaelmas term that year, a plaintiff named Nicholas Crome sought the sum of 77s. from the MP’s estate, a debt arising from a bond that Ulveston had entered into with him in Suffolk in 1459. Crome brought his action against Richard Ulveston, referred to as his father’s executor in the suit, which also named his co-executors, Ulveston’s widow, Elizabeth, and Thomas Bevyle of Beccles.38 CP40/810, rot. 136. Both HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 895, and (probably following Wedgwood) Richmond, Hopton, 150, assume that the MP died in 1460. Richard survived for at least another decade,39 KB27/841, rex rot. 49; 846, rex rot. 18. while Elizabeth was certainly still alive in 1476 when she faced proceedings at Westminster as one of her late husband’s executors. The plaintiff, Sir William Brandon†, accused her of wrongfully detaining a muniment chest containing deeds relating to land in Henham that he had bought from Robert Banyard, and which Baynard, while still owner of the land in question, had entrusted to Ulveston for safe-keeping in March 1461.40 CP40/860, rots. 127, 127d. Elizabeth may in fact have survived into Henry VII’s reign, since the Chancery issued a writ of diem clausit extremum relating to Elizabeth Ulveston ‘of Suffolk’ in February 1495.41 CFR, xxii. nos. 503, 530.

A descendant and namesake of the MP (the exact relationship is unclear) was active in East Anglia during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. He was obliged to petition Richard III to regain the Ulveston manor at Henham, which the then duchess of Suffolk, the King’s sister, had unjustly occupied. This John Ulveston sold off another part of his inheritance, Ulveston Hall in Debenham, in 1506.42 CFR, xxi. no. 643; CCR, 1500-1509, nos. 944, 983; BL Harl. MS 433 ed. Horrox and Hammond, ii. 227; LP Hen. VIII, i. no. 438 (1) m. 2.