SWYNEY, Thomas

Perhaps related to the John Swyney serving as a coroner in Worcestershire at the beginning of the fifteenth century,5 CCR, 1402-5, p. 333: writ to sheriff of Worcs. to hold election for a new coroner in place of John, deemed ‘insufficiently qualified’ to exercise the office. Swyney was a butcher by trade.6 Feudal Aids, v. 325. He must have acquired much of his livestock from Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire, since drovers and butchers from those counties were among those whom he sued for debt during the 1430s and 1440s. In all likelihood he had business dealings further afield as well, for in 1450 he brought a similar suit against Alan and Richard Watson, respectively a grazier and a drover, both of whom were from Somerton Castle in Lincolnshire.7 CP40/678, rot. 183; 696, rot. 151; 701, rot. 157d; 732, rot. 288d; 759, rot. 232; CPR, 1436-41, p. 14.

There are no specific details for Swyney’s property at Worcester although he was found to possess freeholdings in the city worth £5 p.a. for the purposes of the subsidy on lands granted by the Parliament of 1431. He helped to assess its inhabitants for this tax, since he was a member of a jury panel which gave evidence to the visiting subsidy commissioners in November that year.8 Feudal Aids, v. 325. For some years at least, Swyney possessed lands outside Worcester as well. In the early autumn of 1414 he received a conveyance of property at Kempsey to the south of the city, by means of a deed in which he is referred to by his alias of ‘Thomas Cook’. It was as Thomas Swyney alias Cook that he conveyed the same properties to John Sharp I* and the clerk, William Hawkes, nearly 26 years later.9 Birmingham Archs., Zachary Lloyd pprs., 3688/99, 109, 113. At an unknown date between the early fifteenth century and 1457, a fellow citizen, John Alcester, petitioned the chancellor, complaining that Swyney was illegally occupying a toft and tenement in the city belonging to him. In his bill, Alcester stated that a lengthy period he had spent overseas on the King’s service had given rise to a rumour that he had died, a falsehood to which Swyney had reacted by seizing the properties for himself.10 C1/17/125. Swyney was also involved in a property dispute as a feoffee of Robert Nelme* of Worcester. By the beginning of 1450, the Worcestershire lawyer Thomas Lyttleton had begun an action in the court of common pleas against him and two co-feoffees, John Vampage* and William Pullesdon*, alleging that Nelme, now dead, had wrongfully disseised his late father, Thomas Hewster*, of three messuages in Worcester.11 CP40/756, rot. 110d; 759, rots. 50, 314d.

The Worcestershire election return for the Parliament of May 1413 provides the earliest known reference to Swyney. It was a combined return, for both the knights of the shire for the county and the burgesses for Worcester, but in all likelihood he had only taken part in electing the city’s representatives. By the mid 1420s he was one of the most important men of the city, and he was returned to his only known Parliament while bailiff of Worcester, an office in which he served several terms.12 Some sources would appear to suggest that he was also one of the bailiffs in 1427-8 and 1430-1 (E368/200, adhuc. rot. 12; T.R. Nash, Worcs. ii. app. p. cxi; V. Green, Hist. Worcester, i. 83n), but he does not feature as such in contemporary charters naming the bailiffs of those years: Worcester Chs. (Worcs. Historical Soc. 1909), 194. Further evidence of his local prominence is his part in an agreement of 1433, by which the leading men of the city and the local cathedral priory made arrangements to improve the supply of water to the priory.13 Worcester Chs. 162. It is nevertheless possible that he fell into disgrace later in his career, since in February 1450 Sir Thomas Blount† and others were commissioned to deliver the gaol of Worcester castle of several prisoners, among them ‘Thomas Coke’.14 CPR, 1446-52, p. 384. Swyney was then one of the bailiffs of Worcester, meaning that the city would have lost his services, assuming that he was the imprisoned man. If the prisoner, his disgrace was short-lived since he was re-elected to another term as a bailiff in the following autumn. Nothing more is heard of Swyney after 1459 and the Thomas Swyney of Worcester active in the 1460s was perhaps his son.

A ‘gentleman’ and lawyer, this latter Thomas was frequently employed at the Exchequer. In March 1462 he stood surety there for the clerk of the pipe, Nicholas Lathell,15 CFR, xx. 68-69. and it was there that he represented Thomas Pachet* and John Broke*, then accounting for their recently completed term as bailiffs of Worcester, in the autumn of the following year.16 E13/149, rot. 34. He was likewise an attorney in the Exchequer for Henry Wrotteseley, deputy sheriff of Worcestershire in 1461-2, for Wrottesley’s two immediate successors, John Rugge and Sir Renfrew Arundell†, and for Thomas Middleton*, who held the office in 1465-6. Exchequer records also reveal that he was Rugge’s under sheriff, and that by 1466 he had entered the service of Ralph Wolseley*, then victualler of Calais and later baron of the Exchequer, for whom he acted at Westminster.17 E13/148, rot. 69; 149, rot. 49d; 151, rot. 102d; 153, rots. 5d, 28; 154, rot. 13d..