YOUNG, Thomas II

Best known for advocating the dynastic claims of Richard, duke of York, in the Parliament of 1450-1, Young enjoyed a wide-ranging career as a merchant and lawyer. His support for York in that assembly earned him a spell of imprisonment in the Tower of London, to which he was briefly returned in early 1460 on suspicion of treason, but he was never a political diehard. Although he prospered after the accession of Edward IV, under whom he became a serjeant-at-law and then a judge, he subsequently accepted the short-lived restoration of Henry VI in 1470 before ending his days back in the service of the first Yorkist King. During his long and eventful career he was returned to the Commons on at least 11 occasions, meaning that he was one of the most experienced parliamentarians of his day.

By birth Young was a native of Bristol, but his father and namesake was a Welshman who had settled in the town and become one of its leading merchants. At some stage before 1408 the elder Thomas married Joan, the wealthy widow of John Canynges, a former mayor of Bristol. Apart from the subject of this biography, Joan bore him another son and a daughter but he also assumed responsibility for her six children by Canynges, alongside whom his own children were raised.22 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 476; iv. 939-40. Throughout their lives, his sons Thomas and John Young enjoyed a close relationship with their half-brothers, Thomas and William Canynges. All four men had distinguished careers, although that of the younger Thomas Young was the most varied and politically significant. Like John Canynges, the elder Thomas Young also served as mayor of Bristol. He appears not to have held public office after completing his second term in the mayoralty at Michaelmas 1421, although he survived until 1427. In his will, dated 14 Mar. that year, he left his messuages, shops and tenements in the town to his wife to hold for the rest of her life, with remainder to his sons, Thomas and John, and daughter Alice, the wife of Thomas Pynchon. In due course the younger Thomas succeeded to a share of the same properties, comprising several messuages, a tenement, a shop and rents situated in Temple Street, Fuller Street and on Avon bridge. The testator also left his children a third share of his goods not otherwise specifically bequeathed and named his wife and by now adult eldest son as his executors.23 Bristol Wills (Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. 1886), 115-16. It was in that capacity that mother and son took legal action against the Bristol draper John Mavyell in 1429, over a debt of no less than £240 he owed to the testator’s estate.24 C131/62/9. Joan Young died before the end of the same year, having directed that her own property in Bristol should pass first to her sons by John Canynges and only in default to those of her second marriage; but her death did allow the younger Thomas to enter into his paternal inheritance. Apart from the holdings he inherited, his interests at Bristol were augmented through marriage. His wife Isabel was the daughter and coheir of a prominent and wealthy local merchant, John Burton, and her sister was married to Young’s half-brother, William Canynges, so securing the Burton wealth for the Young and Canynges families. Young appears to have enjoyed a good relationship with his father-in-law, who appointed him as one of his executors before his death in 1455.25 Gt. Red Bk. of Bristol, iii (Bristol Rec. Soc. xvi), 56-61; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 342, 601.

Following in the footsteps of his father and Burton, Young also became a merchant although his decision to enter the law marks him out from his brother and half-brothers, all of whom pursued more conventional mercantile careers. William Canynges established himself at Bristol while Thomas Canynges and John Young became leading London grocers. For a time, Thomas Young co-operated in business ventures with his half-brother William. In April 1432 he and William took a statute staple for £20 from a London vintner to whom they had sold ‘divers merchandise’ on credit, and it was on the strength of that security that they began legal action against their debtor in the following autumn.26 C241/225/55. Damage to this document renders the name of their debtor uncertain. At the end of the same decade Young received a like security from William, Ralph and Richard Hert of Lincoln, to guarantee that they would pay him more than £92. This second statute staple, which also led to legal proceedings, was probably likewise connected with a commercial transaction, for Ralph was a vintner and Richard a merchant.27 C241/228/10.

Young continued in trade long after entering the law, perhaps right up until the end of his life. In May 1445, for instance, he and John Gedney of Sandwich bound themselves in £20, to guarantee that they would satisfy the King of certain sums connected with 5,040 fells which they and three foreign merchants, John Swensbergh, Arnold van Penxston and Ingelbert van Howe, had forfeited. Presumably the five men had suffered the forfeiture for having neglected, deliberately or otherwise, to pay customs or other charges due to the Crown.28 E159/221, recogniciones Easter 23 Hen. VI. It is unclear whether Gedney should be identified with the London draper John Gedney*. Young was referred to as ‘mercator’ when returned to his penultimate Parliament in 1455, suggesting that even at that date he was by no means primarily a lawyer. Throughout his career he frequently associated with his brother John, his half-brother Thomas Canynges and other prominent Londoners, among them the grocer and Exchequer clerk Thomas Brown II*, the mercer and lawyer Thomas Frowyk II* and another grocer, William Venour. In the mid 1430s he appears to have co-operated with Brown in the lucrative business of ransoming French prisoners of war. Venour, who was a close friend, had married one of the daughters and coheirs of the Bristol merchant Thomas Beaupyne†. Both he and Thomas Canynges died in the early years of Edward IV’s reign, following which Young served their widows as a feoffee and, after her death, Elizabeth Canynges as an executor.29 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 99, 115; 1441-7, p. 133; 1454-61, pp. 37-38, 419-20, 485-6; 1461-8, pp. 68, 161, 363, 367; CPR, 1436-41, p. 23; 1441-6, p. 345; 1461-7, p. 512; CP40/795, rot. 114; 821, rot. 447; 823, rot 397; Corp. London RO, hr 187/7; 188/2; 196/5; KB9/145/7/41, 43; Glos. Archs., Badminton muns., D2700/NN1/1; CP25(1)/79/92/143; KB27/830, rot. 32. What prompted him to embark on a legal career must remain a matter for speculation, although his subsequent rise to the very top ranks of his profession indicates that he possessed a considerable aptitude for the law.

Exactly when Young began his legal training is unrecorded although he was already acknowledged as a ‘gentleman’, the sobriquet typically allowed to lawyers, as early as 1432.30 C241/225/55; CFR, xvi. 116-17. In all likelihood he had entered the Middle Temple in the previous decade, since as a serjeant-at-law he was senior to William Jenney*, who was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in Michaelmas term 1430.31 Baker, 1736. It was perhaps for his legal expertise that he was called upon to witness the will which Richard Buckland* made at London in August 1436, although friendship may have played a part since Buckland bequeathed him £10.32 Fifty Earliest English Wills (EETS lxxviii), 107-8. He had certainly entered the Middle Temple by November the following year when he witnessed another will, this time of a fellow member of the inn, Nicholas Metley*.33 Shakespeare Centre Archs., Ferrers mss, DR3/258. Young is the earliest known reader of the Middle Temple. He gave readings on Merton, cc. 1-2 and Westminster II, cc. 24-35, 45-48, probably completing them before the autumn of 1442 when he secured letters patent exempting him for life from becoming serjeant-at-law, an office he was eventually obliged to accept just over two decades later.34 Readers and Readings (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xiii), 145; Readings and Moots i. (Selden Soc. lxxi), p. lx; CPR, 1441-6, p. 127. In the meantime, he necessarily spent much time at Westminster in pursuit of his legal career. It was there that he was caught up in a fracas with half a dozen men (including four ‘gentlemen’, Roger Barowe, Walter Pye, William Burghill and Thomas Senderby), from Clehonger in Herefordshire in 1458. In June that year he began a suit against them in the court of common pleas, where in subsequent pleadings he alleged that they had attacked him and tried to kill him on the previous 15 Jan. As a result, between then and the day he initiated his suit, 1 June, he had dared not go about his day-to-day business at Westminster, namely collecting fees from those he represented as an attorney in the King’s courts, as well as other debts, and trading in ‘victuals’ in his capacity as a merchant. The plea roll does not however reveal whether his assailants were already known to him or the other circumstances of this affair.35 CP40/791, rot. 405.

A merchant and successful lawyer like Young would have possessed plentiful supplies of ready capital, and by the mid 1440s he was lending money to the Crown. In August 1444 he advanced £40 to the King, a loan for which the Exchequer issued him with a tally assigned on the customs of Bristol.36 E401/786, m. 20; E403/754, m. 10. In March the following year he sued Thomas Bateman and John Sharp III*, the former collectors of customs in the port, for non-payment of that sum, although with what result is not recorded.37 E13/143, rot. 38. Late in the reign of Henry VI he received a tally assigned on the issues of Yorkshire, so that he might recover the debts which the Crown still owed him, and it was on the basis of this tally that he went to law against Sir John Tempest, a former sheriff of that county, in 1462.38 E13/147, rot. 70. By then Young was already lending money to the new King, Edward IV, to whom he advanced £150 in July 1461, a further 100 marks in the following December and another 100 marks in 1470.39 E403/823, m. 5; 824, mm. 6, 9; E404/72/1/83; 74/3/15; CPR, 1461-7, p. 41.

The wealth Young accumulated also gave him the wherewithal to invest in real property, although his acquisitions were respectable rather than spectacular. During the earlier 1440s he made a significant purchase from John Newton of Bristol (probably the son of John Newton†) of lands in Bristol and several Gloucestershire parishes. Among these holdings were the manor of Shrivenham in Westbury on Trym and an estate at Shirehampton, just outside the town, which became one of his principal places of residence.40 It is unclear whether a bond for £100 which Young gave to a fellow Glos. esquire, John Dygas of Shirehampton, in Jan. 1444 was in any way connected with the purchase. Over two decades later, Dygas sued him on the strength of that security: CP40/814, rots. 113-14. In 1457 Young and his feoffees, including (Sir) John Fortescue*, c.j.KB, acquired the Gloucestershire manors and advowsons of Tormarton, Littleton, West Littleton and Acton Turville from the de la River family, although in what circumstances is unknown. He married his daughter Agnes to Robert de la River but it is unclear whether the match coincided with his acquisition. In the latter half of 1459 Young obtained the reversion of Castle Combe, a manor at Old Sodbury in the same county. He may never have enjoyed actual possession of Castle Combe since it was held for life by Alice Newburgh (wife of John Newburgh II*) who survived until 1482, although it afterwards passed to his son and heir.41 CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 170; CP40/756, rot. 29; 795, rots. 26, 114; 838, rot. 132d; CP25(1)/79/92/143, 147; 93/7, 8; Notts. Archs., Portland mss, 157 DD/P/121/1; KB27/786, rot. 84; 830, rot. 32; 906, rots. 558, 558d; C140/84/36. Alice’s interest was as the widowed daughter-in-law of William Westbury, j.KB. It was also in 1459 that Young acquired the Wiltshire manor of North Wraxall from his son-in-law Edward Cervington, the husband of his daughter Joan. Again, the circumstances of this transaction are unclear, and it is impossible to tell whether it was in any way connected with a dispute between him and Edward’s father, David Cervington, earlier that decade. He had fallen out with the elder Cervington, who had died at a very advanced age in September 1456, over Joan’s jointure lands, prompting him to take action in the Chancery. Young claimed that he had provided his daughter with a marriage portion of 300 marks as agreed, only for the Cervingtons to fail to settle the manor and advowson of Whatley in Somerset on the couple, so denying Joan her rightful jointure interest in the Cervington estates.42 C1/16/314; 17/410; CP40/795, rot. 26, cart. rot.; C139/163/5; C140/61/26.

Some time after embarking on a legal career, Young became recorder of Bristol, an office he occupied from at least the early 1440s until the mid 1460s or later. As the appointment indicates, he always remained closely identified with the town, where he also served on many royal commissions and which he represented in no fewer than nine consecutive Parliaments from October 1435 until mid 1451. Doubtless his fellow Bristolians regarded him as an ideal candidate for the Commons, taking into account his mercantile background, expertise in the law and familiarity with London and Westminster, where more often than not Parliament sat. Given that Young was so often in the capital – by the early 1460s he had a residence in the parish of St. Clement Danes, conveniently close to the Middle Temple43 CFR, xx. 131, 182. – it was less inconvenient for him than most other Bristolians to attend Parliaments. Similarly, he was well placed to run errands to the Exchequer or other government departments on behalf of his native town.44 E403/740, m. 12; CFR, xvii. 308. He is not always easy to distinguish in Exchequer records, since he had a namesake who was clerk of the estreats in the later 1450s, perhaps the man who received assignments of money there on behalf of Sir Roger Fiennes* (treasurer of the Household, 1438-46) and others. The clerk was possibly the Thomas Young of London who, in association with his wife Margaret, was granted a papal licence to keep a portable altar in 1442: PRO List ‘Exchequer Officers’, 90; E403/747, mm. 12, 13; 769, mm. 5, 7; 755, m. 13; 777, m. 10; 810, m. 7; CPL, ix. 316. For lack of evidence to the contrary, the unlikely possibility that the clerk and the MP were one and the same person has been rejected. On one occasion early in the reign of Edward IV, the authorities at Bristol asked him to go to the King’s chamberlain, to explain that a quantity of gunpowder which they had seized in 1456-7 had run out. Since that time both Richard, duke of York, and subsequently Edward IV had grown accustomed to draw upon this supply to use against their enemies, but now there was nothing left.45 Gt. Red Bk. of Bristol, i (Bristol Rec. Soc. iv), 136-8.

At about the same time as his appointment as recorder of Bristol, Young was retained as an apprentice-at-law by the duchy of Lancaster, which he was also to serve as a deputy chief steward of the south parts, as clerk of the court of its honour of Walbrook and as a justice in South Wales. He was to have a longstanding association with the duchy, which continued to retain him for his counsel after he became a serjeant-at-law. Although his work for it gave him an important connexion with the Crown, it was as a bureaucrat rather than a courtier and, unlike some of his contemporaries, he appears not to have benefited significantly from Henry VI’s often misguided largesse. He did however gain the stewardship of the former Gournay estates which John, Lord Tiptoft, had held in Somerset and Dorset, immediately after that peer’s death in early 1443. Young was paid a fee of £5 p.a. for his stewardship, which he was to relinquish in favour of John Byconnell* in 1461.46 CPR, 1461-7, p. 23.

Besides the duchy of Lancaster, Young possessed other important institutional clients in the dean and chapter at Windsor, the corporations of Kingston-upon-Hul1, London, Exeter and Rye and the Grocers’ Company of the City of London. He had formed a connexion with the canons of Windsor before the end of the 1430s, since he was receiving an annual retainer of 3s. 4d. from them by 1439-40.47 St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, recs., XV/48/16 m. 4. More remarkable is his service to Hull, for he spent part of his fourth Parliament, that of 1442, working in the interests of that borough, which had become an ‘urban county’ like Bristol less than two years earlier. As its chamberlains’ account for 1441-2 records, Hull paid him £3 for ‘his labour’ at the Parliament, apparently in relation to its exemption from poundage for woollen cloth. How and when he came to act for that borough is unknown. Had it retained the services of a lawyer rapidly making a name for himself some time before the Parliament, or had its MPs approached an influential and experienced fellow Member of the Commons House (the Parliament was Young’s fourth) for his help after that assembly had begun?48 Hull Hist. Centre, Kingston-upon-Hull recs., chamberlains’ accts. 1441-2, BRF 2/358. Less unexpectedly, in July 1447 the corporation of London chose Young and John Vampage* to arbitrate in a quarrel between it and the rector and parishioners of St. Stephen’s Walbrook over the terms of the will of Henry Barton†. During 1447-8 he was paid a ‘reward’ of 6s. from the receiver of Exeter, who in that period rode to London on at least two occasions in pursuit of his city’s business. On one of these visits to the capital, the receiver treated Young, Vampage and other lawyers to breakfast in Vampage’s chamber in London. In 1449 the corporation of Rye bought felt caps for Young and two fellow men of law, William Lacon I* and William Eland*, so ‘that they might the sooner be friends to us and the franchise of Tenderden’. In August that year Tenterden was incorporated into the Cinque Ports as a limb of Rye, although it is not clear whether this process did in fact owe anything to Young’s help.49 C.M. Barron, Med. Guildhall London, 52; Letters and Pprs. Shillingford (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, ii), 149, 152; E. Suss. RO, Rye mss, 60/1, f. 20v. Young’s connexion with the Grocers of London dates from at least 1447 when he was one of three ‘lernid men’ retained by that Company,50 Baker, 1736. of which his brother John was warden in the following year. The Grocers are recorded as having paid him fees in 1448, 1449 and 1460 (as, no doubt, they did in between those dates) and to have presented him with hoods in 1448-50 and 1452-4.51 N.L. Ramsay, ‘The English Legal Profession’ (Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), 141.

The most significant of Young’s individual clients was Richard, duke of York, although he was also employed by other important figures, among them Ralph, Lord Cromwell, William, Lord Lovell, Henry Beauchamp, duke of Warwick, Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, Robert, Lord Hungerford and Moleyns, Sir John Barre*, Sir John Fastolf, (Sir) John Howard* and Edward IV’s queen, Elizabeth Wydeville. Already associated with Cromwell by the later 1430s, Young was a feoffee for him from at least the first half of the following decade, a role he continued to perform up to and beyond that peer’s death in early 1456.52 CCR, 1435-41, p. 115; 1441-7, pp. 222-3, 229; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 199-200, 341; C67/41, m. 30; E328/136. In 1440 Young was one of several leading lawyers whom Lovell paid for their advice,53 Northants RO, Finch Hatton mss, 3152. and at the beginning of May 1446 he became steward of Warwick’s honour of Gloucester in Bristol with a fee of ten marks p.a.54 CIPM, xxvi. 459. Presumably the stewardship was extremely short-lived, since Warwick died just over a month later. In the following October he was retained as a legal counsellor by the duke of Buckingham, who awarded him a fee of £2 p.a. chargeable on his estate at Thornbury, Gloucestershire, and in whose service he remained until at least 1457-8.55 C. Rawcliffe, Staffords, 221, 238; K.B. McFarlane, Eng. in the 15th Cent. 252. Young was associated with Sir John Fastolf by the latter half of the 1440s when he advised the knight in his struggle to retain the manor of Titchwell in Norfolk, and Sir John paid him for his counsel up to at least 1455. Most of Fastolf’s estates lay in his native East Anglia, although Young may have come into contact with him in Gloucestershire where he held the manor of Oxenton in the right of his wife. Fastolf was an executor of the late John, duke of Bedford, and in early 1456 he wrote to three of his intimates, John Paston*, Nicholas Molyneux and Thomas West, about Bedford’s still unfulfilled will. Were an Act of Parliament the best course of action for rectifying this highly unsatisfactory state of affairs, he asked that it should be sought with the help ‘of substanciall lerned man, as Thomas Yonge and othir suche’.56 C254/145/52; Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Fastolf pprs., 42, mm. 1-3; McFarlane, 225; Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 132-3. A shared connexion with the duke of York probably explains how in the spring of 1452 Young came to act as an attorney in the Exchequer of pleas for the Herefordshire knight, Sir John Barre.57 E13/145A, rot. 42d. Young was also a feoffee for the Hungerfords, and it was as such that he was party to the marriage settlement made for Lord Hungerford’s eldest son Thomas* and his bride Anne, a daughter of Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, in October 1460.58 CCR, 1454-61, p. 439; CIMisc. viii. 322. In March 1463 Young was paid for a couple of days ‘labour’ at the Whitefriars in London by Howard, whom he again advised in 1465.59 Howard Household Bks. ed. Crawford, i. 151, 485, 486. By the second half of the same decade he was one of the legal counsellors of the queen, from whom he received a fee of 40s. p.a.60 A.R. Myers, Crown, Household and Parl. 298-9. Through his connexion with her, he was caught up in a complicated quarrel later in the same decade. The dispute was connected with the fee farm of Bristol, which the King had granted to the queen in January 1466. She had afterwards assigned the task of collecting arrears of the farm to Young, who by 1469 was at odds with her attorney general, John Dyve*, and her former receiver-general, John Forster†, over the discharge of a tally assigned on the same farm, prior to its grant to her. In the autumn of that year Dyve and Forster sued him in the Chancery, although with what result is unknown.61 C1/43/102-3; C253/42/74.

Important though such patrons were, it is for his association with Richard, duke of York, that Young is chiefly remembered. His connexion with the duke dates from at least early 1447. On 26 Feb. that year York appointed him steward of the manor of Easton-in-Gordano in north Somerset, with a fee of 53s. 4d. p.a., and two days later he witnessed a grant from the duke to the Franciscans at Bury St. Edmunds, the venue for the Parliament then taking place.62 Johnson, 241; CPR, 1446-52, p. 231. As it happened, at this time Young was probably more occupied with the affairs of the Crown than those of York, for during the Parliament, in which he sat as one of the MPs for Bristol, he was paid a reward for his ‘labours and diligence’ on ‘divers matters’ concerning the King’s profit.63 E403/765, m. 16. Ironically Bury was the scene of the arrest and death of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, whose role as the principal opponent of the government and Court York subsequently filled. There is, however, no evidence that Young’s endeavours were in any way connected with the bringing down of Gloucester, a magnate for whom he recently had acted as a deputy justiciar in South Wales. By the end of the same decade, Young was one of York’s closest advisers. In March 1449, a few months before taking up the lieutenancy of Ireland, the duke appointed him to act as an attorney for him in England,64 CPR, 1446-52, p. 245. and by the autumn of 1450 Sir Thomas Tuddenham* and John Heydon*, retainers of the King’s erstwhile chief minister, the late William, duke of Suffolk, were seeking to obtain the ‘good lordship’ of York’s chamberlain Sir William Oldhall* with his help.65 Paston Letters, ii. 47. Young’s most obvious gain from his association with the duke was the manor of Easton-in-Gordano. York farmed it out to him for £16 13s. 4d. p.a. in 1449 but in 1451 the farm was converted into a grant in fee.66 Johnson, 241; War and Govt. 192-3. Either this latter arrangement was a security for a mortgage, never subsequently redeemed, or it was a straightforward reward to Young for the support he gave York in this period.

The Parliament of 1450, in which Young was again an MP for Bristol, was the scene for the most notable display of that support. Just before its dissolution in late May 1451, he took the risk of advocating his patron as contingent heir to the throne, probably by means of an oral petition. His action was probably the cause of the abrupt ending of the Parliament, and the government punished him for his audacity by sending him to the Tower. It is unclear exactly when he was released – he later complained of a lengthy confinement – although he was probably already free when a royal pardon was issued to him on 6 Apr. 1452. There is no evidence that he was involved in York’s rising earlier that year, and he cannot have put himself completely beyond the pale, since throughout this period he continued to receive his fees from the duchy of Lancaster. Presumably Young had spoken out in May 1451 under direct instruction of York, rather than from a political conviction not normally ascribed to late medieval lawyers. Whatever the case, the politics of the time were far from clear-cut, as illustrated by the fact that he was also a retainer of the duke of Buckingham, a moderate supporter of the Court. Later, in 1459, he was omitted from ad hoc commissions but remained a j.p., and he did not follow York into exile after the debacle at Ludford Bridge. Furthermore, when Parliament met at Coventry at the end of that year, he was not among those of the duke’s allies and followers attainted for treason. As already noted, in the same period he was at liberty to attend to his own affairs, namely his acquisition of the reversion of Castle Combe, and in the following year he was associating with Lord Hungerford, a peer who fought and subsequently died for Henry VI.67 SC8/28/1387; C67/40, m. 34; PROME, xii. 453-64; Johnson, 98; Somerville, 198; McFarlane, 252. While undoubtedly a useful supporter for York, Young was certainly no political diehard.

Following his release from the Tower, Young did not again begin to serve as an ad hoc commissioner until his appointment to a gaol delivery panel in February 1454. Early in the following month, the Crown granted him and Fulk Stafford* the keeping of the Worcestershire estates of Robert Arderne*, the only man of any standing to suffer the death penalty for his involvement in York’s rising of 1452. In all likelihood he and Stafford, a servant of York’s ally the earl of Warwick, received the grant in the interests of Arderne’s son and heir Walter rather than themselves. By now York, who was to become Protector of England just over three weeks later, had returned to the centre of affairs and was well placed to help the son of his unfortunate retainer. Some time afterwards, Walter Arderne gained permission to enter his father’s lands as though they had never been forfeit, by means of a petition probably presented to the Parliament of 1455.68 CFR, xix. 82-83; SC8/89/4403.

It was to the same Parliament that Young, once again an MP for Bristol, presented to the Commons a well known and potentially constitutionally significant petition of his own. He appealed for recompense for the physical and financial losses he had suffered while in the Tower earlier in the decade, asserting that his imprisonment had breached the Commons’ ‘olde liberte’ ‘to speke and sey in the hous of their assemble as to theym is thought conuenyent or resonable withoute eny maner challenge, charge, or punycion’. He was careful not to repeat what he had said in 1451, although the petition tacitly repeated the claims he had advanced earlier on behalf of York. It is a moot point whether Young sincerely believed in freedom of speech for the Commons or was merely acting in the interests of himself and his patron, but his petition certainly placed his fellow MPs in something of a dilemma. They could have sought to advance their privileges by supporting it; but this would also have meant condoning what he had said in 1451. With some political adroitness, the Crown referred the matter to the lords of the Council, to provide for the petitioner as they thought fit. By this means, any possibility of a royal confirmation of a supposed right of the Commons was averted and the privilege Young claimed for the Lower House was not officially recognized. It is not known how (if at all) he was compensated for his incarceration, or whether the royal pardon he received on 11 Mar. 1456, a day before the dissolution of the Parliament, was in some way connected with his petition.69 SC8/28/1387; P. Cavill, ‘Hen.VII and Parliament’ (Oxford Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 2005), 139; Johnson, 165; J.S. Roskell, Speakers, 41-42; C67/41, m. 7. During the Parliament he also found time to counsel Walter Fayrsted, a London glover who was suing William Heron, a ‘poyntmaker’ (manufacturer of lace) from the City, and others for falsely accusing him of taking part in Cade’s rebellion. A few years later, Heron brought a suit of his own in the common pleas against William Couper and two associates, for illegally maintaining Fayrsted in the earlier action. In his defence, Couper claimed that he had been another of Fayrsted’s legal advisers, but Heron (who appears to have had no quarrel with Young) won his case.70 CP40/784, rots. 380-1d.

Early in 1458 Young went to the trouble of obtaining another royal pardon, probably no more than a precautionary step in increasingly troubled times.71 C67/42, m. 41 (28 Jan.). Seemingly unaffected by the upheavals of the following year, in late January 1460 he went to King’s bench in his capacity as a mainpernor for Sir William Oldhall, then embroiled in litigation against Sir Theobald Gorges*. He and two fellow sureties, Humphrey Bourgchier* and Roger Malmesbury, formally informed the court that Sir William, by then a prisoner of the Lancastrian government at Kenilworth castle, was unable to appear.72 KB27/793, rot. 25. A few days later, Young was nominated to arbitrate in a quarrel between Sir Maurice Berkeley I* and John Carpenter, bishop of Worcester,73 CCR, 1454-61, p. 431. but by the end of February the government had also taken him into custody and returned him to the Tower of London. He was held in the Tower under suspicion of treason after a clerk, John Boswell, had made certain (apparently unrecorded) allegations against him. On 1 Mar. Richard Gower, the deputy constable of the Tower, brought him into the Chancery and on the following day he was freed on bail of no less than £1,500, of which he was made liable for £1,000 and his mainpernors (his brother John and three other Londoners, Philip Malpas*, William Venour and John Forster) for the remainder. He fulfilled the conditions of his bail by subsequently reappearing in Chancery on a series of given return days up to and including the following 25 Nov., when he was dismissed sine die. Young was to come to terms with his accuser in November 1462 when Boswell formally agreed to cease litigation against him, suggesting that Young’s adversary had made his accusations during a private quarrel between the two men. In turn, Young undertook not to take any legal action against Robert Wingfield*, marshal of the Marshalea, in connexion with his dispute with Boswell.74 CCR, 1454-61, pp. 419-20; 1461-8, pp. 150, 152. In the same month Young received bonds for £10 from each of the three esquires, Augustine Cavendish, William Brandon† and Nicholas Carew (s. and h. of Nicholas Carew*): CCR, 1461-8, p. 150. Quite possibly these securities related to a completely different matter, although it is worth noting that Brandon was a former marshal of King’s bench.

Whether or not Boswell’s accusations of treason arose from Young’s connexion with York, it was probably no coincidence that the decision not to pursue them was made at a time when the duke and his allies were back in control of the government. By November 1460 Young was also a sitting MP, having while still on bail, and perhaps to secure himself against re-arrest, gained election to the Parliament of that year, this time as a knight of the shire for Gloucestershire. No doubt he owed much to his links with York for his election since, although an influential lawyer and man of affairs, he was scarcely a well established member of that county’s gentry. His fellow MP, Thomas Brydges*, was very probably another of the duke’s retainers from the West Country, Thomas Brydges of Coberley. While the Parliament was taking place, Sir William Oldhall died and Young was both a feoffee to the use of the knight’s will and one of his executors. Oldhall bequeathed him no less than £200, a striking mark of the esteem in which the knight must have held him.75 CAD, i. B1244; PCC 21 Stokton (PROB11/4, ff. 163-4). The Parliament of 1460 was the momentous assembly which agreed that York, who had laid claim to the throne shortly after it opened, should succeed Henry VI as King. When Young had spoken out for York in 1451, Henry was childless but by 1460 the King had a young son and heir whose rights were now set aside, making civil war inevitable. A further point of no return was the defeat and death of York at Wakefield at the end of the same year.

Early in 1461, Young’s fellow lawyer and feoffee, Sir John Fortescue, turned to him for help. Unlike many of their profession, Fortescue was a man of strong political convictions and a firm supporter of the Lancastrian dynasty, and in the dying days of Henry VI’s reign he joined the queen and her army in northern England. Shortly before riding north, he hurriedly transferred his estates in Hertfordshire and Middlesex to Young and others to hold to the use of his wife.76 C.L. Scofield, ‘Sir John Fortescue in Feb. 1461’, EHR, xxvii. 322-3. His choice of Young as a feoffee indicates that the two men enjoyed a friendship firm enough to withstand even the bitter divide in national politics. At the same time, Young’s willingness to accept the role is perhaps further evidence that he was never as partisan as Fortescue, who did not make his peace with the Yorkists until after the failure of Henry VI’s Readeption in 1471.

Unlike Fortescue, Young thrived during the first reign of Edward IV. He made himself immediately useful to the new regime, helping (Sir) John Wenlock*, chief butler of England, to discharge the duties of the nominal steward of England, the King’s younger brother George. It was in that capacity that he and Wenlock received bills of claims to render services during Edward’s coronation. Among the successful petitioners were the mayor of Oxford and six of his fellow burgesses, whose claim that they should assist Wenlock at the coronation feast was upheld.77 Recs. Med. Oxf. ed. Salter, 69-70. As already noted, by the same summer Young was making loans to the Yorkist Crown,78 E403/823, m. 5; CPR, 1461-7, p. 41. and a few months later he accompanied the King to the south-west. On 4 Sept. Edward and his entourage arrived at Bristol where on the following day Young and others acting as justices of oyer and terminer took presentments against (Sir) Baldwin Fulford*, a Lancastrian rebel held in the town since his capture at sea. The King himself presided at the subsequent trial and the royal party probably witnessed Fulford’s execution there on the 9th.79 CPR, 1461-7, p. 65; KB9/297/134-5; Three 15th Cent. Chrons. (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xxviii), 77; C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, i. 200; C.D. Ross, Edw. IV, 48.

Later in the same autumn, Young was caught up in a dispute with Edward Neville, Lord Abergavenny, fortunately for him not a peer of especial importance, even though an uncle of the King’s hugely influential ally, Richard Neville, earl of Warwick. He was drawn into the quarrel as a feoffee of his brother, John Young, who a year earlier had purchased Ifield and two other manors in Northfleet, Kent, a county where Neville was also a landowner. John had obtained final confirmation of the transaction following the accession of Edward IV but soon afterwards he was troubled over his title by Neville’s servant John Rous, perhaps acting on behalf of his master. Matters came to a head in November 1461 when John Young and his feoffees, who also included William Venour and Robert White* (John’s father-in-law) took legal action against Rous at Westminster. They accused him of forgery, alleging that he had fabricated a deed of 14 Nov. 1457 by which John Lymsey had quitclaimed Ifield to him and John Joskyn*, then a Household man of Henry VI. Their lawsuit led to the arrest of Rous, who immediately sought to regain his freedom by suing for a writ of parliamentary privilege. The Parliament of 1461 was then taking place and, as a servant of a member of the Lords, he claimed the right of immunity from such arrest. Neville likewise complained about the arrest of his servant, whom the justices of King’s bench were directed to release forthwith, provided that there was no other reason for his detention. It would nevertheless appear that there was some such cause, since the writ directed to the justices was subsequently endorsed ‘not allowed’.80 CCR, 1454-61, pp. 485-6; 1461-8, pp. 68-69; KB9/145/7/41, 43.

By the following summer Young was also busy as a feoffee for the timeserving bureaucrat John Say II*. In spite of his past membership of Henry VI’s Household, Say had served as a steward for the late duke of York in Hertfordshire and successfully adapted to the accession of Edward IV. In early May 1462 he and a number of co-feoffees received possession of one of Say’s manorial acquisitions, Liston Overhall in Essex, by conveyance from Sir John Markham (who had replaced Sir John Fortescue as chief justice of King’s bench) and others. Previously Young had possessed an interest in the same manor as a feoffee of its former owner, his late friend and associate William Venour.81 CPR, 1441-6, p. 345; 1461-7, p. 228; C140/67/43; CCR, 1476-85, no. 345.

A year later, Young was promoted to the upper ranks of the legal profession. In spite of the exemption he had obtained over two decades earlier, on 23 May 1463 the government issued letters ordering him, upon pain of £1,000, to take up the office of serjeant-at-law on the following 7 Nov.82 CCR, 1461-8, p. 172. Shortly before his creation as a serjeant, he was in Bristol arbitrating in a quarrel between the local parish of St. Ewen and John Sharp III. Young and his fellow arbiters first met to hear evidence in October 1463, but their business was interrupted by his need to return to London, not least to attend the ceremonies marking his creation as a serjeant-at-law. He appears to have made quite an impression when he returned to Bristol in his new serjeant’s robes on the following 3 Jan. A contemporary recorded that Young was dressed in ‘a longe blue gowne, vngurd, with a scarlet hode vnrolled, and one stondyng Room [?round] cap of scarlet’, probably the uniform for serjeants during legal vacations.83 Church Bk. St. Ewen’s ed. Masters and Ralph, pp. xxix-xxxii; Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. xv. 173-8, 230; Order of Serjts. at Law (Selden Soc. supp. ser. v), 80 and n, 82n. Unusually, just a day after receiving the coif he was appointed a King’s serjeant during pleasure,84 CPR, 1461-7, p. 300. It is also curious that he was not referred to as a serj. in the royal pardon granted to him in Nov. the same year; unless the recipient of this pardon was in fact his eldest son and namesake: C67/45, m. 7 (12 Nov. 1464). and it was as such that he attended the coronation of Elizabeth Wydeville in May 1465. As soon as he became a serjeant-at-law, Young was liable for assize work, although in the event he was not required to begin serving as a justice of assize until the summer of 1466, when he replaced the recently deceased Nicholas Aysshton*, j.c.p., on the south-western circuit.85 Coronation Eliz. Wydeville ed. G. Smith, 66; KB27/807, rot. 52b; Order of Serjts. at Law, 497.

It was as a King’s serjeant that Young was summoned to the Parliament which opened in June the following year, although he was already a judge by the time it was dissolved in June 1468. He was appointed a puisne justice of the common pleas in November 1467, in place of either (Sir) Robert Danvers* or Peter Ardern, two recently deceased judges of that court. To maintain his new status he was granted a customary annuity of 110 marks, along with yearly allowances for robes amounting to just over £8. Later, in December 1469, he received a grant for life of an annual tun of wine from the King’s prises in Bristol.86 Judges of Eng. 68; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 59, 180. Unfortunately for him, his fees and wages were not automatically forthcoming, since in 1469-70 he began suits in the Exchequer against the keeper of the hanaper, John Davyson, over the non-payment of over £150. Davyson responded by suing for a writ of error on the basis of a legal technicality, and the matter was referred to the Exchequer chamber. This protracted dispute ran until October 1475, when Young went to the Exchequer to acknowledge that he had now received the money he had claimed, along with his costs and damages.87 E13/155, rots. 57, 59, 79, 82-83, 102. Young was also caught up in a suit in Chancery over an unknown matter early in his career as a judge. In late November 1468, in response to a no longer extant bill brought by Robert Worth, warden of the Fleet prison, and his wife, the Chancery issued writs of sub poena, each under pain of £100, against him, his fellow justice of the common pleas, Sir Richard Chokke, the serjeants-at-law, Richard Pygot and Thomas Bryan, and one Thomas Riplyngham.88 C253/42/285-7.

In spite of Young’s Yorkist connexions, the Readeption of Henry VI two years later did not halt his judicial career, another indication that, ultimately, he was not a political diehard. On 9 Oct. 1470 he was reappointed a justice of the common pleas during pleasure, with the customary wages and fees,89 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 226-7, 229. and he received a summons to the Parliament which opened at Westminster in the following month. During the Parliament he was obliged to take action to safeguard his estates. First, he obtained a quitclaim from George, duke of Clarence, of Easton-in-Gordano, the manor which had once belonged to the Clarence’s late father, the duke of York. Secondly, in early February 1471, Joan widow of John Newton came to the common pleas to challenge his title to the former Newton estates. He and she were licensed to negotiate with each other out of court and the matter was probably settled informally. In any event, Joan failed to recover them for in due course they passed to Young’s son and heir.90 CCR, 1468-76, no. 624; CP40/838, rot. 132d; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 170.

After Edward IV regained the throne in the spring of 1471, Young was removed from the bench of the common pleas and not, except in his native Gloucestershire, reappointed a j.p. By apparent contrast, the newly restored King knighted his brother John for his role in defending London against the Kentish rebels led by the Bastard of Fauconberg. Young had not, however, necessarily incurred Edward’s displeasure, since by then he was an old man and perhaps desired a reduction of his public duties. Furthermore, he continued to receive his annual tun of wine from the port of Bristol, a grant exempted from the Act of Resumption of 1473.91 PROME, xiv. 170. In the event, his judicial career was not in fact over. Despite his advanced age, at the end of April 1475 he was made a justice of King’s bench, although he was spared the rigours of assize work. The appointment was in keeping with the other unorthodox aspects of his legal career, namely his call to the coif in spite of his previous exemption from that office and his immediate creation as a King’s serjeant. If not readily explicable, it seems likely that the pattern of this career arose out of nothing more than chance and circumstance and was not of particular significance.92 E.W. Ives, Common Lawyers: Thomas Kebell, 480, suggests that the appointment was intended to provide the KB with extra experience during the King’s absence in France, possibly during the illness of one of the existing justices, William Lacon I, who died just a few months later.

In the years following Edward IV’s restoration, the aged Young was also obliged to find time and energy for private affairs. A matter of particular importance was the safeguarding of the settlement made when his daughter Elizabeth married John Newdigate of Middlesex. During the negotiations for the marriage, which occurred in about 1465, Newdigate had agreed that Elizabeth should receive for her jointure an annuity of 20 marks for life from his manor of Harefield in that county. In spite of his undertaking, he had afterwards sold Harefield to the then chancellor George Neville, archbishop of York, for £400, forcing Young to intervene to defend his daughter’s interests. First, he had sued Newdigate in the Chancery for breaching the settlement and secondly, with the consent of a presumably by now contrite son-in-law, he had approached the archbishop and persuaded him to forsake his purchase in return for substantial compensation of £200. Notwithstanding all the trouble and expense her father had gone to on her behalf, Elizabeth’s jointure was still insecure, for Sir Robert Green†, one of the feoffees of the marriage settlement, had taken possession of Harefield for himself by the early 1470s. Young responded by bringing an assize of novel disseisin against Green, only to find that three of the knight’s co-feoffees, the lawyers Guy Fairfax, John Catesby and Richard Pygot, were refusing to co-operate in that lawsuit. In the latter half of 1471, therefore, he sued Fairfax and his associates in the Chancery, in an attempt to enforce their compliance. It would appear that the whole messy business was eventually resolved to his satisfaction, for in the end the Newdigates did not lose Harefield. Whether Elizabeth’s marriage to a man who had shown such a cavalier disregard for her interests was a happy one must remain a matter for speculation. Harmonious or not, by the standards of the time the match was a success because she bore her husband a son and heir, another John Newdigate. The younger John followed in the footsteps of his maternal grandfather by entering the law and he was called to the coif in 1510.93 Ibid. 480; Surr. Arch. Collns. vi. 226, 236-7; C1/33/265; 1489/106; VCH Mdx. iii. 241.

Another important event of Young’s later years was the death in November 1474 of his surviving half-brother William Canynges, who late in life had forsaken the world for the Church. They must have remained close to each other in their old age, for when founding a chantry at Bristol in the previous decade Canynges had directed that Young should benefit from its prayers.94 Bristol RO, Braikenridge deeds, P/St. MR/5163/269. By contrast, Young had a far from cordial relationship with the de la Rivers, the family into which he had married his daughter Agnes. At the beginning of 1475 his grand-daughter Isabel, the sole heir of the late Robert de la River by the same Agnes, sued him in the Chancery. Apart from a damaged writ of sub poena dated 16 Feb. that year, none of the records relating to the suit has survived but it was probably connected with his acquisition of Tormarton and the other former de la River manors. When her grandfather Maurice de la River (who outlived Robert) died in 1457 Isabel was still a child, but by 1475 she was very probably already married to John, the son and heir of the Somerset knight Sir Nicholas St. Loe. Coincidentally or not, in August 1475 Sir Nicholas clashed with Young’s eldest son, Thomas, who responded by suing him, again in the Chancery. According to Thomas, on the 3rd of that month Sir Nicholas and a band of armed followers had seized him and a servant on the King’s highway between Chipping Sodbury and Bristol and brought them to his manor of Sutton Knighton in Somerset, where he was still detaining them without reason. Evidently Thomas was not kept in the strictest captivity, given that he was able to bring his bill while Sir Nicholas’s prisoner.95 C253/46/478; CP40/906, rot. 558; C140/24/26; C1/47/60.

In June 1476 Young was party to a conveyance of the manor of Thrussington, Leicestershire, apparently on behalf of the Nottinghamshire esquire, John Babington of Chilwell,96 Birmingham Archs., Elford Hall mss, 3878/46.and in the following February he and his brother Sir John Young complained to the authorities about an attempt to defraud their young kinsman, Baptist Pynchon, a few years previously. The Youngs’ complaint is recorded in a certificate enrolled on the close rolls on the 10th of that month. According to them, William Bowres, a servant of one Harry Coventry, had tried to trick Pynchon, at the time an apprentice of the London fishmonger John Bromer* (d.1474), into sealing a deed surrendering his right to certain estates in Essex. Pynchon had refused to do so only at the last moment, after receiving timely advice from a clerk of the Chancery (where he had accompanied Bowres to have the deed authenticated) that he was about to disinherit himself. In spite of this setback, Bowres had not given up on his attempts to take the young man’s lands for himself since, with the connivance of Coventry and another Chancery clerk, Henry Wyndesore, he had then resorted to impersonating his intended victim in order to get the deed enrolled. The purpose of the Youngs’ certificate was to ensure that the authorities were fully informed of Bowres’s conduct and that their naïve kinsman did not lose the land in question.97 CCR, 1476-85, no. 126. It is not clear why they submitted it over two years after the death of Bromer, who had immediately informed Sir John Young about what had happened, unless Bowres’s impersonation of their relative – as opposed to his initial abortive attempt to gain the lands by hoodwinking Pynchon – had not come to light until some time later.

Young died not long after putting his name to the certificate, in the first week of May 1477. Presumably his death occurred in London since he was interred in the Greyfriars’ church there, one of the City’s more fashionable burial places. Several decades later, the Tudor historian John Stow viewed his tomb and noted an incomplete monumental inscription: …venerabile vir Thomas Yonge unus justiciariorum de banco communi tempore Regis Edwardi 4. qui obiit 4 die mensis Maii anno domini 1476 [sic].98 C140/61/26; Collectanea Topographia et Genealogica ed. Nichols, v. 287; Harl. 544, f. 48v. Given the mistake regarding the year, it is not certain whether Worcestre’s recording of the inscription is inaccurate in other respects. The inq. post mortem held for Young in Som. states that he died on 3 May and that held in Wilts. found that his death occurred two days later. His will is no longer extant, although he is known to have appointed his eldest son and heir, another Thomas Young, as his executor. He also had at least one younger son, George. In the following November, when an inquisition post mortem was held for Young in Somerset, the jury found that he had settled the manor of Easton-in-Gordano on George, his wife and children, with remainder to George’s elder brother, who was now in possession. This finding suggested that George had predeceased his father but it was made in error, for a subsequent inquisition found that Young had not in fact left the manor to his younger son. Still alive in Henry VII’s reign, George married Joan, daughter of Thomas Vachell, who bore him a son Hugh. This match gave the Youngs another connexion with the de la Rivers, for Joan’s mother was the sister of Robert de la River and the aunt of the MP’s grand-daughter Isabel St. Loe.99 C67/51, m. 25; C140/61/26; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 170; CP25(1)/79/93/7. At the earlier inquisition Easton-in-Gordano was valued at £10 p.a., as was the manor of North Wraxall when an inquisition post mortem was held for Young in Wiltshire. There is no surviving record of any like inquisitions in Gloucestershire and Bristol, making it impossible to arrive at even a rough estimate of his landed wealth.

Some 30 years of age when he succeeded his father, the younger Thomas formally took possession of his inheritance in the summer of 1478 when he swore fealty to the Crown and his widowed mother Isabel was assigned her dower lands.100 CFR, xxi. nos. 332, 492. Like his father, Thomas resided at Shirehampton, and it was there that in September 1480 he was visited by the antiquary and Bristolian William Worcestre. Worcestre had come to collect a couple of books, ‘The Ethics’ and ‘Le Myrrour de Dames’, which Thomas had borrowed from him. While at Shirehampton, he breakfasted with Thomas and his wife, who received him kindly and made him ‘good cheer’ for the sake of the late MP, presumably once his friend: dedit michi letum vultum pro amore patris sui cum vxore eius sui favore.101 William of Worcestre, Itins. ed. Harvey, 263; William Worcestre: The Topography of Med. Bristol ed. Neale (Bristol Rec. Soc. li), 253. As it happened, Thomas was unable to retain all of his inheritance, for a decade later he lost the former de la River manors which his father had obtained from the de la Rivers to his niece Isabel and her husband Sir John St. Loe. The St. Loes sued him in Isabel’s right in the common pleas, and in pleadings of Michaelmas term 1488 the couple claimed that she was the rightful heir to Tormarton and the other manors which his father had acquired from the de la Rivers. Thomas responded by referring to the recoveries by which these estates had passed to the MP and his feoffees in 1457 but the court awarded possession to the St. Loes, having accepted their argument that the recoveries were not legally valid. Thomas survived until May 1506. His only surviving child was his daughter Alice, by then the wife of William Malette, meaning that his nearest male heir was his nephew Hugh Young, son of his brother George. By virtue of settlements made by his uncle, Hugh succeeded to Thomas’s holdings in Bristol and the manor of Castle Combe and Alice Malette to his manor of North Wraxhall. Alice was also the heir to the former Newton estates purchased by the MP some 60 years earlier. The lack of an extant Somerset inquisition post mortem for Thomas renders the descent of Easton-in-Gordano uncertain.102 CP40/906, rot. 558; Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. xv. 244; xxxi. 91; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 168-70.