TYLDESLEY, Elias

Tyldesley was one of several lawyers to represent Derby during the Lancastrian period. It may be that he was a kinsman of the King’s serjeant-at-law, Thomas Tyldesley (d.1409) of Tyldesley and Eccles in Lancashire, but evidence is lacking and he was certainly not his son.4 J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii. 1572; VCH Lancs. iii. 441. By 1430 he was acting as an attorney in the court of common pleas: in that year he represented a chapman of Nottingham and a wealthy Derbyshire widow, Isabel Haloughton. In 1435 he was a joint-plaintiff in the exalted company of the chief justice of the court, Sir William Babington of Chilwell (Nottinghamshire), in a plea of detinue of charters against a widow of Derby, and early in the following year he appeared in person to sue a ‘courtholder’ for taking his goods worth 40s. from King’s Newton, a few miles to the south of the borough.5 CP40/677, rot. 190; 679, rot. 373; 696, rot. 235d; 700, rot. 373. The geographical range of these suits imply that he was settled in Derby or its environs from early in his career, and this would explain his election in December 1436 to represent the borough in Parliament. In turn his service there may have brought him to the attention of the Crown as a potential office-holder, for, on 12 Feb. 1439, he was appointed to the minor duchy of Lancaster post of feodary in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.6 C219/15/1; DL42/18, f. 117v.

Little is known of the middle years of Tyldesley’s career, but in its later part he was involved in a series of local disorders. In the autumn of 1444 he was implicated in an act of disseisin at Stretton-en-le-Field (Derbyshire) committed in support of a leading townsman, John Booth*, who claimed to hold the manor there in right of his wife. In Easter term 1447, described as ‘of Derby, yeoman’, he was among 44 townsmen each fined 20s. in the court of King’s bench for unspecified trespasses.7 CIMisc. viii. 189; KB27/744, fines rot. 1d; CPR, 1446-52, p. 418. A few years later he was involved with other leading townsmen, including Thomas Bradshaw* and John Spicer*, in more significant offences against the neighbouring abbey of Darley. According to bills laid before the justices of oyer and terminer who came to the town in September 1454, Tyldesley, as one of a riotous assembly of 200 townsmen, had, on 24 May 1452, broken the closes of the abbey at Little Darley and Little Chester on the town’s outskirts. Then, through threats and assaults against various monks and servants of the abbey, the rioters had prevented the holding of divine services at the abbey for four days. Similarly, on 13 Nov. 1453, he was one of those responsible for ringing the bells of the church of All Saints, ‘discordie videlicet Awkewardly’, as a signal for the gathering of an armed band of 300 men which then went to throw down the close and hedges of the abbey at Little Darley. Like those indicted with him, our MP was able to put himself back on the right side of the law on payment of a small fine. Interestingly, in one of the bills he is described as town clerk, the only evidence for our period of the identity of the holder of this office in Derby, and it may be that he had long held the clerkship.8 KB9/12/1/2, 3.

The date of Tyldesley’s death is unknown, but probably occurred shortly before February 1457 when John Saynton* was appointed to his office of feodary. It is likely that Hugh Tyldesley, who, in 1469, made conveyance of a garden in Derby near Bag Lane, was his son, and John Tyldesley, coroner of Derby in the late 1470s, his grandson.9 R. Somerville, Duchy, i. 584; Derbys. Chs. ed. Jeayes, 993; KB27/874, rex rot. 1d.