WEST, John

A lawyer from a parish situated immediately north of Malmesbury, West sat in at least nine Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign, most of them consecutive.2 It is often difficult to distinguish West from others with whom he shared his name. Among these namesakes were a yeoman of the King’s household (by 1438 to1452 or after), a Warws. man active in the second half of the 15th cent. Another lawyer, the latter served as clerk of the peace and a j.p. in Warws. and as an officer in the ct. of KB at Westminster: E101/408/25, f. 8; 409/16, f. 36; 410/6, f. 6; 9, f. 45; PPC, vi. 229; E. Stephens, Clerks of Counties, 172; CPR, 1467-77, p. 11; 1476-85, p. 89; Reps. Spelman (Selden Soc. xciv), ii. 361. His family was probably already well established at Brokenborough by the fifteenth century, and the Wests retained lands in that parish until or perhaps beyond 1550-1 when Henry West sold some 180 acres there to the clothier, William Stumpe†. They also held property in Malmesbury itself and, no doubt, elsewhere in Wiltshire as well. It is not known when West came of age, and possibly the John West of Brokenborough who in the early 1400s quarrelled with the clerk William Colbart (whom he accused of employing a female servant who had absconded from his own service at Brokenborough) was an older namesake. In the same period John West of Wiltshire stood surety at Westminster for an alleged debtor, Thomas Redynge of Smithfield, and in 1411, also at Westminster, Thomas Hyweye† of Malmesbury entered a statute staple with John West of Brokenborough and Robert Newman† of Charlton. This security was intended to guarantee that he would pay them £50 by March 1412, but by late 1414 they had begun legal action against him for failing to honour that undertaking. While Newman’s associate is clearly either the MP or one of the MP’s immediate relatives, the identity of the John West who, with his wife Joan, conveyed a small plot of land at Edington, Wiltshire, to the local rector in 1416 is by no means certain. Probably he was the John West who had witnessed a conveyance of lands at Edington and elsewhere on behalf of John Rous† two years earlier. If so, it is worth noting that these lands included the manor of Baynton, which Rous later gave to the monastery of Bonhommes in Edington. In October 1454, probably soon after Rous’s death, John West of Brokenborough was one of those who helped to convey the manor to that religious house.3 VCH Wilts. xiv. 31; CP40/698, rot. 193; CCR, 1402-5, pp. 130, 523; C131/225/27; C241/207/49; Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 351; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 239; Edington Cart. (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xlii), 165, 167.

In spite of the problems of identification, there are grounds for assuming that the John West of Wiltshire sworn to keep the peace in 1434 was the subject of this biography: those who took this widely administered oath were men of some substance in their respective counties and the MP was known as a ‘gentleman’.4 CPR, 1429-36, p. 371; CCR, 1435-41, p. 158; CFR, xviii. 124. It is nevertheless possible that West owed his status more to his profession than to his landholdings. Within Wiltshire he was frequently employed as a feoffee, surety, attorney and scribe, and he was several times an attorney at the Salisbury assizes in the mid and later 1420s, once representing the borough of Malmesbury there.5 CFR, xiii. 210; xiv. 422; Cheshire and Chester Archs., Crewe mss, DCR/37/1/10; Wilts. Hist. Centre, Crewe (Hungerford) estates, 1081/10; Cat. Muns. Berkeley Castle, ii. 949; C1/17/174; JUST1/1536, rots. 113, 116; 1540, rot. 111; Wilts. Feet of Fines, 491. He also found work with Malmesbury abbey. In 1425 the abbot began a suit against West at Westminster, alleging that John had failed to account for when he had been that ecclesiastic’s bailiff and receiver at Malmesbury. The case appears not to have reached pleadings and the dates of West’s period of office are unknown.6 CP40/658 rot. 287; 659, rot. 178. West had yet to respond to the suit when it was referred to Easter 1427, but it does not feature in the plea roll for that term: CP40/665.

Among those for whom West was a feoffee was John Nicoll II*, his fellow MP in the Parliament of 1422, but he was not to enjoy such a good relationship with Nicoll’s son, John Nicoll III*. At some stage after the elder Nicoll’s death, the younger began a suit in the Chancery, alleging that West had refused to make a release of a tenement in Malmesbury that he had held in trust for his late father.7 C1/16/459. West was also associated with the Wiltshire esquire Edmund Dauntsey of Laverstock who may have retained him for his counsel. In 1433 and again in 1435 he was Dauntsey’s co-plaintiff in suits heard in the court of common pleas at Westminster. The earlier of these actions concerned a debt of £40, which they claimed John Nicoll III owed them; the second a trespass that William Goldyng, a husbandman from Gloucestershire, had committed on their property at ‘Pole’ in Wiltshire. Associated with them in the latter action was another co-plaintiff, Thomas Nicoll. It is probable that Thomas was a kinsman, and that he and West were involved in the suit as Dauntsey’s feoffees. Dauntsey died later in the same decade – probably in 1438 – having appointed West one of his executors. It was as such that in 1439 and the early 1440s West was a party to further suits heard at Westminster, for debts allegedly owed to or by the deceased’s estate.8 CP40/688, rot. 204; 698, rot. 193; 715, rots. 154d, 365d, 368; 721, rot. 235d; 734, rot. 40.

By then West was very well acquainted with the two main common law courts, having practised as an attorney at Westminster for over a decade, from at least the mid 1420s in King’s bench and by the early 1430s in the common pleas.9 KB27/657, att. rot. 2; 683, att. rot. 1; CP40/680, rot. 245. During the mid or later 1440s he fell into dispute with one of his clients, the then abbot of Malmesbury, whom he sued in the Chancery as a result. According to his bill, he had secured bail for William Stevenes, a bondsman of the abbot whom the authorities had arrested on suspicion of felony and sent to King’s bench, putting himself forward as one of Stevenes’ bailsmen. Unfortunately, Stevenes had promptly absconded, and West had forfeited 100s. to the Crown. West complained to the chancellor that the abbot was refusing to reimburse this sum and, to make matters worse, would not pay him his fees and expenses for taking up the case.10 C1/14/1; 17/149. The plaintiff was a successor of the abbot who had sued West in the mid 1420s: J. Moffatt, Malmesbury, 178.

Presumably the time West spent at Westminster had a bearing on the frequency with which he was returned to the Commons. It was the venue for every session of all his known Parliaments, meaning that it was no great inconvenience for him to sit as an MP. Before first entering the Commons, he attested the return of the knights of the shire for Wiltshire on more than one occasion, and immediately after the county’s election to the Parliament of 1420 he stood surety for one of the men elected, the previously mentioned John Rous. He was also a mainpernor for three other Malmesbury MPs: for John Gore*, following the latter’s election to the last Parliament of Henry V’s reign; for Thomas Drew* in 1426; and for William Palmer* in 1437.11 C219/13/4; 15/1.

It is not clear when West’s own parliamentary career came to an end. Given the 15-year gap between the Parliaments of 1435 and 1450, it is conceivable that the John West who sat for Malmesbury in 1450-1 was a son or another younger namesake. Yet this hiatus is not as definite as it might first appear, for the names of Malmesbury’s MPs in 1439-40 and 1445-6 are unknown. Also worth noting is the lack in the surviving manuscript evidence (such as it is) of any reference to two John Wests of Brokenborough, senior and junior, since sons commonly featured with their fathers in deeds and other records while both were still alive. If the subject of this biography did sit in 1450, he was no doubt the John West who stood surety for Thomas Hasard* upon the latter’s election as a burgess for Malmesbury to the Parliament of 1447, who attested the return of Wiltshire’s knights of the shire to the following assembly and who was commissioned to collect a tax in August 1449.12 Possibly he was also the John West who stood surety for Alexander Appleby* upon the latter’s election in 1450 as an MP for Wootton Bassett: C219/16/1.

Whatever the case, West had at least one son, Robert, who sat for Malmesbury in 1449-50 and 1459 and likewise pursued a legal career. Of age by the mid 1430s, Robert was his father’s co-plaintiff at Westminster in 1435 when they sued a tanner for breaking into a close of theirs in the town. At the end of the same decade he stood surety in the common pleas for his father, then the defendant in a suit for debt brought by the vicar of Calne and an associate. Later, in the mid 1440s, John and Robert West were associated with John Dewall* and others as co-plaintiffs in another common pleas suit, this time over property near Malmesbury.13 CP40/698, rot. 193; 715, rot. 208d; 739, rot. 437.

It is possible that West survived until about 1460. In 1457 John West and others from south-west England were associated with (Sir) John Fortescue* in a property transaction in Hertfordshire, apparently as Fortescue’s feoffees, and in Michaelmas term 1459 John West was appointed to act as an attorney in a Wiltshire suit in King’s bench. In a deed of 1 Jan. 1461, however, Robert West is referred to as the son and heir of John West, late of Brokenborough.14 CCR, 1454-61, p. 192; KB27/794, att. rot. 1; Cat. Muns. Berkeley Castle, ii. 950.