WYKES, William

Wykes had a long career as a local lawyer. He came from a minor gentry family, established at Moreton Jefferies, a few miles to the north-east of Hereford and a little further to the south-east of Leominster. His father attested the Herefordshire parliamentary elections of 1429 and 1432, and gave testimony at a proof of age in 1430, when he gave his own age as 44.3 C219/14/1,3; CIPM, xxiii. 598. The father’s date of death is unknown – it was either he or our MP who, in 1439, was defendant in an action of trespass sued by another local lawyer, John Kene – but he was certainly dead by Hilary term 1443, when his wife was defendant as his executrix in an action of debt.4 KB27/711, rot. 67d; 714, rots. 32, 33; CP40/728, rots. 210, 369. At this date our MP was establishing himself in the lower reaches of the legal profession. By 1444 he was active as an attorney and surety in the court of King’s bench, representing, among others, the warden of the friars minor of Hereford and his own mother. He also served her in other capacities, seizing animals belonging to his kinsman, John Wykes, as a distraint for services John owed her as a tenant in Moreton Jefferies. He then filed a suit for her, claiming that John had illegally retaken the animals, and in Michaelmas term 1444 secured writs of outlawry against John and his servants. He was also an active litigant on his own account. In 1447, for example, he sued two Gloucestershire husbandmen for assaulting him at Ledbury, and in the following year he claimed 40s. each against two butchers of Oxford, perhaps for legal work undertaken on their behalf.5 KB27/733, rex. rot. 28; 734, rot. 62d; 744, att. rot. 1; CP40/746, rot. 6; 750, rot. 482.

Although there is no record of any prior association between Wykes and the borough of Leominster, he was returned by its electors there on 6 Feb. 1449, only six days before Parliament was due to assemble. His connexions in the county’s other borough constituency of Hereford perhaps made a seat there a more natural one for him to fill; his return for Leominster suggests that electoral competition was weaker there than in the county city. One can, however, speculate as to whether his election was a function of candidate looking for a seat or a borough looking for an MP. Whatever the case, it was an arrangement of mutual advantage: as a minor lawyer with business in the central courts, Membership of Parliament gave Wykes an additional status, and in return the borough found someone prepared to serve cheaply.6 That additional status may be reflected in his nomination, on 10 Mar. 1449, during the first session of this assembly, by a London fuller, Thomas Conisholme, as a trustee of his goods: CCR, 1447-54, pp. 140-1.

The arrangement proved satisfactory enough to be repeated at the next hustings, held on 30 Oct. 1449, again only a few days before the day appointed for Parliament’s assembly. Wykes was almost certainly elected in absentia, for, on the day of his election, he offered surety in the court of King’s bench for Richard Green, former mayor of Hereford. 7 C219/15/6, 7; KB27/754, rex rot. 8. None the less, the election was probably welcome to him because of the overlap between its first session and the Michaelmas law term, which ended three weeks after Parliament began. It is noticeable how his activity as an attorney increased in this term, filing suits for the dean and chapter of Hereford, Joan, widow of (Sir) Kynard de la Bere*, John Berewe, archdeacon of Hereford, and others. He also furthered an action of his own, securing a writ of outlawry against his troublesome kinsman, John Wykes, for trespass at Moreton Jefferies.8 KB27/754, rots. 14, 16, 101d. There is also interesting evidence of co-operation between him and the other MPs from Herefordshire. On 16 May 1450, during Parliament’s last session, he joined the Hereford MP, Thomas Breinton*, in offering surety for Thomas Fitzharry, MP for the county, in a royal grant of the keeping of a moiety of the castle of Ewyas Lacy; three days later, Fitzharry returned the favour when he and Breinton offered surety in a grant to Wykes of the keeping of various small parcels of land. Parliament ended just before Trinity term, at the start of which Wykes offered mainprise in King’s bench for an important resident of the constituency he had just represented, John Lunteley, who had been appealed as accessory to murder.9 CFR, xviii. 155-6; KB27/754, rot. 32.

By this time Wykes had probably entered into his patrimony in its modest entirety. Early in 1451 he was assessed on an income of £4 4s. from lands in the Herefordshire hundred of Broxash, suggesting that his mother was then dead.10 E179/117/64. The new status that went with this landed income was expressed in his appearance on 24 Oct. 1450 as an attestor to the election for the county of Fitzharry and (Sir) Walter Devereux I*, with the latter of whom he was later to form an important association.11 C219/16/1. During the first session of the next Parliament, to which he was not returned, he again acted as a mainpernor for a royal grant: on 30 Nov. 1450 he stood surety for Roland, son and heir of another Herefordshire lawyer, Richard Winnesley*, as farmer of the alnage in Shropshire. At this stage of his career he probably spent much of the law terms at Westminster, but outside them he found work nearer home. On 13 Dec. 1451, for example, he was at Worcester to represent the Worcestershire knight, Sir Hugh Mortimer, at a special assize of novel disseisin.12 CFR, xviii. 193; CP40/787, rot. 520.

Wykes’s labours on behalf of himself and his clients did not meet with universal approval. In August 1452, when royal commissioners of oyer and terminer came to Hereford to investigate recent Yorkist risings in the city and county, a curious bill was presented against him. It was very badly drafted in that the specific charge of extortion is incomprehensible, but it ends by accusing him of a readiness, ‘to sue all untrewe maters’. Despite its incoherence, a jury endorsed it as true, and, clearly, Wykes was the subject of some hostility. His legal work was probably the main factor here, although another may have been an association with Devereux, whose activities had been the principal cause of the disturbances in the county. Certainly, a few months after this inquiry, he is found acting for Sir Walter, offering surety for him as the lessee of the disputed Gloucestershire manor of Dymock.13 KB9/34/1/14; CFR, xix. 22.

Whatever the cause of the hostility to Wykes, his career continued to develop. In the mid 1450s he was very active as an attorney in King’s bench, conducting suits for the prior of St. Guthlac, Hereford, and other more obscure litigants. His seemingly near-continuous attendance at the court during term time made him an obvious choice to receive writs there on behalf of successive sheriffs of Herefordshire, and at least one such sheriff, William Lucy, in office in 1453-4, so nominated him.14 KB27/771, rot. 59d, att. rot. 1; 776, rots. 7d, 61d; 778, rot. 16. The most important action that he pursued on his own account in these years, however, was in Chancery rather than King’s bench. At some date between July 1452 and March 1454, he and his wife, Margaret, petitioned the chancellor against John Buryton*, one of their feoffees in the manor of Moreton Jeffries, claiming that he refused to join their other feoffees in releasing to them.15 C1/231/22.

Matters of greater import were soon to have an impact on Wykes. Richard, duke of York’s loss of the protectorate early in 1456 provoked a Yorkist rising in Herefordshire, led by Devereux and Sir William Herbert*. Judging from indictments laid against the rebels, Wykes played no active part, but he aided Devereux in the troubles that beset him in the wake of the rising. When Devereux had been pricked as sheriff of Gloucestershire in the previous November, he had nominated Wykes as his under sheriff, and at Michaelmas term 1456, when imprisoned in Windsor castle, he nominated him to account in the Exchequer for the issues of the shrievalty. Later, on 13 May 1457, Wykes was one of 15 Herefordshire men, headed by Devereux’s son, Walter II*, who entered into a massive bond in 5,000 marks to John Wingfield† and William Brandon*, marshal of the Marshalsea, that Devereux and six other rebels would be true prisoners in that prison; two months later, on 6 July, he stood mainprise for the good behaviour of two of Devereux’s servants, John Kene and a cleric, John ap Richard, who had been pardoned for their part in the rising; and in the following Michaelmas term he offered surety for another adherent of Devereux, John Chabbenore, a gentleman of Hereford.16 KB27/779, rot. 49d; 784, rex rot. 7; E207/17/3; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 222-3; C237/44/133.

Beyond this, almost nothing is known of Wykes’s part in the dramatic events that divided county and nation in the last years of Henry VI’s reign. Although he attested the Herefordshire election to the Lancastrian Parliament of 1459, his appearances in the records are otherwise the uncontentious ones of the minor local lawyer. In Trinity term 1459, for example, he appeared in the court of common pleas to sue his troublesome kinsman, John Wykes, for a debt of five marks.17 C219/16/5; CP40/794, rot. 245. None the less, although not an active partisan of the Yorkist cause, he was clearly connected with the Yorkist faction in Herefordshire, and it is surprising to find so few references to him during the 1460s. He served as under sheriff to Thomas Cornwall in 1466-7, and appeared as his attorney in the Exchequer of pleas on 28 May 1468. The only other references to him relate to suits he brought in the central courts: in 1465, for example, he appeared in person in the court of common pleas to pursue two writs of cessavit against tenants at Morton Jefferies, and in 1467 he secured writs of outlawry against two tradesmen for close-breaking there. 18 E13/154, rot. 7; CP40/815, rot. 59d; KB27/820, rot. 17d; 824, rot. 48d.

The possibility cannot, however, be ruled out that Wykes served again in Parliament during this decade, for the names of the Leominster and Hereford MPs in the Parliaments of 1461 and 1463 are unknown. His election for Hereford to the Parliament of 1472, after an apparent break of more than 20 years since his last Parliament, adds to this possibility. This election may have been something of a mixed blessing for him, particularly if he had compounded with the city authorities to serve for a fixed fee rather than a daily rate. The Parliament met over a remarkable seven sessions between 6 Oct. 1472 and 14 Mar. 1475, more than enough to act as a disincentive to attendance. Interestingly, there is evidence that Wykes was among those who used the excuse of other business to indulge in at least the occasional absence. It is not known when he was first chosen as one of the county coroners, but he was in office by 27 Mar. 1473, when, at the county court held at Hereford castle, he took an appeal of murder. Since Parliament was then meeting – it was not prorogued until 8 Apr. – Wykes must have missed at least part of the second session. 19 C219/17/2; KB27/848, rot. 38d. It is possible that he tailored his attendance to the law terms. The second session may have been inconvenient to him because, save for an overlap of five days, it fell between the Hilary and Easter terms. He was certainly present at Westminster for the beginning of the fifth session on 9 May 1474, for on that day he offered surety in the court of King’s bench for a Herefordshire gentleman, Roger Bodenham of Much Dewchurch, appealed of murder.20 KB27/848, rot. 30. Nine days before, on 30 Apr., he had still been in Herefs., acting as coroner at Ledbury: KB27/874, rex rot. 6d.

In the 1470s there is evidence once more of a close relationship between Wykes and the Devereux family. At least as far as the surviving evidence goes, his service to that family lapsed with the death of Sir Walter Devereux in 1459, but it had been resumed by 1471. In Michaelmas term of that year the county sheriff, Richard Croft†, employed him to warn Walter Devereux II, Lord Ferrers of Chartley, to appear in the Exchequer; on 18 June 1475 he joined Ferrers’s brother, Sir John, and three other associates of the Devereux family in entering a statute staple to two London mercers for the payment of nearly £300 on that day a year later; in January 1481 he was one of the feoffees employed by Ferrers in the alienation of the advowson of the church of Sutton Courtenay (Berkshire) to the King’s free chapel of St. George’s, Windsor; and a year later, at the time of Ferrers’s marriage to the widow of a London alderman, he was one of his feoffees alongside several of the greater Herefordshire gentry.21 E13/157, rot. 52d; C241/257/28; CPR, 1476-85, pp. 226, 242; Longleat House, Wilts., Devereux pprs. DE/Box I/27.

No doubt his close connexion with Lord Ferrers added to his local standing, but, by the early 1480s, Wykes was already elderly and little is known of the last years of his long life. In 1477 he headed a group of five men who claimed £100 against the former Hereford MP, John Holland*; he attended the shire election at the end of that year, probably in his role as county coroner; and on 6 June 1480 he secured a pardon of the outlawry he had incurred, carelessly for a lawyer, for failure to answer (Sir) John Say II* for debt. During these years he was retained as their principal attorney by the dean and chapter of Hereford cathedral, and it is likely that this connexion was of long standing. 22 CP40/864, rot. 81d; C219/17/3; CPR, 1476-85, p. 185; J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii. 1719. Early in the reign of Henry VII, in what amounted to a tardy recognition by the government of his local standing, he was appointed to two ad hoc commissions, one of which involved the lands of his old associate, Thomas Fitzharry.23 CPR, 1485-94, pp. 133, 178. No further references to him have been traced. He was succeeded by his son, William, and Thomas Wykes, who served as escheator of Herefordshire in 1495-6, was probably also his son. His grandson, another Thomas†, represented Leominster in the Parliament of November 1554.24 C1/1253/9-11; CFR, xxii. 537; The Commons 1509-58, iii. 673.