COVENTRE, Thomas I

More can be added to the earlier biography.2 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 675-7.

While the exact nature of Coventre’s business interests is unclear, the bonds in statute staple he received from fellow Oxford burgesses and others in the late 1390s and early 1400s, securities for debts they owed him, probably arose from commercial dealings.3 C241/188/130; 195/18, 52; 199/35, 47.

At the beginning of 1416, Coventre obtained a royal pardon,4 C67/37, m. 19. and he was active as an executor of the Oxford draper, John Kingsmill, during the early 1420s. By 1423, he and his co-executor, Kingsmill’s widow Cecily, in association with her new husband, William Herberfeld*, were pursuing suits in the court of common pleas over debts owed to the deceased’s estate by various individuals from Oxfordshire and elsewhere in southern England, among them the abbot of Eynsham and Sir Robert Latimer of Dorset (father of John Latimer*).5 CP40/649, rots. 172, 195, 401.

While the Parliament of 1427, Coventre’s 13th, was in session, the knight of the shire for Wiltshire, John Paulet*, secured a grant of the manor of King’s Brompton in Somerset.6 CFR, xv. 204; E159/204, brevia Hil. rot. 12. The property had formerly belonged to Sir Peter Bessels*, who had died childless two years previously, and the grant led Paulet into dispute with Coventre, one of Bessels’ feoffees and executors. Coventre opposed the grant, because Bessels had intended that the Somerset priory of Barlinch should have the manor. He was resolute in his stance, and he and Paulet were still litigating over the issue when the latter died in 1437.7 E159/213, brevia Hil. rot. 9; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 217.

During the second session of the Parliament of 1429, Coventre’s fellow MP, Richard Wythigg*, appeared in the Exchequer, to testify that he was in ‘bodily danger’ from Thomas Chace, chancellor of Oxford university, with whom the burgesses of Oxford, led by Coventre, were engaged in a major jurisdictional dispute. Obliged to provide securities to keep the peace towards Wythigg, Chace had also to defend himself in the common pleas against Coventre shortly after the dissolution of Parliament. In Easter term 1430, both he and Coventre appeared in person in that court, where the latter accused the chancellor of withholding 100s. from him. Coventre asserted that he had leased a messuage in Northgate hundred in the suburbs of Oxford to Chace in October 1423, and that the 100s. represented arrears of six-and-a-half years of unpaid rent. In response, Chace simply denied ever having taken out such a lease in the first place. Although seemingly a private matter between the parties, the animosity arising from the much wider dispute between them and their respective institutions must have given this particular quarrel extra bite.8 E159/206, recorda Hil. rot. 14d; CP40/677, rot. 110d.

At the same time, there was some friction between Coventre and Wythigg on the one hand and their fellow burgesses on the other. After the dissolution of the Parliament of 1429, the two MPs sought expenses of £27, equating to a daily wage of 2s. each for the 135 days they had spent attending it and travelling between Oxford and Westminster. Their claim was resisted by the mayor and bailiffs, who informed the Exchequer that the town had fixed the daily wages of its parliamentary representatives at 1s. each in June 1423, a decision previously accepted by both men.9 C219/330/23. It is therefore puzzling that Coventre and his associate should have sought wages at double that rate, although they may have encountered a heavier workload and higher expenses than usual and felt deserving of greater recompense.

While remarking upon Coventre’s links with various members of the Oxfordshire gentry, the previous biography failed to notice his dealings with Thomas Chaucer*, the most important esquire of the county in the first dozen years of Henry VI’s reign. At some stage before 1428, he, William Fitzwaryn, Thomas Estbury and Thomas Somerton ‘sold’ the manor of Buckland in Berkshire to Chaucer. Quite evidently, they were acting as feoffees, presumably of Sir Peter Bessels, whose family had previously owned the property. Buckland subsequently passed to Chaucer’s daughter and heir, Alice, who brought it in marriage to her third husband, William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk.10 VCH Berks. iv. 454. On another occasion of uncertain date, although before mid 1431, Coventre entered into a bond in statute staple with Chaucer, the lawyer John Cottesmore and John Coventre, presumably a relative. The condition of the bond was that he should pay them the very considerable sum of £200 at midsummer 1431, but the reason for it is unknown.11 C241/245/7.

Coventre was certainly still alive at the end of November 1438 when he received a like security from John Yerman of Wooburn, Buckinghamshire, for the payment of £20 at the feast of the Annunciation following. By August 1439, Yerman was facing legal action for failing to meet this undertaking,12 C241/228/31. so the MP may well have survived the 1430s.