CULLYFORD, Edward

More can be added to the earlier biography.8 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 709-10.

It was as a result of Cullyford’s long established ties with the Hills of Spaxton that he came to serve in the first of his four documented under shrievalties from the spring of 1422, when Robert Hill† assumed the shrievalty. On this occasion, as during his later spells in the same office, there were some questions over his professional conduct: at the Dorchester assizes of July 1422 he was accused of having empanelled a jury favourable to Stephen Russell† and his wife Alice, and in August 1429, when the sheriff was (Sir) John Stourton II*, he was accused of similar improbity at the Somerset sessions at Ilchester.9 N.L. Ramsay, ‘The English Legal Profession’ (Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), 6; JUST1/1531, rot. 11; 1540, rot. 41.

Cullyford met his death as a result of a long-running quarrel with a local gentleman, John Brut of Cannington, over property in Whitestaunton. In an attempt to settle the dispute, a love day between the parties had been arranged, Sir Edward Hull* and Cullyford’s former parliamentary colleague Alexander Hody* being appointed arbiters. Yet, when the parties met on the set day, 4 Aug. 1446, Brut and his associates proved less than conciliatory and began to argue with Cullyford in harsh language. Hull, shocked by their behaviour towards a county coroner and serving under sheriff, asked Hody to intervene in his capacity as a j.p., but this he refused to do, claiming that such a step would only aggravate the situation and cause even greater discord. Nevertheless, he promised Hull that no harm should come to Cullyford from his unruly opponents. Yet, between five and six o’clock that evening, after Hull and Hody had withdrawn, two local gentlemen of Brut’s party, Hugh and John Michell, who had remained at Cannington, set upon Cullyford, and brutally beat and stabbed him to death. The murderers subsequently fled towards Otterham, but their escape was, perhaps deliberately, assisted by Hody, who on his return to Cannington sought out the offenders’ kinsman Walter Michell and announced that he would surely arrest John and Hugh, should they ever come into his presence. Cullyford’s widow Elizabeth appealed the Michells and their abettors, including Hody, in the court of King’s bench, but despite the endorsement of her charges by a local jury, in mid 1448 another panel cleared the defendants of the crime and, to add insult to injury, Elizabeth was ordered to be arrested for her false accusations.10 KB9/254/66-68; KB27/745, rots. 28, 28d; 782, fines rot. 1d; CP40/771, rots. 114-114d. A few months later, Elizabeth married Thomas Holland* of Cowick.11 Reg. Lacy iii (Canterbury and York Soc. lxii), 21.