HANSARD, Sir Richard

The earlier biography is based on an impossible chronology, making the MP, who was active in local government as early as 1399, the son of a man born in the late 1370s.2 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 284-5. The error arises from the misdating of the death of the MP’s father, Sir Robert, to about 1410; in fact he died in 1391, and it was not he but our MP who was born in the late 1370s.3 The father made his will on 26 Jan. 1391, bequeathing 20 marks to each of his four sons: Test Ebor, 132. This confusion has produced another error: the earlier biography identifies our MP’s wife, Joan Aske, as his mother. His marriage to Joan took place in the late 1390s when Sir Gerard Usflete†, Gerard Sotehill, Conan Aske and the bride’s father John Aske settled the manor of Walworth on the couple in tail general.4 DURH3/47, m. 19. Aside from these important revisions, there is little to add to the previous biography. On 17 Nov. 1424 Hansard appeared by attorney in the Exchequer of pleas to sue John Haytefeld, recently sheriff of Lincolnshire, for the non-payment of £26 due to him in parliamentary wages. In 1436 his widow, Joan, was assessed for taxation on an annual revenue of £32, and his son and heir, Richard, on £40.5 Parliamentarians at Law ed. Kleineke, 365, 371; E179/136/198. In a Chancery petition of c.1470 the family lands were given what appears to have been the exaggerated valuation of £100 p.a.: C1/41/122.

Hansard’s widow survived him by some years. On 6 Aug. 1432 she leased the manor of Cadney, a few miles from South Kelsey, from Sir John Byron*. The arrangement did not prove a happy one: on 24 Sept. 1442 Byron recovered £75 9s. in damages against her for making waste. In April 1440 her sister Alice Myton bequeathed her ‘unam mantilet cum quatour barbys et duobus forhedes’.6 CP40/722, rot. 393d: Test. Ebor. ii (Surtees Soc. xxx), 76. She was alive as late as May 1446, when she was sued in Chancery for breach of promise, but dead by 9 May 1453, when the escheator of Durham was ordered to give seisin of the manor of Walworth to Richard Hansard as her son and heir.7 C1/13/80; DURH3/47, m. 19.

This Richard had a more modest career than his father, although he did serve as both escheator in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire and j.p. in Lindsey. His eldest son, another Richard, was killed at the battle of Wakefield on the side of the duke of York; and this Richard’s son, also Richard, was a servant of Richard III.8 Lincs. Archit. and Arch. Soc. iii. 69-70; C1/40/274, 452; 41/121-2; R. Horrox, Ric. III, 53, 195. The family failed in the main male line in 1522 and their lands passed to the Ayscoughs.9 D. Wilson, A Tudor Tapestry, 21-24.