HILLARY, Robert

The earlier biography failed to identify Hillary’s place of residence.4 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 376. However, by the mid 1430s he was certainly living at Sherborne, the home of his putative brother John,5 CP40/708, rot. 306d; CPR, 1429-36, p. 383. Their fa. may have been Thomas Hillary of Sherborne, who held a tenement in ‘Frerenlane’, Dorchester, at the beginning of the century: Dorchester Recs. ed. Mayo, 144, 153. and thereafter was usually styled ‘of Sherborne, gentleman’. A lawsuit involving the affairs of John’s wife reveals more. In 1458 Hillary was accused in the common pleas of illegally taking silver plate and jewelry worth £40 belonging to one John Ilberd of Sherborne, an offence allegedly committed several years earlier, on 20 Aug. 1435. Hillary denied the charge, stating that the goods had belonged to another John Ilberd, who had named him as executor of his will, together with Ilberd’s wife Margery. The widowed Margery had subsequently married John Hillary, and the couple had borrowed ten marks from Robert to pay the testator’s debts. Margery, who was now dead, had given him the goods in satisfaction of the loan.6 CP40/788, rot. 104.

Similarly, the term Hillary held office as bailiff of the liberties of Bishop Stafford of Bath and Wells may now also be narrowed down. John Hillary occupied the post from 21 Sept. 1433 until Robert himself took it over at some point in the winter of 1437-8.7 E368/206, rot. 3; 210, rots. 4d, 10d. Indicative of his standing as a lawyer are Robert’s appointments as a member of the quorum of the Dorset bench for over 25 years, and his frequent commissions to deliver the gaols of Dorchester and Ilchester. There is also evidence of him bringing lawsuits on his own account in the court of common pleas, for instance against men of Gussage St. Michael in 1441 for debts amounting to nearly £20.8 e.g. CP40/720, rot. 360. He obtained a pardon for all fines, amercements and dues to the Crown imposed before that autumn, by grant of September 1446.9 E159/224, brevia Mich. rot. 28d.

Besides serving Bishop Stafford, Hillary was also employed, for over 13 years, as steward of the estates of Abbotsbury abbey, having been appointed for life by the abbot, Richard Percy, in January 1441. He was promised an annual fee of £2 and the rental income from property on the Dorset manor of Hilton. Yet in May 1454, after Abbot Percy died, the new abbot denied his entitlement to any payments. Hillary initially brought a plea against the abbot for the sum of £43 6s. 8d., this being arrears on an annual rent of five marks (£3 6s. 8d.), which he claimed had not been paid throughout his term as steward. When his suits came to pleading in 1463 he said that the sum now owed him, for a period of over 21 years, amounted to 106 marks, and he also sought damages of £40.10 CP40/773, rot. 453; 808, rot. 348d; 810, rot. 459. At a court hearing early in 1464 both he and the abbot stood by their different versions of events, and the sheriff was instructed to bring a jury to the common pleas in the following Easter term, but no further proceedings are recorded.11 CP40/811, rot. 189. Perhaps Hillary died in the meantime, without ever obtaining satisfaction.

In the early 1460s Hillary brought another suit, this time in Chancery, against William Fulford, canon of Wells, in his capacity as administrator of the goods of John Lane, a Wells chaplain who had died intestate several years earlier. Hillary contended that Lane had wrongly taken from him a quantity of wool worth 19 marks, and that the administrator had only given him £2 in recompense. Save for his court appearances his last recorded public action had been to attest the Dorset shire elections of 1460, after an absence from the hustings of nearly 40 years.12 C1/28/477; C219/16/6.