MORLEY, John

More may be added to the earlier biography.3 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 781-2.

Morley played a significant part in the affairs of the alien priory of Lancaster. He was a friend of the last prior, Giles Lovell, who, after the alien priories had been seized into royal hands, had been allowed to hold the priory’s properties at farm with remainder, expectant on his death, to Henry V’s foundation, the Bridgettine nunnery of Syon. Lovell’s stewardship of these lands was, seemingly, not beyond reproach. After his death, in about 1428, the abbess of Syon complained in a petition to the chancellor and treasurer of England that he had made waste there to the value of £200. As one of Lovell’s executors, Morley found himself the subject of this petition. The outcome is unknown, but the possibility cannot be discounted that the matter informed his desire for a seat in the Commons of 1431.4 VCH Lancs. ii. 171; D.M. Smith, Heads of Religious Houses, iii. 185-6; PL6/1/22.

When this petition was presented against him, Morley was serving as one of the Lancashire coroners. He was in office by the summer of 1429 when, along with the county sheriff, Sir Robert Laurence†, he was sued for close-breaking at Salford by (Sir) Ralph Radcliffe*, and it is likely that he was in office when he attested the first of his four parliamentary elections in 1426.5 PL15/2, rot. 8. His attendance at the hustings of 1437, when he must have been approaching 70 years of age, is the last known reference to him. He was certainly dead by 1445, when the family’s lands were in the hands of the husband of his son William’s widow.6 VCH Lancs. viii. 207n.