MORYS, John

John was the son of a lawyer from a prominent Cambridge family who had sat for the shire earlier in the century. By 1412, Nicholas Morys had acquired lands in Northamptonshire, so his son was to become a landowner in two counties.2 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 793-4. The earliest known reference to John is a transaction of November 1416, by which he and his father obtained lands at Cotterstock, Southwick and other parishes in Northamptonshire from John Gryn and Katherine his wife, to add to those that Nicholas already held in that county.3 W.G. Searle, Queens’ Coll. 51. Most likely he was then under age, and he is not recorded again until 14 years later, when a Cambridge cordwainer and a tailor from Trumpington were pardoned their outlawries for failing to answer him in separate pleas of debt.4 CPR, 1429-36, pp. 20, 21.

It was as John Morys of Cambridge, esquire, that Morys was bound in a recognizance for £50 to John Burgoyne* of Dry Drayton in 1432, but as of Trumpington that he took the general oath not to maintain peace-breakers two years later.5 CCR, 1429-35, p. 171; CPR, 1429-36, p. 385. He had probably married Elizabeth Ansty, by 1438, since in August of that year he became a feoffee of Sir John Bernard of Isleham, her great-uncle. Her grandfather, Thomas Bernard, Sir John’s younger brother, was primarily a Northamptonshire landowner but his interests also extended into Suffolk (where he was a j.p. at his death in 1464), as well as his native Cambridgeshire.6 Cambridge Univ. Lib., Ely Diocesan recs., G1/5 (Reg. Gray), ff. 197-200; CCR, 1461-8, p. 310; A.F. Bottomley, ‘Admin. Cambs.’ (London Univ. M.A. thesis, 1952), 150; C140/12/11. He was one of the feoffees upon whom Morys settled his manor at Trumpington, to the use of himself and his wife and their heirs, the others being Thomas Peyton, Sir John Bernard’s son-in-law, and Thomas Burgoyne*, son of John of Dry Drayton. Almost certainly, Morys was on friendly terms with Burgoyne, just as their fathers had been with each other in the past. His Ansty in-laws were probably other close associates, since his wife’s father named him and Elizabeth among those who should benefit from prayers said in a chantry he founded at his manor at Stow cum Quy.7 C1/150/58; Bottomley, 228; The Commons 1386-1421, iii.794; G1/5, ff. 197-200.

By the mid 1430s, Morys must have enjoyed a reasonable landed income, since his estates were valued at £35 p.a. for tax purposes in 1436 and at £36 p.a. in 1451. Assuming that the subsidy commissions in question used the same criteria for both these assessments, he cannot have been active in the land market between the two dates.8 E179/240/268; 181/103. His property in Cambridge was an ongoing concern, for on at least three occasions in the 1440s he began suits in the court of common pleas against local men for breaking into his house or close there.9 CP40/724, rots. 283, 458; 726, rot. 518d; 739, rot. 591. He was an energetic litigant, and probably possessed a good understanding of the law given that he was a lawyer’s son. Most of those he sued (mainly for minor debts and trespasses) were from Cambridge and Trumpington.10 e.g. CP40/699, rot. 276; 739, rot. 536; KB27/702, rot. 72d; 726, rot. 4d; 729, rot. 13d. On occasion, he was a co-litigant. During the first half of the 1440s, for example, he, John Ansty* (his brother-in-law) and Henry Filongley* sued two Trumpington men in the King’s Bench for trespass, and he and Thomas Burgoyne sought redress in the common pleas from the parson of Fulbourn for refusing to hand over building materials for which they had paid.11 KB27/729, rot. 13d; CP40/734, rot. 511. These materials were intended for the repair of a manor at Exning, just across the county boundary in west Suff., but exactly what interest either had in Exning is not known. Sometimes, however, Morys was at the receiving end of litigation, as in 1456 when he defended a trespass suit brought against him by a woman who was his neighbour at Trumpington.12 CP40/781, rot. 212.

Morys was not involved in county administration until the 1440s. He first attended a shire election in December 1441 (to the Parliament of 1442), and the Crown appointed him to his first and only peace commission just over four years later. As a j.p. he attended the quarter sessions for a modest total of ten days, but at this stage of his career he was devoting some of his time to private affairs in Northamptonshire. In April 1446 he quitclaimed a manor at Hannington in that county to William Tresham* and his feoffees, and he was one of those to whom John Styuecle, a London brewer with Cambridge connexions, made a quitclaim of lands elsewhere in Northamptonshire two months later.13 CPR, 1441-6, p. 468; E372/292, 293, 296; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 385, 390. Yet Morys’s association with his native shire was sufficient to allow him to sit for it in the Parliament of 1447. He may have had the backing of a patron when he stood for the Commons, since he was certainly not among the leading gentry of Cambridgeshire.

Later that year, if not while a sitting MP, Morys became involved in the foundation of what was to become Queens’ College, Cambridge.14 Perhaps his connexion with the college could have influenced his election. His fellow knight of the shire, William Cotton*, was the receiver-general of Queen Margaret, who assumed the patronage of the college in the following year: R. Somerville, Duchy, i. 399. The driving force behind the new college was the man who became its first president, Andrew Docket. Docket was the principal of St Bernard’s hostel and rector of St Botolph’s, Morys’s parish church in Cambridge, and he sought land to provide a site for the college from his parishioners. One of them, Richard Andrew alias Spicer*, made a gift of land for this purpose in November 1446, but after this first site proved too cramped the college was re-founded on another plot on 21 Aug. 1447. The greater part of the second site comprised a messuage and garden donated by Morys and his wife, but there were also four small tenements on the bank of the river Cam which Morys and John Battysford* had made over in a separate grant.15 A. Oswald, ‘Andrew Docket’, Cambridge Antiq. Soc. Procs. xlii. 8-14. At an early date in the college’s history Morys’s corner house next to these tenements became college property, although this probably happened after his death. Later, in 1455, Docket and his associates at the college won possession of five messuages and two gardens in Cambridge from Morys and his wife in the common pleas. It is likely that this action was collusive, either to safeguard a further grant of lands to Queens’ by Morys or to secure the college’s title to property it already held.16 CP40/779, rot. 604d.

For whatever reason, Morys’s days as an office-holder in Cambridgeshire were over by 1449, although he continued to take a limited part in its affairs after this date. He still attended parliamentary elections and he was a member of a grand jury that, in October 1452, indicted those in Cambridgeshire said to have plotted the death of the King.17 KB9/7/1/4. He must have been an old man when he made a grant of lands in Cotterstock and elsewhere in Northamptonshire to Docket – still president of Queens’ College – and others in June 1479. This is the last known reference to him and he probably died soon afterwards. His son and heir, another John, resided at Glapthorne in Northamptonshire. The younger John, who appears to have played little part in the affairs of Cambridgeshire, conveyed away his father’s manor at Trumpington to the lawyer, Robert Reede, in February 1491.18 C1/150/58; CFR, xxi. no. 17; CP25(1)/30/101/8.