TRACY, Walter

More may be added to the earlier biography.3 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 638.

It has been suggested that this Dorset attorney sometimes lived at Berry Pomeroy on the outskirts of Totnes in Devon.4 J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii. 1547. This is a plausible conjecture. In about 1410 a Walter Tracy was granted by Sir John Pomeroy† a lease of land there, on the bank of the river Dart, and this connexion with the Pomeroys continued until the 1420s. That Walter attended the baptism at Combe-Raleigh of Joan, daughter and eventual coheir of John St. Aubyn†, whose mother, another Joan, later married Sir Thomas Pomeroy† (d.1426); and he served on the jury at the second inquisition post mortem for the older Joan (d.1423) conducted in 1428.5 Devon RO, Seymour of Berry Pomeroy mss, 3799M-O/ET/2/10; CIPM, xxii. 823; xxiii. 246; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 108-10. As the careers of William Mountfort* and William Oliver I*, make clear, men from this same part of Devon, in particular from Dartmouth, could and did successfully establish themselves in the Dorset borough of Bridport, where they became important figures in local administration and represented the townsmen in Parliament. Perhaps this Walter Tracy trod the same path.

No additional information has been found to confirm that the MP was related to other Tracys who represented Bridport (John Tracy†, who sat in ten Parliaments of the late fourteenth century and Nicholas Tracy† who did so in 1402), or to William Tracy of Bridport, who was dismissed as a coroner of Dorset in 1429 as being too sick and aged to perform his duties.6 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 637; CCR, 1429-35, p. 3. He was not the son of John Tracy, who was survived by two bastard sons, Hugh and Robert, and a legitimate daughter, Alice, wife of John Reve: SC2/169/3. Yet, more light can be shone on Walter’s links with the borough he represented in 1419 through an examination of the accounts of its cofferers. These show that Bridport paid him a fee of 6s. 8d. every year from 1414 to 1423, which suggests that he occupied the position of town clerk, for this was the stipend that the un-named clerk received in later years.7 Bridport ‘Domesday Bk.’, ff. 83, 87, 91, 94, 96, 107. Although Tracy was paid less than the recorder (20s.) and John Stampe†, who was retained as legal counsel (13s. 4d.), the fee places him among the small group of lawyers permanently employed by the authorities.

More, too, has been discovered about Tracy’s activities elsewhere in Dorset. In January 1426 he served as a juror at the post mortem held at Hooke for Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, and seven years later he testified at the proof of age of Walter, son and heir of William Payn† (d.1426) of East Lulworth (the stepfather of the prominent landowner John Newburgh I*), stating that he had been present at Walter’s baptism in 1413.8 CIPM, xxii. 488; C139/67/54. For the county’s landowners, Tracy proved to be a popular choice as an attorney in the law courts at Westminster. Accordingly, he put in regular appearances in the court of common pleas in the 1420s and 1430s for the abbot of Cerne, Sir Humphrey Stafford* and Simon atte Forde*,9 CP40/653, rot. 302; 657, rots. 314d, 320; 670, rot. 68; 699, rot. 342. and in the King’s bench for such prominent litigants from the region as Sir Thomas Brooke*.10 KB27/655, rex rot. 15; 661, rot. 29; 677, rot. 31. Not infrequently, while at Westminster on his clients’ business he took the opportunity to further his own interests, by suing for the recovery of substantial debts, or entering pleas of trespass and breach of the Statute of Labourers. Sometimes such suits coincided with his service in the Commons. Tracy was extremely litigious. For several years he relentlessly pursued another lawyer, Edward Stikelane† of Watford, for a debt of 20 marks, and in the 1440s he accused a neighbour, Thomas Mankeswell, of illegally entering his property at Bridport, and assaulting his tenants. This last action continued with pleas against Mankeswell’s widow.11 CP40/635, rot. 195; 647, rot. 169; 657, rot. 279d; 715, rot. 287d; 720, rots. 145, 162d; 722, rots. 84, 196; 728, rot. 153d; 738, rot. 267d; 745, rots. 166, 199d; 750, rot. 193; KB27/640, rot. 30d, 667, rot. 25. The Tracys and Mankeswells had long been at odds, but the evidence given in the record of a suit in the ct. at Bridport in May 1451, perhaps after Walter Tracy’s death, fails to illuminate the cause of their quarrel: SC2/169/3.

Tracy’s final recorded appearance in the central courts occurred in Trinity term 1450,12 CP40/758, rot. 224. and he probably died soon afterwards. By July 1453 his property in West Street, Bridport (next to the Mankeswells’ house) was described as no longer in his possession.13 Bridport wills, DC/BTB/Y8..

If he was the man with interests at Berry Pomeray, he left a son named Thomas (fl.1470).14 Seymour of Berry Pomeroy mss, 3799 M-O/ET/3/70.