URSWYK, Thomas I

The earlier biography is wrong in its assertion that the manor of Badsworth was divided by Sir Robert Urswyk between his two sons. Thomas acquired his moiety by marriage, at some date before about 1402, to the heiress of the minor Yorkshire family of Hertforth, and on the death of his half-brother, Sir Robert, in 1420, the manor, long divided into two moieties, was reunited in his hands.1 J. Hunter, S. Yorks. ii. 436.

For a groom for his own daughter, Ellen, Urswyk looked to Lancashire rather than Yorkshire. On 29 Mar. 1420 he contracted her to Thomas, son and heir-apparent of (Sir) William Assheton*. The terms favoured the groom’s family because our MP had not yet inherited any of the family lands (although he was very shortly to do so as his brother’s heir-male): he undertook to pay a portion of 160 marks in return for a modest jointure of only ten marks p.a. from the Assheton estates.2 Brynmor Jones Lib. Hull Univ., Palmes mss, DD PA/14/1. The contract poses a problem of dating. It is dated ‘Friday in the 5th week of Lent 7 Henry V’, that is, at first sight, 7 Apr. 1419. Yet the bond Assheton entered into for the performance of the contract is dated on ‘Friday in the 5th week of Lent 8 Henry V’, which could be either 29 Mar. 1420 or 14 Mar. 1421: PL15/35, rot. 13. Since 29 Mar. 1420 was the first day of the 8th year of the reign of Hen. V, the most likely resolution is that the contract is misdated by a year.

Soon afterwards Urswyk’s eldest (and perhaps only) son, Robert, was also married into a Lancashire family, one even more important than the Asshetons. Robert’s bride was Katherine, a daughter of Sir William Haryngton (d.1440) of Hornby and sister of Thomas Haryngton I*. The daughter of this match, Isabel, was destined to be our MP’s heir. She was first married, probably before she had become Urswyk’s heiress-apparent, to Avery Mauleverer*, a rising lawyer from Cusworth, a few miles from Badsworth. He fell, in the service of the Percys, at the first battle of St. Albans, and our MP lost little time in finding her a new husband. On 18 Dec. 1455 it was agreed that Isabel should marry William, a younger son of Henry Vavasour (d.1452) of Hazlewood, not far from Badsworth. The groom undertook to settle on his wife a jointure in tail-male of lands worth £20 p.a. and to guarantee her dower lands worth a further ten marks p.a. and a share, at his death, of goods worth as much as 600 marks. That a younger son was able to offer such terms is testament to the wealth of the Vavasours. In return, Urswyk promised that all the lands once of his late wife and those settled on Isabel’s parents at their marriage, together having an annual value of 40 marks, would descend to the bride.3 Palmes mss, DD PA 14/2 (partially printed in Yorks. Arch. Jnl. xvii. 119-20).

Urswyk did not long survive his grand-daughter’s marriage. He was dead by the following August when, at the assizes at Lancaster, Sir James Pickering* and Henry Watkins, a priest of Pontefract, as the administrators of his goods, brought actions against his creditors.4 PL15/9, rot. 5. Although proof is lacking, it is probable that Thomas Urswyk II, who was chief baron of the Exchequer in the 1470s, was our MP’s younger son.

These new details about Urswyk’s family are not matched by any new evidence about his public career. He was, however, remarkably active as a j.p. From August 1439 until December 1444 he sat on at least 14 occasions, almost always at Garstang.5 PL15/3, rots. 32d, 34; 4, rot. 19; 5, rots. 18, 20d, 21, 22d, 23d; 9, rot. 28d, 29; 13, rot. 29; 15, rot. 24.