WALEYS, John

This MP is to be distinguished from a more prominent namesake, the son and heir of the wealthy Sir William Waleys† of Glynde in Sussex, for that John Waleys died on 4 Oct. 1418.1 C138/30/11; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 748-9. John Waleys of Glynde (whose patrimony in Suss. was worth at least £46 13s. 4d. p.a.) m. Joan (d.1420), da. and h. of Sir Robert Turk† of London and Hitchen, Herts., thereby acquiring estates in Herts. and Beds. He left a s. and h. also named John, who died a minor before Mich. 1423, leaving four sisters as coheiresses to their parents’ considerable estates: Feudal Aids, vi. 527; C138/57/37; C260/133, no. 24; Cat. Glynde Place Archs. ed. Dell, ped. aft. p. x. Yet he too almost certainly came from Sussex, and was a kinsman of the William Waleys who, a retainer of Thomas Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, served for five years as royal searcher of ships in the port of Chichester from May 1413. Subsequently, John was engaged as an attorney for William’s widow and her third husband, Robert Jugler†.2 CPR, 1452-61, p. 203; E122/182/20; CP40/652, rot. 117. He had completed his legal training in the early years of the century, during which he had on occasion offered mainprise in Chancery for defendants from Sussex and Surrey, and appeared regularly as an attorney at the assizes held in East Grinstead and Lewes.3 JUST 1/1521, rots. 46, 47, 49; 1523, rot. 9; 1528, rots. 34, 35; 1534, rot. 3d; CCR, 1405-9, p. 479. Where he was living at this stage of his career is uncertain, although it may have been in the house at West Hoathley in Sussex which he acquired along with some 225 acres of land in 1409.4 CP25(1)/240/82/10.

By that date, like his kinsman William, John had joined the affinity of the earl of Arundel, and is recorded in association with several of the earl’s retainers, such as Jugler, William Ryman* and John Halsham.5 CP25(1)/240/82/15. He formed especially close links with the earl’s legal counsel Richard Wakehurst†, to whom he may have been related. Together, in January 1413 Waleys and Wakehurst provided sureties for the Sussex landowner Sir John Brewes, and in the following July Waleys stood surety at the Exchequer when Wakehurst, Ryman and others were granted custody of the English estates of the alien abbey of Sees, in an arrangement finalized by their lord the earl as treasurer of England.6 Bolney Bk. (Suss. Rec. Soc. lxiii), 11; CCR, 1409-13, p. 415; CFR, xiv. 34; CP25(1)/240/83/15. His return to Parliament for the Sussex borough of Midhurst in 1414 doubtless owed much to these connexions; and at least three of his companions in the Commons – Jugler (sitting for Chichester) and the two shire knights (John Babelake† and Richard Wayville†) – were of the Fitzalan affinity, while the sheriff making the return was another of this closely knit group, John Halsham.7 C219/11/5.

Given the MP’s profession, it seems clear that the John Waleys who enlisted in the retinue of the earl of Arundel for Henry V’s invasion of France in 1415 was the esquire from Glynde.8 Suss. Arch. Collns. xv.130. His later military service was not a success, for at some point bef. Aug. 1416 he was arrested by the duke of Clarence and temporarily imprisoned in Winchelsea gaol for withdrawing from the naval expedition of that summer without permission: DKR, xliv. 580; CCR, 1413-19, p. 314. Having been repatriated, sick, from Harfleur, Earl Thomas died at Arundel that October. For several years afterwards, and throughout the 1420s, Waleys the MP served the widowed Countess Beatrice by regularly appearing on her behalf in the courts of common pleas and King’s bench. Most notably, in the spring of 1416, when Beatrice sued out a writ of dower against the feoffees of her late husband’s estates, Waleys represented her in court.9 CP40/647, rot. 141d; 662, rot. 481; 665, rot. 335; 667, rot. 305d; KB27/651, rot. 53d; CPR, 1422-9, pp. 281-3. This relationship bore fruit in 1423 when he was returned to Parliament for the borough of Reigate, then in the countess’s possession. Whether he fulfilled the residential qualification is uncertain. Earlier on in his career he had simply been called ‘of Sussex’ or ‘of Surrey’, and when he had stood bail for William Feret* of Lewes at the Exchequer in 1420 he had been described as a gentleman ‘of Ockley’, situated several miles from Reigate.10 E159/197, recorda Mich. rot. 4. Ockley was where his mentor Richard Wakehurst held a manor-house, and while up at Westminster to attend the Parliament, Waleys appeared as an attorney in the court of common pleas on behalf of Wakehurst and his co-feoffees of a messuage and land at Ockley which, significantly, they held by grant of William Waleys, his putative kinsman.11 CP40/651, rot. 35.

Subsequently, Waleys continued to take briefs from landowners from the region, who included Sir Reynold Cobham and the executors of William Weston† of Hindhall, and he appeared for the former as well as for Countess Beatrice in the Michaelmas term of 1427, at the time that he was representing New Shoreham in the Commons.12 CP40/643, rot. 198; 657, rots. 147, 177; 658, rots. 51, 367d; 661, rot. 149d; 667, rots. 400, 574. Although he is not recorded holding property at Shoreham, Waleys’s reputation as a spokesman had already recommended him to a number of the townsmen, for whom he acted in the central courts.13 CP40/680, rot. 258. Waleys had attested the electoral indenture for Surrey for the Parliament of 1425, and did likewise for that of 1431.14 C219/13/3, 14/2. Remaining an associate of Richard Wakehurst, in the following year the two lawyers joined in bringing a plea in the King’s bench alleging that a group of men had broken their closes at Nuthurst in Sussex and assaulted their tenants.15 KB27/683, rot. 12d. About that time, however, Waleys’s role as the principal attorney for Countess Beatrice ended with his replacement by Richard Jay*.16 CP40/686, rot. 256d. For a while Waleys continued acting as a feoffee for the Sussex families of Halsham and Bolney, but he is not recorded alive for certain after November 1437.17 Add. Ch. 8877; Bolney Bk. 8, 9. It is possible, however, that he was the John Waleys of Charlwood, Surr., who relinquished land and tenements he had inherited there in Jan. 1438. Among the feoffees of these holdings had been John Waleys of Dorking, who had been listed among the Surr. gentry required to take the general oath against law-breakers four years earlier: Add. Chs. 18719, 18725, 18731; CPR, 1429-36, p. 380.