SLYFIELD, Thomas

Few records relate to the manor of Slyfield in Great Bookham, but it would seem to have been held by our MP’s family from early times. In the 1360s it descended to Nicholas Slyfield†, who served twice as sheriff of Surrey and Sussex and then as knight of the shire for Surrey in 1383. VCH Surr. iii. 328-9. Thomas’s precise relationship to Nicholas is unknown, but he may have been his grandson. His initial advancement came through his first marriage, to Elizabeth, a member of the distinguished Sussex family of St. John, and widow of George Brewes. The latter, the male heir of Sir Thomas Brewes† (d.1395), from whom he had inherited estates in Surrey, Sussex, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Yorkshire, died childless in 1418, leaving as his own heir Hugh Cokesey*, the great-grandson of his sister Agnes, who was then a minor in the King’s wardship. George had given Elizabeth jointure in his manors of Little Bookham, Surrey, and Bidlington, Sussex, The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 353-4; C138/35/48. In 1428 a John Slyfield was listed in possession of land in Little Bookham which Thomas Brewes had once held; this was probably a copyist’s error for Thomas: Feudal Aids, v. 125. but it proved difficult for her to obtain possession of any of the other Brewes estates as her dower portion. She married Slyfield, her neighbour at Bookham, without obtaining a royal licence, and it was only after the couple had paid a fine of 40 marks on 24 Nov. 1421 that writs to assign her dower were sent to the escheators of the five shires concerned. Even then, eight months elapsed before in August 1422 she was allotted the principal chamber and certain other rooms in the manor-house on her late husband’s estate at Bramley, together with specified lands and rents. CPR, 1416-22, p. 401; CCR, 1419-22, pp. 177-8; C138/64/33; VCH Surr. iii. 83. In 1429 Slyfield and his wife purchased a papal licence to have a portable altar, an indication of their standing. CPL, viii. 131. Nevertheless, they were still not satisfied with Elizabeth’s dower allocation, and it was not until November 1430 (12 years after Brewes’s death) that she received a share in the manor of Manningford Brewes in Wiltshire, including accommodation in the ‘Brode chambre’. C139/52/77. All this increased Slyfield’s income and status for the period the marriage lasted. However, Elizabeth died in 1433, C139/62/4; CFR, xvi. 165, 175. Elizabeth’s monumental brass is in Great Bookham church: Surr. Arch. Collns. v. 43. so these properties were then lost to him. Nevertheless, according to the tax assessments of 1436, he still received an income of £20 p.a. from his land in Surrey. Surr. Hist. Centre, Woking, Loseley mss, LM/1719.

Precisely when he made his next, also profitable, marriage is uncertain, but it had probably taken place before the death of his new father-in-law, John Weston, in November 1440. C139/102/5. Although Anne was the youngest of Weston’s three daughters and coheirs, who divided his estates between them, she and her husband Slyfield obtained the lion’s share: the Surrey manors of Papworth in Send, West Clandon and Weston in Albury. VCH Surr. gives contradictory information in iii. 4, 74, 347 and 368, partly as a consequence of confusing John Weston I with John Weston II* of Hindhall in Buxted. The account has been corrected partly from O. Manning and W. Bray, Surr. ii. 126; iii. 74. By March 1443 they had produced a child. CFR, xvii. 256; E159/222, brevia Mich. rot. 15d.

Slyfield had been among the men of Surrey required to take the generally-administered oath against maintenance in 1434, then being styled an esquire of Great Bookham, CPR, 1429-36, p. 380. and his place in county society is indicated by the frequency with which he attended the parliamentary elections at the shire court at Guildford – doing so nine times between 1431 and 1459. C219/14/2-5; 15/4, 6, 7; 16/2, 5. He himself was elected to sit in the Parliament of 1450, which was assembled in the aftermath of Cade’s rebellion. Before his election he had served for four years as a member of the quorum on the Surrey bench. This, and the fact that he was sometimes called ‘gentleman’, suggests that he had received some training in the law, although there is now no evidence to support this supposition. He was quite often called upon to act as a feoffee of land in his home county, doing so, for example, for Thomas Elyot regarding property in Guildford, and for William Redstone* in Southwark. CCR, 1435-41, p. 230; 1461-8, p. 201; CP25(1)/232/72/5; CPR, 1441-6, p. 28. Probably in the capacity of a trustee for the de la Poyle family, in 1446 he had been sued by John Gaynesford I* for the manor of Coteford. CP40/743, rot. 431d. Shortly after his service in the Parliament of 1450, he was one of the arbiters chosen by Nicholas Carew* of Beddington to help resolve Carew’s dispute with his two nieces. Add. Ch. 23656. By contrast, in a suit brought against Slyfield in 1454 by the wardens of St. Margaret’s church, Southwark, it was alleged that he had failed to comply with the conditions for a trust whereby he held property set aside to provide daily prayers for the souls of Thomas Palmer and his wife. C1/24/147; CCR, 1447-54, p. 498.

Little is known about Slyfield’s political stance in the civil war years of 1459-61, although his restoration to the bench in 1461 indicates that he was acceptable to the Yorkist regime, and he was returned to Edward IV’s first Parliament, summoned to assemble on 4 Nov. The electoral indenture does not survive, so that Slyfield’s attendance in the Commons is known only from the writ dated 12 Nov. for the release of his servant, a gentleman called Richard Skinner, who had been arrested on a suit for debt, this being deemed to be contrary to the privileges accorded to MPs. KB145/7/1, no. 131. Despite his service as a j.p. Skilling did not always respect the processes of the law. While a member of the Surrey bench he was outlawed for failing to appear in the common pleas to answer Richard Lee*, the London alderman to whom he allegedly owed the large sum of £115 8s. 8d. Slyfield obtained a royal pardon of outlawry on 15 May 1465. Another, more serious charge laid against him, was that he had conspired together with Nicholas Carew (the son of the man who had earlier asked him to be an arbiter), and some 22 lesser individuals, described as yeomen, husbandmen, fletchers, butchers and bakers, to have Richard atte Welle of Leatherhead wrongfully charged with breaking into Carew’s closes at Beddington in November 1460 and indicted for stealing four horses. Presumably Slyfield was exonerated, although one of his alleged fellow conspirators was outlawed for failing to appear in court to answer. CPR, 1461-7, pp. 410, 545. On another occasion he failed to pay a debt owed to a London draper, and a writ was sent out for his arrest in October 1468. C241/251/29.

Slyfield died shortly before 5 July 1470. A writ de diem clausit extremum was issued (CFR, xx. 260), but no post mortem has survived. Not long previously he and his wife had made a conveyance of the manor of Polesden in Great Bookham with some 500 acres of land there and in Dorking, Chertsey, Leatherhead and Stoke Dabernon to feoffees headed by Edmund Shaa and including John Norbury†. CP25(1)/232/75/18; VCH Surr. iii. 331. Slyfield’s widow presented to the living at West Clandon (part of her inheritance) in 1471, and his feoffees conveyed the manors of West Clandon and Weston in Albury to their son, Henry Slyfield, in 1487. Manning and Bray, iii. 54, 126, although on p. 109 the conveyance is dated 22 Hen. VII (1507) instead of 2 Hen. VII (1487). Henry had probably come of age before his father’s death, for he had attested the Surrey elections in 1467.