SPERT, Richard

Spert’s was an unusually peripatetic career, which began in Kent, moved to Sussex and briefly to Nottinghamshire and ended up in Lincolnshire, where he held an impressive range of royal offices over a period of 40 years. Probably the son of William Spert, a Kentish landowner and lawyer who died intestate, in the early 1450s he took on the administration of William’s estate, and brought legal actions against ten men from Halden and its neighbourhood who had allegedly stolen goods worth £30 at Southwark during William’s lifetime. CPR, 1429-36, p. 389; 1452-61, p. 186. To judge from his later service as a member of the quorum on the bench in Lincolnshire, Spert received some training in the law, J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii. 1443. but he chose to tread the path of an administrator rather than as an attorney in the law courts. His first recorded post was as under sheriff in Surrey and Sussex, in the employment of the former shire-knight John Devenish*. His association with Devenish pre-dated the latter’s appointment as sheriff in 1453, and he appears to have become a member of his household, for when he took out a royal pardon on 29 Jan. 1456 he was called ‘formerly of Hellingly’, which was where Devenish lived. In the pardon Spert was also described as a ‘gentleman’ previously resident in London, a description commonly given to lawyers. Add. Ch. 30021; C67/41, m. 3. Much later, in 1467, Devenish brought a bill against him in the ct. of the Exchequer suing for payment of an obligation in £200, which Spert had entered at Hellingly on 13 Nov. 1453. Spert asked the ct. for leave to negotiate, and no judgement is recorded: E13/153, rot. 21d.

No ready explanation has been found for Spert’s return to the Parliament of 1460 for the Sussex borough of New Shoreham, which is situated at some distance from Hellingly. It may be the case that he was again acting as under sheriff, and that his superior, Robert Fiennes*, entered his name on the indenture. A curious feature of the indentures from the Sussex boroughs for this particular Parliament is that they were all dated 28 Aug. and drawn up at the shire court in Chichester; none of the elections were authenticated in the towns themselves. Perhaps the burgesses of Shoreham subsequently took exception to Spert’s return, for the name of Thomas Cager* appears in his place on the schedule accompanying the indentures to Chancery, and it remains uncertain which of the two men actually attended sessions in the Commons. In either case the MP was an outsider to the local community at Shoreham. C219/16/6.

The next few months witnessed dramatic changes in Spert’s life, in which he moved from Sussex to Lincolnshire, and save, perhaps, for continuing his links with the Sussex heiress Margery Austyn, he appears to have severed contact with the south of England. Cat. Wiston Archs. ed. Booker, i. 204. It looks very likely that his move was encouraged by two of the other Members of the Parliament of 1460: William Hussey*, the Lincolnshire lawyer and future chief justice, who represented the borough of Bramber (a short distance from Shoreham), and Humphrey Bourgchier, who sat for Lincolnshire in the first session of the Parliament before his elevation to the Upper House as Lord Cromwell at the start of the second. The evidence is circumstantial but compelling: namely, Spert’s appearance in later years as one of Hussey’s feoffees, and his description within a few months of the dissolution as a resident of Tattershall in Lincolnshire, for Tattershall was Bourgchier’s seat. Significantly, in January 1458 he had been indicted as one of Bourgchier’s armed followers who in the previous month had expelled the feoffees of Ralph, Lord Cromwell (d.1456) from certain manors in Nottinghamshire. As ‘once of Chilwell, gentleman’: KB9/289/78. Chilwell was the home of the Babingtons, and it may be conjectured that Spert served William Babington* as his under sheriff in 1456 (the date of Spert’s term as under sheriff of Notts. is not known). It is also worthy of remark that Bourgchier was the nephew of John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, who was lord of both New Shoreham and Bramber. The duke and his Bourgchier kinsmen may well have been active in attempts to fill the Commons with supporters of the Yorkist earls fresh from their recent victory at the battle of Northampton, and in preparation for the return to England of another of Humphrey’s uncles, Richard, duke of York. In the first parliamentary session York laid claim to the throne.

Yet however Spert’s removal to Lincolnshire was put into effect, it is clear that he was accepted into the shire community with remarkable speed, for at the time the Parliament assembled he was already acting as clerk of the peace in Lindsey. Among the bequests that one of the Lincolnshire j.p.s, the esquire John Marmyon, purportedly made on his deathbed on 14 Mar. 1461 (ten days after the dissolution) was an annual rent of £2 from property at Keisby, which Spert was to have for life. He had to take Marmyon’s feoffees to court in 1463-4 to pursue his claim for payment: C1/27/109-11; 29/139. A few months later Spert was persuaded to take on the escheatorship of the county, and on 8 Nov. 1461 the new Lord Cromwell’s associates Thomas Wake of Blisworth in Northamptonshire and the latter’s brother John (the sons of Thomas Wake*) provided securities in Chancery that he would perform his duties diligently. At the same time he and Thomas offered similar guarantees for John Wake when he took on the escheatorship of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire. CCR, 1461-8, pp. 106-7. Spert had stood surety for the younger Thomas Wake in KB in Mich. term 1459, and subsequently acted on his behalf as a feoffee of property in the London parish of St. Dunstan in the East: KB27/794, fines rot. 1; Corp. London RO, hr 193/19, 20. Both his appointment as escheator and, more important, his close links with Cromwell, the cousin of the new King Edward IV, are proof enough of Spert’s commitment to the Yorkist regime.

During his escheatorship, which lasted for two years instead of the normal period of 12 months, Spert received another pardon, which, dated 12 May 1462, referred to him as ‘formerly of London, alias of Stainsby, Lincolnshire’, and also as administrator of the goods of William Dalyson, a Lincolnshire landowner. C67/45, m. 26. At some point before the spring of 1464, he consolidated his interests in his adopted county by marrying Dalyson’s widow, Katherine. Together, the couple pursued the debtors of her late husband in the law-courts, although in their turn they were sued in the Exchequer of pleas by the administrators of the estate of William Beaufitz*. CP40/812, rot. 269; 823, rot. 54; 824, rot. 250; E13/151, rot. 67. In the summer of 1465 Spert and his wife sued out a writ for an assize of novel disseisin in Yorkshire, but the location of her landed interests in that county is not known. Nor is the full extent of the property in Lincolnshire that Spert acquired by this marriage, although he later held in right of his wife some land at Burgh-le-Marsh and Winthorpe, which made him liable to contribute to the diking of a creek; and other of their holdings were in Welwick and Thorpe. C60/274, m. 22; The Med. Lindsey Marsh (Lincoln Rec. Soc. lxxxv), no. 12 (8); CP40/829, rot. 313d. In 1483 he was to be party with his wife to an award in Somersby and Bag Enderby. In a will made ten years later her son Thomas Dalyson confirmed her in possession for life of all his late father’s goods and landed holdings. Lincs. Archit. and Arch. Soc. v. 51 (referring to Lincs. AO, LB/1/2/1/1); PCC 25 Dogett (PROB11/9, ff. 197v-8).

Not long after Spert’s arrival in the region he was appointed to the Lindsey bench as a member of the quorum, and for an unrecorded year in the 1460s he served once more as an under sheriff, this time in Lincolnshire. He maintained his close links with Lord Cromwell, and it was when the latter was alderman of the Corpus Christi guild in Boston in 1466-7 that Spert gained admittance to the fraternity. Harl. 4795, f. 44v. His wife was admitted to the guild in 1492: ibid. f. 51v. Not surprisingly, he was removed from the bench during the Readeption of Henry VI, and although pricked to be sheriff he was not appointed. Although, prudently, he purchased a pardon from the restored monarch, on 4 Feb. 1471, C47/34/2, no. 6; C67/44, m. 3. he was ready to welcome the return of Edward IV and assist his recovery of the throne two months later. Spert may have fought on Edward’s side at the battle of Barnet, in the company led by Cromwell, who died on the field. Despite the death of his patron, following that victory he soon came to greater prominence, as his talents as an administrator gained further recognition. His appointment as receiver of the duchy of Lancaster lordship of Long Bennington in July that year was made for term of his life, and he indeed continued to hold the office, notwithstanding further changes of regime, until his death 30 years later. The post of surveyor of Crown lands in several counties followed in 1472, giving him additional responsibilities of a high order. CPR, 1467-77, pp. 329, 348; B.P. Wolffe, R. Demesne in English Hist. 177, 292-3. In respect to his royal grants, Spert was exempted from the Act of Resumption passed in the Parliament of 1472-5, and in November 1474 he was among those specially authorized to receive the subsidy of a tenth which the Commons granted the King for defence, in part for the wages of 13,000 bowmen. He was to examine and supervise the collection of the subsidy in Lincolnshire, and deliver all sums received into the Exchequer. PROME, xiv. 192-3; CPR, 1467-77, p. 496. In April 1475 he was appointed for life as feodary of the honour of Bolingbroke, or all duchy lands in Lincolnshire, back-dated to the previous Michaelmas.

For several years Spert was employed by Richard, duke of Gloucester, as his receiver in Lincolnshire (at a fee of ten marks a year), so it is not surprising that following Richard’s accession to the throne he remained a loyal and dependable royal servant. DL29/639/10386, 10387B. In December 1483 he was appointed to inquire in his county about the identity of the rebels who had committed treason against the new King, and to take possession for the Crown of their lands and moveable possessions, compelling the traitors’ officials to render account for their revenues. The pardon he received on 24 Oct. 1484, listing several of his posts, was no doubt a necessary formality to protect him from potential actions arising from his various duties. By then Spert was in receipt of a life annuity of 40 marks, taken from the profits of Long Bennington, and he was also confirmed in possession of an annual rent of £10 from Crown lands until such time as he should be given an office with the fee of 20 marks p.a. for life. CPR, 1476-85, p. 393; C67/52, m. 14; BL Harl. MS. 433 ed. Horrox and Hammond, i. 186, 194; iii. 129. Unusually, following Richard III’s death at Bosworth and the advent of Henry VII, Spert was permitted to carry on his administrative tasks without interruption. He was re-granted the receivership of Long Bennington, once again for life, as early in the reign as 19 Dec. 1485, and exempted from the Act of Resumption passed in Henry’s first Parliament. Another early reward was a lease for seven years of the fishery at ‘Smalney’, parcel of the honour of Bolingbroke. Materials for Hist. Hen. VII, i. 308, 599; PROME, xv. 258.

Meanwhile, Spert’s involvement in Lincolnshire affairs had been expressed both by his participation in the parliamentary elections held there in 1472 and 1478, C219/17/2, 3. and by his nomination as a trustee of the estates of such prominent families in the region as Tilney, Littilbury, Copledyke and Thymelby. CCR, 1468-76, no. 369; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 324, 721; CP25(1)/145/163/8. He was later accused by Humphrey Litlebury’s yr. son John of failing to purchase lands on his behalf in fulfilment of his late father’s bequest: C1/211/73. Among those who held him in high regard were John Gygur, the warden of Tattershall College, and John Leynton*, both of whom were inextricably involved in the administration of the former Cromwell estates, the latter as executor of the will of Lord Ralph. In the autumn of 1472 Gygur received a letter from Leynton remarking on Spert’s desire to have again the stewardship of Tumby, and stating that ‘he shall have my good wille with alle my hert bothe for that and Candlesby … And therefore shall y laboure by alle the weyes and meanes y kan to thentent that Spert might have it, for the goode wille and affection that he bereth as well unto us as unto the College: for which we have grete mater and cause to do anything that might like hym’. HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, i. 186-8 (where the letter is wrongly dated c. 1460). Spert’s association with Leynton and Gygur had come about through his own role as a feoffee and administrator of the estates which, accumulated by Lord Ralph, had descended to his coheirs, Maud, Lady Willoughby, and Joan, now the widow of Humphrey Bourgchier and wife of Robert Radcliffe†. Thus, he was party to transactions of the late 1470s relating to these properties, and was among the group enfeoffed of the reversion of four Norfolk manors expectant on Radcliffe’s death in November 1482. At that date he became a trustee of extensive holdings in Norfolk, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire under an arrangement by which the original body of Lord Ralph’s feoffees, now seriously depleted, was replenished as that lord had directed in his will. CP25(1)/145/162/42; Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Misc. 249; Candlesby deeds, 42b. Later that month, an indenture was sealed whereby the president and scholars of Magdalen College, Oxford, demised to farm the manor of Candlesby to Chief Justice Hussey and others, including Spert, for 60 years, or until one year after the death of Lady Willoughby, providing that she should receive the issues of the manor for her lifetime. Magdalen Coll. 127/38. That Spert, like Hussey, was of counsel to Lady Willoughby is evident from a letter sent by Gygur to Bishop Waynflete in August 1481, reporting a discussion in their presence in which they advised her not to claim any title in the manors of East Bridgford or Kirby Bellars. Magdalen Coll. East Bridgford, 10. Meanwhile, Hussey had indicated his own confidence in Spert by asking him to be party to a number of his property transactions. CP25(1)/145/162/38, 43.

Spert remained active as a j.p., commissioner and royal official until his death. His last appointment to the bench was dated February 1501, and he died at an unknown date before 18 May that year. Inquiries were to be made regarding his lands, and (by writ dated 16 Sept.), those of his late wife, but no inqs. post mortem survive: CFR, xxii. nos. 690, 715. HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 788, suggested that Sir Thomas Spert, controller of the King’s ships under Hen. VIII, and his son Richard Spert of Kingswood, Wilts., were descendants of the MP.