SWAN, Thomas

Swan was either a native of Oxford who pursued a career in London before returning home, or a Londoner who settled in Oxford. Letters patent, dated 9 Feb. 1427, reveal his connexion with the capital. These letters, which pardoned him his outlawry for failing to answer two Londoners in suits for debt, described him as ‘of Oxford, gentleman, alias citizen and fishmonger of London’. CPR, 1422-9, p. 372. Whatever his origins, it would appear that he left the City for Oxford after marrying Joan, widow of Robert Sprunt, and that he owed his position in the town to this match. Inevitably, his marriage involved him with the Sprunt family, whose affairs came to take up a considerable amount of his time.

The son of the brewer John Sprunt, an alderman and former mayor of Oxford, Robert Sprunt had predeceased his father, who died in 1419. In his will of that year, John left most of his property to his grandson and namesake. At the same time, he provided for two female family members, awarding his daughter-in-law a life interest in a tenement and brewery in the parish of St. Peter le Bailey and settling holdings in those of St. Aldate’s and St. Michael at the South Gate on his grand-daughter Alice and her legitimate issue. John died before 2 July that year when Joan appeared before the mayor of Oxford to acknowledge that she and her children had received proper provision from her late husband’s goods. All Souls MS DD. C140, no. 69. Soon afterwards, she and Swan, by then man and wife, fell into dispute with her father-in-law’s executor Thomas Chesterfeld, rector of the parish church of St. Peter le Bailey. They sued Chesterfeld in Chancery, alleging that he had produced a forged version of John Sprunt’s will in order to disinherit her children by Robert Sprunt, although with what result is unknown. C1/69/386.

Swan’s stepson, the younger John Sprunt, died childless later that decade or in the early 1430s. In his will, dated 9 July 1427 and proved on 13 July 1431, he entrusted all his real and personal property to Swan, whom he appointed his executor, to hold to the use of his sister Sibyl and her heirs. Should Sibyl die without legitimate issue, his estate was to pass to their sister Alice, to whom their grandfather had left his properties in St. Aldate’s and St. Michael at the South Gate several years earlier. All Souls MS DD. C140, no. 70. Curiously, the testator’s brother, yet another John Sprunt, does not feature in the will, but he pursued a career outside Oxford, taking up residence at Horkesley in Essex. CCR, 1429-35, p. 237. In the event both Alice and Sibyl died childless before the beginning of 1433, by which date their mother, Joan Swan, had also died. In January that year, Chesterfeld, who, notwithstanding the Swans’ allegations, had retained his role as an executor, sold the Sprunt holdings to raise money for pious uses, in accordance with the directions left to him by the elder John Sprunt. He found purchasers in Humphrey Stafford, earl of Stafford, and his half-brother the cleric Thomas Bourgchier, who paid 250 marks for the properties. In the following February, John Sprunt of Essex, his brother’s heir in law, made a formal quitclaim to the two men in order to safeguard their title. Evidently, Stafford and Bourgchier were acting as agents rather than on their own account in this matter. A few years later, they conveyed the Sprunt estate to Thomas Chichele, archdeacon of Canterbury. In due course, the properties formed part of the endowment of All Souls’ College, the foundation of Chichele’s uncle, Henry Chichele, archbishop of Canterbury. All Souls MS DD. C140, nos. 71-76; CCR, 1429-35, p. 237; Biog. Reg. Univ. Oxf. ed. Emden, i. 412-13. It is possible that Sibyl, evidently a minor when her brother made his will, predeceased the younger John Sprunt since she does not feature in the deed of sale to Stafford and Bourgchier. The deed, which also fails to refer to John of Essex, specifically states that John the younger, his sister Alice and mother Joan were all dead.

Having settled in Oxford, Swan served two consecutive terms as one of its bailiffs before entering the Parliament of 1427. He was elected alongside Thomas Coventre I*, an extremely experienced parliamentarian to whom he must have looked for guidance as a newcomer to the Commons. Unheard of after his election to the Commons, he may have predeceased his wife and stepdaughters. Henry Swan, perhaps a relative, was a surety for Coventre following the election of the latter to yet another Parliament in January 1431. C219/14/2.