TEMYS, William

The manor of Rood Ashton, to the south of Trowbridge, was settled on Nicholas and Joan Temys in 1402, and on the same Joan and her second husband Robert Salman† of Calne and their issue in 1433, with successive remainders in tail to Joan’s son William Temys (our MP), and his brothers Thomas and John, and ultimately to Sir Walter Hungerford†, Lord Hungerford, and his heirs. Wilts. Feet of Fines, 219, 472. Which of the Temys brothers was the oldest remains uncertain, but it may be because Thomas had already been married to an heiress with an estate at Netheravon and property in Salisbury, that William was preferred at Rood Ashton. William later acted as a feoffee of his sister-in-law’s inheritance. Ibid. 506; CPR, 1436-41, p. 26.

Before he took possession of Rood Ashton, William lived at Blackland, some two miles from Calne, the borough he represented in the Parliament of 1432. Doubtless his stepfather Salman, who had sat for Calne in five earlier Parliaments, played a part in securing his election by the burgesses. William was styled ‘gentleman’ in the spring of 1434, when he brought a plea of trespass in the court of common pleas against Queen Joan, and he and his brother Thomas were listed among the gentry of Wiltshire required to take the oath against maintenance which was administered at that time. CP40/693, rot. att.; CPR, 1429-36, p. 371. Another kinsman, Robert Temys, a chapman for whom William later acted as executor, also lived at Blackland: CP40/799, rot. 392. He added to his landed holdings near Calne in 1440, when he and his wife Mary acquired from Margery Fenamour (probably a kinswoman of hers) moorland at Whetham, and in 1444 when Katherine Spershut sold him her estate at Calstone Wellington. Money-Kyrle mss, 1720/267; CPR, 1441-6, p. 240; 1494-1509, p. 165; VCH Wilts. xvii. 127. That he was a person of some consequence in the town itself is clear from his inclusion among those for whom prayers were to be said in the parish church of St. Mary, at the chantry founded two years later by John St. Loe*, the esquire for the King’s body. CPR, 1441-6, p. 459. In his later years Temys was called ‘esquire’ and in the assessments made for taxation in February 1451 his annual income was recorded as £13. E179/196/118. Thomas was not assessed (perhaps he managed to evade the assessors) and John Temys was said to have an income of just £2 p.a. Unless the size of his estate diminished before his death, the findings of his inquisition post mortem, which gave it a lower value of £8 3s. 8d. must be regarded as an underestimate. C140/51/16.

There are glimpses of Temys in the law courts at Westminster. For instance, in Easter term 1441 he sued a woolmonger of Marlborough for the sum of £20, but was himself accused by Richard Hayne II* of assaulting him at Calne. In the latter case the man accused with him, Richard Casterton, was a wealthy esquire from Lincolnshire, but the background to their quarrel with Hayne is not revealed. CP40/721, rot. 172d, 348d, continuing in Hil. 1442: CP40/724, rot. 187. Other charges brought against Temys saw him at odds with John Quynteyne, an employee of the ‘myghtie prynse my lord of Gloucetur’ in the forest of Pewsham, which stretched between Chippenham and Devizes. Quynteyne complained to the chancellor about an unjust summons to appear in court at the suit of John Fenamour ‘by the steryng and temptacion of one William Temse’, and made wild allegations about ‘the malyse of stepdames and covetyse pepul’. Temys’s interest in the affair may have come about though his wife’s putative relationship with Fenamour, but the rights and wrongs of the case remain obscure. Money-Kyrle mss, 1720/263; cf C1/39/125 although Temys is not mentioned there. Perhaps the quarrel arose out of the administration of the forest, in which he too was engaged, at least later in his career.

Following the serious social upheavals of the summer of 1450 which provoked the murder of Bishop Aiscough of Salisbury, Temys served on juries indicting the perpetrators before commissioners of oyer and terminer in the cathedral city in July 1451, and again a year later at Malmesbury. KB9/133/23d; 134/1/14, 32; 134/2/149, 151. He himself had suffered at the hands of the rebels, though apparently escaped personal injury, for among the indictments presented in July 1452 was one of a number of Cornishmen who were said to have broken into his houses at Rood Ashton and stolen goods including gold rings and silver plate valued at £28 13s. 4d., as well as the huge sum of £100 in coin. KB9/134/1/28. After an absence from the Commons of 21 years Temys was returned to the Parliament of 1453-4 as a representative for Devizes. Whether he had any property in the town has not been discovered, although he had been a juror at the inquisition post mortem for Lord Hungerford held there four years earlier. C139/135/30. Temys ran into trouble in the later years of the decade, and was outlawed. In July 1459 the barons of the Exchequer commissioned John Whittocksmead* and others to conduct an investigation about his moveable goods, presumably so they could be confiscated. E159/235, commissiones, Trin. rot. 1.

How Temys escaped this predicament is not recorded. In February 1464 an order went out to the sheriff of Wiltshire for the election of a replacement for his post as verderer in the forests of Pewsham and Melksham, on the grounds that he was dwelling in the ‘uttermost border of the county’, so might not conveniently exercise the office. CCR, 1461-8, p. 176. In his later years he pursued claims to lands elsewhere in Wiltshire, once more challenging the title of his wife’s putative relations. Thus, in 1469 he was bound to Roger Fenamore in £100 as guarantee that he and his wife would abide by arbitration concerning land in Whetham and Stockley, about which an assize of novel disseisin was pending, and he was party to another assize in August 1472 which concerned tenements in Lydiard Millicent and elsewhere, of which he was a feoffee. Money-Kyrle mss, 1720/288; C66/530, m. 31d.

Temys died on 6 Apr. 1475, leaving his son, another William, aged 22, as his heir. The younger William’s fealty was duly taken by the escheator of Wiltshire by writ issued in October. C140/51/16; CFR, xxi. no. 309. He himself died in 1499. CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 386.