TYRELL, Thomas

Born into a well established and prominent landed family, Thomas was the eldest son of John Tyrell, a distinguished servant of the Lancastrian Crown who sat in no fewer than 13 Parliaments (three of them as Speaker) and was knighted in 1431. John served Henry VI as a councillor, as an officer of the duchy of Lancaster and as treasurer of the Household, and he was closely linked with Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and other important magnates. By the end of his life John, who died on 2 Apr. 1437, was the wealthiest non-baronial landholder resident in Essex; his lands, excluding properties worth £40 p.a. which he had already settled on Thomas, were worth at least £396 p.a. Some of his estates descended to two of his younger sons (William I succeeded to properties in Norfolk and Suffolk and William II to others in Essex), but Thomas’s landed inheritance was still an extremely substantial one. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 683-6; H.L. Gray, ‘Incomes from Land in Eng. in 1436’, EHR, xlix. 633; R.M. Jeffs, ‘Later Med. Sheriff’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1960), 330; CPR, 1441-6, p. 261; CFR, xvii. 101; PCC 32 Godyn (PROB11/5, ff. 253v-255v); Morant, i. 261.

It is possible that these estates were augmented by lands his wife, Anne, had brought to their marriage, a match arranged between his father and the executors of her father, Sir William Marney. The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 694. Over the years Thomas also came into possession of further properties. In the 1440s, for example, he succeeded to lands once held by his uncle Edward Tyrell. In a codicil which he added to his will shortly before his death in December 1442, Edward awarded his nephew a reversionary interest in the manors of Shepreth, Meldreth and Malton in Cambridgeshire. In the mid 1440s Thomas quarrelled with Edward’s son and namesake over this settlement but the properties were in his hands by 1447, by which date the younger Edward, who left no issue, was probably dead. Reg. Chichele, ii. 628-36; CIPM, xxvi. 126-9; C145/311/15; CPR, 1441-6, p. 296; VCH Cambs. v. 244, 256; vii. 87. Later, in 1459, Thomas inherited a share of Great Sampford, an Essex manor once held by his maternal grandfather, Sir William Coggeshall*. CFR, xix. 236-7; CPR, 1452-61, p. 503; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 329-30. Tyrell also actively augmented his estate by making purchases of land and by obtaining several leases, the first of which appears to have expired in the early 1440s, E13/142, rot. 13d. of the royal manor of Havering atte Bower. He did not however retain all of his lands, whether inherited or otherwise. At a relatively early date he disposed of part of his inheritance, a manor at Harrow-on-the-Hill in Middlesex, and in 1464 he conveyed away another manor at Bobbingworth, a property near Chipping Ongar which he had bought in the mid 1440s. C1/32/178; VCH Essex, iv. 11; Essex RO, Misc. docs., D/DB/T96/41-42. At the hub of Tyrell’s estate was his residence at East Horndon. He must have maintained a considerable establishment there, since in October 1439 he obtained permission from the Crown to purchase no fewer than 140 quarters of wheat, barley and malt in Norfolk and Suffolk for his household. CPR, 1436-41, p. 348.

Among those whom Tyrell is likely to have entertained at East Horndon are his wife’s family, the Marneys. He was a Marney feoffee and he likewise acted as such, and as a witness and surety, for other landowners, including relatives like William Skrene, who had married his sister Alice, and Thomas Cornwallis*, the son-in-law of his uncle Edward Tyrell. CCR, 1419-22, p. 54; 1441-7, pp. 226-7; 1447-54, pp. 24-25; 1468-76, nos. 91, 397, 1476-85, nos. 341, 345; CPR, 1461-7, p. 228; 1467-77, pp. 151-2, 344-5; Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 36, 67, 87; Essex RO, deeds, D/DHf/T41/86, 88, 102, 121; Corp. London RO, hr 178/2; C146/331; CAD, i. C331, C1105; iv. A7909; v. A13118; vi. C5103. He doubtless enjoyed a particularly good relationship with Robert Darcy I*, who appointed him an overseer of his will. Egerton 3401, ff. 5v-9v. Darcy’s daughter Eleanor married Tyrell’s eldest son William, and Tyrell’s daughters Elizabeth and Anne became the wives of Darcy’s sons, Robert II* and John respectively. Furthermore, Robert II followed in his father’s footsteps by making Tyrell an overseer of his will. Vis. Essex, i. (Harl. Soc. xiii), 44-45; W. Parker, Hist. Long Melford, 57; Procs. Suff. Inst. Archaeology, ii. 79; Ric. III, Crown and People, 212-13; Egerton 3401, ff. 10-15. Tyrell was also an executor for Anne, the widow of John Holand, duke of Exeter, and previously the wife of (Sir) Lewis John*. In the 1440s she and the MP farmed the manor of West Thurrock from the dowager duchess of Bedford. Tyrell probably served Anne, who died in 1457, as a counsellor or estate official, since in her later years she paid him a retainer of ten marks p.a. PCC 14 Rous (PROB11/1, f. 107); Paston Letters ed. Davis, i. 140; VCH Essex, viii. 59; Essex RO, Petre mss, D/DP M1081-2. He was also a feoffee for Margaret, the daughter and heir of Sir Reynold Cobham of Sterborough, and her husband, Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland, CPR, 1452-61, pp. 214-15. but the prominent royal servant, Ralph, Lord Cromwell, and the Bourgchiers, a magnate family with considerable influence in Essex, were probably his most significant connexions among the nobility.

Like his father, Tyrell was one of Cromwell’s feoffees and he was present when the peer came before the King and his Council, to refute allegations that he was guilty of treason, in February 1453. CPR, 1452-61, pp. 93-102. Cromwell, who died in early 1456, made Tyrell an executor of his will, an onerous responsibility. CPR, 1452-61, pp. 199-200, 341; CCR, 1454-61, p. 457; 1461-8, pp. 88, 251-2; 1468-76, no. 911, 1173; C67/41, m. 30; C1/26/75-85; Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Misc. 367; E159/234, brevia Mich. rot. 29. One of the more immediate tasks for him and his fellow executors was reaching a settlement with Cromwell’s old enemy, William Tailboys*. They made an agreement with Tailboys in March 1457, agreeing to forgive him the huge sum of £2,002 which Cromwell had won against him through the law, in return for his promise to behave peacefully towards the peer’s family, servants and friends. Tailboys was nevertheless to give them a bond for 1,000 marks, to guarantee that he would keep this promise and not attempt any legal action against those involved in the lawsuits between Cromwell and himself. CCR, 1454-61, pp. 197-8; S.J. Paylimg, ‘Execution of the will of Ralph, Lord Cromwell’, in The Fifteenth Cent. XIII ed. Clark, 1-29. As with Cromwell, Tyrell inherited his links with the Bourgchiers from his father, who had served Anne, dowager countess of Stafford, as a feoffee and steward and had witnessed deeds on behalf of Henry, Lord Bourgchier, her eldest son by her second marriage. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 684-5. He himself witnessed settlements she had made for Henry and her other Bourgchier sons in 1431 and, 30 years later, a conveyance made in accordance with her will. E41/332. In March 1456 he was associated with Henry’s son and namesake and others in obtaining the wardship of a Somerset heiress, a grant for which they afterwards paid the Crown £220. C81/1622/69, 85; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 285-6, 288. Tyrell remained on good terms with Henry Bourgchier, whom Edward IV made earl of Essex, for the rest of his life. He was at the earl’s London house in July 1473, when the peer, having just completed a temporary term as chancellor of England, returned the great seal to the keeper of the rolls, and he appointed Bourgchier one of the overseers of his will not long afterwards. CCR, 1468-76, no. 1164; PCC 31 Wattys.

It is possible that Tyrell spent some of his early career campaigning in France, In Feb. 1430 a Thomas Tyrell was retained to accompany Hen. VI on his coronation expedition to France. Serving under the duke of Bedford, he distinguished himself in 1432, when he led a successful raid on the town of Clermont, and again two years later, when he took part in the capture of Louviers, just south of Rouen. He also saw active service in Normandy in the late 1430s or early 1440s, and in the summer of 1450 when he and his troops were defeated outside Caen: E404/46/23. P. Vergil, Anglica Historia (Cam. Soc. Ser. 3, lxxiv), 37, 49, 51, 64, 79, HP Biogs. 891, and Griffiths, 759, assume that this Thomas was the MP, but the man in question was almost certainly a namesake, perhaps his uncle (see Reg. Chichele, ii. 628-36). In 1430, when the soldier indented with the King, the MP was only some 17 years of age. It is unlikely that the MP was abroad in the late 1430s and early 1440s, when he was appointed to several offices in Eng. In the summer of 1450 he was certainly at home, helping to put down Cade’s rebellion: Issues of the Exchequer ed. Devon, 466; CPR, 1446-52, p. 387. although it is more likely that he attended Lincoln’s Inn, an institution to which he was linked in the later 1450s. In 1457-8 one of his sons was admitted to the Inn and in the same year ‘Terell senior’ (perhaps the MP) and John Leynton*, another of Lord Cromwell’s executors, were assigned a chamber there. L. Inn Adm. i. 14; L. Inn Black Bks. i. 31, 32. Even if he himself did not attend the Inn, Tyrell had some legal expertise. He arbitrated in several disputes, among them a quarrel between the corporation of London and the Genoese merchants who traded in the City, for the resolution of which he and Thomas Billing* made an award in the autumn of 1454. CCR, 1441-7, pp. 237-8; Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 366, 393-4; E213/52; P. Tucker, Law Courts and Lawyers in London, 259. Whatever his whereabouts and activities as a young man, Tyrell did not hold office in Essex until the summer of 1439, when he was placed on a commission there. In spite of his lack of experience as an administrator, in November the following year he was appointed sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire and made joint steward with William Tyrell I of the duchy of Lancaster’s estates in the home counties. By this date both he and William I had joined the Household, for they are listed among the esquires of the King’s hall and chamber in a wardrobe account of 1438-9. E101/408/25, f. 7. If he had not already done so, their brother, William II, would likewise become a member of the royal establishment soon afterwards. As a Household man, and in later years a royal councillor, Tyrell spent an appreciable amount of time in London and he was described as ‘lately of’ the city in a royal pardon of August 1452. C67/40, m. 16. Inevitably he had dealings with a number of Londoners, including the mercer, William Pountfret, and the draper, John Gedney*. With his father, he was a feoffee for Pountfret and his family, and as such he was caught up in a dispute over property in the city between the mercer and Sir Thomas Percy, the future Lord Egremont, in the late 1430s and the 1440s. CP40/738, rot. 535. It was apparently in the same capacity that he fell out with Pountfret’s son and namesake in the later 1450s, this time over property in the parish of St. Bartholomew without Bishopsgate. KB27/784, rot. 75. By contrast, Tyrell appears to have enjoyed a much smoother relationship with Gedney, who appointed him as an executor of his will. C67/42, m. 26; CCR, 1454-61, p. 489.

No doubt Tyrell’s status as a royal esquire helped him to win election to the Parliament of 1442, although once this Parliament opened the Commons expressed disquiet about the growing costs of running the Household and asked the King to appoint a committee of lords to ensure it was properly managed. PROME, xi. 381. At the beginning of 1443 Tyrell was appointed a j.p. and in November the following year he was pricked for another term as sheriff. Just over two years later he was elected to his second Parliament, having received the honour of knighthood in the meantime (perhaps at the queen’s coronation). The government, headed by William de la Pole, marquess of Suffolk, had called this assembly, which opened at Bury St. Edmunds on 10 Feb. 1447, in order to take action against Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, one of its leading critics. During the elections to the Commons the government mobilized its resources to secure the return of courtiers like Tyrell and his brother William I, who sat for Suffolk, and Sir Thomas Fynderne*, the other knight of the shire for Essex. When he arrived at Bury, chosen as a venue because it was well away from London where he enjoyed considerable popular support, Gloucester was arrested on trumped up charges of treason and he died shortly afterwards. It is not known whether the Tyrell brothers had maintained their father’s links with Gloucester, but by now their primary loyalty was to the government and Court. Tyrell was re-elected to the Parliament of February 1449 (to which William II was also returned) and two months after its dissolution he lent the Crown £26 13s. 4d. E101/810/23.

In the spring of 1450, during the final session of the next Parliament, the Commons nominated Tyrell to act as one of the receivers and treasurers of a new graduated estate tax. The purpose of the tax, which he helped to assess in Essex and London, was to raise money to pay those captains and men defending the realm. The murder of the keeper of the privy seal, Adam Moleyns, bishop of Chichester, lynched at Portsmouth on 9 Jan. 1450 by a mob of unpaid seamen, had already served as a warning of the dangers posed by discontented soldiers and sailors. Shortly after Moleyns’ death, the King granted the temporalities of Chichester to Tyrell and Reynold Pecock, bishop of St. Asaph, to hold at a farm of 700 marks p.a. for as long as the see should remain vacant. PROME, xii. 84-87; CPR, 1446-52, p. 377; Griffiths, 432; Cal. Letters Mayor and Corporation London ed. Sharpe, 331; CFR, xviii. 148. It is likely that Tyrell was merely acting on Pecock’s behalf, since the bishop succeeded Moleyns at Chichester just a few weeks later. In the following summer Tyrell played an active part in suppressing Cade’s rebellion in both Kent and Essex. On 12 July he, Richard Waller (father of Richard*) and the chamberlains of the Exchequer were commissioned to take the rebel leader’s property into their custody, and he and Waller went to Rochester to confiscate Cade’s goods on behalf of the Crown. Over the next few weeks Tyrell, William II and John Ingrowe hunted down and arrested rebels in Essex, and in September the King instructed the Exchequer to pay the three men a joint reward of £40. CPR, 1446-52, p. 387; E101/515/13; Issues of the Exchequer, 466; E404/67/20. Tyrell was still dealing with the aftermath of the revolt in early 1451, when he was appointed to a commission in Kent charged with investigating the treasons of Cade and other rebels, but a few months later he was one of those ordered to take the muster of the force which Richard Wydeville, Lord Rivers, recently appointed seneschal of Aquitaine, was assembling outside Plymouth. CPR, 1446-52, p. 478. He was again busy with military matters after his appointment to a commission of array in Harwich in July the same year. In March 1452 the King authorized the construction of better defences for the town, which was vulnerable to French naval raids, and he appointed the earl of Oxford and Tyrell to supervise the work. CPR, 1446-52, pp. 528-9; Griffiths, 430.

Such raids served to highlight the military disasters suffered by the English in France; failures which had helped ensure the downfall of the King’s chief minister, William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, two years earlier. Tyrell is not known to have had any more than a passing association with the duke, whom his patron Ralph, Lord Cromwell, had come to oppose. I.M.W. Harvey, Jack Cade, 62-63, 69. In 1441, for example, he and de la Pole were apparently co-feoffees for Sir Lewis John, C66/449, m. 7d; Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 30. and in April 1451 he was in a group of men (again probably acting as trustees) to whom the duke’s widow conveyed an annuity of £10 from the manor of Langham, Essex. E210/5183. When Suffolk fell from power various Household men and courtiers were also strongly criticised, but Tyrell, probably because he had not profited excessively from royal grants, was not affected by the political crises of the late 1440s and early 1450s. By July 1451 he had begun attending meetings of the Council, C81/1546/56. and by the following March, when the Crown granted him the patronage of East Horndon church, he was styled a ‘King’s knight’. CPR, 1446-52, p. 529. Late in the following year he was one of those in Essex commissioned to treat for loans on behalf of the Crown, which needed money to finance the relief of Bordeaux. A considerable number of other Household servants, councillors and King’s clerks were appointed to similar commissions elsewhere in the country, and privy seal letters seeking loans were also dispatched to private individuals. Tyrell himself received such a letter (he was asked for £40) in August 1453, even though he had already lent the King £20 the previous January. One of his fellow commissioners in Essex was another Household man, Thomas Thorpe*, from whom he bought the wardship of Isabel, one of the daughters and coheirs of John Helion in June 1453. CCR, 1447-54, pp. 446-7; CPR, 1452-61, p. 82. He subsequently married her to his son Humphrey. C140/18/56.

Later that year, some weeks after the King’s mental collapse had precipitated a constitutional crisis, the government decided to summon a great council. At first it intended to exclude Richard, duke of York, the leader of the opposition to the Court, from this assembly, but on 23 Oct. a group of peers decided, in the absence of York’s chief opponent, the duke of Somerset, to summon him to attend. They chose Tyrell to act as their messenger, and he probably found York at Fotheringhay, his castle in Northamptonshire. P.A. Johnson, Duke Ric. of York, 124-5; PPC, vi. 163. It is possible that by sending Tyrell they hoped to soften York’s indignation at his initial exclusion from the council, since the MP’s father had served the duke as his receiver-general. Griffiths, 759; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 685. Some weeks later Tyrell attended a meeting of the ordinary King’s Council, where he and others present swore to punish any who disobeyed its orders. R.A. Griffiths, King and Country, 316. York finally took office as Protector and chief of the Council on 27 Mar. 1454. He also replaced the duke of Somerset as captain of Calais and began to strengthen its defences. In April Tyrell was among those appointed to treat for a loan in Essex, to support the cost of sending an army to that port, and he was summoned to the great council which met at Westminster on the following 25 June to discuss the defence of both England and Calais. PPC, vi. 184-6; Griffiths, Hen. VI, 733. York was again excluded from the government after the King recovered his senses at Christmas 1454, and in the following spring Tyrell, in common with other substantial gentry well regarded by the Court, was summoned to another great council at Leicester. PPC, vi. 341. The first battle of St. Albans ensured the council never met. It is not known if Tyrell was with the King at St. Albans, but he was not adversely affected by this Yorkist victory. The Parliament of 1455, which opened a few months later, passed an Act of Resumption, but in recognition of his ‘long and agreable service’ to the King he was allowed to keep his advowson of East Horndon. PROME, xii. 412.

Tyrell stayed loyal to the Lancastrian Crown in the later 1450s, continuing to serve it as a j.p. and ad hoc commissioner. In November 1459 he was returned to his last Parliament, a partisan assembly packed with Household men and other supporters of the Court which attainted York and his allies. A day after his election he was appointed to his third and last term as sheriff, and in May 1460 he and Thomas Thorpe acquired a new grant of the manor and lordship of Havering atte Bower, to farm for 20 years at £102 p.a. CFR, xix. 275. On the following 10 July his eldest son William and brother William II fought at Northampton for Henry VI, who knighted both men just before the battle. W.A. Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 12. At that time Tyrell himself was with the garrison of the Tower of London, which was holding out against a Yorkist force commanded by the earl of Salisbury. Led by Lords Scales and Hungerford, the Tower’s garrison played havoc with its cannon fire, killing local residents and damaging property. Such an action proved a mistake, since it persuaded the city’s authorities to co-operate with Salisbury in a full-scale siege. The garrison, which had already begun to negotiate its surrender, staged a mass breakout on the night of 19 July. Scales and a number of others were caught and killed but Tyrell was among those who made good their escape. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 863, 877. Remarkably, Sir Thomas suffered no consequences for taking up arms on behalf of Henry VI. Even though the Yorkists had regained control of the government after Northampton, he retained his position as sheriff (and was excused £180 of his account when his term came to an end), E159/257, brevia Hil. rot. 5d. and the Parliament of 1460 appointed him to a reconstituted panel of feoffees for the King’s will. PROME, xii. 540-2; Somerville, i. 212-13. His links with the Bourgchiers, the senior members of which family had finally committed themselves to the Yorkist cause in the previous summer, may explain his ability to emerge unscathed from the final troubled years of Henry VI’s reign.

When York’s son seized the throne in March 1461 Tyrell was dropped from the bench, although in the following May he obtained another 20-year farm of Havering atte Bower from the new King, this time in association with the Londoner Thomas Cook II*. CFR, xx. 18. His brother, William I, by contrast, was never reconciled to the change of regime, being arrested and found guilty of treason in early 1462. On 20 Feb. that year, three days before William’s execution, Sir Thomas took the precaution of acquiring a royal pardon. C67/45, m. 41. If he himself had fallen under suspicion, he soon recovered the trust of the government, which reappointed him a j.p. in March 1463 and placed him on an ad hoc commission a few months later. He was appointed to his last such commission in 1474, although he remained on the bench for the rest of his life.

Tyrell outlived his eldest son, so his heir was his grandson, Sir William’s son Thomas. In January 1475 Thomas, who joined Edward IV’s household, was married to Anne, a daughter of Walter Devereux II*, Lord Ferrers of Chartley. In the negotiations for the marriage the MP agreed to settle his manors of Meldreth and Malton in Cambridgeshire and Avon and Milton in Hampshire on the couple, while for his part Devereux undertook to provide Anne a portion of 400 marks. C147/114; CAD, i. C1358; CPR, 1476-85, p. 135. In the testamentary section of his will, PCC 31 Wattys. dated 16 May 1475, Sir Thomas asked to be buried in East Horndon church and instructed his executors to place a memorial stone over the grave of his eldest son, Sir William Tyrell, who lay buried with his wife Eleanor in the church of the Austin friars in London. It is possible that Sir William, still alive in July 1470 (C67/47, m. 4), died in one of the civil war battles of 1471. For his spiritual welfare he asked the dozen or more religious houses of which he was a lay brother to sing for his soul, ordering that each of these institutions should have 20s., save the cathedral priory at Canterbury, which was to receive twice that amount. He also left sums to several other religious houses in London and Essex, as well as every parish church in places where he held property, and he founded a chantry at East Horndon for a priest to sing for him, his wife and parents for a period of 15 years after his death. He asked his executors to complete the steeple and other building work he had begun at East Horndon church, to which he bequeathed a vestment, a mass book and two other books (a copy of ‘De proprietatibus rerum’, a popular encyclopedia of theology and science, M.C. Seymour et al., Bartholomaeus Anglicus and his Encyclopedia, 11-13; Bartholomaeus Anglicus on the Properties of Soul and Body ed. Long, 1. and a collection of saints’ legends). Tyrell also instructed his household to stay together for 13 years after his death (presumably for the benefit of his widow, who survived until 1484), CFR, xxi. no. 830. left 100s. each to his daughter Anne and her husband John Darcy and mentioned his responsibilities as an executor of John Gedney and Ralph, Lord Cromwell. He expressed the wish that Gedney’s will should finally be fulfilled and referred to the costs, along with the ‘grete laboure and the long and troublous tyme’, he and the late John Leynton had suffered with regard to that of Lord Cromwell. He directed that various sums of money and bonds which he had received on behalf of Cromwell’s estate since Leynton’s death should be delivered to the peer’s other surviving executors, the bishop of Winchester and (Sir) John Fortescue*. He named seven executors of his own: his wife Anne, (Sir) Thomas Urswyk II*, his nephew John Tyrell of Beeches, his sons Humphrey and Robert Tyrell, Robert Hotoft and the priest William Howard. He also appointed four overseers: Henry Bourgchier, earl of Essex, Sir Thomas Montgomery†, Richard Haute† and John Tyrell, the son of William II. Like Bourgchier, Montgomery and Haute were influential servants of the Yorkist Crown – Montgomery as a knight for the body and Haute, a relative of Edward IV’s queen, as a member of the prince of Wales’s household. The latter was also the MP’s son-in-law, having married Elizabeth Tyrell after the death of her first husband, (Sir) Robert Darcy II. With regard to his lands, Tyrell provided for his wife by awarding her an annuity of £20 and an estate for life in nine of his manors, at East Horndon, Springfield, Great Sampford, Downham and elsewhere in Essex and at Shepreth in Cambridgeshire. After her death his two surviving sons, Humphrey and Robert, were to share the annuity equally between them. He provided for Elizabeth, the widow of his son Thomas, who had died in 1473, by directing that she should have £10 p.a. for the rest of her life. One of the daughters and heirs of (Sir) Henry Bruyn*, she afterwards married the Sir William Brandon who died bearing Henry Tudor’s standard at Bosworth. CFR, xx. 78; xxi. no. 160; Ric. III, Crown and People, 212-13, 215; C67/48, m. 4; CPR, 1494-1509, p. 21. Tyrell also set aside part of his estate for a period of 15 years, to provide the necessary revenues to perform his will. It consisted of the manors of ‘Whithall’ (in Great Dounton) and ‘Botnynge’, a mill at Shenfield, an inn called ‘The Lyon’ at Chelmsford and other holdings, as well as two manors, ‘Langhous’ in Chadwell and ‘Carnes’ in Stanford Rivers, to which he had succeeded after the death of his childless great-nephew, Sir John Skrene. (Skrene had been killed in a fracas with his cousin Edward Tyrell, a younger son of William I, at Westhorpe, Suffolk, in December 1474.) Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 36; CPR, 1467-77, p. 482; KB9/340/91; C140/50/42. He assigned to two of his executors, his son Humphrey and William Howard, the task of collecting these revenues, from which they were to provide annuities (of £8 13s. 4d. and £4 respectively) to Thomas Cornwallis and John Estoft (son of the man who had sold him Bobbingworth). He also ordered them to provide marriage portions of £40 and £20 respectively to his grandchildren Elizabeth and Alice, the daughters of his dead eldest son. According to the terms of the will, the properties which Tyrell set aside for the performance of his will were to revert to Thomas, his grandson and heir, after the 15 years came to an end, although only if Lord Ferrers honoured his promise to pay his daughter’s marriage portion of 400 marks. If Ferrers paid 300 marks of this sum promptly, he was to be excused the remainder. Tyrell also recalled the services he had performed for two relatives, his son-in-law, John Darcy, and his brother-in-law, the late Sir John Marney. Darcy had forfeited his manors at Tolleshunt D’Arcy in north-east Essex to the Crown for supporting Henry VI’s Readeption, but the MP had redeemed them from the duke of Gloucester, to whom Edward IV had granted the properties. Tyrell had retained possession of the manors after recovering them, and he instructed his executors to take their incomes until they had recovered his expenses, both in redeeming the properties and providing for his unfortunate son-in-law. Marney had also fallen foul of Edward IV and Tyrell had stood surety for him in 1468, after he had been arrested on suspicion of treason and fined £800. As a safeguard, Marney had conveyed his lands in Essex, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire to Tyrell and his other sureties, but the King had seized these properties in 1471. Marney’s widow and sureties had recovered them in the following year, but only after paying the £800 and a further fine. C.D. Ross, Edw. IV, 122-3; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 344-5. In his will, therefore, Tyrell requested the feoffees of these properties to allow his executors to recover the money he had lost saving Marney’s estate. Tyrell lived long enough to add two codicils to his will, dated 18 Mar. 1476 and 26 Mar. 1477. He died two or three days after making the second codicil and, as requested, was buried in East Horndon church. His gravestone no longer survives, although it was viewed by the early modern antiquary, John Weever, who also recorded seeing stained-glass windows commemorating the MP and his wife and parents in the same church. C140/58/71; Trans. Essex Arch. Soc. iii. 79n. An inscription still visible in East Horndon church in the 18th cent. recorded that Tyrell died on 22 Mar., but this conflicts with the date of his second codicil. His inqs. post mortem in Essex and Hants state that he died on 28 Mar.; that held in Cambs. gives 29 Mar.