URSWYK, Thomas II

Urswyk’s political acumen, as displayed at decisive moments in national history in 1460-1 and 1471, enabled him to emerge from comparative obscurity to become one of the highest judges of the land and a person of undoubted wealth and consequence. This rise had initially required dislocation from his native Lancashire. Of his family origins in the north-west there is no doubt, yet uncertainty remains about his precise relationship to his namesake, Thomas Urswyk I, who had served as receiver of royal estates in the region, and lived on until the mid-1450s. The MP was not the Thomas who with his parents John and Ellen Urswyk acquired land at Catterall, Lancs. in 1438, for this land apparently passed to his son, another Thomas (d.1519), whereas we know that the recorder of London only left daughters: CAD, i. C815; VCH Lancs. viii. 145. Nevertheless, the MP did continue to have interests in the north-west, for late in his life he was asked to safeguard evidences relating to property in Garstang, Lancs., on behalf of Katherine Urswyk, probably his niece: Urwick, 77; C1/62/401-2; VCH Lancs. vii. 269 n. 33. This last suggests that it was Thomas the recorder who held land in Caton, Great and Little Eccleston, Elswick and Upper Rawcliffe in 1473, but nothing has been found to substantiate this claim. Well before then the future MP for Midhurst and London had completed his legal education, for he gave readings at the inns of court in the autumn of 1441 and at Lent 1448. Readings and Moots, i. (Selden Soc. lxxi), pp. xxx, xxxii. Membership of Gray’s Inn in the fifteenth century is poorly documented, but if, as is supposed, the group of men headed by Thomas Bryan to whom in 1456 Reynold Grey, Lord Grey of Wilton, conveyed the inn itself (sited in his manor of Portpole in Holborn), were indeed the leading fellows, then Urswyk was evidently numbered among them. Ibid. p. xix; E. Williams, Early Holborn, i. 652-3; Baker, i. 181-2.

Initially, Urswyk’s clients were drawn mainly from the north of England. By 1445 he had been engaged as counsel for the city of York: the city’s representatives in the Parliament of that year made a payment of 3s. 4d. to him for his assistance at Westminster; not long afterwards the civic authorities rewarded him with 33s. 4d. for his help in conducting their litigation in the central courts; and without interruption from 1449 until his death 30 years later he received an annual fee of 20s. from York, even during his time as recorder of London. York City Chamberlains’ Acct. Rolls (Surtees Soc. cxcii), 34, 54, 62, 73, 92, 108-9. 125, 136, 151, 168. He assisted the citizens of York to present bills to Parliament, doing so at the assemblies summoned for February 1449 (when he himself was sitting in the Commons) and in 1455 – an exercise which developed his expertise in parliamentary procedure. Ibid. 68, 96. Urswyk was not by any means the only outsider to be elected for the Sussex borough of Midhurst in Henry VI’s reign, for none of its identified MPs between 1447 and 1460 came from the locality. Curiously, three of them – Urswyk, his putative kinsman Thomas Molyneux* (who also came from Lancashire), and John Baldwyn* – were members of Gray’s Inn, and this connexion would appear to have been a significant factor in their successful candidacy. Whether his first appearance in the Commons helped to further Urswyk’s career is impossible to say, but within three years of the dissolution of the Parliament he had been retained for life as legal counsel to the duchy of Lancaster, and in July 1452 he gained appointment as King’s attorney in the courts of the county palatine. Although he surrendered the latter patent on being chosen common serjeant of London a year later, he was kept on as an adviser to the duchy council for several years to come. Somerville, Duchy, i. 482; DL37/20, m. 2. Meanwhile, although Urswyk’s northern background had been recalled in February 1452 when, while standing surety at the Exchequer for the Essex landowners the brothers William and John Green III* he had been described as ‘of Yorkshire, gentleman’, CFR, xviii. 253. he had become increasingly involved in the affairs of his adopted county of Essex, and his ties with the north inevitably loosened as his commitments in the capital and elsewhere in the south-east absorbed more of his time. Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 42.

Urswyk’s preoccupation with the government of London lasted from 1453 to 1471, and formed the central part of his career. His promotion as common serjeant of the City in the place of John Needham* may have come about through a relationship by marriage to the latter, who, a fellow member of Gray’s Inn, rose to be a justice of the common pleas four years later. Although common serjeant for barely 18 months, Urswyk quickly made his mark by serving on a committee assigned in November 1453 to handle disputes between the civic authorities and the bishop of London over the chapel on London Bridge, and his competence in office must have been apparent, for in October 1454 when Thomas Billing* resigned as recorder, he was promptly nominated to take his place. He remained in that post until the events of the spring of 1471 propelled him into the judiciary. That he was zealous on the City’s behalf is clear from the special reward of £8 he received on 1 Apr. 1457 for his exceptional services. London jnls. 5, f. 134v; 6, f. 118.

Urswyk’s integration into London society is reflected in his admission to the fashionable fraternity of St. John the Baptist, Guildhall Lib. London, Merchant Taylors’ Co. accts. 34048/2, f. 152. and, more importantly, by his marriage in the late 1450s to one of the daughters of a wealthy mercer, Richard Rich. Accordingly, Urswyk came into close contact not only with his father-in-law but also with two affluent members of the Grocers Company: William Marowe*, the sometime mayor, and John Walden*, the alderman, who had married sisters of his wife. B.H. Putnam, Treatises on J.p.s, 120. For his association with Rich and Marowe in Jan. 1457: Corp. London RO, hr 185/20, and with Marowe and Walden in Mar. 1458 in the purchase of Le Belle tavern from John Wood III* and his wife Elizabeth (née Mitchell): hr 186/32. Although the marriage may not have brought Urswyk much in the way of real estate (for Anne and her sisters were not heiresses), it confirmed his place within the inner circle of the civic heirarchy. Naturally, he figured prominently in the conduct of the Rich family affairs, and was frequently called upon to help his wife’s relations in their lawsuits and property transactions. For instance, in 1459 he was associated with his father-in-law and other members of the family in the purchase from Dartford priory of a messuage in the London parish of St. Mary le Bow. CPR, 1452-61, p. 463; 1467-77, p. 202; CCR, 1454-61, p. 393; London hr 193/9, 10.

Not surprisingly, during his time as common serjeant and recorder of London Urswyk was a popular choice to act as an arbiter in disputes, both within the City and beyond its confines. In July 1453 he was asked to make an award in the long-running dispute over the Brokholes inheritance in Hertfordshire, Essex and Warwickshire, on the nomination of one of the claimants, Ralph Holt; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 448, 473-4. and in the 1460s he mediated in a quarrels over a consignment of onion seed, and between a ‘gentleman’ from Hampshire and a chaplain from Somerset. CCR, 1461-8, p. 390; 1468-76, no. 127. On one recorded occasion his impartiality was called into question: a mercer named Thomas Shelley protested that ‘the Recordour was chief of counseill’ with his adversary, but this outburst only redounded to Shelley’s detriment, for on 7 Aug. 1455 he was accused of uttering ‘verba scaundelose’ before the mayor and aldermen, and was bound in £20 to abide by the judgement of their court regarding his allegation. Jnl. 5, f. 254. Urswyk was party in April 1456 to a suit in the Exchequer of pleas in which he and his co-plaintiff, the under sheriff Thomas Burgoyne*, alleged that Richard Joynour*, the grocer and former collector of tunnage and poundage in London, owed them £100 under an obligation dated the previous July, although given the competition from Joynour’s many other creditors it is unlikely that they succeeded in their suit. E13/146, rot. 52. Urswyk’s dealings with the abbot and convent of Westminster Abbey may also have arisen out of the settlement of a dispute. As recorder he was party to transactions whereby the abbot agreed to pay (Sir) William Tailour†, the prominent alderman and grocer, the sum of £100 p.a. for six years, beginning in 1463. Receipts survive in the names of the two men for the first three years’ payments. CCR, 1461-8, pp. 198-9; Westminster Abbey muns. 5899, 30401, 30404. While Urswyk was busy about the concerns of the citizens of London, he was also required for royal service on commissions of oyer and terminer in the capital and its environs, and in July 1458 he was assigned to hear at Rochester the depositions of witnesses to a conflict at sea between the earl of Warwick’s fleet and men of Lübeck. That same month he began to benefit from royal patronage to a limited extent, then being granted jointly with the Hertfordshire lawyer Ralph Gray I* the wardship and marriage of the grandson and heir of John Harleston II* of Suffolk, only to lose the concession when he and Gray failed to agree with the chancellor and other lords of the Council as to a reasonable payment. CPR, 1452-61, pp. 434, 459.

In the capacity of a spokesman for the citizens of London, Urswyk began to take a role in national affairs following the Parliament which met at Coventry at the end of 1459. On 14 Jan. 1460 a royal commission was issued to the local authorities in a number of towns and cities to raise men-at-arms and archers to resist the forces of the now attainted duke of York and his adherents. The mayor and aldermen of London opposed the commission on the grounds that a demand for military aid in such a form might derogate from the City’s franchise and liberties, and sent a deputation, consisting of two aldermen (Geoffrey Boleyn* and Ralph Verney*), the recorder Urswyk, and one of the under sheriffs (Burgoyne) to Northampton to wait upon the King and Council and explain their concerns. The interview proved satisfactory from the Londoners’ point of view, and the deputation returned bearing a letter from the King, dated 2 Feb., declaring that the City’s liberties should in no way be prejudiced by the commission. The letter, addressed to the mayor and aldermen, and referring to the ‘declaracion of your Recordour honorably purposed unto us on yor behalfe the good will and full entente that ye have tobeye oure good plaisirs and lawefull comaundements’, was read out in common council three days later. R.R. Sharpe, London and the Kingdom, i. 298; London Letter Bk. K, 402-3; jnl. 6, f. 196v. After the victory of the Yorkist lords at Northampton in July following, Urswyk was required to act in a judicial capacity in their interests. Shortly before, (Sir) Thomas Brown II* had broken through the Yorkist blockade of the Tower and had ordered his men to shoot ‘wyldefire’ into the city, causing several deaths and injuries among the inhabitants. Vengeance was demanded, and at a speedy trial conducted at the guildhall before the victors and the civic dignitaries, including Urswyk, Brown and a handful of lesser men were judged guilty of treason. PROME, xiv. 44-45. Whether Urswyk was personally inclined to support the Yorkists at this stage is impossible to say. In February 1461, following the Lancastrian victory at St. Albans, he was sent as a delegate from London to Queen Margaret to excuse the City for not sending supplies for her army, and may have played a decisive part in persuading her to turn back from attacking the capital. By this date certain of the citizens had made financial commitments to the Yorkist lords by providing them with loans, but Urswyk himself did not do so until after his election to Edward IV’s first Parliament later in the year. Then, on 25 Feb. 1462, during the recess, he and a fellow lawyer, Thomas Bryan, proffered a loan to the King of £40. This was handed to Edward in person, at the same time as Urswyk’s father-in-law contributed 100 marks to his coffers. E403/824, m. 11; E404/72/1/98.

In this and the next three consecutive Parliaments, Urswyk represented London as one of its four MPs, so there can be no doubt that the citizens appreciated his qualities as an advocate. Indeed, in electing him to Parliament not once but four times, the rulers of London departed dramatically from their normal practice, for in the 140 years since 1322 they had only once previously chosen to be represented by their recorder (that single occasion being in 1442 when they had elected John Bowes*). While serving as an MP Urswyk may also have been called upon to assist the City’s silkwomen, artificers, horners and pattenmakers to gain the support of the Commons for the petitions they presented for the attention of these Parliaments. PROME, xiii. 111-15, 242-3. Private matters also concerned him in this period. During the long recess of the Parliament which met from April to June 1463 and then for a second session from January to March 1465, his wife’s family suffered three deaths, leaving Urswyk with the responsibility of assisting bereaved widows and children. Under the terms of the will that his prosperous father-in-law Richard Rich made on 20 Apr. 1463, just before Parliament assembled, Urswyk and his wife received in tail specified lands and tenements in High Laver, Essex, and the sum of £2 to dress themselves and their children in black for the testator’s funeral. He and Rich’s other two sons-in-law were expected to supervise the executors, taking a pipe of wine or ten marks each for their trouble. PCC 4 Godyn. Not long afterwards his brother-in-law John Walden also died, and in February 1465 he was asked to mediate in the widow’s dispute over property with her stepson. The arbiters’ failure to reach an agreement postponed a settlement for more than three months longer, but the delay perhaps shows that Urswyk argued the cause of his wife’s sister to good effect. CCR, 1461-8, pp. 273, 308. In addition, another brother-in-law, William Marowe, currently serving as one of Urswyk’s fellow MPs, also died in that winter of 1464-5 (quite likely before the dissolution of the Parliament on 28 Mar.), having named him as an executor. The task, although generously rewarded with a gift of £10, cannot have been an easy one, for six of Marowe’s children were still under age and unmarried, and their substantial legacies amounting to £2,200 needed to be safeguarded. Furthermore, the widowed Katherine Marowe, who was bequeathed £1,000 besides much else in the way of plate and goods, leaned heavily on him for support in her property dealings in the autumn of 1465. On 4 Nov. he joined his co-executor, the King’s remembrancer William Essex* (probably another of Marowe’s brothers-in-law), in confirming her in possession for life of the great London house known as Le Culver, of which they had been enfeoffed six years earlier. PCC 9, 11 Godyn (PROB11/5, ff. 67-68v, 84v-88v); London hr 187/51; 195/34, 40.

At the time of Urswyk’s election to his third consecutive Parliament for London, in the summer of 1467, he was retained as counsel to Queen Elizabeth – being one of only two apprentices-at-law whom she employed. She paid him an annual fee of 26s. 8d. E36/207, f. 25; A.R. Myers, Crown, Household and Parl. 151, 299. For a number of years there had been considerable discord between the authorities of London and Southwark, in part arising from a clause in royal letters patent of 1462 which granted the former the right to take felons in Southwark and imprison them in Newgate. Urswyk almost certainly participated in the negotiations which ended with the annulment of the clause by Act of the Parliament. PROME, xiii. 361. In March 1468, shortly before the dissolution, he shared with (Sir) John Doreward* and Walter Writtle* (the latter then representing Essex), a lease at the Exchequer of property in the London parish of St. Mary Staining, to last for 15 years. CFR, xx. 240. In the final session, at Westminster on 20 May, the attention of the Commons was drawn to alleged corruption at the Mint on the part of Hugh Brice, the keeper of the exchange. Brice appeared to defend himself, but through lack of time the Commons were unable to examine the matter with the attention it deserved. The MPs asked the King to appoint a committee headed by Cardinal Bourgchier, Archbishop Neville, the chancellor, treasurer and five judges, who together with 11 Members of the Lower House, including Urswyk (as nominated by their fellows) might determine whether the offences had been committed. PROME, xiii. 386-9. Shortly after the dissolution on 7 June, Urswyk had to consider an even more serious matter when sensational accusations of treason were made against the prominent Londoner (Sir) Thomas Cook II*, and he was appointed on 20 June to the commission of oyer and terminer set up to try Cook and his alleged accomplices. Accordingly, he served on the bench which presided at the trial, although it seems improbable that in the distinguished company of the duke of Clarence, four earls and three other members of the nobility, his opinion counted for much, unless it was sought to clarify points of law. KB9/319/49. It is not unlikely that he harboured sympathy for the accused, for up until recently he had been counted among Cook’s closest associates. Their connexion went back at least 12 years, during which period they had offered each other mutual support in transactions relating to the acquisition of property, and had purchased adjacent manorial estates in Essex. Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 50; CAD, i. C1171. In the event, Cook was convicted not of treason but of misprision, and although he was fined heavily he kept his life.

Whether Urswyk ever shared Cook’s disenchantment with Edward IV’s government is impossible to ascertain from the surviving records, although he may have done so temporarily, for he saw fit to sue out a pardon from that monarch in May 1470, and it is worthy of remark that it was only when Henry VI was restored to the throne in the following autumn that he was appointed to the Essex county bench. This was while he was sitting in his fifth Parliament (the fourth consecutive one for London), Although he had not been among those chosen to represent London in the Parl. summoned to meet in York in Sept. 1469 and then postponed. with Cook as one of his colleagues. During this Readeption Parliament, assembled on 26 Nov., Cook made a personal plea to the King for compensation for his losses under Edward IV, which he estimated at 22,000 marks, and he spent large sums of money to buy himself friends. Urswyk no longer wished to be numbered among them. When, that same November, Cook’s feud with his former brother-in-law (Sir) Ralph Josselyn† burst out into the open, Cook was bound over in £2,000 to abide by the award of several aldermen and the recorder Urswyk, but the latter was no longer inclined to be impartial. Both he and Josselyn were feoffees of Cook’s property, but in the face of the ‘grete grugge and evyl wille’ now existing between Josselyn and Cook, Urswyk chose to show ‘grete favor and affection’ to the former. In the tense atmosphere of the times, it is not difficult to imagine how personal disagreements between members of the civic heirarchy of London could accentuate political differences, and vice versa. The acrimony exhibited between the three erstwhile friends in later years had its roots in the rivalries of 1470-1 when Cook rose to eminence in the train of Warwick and Clarence, while Josselyn and Urswyk may have had no liking for the restored Lancastrians and have been sincere supporters of the exiled Edward IV. John Vale’s Bk. ed. Kekewich et al. 94; A.F. Sutton, ‘Sir Thomas Cook and his “troubles”’, Guildhall Studies in London Hist. iii. 105-7. For the Cook/Urswyk quarrel see C1/50/21-22.

Their differences were made clear when Edward IV returned to England in the spring of 1471. Cook and a few others of his persuasion made a feverish effort to raise the City against the Yorkist army, but they finally gave up in the face of the common council’s determination to offer no resistance. On 10 Apr. Archbishop Neville escorted Henry VI around London, exhorting the people to display loyalty to him; but Urswyk and certain aldermen ‘such that hade reule of the cyte’ commanded all those in harness, safeguarding the King and the city, to leave their posts and go home to dinner, and ‘in dyner tyme Kynge Edwarde was late in’ and enabled to take his rival and the archbishop captive. Reinforcements entered London on the 12th (Good Friday), and Edward and his host then set off towards Barnet, where Warwick and his forces were defeated on Easter Day. Jnl. 8, f. 4; Warkworth, 15. Even so, the capital was still not entirely secured for the Yorkists. While Edward was in the west early in the following month, about to face the Lancastrian army massed at Tewkesbury, a substantial force led by the Bastard of Fauconberg and backed by ships in the Thames demanded entry into London, and a sustained attack on Aldgate resulted in part of the rebel army winning the ‘bullwerk’. This provided Urswyk with another moment of glory – to be recounted later by the chroniclers of the victorious side. Together with Robert Basset*, the alderman of Aldgate Ward, and appareled in ‘a blak jak or dobelet of ffens’, he commanded that the portcullis be raised ‘in the name of God & Seynt George’, issued out with a troop of men, and ‘wt sharp shott and ffyers ffygth’ put the Bastard’s supporters back as far as St. Botolph’s church. The lieutenant of the Tower sallied out with a fresh company, which discomforted the rebels; many were slain and others chased into the countryside by the city levies. Gt. Chron. London ed. Thomas and Thornley, 219.

On 21 May the mayor and aldermen went out to meet the triumphant Edward IV in the meadows between Islington and Shoreditch, whereupon the King knighted the mayor, 11 aldermen and Urswyk, in a distribution of civic knighthoods hitherto without parallel. But this was not all. Urswyk was singled out from the others in an expression of the King’s personal gratitude towards him, with promotion on the very next day as chief baron of the Exchequer. In order to maintain his new status he was granted the customary annuity of 110 marks and two robes (one with fur at Christmas, the other, lined, at Whitsuntide). Jnl. 8, f. 7; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 259, 293. On his resignation from the recordership and in appreciation for his outstanding service over 18 years, the City took the unusual step of voting Urswyk two pipes of wine for the forthcoming year and thereafter one pipe of wine every year for the rest of his life, expressly for his efforts in governing and defending the city in time of war and peace. Jnls. 7, f. 246; 8, f. 7v.

Urswyk’s remaining years proved busy ones as he took up his new appointment. As chief baron he was expected not only to preside over the court of Exchequer chamber but also to attend sessions of the peace in eight counties. Naturally, the King called upon him for help in raising much-needed cash for his military expedition to France in 1475. On 17 June, with the army ready to depart, he sent an urgent letter to the city of London, requesting support in the form of benevolences. These, the mayor and aldermen were to levy with the assistance of Urswyk and the other two chief justices, who were to call before them any citizens thought to possess goods worth 100 marks or more who had not already made a suitable contribution. John Vale’s Bk. 147-8. Such services deserved rewards, and besides his official emoluments, Urswyk benefited in other ways from royal patronage during his time as chief baron. In the previous month he had been granted jointly with the widow of his former colleague Walter Writtle the wardship and marriage of Writtle’s son and heir, who was also the heir of Elizabeth Hende, first wife of Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley. CPR, 1467-77, p. 514.

Not surprisingly, in the course of his career as a civic official and then as chief baron, Urswyk was frequently placed in positions of trust. On numerous occasions the goods and chattels of Londoners were placed in his keeping (in a legal technicality perhaps designed to ensure their safety from confiscation while litigation was pending); e.g. CCR, 1447-54, p. 409; 1454-61, pp. 249, 494; 1468-76, nos. 505, 557, 1099; CAD, vi. C6448, 5772. and he was always a popular choice as a feoffee, not only of property in the City, but also of landed holdings elsewhere in the south-east. His trusteeship of the manor of Newhall in Essex, previously held by Richard Alrede the receiver-general of the duchy of Lancaster, required his attention for nearly 20 years; CAD, iv. A6165, 7005; v. A11888, 12280, 13127. that of property at Windsor fell to him by nomination of Henry Fraunceys*, the clerk of the castle; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 340-1. and that of estates in Kent resulted from links with the family of John Martin, the former j.c.p. CCR, 1461-8, p. 235; CAD, i. C311, 725, 762, 868. In London in the 1460s he was a feoffee of property by grant of the Frowyks, Sir Simon Mountfort† and (Sir) Richard Illingworth*. London hr 195/20, 21; 197/4, 21, 37; 198/5; CCR, 1476-85, no. 736. Association with the alderman and former mayor Geoffrey Boleyn in the course of their civic duties led to Urswyk’s participation in transactions regarding the manors which Boleyn purchased in Kent from the Fiennes family, and acquired in Norfolk through dealings with his wife’s uncle, the lawyer Thomas Hoo II*. CAD, i. C137, 862; ii. C1784, 2624; CPR, 1461-7, p. 141; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 206-7. This in turn led to Urswyk’s involvement in Hoo’s complex settlements of his own patrimony and the former Burcester estates. CCR, 1461-8, pp. 383-5; 1468-76, no. 1199. He helped John Gaynesford† to settle jointure on his wife, CPR, 1461-7, p. 522. and acted for (Sir) John Say II* (Speaker in two of the Parliaments he attended), CPR, 1461-7, p. 228; CCR, 1476-85, no. 345. and for members of the prominent family of Tyrell, among them (Sir) Thomas*, whom he served as an executor. CPR, 1476-85, p. 77; CAD, i. C1230. Nor were his services restricted to Londoners and the gentry. He was party to the arrangements for the marriage of Elizabeth, Lady Fitzwalter, to John, Lord Dynham, in 1467; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 12, 21; Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 64; later transactions brought him into contact with William, Lord Hastings, Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 71; CCR, 1468-76, no. 1272; 1476-85, no. 468. and other members of the nobility, such as William Neville, earl of Kent; while Eleanor, dowager countess of Northumberland, sought his assistance in furthering organizing the payment of the enormous debts left by her late husband. London hr 192/18; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 468, 477, 544, 548, 552, 558; CCR, 1476-85, no. 43; Collectanea Topographia et Geneaologica ed. Nichols, iii. 266-70. It was no doubt because of his office as chief baron that in 1473 he was roped in to help disentangle the financial affairs of Isabel, Marquise Montagu, in particular for the settlement of a tailor’s bill amounting to £1,000. CCR, 1468-76, no. 1204.

When it came to naming trustees of his own estates, Urswyk looked exclusively to members of his profession: Guy Fairfax and John Catesby, both serjeants-at-law, Humphrey Starky, who had succeeded him as recorder, and his kinsmen Thomas and Robert Molyneux. Save for a tenement in Ironmonger Lane, he does not seem to have held much property in London, and it is uncertain where he dwelled during his time in civic office. Guildhall Lib., St. Paul’s mss, 25129. The statement in Urwick, 70, that while he was recorder he lived at a manor called Ewell or ‘Tyle Hall’ in Stepney is based on a misunderstanding of Urswyk’s role in transactions relating to this former Burcester estate: CCR, 1461-8, pp. 383-5; 1468-76, no. 725. He had preferred to invest his earnings in land in Essex, where his extensive purchases provided him with an income from farming to add to that from legal fees. These included the manors of Lea Hall in Hatfield Broad Oak, which by his death contained over 300 acres of land and was settled in jointure on his wife, and Little Hall in Moreton. VCH Essex, viii. 169-70; C140/73/75. But it was at Marks, the manor he bought in 1460, that he decided to make his home. Like Sir Thomas Cook he accumulated substantial holdings in this neighbourhood, and together they used their government connexions and legal expertise to secure a royal charter for Havering in 1465. This confirmed ancient privileges, excluded outside official intervention, gave Havering its own j.p.s and conferred on it the status of ‘liberty’. Urswyk made sure that the boundary of the new liberty was drawn to include Marks, which had previously been located in Barking. Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 55; VCH Essex v. 276-7; M.K. McIntosh, Autonomy and Community, 224, 241. Two years later he set seal to the change by the purchase of the nearby manor of Uphavering, which was then incorporated into the rest of the Marks estate. CAD, ii. C2838; vi. C6477; VCH Essex, vii. 69. The new manor-house he built at Marks, with its moat and two square towers, was to stand on the site for over 330 years. An inventory drawn up after his death shows that it contained no fewer than 22 rooms or offices (among them a chapel, bakehouse and dairy), and that one of the bedrooms was known as the ‘great new chamber’. Urswyk’s moveable goods on the manor were worth over £317, including livestock worth £65 10s. 4d., crops £44 8s. and stocks of wool and timber valued at over £18. The inventory also reveals that Urswyk had a well-stocked library, kept in the chapel, which contained (besides the predictable books of statutes) Frossart’s chronicles, the Speculum Ecclesiae of St. Edmund Rich, Mandeville’s Travels and a copy of the Canterbury Tales. The last had a value of as much as £7 18s. 11d. VCH Essex, v. 277; Essex Review, lxiii. 4-20 (transcription of E154/2/2). It was probably he who owned the volume of Gower’s Confessio Amantis and other works which is now Trin. Coll. Cambridge, ms R. 3. 2 (Med. Scribes, MSS and Libraries ed. Parkes and Watson, 209); and he also owned a Year Bk. which is now in the Lincoln’s Inn Lib.: Readings and Moots, i. pp. xxx, xxxii.

The chief baron died on 19 Mar. 1479, and was buried in the church at Dagenham on the north side of the chancel, at a funeral costing £13 17s. 8d. A marbler received £6 13s. 4d. for carving the altar tomb, which was later decorated with brasses representing him with his second wife and 13 children, one of whom was a nun. C140/73/75; Mon. Brasses ed. Mill Stephenson, 115; Essex Review, lxiii. 4-20. Only five of Urswyk’s children survived him, all of them daughters. By the time of his death two had been married to prominent Essex esquires, in accordance with their status: Katherine to Henry Langley and Anne to John Doreward. The others, Elizabeth, Joan and Mary, were still minors and unmarried when a post mortem was conducted in November. C140/73/75. After Doreward’s death Anne married Sir Thomas Fiennes, son of Lord Dacre of the South: Suss. Arch. Collns. lviii. 64-65. Urswyk’s widow, Anne, later married John Palmer of Otford, Kent. In 1482 she and her new husband instituted Chancery proceedings against Sir Guy Fairfax j.KB and another of the trustees of Marks for refusing to permit her to sell the reversion of the manor for the benefit of herself and to pay for her daughters’ marriages, as Sir Thomas had instructed in his will. Urwick, 77-80; C1/53/93; 58/93. The will has not survived. Marks, Uphavering and Lea Hall were sold a few years later, leaving Anne with an annuity of £12 from Uphavering. She survived Palmer, and was still living in May 1491. CAD, ii. C2366; C1/58/62 (a Chancery suit brought by Anne against her stepson Thomas Palmer over his failure to carry out the provisions of her marriage contract with his late father).