VEYSY, William

It has been speculated that Henry VI’s brick-maker was a ‘Dutchman’, that is a German, who brought with him to this country the skill of manufacturing bricks, which at this date was more advanced on the continent than in England. A German origin is also suggested by Veysy’s office as joint surveyor of beer-brewers, for which there was no precedent. L.F. Salzman, Buildings in Eng. to 1540, 142-3. Yet if he was indeed a foreigner, he would almost certainly have sued out letters of denization to provide legality to his office-holding, and no such letters are recorded. All that can be said is that there is no evidence that he belonged to the family of Vessy of Exeter and London, The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 717. and, indeed, nothing is recorded about him before October 1437. This was soon after the King came of age and embarked on his plans for the expansion of his palace at Sheen, one of his favourite residences. As ‘King’s serjeant’ and ‘brick-maker’, Veysy was assigned the tasks of searching for a place where the earth was suitable for making bricks, arranging with the landowner for it to be dug up, and building a kiln. CPR, 1436-41, p. 145; Hist. King’s Works ed. Brown, Colvin and Taylor, i. 1001. For the works at Sheen in 1440 he supplied 9,500 bricks costing 4s. 6d. per thousand ‘at the tylekenne’, and there are references to bricks being brought from his kilns at Le Frithe near St. Albans to make the ‘creste’ of a stone wall at the Tower of London that same year. E101/503/9; Salzman, 142-3. Two years later Veysy was commissioned to impress bricklayers for the major works at Eton, and between 1443 and 1452 he provided some 2.5 million bricks for the college buildings. These were made at Slough, where Veysy had rented land on which to erect a kiln; the college’s direct responsibility was reflected in the price it paid Veysy for the bricks – a mere 10d. per thousand. R. Willis, Architectural Hist. Cambridge ed. Clark, i. 384-5; Hist. King’s Works, i. 282; CPR, 1441-6, p. 93; English Med. Industries, ed. Blair and Ramsay, 223. As the royal brick-maker Veysy received a daily wage of 6d., initially paid by the clerk of the King’s works but from 12 Jan. 1445 assigned on the farm of alnage in the city of London. This wage was granted him for life, together with an annuity of £10, which more than doubled his income. CPR, 1441-6, p. 365; CCR, 1441-7, p. 260; E159/221, recorda, Trin. rot. 5. An imperfect record dating from 1441 to 1446, notes the supply of 1,025,500 bricks to various members of the royal Household, at a total cost of £256 7s. 6d. This huge sum was still owing to Veysy in May 1448, when he was granted licence to export tin free of customs’ duties until he recouped this amount. Proving unable to take advantage of this concession, however, in July 1454 he returned the letters patent to Chancery for cancellation and obtained a warrant to the Exchequer to pay him in ready money or else make him an assignment on other revenues. Even so, the assignment was not issued until February 1455. C47/3/53, no. 19; E159/230, brevia Hil. rot. 1d; E404/70/1/82; E403/800, m. 9. The delay may have been occasioned by Henry VI’s mental collapse. Veysy’s employment on royal works led to him being commissioned by others close to the King engaged in their own projects; he is thought to have been responsible for building the ‘green court’ at Herstmonceux castle for Sir Roger Fiennes*, the treasurer of the King’s household. J.A. Wight, Brick Building in Eng. 46, 49, 124.

In the meantime, Veysy had received another unusual appointment. On 29 Jan. 1441 he had shared with Richard Lounde a grant for life of the post of surveyor of all the beer-brewers in England, wherever they lived. It was stated in their patent that hitherto no officers had ever been empowered to enforce the assize of bread, wine, ale, flesh, fish or other victuals nation-wide. Orders of April 1443 specified the required quality of the malt, hops and grain to be used, the processes to be employed and the prices charged. The two men were to receive a fee of ½ d. for every barrel of beer brewed, to keep as their own personal profit, for they rendered nothing to the Crown. Writs were sent to the mayor and sheriffs of London ordering them to assist Veysy and Lounde in their task, but this aroused opposition, with fears being expressed that the appointment would directly impinge on the liberties of the City. It was therefore granted, in a royal charter of October 1444, that immediately after the expiration of the grant (that is, when both men had died) the mayor and citizens might dispose of the office as they thought fit. CPR, 1436-41, p. 495; 1441-6, pp. 184-5; London Letter Bk. K, 270; CChR, vi. 41-44.

This was not the only post Veysy acquired in the City. The King also intervened to secure his appointment as water-bailiff in the Thames, by sending the mayor and aldermen a letter in January 1445 referring to his ‘merites’ and the exemplary service he had done. Henry VI reported that Veysy had informed him of the ‘greet kyndenesse and favour’ that the civic authorities had already shown him, for which he thanked them. The text of Veysy’s oath as water-bailiff, copied into the City’s journal in 1447, specified that he undertook to search the waters of the Thames and Medway that fell within the City’s jurisdiction, to remove illegal weirs and nets and to bring offenders into court. To assist him London provided as his servant a yeoman, who was paid four marks a year, while he himself received £5. Veysy was made free of the City in August 1446. London Letter Bk. K, 302-3; Barron, 191-2.

Through his involvement in the works at Sheen and Eton, Veysy came into close contact with Henry VI’s personal physician, Master John Somerset*, an inspirational guide for the young King in planning the foundation of his colleges at Eton and Cambridge. The two men became friends, and Veysy attested Somerset’s election as a knight of the shire for Middlesex in the Parliament of 1442, C219/15/2. an assembly preoccupied with the handsome endowment of the establishment at Eton. Their friendship is further indicated by Veysy’s participation in 1448 in Somerset’s creation of a chantry in the London church of St. Stephen Colman Street, where two chaplains were to pray for the spiritual welfare of the King and his physician, as well as for the King’s secretary, Veysy and a few others. It is more than likely, too, that Veysy supplied the materials for the construction of the almshouse Somerset erected at Brentford, for like Eton it was built of bricks. CPR, 1446-52, pp. 176-9; C. Rawcliffe, ‘A Fifteenth Cent. medicus politicus’, in The Fifteenth Cent. X ed. Kleineke, 109, n. 75. He and Somerset were co-feoffees of property in Ruislip in Middlesex, and fellow recipients of a gift of goods and chattels. C1/28/154; CCR, 1447-54, p. 55.

It was probably this connexion with Somerset, who was chancellor of the Exchequer, which led to Veysy’s election to the two Parliaments of 1449 as a representative for the Dorset boroughs of Lyme Regis and Wareham, with which he had no previous association. Significantly, his fellow MP for Lyme was Andrew Kebell*, Somerset’s appointee as comptroller of the pipe. The two men would have been useful in the Commons at a time of crisis at the Exchequer. When Somerset died intestate in June 1454 Veysy was one of the three men appointed administrators of his estate. They had to bring suits in the court of the Exchequer to recover sums due to the deceased, and to complete transactions regarding his lands. It was as administrator of Somerset’s goods that the ‘esquire, alias brick-maker’ obtained pardons in October 1455 and July 1458. E13/146, rot. 51; C67/41, m. 12, 42, m. 18; E326/1525-6, 1532; E159/232, brevia Hil. rot. 16d; 234, brevia Trin. rot. 25.

Meanwhile, in April 1453 Veysy, as water-bailiff of the Thames, had been commissioned with another serjeant-at-arms to requisition vessels moored in the river, and command their owners and masters not to set sail without licence, CPR, 1452-61, p. 117. and he received another such commission, extending his brief to three of the Cinque Ports, a year later. In the late 1450s, however, Veysy neglected his duties as water-bailiff, and he was dismissed from the office by the authorities of London in 1457. Barron, 191-2, citing London jnl. 6, ff. 180, 186. The last years of Henry VI’s reign were ones of obscurity for Veysy, as for so many men to whom Henry had once extended generous patronage, and Henry’s deposition marked the end of his career. Although in April 1461, just after the accession of Edward IV, he stood surety for Ralph Harrys, given the keeping of the royal manor of Kennington, CFR, xx. 14. Veysy himself found no favour with the new monarch, and by February 1462 he had lost his post as supervisor of breweries. CPR, 1461-7, p. 75. Veysy is last recorded in September that same year, dealing with property in Isleworth which had once belonged to Master John Somerset, and included the ‘great messuage’ where the physician had lived. E326/1525-6; CAD, v. A13416.

Nothing is known for certain about Veysy’s private life, but he may have been the Veysy (first name not given) who married Elizabeth, the daughter and coheiress of George Bishop. In 1481 the latter’s lands in Colham and elsewhere in Middlesex were in dispute between her son George Veysy and his uncle John Foote. C1/61/328.