YEO, Nicholas

Nicholas came from a landowning Devonshire family with connexions of service and feudal tenure to both the Courtenay earls of Devon and the Holand earls of Huntingdon. The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 6, 847. The Yeos were of some standing in their county, and on his death in 1408 Robert, Nicholas’s probable father, passed lands valued at some £19 p.a. to his eldest son John. CIPM, xix. 549. The family’s holdings were nevertheless insufficient to provide an endowment for a younger son, and Nicholas thus sought his fortune in London, where he was apprenticed to the draper Thomas Pyke. Yeo was admitted to the freedom before 1428, when he first acted as a surety in the mayor’s court, but before 1430 little else is recorded about his activities in the capital. What is certain, however, is that he quickly established himself as a prominent member of his company, serving as one of the two wardens in 1433-4. Before long he took on apprentices of his own, and he evidently maintained cordial relations among his neighbours, for he was appointed an executor of the wills of not only his former master, Pyke, but also of Edmund Bendysh, London jnls. 2, f. 125; 3, f. 70v; Johnson, i. 333; Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, p. 288; CPR, 1446-52, p. 293. while at other times his services as a feoffee of property in London and Kent, and also further afield in Suffolk, were called upon. London hr 160/1; 162/21; 168/32-33; CCR, 1435-41, p. 249; C1/10/133.

Yeo’s status within his craft was underpinned by his successful dealings as a cloth merchant, for by the early 1430s he was involved in the burgeoning export trade to the continent. Over the course of just a few months in 1433 he shipped several different kinds of cloth, including scarlet and kendale, to both northern and south-western Europe; his later dealings concerned commodities such as tin and pepper, as well as cloth; and his trading activities overseas were evidently of a scale that warranted the opening of an account with the London branch of the Italian Boromei bank. E122/203/1; H. Bradley, Views of Hosts of Alien Merchants, 8, 18, 19, 95; Archivio Storico Lombardo, xl. 371. By contrast, his commercial dealings within England are harder to map, but the debts owed to him at various points in his career suggest that he had business connexions ranging from Buckinghamshire to Staffordshire. CP40/717, rot. 441d; CPR, 1429-36, p. 441. In the capital, Yeo was the recipient of a number of ‘gifts’ of goods and chattels made by men of various crafts, often an indication that credit was being extended to cover the costs of goods supplied. CPR, 1436-41, p. 103; Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, p. 250; 1437-57, pp. 159, 162; CCR, 1435-41, p. 31; 1441-7, pp. 193-4.

Like many of his fellow merchants Yeo did not trade solely in one commodity, and this diversification enabled him to respond on two occasions to demand for goods in the capital. In May 1438 he was granted a licence by the Crown enabling him and others to buy 200 quarters of grain in East Anglia for shipping to London, where a severe shortage of grain was driving up prices. Over the course of the next 18 months the city government, led by Stephen Brown*, organized further shipments of grain to alleviate the crisis, and these efforts were so successful that by September 1439 Yeo came before the mayor and aldermen to undertake to provide storage space for £20-worth of grain, should the store-rooms in the city prove insufficient to house the vast quantity of grain (worth 1,000 marks) that had been purchased. CPR, 1436-41, p. 163; jnl. 3, f. 22. A few months later Yeo was again able to turn the city’s needs to his own commercial advantage, this time as a result of a shortage of sweet wine in the capital. Though doubtless not as essential as grain to the well-being of the commonalty, the court of aldermen nevertheless granted him permission to sell various types of wine, obtained from an unnamed source, at prices to be set by the mayor. Jnl. 3, f. 36v. His trading activities soon gave Yeo a prominence in London that went beyond the ranks of his own craft. In August 1439, for example, he and two prominent mercers, William Estfield* and Henry Frowyk I*, were chosen to judge the sufficiency of debtors brought into the mayor’s court to answer their creditors. Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, p. 5. His experience as a trader similarly stood him in good stead in January 1442 when he was appointed by the Crown as one of those who was to hear an appeal from the court of admiralty. Rather more controversial was the decision in the summer of that year to appoint Yeo and the grocer Nicholas Wyfold as joint inspectors of the balances at the city’s Beam, where goods were weighed and scrutinised. This post had usually been occupied by a member of the Grocers’ Company alone, but it seems that the Drapers’ Company were now taking a keen interest in its management. Jnl. 3, f. 149v; P. Nightingale, Med. Mercantile Community, 456.

By 1436 Yeo had acquired property in the city and in neighbouring Middlesex that was estimated to yield an income of some £25 p.a. S.L. Thrupp, Merchant Class Med. London, 385; E179/238/90. A significant amount of this appears to have come his way by his marriage to Elizabeth, the ultimate coheiress of property that had at one time belonged to the goldsmith John Burdeyn and his wife Agnes. Elizabeth’s mother, Margery, had outlived both her husbands, and had died by September 1430, seised of property in no fewer than six parishes in London as well as in Yeading in Middlesex. In an indenture drawn up on 24 Sept. arrangements were made for her holdings to be partitioned between Elizabeth and her sister Joan, the wife of Henry Suthwell. The Yeos’ pourparty consisted of five messuages in the parish of St. Mary Staining, a moiety of two messuages and five shops in St. Mary le Bow, and a fourth part of a shop in St. Mary Magdalen Milk Street. In addition they also secured 180 acres of land at Yeading. London hr 159/29; CP40/689, rot. 136.

Yeo’s civic career followed a conventional path. He was among the representatives of the commonalty who attested the parliamentary election of 1435, and in the autumn of the following year he was himself chosen as one of the two common councilmen who were to represent the City’s interests in the Parliament summoned to meet on 21 Jan. 1437. In an unusual turn of events, however, four days before Parliament assembled Yeo was elected as an alderman for the ward of Farringdon Without in succession to John Paddesley who had secured a move to Langbourn Ward. In order to avoid having three aldermen in Parliament (in contravention of the City’s customs), Yeo’s installation as alderman was delayed until 10 Apr., by which time Parliament had been dissolved. Jnl. 3, ff. 1, 118, 123; Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 211. The extra-mural location of his ward was not ideal for a member of a craft which had historic and ongoing links with particular locales within the City, notably the area close to St. Swithin’s Lane and Candlewick Street, where the Drapers established their Hall earlier in the century. The resignation of John Brockley* as alderman for Candlewick Street Ward in the summer of 1438 thus provided Yeo with a welcome opportunity to move to a ward with closer connexions to his own craft, and on 8 Aug. that year the court of aldermen decided to allow him to transfer his aldermanry. The following month he was chosen as one of the City’s two sheriffs, and on relinquishing that office began a two-year term as one of the four auditors. In the meantime Yeo was periodically appointed to some of the numerous committees instituted by the city government to deal with various issues, including London’s water supply and the continuing problem posed by those who escaped justice by claiming sanctuary within the precincts of religious houses. Jnl. 3, ff. 11, 13, 46, 60, 167v.

In February 1441 Yeo petitioned the court of aldermen asking to be exonerated from his aldermanry, giving as his reason his intention to set out on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but was refused. The salvation of his soul was nevertheless at the forefront of Yeo’s mind, perhaps because of ill health, and in April of the same year he obtained a papal grant enabling him to receive full remission of sins from a suitable confessor. It is uncertain whether he ever made his planned journey to the Holy Land: he seems to have been absent from London for at least part of the year, but his presence at the election of the mayor on 13 Oct. would seem to rule out a long voyage. Ibid. f. 74v; CPL, ix. 229-30; Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 262. Yeo’s wife obtained a similar papal grant in Feb. 1444: CPL, ix. 371. Early in the following year Yeo was once more being appointed to civic committees, and in August, having recently contributed the sum of £20 to a loan made by the City to the Crown, he was one of several senior aldermen (also including John Norman* and Thomas Catworth*) who were delegated to accompany the mayor, his fellow draper Robert Clopton*, to attend upon the King. Jnl. 3, ff. 114, 116, 137, 144v.

Very little is recorded of Yeo after the summer of 1442. He was only appointed to one further post in the city (that of auditor for work being carried out on the conduits at the instigation of William Estfield in July 1444), and in the autumn of that year he was present at the election of the mayor for the last time. Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 286, 288, 299; jnl. 4, f. 34. On the same day, 13 Oct., Yeo drew up a will in which he asked to be buried in the choir of the church of St. Bartholomew the Less, at the foot of the image of the patron saint. His post obit arrangements included a chantry to be maintained in the church for five years at a cost of £33 6s. 8d. for the benefit of his soul and the souls of Thomas Pyke, his former master, and the latter’s wife Alice. Additional charitable bequests included £20 towards the marriages of poor girls and 100s. for the poor of Bread Street Ward. Another 100s. was left to the works of London Bridge. Sums of money were assigned to three apprentices, as well as an unspecified number of servants. Commissary ct. wills, 9171/4, ff. 149v-150. As Yeo was himself childless, his Devonshire relations featured prominently among the beneficiaries of his estate. He left 100s. to a nephew, Richard Yeo, to be used for his schooling or apprenticeship, and a similar sum to Richard’s brother, William, to maintain him in his studies at Oxford. The boys’ relationship to the MP, not recorded in the will, is apparent from an entry in the journals of the ct. of aldermen in Jan. 1445: Nicholas’s unnamed brother acknowledged receipt of the bequest for his sons’ schooling: jnl. 4, f. 58v. A younger namesake and another nephew, John, son of his brother John Yeo, received gifts of household goods. Yeo’s widow and principal executor was left her share of their household goods and chattels to the value of £1,000, as well as all goods and equipment connected with his trade and other items in the hall, parlour, chamber and kitchen of their residence. She was also assigned the remaining terms in three tenements in Bread Street which they had leased from the abbey of St. Mary Graces, with subsequent reversion to Yeo’s nephew John. The will was proved in the commissary court in London just over a week later, on 21 Oct. Commissary ct. wills, 9171/4, ff. 149v-150. Elizabeth subsequently took her lands and goods to a second husband, Thomas, son of the wealthy draper and alderman Simon Eyre. She eventually died in late 1473 or early 1474, having asked to be buried next to Yeo in St. Bartholomew’s church. Any money accruing from debts still owed to Yeo was to be used by Thomas Eyre to make further provision for his soul. Ibid. 9171/6, ff. 143v-144.