LUCY, Thomas (d.1415), of Charlecote, Warws.

On 28 Dec. 1398 Lucy was retained for life by the aged and ailing John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, to serve as his esquire in peace and war, in return for an annuity of ten marks charged on the lordship of Monmouth (where his father was the duke’s steward). The annuity was confirmed by Richard II in the following March, after Gaunt’s death, but this did nothing to sway the Lucys’ devotion to the house of Lancaster.Cam. Misc. xxii. 111; CPR, 1396-9, p. 524. Following his father’s murder in 1401, Lucy inherited the family lands in Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire, thus acquiring an income of at least £40 a year. By 1402 he had joined Henry IV’s household, and it may have been he who in the next year (described as ‘of Gloucestershire’) provided sureties at the Exchequer for the King’s sister, Elizabeth of Lancaster. He was returned to the Parliament of 1406, in the course of which he was knighted and appointed sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire. Ex officio he held the elections of 1407, and in the following year he was pardoned for the escape of four prisoners from Leicester gaol during his term. His duties in the localities entailed leaving the Court, but by Michaelmas 1408 he had been retained by Richard, earl of Warwick, from whom he received an annuity of £20. Thus drawn into the Beauchamp circle, two years later he witnessed a conveyance to the supervisor of the earl’s estates, Robert Hugford. His second return to Parliament may well have been made in the Beauchamp interest.Warws. Feet of Fines (Dugale Soc. xviii), no. 2398; E101/404/21 f. 45; CPR, 1401-5, p. 205; 1405-8, p. 439; C219/10/4; Egerton Roll 8772; CCR, 1409-13, p. 83.

In 1413 Lucy’s wife, Alice, inherited the extensive Hugford and Pavenham estates in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Shropshire, which had an annual value of about £80.CFR, xiv. 49; VCH Beds. iii. 50, 211, 224, 330; C138/4/44. But Sir Thomas’s prospects of a comfortable existence as a substantial landowner and the promise of his early career were brought to nothing as a consequence of bad health. In May 1414 he was excused from doing homage for his wife’s inheritance ‘as he is so troubled with divers infirmities that he may not come in person to the King’s presence’; in March 1415, being ‘ill and of a weak condition’ he was granted a papal indult permitting his confessor (on the advice of his doctors) to dispense him to eat meat and dairy produce during Lent, and on 28 June he died. Just a few weeks later his widow married Richard Archer of Tamworth. She retained the bulk of the Lucy estates until her death in 1420, and subsequently Archer held much of her Hugford inheritance ‘by the courtesy’ until his own death over 50 years later.CCR, 1413-19, pp. 178, 233; 1419-22, pp. 84-85, 130; CPL, vi. 463; C138/11/14. Lucy’s heir was his son William (d.1466), a minor who was placed in the wardship of John Boteler of Lancashire, and who in 1423 was found to be the next heir in blood of Elizabeth, Lady Clinton (though he only came into possession of a few, if any, of her landed holdings). William (who like his father was retained by the earl of Warwick) married Eleanor, daughter of Reynold, Lord Grey of Ruthin, and by 1436 enjoyed an estimated annual income of £110.W. Dugdale, Warws. 501-4, 507; CPR, 1413-16, p. 340; C139/12/36; EHR, xlix. 639.