LANHERGY, Thomas

The Lanhergys were tenants of the duchy of Cornwall with lands in ‘Boskeyre’ and St. Laurence near Bodmin. Although their estates were not substantial (in 1451 the family’s entire holdings in Cornwall were thought to be worth no more than 40s. p.a.), they were nevertheless well connected both among the Cornish gentry and among men of higher rank.7 C1/279/62; 284/1; E179/87/92. Thomas’s grandfather served John Holand, earl of Huntingdon, as steward of his Cornish estates, while his father could number the influential Stephen Bodulgate among his godparents.8 M. Cherry, ‘Crown and Political Community, Devon’ (Wales Univ. Swansea Ph.D. thesis, 1981), 171; M.M.N. Stansfield, ‘Holland Fam.’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1987), 265; CIMisc. vii. 99; CIPM, xx. 680; SC6/819/10, rot. 14. It is not certain when exactly Lanhergy succeeded to his paternal inheritance, but it seems that his father may have died relatively young, for Thomas appears to have been in possession by the autumn of 1437, when he was able to describe himself as ‘lord of Lannomur’.9 Maclean, i. 558.

Lanhergy’s career was essentially a local one. Although he occasionally stood bail for his neighbours in the royal law courts, he did not himself practice as an attorney at Westminster.10 KB27/708, rex rot. 14d; 752, rex rot. 6. He was, however, of considerable standing in Bodmin, where he first served as ‘prepositus’ in 1437-8, taking office not long after his first return to the Commons for the borough. He evidently carried out his duties to the satisfaction of the townsmen, for over the course of the next five years he went on to serve two terms as mayor of Bodmin.11 Maclean, i. 682; Bodmin bor. recs., B/Bod/302, f. 4v. It is not clear whether it was in the course of his official duties or in defence of his own property that in the autumn of 1439 and summer of 1440 he assembled a group of his armed retainers and invaded the property of Roger Porthquyn and William Samon at Porthquyn, ‘Boskeyre’ and Bodlawarn. As a consequence, the following June he found himself arrested by one of the Cornish j.p.s, (Sir) Renfrew Arundell*, and committed to Launceston gaol. In November 1442 he appeared before the court of King’s bench at Westminster and admitted to the charges laid before the court by Arundell, and agreed to pay fines totaling 38s. 8d., but denied the details of his offences alleged by two Cornish presenting juries.12 KB9/236/5-7; KB27/726, rex rot. 28, fines rot. 2d. He had evidently regained his liberty rather sooner, for in April 1442 he was associated with Henry Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, the latter’s Cornish retainer John Nanfan*, and the royal household esquire John Norris* in receiving custody of the Cornish estates of the wealthy Sir William Bodrugan*, a grant which was renewed the following January.13 CPR, 1441-6, p. 83; CFR, xvii. 249. This grant would cause Lanhergy considerable problems, for not only did he face debt litigation over a bond for £40 made to Bodrugan’s widow, Philippa, in early 1444 and a debt of £60 owing to Warwick and another retainer of his, the Exchequer official John Brome II*, but in early 1445 he was among a group of Cornishmen headed by Nanfan whom William Clerk alias Tanner, who had married Philippa, accused of having conspired to have him falsely indicted and imprisoned for an imagined theft of the Bodrugan muniments.14 CP40/736, rot. 338; 749, rot. 312, att. rot. 1; 754, rot. 115; E159/220, recogniciones Hil. rot. 1. Rather more obscure are Lanhergy’s relations with several other Westminster officials around the same period. In May 1438 he made a bond to William Fallan, one of the barons of the Exchequer, for the sum of £15 8s. 10d., while in June 1444 he granted an annuity of 40s. to the Chancery clerk John Nayler (a grant later augmented by a settlement of property in Bodmin).15 E159/214, recogniciones Easter rot. 1; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 221-2; 1447-54, p. 74.

Further trouble was, however, already brewing. In January 1443 the King ordered the justices of King’s bench to cease proceedings against Sir William Bonville* and a number of associates, including Lanhergy as well as his neighbours John Nicoll I*, Otto Nicoll* and William Bere*, whom one Richard Dawne had appealed of mayhem. A year later, Lanhergy was in dispute with no less a man than the notorious Richard Tregoose* over a debt of £10, in which he stood bound by statute staple. Tregoose was not renowned for the delicacy of his methods when settling quarrels, so Lanhergy might well have considered himself lucky merely to be arrested and imprisoned at Launceston once more. Tregoose himself was entrusted with making the arrest by the steward of the duchy of Cornwall, Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, but – perhaps fortunately for Lanhergy – it was the sheriff of Cornwall, John Arundell, who seized him and sent him to Launceston. Within three days he sued out a writ of corpus cum causa to secure his removal to the Marshalsea, and on 27 June he was released on bail.16 C131/66/6; C244/42/2; KB145/6/21; KB27/737, rex rot. 17d.

The background to Lanhergy’s two successive returns to Parliament in 1449 is uncertain. Unquestionably, he possessed the necessary local credentials to represent the borough of Bodmin, and his prior connexion with the young duke of Warwick may suggest that the was a candidate agreeable to the court circle around William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk. Certainly, the sheriff of Cornwall presiding over the elections to both the Parliaments of 1449 was none other than the leading courtier John Trevelyan*. Now, however, old troubles returned to haunt Lanhergy. Even as the Commons gathered in the refectory of Westminster Abbey, nearby in Westminster hall the court of King’s bench issued orders for fresh outlawry proceedings over the old appeal of mayhem brought by Richard Dawne.17 KB27/751, rex rot. 17. Trevelyan clearly had no intention of imprisoning any Members of the Commons supportive of the administration, and proceedings against him for his failure to produce Lanhergy before the King’s justices continued until some years after Thomas’s own death.18 KB27/768, rex rot. 4; 778, rex rot. 27d; 793, rex rot. 42. Trevelyan’s later claim, pleaded in KB in late 1473, that Lanhergy and the other prisoners he had repeatedly failed to produce in ct. had escaped from Launceston gaol in a mass gaol break on 20 Jan. 1462 was clearly spurious: KB27/849, rex rot. 31. Lanhergy himself clearly remained at liberty. In the years that followed he is periodically found serving his neighbours as a feoffee or a trustee of their moveable possessions,19 CCR, 1447-54, p. 32; 1454-61, p. 251; Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR1/352. and he may have served several more terms as mayor of Bodmin between 1455 and 1460. The mid 1450s saw a renewal of the conflict between the men of Bodmin and the borough’s lord, the local prior of St. Petrock’s, which had been at rest since the 1430s, and Lanhergy, from whom the prior claimed a payment of £7 12s. 1d., evidently played his part.20 CP40/779, rot. 90.

Lanhergy seems to have lived out his days quietly, and died childless on 30 Apr. 1465, leaving as his heirs his 40-year-old sister Joan, the wife of Edmund Becket, and her descendants. Litigation between the heirs and Lanhergy’s feoffees over possession of the family estates continued for more than three decades.21 CFR, xx. 144; C140/18/50; Arundell mss, AR2/1337/7; C1/279/61-63; 281/9-12; 284/1. One of the suits later brought in Chancery by one of Joan’s descendants wrongly claimed that she had been Lanhergy’s da.: C1/279/62. The error is repeated by Vivian, 25 and Maclean, i. 310-11.