TYRELL, Edward

A member of a large and well established Essex family, Edward was a younger brother of the influential John Tyrell, the Speaker in three of Henry VI’s Parliaments. While he succeeded to his mother’s manors at Shepreth, Malton and Meldreth in Cambridgeshire and Harrow-on-the-Hill in Middlesex,9 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 683; VCH Cambs. v. 244, 256; vii. 87; VCH Mdx. iv. 209; Feudal Aids, i. 183, 184. he took up residence at Downham where he held a manor at lease from John.10 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 684. The lease was evidently for the long term, since it was later confirmed to him by his nephew, Thomas* (John’s son and heir), and did not expire at his death.11 Reg. Chichele, ii. 628-36. Through his second marriage, Edward also came into possession of lands at Hatfield in Hertfordshire which his wife, Anne, held in dower after the death of her first husband. In the mid 1430s he was reckoned to enjoy the considerable annual income of £135 from his real estate, making it likely that he had entered the land market as well.12 Feudal Aids, ii. 49; H.L. Gray, ‘Incomes from Land in Eng. in 1436’, EHR, xlix. 633. Nothing is known about his previous wife, Eleanor, beyond that she was the widow of Edmund Haverland of Colchester and that he joined her in a quitclaim of September 1411. By means of this transaction, they relinquished any claim to Haverland’s properties in that town and Greenstead, an outlying part of its liberty, to two of Edmund’s feoffees.13 Colchester ct. rolls D/B 5 Cr38, m. 3; 50, m. 37. It is unlikely that Eleanor was the mother of any of Edward’s legitimate children, least of all his son and namesake, still a minor when the MP died.

In his early adulthood Edward was retained by Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and he, his brothers, John and William, and their step-brother, William Haute* (the son of Sir Nicholas Haute† of Kent, Eleanor Tyrell’s second husband), mustered in Kent with other members of the duke’s retinue in July 1415, prior to crossing to France.14 E101/45/13. Gloucester fought at Agincourt, so it is possible that all three Tyrells were at the battle. Edward’s military career extended beyond Henry V’s first French campaign, for in July 1417 he mustered at Tichborne Down, Hampshire, prior to embarking on Henry’s second great expedition across the Channel. He did so as a member of the retinue of Hugh Stafford, Lord Bourgchier, of whose Essex estates his brother John Tyrell was steward.15 E101/51/2. Extended absences in France might explain the lack of evidence for Edward’s activities in England while Henry V was on the throne. His public career at home began following the accession of Henry VI, after which there is no sign that he returned to France.

Early in Henry VI’s reign, Tyrell became embroiled in a quarrel with Ralph Bateman. Connected with the affairs of his mother, Eleanor, who had died in March 1422, it arose from a debt that his adversary had incurred in the late fourteenth century with Eleanor’s own mother, Elizabeth Flambard (d.1394), of whom she was executrix. The debt remained outstanding for years, and in 1421 Eleanor won a verdict against the by then elderly Bateman at law, awarding to her possession of his manor of Harlton in Cambridgeshire until she had recovered the sum in question and her legal expenses. Refusing to accept the verdict, Ralph contested it after her death, through several petitions he submitted to one or more of Henry VI’s first four Parliaments. He claimed that Eleanor and then Edward, his mother’s executor, had taken far more from Harlton than he had owed and appealed for the restoration of the manor to him. He further alleged that Edward and his brother John had ousted him from another two manors; that they had used force and threats to stymie a suit he had brought against them and to advance legal proceedings of their own; that they had exerted their influence to have him falsely indicted for various crimes; and that they had colluded with Nicholas Caldecote*, Warren Ingrith and John Tyrell’s friend Sir John Tiptoft† to bring false accusations against him, so that he was on the point of being outlawed for felony. One of the petitions indicates that Bateman had sought the help of the Regent, John, duke of Bedford, who sent letters to Parliament requesting that justice be done. Another bears the endorsement that the Lords should decide on the matter and that the parties should appear before them to hear their ruling, although what came of this directive is unknown. To complicate matters, the quarrel was entangled with another between Bateman and Nicholas Caldecote, an extremely murky affair during which the parties traded accusations of assault and murder against each other. Before Eleanor Tyrell died, Ralph had agreed, possibly under duress, to sell Harlton to Caldecote, although he sought to regain it the summer of 1422 by bringing an assize of novel disseisin against Caldecote, Edward Tyrell and others. Ultimately Bateman must have prevailed in these quarrels, since he was able to sell Harlton to the London draper, Alexander Child, who was in possession by 1428.16 CIPM, xxi. 935; SC8/199/9918-19, 9927; VCH Cambs. v. 217; P. Maddern, Violence and Social Order, 146-53.

Amidst these controversies, Tyrell was also engaged in more positive activities. He attested the return of the knights of the shire for Essex to the Parliament of 1423, and in early 1425 he and other gentry from Essex and elsewhere underwrote a mortgage on behalf of John, Lord Fanhope, then trying to raise a ransom for his stepson, John Holand, earl of Huntingdon, a prisoner in France.17 CCR, 1422-9, p. 196; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 151. In late 1426 he stood as a mainpernor for Sir John Tiptoft, in relation to a grant that knight had secured from the Crown,18 CFR, xv. 159. and assumed office as escheator in Essex and Hertfordshire. While escheator Edward was party to the conveyance of a manor at Herringby in Norfolk to Sir John Fastolf and his feoffees, a property which John Tyrell and his second wife, Katherine, had sold to the knight.19 CP25(1)/169/186/30; A.R. Smith, ‘Acquisition of Sir John Fastolf’s Estates’, in Rulers and Ruled ed. Archer and Walker, 150. He was also active – from the late 1420s onwards – as a feoffee or witness on behalf of other landowners, including William, Lord Ferrers of Groby, Lewis John* and John Marney,20 CCR, 1422-9, p. 470; 1435-41, p. 67; 1441-7, pp. 112, 226-7, 261; Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 16, 18, 30; Corp. London RO, hr 158/69; Essex RO, deeds, D/DC 27/1041; D/DHf T41/86, 88-89. although his most important connexion was with John de Vere, 12th earl of Oxford.

It is possible that Tyrell owed his connexion with de Vere to his association with the duke of Gloucester, since the earl’s stepfather, Nicholas Thorley, was a member of the duke’s circle.21 CP, x. 235-6; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 685. Whatever the case, he was certainly associated with the earl by the later 1420s. In the autumn of 1427, for example, he went to the Exchequer to collect the fee that Oxford, still short of his majority, enjoyed as one of the King’s councillors.22 E403/683, m. 3. De Vere had only recently come of age when he received a heavy fine in mid 1429, for marrying without licence while a ward of the Crown. Upon the imposition of this penalty, Edward and his brother John were among those who stood surety for its payment on the young peer’s behalf, each under pain of £100.23 CPR, 1422-9, p. 543. As the account of Giles Lucas, steward of the earl’s household, for Michaelmas 1431-2 shows, Edward was steward of Oxford’s estates by the early 1430s. The account records that he received a payment of 23s. 4d. for his expenses in riding out to hold courts on the earl’s manors, and his own servants another 2s. for their part in collecting rents from the earl’s farmers.24 Household Accts. ii. 523, 524, 533. Edward was also one of the earl’s feoffees,25 CPR, 1429-36, p. 602. and a member of his council, and it was in the capacity of de Vere councillors that in the summer of 1431 he and Robert Writtle (father of Walter*) mediated an agreement in London between their patron and five artisans and labourers who had trespassed on Oxford’s holdings at Wickingston, Leicestershire.26 CP40/737, rot. 434d. Tyrell’s attachment with the earl endured for the rest of his life. In 1440-1, for example, he was de Vere’s general attorney in England while the latter was in France,27 C76/123, m. 14. and he appointed his patron, already one of his feoffees, as an overseer of his will.28 Reg. Chichele, ii. 628-36. It is possible that Edward was connected to the earl by marriage: if his second wife was the gd.-da. of Sir Richard Cergeaux as posited in the cursus at the head of this biography, then she was Oxford’s cousin. (The earl’s father, Richard, the 11th earl, had taken for his own second wife Cergaux’s daughter, Alice.)

It was during the first session of the Parliament of 1427 that Edward went to the Exchequer to collect de Vere’s fee as a royal councillor, and it is likely that he enjoyed his patron’s support when he gained election to this assembly, the first in which John Tyrell served as Speaker. With or without the earl’s backing, his status as a well established and substantial landowner ensured that he was eminently qualified to serve as a knight of the shire. He was re-elected to the Commons in 1432 and in May 1434 he was made a j.p., a position he was to hold for the rest of his life. In the following year he sat in Parliament for the last time and in November 1436 he was pricked as sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire. As sheriff he presided over the final election of John Tyrell (by then a knight) to the Commons, and during his term he obtained a royal pardon,29 C67/38, m. 27 (22 Apr. 1437). although whether in connexion with any shortcoming in his exercise of that office is unknown. By 1438 at the latest (and probably considerably earlier), he was an esquire of the royal household, of which the well connected John had been treasurer since the spring of 1431, and of which he himself remained a member until his death.30 E101/408/25; 409/9. Membership of the royal establishment necessitated spending time at London and Westminster, and like others in his family, Edward had dealings with a mercer from the City, William Pountfret. With his brother Sir John and nephew Thomas, he was a Pounfret feoffee and, as such, was caught up in a dispute over property in the City between the mercer and Sir Thomas Percy, the future Lord Egremont, during the late 1430s.31 KB27/784, rot. 75; CP40/738, rot. 535.

The shrievalty was Edward’s last office of any importance, although he attested the election of his nephew, Thomas Tyrell, as a knight of the shire for Essex in January 1442 and was appointed to his final ad hoc commission in the following March. By then in the last year of his life, a few months later he helped to found a chantry in the parish church at Danbury for the benefit of the late Sir Gerard Braybrooke† and the souls of himself and his co-founders.32 CPR, 1441-6, p. 112; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 78-80. On 1 Oct. 1442 he drew up a last testament, seeking burial in a chapel he had built in the Franciscan friary at Chelmsford. He left his son and namesake various items of bed linen – to receive when he came of age – and similar household articles to his step-brother, William Haute. He named Haute as one of his executors, as he did his nephew Thomas Tyrell. Those he chose to oversee their work comprised a powerful panel. Apart from the earl of Oxford, they included Humphrey, earl of Stafford, Stafford’s half-brother, Henry, Lord Bourgchier, and Robert Darcy I*. Humphrey and Henry were the sons of Anne, countess of Stafford, a cousin of Henry VI and a lady whom John Tyrell had served for many years. In a separate will for his lands, dated 9 Dec. 1442, Edward’s first concern was to honour certain debts owed by his mother and his late ‘brother’, Sir William Lisle*. The exact relationship between him and Lisle, who had died the previous spring, is unclear but it is very likely that the knight’s second wife, Elizabeth, was his sister or half-sister. Edward had served Lisle as a feoffee, and a chantry he ordered his executors to found in Downham church was for the benefit of Sir William’s soul, as well as those of himself, his wife, his parents and others. The testator settled the bulk of his estate on his son and namesake although he awarded his wife possession for life of his manors in Cambridgeshire and certain holdings at South Hanningfield and Downham in Essex, along with a house in Dowgate Ward, London, which he directed his executors to sell after her death. The only part of his estate which Tyrell set aside for the younger Edward to succeed to during Anne’s lifetime was his properties in Middlesex, but even then he allowed Anne dower rights in these as well. As for the manor of Downham, he conveyed the remainder of his lease to his executors and three of his overseers, the earls of Oxford and Stafford and Robert Darcy, presumably to hold to the use of his will. Edward awarded his daughters, Philippa, who had married Thomas Cornwallis*, and Margaret, whom he had married to his ward, Robert Mounteney, reversionary interests in his estate, to vest if their brother died without heirs. Mounteney was the heir to a manor at Mountnessing, and the testator further provided for the couple by settling lands in the hundred of Rochford on them, in recompense for the revenues he had drawn from the Mountnessing property. The Mounteney wardship had caused him no little trouble, since at one stage he had faced competition for it from no less a figure than Richard, duke of York, and possibly (Sir) Lewis John as well. Edward used certain lands and tenements at Downham to provide for his bastard son, John, and for Thomas Botiller: Botiller, probably one of his servants, was to have them for life, after which they were to pass to John. The house in London was not the only part of the estate he ordered his executors to sell, for he also instructed them to dispose of a tenement at Buttsbury, to raise money for his chapel and tomb at Chelmsford and to give his servant, Robert Beauchampe, an annuity of 40s. for life. The MP’s stepson, John Bassingbourne, also features in the will. Edward divided the money he had received for the ‘forfeiture’ of John’s marriage three ways, a provision suggesting that John had been his ward and had forfeited that sum after marrying without his permission. He allotted a third to Bassingbourne, another third to his wife Anne (to allow her to settle her first husband’s debts and perform charitable works) and the remainder to the use of his executors. Tyrell added a codicil to his will and testament on 14 Dec., just three days before he died. In it he confirmed his manors in Cambridgeshire on his wife for life, but this time with reversion to his son in tail-male rather than in tail-general. If the younger Edward died without male issue, they were to pass to his cousin, Thomas Tyrell, rather than to his sisters, Philippa and Margaret, who now would succeed to them only if Thomas also died leaving no sons.33 Reg. Chichele, ii. 628-36; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 612, 614; Corp. London RO, hr 178/2; CIPM, xxvi. 126-9. In the event, it is possible that the younger Edward never came of age,34 His age at his father’s death is uncertain. The Cambs. inq. post mortem held for the MP in Apr. 1443 declared that the yr. Edward was 15; that held in London in the following Oct. found that he was 17; but those held in Essex and Herts. said that he was 19: CIPM, xxvi. 126-9. although he outlived Anne Tyrell, who died in the spring of 1444. Not long afterwards he quarrelled with Thomas Tyrell over his father’s manors in Cambridgeshire; but presumably he was no longer alive in 1447 when these properties were in Thomas’s hands. In June the same year the MP’s daughters and their husbands made a formal release of the Middlesex properties to Thomas and his feoffees.35 C145/311/15; CPR, 1441-6, p. 296; VCH Cambs. v. 244, 256; vii. 87; CP25(1)/152/93/132.