William Fauvel, or Flauvel (died 1339) was an English judge and Crown official of the fourteenth century, part of whose career was spent in Ireland. [1] Despite his previous eminence as a judge, he died in prison in England while awaiting sentence for murder.
He was a Yorkshire man with strong links to the town of Skipton. He was the son of Constantine Fauvel or Flauvel of Skipton: [1] Constantine was a close relative, probably a younger son, of Everard Fauvel (died 1307) who held, as tenant-in-chief from the English Crown, substantial lands at Skipton, Thoralby and Broughton. William had at least one brother: he was married but had no children. [2]
Apart from his time serving as a judge in Ireland, William lived mainly in York, where he was residing in 1327. [1] He served as a justice of the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland) from 1329 to about 1332, [1] and then returned to England. He served there as a tax collector, and in 1332 he was employed by the Crown to levy a tax in Westmorland for an unspecified "Irish business". [1] From his family's petition after his death it seems that he held substantial lands in Yorkshire, probably inherited from his father and grandfather. [2]
He was back in York by the summer of 1334, when the Close Rolls record that he admitted to being indebted in a sum of 100 marks to Robert de Clifford, [1] to be charged on his lands in default of repayment. Robert de Clifford was probably Robert Clifford, 3rd Baron Clifford (died 1344), whose principal seat was at Skipton.
According to the Registers of the Archdiocese of York , he died in the Archbishop of York's prison, a convicted murderer, in 1339. [2] He had been charged with assisting in the killing of one Cheston Fish, who is described as an "approver", i.e. a person guilty of felony who turns Crown informer against his co-accused. [2] Presumably Fauvel was one of those against whom Cheston was prepared to testify (Cheston was in York gaol, probably awaiting trial, at the time of his killing). The details of the felony of which Fauvel was suspected are not known. [2] In that violent age, cases of felony and even murder were not uncommon among members of the ruling class. Some of those found guilty, like Fauvel himself, pleaded benefit of clergy, [2] while others obtained a royal pardon.
Fauvel was "appealed" (found guilty) of murder. He pleaded benefit of clergy, and was delivered to the custody of the Archbishop, William Melton, but died in the Archbishop's prison before the matter was resolved. [2] His brother and his widow petitioned for the return of his lands. [2] The Archbishop ordered the Sheriff of Yorkshire, Sir Ralph Hastings (died 1346), to restore the lands to their rightful owner, without specifying who this was. [2]
Robert Michael Oldfield Havers, Baron Havers,, was a British barrister and Conservative politician. He was knighted in 1972 and appointed a life peer in 1987.
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John Clifford, 9th Baron Clifford, 9th Lord of Skipton was a Lancastrian military leader during the Wars of the Roses in England. The Clifford family was one of the most prominent families among the northern English nobility of the fifteenth century, and by the marriages of his sisters, John Clifford had links to some very important families of the time, including the earls of Devon. He was orphaned at twenty years of age when his father was slain by partisans of the House of York at the first battle of the Wars of the Roses, the Battle of St Albans in 1455. It was probably as a result of his father's death there that Clifford became one of the strongest supporters of Margaret of Anjou, wife of King Henry VI, who ended up as effective leader of the Lancastrian faction.
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Henry Clifford, 10th Baron Clifford was an English nobleman. His father, John Clifford, 9th Baron Clifford, was killed in the Wars of the Roses fighting for the House of Lancaster when Henry was around five years old. A local legend later developed that—on account of John Clifford having killed one of the House of York's royal princes in battle, and the new Yorkist King Edward IV seeking revenge—Henry was spirited away by his mother. As a result, it was said, he grew up ill-educated, living a pastoral life in the care of a shepherd family. Thus, ran the story, Clifford was known as the "shepherd lord". More recently, historians have questioned this narrative, noting that for a supposedly ill-educated man, he was signing charters only a few years after his father's death, and that in any case, Clifford was officially pardoned by King Edward in 1472. It may be that he deliberately avoided attracting Yorkist attention in his early years, although probably not to the extent portrayed in the local mythology.
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Events from the 1170s in England.
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