FYLOLL, Jasper (by 1467-1536 or later), of London and Faulkbourne, Essex.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. by 1467, 7th s. of John Fyloll (d.1467) of Woodlands, Dorset by Margaret, da. and h. of John Carent of Silton, Dorset. educ. M. Temple. m. by 1509, Joan, wid. of Robert Grey (d. 12 May 1503) and Nicholas Ruynon.1

Offices Held

Customer, port of Poole 1501-6; gent. usher by 1509; receiver, manors late in the possession of Queen Elizabeth, Som. by 1509.2

Biography

Woodlands, a manor in the parish of Horton, Dorset, was the seat of the Fylolls from the middle of the 15th century. The head of the family in the early 1520s, Sir William Fyloll, also had property in Dorchester and in his will of May 1527 he appointed as executor his nephew Sir Thomas Trenchard, who by 1535 was high steward of the borough. Sir William Fyloll had tried to prevent his younger daughter Catherine and her husband Sir Edward Seymour, the future Protector, from inheriting any more from him than they could claim at common law, but had wanted Catherine to have an annuity, not payable through her husband and conditional upon her living in a religious house: his animosity towards the pair gave rise to dissension in his family which had to be resolved by a private Act (22 Hen. VIII, c.19) passed during the second session of the Parliament of 1529. Although Edward Seymour himself is not known to have been elected to this Parliament, his father Sir John Seymour was, and it may be that Jasper Fyloll, Sir William’s youngest brother, sought and was helped to find a seat in the Commons at least in part to represent his family’s interest there. Of any role which he played in the public business of the House the only glimpse is afforded by the inclusion of his name in a list of Members compiled by Cromwell on the back of a letter of December 1534: the names so recorded are thought to be of those having a particular connexion, possibly as a committee, with the treasons bill then passing through the Commons.3

Fyloll had followed his father in receiving a legal education: he entered the Middle Temple before 1501 and three years later he was admitted at his own request to the chamber of John Smith, treasurer of the inn, but unlike his father he is not known to have practised as a lawyer. He seems, indeed, to have been lacking in legal acumen. Thus Sir Edmund Dudley obliged him to pay ‘great sums of money upon a light forfeiture’, probably an aftermath of his term as customer of Poole, and in 1512 his reversionary interest in an exchequer office, that of lord treasurer’s remembrancer, was cancelled on the grounds of his insufficiency in experience and learning. Yet another arrangement which worked out badly for him was one of 1513 by which he was given an annual fee of 40s. by John Fortescue and his wife Philippa, with the right to live in their house at Faulkbourne; Fortescue died in arrears with the fee, and when his widow remarried, her new husband Sir Francis Bryan turned Fyloll out without paying him what was due or recompensing him for the costs he had incurred in going up to London and acting for Philippa during her widowhood. Even Fyloll’s connexion with the Household as a gentleman usher faded away: by 1526, with three other Londoners, he was ‘out of wages’ and presumably only called upon for attendance from time to time, and by the early 1530s (when he was over 60 years of age) he no longer retained the office.4

During the last decade of his life Fyloll conceived the notion of becoming surveyor of the London customs house, a post in which, he assured the King, he would save the crown great sums of which it was yearly defrauded. This proposal was handed on to Cromwell, and although no action seems to have been taken on it, Fyloll came to be employed in other ways. In the summer of 1535 he tried to convert the monks at the London Charterhouse to the new order in religion, and in the autumn Cromwell ordered him to move into the monastery to supervise the life of its community. He seems to have made something of a reputation as a proselytizer, for in January 1536 the bishop of London suggested to Cromwell that he might lend a hand with John Copinger, the confessor of Syon. This is the last reference found to Fyloll, who by then was touching 70 and who may be presumed to have died soon afterwards.5

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Helen Miller

Notes

  • 1. Date of birth estimated from fa.’s death. HP, ed. Wedgwood 1439-1509 (Biogs.), 325-6; The Gen. n.s. ii. 301; Vis. Dorset, ed. Colby and Rylands, 18; LP Hen. VIII, i.
  • 2. CPR, 1494-1509, p. 486; LP Hen. VIII, i.
  • 3. Hutchins, Dorset, iii. 152; C. H. Mayo, Recs. Dorchester, 320, 325; PCC 23 Porch; LP Hen. VIII, vii. 1522 (ii) citing SP1/87, f. 106v.
  • 4. CPR, 1494-1509, p. 486; LP Hen. VIII, i, iv, v; EHR, lxxxvii. 89, 97; CCR, 1500-9, p. 190; C1/505/27.
  • 5. LP Hen. VIII, v, vii-x; Elton, Policy and Police, 328.