Notes |
- From the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:
Christopher Conyers [...] married Ellen, the daughter and coheir of Thomas Rolleston and his wife, Beatrice Haulay. The Rolleston inheritance in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire was divided between Ellen and her sister Margaret (the wife of John Tirwhit) in November 1415. Ellen died in 1433 and Christopher subsequently married Margaret, daughter of Robert Waddesley. With his two wives Christopher fathered twenty-five children, including twelve sons and, unusually, he made landed provision for a high proportion of the younger sons. To some extent he could afford to do this because his eldest son and heir, John had married an heiress -- Margery (d. 1469), the younger coheir of Philip, Lord Darcy -- but the endowment of the younger sons did not all come out of Christopher's own estate; he was also purchasing land extensively.
Other children were provided for by their marriages to heiresses -- again testimony to Christopher's purchasing power, but also to his local standing, although he was never knighted (which allows him to be distinguished from his namesake who headed the Sockburn branch of the family from 1431) and was never sheriff. His influence presumably derived from his service to the junior Nevilles, who held Middleham in Wensleydale, an association that also helps to explain Christopher's appointment as bailiff of Richmondshire in June 1436, initiating a family connection with the administration of the shire that was to endure for the rest of the century. In March 1436 he was one of the feoffees to the use of the will of Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, although his relatively lowly social status is reflected by his placing in the list.
[After his son John was attainted at the Coventry parliament, following the rout at Ludlow in 1459:] Christopher, meanwhile, first safeguarded himself by securing a pardon in December 1459 and then early the following year made an elaborate settlement to protect his land should he die while his heir was under attainder -- a real risk since he must have turned seventy (having been old enough to act as one of his father's executors in 1412).
Christopher's anxieties proved groundless and he lived long enough to see the Yorkists triumph at Towton in 1461. He was dead by 1465 [...]
|