Christopher Conyers

Bef 1402 - 1465  (> 58 years)

• Name	Christopher Conyers  [1]
  Alternate birth	Abt 1380  [2]
  Birth	Bef 21 Apr 1402  [3]
  Gender	Male
  Alternate death	Aft 1459  [4]
  Death	Between 1461 and 1465  [5]
  Alternate death	Aft 1462  [2]
  Person ID	I17127	Ancestry of PNH, TNH, and others | Ancestor of JTS, Ancestor of LMW
  Last Modified	6 Nov 2023

  
  

  Father	John Conyers,   b. of Hornby, Yorkshire, England d. Bef 25 Apr 1412
  Mother	Margaret St. Quintin,   b. Abt 1379   d. Aft 4 May 1435 (Age ~ 56 years)
  Marriage	Bef 22 Jan 1398  [6]
  Family ID	F12547	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Eleanor Rolleston,   b. Abt 1399   d. 6 Aug 1444 (Age ~ 45 years)
  Marriage	Bef Sep 1415  [2]
  Children	+ 1. John Conyers,   b. of Hornby, Yorkshire, England d. 14 Mar 1490   2. Joan Conyers
  Family ID	F10671	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	6 Nov 2023

  
  

• 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 [...]

  
  

• Sources

  [S142] Royal Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families by Douglas Richardson. Salt Lake City, 2013. [S53] The Magna Charta Sureties, 1215: The Barons Named in the Magna Charta, 1215, and Some of Their Descendants Who Settled in America During the Early Colonial Years by Frederick Lewis Weis. Fifth edition, with additions and corrections by Walter Lee Sheppard, Jr. and William R. Beal. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1999. [S1769] John P. Ravilious, 29 Oct 2008, post to soc.genealogy.medieval. [S3593] Robert Joseph Curfman, "The Yorkshire Background of the Boyntons of Rowley." The Colonial Genealogist 41, 1983. [S76] The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2004-ongoing. [S6909] John Watson, "Margaret, Wife of Sir John Conyers of Hornby." Genealogical Rambling, 9 June 2017.