Legal Culture: Medieval Lawyers’ Aspirations and Pretensions

Summary

He ‘was yn those quarters a great officer, as steward, surveier or receyver of Richemont landes, whereby he waxid riche and able to build and purchace’. So wrote John Leland, who travelled throughout England in the early sixteenth century recording details about manors and landed estates, concerning Thomas Metcalfe (d.1504), who was in the service of Richard, duke of Gloucester (the future Richard III) and was appointed chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster in 1483. Metcalfe’s building project was Nappa Hall in Yorkshire, which still stands today and whose external features remain remarkably untouched. We are fortunate to have a description of the ‘before and after’ in the true manner of a television make-over programme. Leland informs us that before Metcalfe got to work on Nappa Hall, there was ‘but a cotage or litle better house, ontille this Thomas began ther to build in the which building 2 toures be very fair, beside other logginges’. The two towers are indeed an unusual feature of the hall. Comprising three storeys at the lower end rising to four at the upper, the towers flank the single storey hall, giving it a distinctive character.

The comments made about Metcalfe might be taken as a model for many ‘men of law’ of the time, who were essentially self-made men, rising through the ranks of their profession (perhaps retained in royal and/or noble service) and seeking to invest their newly acquired money in landed estates. Land and property offered the obvious choice for investment. Chaucer describes his ‘serjeant of the lawe’ thus: ‘So greet a purchasour was nowher noon/ Al was fee simple to hym in effect.’ In one reading at least this could mean that the serjeant was almost obsessively concerned with accumulating land: ‘fee simple’ could apply to land title, or more satirically to a lawyer’s grasping desire for money. But this was not necessarily a universal characteristic of the profession: not every lawyer rose through the ranks, nor did those that did necessarily rise that highly. Undoubtedly some lawyers were simply unsuccessful and remained poor and insignificant. However, many men of law can be found to have desired to use their professional expertise to their advantage and to extend their landed base as a consequence.