Family and Education

Offices Held

Biography

Elyot, a chapman by trade, witnessed a deed at Horsham in October 1424. Two years later he sat on a jury at Bramber testifying about certain lands pertaining to John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, the lord of Horsham.2 Subsequently, Elyot was indicted for breaking into John Dawtre’s house in the town in July 1429, stealing plate and clothes worth £3 6s.8d., and ravishing Dawtre’s wife. He was also accused of stealing two fur gowns worth ten marks from Sir Hugh Halsham’s house at Southwark in November 1434, this being a matter of armed robbery. When brought to trial in the King’s bench he pleaded not guilty, but was then misled by Stephen Sloghterforth of Warnham, one of the jury, who undertook that his colleagues would be favourable to Elyot, so that he omitted to challenge any of the jurors. These, however, found him guilty, and he only managed to escape the death penalty as a result of an appeal to the King, from whom he procured a pardon in March 1438 on the grounds of Sloghterforth’s deception, and (presumably) proofs of his own innocence.3

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: A. P.M. Wright

Notes

• 1. Constable of Horsham in 1401: CPR, 1399-1401, p. 458.
• 2. Cat. Wiston Archs. ed. Booker, no. 1344; C139/25/40.
• 3. CPR, 1436-41, p. 172.