Family and Education

m. c.1392, Agnes, wid. of William Gerard† of Norwich, 1s.

Offices Held

Treasurer, Norwich Mich. 1387-8; bailiff 1390-1, 1396-7, 1401-2.1

J.p. Norwich 12 Apr. 1397-aft. July 1401.

Commr. of array, Norwich Aug. 1402.

Biography

Everard entered the freedom of Norwich in 1378-9. In 1386 he and Walter Bixton* successfully persuaded the King’s Council in London to reduce a loan expected from Norwich to the Crown from 500 marks to £100, although they had to accept responsibility on behalf of their fellow citizens for the defence of the city and the surrounding countryside in the face of the threatened French invasion. Everard served a term as treasurer and another as bailiff before being elected to the consecutive Parliaments of 1393 and 1394. At the parliamentary elections of 1395 he stood surety for Thomas Gerard, a kinsman of his wife’s former husband, and during his second term as bailiff he had a part in making the returns to both Parliaments of 1397. In January 1399 he was chosen as a member of the committee which was to consider how best to apply to Richard II, on the occasion of his proposed visit to Norwich, for a new charter for the city: a fruitless proceeding, as the King never came. It was in order to obtain confirmation of the existing liberties from Henry IV that Everard accompanied Henry Limner* to London in 1400; they were absent for 18 days (8-26 May) and received 3s.4d. per day each as expenses. The charter which raised Norwich to the status of a shire-incorporate came into effect while Everard’s last Parliament was in progress in January 1404.2

Everard’s marriage to Agnes, widow of the William Gerard who had represented the city in the Commons three times between 1373 and 1384, gave him possession of a capital messuage in St. Clement’s parish and a stall and tenement in the fishmarket in St. Peter Mancroft, which Agnes held for life as her dower portion; while in 1395 Thomas Gerard conveyed to them part of a garden, also in St. Peter’s. A few years earlier Agnes had inherited lands at Brundall, Strumpshaw and Postwick, a few miles to the east of Norwich, but would seem to have sold them before her union with Everard. However, in 1401, when an aid for the marriage of Henry IV’s elder daughter was being collected, Everard was assessed on half a knight’s fee called ‘Felthorp’ in the suburbs of the city, and as joint holder with William Gerberge of the manor of Yaxham, some 20 miles away. The latter he probably held merely as Gerberge’s feoffee and not in his own right.3

In his will, brought to the city court for enrolment on 5 Aug. 1405, shortly after his death, Everard left his widow a messuage in the parish of St. Peter Mancroft and his son Thomas, still a minor, another adjacent to it but in the parish of St. Gregory, arranging that they should hold the garden between the two properties in common. Agnes was also to have a grange and gardens next to ‘le Freyteyerd’ in St. Clement’s, although a tenement in the parish of SS. Simon and Jude was to be sold for pious uses.4

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

• 1. Norf. Arch. xxv. 195; Norf. Official Lists ed. Le Strange, 98.
• 2. Cal. Freemen Norwich, 49; F. Blomefield, Norf. iii. 112, 114; Recs. Norwich ed. Hudson and Tingey, ii. 52; C219/9/11-13.
• 3. Norf. RO, Norwich enrolments, 15 mm. 4, 15, 19d, 24d, 28d; ‘Domesday bk.’, f. 86; CP25(1)168/177/62; Feudal Aids, iii. 629, 632; Blomefield, x. 282.
• 4. Norwich enrolments, 16 m. 22d.