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In September 1406 Swan obtained a lease for 20 years of a number of tenements in Marlborough. Almost all the other known known facts about his life point to his having been a servant of the influential Wiltshire landowner, Sir William Sturmy*. In October 1400 the latter had appointed him and Richard Collingbourne* as attorneys charged to give livery of seisin of land around Great Bedwyn and in Hampshire to Sir William Hankford, j.c.p., and other feoffees. In 1410 our MP made over one of his houses in Marlborough to Sturmy, and it was in association with him that, in the following year, he stood surety for Walter Milward of Basingstoke. Swan’s fellow Member in March 1416 (and subsequently one of his sureties for attendance in the Parliament of 1420) was Thomas Newman, a lawyer who was also connected with the former Speaker. In 1418 Swan once more served as an attorney in a conveyance of Sir William’s lands, the feoffees again being headed by Hankford, now c.j.KB. At an unknown date before his death in 1427 Sturmy granted Swan for life certain lands and tenements at Crofton, no more than a mile from his seat at Wolf Hall; and in his will he left him a bequest of ten marks. In the meantime, Swan had stood surety for the appearance in the Commons of 1422 of Nicholas Wotton^†, burgess-elect for Marlborough.

CCR, 1402-5, p. 504; 1409-13, p. 305; 1413-19, pp. 457-8; CAD, ii. B2540-1; C219/12/4, 13/1; Feudal Aids, v. 264; PCC 7 Luffenham.

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: Charles Kightly

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