YURLE (YERLL), Simon, of Launceston, Cornw.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1386-1421, ed. J.S. Roskell, L. Clark, C. Rawcliffe., 1993
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Family and Education

m. Christine.

Offices Held

Biography

Yurle’s background is obscure, but he was possibly a Devonshire man by birth, for in August 1419, only a year before his first return to Parliament for the Cornish borough of Launceston, he was described as being ‘of Devon’. Three months later, however, he was said to be living in Cornwall, and it seems likely that he held land on both sides of the Tamar. Yurle’s many appearances in the Exchequer as a surety suggest that he was a lawyer who specialized in work at that court. Thus, he acted (in 1419) on behalf of the lessees of manors in Yorkshire which had belonged to Henry, Lord Scrope of Masham, for (Sir) John Colshull II’s* widow (in 1422), for a lessee of lands in Bedfordshire (in July 1425, a few days after the dissolution of his third Parliament), for John Jaybien*, and for John Hody* (the future chief justice), Nicholas Aysshton* and their fellow custodians of the Pomeroy estates in Devon and Cornwall (in 1428). Meanwhile, he himself had obtained, together with John Cokeworthy II*, an Exchequer lease of certain escheated lands in Chilsworthy and Ipplepen, Devon, which was to run from Michaelmas 1419 for 20 years. On his own account, at some point before 1434, he brought an action in the court of common pleas against a husbandman from Grove, Cornwall, for illegal detinue of a muniment chest.1

The date of Yurle’s death is not known, but the words of a London goldsmith, as recorded in a Chancery petition dated some time between 1442 and 1450, provide an epitaph for him. On meeting Yurle’s widow in Aldersgate Street, the goldsmith, John Cary, ‘reported him for a true man and for a good paler’ and commended the way he had settled his affairs.2

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

  • 1. CFR, xiv. 286, 293; xv. 105, 248, 326; E368/195 m. 44; CPR, 1429-36, p. 311.
  • 2. C1/15/149, 191. Yurle’s widow married Thomas Palmer of Otford, Kent.