Robert de Faryngton

Little is known of his early life. Of his family, we know that he had at least one brother Nicholas, on whose behalf he petitioned the King in 1398, and a cousin, Hugh de Faryngton, who accompanied him to Ireland in 1395 and became a judge there.^[1] It is unknown whether they had any connection to the prominent de Faryngton family of Evesham, Worcestershire. Hugh seems to have lived in Bedfordshire^[2]

Ruins of St Dunstan-in-the-East, 2010

Robert is first heard of in 1370 as a clerk in the English Court of Chancery.^[1] He was in holy orders. Even in an age when such behaviour was commonplace among the priesthood, he was a notorious pluralist who acquired a remarkable number of benefices and prebends, which included Blackawton, Ludlow, Bishopstrow, Harlow, Laughton en le Morthen, St. Clether and St. Dunstan-in-the East.^[3] In 1375 he was awarded the prebendary of Aust, recently vacated by the philosopher John Wycliffe. On this occasion however, he clashed with the King's third son John of Gaunt, Wycliffe's most powerful protector and the dominant figure in the English government, who persuaded King Edward III that Wycliffe was still entitled to the prebend. The grant to de Faryngton was cancelled: he was compensated with another prebendary in Lincoln, with which, it has been said, he was content, "at least in the short term".^[4]

Despite his reputation for acquisitiveness, he was highly regarded as an administrator. In 1395 he was sent to Ireland as Master of the Rolls in Ireland.^[1] His tenure as a judge was brief, but it allowed him to gain the customary right of the Master of the Rolls to be appointed a prebend of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, and he was also given another prebend at Lusk.^[1] It is interesting that the King in 1395 gave a gift to the Chapter of St. Patrick's "on account of their poverty".^[5] Robert, on the King's instructions, also confirmed the charter for the Priory of All Hallows outside Dublin.^[5]

In 1397, when he appears to have been with the Royal Court at Westminster, he was described once again as a "King's clerk", though by now a very senior one. The Crown authorised a payment to Robert, to be shared with Sir Jenico d'Artois (a Gascon-born knight who was high in the Crown service in Ireland), for the marriages of the three daughters of the late Sir Robert Ufford (sometimes styled Lord Clavering) and his widow Eleanor Felton, daughter of Sir Thomas Felton and Joan de Wakefare, who were royal wards. Of the three girls, Sybilla became a nun, but suitable husbands of the Bowett family were found for her sisters, Joan and Ela.^[6]