William Yelverton
judge in Norfolk, England and twice a member of parliament for Great Yarmouth, Norfolk
Sir William Yelverton KB (1400 – 1470s) was a judge in Norfolk, England and twice a member of parliament for Great Yarmouth, Norfolk.
Biography
Yelverton was born in Norfolk to John Yelverton of Rackheath, Norfolk, and Elizabeth, the daughter of John Rede of Rougham.
Yelverton was a justice of the peace in Norwich in 1427 and recorder from 1433 to 1450. In 1435 and 1436, he was the member of parliament for Great Yarmouth and in 1439 he was made a sergeant-at-law. He was the under-steward of the Duchy of Lancaster, Norfolk and made judge of the king's bench in 1444.
In 1439, despite not being presiding justice, Yelverton intervened during the trial of rapist Thomas Elam, whose victim, Margaret Perman, died of her injuries. In front of the court he declared to remember the event of Margaret's death, lending weight to the prosecution, who won the guilty verdict.
In spite of some apparent reluctance to recognise the new king, he was continued in this office by Edward IV, who knighted him before September 1461. His name occurs in many judicial commissions in the early years of Edward's reign, and he was annually appointed justice of the peace for Norfolk and Suffolk.
Yelverton seems to have been capable of surviving the reigns of several monarchs and it was said of him that "This learned person seems to have stood equally well with the monarchs of both of the Roses, as we find him not only continued in his judicial office by King Edward IV, but made a Knight of the Bath, in order to grace that king's coronation; and upon the temporary restoration of King Henry [sic VI], appointed by patent, dated October 1470, one of the judges of the court of common pleas." John Burke from A general and heraldic dictionary of the peerages of England, Ireland and Scotland...
The public source identifies “William Yelverton” as judge in Norfolk, England and twice a member of parliament for Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around William, Yelverton and judge.
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This entry incorporates text from “William Yelverton” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.