Richard Lyster

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Sir Richard Lyster (c. 1480 – 14 March 1554) was an English judge and Chief Justice of the King's Bench.

Origins and early career

Sir Frederick Madden in his "Remarks on the Monument of Sir Richard Lyster in St. Michael's Church Southampton," describes both the judge's grandfather, Thomas, and his father, John, as of Wakefield in Yorkshire. His mother was a daughter of Beaumont of Whitley in the same county. He had his legal training in the Middle Temple, where he arrived at the dignity of reader in Lent, 1516, and of double-reader in Lent, 1522, and he was appointed treasurer of the society in the following year.

Professional advancement

Of his early professional employment there is no account, the year books and other reports entirely omitting his name; but that he had acquired considerable legal eminence may be concluded from his being placed in the office of

By the inquisition after his death taken at Andover, he was found to be possessed of eleven manors in the counties of Hampshire and Surrey, together with various other lands and tenements. His monument represents him in scarlet robes (the colour of which has now disappeared), with a collar of S. S. round his breast, a judge's cap on his head, and a book in his hand. A part of the inscription remains which records its erection by his widow Elizabeth. This lady, who was a daughter of – Stoke, was his second wife; and by her he had a daughter Elizabeth, married to Sir Richard Blount, and a son Michael, knight of the Bath, who married Margery Horsman and died in his father's lifetime, leaving a son Richard, who married Mary the second daughter of Lord Chancellor Wriothesley and widow of Sir William Shelley of Michelgrove.^[2]

His first wife, and the mother of his children, Elizabeth and Michael, is currently unknown, his second wife was Isabel, the daughter of Sir Ralph Shirley of Winstneston, Sussex, and the widow of Sir John Dawtrey of Southampton who died in 1517. Isabel was still married to Sir John when Richard Lyster's daughter Elizabeth was born in 1510 and who at sixteen married Richard Blount in 1527.^[3] Isabel is also often mistaken for her sister, Jane Shirley, wife of John Dawtrey of Petworth. Isabel is probably the subject of the drawing by Hans Holbein the younger in the Royal Collection. His third wife was another Elizabeth and she is the one who was responsible for his memorial in St Michael's Church

References

• "Lyster, Richard" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.

Notes

Attribution

' This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Foss's Judges of England