Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Prisot, John

1317576Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 46 — Prisot, John1896James McMullen Rigg ‎

PRISOT, Sir JOHN (d. 1460), judge, was probably born at Westberies, Ruckinge, Kent, of which manor his father was lord, towards the close of the fourteenth century, He was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law on 31 Aug. 1443, and on 16 Jan. 1448-9 was made chief justice of the common bench. He was afterwards knighted, was a trier of petitions from Gascony and other parts beyond sea in the parliaments of 1453 and 1455, and in the latter year was a member of the Hertfordshire commission for raising funds for the defence of Calais. In 1455 he became one of the feoffees to the use of the crown of various estates in the duchy of Lancaster. He died in 1460, before the accession of Edward IV.

Prisot was a strong and learned judge and was 'of furtherance' to Littleton in the compilation of his 'Tenures'. He was lord of the mannor of Wallington, Hertfordshire, where his widow Margaret was residing in 1480.

[Cussons's Hertfordshire, Odsey Hundred, p. 80; Clutterbuck's Hertfordshire, iii. 597; Hasted's Kent, iii. 474; Dugdale's Orig. p. 59; Chron. Ser. pp. 64, 66; Nicolas's Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, vi. 239; Rot. Parl. v. 227, 279, vi. 355; Paston Correspondence, ed. Gairdner, i. 123, 211, 290-2; Foss's Lives of the Judges]

J. M. R.