HLGC - Research Seminar

We are pleased to attach our Semester 2 Term Card for the History of Law and Governance Centre. For our first event of this year, we will be welcoming Dr Ashley Hannay from the University of Manchester to speak about “Law and Society in a Northern Gentry Family: The Vavasours of Hazelwood and Spaldington, c. 1485-1585”.

Abstract:
The Vavasour family were established at Hazelwood Castle, near Tadcaster, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, shortly after the Norman Conquest. In the fifteenth century, through marriage, the Vavasours established a cadet branch at Spaldington in the East Riding. The Vavasours were pillars of Yorkshire society, with the mainline of the family remaining at Hazelwood Castle into the nineteenth century.This paper traces the unusual interactions of the Vavasours of Hazelwood and their Spaldington cousins with the Tudor legal system. Within three generations the Vavasours of Hazelwood and Spaldington can be seen to be interacting with almost every part of the law. The most notable member of the family, Sir John Vavasour, rose to be a Justice of the Common Pleas, and multiple Vavasours served as Justices of the Peace and Members of Parliament. Yet this was far from the whole picture. This paper explores the remarkable story of the Vavasours and the law under the Tudors through fratricide and familial crises to excommunication and rebellion.

Bio:
Dr Hannay joined University of Manchester in September 2021, having previously taught at the University of Cambridge and Queen Mary, University of London. He read History as an undergraduate at the University of Lancaster before studying Law at the University of Edinburgh and Magdalene College, Cambridge. Dr Hannay is a private lawyer with interests in legal history, equity, trusts and land. He is primarily interested in the doctrinal development of English property law up to the mid-sixteenth century, and in the legal history of the North of England. He is currently working on projects on the historical development of trusts and on the legal history of the County Palatine of Lancaster. At Manchester, he is the LLB Law with Joint Honours Programme Director and Co-Director of the Centre for Law and Business.