Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pateshull, Simon de (d.1217?)
PATESHULL or PATTISHALL, SIMON de (d. 1217?), judge, probably a native of Pattishall, Northamptonshire, where his family, and possibly he, held the manor under the prior of Dunstable, received charge of the castle of Northampton by the terms of the award between John and the chancellor William of Longchamp [q. v.] in 1191, and appears as one of the king's justices in 1193. In 1195 he was sheriff of Northamptonshire, Essex, and Hertfordshire, and continued sheriff of Northamptonshire until 1204. During the reign of John he seems to have been chief justice of the common pleas division of the king's court, commissions being issued to him by name, ‘with others his companions.’ Matthew Paris speaks of him as chief justiciar of the whole kingdom (Chronica Majora, iii. 296), but this seems a mistake. He was one of the justices for the Jews, and in 1199 received from the king two houses in Northampton which had belonged to Benedict the Jew. John also gave him the manor of Rothersthorpe, near Northampton, and certain wood land. He probably held the manor of Bletsoe in Bedfordshire, having perhaps acquired it by marriage. A fine of a hundred marks incurred by him and another justice for having granted certain litigants a term without royal license was remitted in 1207. He appears to have been sent to Ireland by the king in 1210. He fell under the king's displeasure in 1215, John apparently suspecting him of complicity in the baronial revolt, and his lands were seized; but the abbot of Woburn defended him and made his peace with the king, who in December restored his lands (Patent Rolls, p. 94). He acted as judge in March 1216, and, as his son Hugh received restitution of his lands in 2 Hen. III, it is probable that Simon died in, or about, 1217. He had a son, Hugh de Pateshull [q. v.], bishop of Lichfield, and probably another Sir Simon de Pateshull [q. v.] Simon bore a high character for wisdom and honourable dealing.
[Foss's Judges, ii. 100; Dugdale's Orig. Jurid., Chron. Ser. p. 5; Rot. Litt. Claus. i. 61, 113, 114, 200, 244, ed. Hardy (Record Publ.); Rot. Litt. Pat. p. 94, ed. Hardy (Record Publ.); Rot. Chart. pp. 52, 131, 184, ed. Hardy (Record Publ.); Madox's History of the Exchequer, i. 235, ii. 315, 317; Matt. Paris's Chronica Majora, iii. 296, 542 (Rolls Ser.); Rog. Hov. iii. 136 (Rolls Ser.)]