FELDYNG, William

Later Feldyngs claimed descent from the house of Hapsburg. This conceit, which was probably the invention of Basil Feldyng, earl of Denbigh (d.1675), led to the creation of almost entirely fictional medieval pedigree.2 J.H. Round, Studies in Peerage and Fam. Hist. 216-49. The second earl was responsible for the spurious history of the fam. printed in J. Nichols, Leics., iv (1), 273-90. In reality, William Feldyng’s origins were more in keeping with that of other members of the English gentry. Indeed, until the time of his father, the family was of little significance. His great-grandfather, John Feldyng (d.1403), had been prominent enough to command burial in his local parish church at Lutterworth, where his brass survives, but the fact that his only local office was the relatively menial one of tax collector places him firmly among the ranks of the minor gentry. Our MP’s grandfather, another William, was similarly obscure: his recorded public career is confined to his attestation of the Warwickshire election of 1425.3 Nichols, iv (1), illust. facing p. 263; C219/13/3. Yet he may have been responsible for the advance of the family in another respect for it was probably he who launched his putative younger son, Geoffrey, on a successful career as a London mercer.4 Geoffrey’s place in the pedigree is uncertain, but there can be no doubt of his close kinship with our MP. Both bore the arms ‘argent, three lozenges or upon a fesse azure’: Stowe 860, f. 85; VCH Warws. vi. 174.

Our MP’s father greatly accelerated this advance. Although he too played little part in local affairs, he prospered sufficiently to make a series of property purchases. A later family history places him in the military retinue of the duke of Bedford, but the wool trade, in which our MP was later to be closely involved, is a more likely source of his wealth than military service. The most important of his purchases was the manor of Newnham Paddox (Warwickshire), a few miles to the west of Lutterworth.5 W. Dugdale, Warws., i. 86. Our MP first appears in the records in 1435 when he acted with his fa. in the purchase of land in Bitteswell near Lutterworth: CP25(1)/126/75/38. In 1439 the two acted together in the acquisition of land in nearby Stormeworth: CP25(1)/126/75/50. Such purchases partially explain why, in the Leicestershire subsidy returns of 1435-6, his income was assessed at a respectable £58 p.a. Not all of this was derived from lands destined to descend to our MP – some came from the life interest of his second wife, Joan Bellers, in the lands of her first two husbands, Simon Digby of Tilton-on-the-Hill (Leicestershire) and John Seyton of Maidwell (Northamptonshire) – but there can be no doubt that he passed to his son a significantly greater patrimony than he himself had inherited. His enhanced status was reflected late in his life when, on 14 May 1438, he and Joan secured a papal indult to have a portable altar.6 E179/192/59; CPL, viii. 393.

Feldyng’s father was also far-sighted enough, if we may judge by later evidence, to provide his son and heir with an education in the law and to contract for him a profitable marriage.7 His legal training has largely to be inferred from his appointment to the quorum of the peace. By July 1457 he was in receipt of an annual fee in the curious sum of 14s. 11d. from the priory of Axholme, and this might be taken as a further indication that he was a lawyer: SC6/1107/7. The latter arose out of John’s own second marriage to John Seyton’s widow, for our MP’s wife was her stepdaughter and almost certainly the half-sister of Thomas Seyton*, the heir to the Seyton patrimony. Although she was not an heiress at common law, she brought the Feldyngs her family’s manor of Martinsthorpe in Rutland, probably as a result of a jointure settlement made on her parents. Our MP was seised of this manor by June 1440 when Hugh Boyville* of nearby Ridlington allegedly broke his close there.8 VCH Rutland, ii. 85; CP40/724, rot. 233d. Feldyng presented to the church of Martinsthorpe in 1442. It was also at about this time that he entered his patrimony. His father last appears in the records in Easter term 1440 when father and son acquired by final concord about 250 acres of land in Lutterworth and the nearby vills of Bitteswell and Catthorpe.9 CP25(1)/126/76/52. As late as 1459 our MP had an action pending as executor of his father’s will: CP40/792, rot. 355d.

Early references to William are suggestive of a legal training. In Easter term 1441, as ‘of Lutterworth, gentleman’, he joined Everard Digby*, his stepmother’s son, and William Beaufo* in offering mainprise for a clerk of Leicester. In the following Hilary term he appeared in person in the court of common pleas to sue Boyville for the entry into Martinsthorpe and this is the first of a regular series of personal appearances as a plaintiff in the central courts. As a lawyer from a gentry family he was a natural choice as a member of the quorum of the peace in his native county. He does not appear on the enrolled commissions of the peace until June 1448, but he was already acting as a j.p. a year earlier.10 KB27/720, rex rot. 30d; 723, rot. 11d; CP40/724, rot. 233d; KB9/256/118. With this appointment came a more prominent part in local affairs. In Easter term 1449 he sued an action jointly with a more senior Leicestershire lawyer, Richard Hotoft*, and on the following 16 Oct. the two men were returned to represent Leicestershire in Parliament.11 C219/15/7.

Nothing is known of Feldyng’s political sympathies at this date, and there is certainly no indication of that strong Lancastrian affiliation which was to characterize the course of his later life. Indeed, there is a curious hiatus in his career during the early 1450s. Aside from reappointments to the Leicestershire bench, he was not appointed to any local commission between 1449 and 1457 and the only record of his public activity is his attestation of the Leicestershire election held on 19 June 1455 in the aftermath of the Yorkist victory at the battle of St. Albans.12 C219/16/3. He appears to have concentrated almost exclusively upon his own affairs, further continuing the expansion of the family estates begun by his father. In 1451 he leased three closes in Maidwell for a term of four years from Thomas Seyton; early in 1453 he completed the purchase of four messuages and six virgates of land in Lilbourne, Clay Coton and Yelvertoft (Northamptonshire), a few miles to the south of Lutterworth; and in July 1454 he took a long lease of a ruined messuage, 41 acres of land and a meadow called ‘le Hoke’ in Newnham Paddox from the Carthusian priory of Axholme (Lincolnshire) for a term of 90 years.13 Add. Ch. 22282; CP25(1)/179/95/132; E326/11680. The expansion of his landed interests may have caused some resentment on the part of his neighbours. In Michaelmas term 1454 he appeared in person in the court of King’s bench to claim damages of as much as 300 marks against a clerk and husbandman of Gilmorton for close-breaking and threatening him at Lutterworth (in the following February he was awarded a more modest £20 at the Leicester assizes), and in Easter term 1457 he demanded £100 against those (including the vendor) who had entered his newly-purchased property at Lilbourne, Clay Coton and Yelvertoft.14 KB27/774, rot. 96; 784, rot. 69; 786, rot. 104d.

This expansion of Feldyng’s estates was probably funded by considerable but ill-documented commercial interests, for he is without doubt to be identified with the merchant of the Calais staple active in the late 1440s and early 1450s.15 The evidence is indirect but compelling. As a stapler, Feldyng was joined with other Leics. merchants in contributing to government loans. He also employed in his own transactions another local stapler, John Page of Hinkley: CP25(1)/126/75/50; CP40/783, rot. 322; 799, rot. 363. No doubt his close kinship with Geoffrey Feldyng facilitated his trading interests. Indeed, these interests may have informed his decision to seek election to the Parliament of November 1449. This assembly was of particular importance to the staplers for it came at a time when arrangements were being made for the repayment of substantial loans they had made to the Crown. On 20 Oct., four days after Feldyng’s election, his name was joined with that of two other local merchants, Richard Sapcote and William Prodhomme, in a licence to ship wool from Ipswich free of customs in repayment of the £366 5s. they had contributed to loans amounting to £10,700 the staplers had made over the previous four years. While Parliament was in session arrangements were made for the repayment of a further loan, and, although our MP does not appear to have been among the syndicates which contributed on that occasion, he received further licences to export free of customs in October 1454, the one a continuation of the earlier licence, the other in respect of a further sum of nearly £100 contributed in company with William and Richard Prodhomme.16 CPR, 1446-52, p. 315; 1452-61, pp. 210-12, 226; RP, v. 208-9 (cf. PROME, xii. 157).

Not until the mid 1450s is there evidence to show that Feldyng had formed strong ties with any of the local nobility. In Michaelmas term 1455, however, Edward Grey, Lord Ferrers of Groby (d.1457), and Elizabeth Ferrers, his wife, from whom Feldyng held his manor in Lutterworth, surrendered their interest in a valuable part of her inheritance (namely, the manors of Newbottle, Brington and Woodham Ferrers) to six feoffees, including our MP, Sir Thomas Fynderne* and Thomas Boughton*. A later suit in Chancery shows that these lands were intended for the jointure of Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Wydeville, Lord Rivers, on her marriage to Lord Ferrers’s son, Sir John Grey.17 CP25(1)/293/72/398. This is the first evidence of a connexion between Feldyng and what might be termed the Lancastrian establishment (the groom was to die fighting for Lancaster at the second battle of St. Albans), and there can be little doubt that these links were closer than implied by the surviving evidence.

Feldyng’s enhanced standing in the late 1450s is best exemplified by the unfavourable terms on which Richard Verney of Compton Murdack in Warwickshire was prepared to marry his son and heir, Edmund, to our MP’s daughter, Elizabeth. By an indenture dated 1 Aug. 1457 the groom’s father undertook to convey both his own lands and those of his wife (save lands worth a modest eight marks p.a.) to a group of feoffees drawn from the friends of both contracting parties, namely Thomas Lyttleton, serjeant-at-law, John Brome II*, Henry Boteler II*, John Bellers*, Everard Digby and Thomas Boughton (judging from what we know of our MP’s associations, the last three were acting for him). These feoffees were to hold these estates to his use for his life; on his death, if his wife Eleanor was still alive, they were to convey to her the manor house of Compton Murdack with a garden and closes worth four marks p.a. and annual rents totalling as much as 76 marks from the manors of Compton Murdack and Kingston; and on her death (or his if he survived her) they were to convey all the lands to the couple and the groom’s issue. Further, they were to provide for the couple’s immediate maintenance by granting them and their issue an annual rent of 20 marks. Such terms were remarkably favourable to our MP since his daughter was ultimately to have a life interest in almost the entire Verney estate (although she was to lose lands worth £40 p.a. if she remarried after Verney’s death), and to obtain them Feldyng undertook to pay a portion of £200. This is an indication of his wealth in that it was the sort of sum generally given to the daughters of substantial esquires at this date but, much more significantly, it was considerably less than was usually required to purchase so large a jointure. Verney may have been moved to accept such apparently unfavourable terms by our MP’s political standing at a time when the fortunes of Lancaster were in the ascendant.18 Shakespeare Centre Archs., Willoughby de Broke mss, DR98/122A; C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 480. Richard Verney’s survival until 1490 made these terms less favourable to the bride than they might otherwise have been. None the less she lived long enough to come into her jointure on the groom’s death in 1495: CIPM Hen. VII, i. 656, 1052.

Later evidence leaves no doubt that Feldyng was reckoned among the committed supporters of the Lancastrian regime in the late 1450s, even though little can be discovered about either his activities or connexions. In view of the strong support of the leading Leicestershire magnate, John, Viscount Beaumont, for this regime, it is curious to find no direct evidence of association between the two men. However, on 1 Nov. 1459 Feldyng was elected to Parliament for Leicestershire in company with John Whatton*, an obscure Household esquire in Beaumont’s service, and, considering the critical importance of the assembly, it is likely that the viscount exerted considerable influence at the hustings and that Feldyng was returned with his support. The modest status of all 12 of the attestors certainly suggests some irregularity in the conduct of the election, although Feldyng, unlike his colleague, was well qualified to serve. His apparent eagerness to do so in an assembly that was bound to be highly controversial and divisive is clear evidence of his support for the ruling house, and this was recognized early in the following year when he was appointed to a high-powered commission of oyer and terminer charged with investigating treasons in the lordships of the Yorkist lords in Wales and the marches.19 C219/16/5; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 564-5. He was at Westminster early in 1460 for he appeared in person to pursue actions in both Hil. and Easter term: KB27/795, rot. 64; CP40/797, rots. 226d, 290. In the early summer of 1460 he was nominated to a similar commission to investigate treasons in the south-east: the fact that he held no lands outside the Midlands shows that he owed his appointment to both to some special connexion with the regime and it is possible that he had found a place in Henry VI’s household. The Yorkist victory at the battle of Northampton (and perhaps also Beaumont’s death there) must, therefore, have been a very serious reverse to his rising fortunes, and it is not surprising that he should have been removed from the commission of the peace in his native county.

Feldyng’s commitment to the Lancastrian cause is reflected in his exemption from Edward IV’s general pardon of March 1461, an exemption which implies his presence at the battles of Wakefield or Towton. None the less, he was not included among those attainted in the new King’s first Parliament, and he was soon able to make his peace, temporarily at least, with the Yorkist regime. He was quick to resort to the courts in protection of his interests which his loss of influence may have made others readier to flout. As early as the first Michaelmas term of the new reign he sued pleas of debt in the court of common pleas against several lesser men for sums totalling over £100, and, by bill brought in the court of King’s bench, he recovered over £30 against a yeoman of Hertfordshire to whom he had sold oxen. Soon after he was able to secure the earlier-withheld pardon, granted him on the following 16 Feb.20 CCR, 1461-8, p. 55; CP40/802, rot. 281d; KB27/802, rot. 20d. But, although he was able to avoid the most severe consequences of support for a defeated cause, he was not able to regain the prominent place in local administrative affairs which he had enjoyed in the late 1450s. The only commission to which the Yorkists appointed him was an unwelcome one: in common with many other former Lancastrians he was named as one of the assessors to the subsidy of 1463. Thereafter his position may have been improved by the marriage of Elizabeth Wydeville, widow of Sir John Grey, to Edward IV in May 1464. His association with Elizabeth dated back to her first marriage in 1455, and when the jointure settlement made at this marriage became the subject of litigation in Chancery in 1463 he again played a part in her affairs. Her mother-in-law, Elizabeth Ferrers, claimed that the fine of 1455 had been levied to her own use rather than for the settlement of a jointure on her son’s marriage. The chancellor’s ruling clearly went in the younger Elizabeth’s favour for, on 26 May 1463, our MP demised the disputed property to her for the term of her life.21 C1/27/268-271; CCR, 1461-8, p. 179.

The improvement in Feldyng’s standing is evidenced by the profitable marriage he was able to contract for his eldest son, John. By 12 Sept. 1464 John had married Ellen, one of the two daughters and heiresses of the late Thomas Walsh of Wanlip in Leicestershire. On that date our MP granted the couple and their issue all his lands in Stormsworth, a few miles to the east of Lutterworth, on condition that, if John should die childless before she came to the age of 20, then the grant was to be void.22 Nichols, iv (1), 368-9. The condition was fulfilled and Ellen took her share of Walsh lands to her second husband, William Lyttleton. William was also able to resume the series of purchases, remarkably concentrated in the near vicinity of Lutterworth, by which the family inheritance had been so greatly augmented over the previous 30 years or more. By a final concord levied in 1465 he acquired from his kinsman, William Purefoy of Shirford in Warwickshire, the manor of ‘Purefoy’ in Misterton.23 CP25(1)/126/78/10.

A few years later Feldyng formed another link with the Yorkist establishment through the marriage of his daughter Anne to Humphrey Grey (d.1499), nephew of Edward, Lord Ferrers of Groby, and cousin of a leading Yorkist, Edmund Grey, earl of Kent. On 5 June 1470, probably at the time of the marriage, the earl was among those who settled the manor of Saxthorpe in Norfolk on the groom, our MP, the bride’s brother, Everard, (Sir) Thomas Tresham*, John Bellers, William Catesby† and William Allington† to the use of the couple and their male issue.24 HMC Lothian, 55; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 355; F. Blomefield, Norf. vi. 498. This match could be taken to signify the completion of our MP’s political rehabilitation, yet his new ties with the Yorkist regime proved too weak to restrain him from a reversion to his earlier loyalties when the political climate changed a few months later.

In the last act of his life Feldyng was active in support of the restored Henry VI. His reappearance on the quorum of the peace in Leicestershire and, more importantly, his appointment as sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire indicates his high standing with the restored regime. He was offered an inducement to serve in the latter office: on 28 Nov. 1470 the treasurer and chamberlains of the Exchequer were ordered to deliver to him tallies in the sum of 120 marks assigned on the issues of his bailiwick. Nor did he disappoint when called upon for military support, for was among those knighted on the field of the battle of Tewkesbury on 4 May 1471. His life as a knight was, however, to be an extremely brief one for he was among the Lancastrians killed there.25 E404/71/6/29; J. Warkworth, Chron. Reign Edw. IV (Cam. Soc. x), 18; Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, v. 777; John Benet’s Chron. (Cam. Misc. xxiv), 233; J. Leland, Itin. ed. Toulmin Smith, iv. 163. Since his eldest son John disappears from the records at this date it is possible that he too died in the battle.

The surviving alabaster monument in the north aisle of Lutterworth church can be tentatively ascribed to Feldyng. The effigy of the male is singular in that it portrays him in armour covered with a mantle, a reference perhaps to his combination of military and legal experience.26 A.H. Dyson, Lutterworth, 127-8, illust. facing p. 136. Feldyng and his wife were also commemorated at Lutterworth in now-lost stained glass: Nichols, iv (1), 265. A contemporary chronicle names our MP among those casualties of battle buried in the parish church of Tewkesbury: C.L. Kingsford, Eng. Hist. Lit. 378. By the late 1470s, when his widow married the royal justice, Richard Neel*,27 CP40/876, rot. 48. the family had already overcome the unfortunate circumstances of his death. His second son and heir, Everard (d.1515), educated at Inner Temple, quickly made his peace with Edward IV: in March 1472 he secured a general pardon as ‘of Lutterworth, gentleman, son and heir of Sir William Feldyng, late of Ely and Haddenham in Cambridgeshire’. This last designation is puzzling. It explains our MP’s distraint to take up knighthood in Cambridgeshire in 1465 and his later appointment as sheriff there, but there is nothing to show how he came by his lands at Ely and Haddenham. His interest in them was for more than life for they descended to his heirs.28 J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), i. 661; C67/49, m. 10; E159/242, recorda Hil. rot. 16. In his will of 1515 Everard bestowed the family lands in the Isle of Ely on his second son, Peter, for life with remainder to the main line in fee: Test. Vetusta ed. Nicolas, ii. 532. Everard restored the family fortunes. His appointment as steward of the honour of Leicester in September 1485 implies that he fought for Henry VII at the battle of Bosworth. However this may be, he was certainly in arms with that King at the battle of Stoke and at Blackheath. He was rewarded with knighthood at the marriage of Prince Arthur in 1501.29 R. Somerville, Duchy, i. 564; PROME, xv. 258; Dugdale, i. 87.