OLDHALL, Sir William

One of the best known of all fifteenth-century Speakers,27 Any unattributed references in this biography are from J.S. Roskell, ‘Sir Wm. Oldhall’, Nottingham Med. Studies, v. 175-200. Oldhall owed his political career to his attachment with Richard, duke of York. A veteran of the Hundred Years’ War, he was well into middle age when he joined York’s service. He was this powerful patron’s senior by more than 15 years and the duke came to rely heavily on him as his principal counsellor. Given his influence with York, it is probably no exaggeration to say that Oldhall helped to shape the duke’s career and, therefore, the course of English history. Although well rewarded with lands and offices by his powerful patron, he endured his fair share of vicissitudes as York’s servant and did not enjoy an easy old age. Twice attainted and caught up in several bitter personal disputes in his later years, he had the misfortune to die just months before the duke’s eldest son seized the throne as Edward IV, meaning that he never came to reap the rewards enjoyed by many of his fellow Yorkists.

Born in the late fourteenth century, Oldhall was the only son of a prominent Norfolk esquire. It is not certain who his mother was, since he came into possession of the lands brought to his family by both of Edmund Oldhall’s wives, although it is worth noting that his daughter and heir shared the same Christian name as Edmund’s first wife, Mary English.28 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 872. Roskell, 177, suggests that Edmund Oldhall’s second wife, Alice Fransham, was William’s mother. The bulk of Oldhall’s inheritance consisted of some eight or nine manors and other holdings in west and north-west Norfolk, although he also succeeded to the manor of Ditton Valence and lands in east Cambridgeshire.29 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 871. It is possible that he did not come fully into his own during the lifetime of his father’s widow Alice. She was still alive in 1436,30 15th Cent. Eng. ed. Chrimes, Ross and Griffiths, 122. nearly 20 years after Edmund Oldhall had died, suddenly and intestate, while his son was absent in France.

The young William began his career as a soldier in 1415, having indented to serve with three mounted archers in the retinue that Henry V’s uncle Thomas Beaufort, earl of Dorset, took to France. Dorset was made captain of Harfleur after it fell in the following September, and he and his retinue were based in the town for the rest of the campaign. In spite of missing the battle of Agincourt, the English garrison at Harfleur saw plenty of fighting. During the winter of 1415-16, they made several forays out of Harfleur, incurring heavy casualties on one such sortie in March 1416. By then duke of Exeter, Beaufort spent the latter part of the following year and most of the first half of 1418 in England, but Oldhall must have remained in France, given that he was away from home when his father died.31 E101/4/39; 69/7/503; CP, v. 202-3. Roskell, 179, mistakenly assumes that Oldhall was not in the army which sailed for France in August 1415. He was reunited with Exeter in the summer of 1418 and accompanied him to the siege of Rouen.32 William of Worcestre, Itins. ed. Harvey, 361.

There is no evidence for Oldhall’s activities between January 1419, when Rouen finally fell, and the French victory at Baugé in March 1421. Exeter was taken prisoner at Baugé but it is likely that his retainer, who was certainly in England shortly afterwards, had returned home before the battle took place. Trouble he had run into with his inheritance prompted Oldhall’s return. Taking advantage of his absence in France, one William Shelton had obtained administration of his father’s estate from the archbishop of Canterbury. Probably the William Shelton of Norfolk who had succeeded his father Sir Ralph Shelton† in 1414, Shelton had also managed to persuade the sole surviving feoffee of the Oldhall manors at Bodney and Narford in the west of the county to sell them to his own nominees, having convinced that trustee that Edmund’s only son and heir had died overseas. Upon arriving home, Oldhall succeeded in recovering the properties although only after presenting a bill to the chancellor and petitioning the Parliament of May 1421 for redress. Assuming that Shelton was Sir Ralph’s offspring and not a namesake, fears over his own inheritance might explain his behaviour, since Sir Ralph had arranged to exclude his son from some of his estates.33 C1/4/189; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 356. Having recovered Bodney and Narford, Oldhall prepared to return to France, and he obtained letters of protection at the beginning of June, prior to re-crossing the Channel in the retinue of the duke of Exeter, by now free from captivity.34 DKR, xliv. 627, 629.

By the following autumn Oldhall was again back in England, probably to deal with further personal matters. During this lengthy visit home he stood surety in the Chancery for Robert Lathbury, who had undertaken to serve the King in France, and at the Exchequer for Sir Edmund Stradling, to whom the Crown had agreed to grant the keeping of certain estates which had belonged to the late Sir Gilbert Denys†.35 CFR, xiv. 441-2; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 772. Oldhall did not return to France until the summer of 1423. Although still a member of Exeter’s retinue, it was under Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury, that he fought at the battle of Cravant on 31 July that year. Among his comrades-in-arms at Cravant (almost certainly the battle where he won his knighthood),36 Worcestre, 335, mistakenly records that he was knighted at Verneuil in Aug. 1424. was his brother-in-law, Robert, Lord Willoughby, a veteran of the Agincourt campaign and the husband of Salisbury’s sister Elizabeth. Oldhall had married Margaret Willoughby some time between late 1417 and his return to France in 1423. She was not just a valuable match for her family connexions, since she held for life some nine manors and other lands in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire that had belonged to her previous husband Sir Thomas Skipwith. The couple must have resided on one of the Skipwith manors at South Ormsby in Lincolnshire early in their marriage, since William was described as ‘of South Ormsby’ in the letters of protection granted to him a few weeks before Cravant.37 CIPM, xx. 698-9; CCR, 1435-41, p. 476; DKR, xlviii. 226; Feudal Aids, iii. 262, 284, 341, 363.

During early 1424 Oldhall was in England seeking recruits for a substantial retinue of his own. Having indented to serve the Crown in France with 44 men-at-arms and 135 archers for six months, he took part in an expedition to Picardy in the spring of that year, an operation he helped the Regent of France, John, duke of Bedford, to plan.38 E404/40/188; E159/664, recorda Mich. rot. 6; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 185. He also played an active role in the major campaigns of the following summer, since he was with Salisbury at the taking of Ivry and fought in Bedford’s hard-won and bloody victory at Verneuil on 17 Aug. Shortly afterwards he was appointed captain of Essay, a fortress to the north-east of Alençon, and later that year seneschal of Normandy. During the mid 1420s, he took part in Salisbury’s conquest of Maine and Anjou, where he was appointed captain of the garrisons at Montsoer and Saint-Laurent-des-Mortiers.

Again in England in mid 1426, Oldhall was by now closely associated with the duke of Bedford, who in the summer of that year sent him on an embassy to the duke of Burgundy. It appears that the purpose of the mission was to improve Anglo-Burgundian relations, strained by the rift between Duke Philip and his cousin Jacqueline of Hainault, wife of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. Escorted by 41 horsemen, he and his fellow ambassadors, Richard Wydeville*, Master John Estcourt and Nicholas Harley, left London for Flanders on 1 Aug. Before their departure, the Exchequer paid both Oldhall and Wydeville £50 and Estcourt and Harley 50 marks each towards their wages and expenses. Presumably Oldhall headed the embassy, since he was allowed daily wages of 20s., as opposed to the 13s. 4d. assigned to each of his fellows. Away for just over two months, the ambassadors reported back to the Council on the following 10 Oct. In February 1427 the Council granted a petition they had submitted over arrears of their wages, although Oldhall was still owed money for his part in the mission nearly 20 years later.39 G.L. Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort, 158; E404/42/299; 43/188; E101/322/14; PPC, iii. 201, 244; E403/675, m. 9; 765, m. 4; E159/203, brevia Hil. rot. 21.

Possibly already back in France when the petition was granted, Oldhall had certainly returned to soldiering by May 1428 when he helped John, Lord Talbot, to recover Le Mans. Talbot meted out terrible retribution on those at Le Mans who had helped the French to seize it from the English, but later that year the King’s council in Normandy received intelligence that some of the inhabitants of Argentan had not heeded this dreadful warning and intended to betray their own town to the duke of Alençon. Reacting to this news, the council wrote to the lieutenant of the garrison at Argentan, to inform him that it was sending Oldhall to assist him there until the duke of Bedford ordered otherwise, and to instruct him that he and Oldhall should immediately expel any of the town’s inhabitants whom they suspected of disloyalty.40 A.J. Pollard, John Talbot, 13; Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, ii. 85-86. Like the embassy to Burgundy, this mission was a clear sign of Bedford’s trust in Oldhall. The Regent further demonstrated his high regard for him in a despatch drawn up in the spring of the following year. Intended to draw attention to those whom he considered worthy candidates for election to the Order of the Garter, this catalogued the exploits of Sir William and four other knights serving in France. It referred to Sir William’s participation in the battles of Cravant and Verneuil, his campaigning in Anjou and Maine in 1425 and the assistance he had given to Talbot at Le Mans. It also bought to notice an incident in which he and 17 of his men had once beaten off a superior French force which had ambushed them.

Amidst such exploits in the field, Oldhall remained in touch with home. On one occasion at the end of the 1420s he received a messenger from the corporation of Norwich, a body for which his father had acted as an adviser. He himself had links with Norwich, since Henry Sturmere, one of the city’s more prominent residents, served him as a feoffee.41 Norf. RO, Norwich city recs., view of treasurers’ acct. 1429-30, NCR 7d, f. 1; E159/207, recogniciones Trin. 1431; CP25(1)/169/189/196. He also found time for more personal concerns, since in July 1431 he and his wife obtained papal indults, as of the diocese of Norwich, allowing them to keep a portable altar and granting them a plenary indulgence. Another, more worldly matter demanding Oldhall’s attention in the early 1430s was his dispute with Pentney priory, a house of Augustinian canons in west Norfolk. The quarrel was over the manors of West Bilney and North Tuddenham, once part of the estate of his maternal great-grandfather, Sir Richard Belhouse, who had died in 1362. He and Richard Boson, another of Belhouse’s great-grandsons, claimed that the priory had acquired the manors by taking advantage of Belhouse as he lay in extremis on his deathbed. The prior of Pentney argued that Belhouse had freely conveyed them to several feoffees, who had subsequently enfeoffed them on his priory. The matter went to law and in the meantime the manors were taken into the King’s hands.42 KB27/687, rex rot. 6; CP40/700, Juyn rots. 77-79.

Eventually won by the priory, the quarrel lasted several years and was still very much in progress when Bedford appointed Oldhall lieutenant of Calais. The lieutenancy, which the latter assumed before the end of 1432, proved a difficult one since the garrison there mutinied in the spring of the following year. Protesting over their unpaid wages, the soldiers seized the wool lying on Calais’ wharves and refused Oldhall entry into the town, even though his wife was then staying within its walls. No doubt feeling thoroughly humiliated, Sir William rode to Bedford at Rouen to seek help. As it happened, the Regent was about to visit the Low Countries for his marriage to Jacquetta of Luxembourg, and he dealt with the troubles at Calais en route. Accompanied by Oldhall, he and his entourage took up lodgings at Balinghem castle, a few miles south of the town, while Richard Buckland*, the treasurer of Calais, was sent ahead to negotiate with the garrison. Having received certain assurances from Buckland, the soldiers permitted the duke and his company to enter in peace on 12 Apr. Once inside the town, however, the duke ordered the arrest of many of their number and certain customs’ obligations previously promised to them were withdrawn. A few days later Bedford left for Thérouanne, where he was married on the 20th. On his return to Rouen shortly afterwards, he again stopped off at Calais, to discuss the future conduct of the war with the duke of Gloucester and to mete out further punishment to the imprisoned soldiers. Bedford’s harsh measures provoked strong resentment in some quarters, and one chronicler sympathetic to the mutineers claimed that after these events the duke never had ‘bodily hele till he dyet’.43 Griffiths, 195; The Brut (EETS, cxxxvi), 570-1.

It is not clear if Oldhall accompanied Bedford when the Regent returned home in June 1433, although he was certainly back in England in the following spring when he attended a great council at Westminster. The French war was very much on the agenda, and Bedford, no doubt supported by Oldhall, was obliged to justify his conduct of it. The duke returned to France at the beginning of July 1434. Oldhall soon followed him, for on the 12th of that month he received royal letters of attorney prior to crossing the Channel. Later that year he helped to deal with the aftermath of an atrocity committed by a group of unwaged English soldiers. In early October 1434 these men massacred an entire local Norman militia at Vicques, near Falaise, causing uproar in that region of Normandy. Recognizing the seriousness of the situation, the bailli of Caen, Sir Richard Haryngton*, acted decisively to ascertain the facts and swiftly to send the results of his investigation to Bedford and the Grand Conseil at Rouen. In response, Bedford appointed a high-powered judicial commission, led by Sir John Fastolf, the master of his household, Sir John Salvain, bailli of Rouen, and Oldhall, to meet up with Haryngton at Falaise, and the ringleaders of the marauding soldiery were captured, tried and executed.44 Bibliothèque Nationale, Fr. mss, 26058/2338, 2399, 2416. Oldhall returned to England some time after Bedford’s death in September the following year. He was perhaps already home by December 1435, when the Crown granted the keeping of the manor of Newton by Castle Acre in west Norfolk to him and four other Norfolk gentry, including Sir John and Sir Robert Clifton*, two of his companions at the siege of Rouen in 1418-19.

Having returned home, Oldhall was assessed for the purposes of the income tax the Parliament of 1435 had granted to the Crown. By now a knight banneret, he was found to enjoy a substantial income of £215 3s. 4d. p.a. from his lands and fees in Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire and the Skipwith estates in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, but it is unclear whether this included the £80 p.a. he received from Robert, Lord Willoughby. Granted before 1431 and drawn upon Willoughby’s estates in Norfolk and Suffolk, this annuity for life had been bestowed on him in return for a loan, evidently very substantial and possibly as much as £1,000, he had afforded his brother-in-law.45 15th Cent. Eng. 98, 122; Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, ii. 33; E163/7/31/2, no. 33; C131/70/20; 236/30; CPR, 1452-61, p. 34. Oldhall himself was paying out at least two annuities in this period, one of £10 to his father’s widow Alice, the other of £5 to Robert Norwich, probably one of his servants or tenants.46 E163/7/31/2, no. 3. By November 1436 Oldhall was yet again preparing to go to France, although in the end he did not return until nearly a year later.47 DKR, xlviii. 315. During 1437 he obtained a royal pardon,48 C67/38, m. 10 (14 July). and was involved in a case in Chancery in his capacity as a feoffee for the late Sir Robert Harling, a fellow Norfolk man and veteran of the French wars.49 E159/213, brevia Hil. rot. 17; 214, brevia Hil. rot. 6d; 216, brevia Easter rot. 5; CIPM, xxiv. 444-8; J.M. Wingfield, Wingfield Fam. 20. Harling was not the only comrade-in-arms for whom Oldhall was a feoffee, since he also served as such on behalf Sir John Fastolf and Sir Andew Ogard*, two other former retainers of the late duke of Bedford. Both knights likewise acted for him in the same capacity and were probably among his closest military friends.50 CCR, 1441-7, p. 439; 1447-54, p. 228; 1454-61, pp. 90-92, 390; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 112, 300-1, 414; 1452-61, pp. 198, 386; CChR, vi. 38; CFR, xviii. 184; CP25(1)/91/115/139; 169/189/196; Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Misc. 152; Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, iv. 292; v. 94.

In common with Fastolf, Ogard and others who had served Bedford, Oldhall began to gravitate to the young Richard, duke of York, after their patron’s death. It is not known exactly when he entered the service of York, who began his first term as lieutenant-general of France and Normandy in the spring of 1436, but it was probably as one of the duke’s men that he made preparations to leave England in October 1437. His destination was Bayeux,51 DKR, xlviii. 320. where he was to become lieutenant of the garrison commanded by his brother-in-law Lord Willoughby. After York’s term as lieutenant-general expired in 1437, Oldhall served as a counsellor for his successor, Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, who may have rewarded him at home with the stewardship of Saham Tony in Norfolk.52 In a letter of the late 1450s, the then earl of Warwick, Richard Neville, directed Thomas Hugford* and other executors of Beauchamp to reinstate the MP to the stewardship in place of Sir Thomas Tuddenham, but this missive doesn’t reveal the date of Oldhall’s previous appointment (which did not necessarily occur during Beauchamp’s lifetime) to that office: Trans. Birmingham Arch. Soc. lix. 2-8. Sir William was reunited with York before Warwick’s death in April 1439, for in February that year he was one of five knights who accompanied the duke to a great council which met at Westminster to discuss the war.53 PPC, v. 108. This group also included two old comrades-in-arms, Sir Henry Inglose* and Sir John Popham*. Oldhall had lodged with Inglose, another Norfolk man, at the siege of Rouen 20 years earlier.54 Worcestre, 361. He was one of Sir Henry’s feoffees,55 CAD, iv. A7807; CP25(1)/170/191/263; C.F. Richmond, Paston Fam.: First Phase, 212. and some three months after the great council he stood surety for him in the Chancery. Oldhall also enjoyed a close relationship with Popham. In the late 1420s he, Popham, and William Glasdale had been ‘felowes togedre’ and ‘botefelowes in armes of alle winnings of war’, and in April 1428 the three men had captured the castle of ‘Newchastel’ on the river Saltre, winning a ransom of 1,770 ecus from five of the prisoners taken there.56 English Suits Parlement of Paris, 205-8.

A few months after his reappointment as lieutenant-general of France and Normandy in July 1440, York issued instructions for the management of the war. He did so with the advice of Oldhall, Sir John Fastolf and another experienced soldier, Sir William ap Thomas. It was these men, all members of York’s ‘chieff councelle’, who counselled the duke to secure the wide-ranging powers granted to him as lieutenant and who closely advised him in his conduct of that office.57 Griffiths, 459. The duke also soon came to rely on their help and advice at home, and all three were among the feoffees to whom he conveyed a number of his manors in southern England in March 1441. In spite of the rapidly deteriorating situation in France, York did not leave England until the following June. He crossed the Channel at the head of an army to which Oldhall contributed a sizeable retinue of 42 lances and 146 archers.58 J.S. Roskell, Speakers, 243.

Both of York’s terms as lieutenant-general were criticized for their supposed inactivity, the result (it was alleged) of his counsellors’ fears for his personal safety, even though he and Talbot were able to break up the French siege of Pontoise in the summer of 1441. It was through sheer lack of manpower available to York and his commanders, rather than incompetence, that the enemy were able to retake Pontoise in the following autumn.59 M. Keen, Eng. in the Later Middle Ages, 395; Pollard, 54-57. Roskell, ‘Sir Wm. Oldhall’, 185, neglects to mention the Pontoise campaign and dismisses York’s activities in 1441 for their ‘lack of success’. One contemporary annalist complained that York was too easily swayed by the counsel of young men; another that he depended over much on Oldhall for advice. Oldhall was certainly no longer a young man by this date, although he still had nearly two decades of active life ahead of him. He and his wife were described as ‘of mature age and weak’ in July 1443 when they were issued with an indult from the papacy permitting them to keep their own chaplain. In the following month they obtained a papal dispensation allowing them to eat meat in Lent and other periods of abstinence if they were unable, through ‘their weak constitution and old age’, to follow the customary regimen of fasting.60 CPL, ix. 369, 374.

No doubt Oldhall had exaggerated his infirmities when petitioning the Roman Curia, since he remained active in a military capacity throughout York’s second term as lieutenant-general, during which he also served as a member of the court of requests in Rouen.61 English Suits Parlement of Paris, 299. He developed ever closer personal links with the duke, who awarded him an annual pension of 2,000 ‘salus d’or’,62 Add. Ch. 147. and appointed him chamberlain of his household, general overseer of his estates in France and governor-general of those lands in Normandy which he had assigned to his infant second son, Edmund. Edmund’s lands were especially vulnerable to enemy action and included Orbec, a town situated to the south-west of Lisieux. Orbec was temporarily lost to the French in the spring of 1445,63 Johnson, 47n. and the battle-hardened Oldhall was made its captain upon its recovery. At the same time he took command at Pont-l’Evêque and of Lisieux itself. A good indication of Oldhall’s influence in the affairs of English Normandy in this period is a royal signet letter of about 1444. In this York was requested to send his servant to England, so that Oldhall might brief the King and his Council about the situation across the Channel.64 Roskell, Speakers, 243.

By the mid 1440s the King was actively seeking a peace treaty with France, and following his marriage to Margaret of Anjou he undertook to return the county of Maine to Margaret’s father, its ancestral count. Whatever his later criticisms of such a policy, York showed every sign of accepting it at the time. It was far less popular among his advisers in Normandy, and Oldhall must have found the proposed surrender of Maine, which he had helped to conquer, particularly galling.65 Johnson, 51-53. After his term as lieutenant-general expired in September 1445, York returned to England with his leading counsellors to seek his reappointment. The duke’s negotiations with the King and Council continued over the following winter and spring. In May 1446 he was styling himself lieutenant-general and clearly anticipating a return to France, but soon afterwards he was facing serious charges about his conduct in France. Adam Moleyns, bishop of Chichester and keeper of the privy seal, accused him of financial maladministration and of seeking to favour his own counsellors, namely Thomas, Lord Scales, Oldhall and Sir Andrew Ogard, at the expense of the garrisons protecting Normandy. Moleyns also questioned the effectiveness of the duchy’s defence under York, who sent Oldhall, Ogard and the treasurer of Normandy, John Stanlowe, to the King to rebut the charges. The delegation proved successful, in so far as Moleyns’s accusations were not pursued any further, but at the end of 1446 Edmund Beaufort, marquess of Dorset and subsequently duke of Somerset, was appointed lieutenant-general in York’s stead.66 M.K. Jones, ‘Somerset, York and Wars of Roses’, EHR, civ. 291; Griffiths, 506-7; John Vale’s Bk. ed. Kekewich et al. 180-3.

It is likely that Oldhall accompanied his patron to the Parliament which opened at Bury St. Edmunds in the following February, since he witnessed a grant the duke made to the Franciscan house at Bury while the Parliament was sitting. In April 1447 York went to Windsor to attend a chapter of the Garter. During this meeting he nominated his retainer for election to the Order in place of the late duke of Gloucester, who had died suddenly shortly after his arrest at Bury, but in spite of this and Bedford’s previous recommendation Oldhall would never become a Garter Knight.67 CPR, 1446-52, p. 231; Reg. Order of the Garter ed. Anstis, ii. 132-3. By now Sir William appears to have made the decision to retire from soldiering. At this date he still held lands across the Channel, but he must have realized that the future of the English in France was bleak and that his chances of retaining these properties were not good. He had much to lose, for what evidence exists for his French estates shows that they were very substantial. The earliest known (but almost certainly not the first) of his acquisitions was a grant in tail of lands in the Norman bailliages of Rouen, Caen and Evreux he received in October 1428. Formerly held by Sir Richard Haryngton*, these were worth 200 livres parisiens p.a. In February 1437 he acquired a grant in perpetuity of estates previously bestowed on Hartung von Klux, a foreign knight of the Garter (although he may not have retained them since a condition of this gift was that he and his heirs should live continually in France), and seven months later the barony of Roncheville and an ‘hôtel’ in Honfleur.68 Massey, 164-5; idem, ‘Land Settlement in Lancastrian Normandy’, in Property and Politics ed. Pollard, 94. By the mid 1440s he also held the lordship of Saint-Julien-le-Faucon, and in July 1445 he obtained the lordship of La Ferté-Frênel, previously held by John Grey and worth up to 1,000 livres tournois. It included the castle of La Ferté at the mouth of the Somme, a fortress lost to the French in 1449.69 Massey, ‘Lancastrian Land Settlement’, 169. The French were not the only threat to Oldhall’s estates in Normandy, for after taking over as lieutenant-general Edmund Beaufort challenged his title to the lucrative barony of Roncheville.70 Jones, 300. Yet even as the English position in Normandy became increasingly untenable, Oldhall maintained commercial links with the duchy. In 1448 he and others of York’s men imported corn and wine from Normandy, apparently in circumvention of certain trade restrictions then in force.71 A.J. Stratford, Bedford Inventories, 364.

The corn and wine in question was shipped into London. Sometimes known as ‘of London’ in his later years,72 CP40/718, rots. 95d, 284; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 363-4; C67/41, m. 30. Oldhall had more than a passing connexion with the city. He owned a house in the parish of St. James Garlickhithe, as well as property in St. Giles Cripplegate, just outside the city’s walls. He also acquired property in Farringdon Ward, although he subsequently bestowed three tenements there on Cardinal Kemp’s college at Wye in Kent, and sold a fourth to the London brewer, Thomas Saunder, to clear the debts he owed Saunder and other Londoners. He likewise disposed of two other tenements in the city in the latter part of his career, finding a purchaser for them in Sir Roger Chamberlain*.73 KB27/788, rot. 28d; 793 rot. 25; Archaeologia, xxxvii. 335-8; C4/4/9; CCR, 1454-61, p. 115; C1/29/94. Oldhall also augmented his English estates beyond London and its environs. As early as 1426 he bought a manor in Saxthorpe, Norfolk, from the feoffees of the late John Gurney†, although just two years later he sold it to Sir John Fastolf. The former Gurney manor at Baconsthorpe in the same county also came into his hands, but again he did not retain it, even though he appears for a time to have used it as one of his residences.74 Richmond, 68n; F. Blomefield, Norf. vi. 512; CP40/718, rots. 95d, 284. Oldhall likewise acquired some sort of interest, presumably also temporary, in the former Gurney manor at Hempstead: C1/16/370; 25/116. Much more significant were the grants of lands he received from York. In May 1441 the duke conveyed to him four manors to hold for life, two at Standon in Hertfordshire and the others at Swanscombe, Kent, and Hambledon, Buckinghamshire.75 CPR, 1436-41, p. 531. The conveyance was just one of several significant gifts of land which he received from the duke, who at some stage between 1441 and 1447 granted him a manor at Little Wratting, Suffolk, and in October 1447 a rent-free lease for life of the meadow, pasture and castle guard at Clare in the same county. By 1448 Oldhall was also farming York’s manor of Erbury in Clare (a lease which ended in 1450), enjoying a share of the income of five of the duke’s manors in Gloucestershire (again by virtue of a grant for life) and was in possession of Hunsdon, the Hertfordshire manor which became his principal residence in his later years. He also enjoyed a useful income in fees from the offices he held on York’s English estates. Together, his stewardships at Clare, Hitchin and Thaxted were worth £23 p.a. and as constable of Clare castle he received a further annual fee of £13 6s. 8d.76 Johnson, 65; SC6/850/27; 1113/10; Egerton Roll 8354. When assessed for the subsidy of 1451, Oldhall was found to enjoy an income of £369 p.a. from his lands and fees but this was almost certainly an underestimate.77 C. Rawcliffe, Staffords, 26.

No doubt the duke’s generosity was at least partly motivated by a desire to reward such a highly valued servant, although it is also possible that the financial problems he had run into lay behind some of the grants he made to his retainers.78 Griffiths, 704. He is known to have relied on the likes of Oldhall for loans, some of which he may have repaid in land. The exact circumstances in which Oldhall acquired Hunsdon are not clear. Previously the property of the London alderman (Sir) William Estfield*, the manor was in York’s hands by mid 1446. In the following year the duke obtained a royal licence to fortify the manor-house, although it was to be Oldhall who carried out the extensive building work which took place there. At first sight it appears that York sold or granted Hunsdon to his retainer immediately after acquiring it. Another possibility is that in reality he was merely acting as a feoffee on Oldhall’s behalf, and it was the latter who had bought it from Estfield or his executors.79 VCH Herts. iii. 324, 327; War and Govt. ed. Gillingham and Holt, 193-4. Whatever the case, the acquisition of Hunsdon complemented Oldhall’s purchase of the neighbouring manor of Eastwick from Roger Spice in the autumn of 1447.80 CP25(1)/91/115/139; CCR, 1454-61, p. 390; VCH Herts. iii. 318. Sir William spent lavishly on Hunsdon, which lay within sight of the house that his friend Sir Andrew Ogard was building for himself at Rye near Ware. Both residences were testimony to the extremely substantial fortunes that the pair had won in France. In the later fifteenth century William Worcestre was informed that Oldhall’s work at Hunsdon, including the construction of an impressive tower and great hall, had cost the knight some 7,000 marks, and by the sixteenth the house was literally fit for a king, since Henry VIII adopted it as a royal residence.81 Worcestre, 49; K.B. McFarlane, Nobility of Med. Eng. 184.

Oldhall also acquired estates in Ireland, and in July 1444 the King licensed him to retain them as a non-resident landlord.82 CPR, 1441-6, p. 273. While the extent and location of these Irish lands are unknown, he had almost certainly received them from the duke of York, the greatest of Ireland’s absentee landowners. His royal licence notwithstanding, Oldhall accompanied York to the lordship after the King appointed the duke his lieutenant there. Officially York’s term as such began at Michaelmas 1447 but he delayed taking up the appointment for many months. Still in England in February 1449, when the Crown issued Oldhall with letters of protection as a member of his retinue, he finally crossed the Irish Sea in the following July.83 CPR, 1446-52, p. 233 York’s apparent reluctance to go to Ireland lends credence to the view that the lieutenancy amounted to a sentence of exile that a government dominated by his political opponents imposed on him, although raising the finance necessary for his expedition might have contributed to the delay. However York viewed his appointment, there was important work to do in Ireland, largely neglected by the Lancastrian kings and plagued by disorder, and the task of reasserting royal authority in the lordship was in his own immediate interest. He had inherited the earldom of Ulster and the lordships of Connacht, Trim and Leix but ‘Irish enemies’ and ‘rebel English’ over whom the government in Dublin had absolutely no control had overrun many of his Irish estates. Oldhall, whom the duke appointed seneschal of his liberty of Ulster with a fee of 100 marks p.a., played a part in trying to restore peace to the blighted colony. In the autumn of 1449 he and John Mey, archbishop of Armagh, acting upon York’s commission, made a treaty with Muircheartach Ruadh Ó Néill, the clan chief of the Ó Néills of north-east Ulster. When the parties met at Ardglass castle on 2 Oct., Ó Néill undertook to become a true liegeman for those lands he rightfully held of the Crown, to surrender all those properties he occupied illegally and to make restitution for any injuries he had inflicted on the King’s loyal subjects. Oldhall was also called upon to intervene in a dispute over the bishopric of Down and Connor. John Sely, a claimant to that see, wrote to him to protest that Thomas Pollard had entered the bishop’s palace and taken away goods worth £40. Oldhall is unlikely to have responded favourably to the letter: in reality, Pollard had been properly consecrated as bishop in August 1447, some years after Sely had been deprived of the see.84 New Hist. Ire. ed. Cosgrove, 557-8; Johnson, 236; Reg. Iohannis Mey, 133, 155; Handbk. British Chronology ed. Fryde etc. (3rd edn.), 348. Oldhall must have taken more than a passing interest in the affairs of the Irish Church, since his younger brother Edmund, already rector of Trim, became bishop of Meath during York’s lieutenancy of Ireland. Formerly a Carmelite friar and a priest in the diocese of Norwich,85 CPL, x. 229-30. Edmund left the Carmelites after convincing the church authorities that he had been unfairly induced by members of that order to join their house in Norwich when aged 13 and unable to resist their blandishments. It is possible that he had also come under parental pressure to become a friar, given that his father and namesake was buried in the Carmelite friary in London. Edmund was provided to Meath on 7 Aug. 1450, after Archbishop Mey, probably acting at York’s bidding, wrote to Pope Nicholas V in support of his candidacy. A few months later the papacy, responding to petitions from Edmund and the duke himself, granted the bishop-elect permission to retain Trim for five years after his consecration. Following his consecration, Edmund remained bishop of Meath until his death in August 1459.86 Handbk. British Chronology, 368; Reg. Iohannis Mey, 287-8; CPL, xi. 72.

The duke of York remained continuously in Ireland until September 1450, but Oldhall is known to have visited England earlier that year.87 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 324, 325, 326; R.A. Griffiths, King and Country, 290. In all likelihood he went home primarily to assess the political situation there following the fall from power of his patron’s political opponent, William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, although he may also have used the opportunity to attend to affairs of his own. It was probably at about this time that a match between him and Elizabeth, the sister of Sir John Fastolf’s protégé, John Paston*, was mooted, a proposal made possible by the death of Margaret Oldhall. For her part, Elizabeth was anxious to escape from her domineering mother Agnes Paston, and it is possible that the considerably older Oldhall was equally keen on marrying her, on the grounds that she would provide him with a last opportunity to father a son. Agnes Paston was also prepared to consent to the match, once she was sure that Oldhall’s ‘lond standyt clere’, but in the end it never took place.88 Paston Letters ed. Davis, i. 31-32; Richmond, 179. But the Gairdner edition of the Paston Letters gives ‘c.1454’ as the date of the letter which mentions the proposed match, a dating followed by Roskell, who assumes that Agnes wanted to know whether Oldhall’s estates stood ‘clear’ of his subsequent attainder of 1453.

Shortly after Oldhall returned to Ireland in the spring of 1450, Cade’s rebellion broke out in south-east England. The rising was the most dramatic manifestation of popular discontent with the failures of Suffolk’s administration and the rebels demanded a role in government for York. Surrounded by Oldhall and other old soldiers who had lost their French estates and were bitterly critical of the mishandling of the war, and aware that the defeated lieutenant-general of France, his rival Edmund Beaufort, had returned to England, York needed little prompting to leave Ireland. In early September 1450 he landed in North Wales, and before the end of the month he came before the King at Westminster. Upon his return, he assured Henry VI of his loyalty and complained about the machinations of his opponents. According to one of two bills he submitted to the King, there had been attempts to waylay him and his retinue, both as he travelled to take up his appointment in Ireland and on his return. The bill also referred to a plot to execute Oldhall and to imprison himself and two other leading retainers, Sir Edmund Mulsho* and (Sir) Walter Devereux I*, in Conway castle as soon as they landed back in Wales.89 Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, i. 80-82. The bill misnames Devereux ‘Sir William’. In spite of the Court’s hostility towards the duke and his followers, Oldhall was able to spend two hours at Westminster in friendly conversation with Henry VI in early October. During this audience the King, recognizing his pre-eminence in York’s counsels, asked him to secure the duke’s good lordship for John Penycoke*, an esquire of the royal household whom Cade’s followers had denounced a few months earlier. Oldhall replied that the unpopularity of Penycoke and other Household men made this impossible. He referred the King to a recent incident at St. Albans, to where Thomas Hoo I*, Lord Hoo, another courtier denounced by the Cade rebels, had ridden to meet York. Presumably Hoo had intended to seek the duke’s protection, but he had met with such a hostile reception from the ‘western men’ in York’s retinue that only Oldhall’s intervention (or so Sir William claimed) saved him from death. Sir Thomas Tuddenham* and John Heydon*, two of the most prominent East Anglian gentry linked with the late duke of Suffolk and the Court, approached York by more circuitous but safer means. They did not even contact Oldhall directly, choosing first to communicate with the duke’s lawyers William Burley I* and Thomas Young II*. According to one hostile contemporary they were prepared to pay Oldhall more than £2,000 for his ‘good lordship’ although it is possible that this large sum was intended for York himself. Their efforts to ingratiate themselves with Oldhall were short-lived if one is to believe William Yelverton*, who in the following month claimed that their servants were spreading false tales about both Oldhall and himself. Thomas, Lord Scales, by now associated with the unpopular government and Court rather than York, was another who sought out Oldhall at this time, and Yelverton’s servant, William Wayte, reported to John Paston that Scales and Oldhall ‘arne made frendys’.90 Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 47-8, 524.

Once back in England, York canvassed for the return of his supporters to the Parliament of 1450, not least in East Anglia, a region he visited a few weeks before the assembly opened. Before he arrived those local gentry who looked to him for redress of their grievances made plans to wait upon him in the ‘most wurchespfull wyse’ and to ‘cherse and wurchep well’ his chamberlain.91 Ibid. 53-55. The East Anglian elections for this Parliament were marked by the nomination of men associated with the duke or his ally, John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk. Henry Gray* and Sir Edmund Mulsho, both retainers of York, were returned as knights of the shire for Norfolk and Suffolk respectively, and Sir Roger Chamberlain, who was subsequently if not already one of the duke’s followers, was elected alongside Mulsho. Others of York’s men were elected for constituencies elsewhere, most notably Oldhall who was returned for his adopted county of Hertfordshire, and the Commons probably also contained a substantial element not directly connected with the duke but sympathetic to his cause. Parliament opened on 6 Nov. and the Commons elected Oldhall as their Speaker three days later. The election of a Speaker with no previous parliamentary experience was unusual,92 John Say II* is the only other such example in Hen. VI’s reign. but in Oldhall’s case it was clearly an expression of support for York. The choice of such a distinguished soldier for the office was probably also intended to signal the Commons’ disgust with the government’s failures in France.

When Parliament opened York was at Ludlow and the duke of Norfolk in East Anglia, and it is possible that the assembly went into recess until the two lords, each at the head of a large personal retinue, arrived in London just over two weeks later.93 Johnson, 88; Griffiths, King and Country, 295. With Oldhall as Speaker, York and his allies were able to influence much of what was discussed in the Parliament,94 Griffiths, Hen. VI, 691. Although Johnson, 88, suggests that it would have been more to York’s advantage to have had a Speaker with previous parliamentary experience. which attempted to attaint the late duke of Suffolk, demanded that the King should banish Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, the widowed duchess of Suffolk and other leading courtiers from his presence for life and passed an Act of Resumption. During the first session Somerset came under physical as well as political attack. Contemporary chroniclers differ as to what happened, although it seems that an attempt was made to arrest him and it is possible that he was sent briefly to the Tower, if only to save him from a hostile mob which ransacked his lodgings at Blackfriars in December. It also appears that retainers of York and the duke of Norfolk were involved in the looting, and Oldhall was subsequently alleged to have played a part in it. In the final session of the Parliament York’s legal counsellor Thomas Young proposed that the duke should become the childless King’s heir presumptive. This proved a mistake, since Parliament was brought immediately to a close, Young was sent to the Tower and York lost the political initiative. In the end, the duke had achieved little beyond modestly increasing his support in east and south-east England, and even in this he appears to have relied heavily on Oldhall.95 Griffiths, Hen. VI, 691-2, 709; John Benet’s Chron. (Cam. Miscellany xxiv), 203-4; Historical Collns. Citizen London (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xvii), 196; Chrons. London ed. Kingsford, 162; Gt. Chron. London ed. Thomas and Thornley, 185; Six Town Chrons. ed. Flenley, 137; Jones, 287-8; Griffiths, King and Country, 297.

As the political pendulum swung back in favour of Somerset and the Court, life became increasingly difficult for Oldhall. It is commonly accepted that York was behind Young’s petition, but it is possible that it was the Speaker who had prompted Young to present it,96 R.L. Storey, End of House of Lancaster, 81n. and in the 18 months following the Parliament of 1450 allegations about Oldhall’s part in his master’s political manoeuvrings steadily escalated. The charges were extremely serious, for they included the accusation of having plotted to depose Henry VI by force. In the autumn of 1451 the King ordered him to remain in London and on 23 Nov. that year he fled to the sanctuary of St. Martin le Grand in the City. Prompted by Somerset, the King ordered Richard Caudray, the dean of this collegiate church, to hand him over, only to relent after Caudray protested against such a flagrant breach of the church’s liberties. On the following 18 Jan., however, Walter Bergh*, an esquire of the Household who had implicated Oldhall in the ransacking of Somerset’s residence at Blackfriars, was attacked and wounded in a London street. Oldhall’s enemies put it about that the assailants had acted at his behest and used the incident as an excuse for forcibly removing him from sanctuary. Ten days later a large band of men commanded by the earls of Shrewsbury, Wiltshire and Worcester, the Lords Lisle and Moleyns and Matthew Philip, one of the sheriffs of London, broke into St. Martin’s late at night, dragged him out and brought him to the palace of Westminster. Fortunately for Oldhall, Caudray remained diligent in the defence of his church and, with the support of several bishops, asked the King, who was always ready to demonstrate his piety, to intervene. After two days’ captivity Oldhall was delivered up to the dean at Blackfriars, a transaction which Somerset witnessed in person. Following his return to St. Martin’s, a four man commission headed by the King’s secretary, Richard Andrew, confirmed Caudray’s appeal, although several yeomen of the Household were sent to the church to keep watch over him.97 A.J. Kempe, Hist. Notices of St. Martin-Le-Grand, 138-43; Griffiths, King and Country, 272n; W. Smith, ‘R. Finance and Politics, 1450-5’ (Manchester Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1998), 165-6; E404/69/108; E403/793 m. 2; Issues of the Exchequer ed. Devon, 476-7. In the light of Oldhall’s confinement in St. Martin’s, it is hard to understand why he was among those appointed in late Dec. 1451 to arbitrate in the dispute between York and Thomas Brown II*, the former under treasurer of England. His name even appears on the arbiters’ award of 5 Feb. 1452: CCR, 1447-54, pp. 326-7.

A few weeks after Oldhall was restored to sanctuary, the duke of York was obliged to submit to the King at Dartford, having failed to shake the government by a show of force. In political terms the confrontation at Dartford confirmed Somerset and the Court in the political ascendancy, and in the Easter term of 1452 Oldhall was the subject of several indictments in the court of King’s bench. He stood accused of having assembled with other traitors at Westminster Hall in July 1451, in order to plan a rebellion in September of the same year. He was also charged with inciting men from Kent and elsewhere to murder the King and his lords and to destroy the courts and laws of the land, a reference to disturbances at a meeting of the lords at the Hall on 1 Dec. 1450, the day on which Somerset’s property in London was spoiled. Oldhall was even accused of organizing rebellions after he was restored to sanctuary, although such accusations probably reflected the shift in the political balance of power and Somerset’s personal hostility towards him, rather than the reality. He was supposed immediately prior to Dartford to have helped plan an uprising in support of York, with the aim of seizing the great seal and discharging the chancellor, a conspiracy which led to 1,000 men assembling at Hounslow. Further indictments for treason implicated him in conspiracies said to have occurred in the weeks after Dartford, namely plots to raise rebellion in Wales and the marches and to depose the King.

In spite of obtaining royal pardons in April and June 1452,98 E28/86/11. and producing sureties in the Chancery in the same June for his good behaviour, Oldhall remained in sanctuary. He probably had little choice, given how closely his enemies were watching him, although he may briefly have left his confinement a little later that year, since on 29 Aug. he received licence to meet the former treasurer of England, John Beauchamp, Lord Powick, at a place of Beauchamp’s choosing. The reason for such a meeting (assuming it took place) is unknown, and it is unlikely that Beauchamp, a long-serving Household man, would have felt much sympathy for him. In his predicament Oldhall appears to have sought the help of the chancellor, Cardinal Kemp. It was almost certainly while he was in sanctuary that he made his gift to Kemp’s foundation at Wye, since in return for the endowment he hoped that the cardinal would deliver him out of all manner of duress and clear him of the ‘sinistre reapporte’ in which he was then held by the King.99 C4/4/9. Oldhall was the subject of yet more criminal process in the autumn of 1452. In mid October he was indicted before the duke of Somerset, (Sir) John Prysote*, c.j.c.p., and other justices of oyer and terminer in Hertfordshire for planning a rising at Hitchin on the previous 20 Feb., shortly before the confrontation between York and the King at Dartford. At the end of the same October a like commission headed by the earl of Wiltshire took a similar indictment in Northamptonshire. There the jury alleged that Oldhall and others had plotted the King’s overthrow at Fotheringhay, one of the most important centres on York’s estates. The conspirators were said to have met on 11 Nov. 1450, two days after Oldhall’s election as Speaker, presumably during the short recess which appears to have occurred just after the opening of the Parliament.100 Griffiths, Hen. VI, 699, 709; Storey, 94-95; Kempe, 138-43; KB27/768, rex rot. 7; 777, rex rot. 7; KB9/40/1/5-6; Johnson, 88, 115; Griffiths, King and Country, 272n; C67/40, m. 30. It was because the date given for the alleged conspiracy at Fotheringhay comes so soon after the opening of Parl. that Roskell, 192, suggests that a scribal error took place and that the date meant was actually 11 Nov. 1451.

Although physically safe, Oldhall was stripped of his possessions after taking sanctuary. In about June 1452 the King’s half-brother, Jasper Tudor, received a grant of all his estates, and in the following December the Crown granted Walter Bergh the arrears of rent Oldhall was owed by his stepson Sir William Skipwith in Lincolnshire, the annuity of £80 p.a. Sir William had received from Lord Willoughby and all his goods and chattels in Hertfordshire (including building materials at Hunsdon) and Norfolk. In the same month the escheator of Norfolk and Suffolk impounded 430 of Oldhall’s sheep at Little Ryburgh in west Norfolk, although Edmund Clere, probably acting on Oldhall’s behalf, seized them from the escheator shortly afterwards.101 Johnson, 119n; CPR, 1452-61, p. 34; E207/16/5/K13. Clere, either the MP of that name or his cousin, Edmund Clere of Stokesby, was among those whom Oldhall was to appoint as feoffees to the use of his last will: CAD, i. B1244. In January 1453 the beleaguered Oldhall made a formal release to Pentney priory of the former Belhouse manor at North Tuddenham,102 LR14/153. but he suffered his most serious losses during the Parliament of that year. On 25 Mar. his estates were granted anew to Jasper Tudor, and between the first and second parliamentary sessions he was outlawed.103 Johnson, 119. In spite of Tudor’s grant, during the second session the duke of Somerset obtained another grant, made out to him and his heirs, of the manors of Hunsdon and Eastwick. Somerset’s letters patent referred to all of Oldhall’s estates as forfeit, although this was not technically the case until Sir William was attainted for high treason later in the same session. Excluded from the otherwise general confiscation of his lands were the manors of Little Ryburgh and Stibbard, which Oldhall had granted to the monks of Walsingham in 1451, and that of Bodney which he had sold to Thetford priory.104 Blomefield, vi. 16. The Act of Attainder passed against Oldhall (an indirect but obvious attack on York by Somerset and his allies) explicitly linked him with Cade, since it stated that he had counselled the rebels of 1450, as well as the men who had accompanied the duke of York to Dartford. In its references to Cade the attainder repeated yet more indictments taken against Oldhall in February and March 1453. According to these, he and several retainers and servants of the duke of Norfolk had been active in East Anglia in the spring of 1450, helping to organize Cade’s rebellion and plotting to depose Henry VI in favour of York. Although the indictments were laid before carefully selected and hostile juries, it is not implausible that Oldhall, home from Ireland that spring, had come to view any social unrest as a political opportunity for York.105 R. Virgoe, E. Anglian Soc. ed. Barron, Rawcliffe and Rosenthal, 54-55; Storey, 79; Griffiths, Hen. VI, 592, 618, 629, 685.

In spite of his attainder, Oldhall’s fortunes began to change while the Parliament was still sitting, a development arising from the King’s mental collapse in the summer of 1453. In the following autumn the Lords reacted to the resulting political vacuum by summoning York back to the Council and Somerset was sent to the Tower. In the final session of the Parliament York assumed office as Protector of England, a position he held until the King recovered his faculties at the end of 1454. By then Oldhall had acquired a writ of error to begin the process of reversing his outlawry, but he remained in sanctuary until after York’s victory and Somerset’s death at the first battle of St. Albans. He left St. Martin’s at the beginning of June 1455 and surrendered himself to the court of King’s bench, where he produced his letters of pardon of June 1452 and pleaded that he had been outlawed while confined to sanctuary and unable to defend himself. At the same time he submitted a petition to the Council seeking the overturning of all outlawries, forfeitures and other measures taken against him. In the petition he asserted that he had always served all three Lancastrian kings as a ‘trewe faithfull liegeman’ and complained that certain ‘undisposed’ persons, desiring to obtain grants of his lands and goods, had maliciously accused him of involvement in Cade’s rebellion. He also protested about his confinement in sanctuary under ‘streyte kepyng’. The Council heard the petition on 6 June and decided it should be granted, provided the King agreed. Oldhall’s plea in King’s bench was admitted before the end of the same month, and by 7 July the news of the quashing of his outlawry had reached Sir John Fastolf’s servant William Worcestre, who reported to John Paston that ‘Ser W. Oldhale ys processe yn the Kynges Bynche reuersed’.106 KB27/777, rex rot. 7; E28/86/11; Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 121.

The Yorkist-dominated Parliament of 1455 provided Oldhall with the opportunity to begin the process of recovering his estates, and he presented to the Commons a private petition demanding the restitution of these lands. Similar in content to his petition to the Council and probably passed in the first session, it referred to his record of service to the Lancastrian kings in France and elsewhere,107 Gascony is among the places mentioned, but no evidence relating to Oldhall’s service there has emerged. complained about his wrongful indictment for counselling Cade and requested the annulment of his attainder of 1453. On 12 Oct., during the recess between the first and second sessions, Oldhall was granted a royal pardon, as ‘of London and late of Hunsdon’.108 C67/41, m. 30. On 23 Oct., his previously forfeited estates were released to his household servant, Thomas Peytewyn, and Richard Jeny, to hold at farm from the Exchequer for two years, as from Easter 1455. On 21 Nov., nine days after the second session opened and with York again Protector of England, he secured an exemplification of his successful petition. Several months later, two quitclaims acknowledged Oldhall’s ownership of his tenements in Farringdon Ward, London, and the manor of Eastwick. Although York’s second protectorate came to an end in February 1456, the duke did not immediately lose all political influence, and in the following May Oldhall was appointed a j.p. in his native Norfolk.

Presumably Oldhall had relinquished his position as the duke’s chamberlain during his confinement in St. Martin’s and it is unclear whether he ever resumed the office after leaving sanctuary. It appears he devoted much of the later 1450s to personal affairs, particularly to quarrels with his stepson, Sir William Skipwith, and the family of his son-in-law Walter Gorges. The dispute with Skipwith was ostensibly over a debt of £40 which Oldhall claimed his stepson owed him, but it is unlikely that relations between the two men were ever particularly easy, and it is hard to dispel the impression that Skipwith was unfairly treated by his stepfather. In 1439, shortly after reaching his majority, the younger man had been prevailed upon to agree to a settlement of the manor of South Ormsby to Oldhall’s heirs in the event of a failure of heirs in the Skipwith line, and in the following year his grandmother, Alice Skipwith, had begun a suit against Oldhall and his wife for detaining £152 17s. from her. In May 1441 Skipwith had made a release to the couple of all actions for waste in the Skipwith estates in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire in Margaret Oldhall’s hands, although later in the same month the Oldhalls had consented to his taking possession of the Lincolnshire manor of Calthorpe.109 CP40/718, rots. 95d, 284; 785, rot. 394; 786, rots. 26d, 154; CP25(1)/145/158/40, 159/5; CCR, 1435-41, p. 476. Given that Skipwith paid Oldhall rent for lands in that county, it is likely that he farmed at least part of his own inheritance from the Oldhalls.

Whatever his disagreements with Skipwith, Oldhall’s quarrel with the Gorges family was far more acrimonious. Originally he and Sir Theobald Gorges* alias Russell, a fellow veteran of the war in France and retainer of the duke of York, were on friendly terms with each other, a relationship which had culminated in a marriage between his only child Mary and Gorges’s eldest son Walter. A settlement for this match was agreed in November 1443, although the marriage ceremony, held at Southwark, did not take place until 16 Aug. 1446. The couple were still minors at this date, and Oldhall undertook to provide them with board and lodging in his household for the first seven years of their marriage.110 KB27/793, rot. 25. Although Mary cannot have married at an especially tender age, given that she received a plenary indulgence and an indult to keep a portable altar from the Papal Curia in the summer of 1443: CPL, ix. 364, 369. By the mid 1450s, however, he had fallen out with the Gorges family. After leaving sanctuary he sued Sir Theobald and his son in the Chancery, alleging that they had raided a coffer he had kept with him at St. Martin’s and taken away a release he had prepared in advance of all the debts Sir Theobald owed him but had yet to pay.111 C1/17/278. Presumably these debts arose from the obligations Sir Theobald had entered into at the time of his son’s marriage. In June 1456 Oldhall sued his fellow knight on the basis of these obligations,112 C131/70/1, 5. and just over two years later another case he had brought against Gorges came to pleadings at Westminster. Initiated on the common law side of the Chancery because it arose from a bond of statute staple, it was subsequently referred to King’s bench. Oldhall stated that in 1447 he had given Gorges such a bond, bearing a penalty of no less than 2,000 marks, to guarantee his observance of his side of the Gorges-Oldhall marriage settlement. Apart from agreeing that the couple should initially reside in his household, he had undertaken to make a release to Sir Theobald of the captaincy of Coutances in Normandy for life, to settle his barony of Roncheville and property at Honfleur on the couple and their male heirs and to pay them an annuity of 40 marks p.a. from three of his manors in Norfolk. According to him, he had fulfilled all of these conditions, yet Gorges had taken action against him with the bond, leading to his arrest by the sheriffs of London in June 1458. Gorges had certainly become captain of Coutances, where he had taken command at the end of 1443, but he and his son alleged that Oldhall had not paid the couple their annuity.113 C241/240/9; KB27/793, rots. 25, 223; KB145/6/36.

At some stage during the quarrel Oldhall also clashed violently with his son-in-law, a fracas which arose when he and his servants rode to Little Fransham, where Walter was farming the rectory. According to a petition Walter subsequently submitted to the Crown, two of these servants had seized and held him while Oldhall went for him with a dagger, and he had escaped death only because his wife had intervened and managed to restrain her father. Oldhall had then held him prisoner until he had bound himself in 50 marks to submit to his father-in-law’s judgement in all matters between them. Having secured the bond, Oldhall had subjected him to such unreasonable demands that he could not agree to them and had then gone to law against him with the bond for non-compliance. Condemned in 500 marks as a result, he had ended up in the Marshalsea prison, and while he was in custody Oldhall had sued a feigned action against him for detinue of certain writings and evidences, leading to his further condemnation in another 300 marks.114 CPR, 1452-61, p. 541.

During his quarrels with Skipwith and the Gorges family, Oldhall involved himself in other, unrelated disputes. Shortly before he was arrested by the sheriffs of London at the suit of Sir Theobald Gorges, he began an action in King’s bench against the clerk Richard Broun for committing a burglary on his property at St. Giles Cripplegate while he was in sanctuary. Following his arrest, the King’s bench ordered the sheriffs to deliver him up to that court so that he might pursue this suit. He was subsequently transferred to the Marshalsea, from where he began another action against Thomas Knyston of Dartford, although on what basis is unknown.115 KB27/788, rot. 28d; KB145/6/36. It was also in the later 1450s that Oldhall pursued a Chancery suit against the executors of Sir Andew Ogard, who had died in 1454. In this he claimed that he had suffered at law as a consequence of a bond for £400 which he and Ogard had given at the end of November 1447 to William de la Pole, then marquess of Suffolk, as a guarantee that Ogard would perform certain agreements. Although unspecified, these undertakings were probably connected with the will of the recently deceased Sir John Clifton, of which both Sir Andrew and de la Pole were overseers.116 C1/26/142; C131/236/24; Norf. RO, Norwich consist. ct., Reg. Wylbey, ff. 103-4. In spite of this suit, and although Ogard had drawn close to the Court and the de la Pole circle in his later years, there is no evidence of any falling out between him and Oldhall, who while Speaker had assisted him in his quarrel with the Knyvet family.117 Virgoe, 138-9. By now Oldhall himself was not averse to associating with some of the more notorious members of the de la Pole affinity. In October 1456 he included Sir Thomas Tuddenham and John Heydon among those whom he appointed feoffees to the use of his last will.118 CAD, i. B1244. Given the political instability of the time, one might assume that he chose the pair, both of whom were linked with the Lancastrian Court, for such a role as an insurance policy. On the other hand, he subsequently named Heydon as one of his executors, suggesting that he had come to enjoy much better relations with this prominent Norfolk lawyer. Oldhall had also remained close to his old associate Sir Edmund Mulsho, for whom he was a feoffee and who appointed him as one of his executors in his will of May 1458.119 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 180, 205; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 114-15; PCC 24-25 Stokton (PROB11/4, ff. 186v-188v). It appears that Oldhall was likewise on good terms with the powerful but politically moderate Bourgchier family at this time. It was probably later that year that the Pastons heard that Thomas Bourgchier, archbishop of Canterbury, and his brother, Henry, Viscount Bourgchier, York’s brother-in-law, were planning to visit Hunsdon ‘and hunte and sporte theym with Sir William Oldhall’. In the same period Oldhall was linked with the Holands, another powerful magnate family, in the capacity of a feoffee. He had acted as such since the days of John Holand, duke of Exeter, a fellow veteran of the war in France, but is unlikely to have had much liking for John’s unruly son and successor.120 Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 175; CPR, 1452-61, p. 513; M.M.N. Stansfield, ‘Holland Fam.’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1987), 221, 222. Although married to one of York’s daughters, Henry Holand was no friend of the duke of York,121 S.J. Payling, ‘Ampthill Dispute’, EHR, civ. 899-900. and took up arms against the Yorkists.

As the country slid towards civil war Oldhall remained embroiled in private disputes. By the spring of 1459 he was again in the Marshalsea, this time in connexion with a quarrel with an old enemy, Walter Bergh. He was granted bail after he and two sureties, Thomas Depden of Newmarket (who had served him as an auditor on his estates) and Thomas Saunder (the London brewer) pledged that he would do Bergh no harm and would subsequently reappear in court.122 KB27/792, rex rot. 38d; CP40/786, rot. 129. On the following 25 June a jury decided in his favour in his suit against Sir Theobald Gorges. It was found that he had not in fact withheld the annuity agreed in the Gorges-Oldhall marriage settlement and he was awarded costs and damages totalling £1,100 although the court deferred giving a judgement. Presumably this was for political reasons, since by now York and his supporters were completely estranged from the government.123 KB27/793, rots. 25, 223. Following the débâcle at Ludford in October 1459, York fled to Ireland but he was not accompanied by Oldhall, who was apprehended in England. It is not known where or exactly when Oldhall was arrested, although on 14 Nov. the King committed him to the custody of Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley, constable of Kenilworth castle and a trusted ‘courtier magnate’.124 KB27/793, rot. 25; Griffiths, Hen. VI, 364, 696, 801. Roskell, 198, speculates that he went with York to Ire. and remained away from Eng. until York’s return in the following Sept. Six days later the ‘Parliament of Devils’ opened at Coventry, and soon afterwards Oldhall was proscribed for treason for the second time in his career. Although the Act did not name him as one of the Yorkists at Ludford, it claimed that he had procured and encouraged those of York’s followers who had taken the field there and at Blore Heath, suggesting that he still wielded considerable influence in the duke’s counsels. It also charged him and Thomas Vaughan* with treasonable activity in London on the previous 4 July, possibly because they had communicated with York’s ally, Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, at Calais.125 PROME, xii. 461-3; Griffiths, Hen. VI, 817, 847; Johnson, 185-6. With the passing of the Act Oldhall again forfeited his property, and on 5 Jan. 1460 all his lands, goods and chattels were granted to Humphey Stafford, duke of Buckingham. In the following Febuary and March the Crown established commissions to inquire into the extent of these possessions, and on 16 Mar. Buckingham’s grant was confirmed. It is nevertheless unlikely that the duke (who in any case was soon afterwards killed at the battle of Northampton) ever took control of Oldhall’s lands, since on the very same day these and other estates confiscated from the Yorkists were assigned to the custody of royal receivers. Following Oldhall’s attainder, Walter Gorges took the opportunity to petition the Crown about his father-in-law’s behaviour towards him, and the day after the dissolution of the Parliament of 1459 the King authorized the issuing of a pardon excusing him all the sums in which he was condemned to the MP.126 Add. 46410, f. 73. The pardon itself was dated 9 Feb. 1460: CPR, 1452-61, p. 541. A similar pardon, dated March 1460, was acquired by Richard Wenlock, a prisoner in Newgate gaol, who claimed that, as a result of Oldhall’s ‘malicious labour’, he had been condemned to pay the earl of Warwick £20 13s. 4d.

In spite of Oldhall’s attainder, the King’s bench had neither finished with the suit he had brought against Gorges nor with the process between him and Walter Bergh. In Hilary term 1460 his mainpernors in his suit against Gorges – Humphrey Bourgchier*, Thomas Young and Roger Malmesbury – formally told the court that he could not appear because, as was common knowledge, he was a prisoner at Kenilworth. In the following Easter term Thomas Depden likewise came to Westminster, to explain that for the same reason Oldhall was unable to appear in accordance with the terms of his bail. On both these and subsequent occasions the mainpernors asked the court to send a writ to Lord Sudeley ordering him to bring Oldhall to Westminster, but no action was taken while the justices, faced as they were with such a politically delicate matter, enquired into the exact manner and causes of his detention. It was not until the following 19 Oct. that Butler appeared with his prisoner, even though the Yorkists had recovered control of the government three months earlier.127 KB27/792, rex rot. 38d; 793, rot. 25. Roskell, unaware of the prolonged suit between Gorges and Oldhall, or of the latter’s confinement at Kenilworth, mistakenly asserts that the MP was ‘certainly’ in London on 12 Oct. (p. 198). His assertion rests upon a letter of that date which Christopher Hansson, the caretaker of the late Sir John Fastolf’s townhouse at Southwark, wrote to John Paston (Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 216-17). This refers to one of Paston’s dependants waiting upon ‘Maister Oldhall’at his place in Rotherhithe, but this cannot have been the MP. In any case, Oldhall is not known to have owned any property there. Oldhall cannot therefore have played any part in planning the misjudged claim to the throne which York had made in Parliament on the 16th. The first item of business for the Parliament of 1460 was the annulment of all Acts passed at Coventry in the previous year, meaning that Oldhall was restored in law to his estates before he died. Upon arriving at Westminster he was committed to the Marshalsea and then immediately released, after which he retired to his house in St. James Garlickhithe to wait for 17 Nov., the day reserved for judgement in his suit against Gorges. He failed to reappear in King’s bench on the day in question, and on the 18th his mainpernors, Bourgchier, Young and Malmesbury, came to Westminster Hall to inform the court that he had died at 6 p.m. the previous evening.128 KB27/793, rot. 25. Even though his death was publicly announced in open court at Westminster, Oldhall was posthumously included on the commission of the peace for Norfolk of 24 Nov., an administrative error which bears testimony to the chaotic last few months of Henry VI’s reign.

In his lavish last will and testament, completed just two days before his death,129 PCC 21 Stokton (PROB11/4, ff. 163-4). Oldhall asked to be interred in London, rather than in Norfolk or Hertfordshire. Although his late wife lay in the city’s fashionable Greyfriars’ church, he asked to be buried in a flat tomb of grey marble in the collegiate church of St. Michael Paternoster. To cover the costs of his debts and legacies he ordered his executors to sell all his beds and cloths of arras and half of all his jewels and gold and silver plate. He bequeathed ‘stuffs for vestments’ and all his military pennons and banners to St. Michael’s and instructed his executors to found a chantry there. The chantry was to have two chaplains, who were to receive ten marks p.a. between them. Oldhall also made bequests to other churches and religious houses. In compensation for unpaid tithes, the churches at St. James Garlickhithe and Little Fransham were to have £1 each and that at Hunsdon one mark. In addition, he left further sums to all three churches and to that of Ditton Valence, in return for masses for his soul. He also donated a chasuble to Hunsdon, in return for further prayers for himself and the late Sir Thomas Kingston, a former comrade-in-arms in France,130 CPR, 1422-9, p. 404; 1436-41, p. 248; Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English, ii. 436. set aside 20s. for the fabric of Ditton Valence and bequeathed vestments to that church and to those of St. James Garlickhithe and Great and Little Fransham. Oldhall left a gold hearse-cloth and £5 for masses to the Carmelite friary in Fleet Street, London, where his father lay buried, and two marks to every Franciscan, Dominican and Austin friar in the city. The Premonstratensian abbey at Wendling, Norfolk, and Bermondsey priory in Surrey likewise benefited from the will. Oldhall directed that each should receive vestments and instructed that Wendling should have one made out of his richly embroidered ‘Cotearmure’ of red velvet. He also set aside 15 marks for lepers and other poor men and ordered that every chaplain attending his interment should receive 1s., each clerk 6d. and every boy chorister 4d. A striking omission from the will is any mention of the duke of York, although Oldhall did remember his patron’s two eldest sons. The earl of March, the future Edward IV, was to have his grey walking-horse, and Edmund, earl of Rutland, the horse’s value in money. He also left sums to various relatives (although not to his daughter Mary Gorges or stepson Sir William Skipwith) and dependents. He bequeathed silver plate to his sister Margaret, who had married the Norfolk esquire William Lexham, and to her daughter, Agnes, who had married Sir John Cheyne I*,131 PCC 8 Wattys, 6 Adeane (PROB11/6, ff. 63v-64; 15, f. 43); The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 552. and left 100 marks in money to Margaret’s son, another William Lexham. Among Oldhall’s servants to benefit from his will were Thomas Peytewyn, to whom he left £20, and his receiver-general Robert Burley, who was to have goods worth ten marks. Oldhall also left his old associate, Thomas Young, no less than £200 (a sum to be raised from the money his wife’s nephew by marriage, Richard Welles, Lord Willoughby, and Sir Theobald Gorges, owed him) and ordered that Archbishop Bourgchier of Canterbury should have a great silver bowl, to be called ‘the bolle of Caunterbury’. The archbishop headed the list of Oldhall’s executors, a group which, besides John Heydon, consisted of Young, William Lexham, Thomas Peytewyn and (Sir) William Yelverton, j.k.b. Although he never had the chance to regain actual possession of his restored estates, Oldhall left his executors and feoffees detailed instructions for the bulk of these properties. The chief beneficiaries of the will for his lands were his daughter Mary (whose rights he did not ignore, however much he disliked her husband) and his nephew William Lexham. He directed that Mary and her legitimate issue should succeed to his manors in East Dereham and Ditton Valence, although not until all his debts were paid, and Lexham those at Great and Little Fransham. If he had not already made his peace with Pentney priory, he did so by acknowledging its right to the former Belhouse manor at North Tuddenham although in return he asked the canons to support a chantry for his benefit in the priory church. Finally, the executors were to sell all his purchased fee simple lands in East Dereham and all other estates not specifically mentioned. Oldhall added a codicil to the will on 17 Nov., the day he died. This was to the further benefit of Lexham, since in it he ordered the feoffees of his manor in Scarning to convey it to his relative and his heirs, although his nephew was required to respect the estate for life which Denise, wife of Edmund Buckenham and presumably another of the MP’s relatives, held in the same.

Even though the registered copy of Oldhall’s will bears no date of probate, his executors are known to have set about their business. At some stage before 1471 Hunsdon was sold to Edward IV, who agreed to pay Archbishop Bourgchier 2,000 marks for the manor.132 The Crown must likewise have acquired Eastwick, since it shared the same descent as Hunsdon for some two centuries after Oldhall’s death: VCH Herts. iii. 318. Not all of the will was properly observed, since Walter and Mary Gorges took possession of the manors meant for Lexham at Great and Little Fransham and entered the manor at North Tuddenham. The couple succeeded in keeping the Fransham properties but the prior of Pentney responded to the latter entry by suing them in the court of common pleas, and a verdict in his favour was given in the Easter term of 1463.133 CP40/807, rot. 36. The most serious threat to the Gorges family’s share of the Oldhall lands was an Act passed in favour of the new duke of Bedford, Jasper Tudor, in the Parliament of 1485. This confirmed Tudor in all the letters patent he had received from Henry VI, including the grant that King had made to him of all Oldhall’s lands. To ensure that he did not thereby lose part of his inheritance, Oldhall’s grandson, Sir Edmund Gorges, petitioned the Parliament of 1489 for confirmation of his title to the former Oldhall properties in his hands. Presumably he later disposed of these manors by sale, since the wealthy Londoner Sir William Capell† took posession of them in September 1502 and died seised 16 years later.134 C142/23/280-1; Blomefield, ix. 496.