UMFRAY, John

Despite the numerous namesakes who were active in various counties during this period, it is almost certain that Umfray can be identified as a King’s servant of that name who hailed from Northamptonshire. His family came originally from Gloucestershire, but may have moved to the Midlands following the marriage of his widowed mother, Elizabeth, to Henry Garstang, who in 1446 held the manor of Barton Henred in Northamptonshire, probably in right of his wife. This manor may then have passed to Umfray on his mother’s death.3 VCH Northants. iii. 176; CP25(1)/179/95/117. Garstang may perhaps be identified as the man of this name from Cirencester who died in 1464: PCC 6 Godyn (PROB11/5, ff. 41v-42). At some point Barton Henred had become divided from the castle, manor and lordship of Barton Seagrave which was acquired by the Mowbray family in the fourteenth century, but was sold by John, duke of Norfolk, in 1469. By the mid sixteenth century it too had passed into the hands of the Umfrays.4 VCH Northants. iii. 177.

By the end of 1450, John had entered Henry VI’s household as a yeoman of the Chamber, and was receiving annual fees.5 E101/410/6, f. 41; 9, f. 44. His family’s links with Gloucestershire, along with his position in the Household, were probably responsible for his appointment in November 1456 as escheator for that county and for the Welsh marches. He was clearly a trusted royal servant, and his return in the autumn of 1459 to the Coventry ‘Parliament of Devils’ as one of the MPs for Gatton, is likely to have owed everything to the efforts of the sheriff of Surrey, the staunchly loyalist Thomas Tresham*. He evidently did his masters’ bidding in the Commons, and in December was rewarded with the office of keeper of the Gloucestershire park of Barnsley, a post previously in the possession of Richard, duke of York, who had been attainted by the Coventry Parliament.6 CPR, 1452-61, p. 548. He was to pay the price for this modest reward not long after: in the early summer of 1460 the Yorkist lords who had fled into exile in the previous autumn returned, defeated the court’s forces at the battle of Northampton, and assumed control of the government. A purge of the royal household followed, and it is likely that Umfray was among those removed from it at this date. Certainly, his service to Henry VI came to an end with the monarch’s formal deposition in the spring of 1461, and following the accession of Edward IV he was among a number of men from Northamptonshire and Rutland whose possessions were ordered to be confiscated.7 CPR, 1461-7, p. 35. It may have been on account of resultant financial difficulties that in early 1465 he found himself sued for debt by the abbot of Kenilworth.8 CP40/814, rot. 183.

Nothing more is known of him and he was dead by August 1468, when his widow, Eleanor, was pardoned along with her second husband, Robert Fenne*, who was then styled ‘tenant ... of the lands late of John Umfray, alias Robert Fenne of Barton Seagrave’.9 C67/46, m. 16. Umfray left three sons, the eldest of whom, William, married Maud, daughter of Richard Knightly of Fawsley in Northamptonshire. As part of the marriage settlement Eleanor and Fenne agreed to place lands in Northamptonshire and Gloucestershire in the hands of a group of trustees, who included Knightly, William Catesby* and Thomas Kebell†, who were, from November 1478, to pay the young couple a yearly rent of 20 marks. After Eleanor’s death these estates, worth a total of £50 p.a., were to be settled on them and their heirs. When the time came, however, Eleanor refused to release the property to the trustees, and in 1488 William and Maud submitted a petition to Chancery seeking to force her to do so.10 VCH Northants. Fams. 180; Vis. Leics. 62; C1/110/113. William died two years later, leaving his six-year-old son Richard as his heir, and the inquisition post mortem confirmed that the settlement on William and Maud of 24 messuages, 1,000 acres of lands, 60 acres of meadow and 40 acres of pasture in Northampton and Barton, worth a total of 20 marks p.a., had been carried out.11 CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 994.