WARBLETON, William

The Warbletons had held Sherfield-upon-Loddon in Hampshire and Warbleton in Sussex since the early thirteenth century. When William was born, Warbleton and Tandridge in Surrey were held in jointure by his aged great-grandmother Alice, widow of John Warbleton (d.1350) and of Walter de Burton (d.1368), the London goldsmith, and since she had outlived her son and grandson on her death in 1384 he was declared to be her heir.5 CIPM, xvi. 178-9; VCH Suss. ix. 206-7; VCH Hants, iv. 104-5; Cal. Wills ct. Husting London ed. Sharpe, ii. 112-13. The infant’s wardship was committed to William More†, a London vintner, along with his marriage, for which More agreed to pay as much as £200 at the Exchequer. What happened to the young man when More died in 1401 or 1402 is uncertain, but it seems likely that his wardship was taken over by the grocer Robert Chichele†, who married the vintner’s widow. After he came of age Warbleton retained contact with his former guardian’s family, as a feoffee of property in Southwark. Meanwhile, part of his family inheritance had remained in the possession of his grandmother Katherine, the daughter and coheir of Sir John Foxley† (d.1378) of Bray in Berkshire and widow of John Warbleton (d.1375), as her dower and jointure, and it seems likely that she also had an influence on his upbringing, especially as she had undoubtedly played a part in arranging the marriage of her son (William’s father) to the daughter of her second husband, Sir John de la Hay. Katherine died on 7 Feb. 1404,6 CFR, x. 63; CAD, vi. C5214; CIPM, xviii. 887-9; CPR, 1381-5, p. 172. a matter of days after William had been found at a formal inquiry held on 8 Jan. to be heir to his great-grandparents, and had formally made proof of age (on 11 Jan.). In the course of that year he was given seisin of his substantial inheritance, including the Hampshire manors of ‘Botillers’ in Preston Candover, Chineham in Monk Sherborne and Sherfield itself – which was held of the King in grand serjeanty by the curious and distasteful services of being marshal of the whores, of dismembering condemned felons, and of measuring gallons and bushels in the royal household.7 CIPM, xviii. 888-9; CCR, 1402-5, pp. 265-6, 336-7, 339, 402, 407.

Warbleton’s landed holdings in Hampshire, Sussex and Surrey were to be estimated to be worth £83 p.a. in the tax assessments of 1412, and by 1436 he had increased his annual income by a further £27, largely derived from property in Berkshire and Oxfordshire which came to him with his second marriage.8 Feudal Aids, vi. 451, 516, 528 (as ‘dominus de Walburton’); E163/7/31/1, no. 29. The identity of his first wife’s father is not known, but she may have been a Londoner by birth, as the feoffees making the marriage settlement in 1405 included not only Robert Chichele but also another London citizen, Soloman Fresthorpe. However, they also included John Norbury†, the King’s councillor and friend, so it is possible that she was related to him. Juliana was given a generous jointure in William’s manors of Warbleton, Sherfield, Chineham and ‘Botillers’, as well as property in Basingstoke, all of which were settled on their issue, which suggests that she came from a high-ranking family.9 CPR, 1401-5, p. 466; CP25(1)/290/60/96.

Even by the standards of the period Warbleton was highly litigious, and the rest of his very long life was punctuated by a steady succession of lawsuits in the court of common pleas and in Chancery. Some of these concerned his patrimony. During his minority the Crown had presented to the parish church at Warbleton, and although he served as patron in 1404, in 1413 he had to bring an action against Bishop Reade of Chichester and the then incumbent, William Prestwick, regarding his rights of advowson. The matter was apparently resolved in his favour, although it was Prestwick whom he formally presented a year later.10 CPR, 1396-9, p. 213; CP40/611, rot. 250; Reg. Rede (Suss. Rec. Soc. xi), 277, 331. Many of his suits concerned the widespread estates of the late Sir John Foxley, to which he could lay claim as coheir through his grandmother, one of Sir John’s two daughters. Yet Sir John had severely limited his daughters’ inheritance by settling much of his property on his three illegitimate sons, of whom the eldest and most favoured was Thomas Foxley*. Warbleton succeeded in taking possession of some 40 acres of land in Heckfield, Hampshire, close to the Foxley estate at Bramshill, and together with his grandmother’s sister Margaret, the widow of Robert Bullock†, leased it to tenants in 1404, only to be sued seven years later by William Banastre for an illegal distress after he had taken six oxen from Bramshill park; Banastre said the property pertained to Thomas Foxley, who had granted it to him by ‘way of agistment’. In 1406 Warbleton sued for execution of a final concord dating back to 1276 regarding land in Ifeld, Sussex, which had descended in the Foxley line.11 CP40/581, rot. 106 (where Katherine is wrongly given as William’s mother); 603, rot. 277; VCH Hants, iv. 35. Yet he was prepared to give up part of this inheritance. In 1425 he made a quitclaim to John Preston† of Westmorland, the judge, of his title to the Foxley manor of Farnborough in Kent, and Margaret Bullock’s daughter, another Margaret, the widow of John Hartington†, did likewise.12 CP40/658, cart. rot. 3; CCR, 1422-9, p. 213. Margaret also made a quitclaim of the manor of Bramshill to Thomas Foxley in 1429, and Warbleton may have acted similarly, for when Foxley died in 1436 he apparently accepted that this manor should pass to Foxley’s only daughter and her husband Thomas Uvedale*.13 VCH Hants, iv. 35. The failure of the male line then enabled Warbleton to take possession of the manor of East Court in Finchampstead and land at Halsehill. More contentious was tenure of the manor and advowson of Apperfield in Kent which despite the terms of the Uvedale marriage settlement Foxley had settled on his wife, Theobalda Mareys, in jointure. Warbleton apparently managed to keep possession of Apperfield from 1437, but 20 years later he relinquished it to Theobalda for her lifetime.14 CCR, 1468-76, no. 810; VCH Berks. iii. 102, 243-4; CAD, ii. B3575; CollectaneaTopologica and Genealogica ed. Nichols, iii. 16-18; CP40/783, rot. 600d; 910, rots. 605, 606. Not all of Warbleton’s claims were resolved in the law courts: one regarding land at Kingsclere needed the mediating influence of ten of the leading gentry and lawyers of the region before it was finally settled in 1447.15 Winchester Coll. muns. 12417-24.

Warbleton’s first appointment as sheriff of Hampshire in 1411 coincided with the promotion of Sir John Pelham*, the King’s friend, as treasurer of England, but although he was acquainted with Pelham (and had earlier conveyed to him some land at Warbleton) there is no other hint that he enjoyed important connexions at Henry IV’s court. His term of office was followed immediately with another as escheator, but then for a period of 14 years, from November 1413, there was a gap in his official commitments in shire administration, most likely because of his almost continuous absence overseas on military service. He crossed the Channel in the summer of 1415 for Henry V’s invasion of Normandy (although in whose retinue is not known), mustered in the company of John, Lord Grey of Codnor, as a mounted man-at-arms in the major expedition of July 1417, and in February 1419 at Exmes castle he supervised the array of the force commanded by Thomas Montague, earl of Salisbury. He again returned to France, this time under the King’s personal command, in July 1421, and by May 1423 was once more serving under Salisbury, at Falaise. Warbleton evidently made some profits of war, for safe conducts were issued for a prisoner of his, Petit alias Eliot de Clarence, first to go to France in quest of his ransom in February 1427 and then to come back to England in October following, although he subsequently sold the prisoner on to Sir John Clifton.16 DKR, xliv. 567, 628; xlviii. 246, 253; N.H. Nicolas, Agincourt, 386, app. p. 63; E101/51/2; Add. Ch. 89.

Despite his long absence from local affairs, Warbleton was elected for Hampshire to the Parliament summoned to assemble in April 1425. Present at the shire court at Winchester to attest the parliamentary indenture was his friend, neighbour and kinsman William Brocas* of Beaurepaire, with whom he always remained on cordial terms.17 CPR, 1413-16, p. 228; M. Burrows, Fam. Brocas of Beaurepaire, 155, 157, 284-5, 368; CCR, 1429-35, p. 26. We may also confidently speculate that his candidacy was backed by retainers of Bishop Beaufort of Winchester, the then chancellor. Certainly, he belonged to their circle, for among his co-feoffees of Brocas’s estates was John Golafre*, whom he was to name as a trustee of his own property just a few months later. Furthermore, he himself numbered among the bishop’s esquires. While Beaufort was chancellor (most likely during his current term from 1424 to 1426), and describing himself as ‘your esquire’, Warbleton petitioned ‘the high and myghty prynce my lord of Wynchestre’ regarding his suit against one Thomas Holgyll for the sum of 110 marks. Beaufort had earlier instructed that the matter be put to arbitration, appointing his own cousin, Thomas Chaucer*, as umpire if the arbiters failed to reach an accord, but Holgyll had delayed the process, to Warbleton’s cost, so he now asked his lord to have the miscreant summoned to Chancery to be examined.18 C1/6/144. Warbleton’s association with both Chaucer and Golafre long continued: all three men were to be party a few years later to settlements of estates in 11 counties belonging to Joan, Lady Cobham, and her daughter Joan, the wife of Sir Thomas Brooke*, although he was evidently on closer terms with Golafre than he was with the former Speaker.19 CP25(1)/13/82/27; 292/66/76; CCR, 1422-9, pp. 403-4.

Possibly while the Parliament of 1425 was in session, or very soon afterwards, Warbleton took as his second wife Margery, the wealthy widow of Sir Peter Bessels, who possessed an interest for life in the manor of Bessels Leigh and potentially much else besides. The marriage was to involve him in extensive litigation from then until his death nearly 45 years later, but in the short term it provided him with a residence in Berkshire, and thus qualified him for election by that county to the Parliament immediately following, which was summoned to assemble at Leicester in February 1426. Warbleton’s eagerness for a seat in the Commons is suggested by the fact that the electors in Hampshire also returned him – itself an indication of a breach of the statute of 1413 which required all those elected to be living in their constituencies on the date of the writ of summons. Which of the two shires paid his parliamentary expenses is not recorded. (Thereafter, he alternated between the two constituencies, and in 1434 he was listed as residing in both when it came to administering the oath against maintenance.)20 CPR, 1429-36, pp. 396, 402. The ‘Parliament of Bats’ at Leicester took its name from the armed confrontation of the followers of Bishop Beaufort and Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. No doubt Warbleton sided with the former. It is of interest to note, too, that he was personally acquainted with another member of the King’s Council, John Stafford, bishop of Bath and Wells, who visited his manor-house at Sherfield very shortly before his third Parliament met, in September 1429, and that the clerk of the Parliaments in Warbleton’s first four Parliaments was none other than William Prestwick, the incumbent at Warbleton church.21 CPR, 1441-6, p. 143; CCR, 1429-35, p. 63. His friend William Brocas presided over the election of 1429, as sheriff of Hampshire.

At the end of the session of the Parliament of 1431 Warbleton was appointed to the Hampshire bench. Only recently Jack Sharp, the lollard, had started a revolt in Berkshire, and it was Warbleton who informed the Council, which issued a proclamation for the rebel’s arrest. On 19 May, on hearing that Sharp was in Oxford, Warbleton promptly sent his servants to inform the chancellor of the university and bailiffs of the town, charging them to seize him, which they duly did. No reward was offered for this initiative, so in November he petitioned the duke of Gloucester and his fellow councillors to remind them that his speedy actions had prevented a major uprising. As reimbursement for his costs, on 29 Nov. the Council sent a warrant to the Exchequer to pay him £20, a sum he eventually received on 16 Feb. following. This was not, however, the prelude to advancement. Warbleton again crossed to France in the spring of 1436, this time in the retinue of Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, there to remain for at least two years. Back home he was once more shortlisted for the shrievalty in November 1441, but not pricked in the event.22 PPC, iv. 107; Issues of the Exchequer ed. Devon, 415; C219/14/5; DKR, xlviii. 311, 315; C47/34/2, no. 3. By then in receipt of fees and robes as one of the esquires of the chamber and hall in the royal household, he continued to be so listed until at least September 1452 – a period during which he represented Hampshire twice more.23 E101/409/9, 11, 16; 410/1, 3, 6, 9. Yet he clearly never caught the attention of the inner circle of courtiers able to influence the King.

Contrary to the purpose behind the ordinance which forbade the election of sheriffs to Parliament, Warbleton was appointed sheriff for a third term on 3 Dec. 1450, while his sixth Parliament was in session, and if assiduous in his attendance in the Commons he must have been absent from his bailiwick for at least three months before the dissolution at the end of the following May. During that period he made a loan to the Crown of £20. He was left out of pocket, for although John Gardener of Tisbury, Wiltshire, acknowledged that he owed Warbleton £100, the latter’s action in the Exchequer of pleas in 1454 to recover this sum proved unsuccessful.24 E401/820, m. 17; E13/145B, rot. 18d. Access to royal patronage at Court had not so far led to preferment, but early in 1452 a petition of his met with a satisfactory outcome. He had lost part of an annual rent of 32 quarters of salt payable from the manor of the alien priory of Hoo in Sussex after the King granted Hoo to Sir Roger Fiennes*. The latter died while Warbleton had been taking the necessary legal steps to recover it, and Hoo had then reverted to the royal foundation at Eton. Henry VI, by way of exchange and in recompense for 15 years’ rental arrears, now granted him for life the office of constable of Odiham castle, with wages of £6 0s. 6d. p.a. and the keeping of the park there with further payment of 4d. a day. Warbleton duly relinquished the ‘saltrent’ on 10 Mar., but almost immediately the parkership was granted to John Gibthorpe*, thus reducing the value of the award. Warbleton protested to the chancellor that Gibthorpe, ‘of gret subtilite and vntrouthe’, had secured the grant of office by fraud, but he had to wait several years for even partial satisfaction. In the spring of 1457 after obtaining confirmation of the constableship in fee, along with the reversion of the parkership, Warbleton transferred both offices to Hugh Pakenham, the husband of his cousin, Constance de la Hay, and Gibthorpe surrendered all his estate to Pakenham too.25 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 513, 528, 530; 1452-61, pp. 356, 363; C1/232/23; CFR, xix. 13. This was the signal for Warbleton’s retirement from royal service. Aged 77, he obtained letters of exemption from further onerous tasks on 24 Nov. 1458.26 CPR, 1452-61, p. 463.

Ever since his marriage to Margery Bessels, more than 30 years earlier, Warbleton had been engaged in litigation regarding her former husband’s estates. His first marriage had not produced a male heir, and he had settled on Margery and their male issue his manors of Sherfield and Chineham and property in Basingstoke. His daughter, Margaret, naturally resented being thus deprived of her inheritance by virtue of her mother’s jointure, but she was constrained on 6 Sept. 1429 to permit her stepmother to hold these properties for life, on pain of forfeiture of a bond in 1,000 marks made payable to Margery and to John Cottesmore, very shortly (on 15 Oct.) to be made j.c.p. This submission was formally acknowledged at Sherfield before Bishop Stafford of Bath and Wells, indicating the serious nature of the transaction.27 CPR, 1422-9, p. 320; CCR, 1429-35, p. 63. Sir Peter Bessels had settled on Margery for life his manors of Bessels Leigh in Berkshire and Kingston in Warwickshire, but instructed his executors, of whom she was one, to sell the rest of his landed estate and spend the money thus raised on charitable works. Before February 1427 Warbleton and his wife bought from Sir Peter’s feoffees the manor of Radcot, Oxfordshire, to keep for Margery’s lifetime, and then obtained a royal licence to have it entailed on their issue, after spending at least 200 marks for the purchase of the reversionary interests in this manor and Bessels Leigh.28 CPR, 1422-9, p. 409; CCR, 1422-9, p. 339. The Warbletons initially worked satisfactorily together with their co-executors to dispose of certain of Bessels’s estates in a sale which raised 1,510 marks, but before 1432 they fell to arguing with the rest and brought actions against them and the feoffees, headed by Thomas Coventre I* of Oxford, alleging in Chancery that they had ‘absolutely refused’ to carry out Sir Peter’s will as it related to King’s Brompton, Somerset, Longworth and Carswell, Berkshire, and property in Oxford, which last should have been sold to set up a college of Premonstratensian canons.29 C1/7/231. In the late 1430s the protagonists realigned, with the Warbletons joining Coventre and Margery’s co-executors in suits against Thomas Somerton, one of the feoffees, who now claimed to be Sir Peter’s cousin and next of kin. They said Somerton had sold Buckland (Berkshire), and Kings Brompton for £200, which sum he had kept for himself. On 5 May 1439 John Golafre and Richard de la Hay (Warbleton’s uncle) came into Chancery to offer guarantees that if the Warbletons could not prove the statement in their petition, Somerton would be satisfied of his damages and expenses; and on the very same day they did likewise on behalf of Margery’s illegitimate son, Thomas Haines, who, now calling himself the son of Sir Peter Bessels and adopting his name, was also suing Somerton. Thomas said that his late father had wanted Kings Brompton to be granted to Barlinch priory if a licence might be obtained within two years of his death, and if not the feoffees were to make estate to him and his heirs, in return for a sum of money to be agreed with his mother and the other executors. This Somerton had refused to do. Somerton responded with a bill against Warbleton, saying that Sir Peter had intended Grafton and Radcot and the reversion of Bessels Leigh (after Margery’s death) to be sold and the money disposed in alms for his soul, but that Warbleton had wrongly ‘accroached’ the manors in fee-simple, and had unjustly taken the revenues for more than 14 years.30 C1/9/126, 127; 10/304; 74/84. Nevertheless, the chancellor condemned Somerton to pay the executors 200 marks, and committed him to the Fleet until May 1446. Shortly afterwards, on 1 July, both Warbleton and his stepson took out royal pardons, probably to escape the consequences of the actions then proceeding against them.31 CCR, 1441-7, p. 383; C67/39, m. 8. He and Margery later sued another fellow executor, Thomas Chalkeley of Clanfield, Oxfordshire, for a debt of £100, but Chalkeley obtained a pardon of outlawry in 1451 for failing to appear in court to make answer, and although they eventually recovered this sum and £20 in damages, it was not until May 1458 that he surrendered to the Fleet and gave them satisfaction.32 CPR, 1446-52, p. 483; 1452-61, p. 424. Meanwhile, in Hilary term 1456, Warbleton had been summoned to answer one William Bessels of Bradford, Wiltshire (who claimed the manor of Radcot as kinsman and heir of Sir Peter), for the return of a chest containing charters and other muniments. Warbleton admitted that the chest, which he had found at Bradford in 1428, was in his possession, but refuted the plaintiff’s claim to title to Radcot, and at Michaelmas he and Margery sued him for conspiring to defraud them of the manor.33 CP40/779, rot. 620; 780, rot. 330; 781, rot. 330; Miscellanea Geneaologica et Heraldica, ser. 5, v. 81.

Despite his readiness to pursue his rights through the law courts and to hound his debtors, Warbleton was capable of forming long-lasting friendships. Most important of these was the one he maintained with William Brocas, from 1414 until the latter’s death in 1456. Brocas made Warbleton overseer of his will, and left instructions that his unmarried daughters were only to take husbands approved by him.34 CPR, 1422-9, p. 320; 1436-41, p. 251; PCC 6 Stokton (PROB11/4, f. 61v); CIPM Hen. VII, i. 417. The network of relationships surrounding Brocas encompassed Warbleton too: in the 1440s he was a feoffee of Aldermaston, Berkshire, during the minority of Thomas de la Mare†, Brocas’s great-nephew,35 CPR, 1441-6, p. 176; 1446-52, p. 245. and he acted similarly for Robert Dingley† (d.1456), Brocas’s brother-in-law.36 CP25(1)/207/33/28; Hants RO, Chute (Vyne) mss, 697-8. Naturally, many of Warbleton’s transactions involved his own kinsfolk and their property. For example, in 1443 he and Richard Bitterley† conveyed two manors in Hertfordshire to his uncle, Richard de la Hay, although they were later to admit that they never had a proper title to the premises, so the deed was invalidated.37 CCR, 1441-7, p. 139; 1447-54, pp. 122, 124; 1454-61, pp. 66, 99-100. He was a feoffee of the estates of William Danvers*, his companion in the Parliament of 1431, who also asked him to be an executor of his will in 1439. Their friendship resulted in the marriage of Danvers’s kinswoman, Eleanor, to Warbleton’s stepson, Thomas Haines.38 C139/174/46; PCC 27 Luffenham (PROB11/3, f. 195v); CPR, 1422-9, p. 320. Together with Danvers and others including Reynold Kentwood, the dean of St. Paul’s, Warbleton was enfeoffed of various properties in Oxfordshire and Berkshire by Robert Symeon (grandson of Sir Robert Symeon) before he set off for Guyenne in the retinue of the earl of Huntingdon, but this undertaking resulted in suits in Chancery brought by Symeon’s four heirs-general when Warbleton and his fellows refused to transfer seisin to them. This may explain why Warbleton and Kentwood were sent writs in June 1441 to appear in Chancery on pain of £100, but the actions continued as late as 1452, after the deaths of nearly all of Warbleton’s co-feoffees.39 C1/9/182; 16/296-7; 19/45.

Warbleton’s daughter, his only child, appears to have died before 1444, for he then began to make settlements of his lands on various of his other relations. The Warbleton manors of Sherfield and Chineham were granted in reversion after the deaths of himself and his wife to Henry Puttenham, the son of his paternal aunt, Margaret; and the Foxley manor of Finchampstead was entailed in 1447 to the advantage of members of his mother’s family, first on his uncle Richard de la Hay and Hay’s son Matthew, and then in 1452, after Matthew’s death, on the latter’s sister, Constance, and her husband Hugh Pakenham, in return for a payment of 20 marks p.a. to him and his wife for the rest of their lives.40 Add. Chs. 38557-63; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 217-18; CFR, xxi. nos. 842-4. Warbleton also looked after his stepson, Thomas Haines alias Bessels (d.1458), on whose marriage to one Clemence, he and Margery had settled the Bessels manors of Carswell and Longworth. According to the later testimony of Richard Harcourt*, Thomas, considering that he and his son William (born in about 1444) were inheritable to no lands, but only at the Warbletons’ pleasure, and also considering the ‘great gentleness and kindness’ done by them to him and his children, had entrusted young William to their rule and governance ‘as well in his marriage as otherwise’, whereupon they had married the youth to Harcourt’s daughter. Clemence and her new husband, John Nowers, disputed this, saying that she had the disposition of her son’s marriage, although she had indeed placed the boy in Warbleton’s keeping because of the trust she had in him.41 C1/28/384.

Despite William Bessels’s youth Warbleton named him with his grandmother Margery as an executor of the will he wrote in his own hand at Sherfield on 10 July 1461, and six days later he settled on him and his wife Alice Harcourt a reversionary interest in Radcot and Grafton to fall in after his and Margery’s deaths.42 PCC 29 Godyn (PROB11/5, f. 235). He lived on eight years more, dying at the advanced age of 88 on 4 Jan. 1469, and was buried in the choir of Tandridge priory church, of which he was patron. Warbleton’s heirs were descendants of two paternal aunts: his cousins Henry Puttenham (by then aged over 60), Margery Brecknock and Sibyl Ryke (then the wife of the judge William Lacon I*), and their nephew William Skulle.43 C140/29/44; VCH Hants, iii. 262. Warbleton’s widow, who lived on until 1484, made sure that her grandson, William Bessels, inherited Bessels Leigh and other of the estates which had belonged to her first husband, even though her legitimate heir was her nephew John Haines. Not surprisingly, William remembered his grandmother and Warbleton in his will of 1515.44 C141/4/39; 7/33; CCR, 1468-76, no. 810; Miscellanea Geneaologica et Heraldica, ser. 5, v. 77-81.