ROUS, Reynold

‘Al the Rousis that be in Southfolk cum, as I can lerne, oute of the house of Rouse of Dinnington’; so concluded the Tudor antiquary, John Leland. J. Leland, Itin. ed. Toulmin Smith, vi. 76. It appears that Leland was correct, for a Peter le Rous was living at Dennington as early as Edward III’s reign and the Rouses of Cransford were descended from Reynold’s second son, Thomas. According to the family’s pedigree, Peter was the MP’s great-great-grandfather, but it seems likely that the heralds inserted too many generations. Vis. Suff. ii. 252. Little is known about Reynold’s father, although Robert Rous was active in both Norfolk (where his wife came from) and Suffolk during the first three decades of the fifteenth century. Accorded the style of ‘esquire’ by his contemporaries, he was occasionally appointed to the position of tax collector, but he was never as active in county affairs as Reynold, who trained for the law. CPR, 1399-1401, pp. 424-5; 1405-8, p. 401; CCR, 1405-9, pp. 117-18, 120; 1422-9, p. 130; CFR, xiv. 149; xv. 220, 294; CP25(1)/224/113/45; 114/26. He was still alive in 1444 when he conveyed a close in Dennington to his son. Suff. RO (Ipswich), Rous mss, HA11/C1/21.

While there is no definite evidence for Reynold’s legal training, it is conceivable that he was the ‘Rouse’ or ‘Rous’ who was a member of Lincoln’s Inn in the late 1420s. Lincoln’s Inn, London, Black Bk. 1, ff. 15v, 26v; L. Inn Adm. i. 6. But J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii. 1331, suggests that this was William Rous*, a future Chancery clerk. He was certainly active in Suffolk by the beginning of 1427, when he received seisin of lands at Dennington. CP25(1)/224/114/23. Later in the same year, he was party to another conveyance, of a couple of manors and various lands in Brampton and elsewhere in south-east Suffolk, apparently as a feoffee of the Duke family. Also involved in this second transaction was Sir William Phelip†, an influential local figure and a prominent servant of the Lancastrian dynasty who was created Lord Bardolf in November 1437. CP25(1)/224/114/26. One of Phelip’s principal residences was a manor at Dennington, so it was inevitable that the Rous family should have come into contact with him. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 71-74. In 1422 Robert Rous was associated with Sir William as a co-plaintiff in a plea of debt, while Reynold was a mainpernor when Phelip obtained grants of wardship from the Crown in the early 1430s. CP40/647, rot. 116d; CFR, xvi. 59-60, 153-4. Reynold’s younger brother, William Rous, was also associated with Sir William, becoming a feoffee of his manor at Erpingham in Norfolk. CCR, 1441-7, p. 21. Reynold and his brother benefited from Phelip’s patronage in return, for Sir William helped them and John Andrew III* to acquire a seven-year farm of three duchy of Lancaster manors in Suffolk (Offton, Elmsett and Somersham), in 1437. DL42/18, f. 75. Rous also received 100s. p.a. as steward and receiver of the same lordships and that of Fulmodeston, Norf. – a fee he would lose by virtue of the Act of Resumption passed by the Parliament of 1449-50 – but it is unclear whether these positions were treated as distinct from his wider offices of steward and receiver of duchy lands in Norf. and Suff.: DL29/292/4803. Phelip would name Reynold one of his executors, although in the event Rous renounced the task following his patron’s death in mid 1441. De Antiquis Legibus Liber (Cam. Soc. xxxiv), pp. clxxii-iii. Through the Phelip family, Rous came into contact with Sir William’s brother-in-law, Sir Andrew Butler†. The exact nature of his relationship with Butler is unknown but it must have been close; when he came to draw up his will he gave specific instructions for a chantry priest to include Butler and his wife in his prayers. PCC 12 Godyn.

Almost certainly it was the connexion with Phelip that enabled Rous to enter the service of William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk. Despite a potential conflict of interests in East Anglia, Phelip and the earl had come to forsake rivalry for a cordial modus vivendi in the region. Indeed, the association of Rous and the likes of the better known John Heydon* and Sir Thomas Tuddenham* with both Phelip and de la Pole symbolized the merging in the late 1430s of the two magnates’ interests into a single political connexion. In July 1437, Rous and Heydon, at that date one of Phelip’s principal servants, stood surety in the Exchequer for Tuddenham, who was both a Phelip feoffee and a de la Pole feoffee and counsellor. H.R. Castor, King, Crown and Duchy of Lancaster, 88-91; CFR, xvi. 337. In the following year Reynold went to the Exchequer on Suffolk’s behalf, to collect two instalments of an annuity of 200 marks that the earl received from the Crown. E403/731, mm. 8, 10. At the end of the same decade, Rous and other de la Pole men supported the Suffolk esquire, Robert Lyston, in his quarrels with the duke of Norfolk’s retainer, Sir Robert Wingfield, with Rous acting as Lyston’s attorney. Castor, 109. The Rous-Lyston alliance was renewed later in the fifteenth century when Edward, one of Reynold’s younger sons, married Lyston’s daughter Margaret. CIPM Hen. VII, i. 700-1.

A report, dating from the late 1430s or early 1440s, outlining the legal advice the judge, William Paston, gave one William Burgeys, provides further evidence about the close connexion Rous enjoyed with de la Pole. Burgeys had sought the judge’s counsel after becoming embroiled in a dispute with Reynold, informing Paston that he had suffered malicious harassment and arrest at the hands of his opponent, for refusing to pay a rent of 5s. 4d. he did not owe. He received little encouragement from Paston, who pointed out that Rous was ‘feid wyth myn lord of Sowthfolke and mech he is of hese consel’. He also told Burgeys that he would not find a lawyer in either Norfolk or Suffolk prepared to help him. His advice was, therefore, to ‘make an end qwhat so ever thu pay, for he xal elles on-do the and brynge the to nowte’. According to the report, Rous claimed the rent as lord of Swafield Hall in Norfolk, which he subsequently offered to sell to Burgeys. Possibly the manor had come to Rous from his mother, since it lay just two miles north of her family home at North Walsham, but why he should have made such an offer is unclear. In any event, Burgeys ended up buying it, although for ‘xx li. more than it was worth’. Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 517-19; C.F. Richmond, Paston Fam.: First Phase, 42.

Even if Rous did not owe his return as an MP for Dunwich in 1437 to the active support of Phelip (who subsequently acquired the town’s fee farm) and de la Pole, the burgesses may have elected him because they saw the potential advantages for themselves of a representative with powerful patrons and legal expertise. In any case, Rous was a local gentleman, probably well versed in the affairs of the borough, and if he did not already hold property there he was soon to acquire such an interest. By Michaelmas 1441, several months before he was again returned for Dunwich, he had acquired lands and tenements in its parish of All Saints which had formerly belonged to Robert Thorpe*. Add. Roll 40729. Had they not largely disappeared, Dunwich’s medieval records may well have revealed that the burgesses retained him for his counsel. Their counterparts at Ipswich had certainly done so by the mid 1440s. In 1446-7 the latter borough paid him 20s. for his annual fee, spent a further 3s. 4d. on a dinner for him and assigned him nearly 7s. in expenses he had run up while working on its behalf. Suff. RO, Ipswich bor. recs., chamberlains’ acct. 1446-7, C/3/3/1/1. Whatever work Rous may have performed for Dunwich in Parliament, he also found time for other matters while an MP. Shortly after the Parliament of 1437 opened, for example, he was among those chosen to arbitrate in a dispute over the will of William Garneys, an esquire from Beccles in north-east Suffolk. CCR, 1435-41, pp. 109, 111.

Between his two Parliaments, Rous began to exercise office as an administrator for the Crown, both directly and in the service of the duchy of Lancaster. No doubt he owed his positions as the duchy’s steward and receiver in Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the patronage of Phelip, chief steward of the duchy in the south of England. Although conferred on him on the same day, these offices were regarded as separate, for the stewardship was for life but he held the receivership during pleasure. He was still receiver during the accounting year 1449-50, but John Stanford appears to have taken over the responsibilities of this office – with regard to Norfolk and Suffolk at least – in March 1453. Somerville, 596. Eleven months after obtaining his duchy of Lancaster offices Rous, joined the Suffolk bench. As a lawyer, he was usually a member of the quorum and from the date of his first appointment he served continuously as a j.p until March 1460, retaining his place on the bench even though he was accused of treason in 1445.

The accusation came from a prisoner, Robert Cornewalle, a clerk from Walpole in east Suffolk, during a session of gaol delivery held at Ipswich, probably earlier in the same year. The assize justices present, John Fray† and John Markham, took it seriously, for Rous was committed to the ward of the sheriff of Suffolk and then to the Marshalsea prison in London, prior to appearing in the King’s bench on the following 27 Nov. Upon appearing in court, however, he was able to secure immediate release by producing a writ of privy seal, dated the previous day. In the writ the King declared that Cornewalle had confessed to fabricating his charge of treason and ordered that Rous, ‘oure trewe liegeman giltles’, who had forgiven his accuser, should be released. KB27/738, rex rot. 47. The plea roll does not date the Ipswich gaol delivery, and the relevant gaol delivery rolls (JUST3) for the mid 1440s have not survived. What prompted Cornewalle to make such an accusation is unknown. Rous, connected as he was with de la Pole, by this date the King’s chief minister, could not have seemed a convincing traitor to the authorities.

Possibly this curious episode was bound up with the partisan politics of mid fifteenth-century East Anglia for, despite having the upper hand in the region, de la Pole and his followers had several prominent opponents. Rous did not, however, suffer any serious consequences following the fall of his patron, by then duke of Suffolk, in 1450. He and other members of the resilient de la Pole affinity remained in administrative office in East Anglia after Suffolk’s death. They also rallied around his dowager duchess, and Rous is listed among Alice de la Pole’s feed men, with an annuity of 53s. 4d., in her receiver-general’s account for 1453-4. Egerton Roll 8779. He was also active as an executor of John Belley, formerly one of the duke’s retainers, C1/16/453. and associated with Thomas, Lord Scales, from whom members of the de la Pole affinity gained support and protection following the loss of their master. R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 590-1; Paston Letters, ii. 60-62; Harvard Univ. Law School Lib., English deeds, 453. Both before and after Suffolk’s death, Rous, Sir Thomas Tuddenham and other de la Pole men helped Scales to pursue his claim to the Norfolk manor of Babingley, formerly the property of Sir John Clifton. CFR, xviii. 183-4; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 90-92; F. Blomefield, Norf. viii. 350. The survival of the de la Pole interest also owed much to the incompetence and character flaws of John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, head of the main rival affinity in East Anglia. The lawlessness of some of his followers provoked general complaint, and in about 1454 Rous and other gentry of the region petitioned the judges of King’s bench about the activities of one of the greatest ruffians among them, Robert Lethum. Castor, 170-3; Paston Letters, i. 75-80. Yet membership of rival affinities did not have to preclude co-operation or friendship: in the same period Rous and Sir Thomas Tuddenham were feoffees for Mowbray’s follower, John Timperley I*. CPR, 1452-61, p. 150.

As part of his efforts to advance his own regional interests, the duke of Norfolk allied himself with Richard, duke of York, leader of the opposition to the government and the Court of which William de la Pole had been such an important member. Following York’s victory at St. Albans in May 1455, Rous purchased a royal pardon, dated the following 12 Nov., C67/41, m. 17. possibly as an insurance policy in the wake of the changed political circumstances arising from that battle. There is no evidence that he took part in this or in any other civil war engagement but he was clearly regarded as trustworthy by the Lancastrian government, since he was appointed to anti-Yorkist commissions of array in December 1459 and again the following February. While it is puzzling that he was omitted from the commission of the peace in March 1460, before the duke of York and his allies regained control of the country, he was not the only potential Lancastrian supporter dropped from the Suffolk bench during the chaotic last 18 months of Henry VI’s reign. In spite of his past allegiances, Rous successfully transferred his loyalties to the new Yorkist government in 1461, since he was pricked for the first Suffolk commission of the peace of Edward IV’s reign. Two years later, he was one of those commissioned to inquire into the lands of Viscount Beaumont, who had died fighting the Yorkists at the battle of Northampton in July 1460. He was probably familiar with at least some of these holdings, for Beaumont had held the Phelip estates by the courtesy, having married Elizabeth, the sole daughter and heir of Lord Bardolf. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 74.

The commission was one of Rous’s last. He drew up his will in April 1464 and had died before the following 8 June, when Margaret Paston added in a postscript to one of her letters that ‘Rowse of Suffolk is ded’. PCC 12 Godyn; Paston Letters, i. 291. He had probably remained active right up to the end of his life, for he was still on the quorum of the Suffolk bench when he died. In error he was pricked posthumously for the comm. of the peace of the following 7 Aug. In his will he requested burial in St. Mary’s church, Dennington, and made various bequests, including one of his three best French books (libris gallicos optimos) to the nuns at Campsea in east Suffolk, upon condition that they observed his anniversary. He also left four other books in the same language, perhaps law books, to his son and heir, Henry. Two of his many sons, Henry and Robert, were to act as his executors, along with his widow and a clerk, John Norfolke, and he appointed his old associate, John Heydon, and Roger Drury as supervisors.

These brief testamentary dispositions were followed by detailed directions for his lands. As Rous’s inquisition post mortem has not survived, his will is useful for identifying his properties. Immediately after his death his widow, Elizabeth, was to keep possession of all of his lands for life, although he expected her to see their younger children through school, so that they might ‘lerne the lawe of the lond’, or to secure them a place in ‘service’ (presumably in a magnate household). She was also to see that one of his daughters, Anne, married his ward, Thomas Fastolf†, and to provide Anne with £80 if she complied with the match arranged for her. A year after Rous’s death his executors sued John Brame, esq., for abducting the ward, whom Anne, in obedience to her father’s wishes, subsequently married: KB27/816, rot. 68; A. Suckling, Suff. ii. 366-7. The generous provision Rous made for Elizabeth is probably a sign of his affection for her; as far as producing children was concerned it had certainly been a successful marriage. He did, however, lay down an important restriction concerning her enjoyment of his properties, for if she remarried she was to lose any right to his lands and goods, save her personal array, a bed and an annuity of 24 marks p.a. Furthermore, she would not receive this annuity until the executors of her dead brother, John Denston, returned a bond for 400 marks which Rous, along with John Andrew III and another had given Denston as a security for her jointure. With regard to his sons, the MP left six of them a portion of his landed estate after the death of his widow, although he directed that none should have possession before reaching the age of 24. To Henry he left the manor of ‘Rousez’ and his other holdings in Dennington, to receive when he attained that age, along with all the lands in Norfolk once held by the testator’s mother or his deceased brother, William. Since William predeceased Reynold, he cannot as HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 727, speculated, have been the William Rous who resigned his office as a clerk in Chancery in 1468: CPR, 1441-6, p. 197; 1461-7, pp. 53, 432-3; 1467-77, p. 228; CCR, 1461-8, p. 461. The Dennington property was, however, to support a chantry priest, who was to sing for the souls of Sir Andrew Butler and his wife, Dame Katherine, as well as those of Rous and Elizabeth, for 24 years, either in the family chapel at Dennington or in St. Mary’s church. Although the Norfolk properties left to Henry are not specifically identified in the will, they were probably situated at North Walsham and Bradfield. See the inq. post mortem taken after the death of the MP’s successor, Henry: CIPM Hen. VII, i. 805. Another manor, at Haston, was destined for a fourth son, Edward, and Rous divided his remaining holdings, consisting of lands and tenements in Cransford, Laxfeld, Dunwich, Westleton, Worlingworth, Southwold and other parishes among Edward’s brothers, Thomas, John, William and Humphrey. The only provision he made for his remaining son, Robert, and his second daughter, Margaret, was to name them as remaindermen of the manors at Dennington and Haston respectively, in the unlikely event of all their brothers dying without male heirs. Possibly illegitimate, Robert does not feature in the Rous pedigree: Vis. Suff. ii. 249-52.

The will indicates that Rous’s Norfolk lands came from his mother’s family, and he must have succeeded his father in at least some of the Dennington properties, but he would not have inherited much and it is not surprising that he had been active in the land market during his lifetime. As we have seen, he had acquired Robert Thorpe’s properties in Dunwich, and the will shows that the lands in Laxfeld and elsewhere which he left to his son, John, were ones he had purchased. He is also known to have taken part in a conveyance, involving property in Laxfeld, Dennington, Bedingfield and Coddenham, in 1451, probably as a purchaser rather than a feoffee. CP25(1)/224/118/30. Later, in the early 1460s, John Bressingham sued Rous in Chancery for lands in Hempnall, Cawston and other Norfolk parishes which he was supposed to have been holding as a feoffee for the Bressingham family, but whether the MP had actually tried to gain them for himself is not revealed. C1/29/505.

As he had desired, Rous was buried in St. Mary’s, Dennington. An antiquary who visited the church in the early modern period noted that he and his wife Elizabeth lay in a tomb situated in the chancel and near the rood loft, but no trace of this monument now remains. Although Rous never achieved the prominence of other East Anglian lawyers of his day, he laid the foundations from which his family rose to greater things. His grandson, William† (who also represented Dunwich in Parliament), was knighted after the battle of Flodden in 1513, and his descendant, John Rous†, already a baronet, was created Baron Rous in 1796 and earl of Stradbroke in 1821. Chorography Suff. (Suff. Rec. Soc. xix), 79; The Commons 1509-58, iii. 222; CP, xii (1), 322-3.