SEYMOUR, John I

A measure of Seymour’s standing in Henry VI’s reign is provided by his service as sheriff for a remarkable seven terms and in four different bailiwicks. By its close he had joined the ranks of the wealthiest gentry of Wiltshire. John came of a distinguished lineage: as the sister and coheir of John, 3rd Lord Beauchamp of Hatch (d.s.p.1361), his great-grandmother Cecily (d.1394), the wife of Sir Roger Seymour, had inherited the Somerset manors of Hatch Beauchamp, Shepton-Beauchamp, Murifield and a third part of Shepton Mallet, all of which eventually passed down to him. CP, ii. 50; CIPM, xvii. 420. Furthermore, John’s grandfather William Seymour† was married to a kinswoman of Sir Peter de la Mare† the famous Speaker, and through this relationship he inherited estates in Herefordshire (the manors of Brobury and Yatton and land in Letton, Willersley and Staunton). The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 343; CIPM, xvii. 116-17. His parents usually lived at Shepton-Beauchamp, where by a dispensation issued by the diocesan in 1408 they were privileged to have religious services celebrated in their own oratory. Reg. Bubwith, i (Som. Rec. Soc. xxix), 40. Yet it was at Hatch Beauchamp that, four days before his death on 17 July 1420, Roger Seymour formally placed his Herefordshire properties in the hands of feoffees (and probably did likewise with regard to his Somerset estates), doubtless with the intention of avoiding the consequences of a Crown wardship, for his son and heir was still a minor, aged 18 or 19. Even though Roger had held Hatch Beauchamp and some former de la Mare properties in Gloucestershire of the King in chief, a royal wardship was indeed avoided – perhaps because the jurors at Roger’s inquisition post mortem in Somerset professed ignorance of any such tenure, and no inquisition took place in Gloucestershire until June 1422, when the King was away in France. CIPM, xxi. 428-9, 888. Precisely when John Seymour came of age and formally entered his father’s property is unclear. Ct. rolls and accts. for Yatton and Brobury date only from later in Hen. VI’s reign: SC2/176/115; SC6/860/15; 861/34. So too is the true value of this patrimony; the sum of £57 p.a. given at his death was almost certainly an underestimate. C140/14/32.

Seymour can have barely attained his majority when he was elected to the first Parliament of Henry VI’s reign, as a representative of the Wiltshire borough of Ludgershall. There, his maternal grandfather Sir William Sturmy, as chief steward of Queen Joan’s lands and custodian of Ludgershall itself, exerted considerable influence. This much is clear from the identity of Seymour’s colleague in the Commons, namely, his uncle of the half-blood, John Sturmy* (Sir William’s illegitimate son), who was also attending Parliament for the first time. Another newcomer was his mother’s cousin Robert Erle*, who accompanied him to Westminster as MP for Great Bedwyn. The introduction of the three kinsmen to the Lower House was effected by Sir William himself, sitting for the county in what was his 12th and final Parliament; as a former Speaker and established parliamentarian he was well qualified to show the novices the ropes. They in turn would have been constantly at hand to assist the elderly knight now reaching the end of his career. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 520-3.

Seymour may have seen military service in France in his youth, before his first Parliament, but the earliest record of him actually doing so dates from February 1424. He then undertook to serve for two months with his own contingent of three archers in the army led by Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, to recapture the fortress at Le Crotoy. E404/40/165; E403/664, m. 17. On his return home he married, taking as his wife the heiress Isabel William of Bristol. It is not difficult to see the attractions of the match (which was probably brokered by his kinsman Erle, who had himself married a Bristol widow), for Isabel was by then the only surviving child of the merchant Mark William, who, or so it was claimed after his death, had amassed property in and around Bristol worth as much as 400 marks. Details about the circumstances of the match emerge from proceedings in a suit in the court of common pleas when a disappointed suitor for Isabel’s hand complained about a breach of contract. Thomas Stamford said that Mark William and his wife had promised that the young Isabel should marry him when she reached marriageable age, but before the espousals could take place William’s only son died, leaving Isabel as the merchant’s sole heir and making her a much more lucrative catch than before. Although it was agreed that the nuptials between Stamford and Isabel would take place at Easter 1425, William reneged on this agreement in July 1424 by wedding his daughter to Seymour, who as already possessed of estates in Somerset and Herefordshire and as coheir-apparent of the wealthy and influential Sir William Sturmy possessed far superior credentials as a bridegroom – one who could elevate Isabel in the social scale and enrich her progeny. Genealogist, xii. 73-74; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 869-70. Seymour’s father-in-law witnessed a conveyance of December following whereby Seymour acquired six tenements in Bristol from the executor of John Barstaple, another merchant; CCR, 1422-9, p. 330. Barstaple had been related to the former husband of Erle’s wife. and in 1426 Seymour settled on his wife jointure in his paternal inheritance in Somerset and Herefordshire (in December that year he had to pay a fine of £12 for failing to obtain a royal licence for the transaction in so far as it related to Hatch Beauchamp). Isabel’s inheritance, which she entered at some point after her father’s death in about 1434, consisted of a very substantial number of properties in Bristol (listed at her death as two messuages, 50 tenements, 41 cottages and nine gardens, in all said to be worth 40 marks a year). CPR, 1422-9, p. 384; C140/14/32; C141/7/36. The estate had once been bigger than this; she and her husband sold two other messuages, known as ‘Weltofarez Taverne’. CCR, 1441-7, p. 283.

On 16 Apr. 1427 the keepers of passage in the ports of south-east England, including London, were authorized to permit Seymour to embark on a pilgrimage to Rome. CCR, 1422-9, p. 288. The timing of his voyage was extraordinary, for this was just three weeks after the death of his grandfather Sir William Sturmy, and it might be thought that he, as the knight’s coheir, should have considered it wise to stay at home to supervise the settlement of his grandfather’s affairs. Yet it seems very likely that Sir William had expressly asked him to undertake the pilgrimage to pray for his soul in the holy city which Sturmy had visited 30 years earlier while on embassy. If so, it was a verbal request, for no such provision appeared in the final will Sir William made on 20 Mar. Sturmy left this grandson items of bedding, including costers of red tapestry-work, ‘steyned de geste de Rowlond et Fyrombris’, and further bequests to his other grandson, William Ringbourne*, who was still a minor. Sturmy’s legitimate heirs were found to be his only surviving daughter Agnes, the widow of Ringbourne’s father and now the wife of John Holcombe, and his grandson Seymour (whose mother was already dead). But it was not his intention that all his estates in Wiltshire and Hampshire, worth more than £126 p.a., should pass to Seymour and his aunt. PCC 7 Luffenham (PROB11/3, f. 55); CIPM, xxii. 714-17, 719. He had made it clear that certain of his lands should be transferred (through the means of enfeoffments) to his bastard son John Sturmy and his nephew Robert Erle, both of whom he named among his executors. On 18 July, presumably after Seymour had returned home from his pilgrimage, orders were sent to the escheators to divide the remaining Sturmy estates into two equal parts, giving Seymour his share and taking his fealty. This gave him a distinct advantage, for there was a delay of five months before similar instructions were issued in respect to Agnes Holcombe’s moiety and the widow’s dower. CFR, xv. 177-8, 198; CCR, 1422-9, p. 349. Sturmy’s feoffees, headed by Bishop Polton of Worcester, handed over to Seymour the manor of Burbage, the hamlet of Durleigh, and the stewardship of Savernake forest; and after obtaining a pardon for having acquired the manor of Stapleford, held in chief, without royal licence, they transferred a moiety of that manor to him as well. Similarly, Seymour had to pay a fine of £10 for a pardon for these transgressions. A writ of non molestetis in respect to his homage was issued to the Exchequer the next summer, and on the death of his widowed grandmother in the following year his share of her dower portion was also released to him. Marquis of Ailesbury mss, 1300/43; CPR, 1422-9, p. 449; E159/204, brevia Trin. rot. 4; CFR, xv. 264.

For the time being, Seymour appears to have been content with his lot and took no legal action to contest his grandfather’s settlements on Erle and John Sturmy. The Sturmy inheritance had increased his wealth, so that when it came to assessing the subsidy on landed incomes levied in 1451 (which he was commissioned to do), he could put himself down as in receipt of an income of £180 p.a. E179/196/118. Of course, this may have under-played his worth. Furthermore, his status was enhanced by his assumption of his late grandfather’s role as warden of Savernake forest. In 1427 the duke of Gloucester, as lord of Marlborough and of the forest, formally addressed Seymour as his steward there. Marquis of Ailesbury mss, 1300/53. Continuing his service to the duke (which had begun on or before their voyage to Le Crotoy), in January 1428 Seymour stood surety for his lord in the Exchequer, and went on to perform a like function four years later, in 1432. CFR, xv. 209; xvi. 81. The association with the King’s uncle Gloucester may account for Seymour’s appointment to four shrievalties in the 1430s (for two terms in Hampshire and one each in Wiltshire and the joint bailiwick of Somerset and Dorset). As sheriff he conducted parliamentary elections at Winchester in 1431 and December 1436, and at Wilton in 1432. Prior to the latter occasion he sent a precept from his exchequer in Fisherton on 2 Apr. to the mayor and bailiffs of nearby Salisbury, requiring from them a swift response so he could complete the return for Wiltshire and all its boroughs. C219/14/2, 3; 15/1; First General Entry Bk. Salisbury (Wilts. Rec. Soc. liv), 290. William Turberville*, knight of the shire for Dorset in the Parliament of 1433, later alleged that Seymour as sheriff of that county had kept back £24 8s. due to him in wages, so that Seymour eventually had to give a bond in the sum due to Turberville’s attorney Philip Leweston*. Yet there may have been more to their quarrel than this seemingly straightforward suit suggests. Seymour later petitioned the chancellor to complain that when his under sheriff Robert Collingbourne* had been holding a tourn on 7 Apr. 1434, Turberville had arrived with a mob of trouble-makers and so menaced him that he dared not proceed, and the jury were too intimidated to make any presentments. E5/503; C1/12/140.

That same spring of 1434 Seymour was listed among the gentry of Wiltshire required to take the oath not to maintain malefactors, CPR, 1429-36, p. 370. and was probably resident in that county when elected to represent it in Parliament in the following year, at a shire court held at Wilton on 6 Sept. He was in breach of the statutes in other respects, however, because he attested the Somerset elections to the same Parliament, held at Ilchester less than a fortnight later. C219/14/5. Seymour had earlier declined to take up knighthood (and been fined accordingly), but he accepted the honour not long after the Parliament ended. It may be that he took part in Gloucester’s expedition for the relief of Calais in 1436, and was knighted by the duke while overseas. Appointment to the Wiltshire bench followed in 1438, and election to a third Parliament, again as a knight of the shire, the next year. Whether Seymour’s links with Duke Humphrey had anything to do with his returns to Parliament is now impossible to say. What is clear, however, is that around the time of the Parliament of 1439-40 he disengaged himself from Gloucester’s circle, forming instead a close association with the duke’s long-term political rival, Cardinal Henry Beaufort. On 29 Sept. 1440 because of his ‘diligence, integrity and faithfulness’ Beaufort appointed him constable of Farnham castle, for term of his life and with an annual fee of £10. Reg. Common Seal (Hants Rec. Ser. ii), 259-60. He was in Farnham in Nov. 1440: CCR, 1435-41, pp. 436, 439. Following Beaufort’s death in 1447, Seymour was kept on at Farnham by his successor as bishop of Winchester, William Waynflete, who in July 1455 also granted him a licence to build an oratory in his inn at ‘Hertfordbrygge’. Hants RO, Reg. Waynflete (21M65/A1/13), pt. 1, f. 37*. Meanwhile, Sir John’s public activities had continued to be focused on Wiltshire, where besides his formal service on ad hoc commissions of local administration he kept an eye open for other matters of concern to the royal government. For instance, in the autumn of 1442 he notified the Council that the authorities at Salisbury had not yet forwarded a promised loan of 50 marks, prompting the King to write to the mayor requesting speedy delivery of the money to the Exchequer. First General Entry Bk. 380. Sir John entered the Commons for the last time in 1445. Unless he sat in one of the Parls. assembled in 1460, 1461 and 1463, for which returns for Wilts. have been lost. In the following year, on 9 Nov. 1446, he took out a general pardon to cover any misdemeanours in his time as a sheriff and j.p. C67/39, m. 4.

In 1447 Seymour’s control over the bulk of the former Sturmy estates met with a challenge from his cousin William Ringbourne, whose mother had recently died and who evidently considered Seymour’s share to be disproportionate. Their disagreement led to a fresh partition of their late grandfather’s lands in Hampshire and Wiltshire, which inter alia required the legal transfer of the manor of Figheldean, which was held in chief; Seymour was fined £12 for completing this without the King’s permission. Marquis of Ailesbury mss, 1300/141-2; CPR, 1446-52, p. 414; A.R. Myers, Crown, Household and Parl. 176. When Ringbourne died in 1450, leaving an under-age son, Robert, as his heir, further decisions about the division of the spoils were temporarily set aside; but other more serious matters relating to the Sturmy inheritance needed clarification in 1451. On Robert Erle’s death in that year his title to the late Sir William Sturmy’s manors of Wolf Hall, Stitchcombe, Standen, Stapleford and Burbage, as well as his lands in Crofton, came under review. Erle’s son and heir, John Erle*, asserted that his father had been in possession of Wolf Hall and Crofton for 24 years (ever since Sturmy’s death), under the terms of a settlement made by the knight in tail-male, so they should now pass to him; the malicious rumours that the entail had been put into effect by enfeoffments completed the day after Sturmy died, and were thus invalid, should be scotched. Accordingly, the chancellor was asked to examine witnesses to the sequence of events surrounding Sturmy’s deathbed in 1427. On being examined under oath, William Tourney, the only surviving executor of Sturmy’s will, deposed that he had gone to the knight’s house at Elvetham, Hampshire, at about three o’clock in the afternoon of Friday 21 Mar. 1427 and Sir William, lying sick, delivered to him divers deeds of feoffment naming John Benger† and others, with a letter of attorney authorizing him to deliver seisin to them. He left that day, came to Marlborough the next morning, where he dined with Benger, and the two of them then rode round the various properties named in the deeds, making delivery of seisin at each place, and ending up at Wolf Hall at sunset. As Benger and other key witnesses were now ‘of grete age and so impotent that they may not labour but to their grete hurte and desese’, Seymour asked that Bishop Beauchamp of Salisbury and other leading landowners of the county, including John Stourton II*, Lord Stourton, and the bishop’s brother Sir William Beauchamp*, Lord St. Amand, be empowered to examine them. This they did at Marlborough on 17 Jan. 1452, when Benger and some other witnesses confirmed Tourney’s testimony. Yet it would appear that after Tourney’s departure to meet Benger Sir William’s health had declined dramatically. Sturmy’s chaplain testified to the commissioners that his master had died at eight o’clock on the Friday evening (that is, before the delivery of seisin could have taken place), and that Robert Erle and John Sturmy had asked the household servants to keep the news quiet until Sunday. The prior of Easton Royal, who arrived at the house on the Saturday morning, could also bear witness as to the timing of the death. Seymour, having now established that the enfeoffment was invalid because his grandfather died before seisin had been made, made sure that these depositions were enrolled on the patent roll nine days later. C1/18/45-46; 19/112, 360; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 554-6; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 187-8. Clearly, he and others had been misled back in 1427, for at the inquisition post mortem held on 11 June that year it was firmly stated that Sturmy had enfeoffed Bishop Polton, Benger and others of the properties now under dispute ‘long before his death’; and as we have seen the feoffees had promptly conveyed to Seymour at least part of what was due to him. CIPM, xxii. 716; Marquis of Ailesbury mss, 1300/43. It may be that Sir John had readily accepted that his grandfather wanted Robert Erle to have Wolf Hall and the other manors for term of his life (as a just reward for his devoted service); only when it was asserted that they should descend in tail-male did he take action to recover his inheritance and defeat the ambitions of Robert’s son John. That he did now take possession of Wolf Hall is clear from the agreement he made with Sir John Chalers*, the guardian of the young Robert Ringbourne, that Chalers would bear half the legal expenses of maintaining the rights to the manor and other property to the use of Seymour and Ringbourne as Sturmy’s coheirs. Marquis of Ailesbury mss, 1300/115.

Seymour was well regarded by some of his peers. In the 1440s he had been asked to be an arbiter in a dispute between William Warbleton* and William Fauconer; Reynold, Lord de la Warre, (Sir) James Luttrell (a kinsman by marriage), and John, Lord Stourton, all asked him to be their feoffee, and he attested deeds for (Sir) John Lisle II*. Winchester Coll. muns. 12417; Reg. Bekynton, i (Som. Rec. Soc. xlix), 360; CPR, 1446-52, p. 284; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 339-40; 1461-8, p. 126. His public service continued in the 1450s with three more appointments as sheriff. During his term in 1450-1 the mayor of Salisbury gave him a pipe of wine worth £3 5s. to gain his good will, although Lord St. Amand, less pleased with his conduct, alleged in the Exchequer of pleas that he had failed to honour a tally for £50 when required to do so. First General Entry Bk. 446; E13/145A, rot. 27. Sir John was among the high-ranking members of the gentry sent letters from the royal council in December 1455 asking them to assist the Protector, the duke of York, in his drive to restore order in the West Country. PPC, vi. 270. To protect himself from prosecution for misdemeanours committed during his shrievalties (and he may initially have had St. Amand’s accusation in mind), Seymour purchased a number of pardons in this decade: in July 1452, November 1455, and February and November 1458. The last described him as former sheriff of Herefordshire, and cleared him of all felonies, trespasses and escapes of prisoners. C67/40, m. 24; 41, m. 16; 42, m. 38; E159/234, brevia Hil. rot. 15; 235, brevia Mich. rot. 32; CPR, 1452-61, p. 460. It was unusual for him to be active in that county, and his appointment there may be related to the outbreak of serious disorder in the preceding months. His eldest son, John, took his more accustomed place as sheriff in Wiltshire for the same annual term. Seymour’s commissions of array in the late 1450s, especially those of 1459, indicate the Lancastrian government’s reliance on him in a period of crisis, no doubt arising from his continuing association with the chancellor Bishop Waynflete, whom he served at Farnham and in the bishop’s liberty in Surrey and Sussex. Besides his role as a feoffee of the estates of Sir James Luttrell, he took on a similar responsibility for the lawyer Alexander Hody* just a few days before the battle of Northampton; both Luttrell and Hody were committed Lancastrians who were to be attainted in Edward IV’s first Parliament. CPR, 1461-7, p. 286; C140/4/34. Although Seymour did not go so far as they did in taking up arms against the Yorkists, he almost certainly shared their political sympathies, and following the accession of King Edward, he maintained his close connexion with Bishop Waynflete. Reg. Common Seal, 347.

Understandably, the new regime regarded Seymour with suspicion, removing him from the bench in Wiltshire and declining to appoint him to ad hoc commissions. More seriously, the wardenship of Savernake forest was taken away from him: as early in the reign as 9 Apr. 1461 the forest was committed to one of the new King’s supporters. The process by which he eventually recovered the hereditary office, proved complicated, CFR, xx. 11; VCH Wilts. iv. 420-1, 439-40. He purchased another pardon, on 9 Apr. 1462: C67/45, m. 26. and involved him in litigation in the court of the Exchequer against the sheriff of Wiltshire, Sir Reynold Stourton. On 4 Nov. 1463 he alleged that in the previous August Stourton had come to Wolf Hall and unlawfully seized 14 of his cattle. In his defence Stourton stated that he had been justified in making a distraint on Seymour’s goods for his default in payment of a rent of £7 0s. 4d. p.a. due for 421 acres in Savernake forest which since the beginning of the fourteenth century had been payable to the Crown through the sheriff and appeared with the ancient farms charged on his account. On 27 Apr. 1464 Seymour brought a writ to court demanding speedy justice, and stating categorically that he had not been in possession of the land in question at the relevant date. A jury was to be called to decide the matter in Hilary term following, but by then Sir John was dead. E13/149, mm. 33d, 56, 61. These 421 acres were to be committed to his gds. John Seymour for 20 years at £10 p.a. in May 1485: CFR, xxi. no. 884.

Seymour died on 20 Dec. 1464. C140/14/32. Earlier that year he had been putting his affairs in order. He entered an agreement with Robert Ringbourne, with the consent of the young man’s former guardian Sir John Chalers, that the Seymours might keep all of Wolf Hall, Great Bedwyn and Crofton un-partitioned in return for a fixed annuity payable to Ringbourne and his heirs; this arrangement was duly put into effect. Marquis of Ailesbury mss, 1300/116-24, 143. Also that year he enfeoffed Edmund Blount esquire, Master John Arfos, vicar of St. Nicholas’s church, Bristol, and others of a number of his manors and other estates including the stewardship of Savernake. This was done with the clear intention of preserving them from royal wardship, for his eldest son, John, Ibid. 1300/147. He had settled his moiety of Stapleford on John and his wife Elizabeth in tail-male in 1447: CPR, 1446-52, p. 121. had died in September 1463, so that the heir was now John’s son and namesake, a minor aged 14. In a brief will made three weeks before his death Sir John named three of his other sons (Roger, Richard and Humphrey), as his executors, leaving them £2 each for their trouble. This, in line with the other provisions in the will, was niggardly. Like his grandfather Sturmy he asked to be buried in Easton Royal priory (the prior witnessed the will), but whereas his ancestors had been generous benefactors to the priory, he left it a mere half a mark. A similar sum went to Salisbury cathedral, just £1 to the church at Hatch Beauchamp, a paltry 1s. 8d. each to two other churches, and a cow to that at Elvetham. PCC 8 Godyn (PROB11/5, f. 59). The will does not reflect at all well on the wealthy testator’s generosity, piety or charitable inclinations.

Seymour’s widow, Isabel, to whom he had been married for 40 years, took a vow of perpetual chastity in the collegiate church of Westbury by Bristol in the presence of Bishop Carpenter of Worcester on 3 June 1465. Genealogist, xii. 75. Although she was assigned dower in Hampshire and Wiltshire in the following November, there was an unexplained delay of three years before she received her entitlement in Somerset. CCR, 1461-8, p. 299; 1468-76, no. 27. She took out a pardon on 26 Sept. 1468: C67/46, m. 31. Her final years were troubled by lawsuits over the Wiltshire manor of Huish, which, acquired by Sir William Sturmy long before, had been held by his associate John Bird* until his death in about 1445, whereupon Bird’s widow had taken possession. Isabel claimed that Bird had sold the reversionary interest in Huish to her late husband – a claim supported by her ‘sister’, Bird’s widow – but Thomas Beke* and his wife, another claimant, alleged that she and her grandson Alexander Seymour had entered the property by force and in contempt of the court of Chancery. Despite her acquittal in 1477, the Seymours lost possession of the manor. Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxix. 58-99, 156-84; C1/42/32-35; 50/133-4; VCH Wilts. x. 78. Having outlived our MP by over 20 years, Isabel died on 14 Apr. 1485, leaving her inheritance in Bristol to her grandson John Seymour, and releasing to him the estates in Somerset and Herefordshire she had received in jointure 60 years earlier, as well as more in Wiltshire (including the manor of Wootton Rivers which Sir John had purchased in 1441). C141/7/36; Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 542. Isabel had entrusted her moveable goods to her son Humphrey Seymour, William Peche and Richard Bayly for the performance of her will, and on her deathbed she declared that Humphrey alone should dispose of them in alms for her soul and other charitable deeds. Nevertheless, Bayly removed various valuable items which he gave or sold to John Seymour, leaving Humphrey unable to execute his mother’s will. In a petition to the chancellor, he also said that she had intended him to have certain of her lands and tenements in Bristol for his lifetime. Peche, who had been entrusted with the relevant evidences, confirmed that it was Isabel’s wish that these properties were to pass firstly to Humphrey for life, then to his brother Ralph, and finally to Humphrey’s son Simon, but told the chancellor that John Seymour had demanded the deeds from him; accordingly, he deposited them in the Chancery so that delivery might be made by order of the court. C1/57/1, 2; 59/73; 65/208.

The Seymour cadets, Humphrey and his brother Ralph, were married to daughters and coheirs of Thomas Winslow I* (d.1462), in an alliance probably cemented during the lifetimes of their fathers. Through his eldest son our MP was great-great-grandfather of Jane Seymour, queen to Henry VIII and mother of Edward VI, and of her brother Edward, duke of Somerset, the Protector.