SEYMOUR, Richard

At the time of Richard Seymour’s first election to Parliament the lordship and borough of Marlborough were held by the queen, Margaret of Anjou. It may perhaps be assumed that the queen’s officers deemed him to be a reliable person to serve in this politically-charged Parliament, held at Coventry in the aftermath of the battles at Blore Heath and Ludford Bridge, where the Yorkist lords were destined to be attainted. Richard was introduced to the Commons by his elder brother John, returned as one of the knights of the shire. The Seymours were well known in Marlborough, where Richard’s father owned property and leased more from the queen. CAD, ii. B2530; SC6/1055/16-19. Sir John made arrangements for this one of his five sons to inherit land and tenements there: after his death in 1464 his feoffees settled these properties on Richard and his wife in tail. CAD, ii. B2531; Wilts. Hist. Centre, Savernake Estate mss, 9/19/710. The mayor and other local men witnessed the transactions. In the brief, parsimonious will his father made on 30 Nov. 1464 Richard and his brothers Roger and Humphrey had been named as executors, each with a niggardly bequest of £2; and Richard and Humphrey took on the task of the administration of his substantial estate. PCC 8 Godyn (PROB11/5, f. 59). They stood surety in the Exchequer in the following March and again in February 1466 when certain of the Seymour feoffees obtained custody of estates in Hampshire and Wiltshire removed into the King’s hands because of the minority of their nephew John, the principal heir. CFR, xx. 161, 173.

Controversy still surrounded the Seymours’ title to the manor of Stitchcombe (‘Stotescombe’), once held by Sir John Seymour’s grandfather Sir William Sturmy* (d.1427), who had granted it to his nephew Robert Erle* (d.1451). Sir John was of the opinion that Erle had been left this manor and certain other lands for his lifetime only, and that after his death they should descend to him as Sturmy’s coheir; but Robert’s son John Erle* (d.c.1452) claimed that Stitchcombe had been settled in tail-male. This claim was quickly taken up by the avaricious lawyer Thomas Tropenell*, who married John’s widow. With Tropenell’s guidance, his stepson Richard Erle† placed a number of properties and land (16 messuages, ten tofts and some 500 acres) in Stitchcombe, Burbage and Marlborough in the hands of powerful feoffees, headed by the King’s favourite Humphrey Stafford IV*, Lord Stafford of Southwick, and then alleged at an assize held at Salisbury in July 1466 that Richard Seymour, his wife and several others had wrongfully disseised these feoffees of their property. Following an adjournment to February 1467, Seymour procured a writ addressed to the justices stating that the inquisition post mortem held after his father’s death had found that Sir John had died possessed of two burgages in Marlborough, to which his grandson John, a minor, was the heir; that part of the property now in contention was thus in the King’s hands owing to the heir’s wardship, so the justices should not proceed. With regard to the other contested properties, the jury found for Stafford and his co-feoffees, and assessed their damages at £32 10s. and costs at £20. In response Seymour gave the justices to understand that two members of the jury had admitted that they and their fellows had been hired in the interest of the plaintiffs, and had received instructions in a bill written by Tropenell which set out the verdict they should give; indeed, one of the jurors, John Mompeson*, confirmed that before he was sworn in Tropenell had handed him this bill, which left the jurors merely to award the costs and damages at their discretion. Nevertheless, when they were recalled in June the jurors affirmed that the bill had not influenced their decision. Accordingly, the justices decided that Stafford and his co-feoffees should recover possession of the property and their damages (now multiplied by three in accordance with the statutes). KB27/836, rot. 72; C261/11/19.

In desperation, Seymour petitioned the chancellor, George Neville, archbishop of York, seeking justice for the wrongs inflicted on him: evidence had been forged, and juries, manipulated and bribed by the duplicitous Tropenell, had given false verdicts. C1/31/197-201. Such were Seymour’s preoccupations at the time Parliament was summoned to meet at Westminster on 3 June; the personal motives for his candidacy are clear enough. In the sheriff’s return, made at the county court on 5 May, he is recorded as MP for Marlborough once again, while his principal opponent, Richard Erle, was to sit for Chippenham. Yet there is nothing to show that their suit progressed further while the Parliament was in session. The assize records were eventually called into King’s bench in Trinity term 1469, and a jury of 24 called to appear three weeks from Michaelmas, but before it did so Stafford, newly elevated to the earldom of Devon, had been killed by rebels. KB27/833, rot. 100, 834, rot. 43; E326/4668. The outcome of the proceedings at Easter 1470, when the larger jury should have decided whether the jurors at the assize had perjured themselves, is left open in the record. KB27/836, rot. 72. Yet Richard Erle did relinquish to Seymour a small part of the disputed estate (a meadow in the parish of Mildenhall), in December that year, and this may indicate that Seymour triumphed in the end. Significantly, Stitchcome was eventually to pass to his descendants. E326/2647; VCH Wilts. xii. 131.

Little else is recorded about Seymour. He had been listed as a potential juror at sessions of oyer and terminer held at Salisbury in January 1469 to indict (Sir) Thomas Hungerford* for treason. As Hungerford had been among the notable landowners that Erle had enfeoffed of the disputed estate, this provided an opportunity for Seymour to exact some revenge, but in the event he was not pricked. KB9/320, m. 22. Seymour died on 2 Apr. 1473. Writs de diem clausit extremum were sent to the escheators of Wiltshire, Oxfordshire and Somerset, but an inquisition only survives for Somerset. This shows that he had held a messuage and 50 acres of land in Ashton, worth £2 p.a., by the courtesy after the death of his wife. His heir was their son Humphrey, aged six. CFR, xxi. no. 158; C140/43/12.