SLEGGE, Stephen

Of obscure origin, the Slegges probably lived in west Kent, perhaps at Brenchley near Tonbridge, in the early fifteenth century. In c.1420 Slegge’s father was pursuing a suit for debt against a man from Cranbrook in the same vicinity: CPR, 1422-9, p. 25. Possibly they advanced themselves in the service of the Brenchesle family: in his will, the MP would seek masses for the widow of Sir William Brenchesle, a justice of the common pleas who died in 1406, and he may have enjoyed the Brenchesles’ support when joining the legal profession. Archaelogia Cantiana, xxviii. 229; PPC 21 Stokton. Much of Slegge’s early career is open to speculation. Having moved to Wouldham near Rochester, he could have found employment in the service of either the local bishop or cathedral priory. He certainly formed a connexion with Rochester bridge, possibly through the Rickhills, a family closely related to the Brenchesles. Archaelogia Cantiana, xxviii. 230. Wouldham was a manor held by the cathedral priory of St. Andrew, Rochester: A.F. Brown, ‘Lands and Tenants of the Bpric. and Cathedral Priory of Rochester’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1974), 101, 124. In December 1439 he was associated with Henry Hickes*, attorney to the wardens and commonalty of the bridge, in entering a recognizance to Sir John Juyn, c.j.KB. E159/216, recogniciones Mich. Later, Slegge was a feoffee for the bridge alongside Henry Rowe, one of the wardens, Richard Bamme, a member of its council, and Edmund Chertsey*. CP40/738, rots. 378d, 442; CP25(1)/115/318/604. By the mid 1430s Slegge held lands valued at £7 p.a. for the purposes of the parliamentary subsidy of 1436, E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14 (iv). holdings to which he added (if only temporarily) in 1439, when he and John Baker of Sussex acquired a lease of the rectory of Westerham and chapel of Edenbridge from the prior of Canterbury. Canterbury Cath. Archs., Dean and chapter mss, CCA-DCc-ChAnt/W/160. Within a few years he was sufficiently experienced in the affairs of Kent for Gervase Clifton* to appoint him his under sheriff. E13/141, rot. 58d; CP40/718, rot. 301d.

Whether through Clifton or the mooted association with the Brenchesles, Slegge had formed the connexion with the Fiennes family that would dominate the remainder of his career by the early 1440s. During this period James Fiennes*, who lived at Seal, a few miles to the west of Brenchley, was emerging as the dominant figure in Kentish politics, and in the summer of 1441 he was employing Slegge as an attorney at the Exchequer. E403/741, m. 2. Shortly afterwards, the latter, presumably still of minor standing as a man of law, entered Lincoln’s Inn, by introduction of Bartholomew Bolney*, then one of its governors and a figure closely linked with both the Brenchesle and Fiennes families. L.Inn Black Bks. i. 20. In 1441-2 Slegge was again under sheriff of Kent, this time for John Warner*, CP40/738, rots. 378d, 442; E13/142, rot. 42. and at the end of his term he was appointed escheator in Kent and Middlesex. During his year as escheator, his most important task was holding inquisitions into the temporalities of Henry Chichele, the recently-deceased archbishop of Canterbury. E153/1032. It was possibly his efficiency in carrying out this task, or more likely the recommendation of Fiennes (appointed steward of the archbishop’s lands in 1443) that resulted in his entering the service of John Stafford on the latter’s translation to Canterbury as Chichele’s successor. C60/252, m. 18; F.R.H. Du Boulay, Ldship. Canterbury, 399; CFR, xvii. 309.

At the beginning of 1445 Slegge was elected as a baron for the Cinque Port of Hythe to the Parliament of that year, and in 1446 he claimed exemption from the parliamentary subsidy by virtue of his freedom of the Port. E179/229/139. There is no evidence of a connexion between him and Hythe before 1445, so it is possible that its Portsmen chose him for his legal expertise: it was he, along with one of the barons for Dover, Richard Needham*, whom the Brodhull instructed to sue for the Ports’ privilege of exemption from parliamentary taxation. White and Black Bks. of Cinque Ports (Kent Rec. Ser. xix), 20. It is also worth noting that Fiennes sat as a knight of the shire for Kent in the same Parliament, the first to meet after the direction of policy was finally transferred to those associated with the leading courtier, William de la Pole, marquess of Suffolk, a circle of which Fiennes was an important member. G.L. Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort, 349.

In January 1447, following the summoning of the succeeding Parliament, Slegge attested the return of Fiennes and William Cromer* as the knights of the shire for Kent. The Parliament of 1447 saw the destruction of the duke of Gloucester and the elevation of Fiennes to the dignity of Lord Saye and Sele, and Slegge participated in the election alongside several of the latter’s supporters in the county. C219/15/4. His closeness to Fiennes probably explains the patronage which came his way from the mid 1440s. By 1447, for example, he was the auditor of the northern parts of the duchy of Lancaster, and in June 1448 he was granted an annuity of £14 10s. for life from the fee farm of Canterbury. E159/226, brevia Mich. rot. 17d. His duchy office was no sinecure, however, and in 1449-50 he was rewarded for travelling to the Northumberland lordship of Dunstanburgh and attending upon the duchy council. DL28/5/6.

If such grants were not undue reward for his service, Slegge’s involvement in private land transactions with Fiennes and others of his circle was potentially more controversial. The primary purpose of these, it seems, was to extend Fiennes’s influence in east Kent. In 1447 he witnessed a charter of quitclaim to Mereworth, a manor which Fiennes had purchased, and in the following year the widow of the long-dead Thomas Basings granted the manor of Kenardington to him and his patron. This may have been part of a deal by which Fiennes received the Basings lands in Kent in return for securing a pardon in the court of King’s bench for Alice, widow of Thomas Makworth*, the common law heir to the Basings inheritance who had been indicted for forcible entry. CCR, 1441-7, p. 441; 1447-54, pp. 54, 56; S.J. Payling, ‘Murder, Motive and Punishment’, EHR, cxiii. 2-9. More significantly, in June 1448 the widow of Sir William Septvance† surrendered her estate in east Kent and Thanet to a group of feoffees including Fiennes and Slegge. CCR, 1447-54, p. 68. Further evidence of the close relationship between the MP and his patron is Slegge’s continued employment as an attorney at the Exchequer, where he collected Fiennes’s fee for attending meetings of the Council and returned his uncashable tallies of assignment. E403/767, m. 8; 777, mm. 4, 6, 9; 779, mm. 1, 3. Slegge acquired other property, perhaps for himself, during this period. In April 1447, for example, Stephen Adam demised the manor of Gatesden in Tenterden to him, John Roger III* and Thomas Pittlesden. CCR, 1441-7, pp. 484-5. By that time he was also farmer of the manor of Nesselden from the trustees of Rochester bridge. Rochester Bridge Trust, wardens’ accts. 1447-8, F 1/46.

On 6 Nov. 1448 Slegge became sheriff of Kent, an unusual appointment given his relatively humble origins. Marking the peak of his career, it was undoubtedly a measure of Fiennes’s influence in the administration of the county. In the following month Bishop Low of Rochester appointed him to arbitrate in a dispute between the cathedral priory of St. Andrews and the citizens. Reg. Roffense ed. Thorpe, 575-7. On 29 Jan. 1449 Slegge presided over Kent’s elections to the first Parliament of that year, held at Penenden Heath near Maidstone rather than at one of the more usual locations of Canterbury or Rochester. Better attended than any others in the county during Henry VI’s reign, the elections saw the return of knights and burgesses connected with Fiennes and his party. C219/15/6. Even more controversially perhaps, Slegge was himself returned as one of the barons for Dover. He had no previous connexions with the Port, although Fiennes was warden of the Cinque Ports and the other Member for Dover, John Toke*, also belonged to Fiennes’ circle, for his brother, Ralph Toke*, was the warden’s subordinate as steward and marshal of Dover castle. Spread over three sessions at Westminster and Winchester, the assembly sat for 107 days. Slegge and Toke received wages for a total of 111, a figure including days spent travelling to and from the Parliament as well as attending it. Add. 29810, f. 66.

As sheriff, Slegge also presided over the Kent elections held at Penenden on 6 Oct. 1449 to the following Parliament, although on this occasion only 14 men attested the return of the county’s knights of the shire, his friends John Warner and William Isle*. C219/15/7. Summoned amidst alarming news of French military advances in Normandy, the Parliament of 1449-50 witnessed the impeachment of William de la Pole, by then duke of Suffolk, and severe criticism of other members of the Court party, including Slegge’s patron, James Fiennes. Just before the Parliament came to a close, the commons of Kent began to rise in rebellion under their captain, Jack Cade, ostensibly against the corrupt servants of the Crown responsible for the loss of Normandy and the impoverishment of the Exchequer. During the uprising, Fiennes was put to death after a ‘trial’ at the London Guildhall, and the rebels also accused Slegge of wrongdoing. The final clause of Cade’s so-called third manifesto, perhaps the list of grievances presented to the archbishops of Canterbury and York at Blackheath on 16 June 1450, complained of ‘thextorcions usid dayle amonge of the commone peopull’ of Kent, notably summonses of the green wax and into King’s bench, and prosecutions under the statutes of labourers and purveyance. The rebels identified Slegge as one of ‘the grete extorcyoners’ and ‘fals traytoures’ principally responsible for the oppression of the commons under Fiennes’s malign rule of the county. R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 638; John Vale’s Bk. ed. Kekewich et al. 206.

Accordingly, the Crown was forced to issue a commission of oyer and terminer to investigate the charges levelled by Cade and his followers. Between 20 Aug. and 22 Oct., indictments were heard at Rochester, Maidstone, Canterbury and Dartford. The jurors made five specific charges against Slegge. The first indictment alleged that he and Fiennes had acted together in forcibly expelling Humphrey Eveas from his property at Elmley on the Isle of Sheppey in 1447. The second stated that he, Robert Est and several others had stolen animals and goods belonging to Roger Clitheroe in July 1449. A third alleged that, with Fiennes, he had unlawfully distrained the tenants of John Arundell for refusing to pay a rent surcharge unjustly imposed by them after Arundell’s death. A fourth made a more substantial allegation against him, namely that he, along with Fiennes and his wife, threatened Reynold Peckham* with imprisonment and death, forcing the latter to surrender property at Seal to Fiennes. Fiennes was supposed to have made over other lands to Peckham in exchange, an undertaking he had failed to honour. Soon afterwards, moreover, Fiennes and Slegge had unjustly distrained Peckham’s tenants at Kemsing and Sele. Finally, in September 1450 the hundred jury of Calehill and Chart accused Slegge of having, while under sheriff, extorted ten marks from a local man in 1441. R. Virgoe, ‘Ancient Indictments in K.B.’, in Med. Kentish Soc. (Kent Rec. Ser. xviii), 225-8, 233-4, 239.

The modern editor of these indictments argued that the oyer and terminer commission was an attempt to respond to the complaints about the extortions and malpractices that Fiennes and his associates had committed in Kent over the past decade. Ibid. 215. Yet those brought against Slegge in August and September 1450 appear to have arisen from a mixture of petty squabbles and local rivalries that were politicised and given much greater importance by the events of that summer. He was found not guilty of the eviction of Eveas and, while he put himself upon a jury for the offence against Clitheroe, this was part of a long and complicated dispute over property at Ash near Sandwich. The indictment concerning Arundell’s tenants was deemed insufficient, while both Slegge and Fiennes’s widow were found not guilty of the assault on Peckham. Furthermore, the allegation that Slegge used the under shrievalty to extort money in 1441 was also found insufficient. Despite the failure of the commission to uncover concrete evidence of Slegge’s wrongdoings, his identification with a corrupt party in both local and national government persisted.

During the Parliament of 1450-1, Slegge was among those whom Commons, addressing the King, alleged ‘hath been mysbehavyng aboute youre roiall persone, and in other places, by whos undue meanes youre possessions have been gretely amenused, youre lawes not executed, and the peas of this youre reame not observed nother kept’. Headed by the duke of Somerset, the list was comprised mainly of men associated with the King’s household under the duke of Suffolk and Fiennes. The petition demanded that those named should remove themselves from the King’s presence and remain at least 12 miles from the Court for the rest of their lives. The King, while denying knowledge of any wrongdoing, assented to the petition with certain provisos, namely that the lords named in the petition and those that ‘have be accustumed contynuelly to waite uppon his persone’ should be exempted. The ban was reduced to a year, however, during which time all allegations against those named in the petition would be investigated. PROME, xii. 184-6; Trevelyan Pprs. i (Cam. Soc. lxvii), 61. This petition effectively marked the end of Slegge’s public career. There is no evidence that he was formally a member of the Household and any proximity to the King resulted purely from his connexion with Fiennes, but with his patron now dead, Slegge emerged as one of the handiest scapegoats to blame for the events of 1450.

The petition also opened the door to a raft of further charges against him. On 7 Feb. 1452, a Canterbury jury heard that in 1449 he and Robert Est had broken the closes of Edward Neville, Lord Abergavenney, at Shinglewell and Ifield and assaulted his servants. KB9/267/70. In the following Easter term, Neville brought his own prosecution against Slegge and Est in the court of common pleas. CP40/765, rot. 54. Both of them surrendered themselves to the Marshalsea prison and a jury acquitted them in Michaelmas term that year. KB27/765, rex rot. 23d. Again in 1452, Roger Clitheroe, pursuing his claims over the property at Ash that had featured in one of the indictments of 1450, alleged that Slegge had misused the office of sheriff to return a false of writ of error into King’s bench. No decision is recorded in this case, but later Clitheroe would also allege that another sheriff, John Fogg†, had attempted to defraud him of his right to this property. KB27/763, rot. 54d; E13/145B, rot. 9d; E. Hasted, Kent ed. Drake, ix. 29-30; Virgoe, 227-8.

On 22 June 1452 Slegge took out a general pardon, but this did not forestall further allegations against him. C67/40, m. 26. The most extraordinary of these was made in Hilary term 1453. Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, claimed that he, along with John Low, bishop of Rochester, and others had assaulted one of his servants at Freckenham, Suffolk. On the plea roll, however, the date of this alleged offence is unrecorded, other details are left blank and the pleadings peter out. CP40/768, rot. 112; M.M.N. Stansfield, ‘Holland Fam.’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1987), 314. Two petitions presented in Chancery around this time also probably represent opportunism, attempts to take advantage of the political climate of the early 1450s in pursuit of local and personal grievances. First, Richard Halsnoth claimed that John Roger III, under sheriff of Kent in 1448-9, had enfeoffed property in Ruckinge on Slegge, who had afterwards failed to yield it when required. C1/21/14. Secondly, William Kemp, a kinsman of the chancellor, Archbishop Kemp, alleged that Slegge had leased a barn and other property at Ruckinge and Warehorne from him but had fallen into arrears with his rent. In 1453 the matter was passed to the arbitration of the chancellor’s servant, Thomas Singleton*, but Slegge was accused of failing to find the sureties required by this agreement. This case in particular seems to indicate how drastically the events of 1450 had affected Slegge’s fortunes. C1/21/15.

Despite all the charges he faced, Slegge appears not to have suffered imprisonment, fine or forfeiture as a result of his part in the supposedly corrupt county administration of the late 1440s. As already indicated, most of the charges had local and personal roots. Doubtless, he had obtained land, grants and the advancement of his legal disputes through Fiennes’s patronage, but there is little to suggest that, helped by his patron, he had systematically and deliberately abused his position at either a local or national level. Similarly, although malpractice may have occurred at the parliamentary election for Kent in January 1449, there were no specific complaints about his conduct as sheriff. Nevertheless, Slegge played no part in the administration of the county after the events of 1450. Instead he seems to have concentrated on his connexions with Bishop Low and the group of lawyers at Rochester who were increasingly dominating the business of the city’s bridge. There are just a few references to his activities in the later 1450s. In February 1458, he demised his interest in the manor of Kenardington to a new group of feoffees acting for Sir John Cheyne II*. CPR 1452-61, p. 422. On the following 6 Apr., he sued out another general pardon, as ‘late sheriff of Kent’, but it is unclear whether any specific circumstances prompted him to acquire it. C67/42, m. 22. In Easter term the following year, Slegge was among a group of feoffees, including Bishop Low, who sued Richard Bruyn* in King’s bench for trespass. KB27/792, rot. 2d.

Slegge made his will, dated 30 June 1460, at London, in the parish of St. Nicholas in Farringdon Ward. He sought burial in the chapel of St. Blaise in the parish church at Wouldham, to which he left bequests for its fabric and clergy. Slegge assigned his lease of the manor of Wouldham (which the prior and convent of Rochester had granted to him free of rent as a reward) to Simon Clive, and other properties to Thomas Clive with remainder to Rochester bridge. He also rewarded his servants with small sums of cash and ordered the settlement of debts with the executors of Lady Brenchesle. Whatever the extent of his past misdeeds, the will demonstrated a concern for his soul and a desire to right any wrongs he had committed during his lifetime. He instructed his executors to transfer possession of his manor-house at Wouldham to the abbot of St. Augustine’s, Canterbury – except for the chamber at the ‘nether end’ which was to provide a home for his widow – in return for an obit in perpetuity. Should the abbot not agree to this condition, his executors were to sell the property, ‘to make satisfaction of any wronges that any man resonably canne preve that I have in any wise trespasid too’. Slegge was also eager to right a wrong done against William Adam, with whom he had exchanged lands in Romney Marsh for others at Goudhurst. Adam had received the holdings in Romney Marsh, only for James Bowes, apparently with Slegge’s connivance, to dispossess him of them. Slegge ordered his executors to provide Adam’s heirs with land in the vicinity worth five marks p.a., and enough money to purchase a similar amount of land elsewhere. For the further good of his soul, Slegge bequeathed wheat to the poor of Wouldham and a year’s wages to each of his servants in return for their prayers. He also gave money towards the repair of Bishop Low’s house in Oxford, on condition that the bishop arranged masses for the souls of his father and mother, and made further provision for the spiritual welfare of his parents and others, among them three of his patrons, Archbishop Stafford, Lady Brenchesle and James Fiennes. For his executors, Slegge chose Thomas Cotyng, the chaplain William Gace and Simon Newton, awarding each of them £10 for their expenses and labours, and he named Edmund Chertsey as overseer of the will. He died before 21 Oct. 1460 when probate was granted. PCC 21 Stokton.

The performance of Slegge’s will did not pass without incident. As instructed, the executors sold his property in Ruckinge, Snaith, Horsleton and Warehorne. The highest bidders were George Knolden and Alan Gayler, who promised to pay £83 6s. 8d., only for William Gace to sue them in Chancery for paying £80 rather than the full sum due. C1/42/64. He also pursued lawsuits against them in the common pleas, leading in both cases to pleadings in 1467. He won his suit against Gayler, regarding a debt of just over £7, in Trinity term that year, although his dispute with Knolden was not so quickly resolved, since the justices twice reserved judgement and the matter was still pending in the spring of 1468. According to Gace, the latter had agreed to pay £123 6s. 8d. for 120 acres of land that the late MP had held in Ruckinge, Snave, Orlestone and Warehorne but had yet to pay that sum (of which he still owed five marks) in full. CP40/822, rot. 311d; 823, rot 396d; 825, rot. 514.