SOUTHWELL, John

John’s family apparently derived its name from the town of Southwell in Nottinghamshire, Copinger, ii. 242. but through their service to the Mowbray dukes of Norfolk members of it came in the early fifteenth century to found collateral branches in East Anglia. Our MP may have been related to an older John Southwell, who took on the executorship of the will of Benedict Nicolls, bishop of St. David’s, in 1433, and was perhaps the man appointed surveyor of the search in the port of London in November 1434. Reg. Chichele, ii. 484-5; CPR, 1429-36, p. 442. He himself is said to have been the eldest son of another John ‘of Felix Hall, Essex’, and to have been the first of the family to live at Barham in Suffolk, Copinger, ii. 242. but no contemporary evidence has been found to verify either statement. There can be little doubt, however, that he was closely related to Robert Southwell (d.c.1437), who appears to have been trained in estate administration by John Leventhorpe I*, the receiver-general of the duchy of Lancaster, with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. Such a training accounts for Robert’s appointment in 1413 as receiver-general of the estates inherited by John Mowbray, the Earl Marshal (restored as duke of Norfolk in 1425), an office he occupied until 1426, thereafter advising the duke as a member of his council. L.E. Moye, ‘Estates and Finances of the Mowbray Fam.’ (Duke Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), 69-71, 411. John followed Robert into Mowbray’s circle of retainers by 1430, and it was as a ‘jentylman ove monseigneur de Northfolk’ that he was admitted to the fraternity of St. John the Baptist pertaining to the Taylors’ Company of London. Guildhall Lib. London, Merchant Taylors’ Co. accts. 34048/1, f. 216. The 3rd duke, who succeeded his father in 1432, retained John among his squires, and the latter probably accompanied his lord on military and diplomatic journeys to the north of England and across the Channel to France. Such was the duke’s regard for him that at his seat at Framlingham castle at Michaelmas 1440 he granted him for life the substantial annuity of £20 which Duke John himself held in tail-male by grant of the Crown from its revenues from Nottinghamshire. The King confirmed the grant five years later. CPR, 1441-6, p. 393. Southwell was among those to whom Robert Langton*, the constable of the Mowbray castle at Bramber in Sussex, entrusted his goods and chattels in June 1447, CCR, 1447-54, p. 438. by which date he too had taken up residence in or near the ducal estates in the south of England. In 1446 he had brought a suit against a yeoman from Brighton: KB27/741, rot. 39d.

Southwell’s elections to three consecutive Parliaments for the Sussex town of Lewes are further indication of his close connexion with the duke of Norfolk, who was lord of the borough. That he was set apart from the burgesses-proper is evident from the description ‘esquire’ given him on the return to the first of these, the Parliament summoned to meet on 6 Nov. 1449. While at Westminster, he may well have joined in the vociferous attack made in the Commons to bring down Norfolk’s rival, the King’s chief minister William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk. If Southwell occupied an office at Lewes castle by appointment of his lord, this is not now documented. It is nevertheless clear that he was not in breach of the statutory requirements for MPs to be resident in their constituencies. In association with another Mowbray retainer, John Bekwith*, who accompanied him to the Commons in 1450, he rented a dovecote and garden in Lewes from the duke later on in the decade, Arundel Castle mss, A1869, 1871; Suss. N. and Q. v. 98. These accts. date from later in the century, but refer to the earlier period. and he actively sought to acquire other properties in the town. In May 1454, shortly after the dissolution of his last Parliament, he petitioned the chancellor regarding premises in the parish of St. Michael, which he claimed to have purchased in reversion the previous year from Alexander Wode and his wife Ellen for the sum of £10. Ellen, to whom the property belonged, had promised to complete the legal formalities in accordance with the advice of Southwell’s legal counsel, but before this was done, and while Southwell was away in London, Wode died and the widow refused to complete the transaction. In response to the petition Ellen stated that she and an earlier husband, John Kendale, had purchased the property jointly in fee simple for £30, and that Kendale had built a new house there, at a cost of over £10 – the implication being that the purchase price suggested by Southwell was derisory. Furthermore, she had never assented to the sale of the reversionary interest of her own free will, doing so only out of ‘verray fere and drede’ of Wode. C1/23/13-14; 24/75-77. How the matter was resolved does not appear. It is of interest that one of Southwell’s pledges in Chancery was Edward Rauff*, who as a representative of another Mowbray borough had sat with him in the Commons of both 1450 and 1453.

Although it seems very likely that Southwell was living in Sussex in the early 1450s, later on in the decade he was more active in Suffolk, where he acquired landed interests as a consequence of his marriage to Alana Berry, the coheiress with her sister Agnes, wife of Judge William Paston, of the estates of their parents. Peds. Plea Rolls ed. Wrottesley, 366. Several years earlier (in 1436 when married to her first husband Thomas Bardolf), Alana had renounced all right to her father’s principal manor, that of Horwellbury in Hertfordshire, as well as to the manors of Stanstead (Suffolk), and Marlingford (Norfolk), all of which had been settled on her sister. Her own share of the Berry estates included East Tuddenham in Norfolk and Ellough in Suffolk, which together with the advowsons of Willingham and Pakefield and her Bardolf dower lands elsewhere she now brought to her new husband. Ellough became Southwell’s main place of residence. Richmond, 119n; VCH Herts. iii. 242; CP25(1)/292/68/185; 293/72/393; Copinger, v. 82; vii. 168. As a freeholder of the shire he attested the Suffolk elections held at Ipswich on 24 June 1455, when the sheriff John Wingfield returned his brother Robert* and William Jenney*, both servants of the duke of Norfolk. It was to be alleged subsequently that Wingfield had wrongfully returned Jenney when the majority of those present at the shire court had in fact elected William Lee‡ of Monk’s Eleigh. But as Lee, like Jenney, appears to have been a member of the duke’s council, the controversy did not arise from a challenge from another noble affinity. Perhaps there was some conflict between the duke’s old counsellors and those more recently appointed, but even if so there is now no means of knowing whose candidacy Southwell supported. R. Virgoe, ‘Three Suff. Elections’, Bull. IHR, xxxix. 191-2. It is also of interest that John’s putative nephew, Richard Southwell, who had also entered Mowbray service, was elected to this Parliament as a burgess for the borough of Great Yarmouth. Although John himself is not known to have sat in the Parliament, it was while it was in session later on in the year that, on 28 Nov., he purchased a royal pardon. This described him as ‘lately of Framlingham castle, Suffolk’ (the duke of Norfolk’s seat), ‘alias lately of Ellough’. C219/16/3; C67/41, m. 13.

At the same time, in 1455, Southwell was engaged in a suit in the King’s bench as a co-plaintiff with the duke’s brothers-in-law, the chancellor Thomas Bourgchier, archbishop of Canterbury, and Henry, Viscount Bourgchier, over tenure of the manor of Stockton in Norfolk, which the duke had long contested with Alice, dowager duchess of Suffolk. The three, apparently acting as the duke’s feoffees, claimed to have been wrongfully expelled after an escheator’s inquisition had found that Stockton pertained to the estate of Alice’s son, the young John de la Pole, duke of Suffolk. It was later claimed that in June 1453 John and his putative nephew Richard Southwell, along with other Mowbray retainers, had forcibly entered the manor, and during Richard’s term as escheator in 1455-6 Alice filed a Chancery bill against him for taking advantage of his office to enter Stockton illegally. KB27/778, rot. 51; 784, rot. 87; C1/25/77; 26/164; H.R. Castor, King, Crown and Duchy of Lancaster, 179.

Southwell maintained his interests in Sussex, and it was as of that county that he brought a suit for debt in the court of common pleas in Hilary term 1456 against two men from London. CP40/780, rot. 390. Other dealings with Londoners led to him being the recipient of the goods and chattels of John Gower, a saddler, in August 1459, and of those of Thomas Wydyhale, a goldsmith, in June 1461. CCR, 1454-61, p. 396; 1461-8, p. 98. Although nothing is expressly revealed of his political stance in the years 1455-61, it may be conjectured that he came to the support of his lord the duke of Norfolk when required to do so. Following Norfolk’s death at the close of 1461, Southwell probably continued to receive his annuity of £20 from his son and heir, the 4th duke, HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 783 is mistaken in assuming that Southwell died bef. 12 Aug. 1461, when his kinsman Richard Southwell, servant to the duke of Norfolk, received a grant of an annuity. In fact, Richard’s annuity was of 20 marks (not £20), and was assigned on the alnage of Suff. not from the issues of Notts. Furthermore, Richard’s grant came from the King, not the duke: CPR, 1461-7, p. 45. and to keep for the time being certain lands and tenements known as ‘Pantries’ in West Dean and ‘Bruggelond’ in Treyford, Sussex, which his former lord had given him. He was still in possession of these properties in June 1462, although what happened to his interest when the estate was sold in 1469 is unclear. E210/4070; Moye, 442.

Meanwhile, Southwell briefly found employment under Edward IV as collector of customs and then searcher in Chichester harbour in the years 1463-5. No doubt this enabled him to keep an eye on the concerns of the new duke as they were affected by along the Sussex coast. Little of note is recorded about his personal affairs in this period, save that towards the end of 1464 he put his moveable goods into the hands of Robert Kirkham, the keeper of the rolls of Chancery, Richard Lee*, the alderman and former mayor of London, and the scrivener John Stodeley*, long an associate of the Mowbray retainers. CCR, 1461-8, p. 251. It seems likely that he needed to protect his assets from forfeiture, perhaps in response to pending litigation. Southwell once more attested the shire elections for Suffolk on 20 Apr. 1467, when the duke of Norfolk’s kinsman (Sir) John Howard* was one of those returned. C219/17/1.

Southwell is not recorded alive thereafter, and may have died within a few years. He left no children by Alana Berry. In 1463 he had helped her to settle on Edmund Bardolf (probably her son by her earlier marriage) and Alice Gryce, to whom Edmund was betrothed, a number of properties and some 280 acres of land in Norfolk, at Tuddenham, Honyngham, Thorp and Claxton, this presumably forming part of their marriage contract. If the couple failed to have issue the property was to revert to Alana and her heirs, CP25(1)/170/192/9. and this in fact happened before the summer of 1470, by which date Alana had died leaving as her next heir her daughter Isabel Bardolf. Isabel and her husband, an esquire named Thomas Aslak, then had possession of the manor of Ellough and the advowsons of Willingham and Pakefield, and the widowed Alice Bardolf conveyed to them for 80 years the property which had earlier been settled on her in jointure. CP25(1)/224/120/24; CAD, iii. A5998; Copinger, vii. 168.

There is nothing to indicate that Southwell had survived his second wife. His eldest son, Robert, born of his first marriage, ended his days in 1514 as an apprentice-at-law, and was buried at Barham in Suffolk. Robert left instructions that if his wife Cecily died without surviving issue by him their lands and tenements in Cambridgeshire should be sold in accordance with the will of his late father, to make provision for the souls of the latter and his wife Joan, Robert’s mother. Copinger, ii. 242; PCC 4 Holder; J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii. 1435. Neither the will of our MP, nor further details about his interests in Cambridgeshire, have come to light.