SOUTHWELL, Richard

A lawyer, Richard made his way in the world in the service of successive dukes of Norfolk. In doing so he was following in his father’s footsteps, since Robert Southwell, who probably originated from Nottinghamshire, was a retainer of the Mowbray family in the early fifteenth century. By the beginning of Henry V’s reign, Robert was treasurer at the duke’s castle at Framlingham (an office which his son would hold) although in later years he appears to have resided at Cheshunt in Hertfordshire. CCR, 1422-9, pp. 214, 221-2, 394; 1435-41, pp. 149, 323, 327, 422; CPR, 1429-36, p. 260; Loder, 397; CFR, xiii. 253; xiv. 23; CP25(1)/169/186/14. Although Robert’s putative uncle, John, settled in Suff., The Commons 1509-58, iii. 352, is wrong in stating that the Southwells originated from that county. There is no evidence that Richard inherited estates of any significance from his father. Furthermore, his long-lived mother, Isabel, who subsequently remarried and outlived another Mowbray servant, John Ledes*, retained a share (valued at £14 p.a. for the purpose of taxation in 1436) of the lands that Robert Southwell had held in Hertfordshire until her death in 1481. Moye, 381; E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14(iii). These dower lands were apparently at Cheshunt, Waltham Holy Cross and elsewhere: CCR, 1454-61, pp. 286-7. For many years Richard lived at Framlingham, not taking up residence at Wood Rising, one of the manors inherited by his first wife, Amy Wichingham, until after her father’s death. There is no evidence for his legal training. He was not admitted to Lincoln’s Inn until 1470, and it is not known if he had attended another inn of court as a young man.

Richard is first heard of in the later 1440s. By 1447 he was warrener for the duke of Norfolk at Meeching in Sussex, almost certainly a sinecure given his career was focussed on East Anglia and London. In the following year he and other Mowbray followers helped the duke of Norfolk besiege and loot the manor of Letheringham, Suffolk, home of the duke’s estranged retainer, Sir Robert Wingfield*. CPR, 1446-52, p. 236; R.L. Storey, End of House of Lancaster, 226-7. He was involved in more disorder, this time on his own account, when he seized the Norfolk manor of Holme Hale from Sibyl, widow of Sir Roger Boys, probably in mid 1451. Both of Sir Roger’s sons by Sibyl had also predeceased her, and Southwell – whose maternal grandfather was from the Boys family – decided to stake a claim to the property. It would appear that he planned to marry Jane, the widow of one of Sibyl’s sons, but to the consternation of both him and her father, Edmund Wichingham, she was abducted by Robert Langstrother who took her for his own wife. Following the seizure of Holme Hale, Sibyl set off for London to complain to the King. As a result, Southwell was obliged to give up the manor, although he cut his losses by marrying another of Wichingham’s coheirs, Jane’s sister, Amy. Paston Letters ed. Davis, i. 69-71, 241; Richmond, 40n, 142n.

By the end of 1451, Southwell was following events at another manor, Braydeston, a few miles east of Norwich. This belonged to the Berneys of Reedham, but in the spring of 1450 the maverick Mowbray retainer, Thomas Daniell*, had challenged the title of John Berney by entering the property. Berney’s stepfather, Osbert Mountford, managed to regain possession several months later, but Daniell was a persistent opponent. In a letter which he wrote to John Paston* in December 1451 Southwell described how Daniell was trying to regain the favour of the duke of Norfolk, with whom he had recently fallen out, and to obtain the support of other lords, so as to strengthen his chances of retaking the manor. H.R, Castor, Blood and Roses, 66, 83-84; Paston Letters, ii. 76-77. He was able to do so the following February, when Berney and his stepfather were away in Calais, although again he had lost possession by November 1453. Richmond, 137, 155. One of those who helped to maintain Daniell’s claim to Braydeston in 1452-3 was Robert Lethum. Lethum was another of the duke of Norfolk’s retainers, but such was his lawlessness and unruly behaviour that in about 1454 Southwell and other gentry complained about his activities to the judges of the court of King’s bench. Paston Letters, i. 75-80. This is somewhat ironic, given Southwell’s past activities at Letheringham and Holme Hale and the fact that in June 1453 he, John Southwell (presumably his putative uncle) and other Mowbray retainers had forcibly entered the manor of Stockton, claimed by their master but belonging to the young duke of Suffolk. During Southwell’s first term as escheator in Norfolk and Suffolk, Suffolk’s mother, Alice de la Pole, filed a Chancery bill against him for taking advantage of his office to enter Stockton illegally. He was also among those whom she sued in the same court and in King’s bench for their trespass on that property. C1/25/77; 26/164; KB27/784, rot. 87.

A few months before beginning this term as escheator, Southwell gained election to his only known Parliament. The assembly was called by a government dominated by Richard, duke of York, who had seized power in the wake of his victory at the battle of St. Albans. There is no evidence of any previous links between Southwell and Great Yarmouth, the borough he represented, and it was only after his election that he was admitted one of its freemen. It is very likely that the new government, which appointed him to the escheatorship during the Parliament, had backed his candidature, given that the duke of Norfolk had aligned himself with York, and that Southwell’s father-in-law, Edmund Wichingham, was one of York’s councillors. Norf. RO, Gt. Yarmouth recs., ct. roll, 1454-5, Y/C 4/161, m. 5d; Richmond, 210n. Southwell’s Yorkist connexions were certainly sufficient to prove awkward for him later in the decade. In about 1458, he sent John Paston a letter indicating that he had been condemned at Court for owing his ‘pouere gode will and seruice vnto my Lord of York and other’, and that Henry VI and his queen had pressed the duke of Norfolk to dismiss him from his service. Paston Letters, ii. 176-77. Despite these difficulties, Southwell was by no means a committed Yorkist, for the Lancastrian government was prepared to appoint him to a second term as escheator in the autumn of 1459. By then the Yorkist lords had fled abroad and the Crown was preparing for the Parliament which attainted them. Another of those attainted in this Parliament was York’s chamberlain, Sir William Oldhall, and in early 1460 Southwell was placed on commissions set up to investigate the whereabouts of his lands and goods.

Southwell began this second term as escheator two days after the death of the wealthy East Anglian knight, Sir John Fastolf of Caister. In his will Fastolf had left his extensive estates in Norfolk and Suffolk, including Caister castle, to John Paston, but the validity of the will was soon the subject of a lengthy and bitter dispute. Immediately after Fastolf’s death, Paston and his family were anxious to ensure Southwell’s goodwill because as escheator he was responsible for holding the inquisitions post mortem concerning the lands in question. Paston’s brother, William†, spoke to the chancellor, Bishop Waynflete, and the treasurer, James, earl of Wiltshire, in an attempt to expedite the issuing of the necessary writs. He reported that the bishop, whom Fastolf had appointed his principal executor, was favourable towards the Pastons’ cause, although it was unwise to trust the earl, and that Southwell was ‘rythe good and will disposyd’. Ibid. i. 157-8; ii. 219. Despite William’s efforts, the Pastons’ long struggle to defend their claim to the Fastolf lands was only just beginning. It was probably due to representations on the part of their enemies that the inquisitions post mortem were delayed until October 1460, shortly before Southwell’s term as escheator expired. C139/177/48.

Four months later, York’s eldest son seized the throne. Southwell benefited from the accession of Edward IV, since in the following August he received a grant of 20 marks p.a. from the issues of the subsidy and alnage of cloth in Suffolk, a reward for his (unspecified) good service both before and after Edward began his reign. The annuity was intended to last until he was provided with an office with fees of like value; but it is uncertain that one was ever found for him since it was with regard to it that he successfully petitioned for exemption from the Acts of Resumption passed in the Parliaments of 1461, 1463 and 1467. CPR, 1461-7, p. 45; SC8/29/1417; PROME, xiii. 38, 187, 340-1. In 1467 the King made him a grant for life of lands at King’s Norton in Worcestershire (confiscated from the earl of Wiltshire) and the reversion, to vest after the death of Richard Quatermayns*, of the Norfolk manor of Wickmere (confiscated from William, Viscount Beaumont). CPR, 1467-77, p. 26.

At the beginning of his reign Edward IV’s hold on the throne was far from secure. Like other parts of the country, East Anglia was in an unsettled state, and the duke of Norfolk took advantage of the chaos by seizing Caister castle. In June 1461 John Paston sent his servant, Richard Calle, to Framlingham to seek Southwell’s advice in this matter and to deliver to the duke royal letters demanding an explanation for his behaviour. Calle found the MP reluctant to advise him, perhaps because he was worried about crossing his patron, although the King’s letters, for which Paston had petitioned in person, did find their way into Mowbray’s hands. After reading them the duke summoned Southwell for consultations and dispatched another of his servants to ask Calle, who was not admitted into his presence, for news of Paston’s whereabouts. Calle replied that his master was with the King, upon which he was sent word that Southwell would bear Mowbray’s answer to Edward IV and was commanded to go home. Before leaving Calle prevailed upon Southwell to tell him what the answer contained. He was informed that the duke had promised to prove that he had the better title but Paston’s appeal to the King was successful and Caister was restored to him not long afterwards. Paston Letters, ii. 236-7.

Relations between Southwell and the Pastons were probably somewhat uneasy in the early months of Edward IV’s reign, for there are signs that they took opposite sides in the controversy over the election of Norfolk’s knights of the shire to the first Parliament under the new King. In Norfolk, where the sheriff, Sir John Howard, opposed the candidacy of John Paston and John Berney†, there was an abortive election in June 1461 and further altercations in subsequent shire courts. In June, according to an extremely partisan account that Howard afterwards submitted to the Crown, Paston, Berney and a mob of their supporters had so threatened the presiding officer, his under sheriff, William Prys, that he had fled the shire-house with the assistance of Southwell, Gilbert Debenham II* and Thomas Wingfield†. H. Kleineke, ‘East-Anglian Elections’, in The Fifteenth Cent. X ed. Kleineke 172, 175. In July the same year Southwell was among those commissioned to seize Buckenham Castle into the King’s hands. Formerly part of the estates of the late Sir John Clifton, it was now in dispute between Clifton’s grandson, Henry Ogard, and his nephew, John Knyvet. According to a certificate they subsequently returned into Chancery, Southwell and two of his fellow commissioners, Gilbert Debenham I* and John Twyer, entered the outer ward of the castle on 15 Sept. but could not proceed any further because Knyvet’s wife, Alice, who was keeping possession with a garrison of 50 men, had raised the drawbridge. In the face of her defiance the commissioners were obliged to admit defeat. On 20 Oct. Southwell was placed on a new commission, this time including the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, but before it could take effect Knyvet was able to convince the King that he had a just title to the Clifton lands. R. Virgoe, ‘Buckenham Disputes’, Jnl. Legal Hist. xv. 24-31; CPR, 1461-7, p. 67. The commission was one of the last to which the duke of Norfolk was appointed, for he died shortly afterwards. CP, ix. 608.

In the following February, the King appointed Southwell marshal of the Exchequer, a post normally filled by the dukes of Norfolk in their capacity as hereditary marshals of England but in the gift of the Crown during the new duke’s minority. His predecessor as marshal, Ralph Legh*, yielded the office (which he had held since his appointment by the previous duke in 1450) with some reluctance, and in 1465 Southwell joined the Crown to sue him over his alleged detinue of £14 and a bag of court rolls and rentals. CP40/815, rot. 97. For Southwell at least the office of marshal was probably no sinecure, given that he was described as ‘of London’ in February 1463. CFR, xx. 67. It was a position of some value – the marshal received an annual salary of £5 and a variable income in fees – although he was sharing these emoluments with an associate, Thomas Stede, by the mid 1470s. ‘Exchequer Officers’, 150. Another perk it afforded its holder was the privilege of using the Exchequer as a court of first instance for pursuing lawsuits of his own. The Exchequer plea roll for Michaelmas term 1481 contains one such case involving Southwell as marshal, a suit for trespass that he had brought against a husbandman from Fishley, the parish in east Norfolk in which his first wife’s father had resided. E13/166, rot. 21d. In making Southwell marshal the Crown was no doubt respecting the Mowbrays’ interests, since he had remained in the family’s service after the death of his former master. In the mid 1460s he received cloth for his livery by order of the new duke, Howard Household Bks. ed. Crawford, i. 165. who had recently attained his majority and was soon to renew his father’s claims to Caister.

In the late 1460s two of Sir John Fastolf’s executors, (Sir) William Yelverton* and Thomas Howes, and William Jenney* took it upon themselves to recommend the sale of Caister and other former Fastolf properties to Mowbray, and in October 1468 they and the abbot of Langley (another executor) conveyed the properties to the duke and his feoffees, Southwell included. CCR, 1468-76, no. 622. In the following August the duke, having illegally issued liveries to Southwell and other followers at Framlingham, KB27/830, rex rot. 31d. and taking advantage of a breakdown of law and order brought about by the political weakness of the King, then a prisoner of the earl of Warwick, decided to take Caister by force. Southwell participated in his siege of the castle, manned by John Paston† and a small garrison which was forced to surrender on 26 Sept. During the siege two of the duke’s men were killed by gunfire, and at the end of the year Southwell and other Mowbray councillors prompted their widows to sue appeals for murder against the castle’s defenders. In June 1470, while the appeal was still in progress, a jury indicted Paston and a couple of his men for the deaths and his elder brother, Sir John†, as an accessory. In the same month Southwell informed the younger John Paston that the duchess of Norfolk had not forgotten his past service to her and he arranged to meet him in London to discuss matters. There is little doubt that he approached Paston at the bidding of the duke, who hoped to persuade him and his brother to accept the loss of Caister and come to terms. Norf. Archaeology, xxxvi. 309; Paston Letters, i. 550-1, 559-60, 561. They were not so easily persuaded, and when Henry VI was restored to the throne later in the year they were able to recover the property with the help of the Lancastrian earl of Oxford. They did not hold it for long, since Mowbray regained the castle after Edward IV recovered his throne in the spring of 1471. In the following October the two Paston brothers discovered that one of the widows who had taken legal action against them had dropped her appeal. She admitted that ‘Mayster Southwell’ had put her up to it in the first place and had tried to persuade her to continue with her suit. Paston Letters, ii. 433-4. During the second half of 1472 the younger John Paston made representations to both the duchess of Norfolk and the duke’s council at Framlingham. In September he met Southwell and other councillors, to tell them that his brother was ready to pay Mowbray £40 for Caister. They thought this offer ‘more then resonabyll’, but when they raised the matter with the duke a ‘tempest aros’ and he gave them an answer that they would not repeat to Paston. They nevertheless believed that their master would yield if ‘som Lordys or gretter men’ spoke to him on the Pastons’ behalf. At the same meeting Southwell and the other councillors were ready to offer other lands in recompense for Caister, an admission, as far as Paston was concerned, that their master was in the wrong. The younger John was less sanguine by December, when he reported to his brother that he had never been so much out of ‘conseyt’ with Mowbray, who had told him this to his face, causing Southwell and other ducal councillors to laugh at him. Ibid. i. 577-80, 585-6. In the end, it was the sudden death in January 1476 of the duke, whose sole heir was his infant daughter, CP, ix. 609. which allowed the Pastons to recover Caister. In the following May their grievances were brought before the King’s Council. It decided in favour of Sir John Paston, a ruling which (according to Sir John) Southwell and two other Mowbray feoffees, James Hobart† and (Sir) William Brandon†, accepted with bad grace. Paston Letters, i. 494-5. Southwell remained involved in affairs at Framlingham following the death of the last Mowbray duke of Norfolk. The King gained control of the ducal estates by marrying his second son to Mowbray’s young daughter and heir in 1478, and the MP played some part in conducting or supervising repairs at Framlingham castle in the following year. E403/850, m. 3.

Apart from providing his counsel, one of the most important duties Southwell had performed for the late duke was that of a trustee. In January 1475, for example, Mowbray, short of money and facing the expense of accompanying the King on his expedition to France, had successfully petitioned Parliament for permission to convey lands to a group of feoffees, to hold for five years, using the income from these properties to sort out his finances. Following the petition’s acceptance, the King licensed Mowbray to enfeoff certain of his manors and lordships in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Lincolnshire, Sussex and Surrey on his feoffees, Southwell among them. PROME, xiv. 263-4; CPR, 1467-77, p. 539. Southwell was also a feoffee for other notable figures like Geoffrey Boleyn*, CAD, ii. C1784; vi. C5972. John Bourgchier, Lord Berners, CFR, xx. 36-37. Henry Heydon (son of John*), CAD, iv. A7857. Hugh atte Fenne*, C140/55/22. George Neville, Lord Abergavenny (atte Fenne’s son-in-law), CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1. Elizabeth, widow of Robert Clere of Ormesby, CPR, 1476-85, p. 96; Reg. Wolman, ff. 131-5. Elizabeth’s son-in-law, Sir Ralph Shelton, CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 225-6. and the Mowbrays’ relative and follower John, Lord Howard. He evidently enjoyed a particularly good relationship with Elizabeth Clere. In her will of 1493 she appointed him and Sir Ralph Shelton her executors and bequeathed an item of plate to the MP’s second wife, Katherine. Reg. Wolman, ff. 131-5.

More significant was Southwell’s association with Howard. The MP was present in an advisory role at the latter’s house by the Thames in Stepney in late 1472, when the peer negotiated with John Timperley II* for a match between his daughter Jane and Timperley’s son John†. Six years later, Southwell was a trustee for the settlement made when one of Howard’s grand-daughters married the son and heir of the Hampshire knight, Sir William Sandys. CAD, vi. C7059; C1/110/104. In 1483, after Richard III created Howard duke of Norfolk, Southwell and other Mowbray retainers entered the new duke’s service. By Michaelmas 1483, he was Howard’s steward in Norfolk (an office for which he received an annual fee of £5) and was farming the hundred of Launditch in the same county from him for £8 p.a. Add. Roll 16559. The following spring saw him providing three men to a force the duke was raising for the King. Howard Household Bks. ii. 489. In the meantime Southwell appears to have maintained links with Elizabeth, dowager duchess of the last Mowbray duke. As late as September 1495, she wrote to him and others to ask them to support her servant, Thomas Martin, then in dispute with Sir Henry Gray (son of Henry*). Paston Letters, ii. 475.

Apart from serving successive dukes of Norfolk, Southwell found time to play an active part in local administration. Placed on numerous ad hoc commissions in East Anglia and elsewhere from 1460 onwards, in the early 1470s he joined the Norfolk bench, on which he later spent a period as a member of the quorum. He also served as a customs collector at Bishop’s Lynn and attested the election of the county’s knights of the shire to the Parliament of 1472. During the reign of Richard III he was appointed to two commissions of array and witnessed a charter on that King’s behalf. CPR, 1476-85, pp. 434-5. He remained on the bench, possibly until his death, and served on further ad hoc commissions after the accession of Henry VII.

Southwell survived for the greater part, if not all, of Henry VII’s reign. During the 1490s he quarrelled with William Spinke, prior of Norwich, leading to protracted litigation in King’s bench and the Chancery. The dispute concerned jewels that he and Sir Ralph Shelton had deposited at the priory for safekeeping. Subsequently, however, they accused the prior of having taking the jewels into his possession, a charge he denied. In their suits against Spinke, Southwell and Shelton enjoyed the assistance (as ‘very solicitor’ according to one bill that Spinke submitted to the chancellor) of the MP’s eldest son, Robert Southwell, another lawyer and member of Lincoln’s Inn. C1/216/85-86. For want of an extant will or inquisition post mortem, the date of Southwell’s death is unknown but it is unlikely he lived very much beyond his last appointment to the commission of the peace in November 1504. He was not reappointed to the bench in Nov. 1510, the date of the next known commission of the peace for Norf.

The lack of such evidence also means that there is little information about the MP’s estates, although his inclusion in the ‘King’s Book’ of 1501 indicates that these were of some significance by the end of his life. The book was a list of greater landowners whom Henry VII considered summoning for knighthood at the marriage of Prince Arthur. Containing valuations of their holdings, it recorded that Southwell enjoyed an income of 200 marks p.a. from these lands. J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), i. 50, ii. 1433. Apart from that of Wood Rising, his first wife had brought him manors at Upton and Cantley in Norfolk and Berwick in Barkway in Hertfordshire, of which he and Amy sold the latter property to Henry Colet† in 1475, Blomefield, vii. 230; xi. 133; CP25(1)/91/119/43; 170/193/51; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 58. and, probably, holdings at Fishley in the former county. As for the MP’s second marriage, there is no evidence for any lands he might have gained from his match with the obscure Katherine Sturges. In the spring of 1470 he appears to have made a bid (probably unsuccessful) for Brampton, a manor in Suffolk long disputed between a fellow Mowbray follower, John Strange*, and William Bedston*, by offering to buy up the interests of the rival claimants. Suff. RO (Ipswich), Iveagh (Phillipps) mss, HD 1538/146/1. Two other manors, Helmingham and Spixworth in Norfolk, certainly came into his possession, apparently through purchase, during the later 1470s and early 1480s, and he had succeeded to the manor of Wickmere in the same county after the death of Richard Quatermayns in 1477. His life interest in Wickmere must have become a permanent, for it passed to his descendants. Blomefield, vi. 461; viii. 236; x. 455. Southwell had also enjoyed a temporary interest in the lands of John Berney of Reedham, whose wardship he acquired in about 1473. Berney was the son and namesake of the man troubled by Thomas Daniell some 20 years earlier, and the wardship proved a difficult one because Daniell renewed his claims to Braydeston. Following arbitration, Southwell and his ward handed over 100 marks to Daniell and his son in 1478, in return for which their opponents agreed to leave them in peaceful possession of Braydeston and another manor at West Tofts. Upon acquiring Berney’s wardship, Southwell married the young man to Alice, one of his daughters by Amy Wichingham. Richmond, 165; CCR, 1476-85, no. 274; Blomefield, vii. 218, 257; xi. 125; Vis. Norf. i. 125. Amy was also the mother of his eldest son and heir, Robert. Robert enjoyed a more distinguished career than his father. Knighted in the MP’s lifetime, he served the early Tudors as a knight of the body, as chief butler of England and as an officer of the Exchequer. Baker, ii. 1434.