STOURTON, John II

More may be added to the earlier biography. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 492-6.

It may well be the case that Stourton was more active militarily in the Yorkist cause in 1460 and 1461 than previously supposed. He took at least two prisoners in this period, who were given safe conducts by Edward IV so they might trade in a Breton ship to raise money for their ransoms. C76/146, mm. 9, 13. There can be no doubt about his commitment to the new regime, and his conviction that Edward was the ‘rightfull Kyng of Englond’, for so he described the monarch in his will made a year after Edward’s accession. E13/154, rot. 11. The pardon he acquired on 6 Feb. 1462, described as occupier of the castle of Old Sarum, can only have been a formality. C67/45, m. 34.

The earlier biography commented that it is remarkable that Lord Stourton used none of his wealth for the endowment of religious foundations; and unusual features of his will, since found recorded in an unlikely place (the plea rolls of the Exchequer), reveal his religious practices to have been essentially private ones, in which ecclesiastic buildings played little part. The will contained bequests amounting to just £10 to religious houses, although every monk at the priory at Christchurch Twynham was to receive 6s. 8d. In some of its phrases the will, though made in English rather than Latin, echoed that of Stourton’s father from half a century earlier, The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 499. for instance by referring to the testator’s ‘stynkyng corupt body’. Most unusual was Stourton’s heartfelt plea that at the ‘dredfull oure’ of death his ‘synfull sowle’ might be ‘socoryd, relevyd, confortyd and holpe’ by the Virgin Mary, the archangels Gabriel and Raphael, and ‘myn own goud angels’, specifically naming 14 male saints and 15 female ones who he prayed would be true friends to his soul. Lord John asked to be buried in the church at Stourton, and named as his executors his son and heir William, William Twyneho* and his wife Ankaret, Giles Dacre*, and his chaplain, John Casteleyn, and as overseer the chancellor George Neville, bishop of Exeter. Each of them was bequeathed the sum of £10. Rewards for his servants and payments for repairs to Stourton church were left to the executors’ discretion. The will was dated 20 Mar. 1462. E13/154, m. 11. Before journeying north with the King’s army, Stourton presided over sessions of oyer and terminer held at Salisbury and Dorchester at the end of May. KB9/21/28; 135/36. Just five days before his death on 25 Nov. he made the King a loan of 100 marks. E403/827A, m. 11.