STOURTON, William

The eldest of the four sons of John Stourton, the prominent Wiltshire landowner who was created Lord Stourton in 1448, William was named in memory of his grandfather, the Speaker of 1413 who had laid the foundations of the family’s aggrandisement. The date of his birth is uncertain, although at his father’s inquisition post mortem in 1463 he was said to be over 30, indicating that he was born at some point between 1422 and 1432, C140/8/18. and it is likely that he had still been under age when he accompanied his father to the shire court at Wilton for the parliamentary elections held on 19 Dec. 1441. C219/15/2. Yet even if then still a minor he was already married, for his father had arranged for him an advantageous match to the elder of the two daughters of the wealthy Sir John Chideock. Margaret was destined to be coheiress of her father’s widespread estates, including the important Fitzwaryn inheritance which Sir John had received from his mother. As part of the marriage settlement, in April 1441 Chideock had promised that the young couple would inherit property in Perrott and Hardington in Somerset and the manor of Wyke in Dorset when he died. C139/139/26. The gift Stourton’s father made to them took more immediate effect. On 2 Apr. his feoffees settled on them in tail the manor of ‘Powlesholt’ and land in Wiltshire, as well as other property in Somerset, and on the next day they also took seisin of a moiety of the Dorset manor of Tarrant Rushton. C140/63/55; Stourton, i. 226. This was where they made their home until William entered his patrimony. Stourton, i. 243-50.

These family estates qualified William, as yet un-tried in local administration, to represent Dorset in the Parliament summoned to meet at Bury St. Edmunds on 10 Feb. 1447, but the electors assembled at Dorchester on 30 Jan. were probably impressed more by the status of his father, who had recently been appointed treasurer of the King’s household, and if there was any local opposition to the young man’s return, it might have been easily overcome by the sheriff, who was his uncle William Carent*. Father and son had both attested the Wiltshire elections held on 10 Jan., so the latter was technically in breach of the statute which required both electors and elected to be resident in their counties on the date of the writs of summons. C219/15/4. A notable number of the MPs in the Bury Parliament were courtiers, presumably expected to lend support to the moves of the King’s chief ministers against the duke of Gloucester. The Stourtons’ close links with the Beauforts, the duke’s long-term opponents, lend weight to the supposition that they were of like mind.

Stourton’s father-in-law died on 6 Mar. 1450, and although the widowed Katherine Chideock was to retain a large part of her late husband’s estate as jointure and dower until her death 11 years later, on 18 May orders went out to the escheators of Somerset, Dorset, Wiltshire and Cambridgeshire to deliver to Stourton and his wife their already allotted portion of the Chideock acres, and to Margaret’s sister Katherine and her husband William Stafford* their share. The inheritance was to be divided equally between the two women. CCR, 1447-54, pp. 153-5. That Michaelmas term he was party with his father to transactions regarding land in Frome Selwood and elsewhere in Som., which apparently was then placed in his possession: Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xxii), 114, 127. Very shortly afterwards Cade’s rebellion spread turmoil through the southern counties, and in June Stafford was killed at Sevenoaks in Kent, while attempting to restore order. Quite likely Stourton also joined the royal forces combatting the rebels, for he was knighted before August.

Following his knighting, Stourton’s appointments to ad hoc commissions of local government in Dorset commenced, and from the following year he served as a member of the county bench. During the 1450s he seems to have followed his father’s example of loyal service to Henry VI and the avoidance of overt partisanship as factions among the lords led inexorably to civil war. On 16 Apr. 1455 William and his uncle Carent were the two men summoned from Dorset to attend the great council called to meet at Leicester on 21 May; while his father, as a regular counsellor to the King, would have been expected to join them there. PPC, vi. 340. If they responded to the call they may have been drawn into the battle in the streets of St. Albans, but there is no record of their participation in that bloodshed. Following the battle Lord Stourton adopted the role of peacemaker, and it may have been a conciliatory gesture that prompted the appointment in November of his younger son, Sir Reynold, as sheriff of Wiltshire. Sir William himself was among those, ‘true subgetts, men of gode birth and havour’ who were instructed on 5 Dec. at the request of the Lords and Commons in Parliament to ride to Devon with the duke of York, now Protector once more, to establish order in the wake of the murder of Nicholas Radford*. Ibid. 270; PROME, xii. 348-9. Yet he remained acceptable to the Lancastrians, and continued to be named on royal commissions through to December 1459, then being appointed to array the men of Dorset to defend the realm against the forces of the Yorkist lords attainted in the Coventry Parliament.

Nevertheless, at some point during the next eight months Stourton decided to throw in his lot with York, and may even have actively supported the duke’s followers at the battle of Northampton in July 1460. In a curious deed, allegedly sealed by one Richard Page of Warminster on 22 Aug., Stourton, together with his father and brother were linked together with Duke Richard and the victorious earls of March, Salisbury and Warwick as a feoffee of lands in Wiltshire. Tropenell Cart. ed. Davies, ii. 73. Although the authenticity of the deed is in doubt, and not only because York himself was still in Ireland, the fact that the Stourtons were perceived to be firmly on the side of the victors is significant. Sir William was returned to the Parliament summoned by them to meet at Westminster on 7 Oct. There, the duke laid claim to the throne (an event witnessed by Stourton’s father in the Lords), and was formally accepted as Henry VI’s heir. On 10 Dec., during the parliamentary recess, Lord Stourton and his two sons were all named on a commission to arrest and imprison marauders in Somerset and Dorset; clearly, they were trusted by the new regime with the task of bringing back law and order to their region, and this is further shown by the brothers’ nomination to further commissions appointed on 20 Jan., after York’s death at Wakefield. CPR, 1452-61, pp. 653, 657. There is no record of the Stourtons’ participation in the battles which followed, but after Towton they all proved ready to confirm their allegiance to Edward IV. While Sir Reynold was re-appointed sheriff of Wiltshire in November 1461, Sir William continued to serve on the bench in Dorset. It was a mere formality for the latter and his wife to obtain pardons from the new King, which they did on 5 June 1462. C67/45, m. 24. Family tradition has it that later that year he joined Edward IV’s army moving against the Lancastrians in Northumberland, at the side of his father. Lord Stourton probably died at Durham. Stourton, i. 226; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 495.

Lord Stourton’s death on 25 Nov. left Sir William, his elder son and one of the executors of his will, as heir to substantial estates in nine counties, E13/154, m. 11; C67/49, m. 29; C140/8/18. of which seisin was granted to him on 20 Feb. 1463, saving the dower of his widowed mother. CCR, 1461-8, pp. 122-3; CFR, xx. 191. It is not known when Lady Stourton died. He and his wife took out another pardon on 20 Apr. following, presumably to exonerate them from any misdemeanours when they took possession of their parents’ estates. C67/45, m. 12. A credible valuation of their combined holdings does not survive. It is clear that the one of £138 p.a. given in Lord William’s post mortem considerably underestimated their worth, especially as in 1436 his father had declared his annual income as £600, and to that had since been added the Stourtons’ share of the Chideok estates. C140/63/55. For a list of his estates and their provenance, Stourton, i. 243-50. In the 1460s Stourton set about consolidating his inheritance by bringing a number of suits in Chancery. One of these concerned land in Yempston, Devon, which a feoffee refused to relinquish. C1/33/196. Another concerned the Dorset manors of Fifehead Neville, Melbury Osmond and Burcombe and the advowson of Povington, which had all formed part of the Fitzwaryn inheritance of his wife’s grandmother Eleanor, successively wife of Sir John Chideock† (d.1415) and Ralph Bush* (d.1441). These properties had been settled by Eleanor on her son William Bush when he married Joan, daughter of Sir Thomas Brooke*, and having been kept by Joan as her jointure had come into the possession of her second husband John Carent* (Stourton’s cousin). When Joan died in 1465 the Chideock heiresses (Lady Margaret Stourton and her sister Katherine, now the wife of Sir John Arundell of Lanherne) sought to recover them. Early in 1467 they petitioned the chancellor George Neville, archbishop of York, alleging that the role of feoffee of the properties had fallen to one John Bourton, who, now over 90 years old, had been persuaded by ‘certain persons’ of ‘synestre imaginacion’ to relinquish his title to them. Carent was not named in the petition, but following Neville’s dismissal from the chancellorship, in June that year, he petitioned Neville’s successor, Bishop Stillington, saying that to end the ‘variaunces’ between him and the Chideock heirs they had agreed to abide by the arbitration of William Huddesfield†, John Byconnell* and William Twyneho*. They, after examining all the documentary evidence, had decided that on payment of £100 Carent should keep the disputed properties for life, with remainder in tail to his children by Joan Brooke, and a final remainder to the right heirs of Sir John Chideock. Carent declared himself ready to make this payment, but Lord Stourton refused to comply with the arbiters’ award, and by an oversight had not been bound in writing to do so. Although the three arbiters all confirmed Carent’s version of events, C1/31/172, 451; 43/258-61. it would seem that he eventually gave in to his cousin’s demands; before his death the disputed manors had returned to Margaret Stourton. CP25(1)/294/77/133B.

For reasons which remain obscure, Stourton was not listed among the members of the nobility summoned to the Parliaments of 1463 and 1467, Reps. Lords’ Cttees. ii. 957-8, 960-1, 965-6. and he never took such a prominent role in national government as his late father. However, as befitted his standing in the localities he was made a j.p. in Somerset and Wiltshire as well as in Dorset, and was also accorded a place on other important commissions. The most important of these was a special commission of oyer and terminer appointed in December 1468 to bring to trial certain of King Edward’s principal opponents. As a consequence he sat with the judges at Salisbury on 12 Jan. 1469 who condemned to death as traitors (Sir) Thomas Hungerford*, de jure Lord Hungerford, and Henry Courtenay, de jure earl of Devon. KB9/320; C. Ross, Edw. IV, 123; CPR, 1485-94, p. 149. The Readeption of Henry VI presented Lord Stourton, like so many other members of the peerage, with a dilemma: whether to back Warwick and Clarence, or to seek the return of the exiled Edward IV. To all appearances he kowtowed to the new regime. He was summoned to the Parliament called in Henry’s name on 15 Aug. 1470, Reps. Lords’ Cttees. ii. 976-7. kept on as a j.p., and offered a pardon by the restored monarch on the following 1 Feb. C67/44, m. 3. His brother Sir Reynold went even further, by offering his whole-hearted allegiance to King Henry. On 25 Apr., after Edward’s victory at Barnet, he was declared a traitor; only through good fortune did he secure the King’s pardon. Stourton, i. 237-8.

Perhaps because he himself had held back from overtly supporting the Lancastrians, in Edward IV’s second reign Lord William was able to take on a more prominent position. The fall of some of their rivals for political hegemony in Wiltshire – the Hungerfords in particular – left the Stourtons virtually unchallenged in the region. Lord William came forward to act as an arbitrator in the long-running disputes between Richard Beauchamp, bishop of Salisbury, and the city of Salisbury in December 1471, when he and his fellows ‘emploied their effectual labours’ for a ‘good direction towardes a perfight end and unite’ between the parties. HMC Var. iv. 208-9. Shortly after the opening of Parliament in October 1472, he and his eldest son John were granted for their lifetimes the office of keeper of the royal forest of Petherton, CPR, 1467-77, p. 372. and he was at the King’s side on 17 July 1473 when, in the friary at Stamford, the great seal was delivered to the bishop of Durham as the new chancellor. Stourton was then said to be of the King’s Council, but it is difficult to discover how frequently he served on this body, CCR, 1468-76, no. 1164. and the fact that he was never made a trier of parliamentary petitions suggests that he remained outside the inner circle of government. Nor did he establish particularly close relations with the royal family, although in the mid 1470s he officiated as steward of Gillingham for the queen, from whom he farmed land in Dorset, DL29/736/12059. and his eldest son was dubbed a knight on 18 Apr. 1475 at the same ceremony as the young Prince Edward and his brother the duke of York. CP, xii (1), 303.

Following his succession to the barony, Stourton had negotiated marriage alliances appropriate to his standing. A double match was arranged for two of his children, linking the Stourtons to the wealthy Berkeleys of Beverstone castle in Gloucestershire: before May 1467 his son and heir, John, was married to Katherine, daughter of Maurice Berkeley*, and Katherine’s brother William† (Berkeley’s own heir), married his new sister-in-law, Katherine Stourton. Ibid.; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 151; iii. 1078. Other of Lord Stourton’s daughters made good marriages too, to the heirs of Sir John Philipot of London and John Roger (d.1450) of Bryanston (Lord Audley’s stepson). Stourton, i. 239-43. For neighbours and friends Stourton occasionally took on the responsibilities of a trustee, doing so, for example, for Alexander de la Lynde, a Somerset esquire, for the son and namesake of William Kaylewey* of Sherborne, and for John, Lord Beauchamp of Powick. Reg. Stillington (Som. Rec. Soc. lii), 169, 299; CCR, 1468-76, no. 952; C1/31/128; 54/26. In 1472 his kinswoman Margaret Beaufort, countess of Richmond, who relied heavily on the support of her mother’s relatives, asked him to witness arrangements for the settlement of her west-country estates, CCR, 1500-9, no. 293; M.K. Jones and M.G. Underwood, The King’s Mother, 144. and towards the end of his life he assisted his wife’s sister Katherine in fixing the terms of the contract for her third marriage, to (Sir) Roger Lewknor*. CCR, 1476-85, no. 474. The feoffees on whom Stourton himself relied included Thomas Rogers†, Thomas Welles*, Roger Huls†, Giles Dacre* and John Pole*, all of whom were sometime MPs, although whether he ever played a part in securing their elections to the Commons is now impossible to discover. C140/63/55. As an honorary burgess of Wilton, Stourton headed the lists of burgesses from when they survive (1468) until his death – which is recorded there: Wilts. Hist. Centre, Wilton bor. recs., gen. entry bk. G25/1/21, ff. 581-9, 591-8. But whether he influenced the returns for Wilton of Dacre and Pole is open to speculation.

Stourton died on 18 Feb. 1478. A few weeks earlier, on 7 Jan., no doubt aware that he was dying, he had made feoffments of certain of his estates, instructing the feoffees to make conveyances to his eldest son and the latter’s wife, and five days later he settled the manor of Dangeirs, Wiltshire, on a younger son, William, in tail. The late hour of these settlements was symptomatic of the general laxity he had shown with regard to the legal formalities governing the descent of his property. He had done nothing to regularize the status of certain manors which his father had put into the hands of trustees nearly 40 years earlier, in 1430, and all those so named had all since died, leaving the properties in the hands of Stourton’s cousin John Carent, as the son and heir of William Carent, one of their number. Nevertheless, despite their earlier confrontation over the former Fitzwaryn inheritance, Carent dutifully handed the manors over to the heir, Lord John, on 6 Mar. C140/63/55; CFR, xxii. nos. 517-20. His feoffees had to seek pardon for transactions regarding Easton in Essex made without royal licence: CPR, 1476-85, p. 141. Stourton was buried in the parish church of Mere in Wiltshire. His widow, who survived for another 25 years, married John Cheyne†, Lord Cheyne (d.1499). Of Stourton’s 13 children, Stourton, i. 239-43. three followed him into the Upper House: after the death in 1485 of John, 3rd Lord Stourton, and of the latter’s infant son Francis two years later, our MP’s second surviving son, William, succeeded to the title, but being childless was followed in 1524 by his brother Edward. CP, xii (1), 303-5. Meanwhile, their long-lived mother, Lady Margaret, had died in 1503. CP25(1)/294/77/133B; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 790.