SYDENHAM, John

The Sydenhams were a prolific west-country family, who even by the early years of the fifteenth century had established a number of cadet branches in the region. The MP must be distinguished from a contemporary namesake – possibly even his younger brother – John Sydenham ‘the younger’ of Orchard. This man served on royal commissions in the s.-w. between 1455 and 1466 (occasionally alongside the subject of this biography) and sat with him on the Som. bench from 27 Mar. 1453 until his death in May 1469. He was succeeded by his son, also called John, who was then almost 22, and survived by his widow, Joan, until 1499: C140/31/19; PCC 35 Horne (PROB11/11, f. 284); PROB2/160; C67/49, m. 25. The member of the family to rise to greatest prominence in the fourteenth century was John Sydenham’s grandfather, Richard (d.1402/3), who in 1388 was chosen to fill one of the vacancies on the judicial bench of the court of common pleas created by the judgements of the Merciless Parliament. PCC 4 Marche (PROB11/2A, f. 24); E. Foss, Judges, iv. 101. Richard’s younger son, Simon, who entered the Church, rose even higher under the Lancastrian monarchs and was elevated first to the deanery of Salisbury cathedral, and subsequently (in 1431) to the see of Chichester. This professional and ecclesiastical advancement did much to enhance the family’s economic fortunes: in the early years of the fifteenth century the failure in the male line of the senior branch of the family had allowed its seat of Sydenham in the parish of Wembdon to pass out of the Sydenhams’ hands, The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 302-3; iii. 483; iv. 555; VCH Som. vi. 329. but by virtue of Richard’s standing as a royal justice he was able to contract a valuable marriage for his son and heir, Henry, to one of the daughters and coheirs of a wealthy Somerset gentry family, the Whitons of Bossington. Henry and his brother Simon acquired further lands (centred on the manors of Stogumber and Preston) by purchase, and Henry’s descendants were to make further advantageous matches. Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xvii), 167; VCH Som. v. 180.

Henry Sydenham’s death left his son and heir a minor in the custody of his feudal overlord, Sir Hugh Luttrell† of Dunster, who in about 1427 granted the keeping of both heir and lands to Master Simon Sydenham. It is possible that by this date the young John was already living in the household of his uncle (then dean of Salisbury), for in about 1425 he was recorded among the men summoning two defendants into Chancery on behalf of the sheriff of Wiltshire. Certainly, he had forged ties in the circle of the leading Wiltshire magnate Walter, lord Hungerford†, by November 1431, when (styled a gentleman of Wiltshire) he stood surety in the Exchequer for Richard Milborne*, who like Master Simon Sydenham was one of Hungerford’s feoffees. CPR, 1429-36, pp. 47, 217. Indeed, the Sydenhams were connected to Hungerford by ties of marriage (if not blood), for the widow of John’s maternal grandfather, John Whiton, had married as her second husband the influential former Speaker of the Bad Parliament, Sir Thomas Hungerford†, and had borne him two sons, including Walter, the later Lord Hungerford. Relations between the Hungerfords and their Sydenham kin remained close, and throughout his life John Sydenham played an important role in the Hungerfords’ land transactions, attesting their deeds and acting as their feoffee. CCR, 1429-36, p. 252; 1461-8, pp. 225-6, 394; 1468-76, nos. 227, 236, 239-40, 247, 429; CFR, xvii. 133.

By the autumn of 1431, John had come of age, and that year his uncle, then newly elected bishop of Chichester, brokered an agreement between him and his cousin and coheir Walter Pauncefoot, under the terms of which the lands of John Whiton were divided up in such a way that Sydenham gained the Whiton holdings in Somerset (consisting principally of the manors of Bossington and Timbercombe, together said to be worth at least £22 p.a.) in their entirety. Honour of Dunster (Som. Rec. Soc. xxxiii), 175, 180, 183, 187, 190, 191; Some Som. Manors (Som. Rec. Soc. extra ser. 1931), 73, 98; C140/28/22, m. 4; CCR, 1429-36, p. 164. Further advancement of the family’s fortunes, probably brought about by Hungerford influence, resulted from Sydenham’s marriage to Joan, one of the three daughters and heiresses of John Stourton I, and cousins of John Stourton II*, later Lord Stourton. Apart from the important connexions that this match provided (Joan’s elder sister Cecily successively married John Hill I* of Spaxton and Sir Thomas Kyriel* of Sarrecourt, while their youngest sibling, Alice, became the wife first of William Daubeney* of South Ingleby, and later of Robert Hill† of Houndstone), it also substantially increased Sydenham’s landed income (now in excess of the knightly minimum of £40 p.a.), and brought him among other holdings the manor of Brimpton, where he established his seat. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 492.

While Sydenham’s later inclusion in the quorum of the peace in his native Somerset may suggest that, like his grandfather, he had received some training in the law, he does not seem to have ever actively practiced as a lawyer. Instead, he lived the life of a country gentleman, and periodically put his knowledge at the disposal of his friends and neighbours, for whom he acted as a feoffee and a witness to their title deeds. CCR, 1435-41, pp. 36, 126; 1441-7, p. 272; 1454-61, pp. 69, 366; CFR, xvi. 82; C147/155; Som. Archs., Misc. Som. docs. DD\BR\by/1. Among those whom he assisted in this way were Katherine, coheiress of the Chideocks of Chideock and successively wife of William Stafford*, Sir John Arundell of Lanherne and (Sir) Roger Lewknor* (and connected to Sydenham by her sister’s marriage to William Stourton*, his wife’s kinsman), John Stafford, bishop of Bath and Wells (soon to become chancellor of England), various members of the Courtenay family, and later, in the 1460s, Margaret, Lady Hungerford and Botreaux, who retained him as a member of her council at an annual fee of 53s. 4d. Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR1/941-2; CCR, 1461-8, p. 88; CFR, xvii. 133; SC6/1119/4. Sydenham’s uncle, the bishop of Chichester, named him one of his executors. CP40/738, rot. 258; E159/215, recorda Hil. rot. 1d. Equally in keeping with this way of life are the few instances of litigation involving Sydenham that are on record: they principally concerned minor matters such as small debts or infringements of his seigneurial rights by local men, CP40/703, rot. 459; 766, rot. 55; KB27/745, rot. 1; 746, rot. 79; 803, rot. 5d; 818, rot. 16; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 184, 375, 618. although in the summer of 1442 he was embroiled in a more acrimonious dispute with Edward St. John of East Luccombe, head of an ambitious cadet branch of the St. Johns of Paulerspury, with regard to holdings at West Lynch (part of his paternal inheritance) over which St. John claimed feudal rights. KB27/725, rot. 93.

It is not clear to what circumstance Sydenham owed his first return to the Commons for the decayed borough of Old Sarum, but it seems very likely that Stourton influence played a part. Since 1447 Joan Sydenham’s cousin John, recently created Lord Stourton, had had custody of the ruined castle and lands belonging to it, and he may well have taken the opportunity to secure a parliamentary seat for her husband. CPR, 1446-52, p. 35. Despite, or perhaps even on account of, the dramatic events in the first Parliament of 1449, Sydenham secured re-election that autumn as one of the knights for Somerset (a position he was well qualified to fill, both in terms of his social standing and his landed income in that county), and he subsequently went on to represent the same shire on three further occasions, perhaps more. The Som. returns for the Parliaments of 1459, 1461 and 1463 are lost, but it is not impossible that Sydenham served in one or more of them. In every instance, it is probable that Lord Stourton at least played a part in inducing him to seek election, if not in ensuring his return, for Stourton (then treasurer of Henry VI’s notoriously cash-starved household) had every reason to seek to place supporters and kinsmen in the Commons.

Nothing is known of Sydenham’s role in the proceedings of the Lower House, and it seems that it was only at the time of his third return, to the Reading Parliament of 1453, that he became drawn into public affairs on a broader scale. On the final day of the first session he was added to the Somerset county bench. The wider crisis that engulfed the realm in the loss of Gascony and the King’s mental collapse that summer, was followed for Sydenham by the personal grievance of having to sue the sheriff, Nicholas Latimer*, for his parliamentary wages (amounting to the substantial sum of £33). These remained unpaid even in the spring of 1455, a year after the dissolution. E13/145B, rot. 58d. The quest for payment as much as the descent of the realm into open civil war may have played their part in causing him (as far as is known, uniquely in his career) to attend and attest the Somerset elections to the Parliament summoned in the aftermath of the first battle of St. Albans. For some time he successfully avoided too close an association with either faction among the lords, even as the divisions began to harden in the second half of the 1450s. In December 1459, when the duke of York and his Neville allies had been driven into exile, Sydenham was commissioned to array the men of Somerset to fend off a potential invasion by the hostile lords in Calais, but when the invasion came, this appointment did not count against him sufficiently to prevent his return alongside the young Humphrey Stafford IV* as knight of the shire for Somerset to the Parliament summoned in the aftermath of the battle of Northampton. In this, Sydenham may once again have followed the lead of his wife’s Stourton kin, who maintained a position of relative neutrality while the control of the government hung in the balance. Certainly, his appointments to office continued even in the early months after Edward IV’s accession, and he also retained his place on the Somerset bench. In the summer of 1466 he was even added to the quorum of the peace, and at this time he had already completed most of a term of office as sheriff of Somerset and Dorset. E13/150, rot. 17d; 153, rots. 4, 6.

In 1467 Sydenham was returned to the Commons for at least the sixth time, but he was not to see this Parliament out. On 6 Nov. the assembly was prorogued to meet once more on 5 May 1468, but by then he was dead, having died a month earlier on 4 Apr. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Walter, then aged 25, who eight years earlier, despite his youth, had attested the Somerset parliamentary elections. But Walter survived his father by little more than two years, leaving as his own heir his infant son John. C140/28/22; PCC 29 Godyn (PROB11/5, f. 223v). Walter’s wid. Margaret survived him until 1477, having married as her 2nd husband William Mutton: C140/61/36; WARD2/56/201/6; CAD, iv. A9150. Our John Sydenham’s widow, Joan, was charged with the execution of his will. She never remarried and died in April 1472, leaving her younger son Richard (whom she had endowed with her manor of Runnington) to settle both of his parents’ affairs. C140/42/45; C67/44, m. 1; 46, m. 23; 49, m. 28; E159/241, recorda Trin. rots. 9, 10. Shortly after his grandmother’s death, the young John Sydenham was seized by the abbot of Athelney who claimed his wardship as feudal overlord of the manor of Bossington, but just six months later, in November 1472, the boy’s uncles took him back into the care of his family. CP40/845, rot. 335.