TRENCHARD, Henry

The Trenchard family had held a prominent position on the Isle of Wight in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and this was to be revived in the lifetime of our MP. VCH Hants, v. 272-3. On the mainland the Trenchards had occupied the manor of Hordle for at least 200 years before his birth, holding it by half a knight’s fee from the earls of Salisbury. Neither the name of Henry’s father or the precise date that he entered his inheritance have been discovered. In 1414 Hordle was held by one Roger Griffin, in right of his wife (presumably a Trenchard widow), and in 1428 the ‘lord of Hordle’ was said to be John Trenchard, Ibid. 112-13; CIPM, xx. 225; xxiii. 105. although in the meantime, at an assize held in Winchester in 1425 Henry (either the MP or an older namesake) had sued for possession of certain lands at Hordle as brother and heir of Baldwin Trenchard and next heir of William Keyhaven, a cousin on his mother’s side of the family. JUST1/1540, rot. 2d; Hutchins, iii. 328-9. Henry Trenchard of Hordle ‘esquire’ was said to be holding the manor by an eighth of a knight’s fee in 1431, E199/16/17. and it was in the oratory of the manor-house that masses were said in the presence of Trenchard and his wife, by licence of the diocesan, Bishop Waynflete of Winchester, granted on 16 Mar. 1450, while his only Parliament was in session. This wife, Christine, came from the ancient Dorset family of Mone, or Mohun, and it was no doubt in the expectation that she would inherit her father’s substantial estates in that county and elsewhere that Trenchard had married her. In the event, Christine pre-deceased her father, at whose death in 1479 the inheritance passed to her son John Trenchard. Hants RO, Reg. Waynflete 1, f.7*v; Hutchins, iii. 328-9. For John Trenchard’s Dorset inheritance from his gdfa. Mone, worth some £98 p.a., see CIMisc. viii. 504, 506; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1114, 1207. Henry had to be content with his own lands in Hampshire (at Milton, Sopley, Avon and Milford as well as on the Isle of Wight), which in due course also came into the possession of their son. PCC 27 Vox (PROB11/10, f. 210); CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 546; iii. 700.

Trenchard’s path to a place at as an esquire in the King’s household cannot now be mapped, yet no sooner there than he quickly established a connexion of the highest importance. In December 1441 he assisted the steward of the Household, William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, and his wife Alice in transactions for their acquisition of a manor in Suffolk from the executors of Sir William Porter†. E101/409/9, 11; CAD, iii. D547. There can be little doubt that this association with de la Pole did much to further his career. At that time Trenchard was serving as escheator in Hampshire, but he was singled out for more permanent office just a month later, then being given the post of riding-forester in the New Forest to hold in survivorship with the ailing Walter Veer*, who had been riding-forester since 1423. Veer’s death occurred just a few weeks later, and in October 1443 Trenchard was confirmed in the post, which earned him a fee of £5 a year, for life. Meanwhile, he had also been granted the reversion of the keepership of the park of Hampstead Marshall to fall in on the death of Richard Dancastre, although in this instance it does not look as if he ever occupied the office. CPR, 1441-6, pp. 33 (where he is wrongly called Richard Trenchard), 131, 225; CCR, 1441-7, p. 167. During the 1440s Trenchard was also linked with the treasurer of England, Ralph, Lord Cromwell, but seemingly merely as a co-feoffee of manors in Hampshire. More significant may have been his association with Sir Roger Fiennes*, the treasurer of the Household, on whose behalf he received payments at the Exchequer. CPR, 1441-6, p. 144; CCR, 1441-7, p. 216; E403/765, m. 7, 773, m. 6.

It is indicative of the position of influence Trenchard held at Court that on 3 Mar. 1446 he obtained confirmation of letters patent granted three years earlier, granting him and his male issue in reversion the important offices of constable of Carisbrooke castle and forester of the Isle of Wight, along with custody of the royal park there and the post of porter of the castle, to take effect immediately after the death of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. His fees were to amount to as much as £30 p.a. as constable and forester, with 8d. per day in addition as parker and porter. Trenchard insisted that the patent should state that ‘if these letters are in any wise invalid, the chancellor shall have authority at the suit of Trenchard or his heirs to amend them by advice of the Council and to cause others to be made, without any suit before the King’. CPR, 1441-6, p. 462. He was given a general pardon on 20 July that year, covering him for any offences committed in his former capacity as escheator and sheriff. More significantly, five days earlier he had joined a syndicate with de la Pole (now marquess of Suffolk), and two Londoners (the alderman Robert Horne and draper Clement Lyffyn), which acquired from Richard Curson a lease of the gold and silver mines in Devon and Cornwall. Clearly, they expected to make substantial profits, for in return they undertook to pay Curson a total of £1,900 in annual instalments of £100. How long Trenchard continued to be involved in this speculative venture is uncertain, but he and Horne were still making payments to Curson’s widow in the autumn of 1451, over a year after the death of de la Pole. C67/39 m. 33; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 397-400; 1447-54, p. 323.

Trenchard, still wearing the livery of an esquire of the Household and now (following Gloucester’s death) constable of Carisbrooke, was elected to Parliament for his home county in the autumn of 1449. The elections should be seen in the context of the renewal of war across the Channel and the French assault on the English garrisons in Normandy, and Trenchard’s companion, Sir John Popham*, was clearly chosen for his wealth of experience of the war. Trenchard may have been put forward because the defence of the south coast (including the Isle of Wight) had become an urgent priority, yet it may also be suspected that the sheriff, Robert Fiennes*, an esquire for the King’s body and nephew of the duke of Suffolk’s ally James Fiennes*, Lord Saye and Sele, promoted his candidacy on the assumption that he would lend support to these royal ministers in Parliament. In the event, there was little that Suffolk’s men in the Lower House could do to defend him against overwhelming criticism and hostility, which reached a climax during the second session. The impeached duke was sent into exile and to his death. Trenchard continued to have dealings with the widowed duchess of Suffolk, to the entent that in 1465 he relinquished to her lands in Berks. which he held as a feoffee: Lincs. AO, Earl of Ancaster mss, IANC2/A/18/31. In the course of that same session of January-March 1450, or else that held at Leicester from April to June, Trenchard shared some of the opprobrium heaped on his patron when petitions were presented to the King by inhabitants of the Isle of Wight. The petitioners were well aware of the imminent threat posed to the island following the fall of Normandy, and fearful of invasion by the French they demanded that Trenchard be ordered to stay at his post at Carisbrooke to organize the defences. The implicit criticism was that he had been neglecting his duties, although there was also a power struggle at play over control of the island. The petitioners extolled the virtues of Henry Bruyn*, another Household esquire, whom the duke of York had made steward of the island the previous year. Bruyn had actively improved the island’s defences by supplying guns and archers, and had put himself on the front line; his behaviour was contrasted explicitly with that of John Newport I*, the previous steward, and by inference with that of Trenchard. The overall lordship of the island was also a contentious issue: by the Act of Resumption passed in the summer this was removed from the duke of York, and on 7 June the King named one of his intimates, John, Lord Beauchamp of Powick, to take charge of the island as his lieutenant. E101/410/3; RP, v. 204-5 (cf. PROME, xii. 157); CPR, 1446-52, p. 333. Carisbrooke castle remained insufficiently supplied with ordnance, artillery and men, and in August indentures were drawn up for the delivery of new weapons to the constable, Trenchard. Reinforcements were also sent: ‘Jenquyn’ Baker esquire was ordered to take a force of nine men-at-arms and ten archers to join the garrison, but its overall strength is not recorded. Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of the English ed. Stevenson, ii. 475; E404/67/156. Baker reached the castle on 18 Oct.

In the course of the Parliament Trenchard’s letters patent regarding his office as riding-forester had been annulled by the Act of Resumption, but two years later, on 4 July 1452, he was restored to the post with a further grant for life. CPR, 1446-52, p. 564; E159/228, recorda, Trin. rot. 10d. It would seem that his offices at Carisbrooke were largely unaffected, for his appointments to commissions of array on the Isle of Wight in the 1450s suggest a continuing if sporadic involvement with its defence throughout the period, when it fell under the lordship of the dukes of Somerset. Trenchard’s constableship was annulled by the Act of Resumption in the Parliament of 1455-6, but re-granted to him on 12 May 1456 albeit under changed conditions: no longer was it to be held in tail-male, but only for term of his life. Membership of the Household was now, however, a thing of the past, and in the late 1450s he seems to have shifted in his allegiance away from the house of Lancaster. He was not appointed to royal commissions on the island or anywhere else from early 1457 until after the end of Henry VI’s reign. Nevertheless, the royal pardon he took out in May 1458 (as ‘of Carisbrooke and the Isle of Wight’), was formally registered in the Exchequer in February 1459. C67/42, m. 10; E159/236, brevia Hil. rot. 5d.

The descent into civil war in 1459-60 saw an attempt by (Sir) Henry Bruyn to regain his former ascendancy on the Isle of Wight, and to challenge Trenchard’s authority there. In April 1460, so Bruyn later alleged, Trenchard assaulted two of his servants at Newport and imprisoned and maltreated them at Carisbrooke, while several of the islanders, presumably Trenchard’s followers, committed other trespasses against him. It would seem, however, that with respect to their political alignments the two men had changed sides. After the Yorkists took control of the government following their victory at Northampton a commission was issued to the sheriff of Hampshire on 15 Oct. to arrest Bruyn for illegally entering the royal forests on the island, and Trenchard proceeded with suits for trespass against him in the Westminster courts, alleging that Sir Henry and his men had broken into his property at Purewell, near Christchurch, and wounded him so badly that he nearly lost his life. CP40/799, rots. 163d, 270; C88/157/28; CPR, 1452-61, p. 651; 1461-7, p. 504. In December the Yorkists appointed Geoffrey Gate as lieutenant of the island and ‘keeper and governor’ of Carisbrooke, but Trenchard seems to have been prepared to serve under his command, and in May 1461, following Edward IV’s accession, both men were appointed to mobilize men for the defence of the castle against the new King’s enemies. Yet although on 28 July Edward confirmed his appointments for life both as constable of Carisbrooke and riding-forester of the New Forest, CPR, 1452-61, pp. 18, 289, 390-1, 637-8; 1461-7, pp. 27, 56. on the Isle of Wight he held the same subordinate role to Gate as he had to the dukes of Somerset. His constableship was not mentioned in the pardon he received in March 1463 – only his service as sheriff and as one-time farmer of the alien priory of St. Helens. C67/45, m. 12. His lease of the estates of St. Helens priory has not been traced. Trenchard appears to have been on good terms with Gate, now a knight, to whom he and co-feoffees released in 1466 all their right and title in the manor of ‘Bridgecourt’ on the island. E326/10444. However, after that spring Trenchard ceased to be appointed to royal commissions, and his public service ended.

Little is recorded of Trenchard’s private affairs. He had been named as a feoffee of lands on the Isle of Wight for his father-in-law John Mone in 1458, but otherwise seems to have had little contact with him. I.o.W. RO, Oglander mss, OG/D/11, P/3, 4; C140/71/51. On behalf of other landowners he was party to conveyances of property in Hampshire through the 1460s and 1470s, and on his own behalf in September 1479 he took possession of land near his home, in Arnewood and Keyhaven. He is last recorded in June 1481 dealing with holdings in Sutton on the Isle of Wight. Oglander mss, OG/D/12, P/6; Winchester Coll. muns. 9723, 12406. Trenchard died at an unknown date within the next 18 months. Writs de diem clausit extremum were issued on 7 Feb., 28 Apr. and 16 July 1483 to inquire as to his date of death and land-holdings, but if inquisitions post mortem were ever held they have not survived. CFR, xxi. 667, 719, 743. Hutchins, iii. 326, 328 gives his date of death as 16 Edw. IV (1476-7), but without citing a source.

The MP’s heir was his elder son John (b.c.1453), who had inherited the estates of his maternal grandfather John Mone in 1479. No doubt Mone had been responsible for arranging his grandson’s marriage to a daughter of a friend of his, the Dorset landowner John Filoll*, who had sat with Trenchard in the Parliament of November 1449. Shortly after his father’s death John Trenchard rose in rebellion against Richard III, and suffered attainder and forfeiture in the Parliament of 1484. Yet he lived to be restored to his inheritance by Henry VII, by whom he was knighted. Sir John took as a second wife Margery, daughter of John Wyke II* of Bindon, and widow of his kinsman John Cheverell (d.1485), and died in 1495. PROME, xv. 26-27, 102-5; CPR, 1476-85, p. 453; CIMisc. viii. 504, 506; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1114, 1207.