TWYNEHO, William

The Twyneho family probably derived its name from the Somerset vill of Twinhoe in Wellow. The generally accepted pedigrees identify the MP as the son and heir of another William, who lived at Keyford in Frome, Hutchins, iii. 468. but in fact he was that William’s grandson. In his will of 1412 the older William named his son and heir John as an executor. The latter founded a chantry in the parish church at Frome, where his father was buried, and presented chaplains to serve there in 1419 and 1429. John, who held property in Bristol and elsewhere worth £25 p.a., Som. Med. Wills (Som. Rec. Soc. xvi), 58-59; Feudal Aids, vi. 448; Reg. Bubwith, ii (Som. Rec. Soc. xxx), 378; Reg. Stafford, i (ibid. xxxi), 69. established a place for himself among the gentry of the region, where he acted as a feoffee for Robert Lovell* and came to be associated with Sir Walter Hungerford†, Lord Hungerford. CCR, 1422-9, pp. 48, 151, 190; 1429-35, pp. 54, 163. His standing was reflected not only in his appointments as escheator of Somerset and Dorset for the term 1426-7 and alnager of Somerset from 1426 to 1434, CFR, xv. 114, 158. but also by his appearance to attest two of the Somerset elections of the 1420s. Yet he combined his role as a ‘gentleman’ with that of a merchant, making his mark in Bristol as controller and collector of customs between 1430 and 1438, C67/38, m. 13; CPR, 1429-36, p. 69; CFR, xvi. 53, 57, 73, 144, 145, 147, 168, 169, 171, 185, 329. and using his house in Broad Street as a base for trading ventures. He witnessed the Bristol elections to the Parliaments of 1435 and 1437. Bristol Wills (Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. 1886), 122-3; Topography of Bristol, i (Bristol Rec. Soc. xlviii), 40; Recs. All Saints’ Bristol, iii (ibid. lvi), 400. Still living on 25 Mar. 1442, he died before 20 Aug. that year, leaving William as his heir. Harl. Chs. 80 G 48, 49.

William was already married when John died: in the previous year he and his wife Ankaret had been in possession of land in the hundred of Frome, which had probably been settled on them by his father. Som. Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. mss, DD\SAS\C/795/FR/54. After inheriting his patrimony he became known as ‘of Keyford, gentleman’, and it was as ‘lord of Keyford’ that he obtained a licence from the pope in 1455 permitting him and Ankaret to have a portable altar. Harl. Ch. 80 G 44; CPR, 1446-52, p. 164; CPL, xi. 228. In due course William made presentations to the family chantry in Frome, Reg. Bekynton, i (Som. Rec. Soc. xlix), 1585; Reg. Stillington (ibid. lii), 186. but there is no sign that he ever held the property in Bristol which had belonged to his father, and it would seem that this passed at some point after John’s death to William’s much younger sibling, another John, who as a lawyer of distinction became recorder of Bristol in 1471 and later sat for the borough in Parliament. J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii. 1569-70. Although John was evidently much younger than his bro. William, the birth-date (c.1440) suggested by Baker is implausibly late.

Although Twyneho was not resident in Shaftesbury, the Dorset town he represented in the Parliament at Bury St. Edmunds in 1447, it seems likely that he held property there for his younger son, another William, and his grandson Roger are both recorded holding messuages and land as tenants of Shaftesbury abbey, where, indeed, one of his daughters was professed as a nun. Yet a more important factor in Twyneho’s election was undoubtedly his link as both feudal tenant and servant with the influential (Sir) John Stourton II* (created Lord Stourton in the following year). CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 47, 48, 50, 51. During Henry VI’s reign Shaftesbury frequently returned Stourton’s associates, and on this occasion, as the treasurer of the Household, Stourton may have actively promoted the election to the Commons of someone he could depend upon to support the government’s policies. At the time Parliament met Twyneho was employed by Stourton as his deputy in the stewardship of the Wiltshire estates of the duke of Buckingham. He was busy in 1446-7 attending on the earl’s auditors at Marlborough and elsewhere: Add Roll 27679.

On 21 May 1448 Twyneho sued out a pardon of all trespasses, offences, misprisions and concealments, at the same time as three other ‘gentlemen’ from Wiltshire – Philip Morgan* of Chitterne and Reynold and John Croke of Codford – did likewise. The nature of their supposed misdemeanours is not revealed, but Twyneho at least made sure that the Exchequer learned of his pardon, by obtaining a writ of non molestetis in January 1450, so it may be that it related to an office for which financial account had to be made. CPR, 1446-52, p. 164; E159/226, brevia Hil. rot. 3. Meanwhile, he had been present at the Wiltshire elections held at Wilton on 14 Oct. 1449, where he not only attested the indenture but also, again in association with Morgan, stood surety for one of the knights-elect, Lord Stourton’s son-in-law the youthful Richard Warre*. A year later he secured election to Parliament again, this time as a representative of the Wiltshire borough of Hindon, which had only recently been re-enfranchised. The return, in respect of Twyneho’s name, shows signs of tampering, but what lay behind the changes is not known. C219/15/7; 16/1.

Twyneho’s connexion with Lord Stourton remained close. He served as agent for Stourton, still treasurer of the Household, at the Exchequer in June 1452, and three years later joined his son Sir Reynold in obtaining a lease for 30 years of the rabbit warrens in Groveley forest, Wiltshire. E403/809, m. 5; CFR, xix. 131. A sure indication of his high standing in the peer’s estimation came not only from his nomination as a feoffee of his estates, CCR, 1461-8, pp. 125-6. but more importantly from the provisions of his will. This, written on 20 Mar. 1462, named both Twyneho and his wife Ankaret among the executors, leaving each of them a bequest of £10. E13/154, m. 11. Together with their fellow executors (Lord Stourton’s son and heir Sir William* and retainer Giles Dacre*), the Twynehos pursued the testator’s debtors in the court of the Exchequer throughout the 1460s. E13/153, rot. 11d; 154, Easter rot. 11, Mich. rot. 26. The executors were clearly on amicable terms, for Twyneho and his son William acted as feoffees for Dacre in 1469, Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 672. and he agreed to be an arbiter in the new Lord Stourton’s dispute with John Carent* and John Arundell over the Chideock inheritance. C1/31/172, 451; 43/258-61; CP25(1)/294/77/133B.

Twyneho had served as a j.p. in Somerset in the years 1454-9, but was dropped from the bench at the time of the Coventry Parliament of 1459 which attainted the duke of York and his allies. Despite his links with the Stourtons, who supported the Yorkists in the ensuing civil war, he was not reappointed under Edward IV, and nor did his service to Edward’s brother George, duke of Clarence, to whom he became attached in the late1460s, lead to nomination to other ad hoc commissions of royal administration. Association with the youthful, unreliable and erratic duke did, however, lead to serious trouble for the MP and his family and eventually to the tragic death of his widow. On 22 Apr. 1470, after the rebellious Clarence had fled into exile following defeat at Losecote Field, Twyneho and three other esquires from the locality – Thomas Martin*, John Mone* and Thomas Bonham – were each bound over in 500 marks to keep the peace, while his eldest son John, then escheator of Somerset and Dorset, was placed in the custody of the constable of England and required to seal a bond for 1,000 marks to guarantee that he would not attempt to escape. The bonds were subsequently cancelled by the King under his sign manual, CCR, 1468-76, nos. 541, 542. but this may not have been until after the royal brothers had been reconciled in the following year. Twyneho’s movements at the time of the Readeption are not recorded, although his absence from commissions appointed in the autumn of 1470 under the authority of Clarence and Warwick suggests that he had sensibly refrained from offering them active support. There is no firm record of him in 1471, after Edward IV regained his throne, and he died at an unknown date before 5 Feb. 1472. CFR, xxi. no. 6 – a writ de diem clausit extremum. No inq. post mortem survives.

Although Twyneho’s will has not survived, it is recorded elsewhere that his executors were his widow Ankaret and brother the lawyer John, who sued his debtors in the court of common pleas. CP40/844, rot. 217; 845, rot. 30d. Little is known about Ankaret’s background, save that she claimed to have inherited the manor of Sulton in Shropshire from her mother’s family the Kendales. In 1469 she and her husband brought an action against her brother Thomas Burdon of Aston in Wem alleging that he had forged documents purporting to show that the manor had been entailed in tail-male in order to disturb their title, and that he had involved her mother Alana in the conspiracy. They had been dispossessed in the previous year. Burdon was committed to the Fleet prison, until granted bail, and in May 1470 the Twynehos recovered the property with damages of £20. Burdon made a quitclaim of the manor. CP40/832, rot. 434; CCR, 1468-76, no. 487. In 1484 Burdon made another quitclaim to Ankaret’s gds. Roger Twyneho: CCR, 1476-85, no. 1186. Reputed to have been of ‘gode, vertuouse and true disposition’ throughout her life, Ankaret must have also possessed other qualities deemed to be out of the ordinary. In a period when a woman would not normally be appointed an executor unless she was the wife or daughter of the testator, she had been singled out to act in this way for a magnate, Lord Stourton. Her reputation was such that, probably in her husband’s lifetime, she was chosen to be an attendant on the duchess of Clarence, Isabel Neville. Unfortunately for Ankaret, following the duchess’s unexpected death on 22 Dec. 1476 the duke began to harbour suspicions that she had killed her, allegedly by giving Isabel poison in some ale on the previous 10 Oct. Clarence took vengeance dramatically. On the following 12 Apr. Ankaret was seized from her home in Somerset by a force of the duke’s men some 80-strong, taken swiftly via Bath and Cirencester to Warwick, and three days later brought before the j.p.s, indicted, tried, found guilty and summarily hanged. All the legal processes were completed within three hours. The duke’s arbitrary action signalled his own downfall. On 20 May a writ was sent to the justices to hand over the records of Ankaret’s trial, and the King summoned Clarence before him, charging him in the presence of the mayor and aldermen of London with having violated the laws of the realm. The jurors in Ankaret’s case admitted that they had given a verdict contrary to their consciences, ‘for fear and drede of grete manaces, and doute of losse of their lyves and godes’; some of them, knowing they had given an untrue verdict, had gone to her in remorse and asked for her forgiveness before she was executed. The duke who had acted ‘as though he had used a King’s power’ was arrested towards the end of June and committed to the Tower, there to remain until Parliament assembled on 19 Jan. 1478, expressly to arraign him on charges of high treason. As her heir, Ankaret’s young grandson Roger Twyneho (the son of her son John) was formally named as the presenter of a petition to the Parliament seeking the annulment of the judicial proceedings at Warwick, although its passage through the Commons was steered by Ankaret’s brother-in-law John Twyneho, sitting for Gloucestershire, and her son William, sitting for Dorset. The fact that both men had been returned as knights of the shire indicates that the electorate in both counties had been well aware of the importance of their role in bringing Clarence to justice. It also lends weight to the supposition that the Lower House was packed. The Twyneho petition, favourably received by the King, was enrolled on the patent roll two days after the duke’s execution. PROME, xiv. 361-5; CPR, 1476-85, pp. 172-3; M.A. Hicks, False, Fleeting Perjur’d Clarence, 123-6; KB9/347/28.

John Twyneho, the eldest son of William and Ankaret, had died in 1475. Their other children included Christopher, who after being educated at Oxford university was to become a canon of Salisbury and archdeacon of Berkshire; Edith, wife of Thomas de la Lynde (who when her mother had been forcibly taken to Warwick had followed behind with servants to attend on her, but was prevented by Clarence from coming anywhere near); Elizabeth, wife of William Lovell of ‘Raffeston’; and Margery, the nun who became abbess of Shaftesbury. PCC 14 Logge (PROB11/7, f. 105); Egerton 3098, ff. 1-2. For Christopher’s career, see Biog. Reg. Univ. Oxf. ed. Emden, iii. 1919-20. The young woman called Ankaret who was married in 1485-6 to Christopher Codrington, a Gloucestershire heir, may have been their grand-daughter. Hutchins, iii. 468, 470; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 176-7; Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. xxi. 308-11.