UVEDALE, Thomas

Uvedale was one of the wealthiest men to sit for Hampshire in the fifteenth century. His father, John, who represented the county six times, received an estimated income of £173 p.a. from estates there and in Surrey (at Tatsfield and Woldingham), which descended to Thomas in about 1440, and the family manor of Titsey, also in Surrey, came into his possession in 1449 on the death of his uncle William. G.L. Gower, ‘Notices Fam. Uvedale’, Surr. Arch Collns. iii. 63-192, esp. 90-93; VCH Surr. iv. 331-2; VCH Hants, iii. 234; O. Manning and W. Bray, Surr. ii. 408-9; E179/173/92. In view of the family’s longstanding connexion with Winchester College (born of a close friendship in the fourteenth century with the founder, Bishop Wykeham), it is not surprising that Thomas and his younger brother William were educated there like their father and uncle before them. Richard Uvedale, who died while studying at Winchester in 1431, was prob. a yr. bro. of his: Winchester Scholars ed. Kirby, 52. Through his father, Thomas soon came to the attention of Henry Beaufort, Wykeham’s successor as bishop of Winchester, who in 1431 made him master of the hunt and keeper of the parks of the bishopric for life, with a fee of £10 p.a., since his ‘diligence and faithfulness can be relied upon’. John and his eldest son Thomas headed the list of witnesses when Beaufort made grants of leases in 1433 and 1439, and from then on until Beaufort’s death in 1447 Thomas regularly attended upon him at Wolvesey palace and elsewhere to attest other of his legal transactions. Reg. Common Seal, 228, 257, 258, 273, 312.

Uvedale’s close connexion with Cardinal Beaufort was undoubtedly significant with regard to his first election to Parliament, in 1437, at a time when he had no experience of royal commissions or office, and was in all likelihood still relatively young. Yet he was familiar with electoral procedures, as he had earlier attended the elections held at Winchester in 1432, for a Parliament in which his uncle represented Surrey. C219/14/3. Although at the stage he first entered the Commons he had not yet inherited the family estates, he nevertheless already enjoyed an income from land estimated at £50 p.a. by the tax assessors of the previous year. E179/173/92. This was probably owed mainly to a settlement made on his marriage to the daughter and heiress of Thomas Foxley, who died shortly before the Parliament was summoned. The match had almost certainly been arranged with Cardinal Beaufort’s help, for the cardinal, who had long regarded Foxley as a trusted member of his circle, was a feoffee of the manors settled on the couple. Furthermore, it was later reported that it had been ‘by souffrance of the cardinal’ that Uvedale and his wife were promised jointure in Foxley’s manor of Apperfield in Cudham, in Kent, as a gift when they married. Yet Foxley renegued on this agreement when, late in life, he took another wife. In the week before Easter 1435 he instructed his kinsman and feoffee John Martin j.c.p. to convey the manor to him and this new wife, Theobalda Mareys, for term of their lives. Several years later Robert Fowler (Foxley’s neighbour and attorney from Bray in Berkshire), deposed that when he read out the deed of conveyance to the lessee of Apperfield the latter responded that William Uvedale, who lived nearby, had sworn that if he allowed anyone disturb his nephew Thomas’s possession of the manor ‘he shulde sore repente it’, so Fowler had departed in haste, well before dawn the next day. Nevertheless, it looks as if Thomas never had possession of Apperfield for long. After his father-in-law’s death, the manor was claimed by William Warbleton*, a direct descendant of Sir John Foxley† (d.1378) in the legitimate line, and he kept it for some time before eventually relinquishing it to Theobalda. CCR, 1454-61, pp. 182-3. Uvedale contested the latter’s title to various of the Foxley estates, and in June 1446, after Theobalda had married Thomas Mauncell, a Yorkshire esquire, he and Mauncell entered mutual recognizances in £500, binding them to accept the award of the chancellor (Archbishop Stafford), Edmund Beaufort, marquess of Dorset, and (Sir) John Fortescue* the chief justice, whom they had asked to arbitrate between them. Their award is not recorded, but on 29 Nov. Uvedale granted Theobalda an annual rent of £10 for term of her life. This he ceased to pay in 1451, so that six years later she had to take him to court for arrears amounting to £60. CCR, 1441-7, pp. 405, 456; CP40/784, rot. 138d. Uvedale remained untroubled in possession of the Foxley manors in Bramshill, Hampshire, and Rumboldswyke, in Sussex, as well as the manor and advowson of Westington in Ayot St. Peter, Hertfordshire, which Elizabeth had inherited from her mother. These he held for life ‘by the courtesy’ after his wife’s death, and over the years he regularly presented to the church at Little Ayot. C140/49/26; VCH Hants, iv. 35; VCH Suss. iv. 171; VCH Herts. iii. 64; R. Clutterbuck, Herts. ii. 264; W.H. Cope, Bramshill, 8.

While his first Parliament was in session, on 7 Mar. 1437, Uvedale stood surety at the Exchequer for Richard Newport*, a fellow landowner from Hampshire, CFR, xvi. 310. and at the dissolution he was named with his fellow knights of the shire on the commission to distribute allowances on the subsides they had granted. This first ad hoc commission was quickly followed by appointment in the autumn as sheriff of Surrey and Sussex, and from then on until his death in 1474 Uvedale was to be kept constantly busy with the tasks of local government, including five more terms as a sheriff and nearly 30 years’ continuous service on the Hampshire bench. While clearly owing his initial promotion to Cardinal Beaufort, he also established amicable relations with another noble landowner from the region, Reynold West, Lord de la Warre, the feudal lord of certain of the Uvedale manors, and a distant relation. De la Warre joined Beaufort as a feoffee of the property settled on Thomas and his first wife, and assisted Thomas’s father in his endowment of Southwick priory in 1439. That the friendship between them remained close for the rest of de la Warre’s life is evident from a number of transactions linking the two men. In London on 23 Feb. 1445, two days before the assembly of Uvedale’s second Parliament, he and his uncle William were among those to whom Lord Reynold granted his goods and chattels (perhaps to protect them from confiscation in a lawsuit), and early in 1450 Uvedale was enfeoffed of de la Warre’s estates in five counties. CPR, 1436-41, p. 343; 1446-52, p. 311; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 365-6; 1447-54, pp. 217-19; Hants RO, Daly mss, 29-34. Lord Reynold’s death in the following August by no means ended Uvedale’s involvement in his affairs, for along with the lawyer John Whittocksmead* he had been named as his principal executor – a commitment which caused them both considerable trouble over the next 20 years. They had to bring suits for the recovery of de la Warre’s debts, but also to face the demands of his creditors, including Henry Wynge, a yeoman from Watford, who claimed in a petition to Chancery that £8 10s. was due to him for 51 barrels of ale delivered for the late lord’s household. Uvedale and Whittocksmead asserted that they were ready to carry out the administration of the will, but lacked the means to do so, as the heir, Lord Richard, had failed to provide them with sufficient resources. Even so, in 1468 they assisted Lord Richard to make a settlement of the manor of Fakenham in Suffolk, CPR, 1452-61, p. 237; 1467-77, p. 118; C1/20/155-6. and Uvedale also apparently came to his aid in 1471 when he was fined 1,000 marks for for his treacherous behaviour towards Edward IV. CCR, 1468-76, nos. 807, 999.

Meanwhile, Uvedale had regularly attended the shire court at Winchester for the Hampshire elections to Parliament, doing so in 1442, 1447 (accompanied by his brother William and son Henry), February 1449 (when William was one of those elected) and 1450. C219/15/2, 4, 6; 16/1. On the last occasion he was in breach of the statutes requiring electors and elected to be resident in the county on the date of the writ of summons, for on 8 Oct. 1450, four days before the shire court met at Winchester, he had been elected at Chichester to represent Sussex. He was returned alongside Robert Poynings*, who during that disturbed summer had allegedly risen in rebellion against Henry VI, purportedly as Jack Cade’s sword-bearer. On 29 Nov., during the first session, Uvedale joined (Sir) Walter Devereux I*, Sir Edmund Mulsho* and Sir William Pecche*, his fellow Members of the Commons, in entering recognizances in £200 to the King to guarantee that Poynings would appear before him and the assembled lords spiritual and temporal eight days later. Poynings himself had to provide sureties in 1,000 marks. CCR, 1447-54, p. 238. Uvedale is here described as residing at Chichester, Sussex, probably on his first wife’s manor near the city. The two shire-knights for Sussex were distantly related by marriage, Uvedale’s second wife was descended from Thomas Poynings, Lord St. John: CCR, 1454-61, p. 375; CP, xi. 330. but there is nothing to suggest that Uvedale ever actively supported Robert Poynings in his dispute with the Percys over the estates of his late father – a bitter quarrel that lay behind many of the violent episodes of the previous months.

During the 1450s the government of Henry VI relied heavily on the Uvedales, and in particular on Thomas and his brother William, for all manner of administrative tasks in Hampshire, and they were evidently expected to take a leading role in the preservation of law and order. While his son Henry was sitting as an MP for Portsmouth in the Parliament of 1453, and following the King’s mental collapse, Thomas was appointed on advice of the Council as keeper of Portchester castle (with a fee of 1s. a day), although he held the post for no more than a year, being replaced by the earl of Salisbury in December 1454. CPR, 1452-61, pp. 141, 208; E159/231, brevia Mich. rot. 19d. He had earlier been named an executor of the will of John Shirwyn, the former constable of Portchester castle: CPR, 1446-52, p. 99; CP40/752, rot. 417. When commissions of array were issued in September 1457 the Uvedales were very much to the fore in their county, with Thomas’s brother William and son Reynold assigned to take command in the hundreds of Meonstoke, Hambledon and Bishops Waltham, and he and his son Henry in those of Fawley, Bosmere and Portsdown. Through much of the decade he was also employed by Humphrey, duke of Buckingham (his feudal lord at Titsey and Woldingham), as steward of the ducal estates in the locality. There is no hint that he ever wavered in his loyalty to the Lancastrian Crown, and he was appointed to important commissions of array and arrest in December 1459 and June 1460, with instructions to suppress risings inspired by the Yorkist lords attainted in the Parliament at Coventry. These orders must have caused him severe misgivings, for his daughter was married to Thomas Roger* of Berkshire, whose father John Roger I* had only narrowly escaped attainder for his support for York. In January 1460 John Roger, then a fugitive, transferred seisin of his manor of Freefolk to Uvedale and others, to protect the interests of his younger son; but his heir, Thomas, was prominent among the men of Newbury and the Roger homelands who were arrested by the earl of Wiltshire in June and imprisoned in Wallingford castle. The decisive victory of the Yorkist earls at the battle of Northampton in July enabled them to appoint commissioners to deliver the gaol, with Uvedale among them. CPR, 1452-61, pp. 648-9; CCR, 1454-61, p. 445; Hants RO, Jervoise of Herriard mss, 44M69/C/590.

Thereafter, Uvedale served the new regime on all manner of ad hoc commissions, and he remained an active member of the local bench after the accession of Edward IV. Furthermore, in June 1461 he was associated with Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, and his brother the chancellor, George, bishop of Exeter, as a co-feoffee of property in Hampshire. His son Reynold was appointed escheator a few months later, with Thomas and his brother standing surety for his good behaviour in office. CCR, 1461-8, pp. 90, 106; KB9/299/25. There is no sign that Uvedale ever showed disloyalty to the new King. He served as sheriff again in 1463-5, in different bailiwicks in the consecutive years, and was made an allowance of £40 on the issues of Surrey and Sussex, for his satisfactory performance. Pricked as a juror at Winchester in August 1466, he helped indict for treason men who had plotted against King Edward on the Isle of Wight, and in January 1469 he acted likewise at sessions of oyer and terminer held at Salisbury when (Sir) Thomas Hungerford* and Henry Courtenay were tried and executed. E403/837, m. 3; KB9/314/86, 87; 340/8. Meanwhile, during his sixth shrievalty, he had been ceremoniously knighted prior to the coronation of Elizabeth Wydeville, and his then wife had been asked to join the new queen’s household as one of three ladies-in-waiting each granted £20 p.a. for their attendance. When the queen visited Winchester College in May 1470 Uvedale was at her side, apparently doing duty as her chamberlain. Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of the English ed. Stevenson, ii [784]; E36/207, f. 18; Archaeologia, lxxv. 155. Kirby, 214, dates the queen’s visit to Winchester to May 1471 and assumes that the queen referred to was Margaret of Anjou, fleeing after the battle of Tewkesbury. However, there is no mention of a royal visit in the college bursar’s acct. for Mich. 1470-1: Winchester Coll. muns. 22140.

Throughout his career Uvedale had occupied a prominent place among the gentry of the region, as befitted his wealth and standing. He was often asked to be a trustee of landed estates. For instance, in 1441 he was made a feoffee of the manor of Fordington, Dorset, held for life by Isabel, wife of John Cheyne I*, CPR, 1436-41, p. 540; Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 361, 366. and he acted in a similar capacity for Thomas Pound* regarding holdings in Sussex which had belonged to his father’s friend Richard Dallingridge*. CCR, 1441-7, pp. 462-3; Suss. Fines (Suss. Rec. Soc. xxiii), 3087. It might have been expected that William Warbleton’s claims to the Foxley estates would have led to disputes between them, yet the surviving records show that on the contrary their dealings were apparently amicable. CFR, xxi. nos. 842-4; CCR, 1454-61, p. 218; Winchester Coll. muns. 12417. Others for whom he acted in positions of trust in Henry VI’s reign included John Newport I* and (Sir) John Lisle II*, CCR, 1447-54, p. 405; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 491. and he was on good terms with the Berkeleys. Add. Ch. 17600; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 187; CP25(1)/207/34/2. Of greater significance was his inclusion in March 1465 in an enfeoffment of the former Fitzalan estates in ten counties, along with the archbishop of Canterbury and many other figures of note, in which they were probably acting for William, earl of Arundel. CPR, 1461-7, p. 443. Following the death of Cardinal Beaufort, In Aug. 1453 he acted as an arbiter at Lancaster in a dispute between Richard Redmayne and William Port of Southwark, arising out of Beaufort’s will, of which Port was an executor: PL15/20, rot. 28d; G.L. Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort, 360-1, 381-3. Uvedale had offered his support to his successor as bishop of Winchester, William Waynflete. In the summer of 1447 he was among those who put down a revolt of tenants on the episcopal lordship at East Meon, and offered counsel to the bishop at Wolvesey palace, and he was later commissioned by him to sequestrate goods pertaining to the diocese. Sir Thomas’s brother and two of his sons were all given offices on Waynflete’s estates, while he himself remained master of the hunt in the bishop’s forests, and when he witnessed leases for Waynflete in 1461 and 1466 he was accorded precedence before the treasurer of the bishop’s household and the treasurer of Wolvesey. Uvedale and other members of his family were present both at proceedings in 1462 to support the prior of St. Swithun’s title to the manor of Winnall, and in the following year when the tenants of the bishop’s manor of Alverstoke protested about their feudal services. Hants RO, bp. of Winchester’s pipe roll, 11M59/B1/184 (formerly 159438); Reg. Waynflete, 1, ff. 43*v, 89*v; Reg. Common Seal, 347, 360, 397; CCR, 1461-8, p. 231. Retaining an interest in the affairs of his old school, in 1465 he was a feoffee of land granted to the college by Margaret, Lady Hungerford and Botreaux. Winchester Coll. muns. 10157-61; CP25(1)/207/34/4.

Uvedale’s third marriage, in the early 1460s, had added to his already substantial landed holdings. Elizabeth Norbury’s previous husband, William Sydney (the eldest son and heir of William Sydney* the lawyer and former shire knight), had held property in Worth and Crawley in Sussex, from which she received the profits, and she was probably also entitled to dower at Sydney’s manor of Westbury in Shenley, Buckinghamshire, and at Baynards and several other places in Surrey. Furthermore, during the minority of Sydney’s two daughters and coheirs Elizabeth took custody of their inheritance without rendering anything to the Crown. C140/62/38; VCH Surr. iii. 98, 100; CPR, 1461-7, p. 273. In the Michaelmas term of 1473, however, she and Sir Thomas were attached to answer the King and another William Sydney (her late husband’s half-brother) on a plea of a breach of the Statute of Westminster for illegal entry into an estate at Rudgwick in Sussex, which they claimed as part of Elizabeth’s jointure. Sydney, who asserted that the property ought to have descended in tail-male, demanded damages of £100. KB27/849, rot. 40.

By then nearing the end of his life, Uvedale made settlements on his wife and children. His sons Henry and Reynold had died childless in 1469 and 1470, respectively, leaving as his heir apparent the elder of his two sons named William, now aged about 19. He arranged that after the deaths of himself and his wife the manor of Tatsfield should pass to another son, Thomas, and that of Woldingham to William the younger (an arrangement which was duly ratified by his heir after his death). His wife was also to keep Titsey and Pittleworth for her lifetime, the latter passing on her death to their son, Robert (d.1501), who was also to have other properties by his mother’s gift. Add. Ch. 24638; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 499. Sir Thomas’s will, made earlier the same year, on 6 Mar. 1473, reveals much about his material possessions but little about his personal piety. He requested burial in a new marble tomb next to his second wife, Margaret, in the high chancel of the parish church at Wickham. Bequests of two chargers ‘with a cardinal’s hat’ and six salvers bearing the arms of Lord de la Warre recall his early mentors, Cardinal Beaufort and Lord Reynold, and he also left a silver gilt standing piece given him by Bishop Waynflete and a silver goblet which had once belonged to his friend Richard Dallingridge. Uvedale’s widow, who was left a lavish dower from the contents of his manor-houses, was named as an executor along with his brother, William, and Thomas Pound, the former Exchequer official who was now treasurer of Wolvesey. He died on 20 Feb. 1474, and the will came for probate on the following 12 July. PCC 16 Wattys, printed in Surr. Arch. Collns. iii. 158-62; C140/49/26.

It seems likely that before his death Sir Thomas had planned the marriage of his heir to Anne Sydney, the younger of his stepdaughters, and this match was finalized before February 1478 when Anne’s mother was formally assigned dower from the Sydney estates, presumably on handing over the rest of the inheritance to Anne and her sister. CCR, 1476-85, no. 172; C140/62/38. Among the distinguished feoffees of her valuable estates (who included Richard Beauchamp, bishop of Salisbury, and the Lords Hastings and Dacre), Uvedale’s widow named Henry, duke of Buckingham, but this association led trouble for the family after her stepson William Uvedale joined Buckingham’s rebellion against Richard III and was attainted in the Parliament of 1484. Certain of the Uvedale manors were forfeited, among them Wickham (worth £44 p.a.) and Pittleworth, which Elizabeth claimed had been settled in tail on the male issue of her late husband and herself, and pleaded that as their son Robert still survived the attainted man had no title to them. A royal commission was set up to investigate the facts in May 1485, but it looks as if Elizabeth’s claim to Wickham had no legal basis, rather that she was desperately seeking to prevent the forfeiture of the principal family manor. CPR, 1476-85, p. 523; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 392. Elizabeth obtained a pardon from the new monarch, Henry VII, on 21 Nov. following. C67/53, m. 7. She died eight months after making her will on 14 Oct. 1487. Although she chose to be buried either in the church of the hospital of St. Thomas or the monastery of St. Mary Overy (both in Southwark), naming the Greyfriars in London as her third choice, it was in Greyfriars, to which she left the princely sum of £100 for masses, that she was interred. Elizabeth had neglected her duties as executrix to Sir Thomas, in that although 13 years had elapsed since his death his tomb had still not been erected: she now instructed her own executors to finish it ‘in haste’. Bequests of jewelry and clothes were lavished on her daughters and son Robert. The latter was not only to have her wedding ring for his betrothed, but also, on reaching the age of 25, the ‘grete salt saler of goold sette with a safir and four grete perlis in the toppe’ which was worth £100, provided he was not ‘wastable nor riotous’. The testator named her brother, Sir John Norbury†, as an executor, and as overseers her son-in-law and stepson William Uvedale and her other son-in-law John Hampden†. PCC 15 Milles, printed in Surr. Arch. Collns. iii. 163-70; Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica ed. Nichols, v. 388; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 392, 400-1.