VOWELL, Richard

Richard Vowell is believed to have been the son of one of the most prominent citizens and parliamentarians of Wells in the mid fifteenth century. Vowell must be distinguished from a Dorset namesake who survived until 1509: C142/28/104. Nothing is known of his early years prior to his first election to Parliament on 26 June 1455. The circumstances of this return are uncertain, but Vowell was an unusual choice, in that he had not been admitted to the freedom of Wells before his return, and there can be no doubt that the influence of his putative father, who as master presided over the election, played a part. Wells convocation act bk. 15. It seems that he had by then established himself in London, and it has been suggested that he may have trained as a lawyer, as several of his younger kinsmen would do in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, but if he did so, he never apparently practised in the law. CCR, 1461-8, pp. 152, 364; J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii. 1599. It was also at this time that he quarrelled with the London draper Bartholomew Couper over a sum of £33: although in December 1460 Couper sealed a general release of actions to Vowell, his executors would more than 25 years later bring renewed legal action over the debt. CCR, 1461-8, p. 364; C131/247/13. Equally, it was during this period of Vowell’s life that he had purportedly arranged a marriage between the Essex esquire Thomas Deyncourt and the supposed widow Joan Fawley. Deyncourt went on to claim that he had agreed to seal a bond for 400 marks to Vowell and his associate William Baret, on condition that he would settle lands of an annual value of 20 marks on his bride, but after he had done so, one John Brous had appeared on the scene to show that Joan was already married to him. Although the match had thus come to nothing, so Deyncourt informed the chancellor, Vowell nevertheless intended to bring litigation over the bond. C1/29/511; CCR, 1461-8, p. 152.

It was apparently not until September 1467, when Vowell was admitted to the freedom of Wells, Wells convocation act bk. 62. that he returned to the city of his birth. At the time, his putative father was serving his eighth term as master, and although William would in the event live on for another ten years or so, it may have been his intention to retire from public affairs and to make way for Richard to assume his place in civic life. Consequently, when it became necessary to replenish the depleted ranks of the city council of 24 Richard was among those elected, just two weeks after his enfranchisement. A week later he was named among the citizens charged with the audit of the city accounts and a year later he first held more senior office as one of the constables of the peace.

In the interim Vowell had gained acceptance among the regional gentry by contracting a marriage to a widow, Margaret, the daughter of the Dorset landowner John Fauntleroy. Although Margaret was not an heiress, she was an attractive bride, as from her earlier marriage to John Jope she possessed a jointure in the Dorset manor of Bercombe and other lands in Alton Pancras and Mapowder. Vowell was not, however, able to take peaceful possesion of his wife’s property immediately, for Jope’s brother and heir, Thomas, appeared on the scene and staked his claim. In the summer of 1469 Jope sought to assert his rights, driving away sheep from Alton Pancras and forcibly seizing the Vowell holdings at Mapowder, CP40/834, rots. 303d, 312d. and about the same time Vowell complained in Chancery that Jope had engineered an enfeoffment of Bercombe to John Mone*, ‘a man of great power’ in Dorset, in an attempt to deprive his former sister-in-law of the property. C1/41/171. It was not until early 1472 that the dispute was finally settled by Thomas Jope’s acknowledgement of Margaret’s right to Bercombe and Alton Pancras. CCR, 1468-76, no. 799. The full extent of Vowell’s own holdings has not been established, but at least within Wells they were substantial. His tenement in the High Street was probably the one that he inhabited, described in his will as having an adjacent orchard and close, but in addition he held a further 27 tenements in the city, said to be worth some £11 p.a. Further afield, he could also lay claim to six houses within the manor of North Petherton, altogether assessed at some £2 p.a., and a tenement in ‘la Newlonde’ in Sherborne. CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 187; E150/896/13.

In the autumn of 1470 the political unrest that had shaken England for almost two years came to a head when Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, succeeded in driving Edward IV into exile and at least in name restored Henry VI to the throne. Little over two weeks afterwards writs were issued summoning a Parliament to meet at Westminster in late November. At the end of September William Vowell had once more been chosen master of Wells to guide his city through this renewed turbulence, and as he clearly had no wish to abandon the south-west at this time, it was his kinsman Richard who undertook their neighbours’ representation in the Commons. No record of the part, if any, that he played in the Commons’ deliberations has survived, and it is impossible to tell whether he and William had in some way fallen foul of the ultimately victorious Edward IV, or whether a private matter lay behind their summons before the monarch just weeks after the battle of Tewkesbury and under the substantial penalty of £500. CCR, 1468-76, no. 720.

Whatever the truth of the matter, within a few years Vowell had evidently not only made his peace with the King, but also re-established himself in Wells society. In the autumn of 1473 he was for the first time elected to the mastership of Wells, and little over a month later he was appointed royal escheator of Somerset and Dorset. In spite of his possible background in the law, this was a curious appointment which may perhaps have been born out of the political uncertainty in the region created by the escalating tension between the King’s brothers, Richard, duke of Gloucester, and George, duke of Clarence, the latter of whom commanded considerable influence in Somerset and Dorset. The escheatorship was to be the only Crown appointment Vowell was ever to hold, and his conduct in office was widely challenged. The abbot of Cirencester complained of Vowell’s seizure of his livestock from Frome in Selwood, (Sir) Gilbert Debenham II* complained that the escheator had taken by force £16 of his money at Wynford Eagle, and in March 1477 an inquisition taken three years earlier into the property of his old opponent John Mone was said to have been untrue and malicious. E13/161, rots. 23, 27d; CPR, 1476-85, pp. 38-39. Some months earlier, Vowell had taken the precaution of suing out a general pardon to protect himself from the charges brought against him. CPR, 1467-77, p. 589.

Other litigation arose from the executorships of the wills of his friends and neighbours that Vowell assumed from time to time. Those whom he served in this capacity included the Somerset landowners Thomas Rodney and William Paulet (the respective sons of Sir Walter Rodney* and (Sir) John Paulet*, and successive husbands of the same woman, one Isabel), but after Paulet’s death he found himself challenged by Rodney’s daughter (another Isabel), the wife of Hugh Croft for payment of the revenues of certain lands, said to amount to some £280. C1/65/233; C4/1/135. Similarly, towards the end of his life Vowell’s execution of the will of Katherine, widow of Robert Halsewell* (by then dating back some years) brought him into conflict with her heirs. C1/204/75.

If Vowell’s career in the service of the Crown remained short and undistinguished, the same was not true of his public career in his native city of Wells, where William Worcestre encountered him in 1478 and consulted a chronicle in his keeping, as well as taking his advice on which other chronicles he might seek out at Glastonbury. William of Worcestre, Itins. ed. Harvey, 78, 79; K. Heard, ‘Glazing Scheme’, Jnl. Eccl. Hist. lx. 674. After 1474 Vowell went on to hold the mastership a further four times, regularly served as an auditor of the civic accounts, and made his name as one of Wells’s most distinguished parliamentarians. Wells convocation act bk. 64, 65, 72, 97, 107, 115, 121, 125, 127, 131, 138, 143, 152, 155, 160, 170, 175, 183, 189, 193, 197, 201, 207. It is nevertheless not certain that this occurred by his volition. Rather, his parliamentary returns often came at times of crisis when he was serving as master and was thus charged with the oversight of the elections in the convocation. Thus, he presided over his own return to the short Parliament of 1478, summoned for the trial of the duke of Clarence, and was elected in the political uncertainty which followed Edward IV’s death to sit in the ultimately aborted Parliament summoned in the name of Edward V in June 1483. By the time that fresh writs were issued in Richard III’s name, Vowell was once again serving as master, and may have had little choice but to return himself. Before the Lords and Commons could assemble, their meeting was once more cancelled on account of the duke of Buckingham’s rebellion, and when fresh elections were called he agreed once more to ride to Westminster. He may by now have been regarded as something of a safe pair of hands, and was thus a natural choice to represent Wells in Henry VII’s first Parliament, summoned just weeks after the battle of Bosworth. For once, Vowell was not also holding the mastership at the time of his return, but he would resume it just a few months after the dissolution, and had only just left office when he was returned to his final Parliament in late 1487, in the immediate aftermath of the renewed unrest that had culminated in the battle of Stoke. Although he is not known to have sat in the Commons in the final decade of his life, he remained active in his locality, serving as a member of the council of 24, and in 1497 he was among the senior citizens of Wells who arranged for a corporate loan of £100 towards the King’s projected expedition to Scotland. E36/14, p. 288.

Vowell died on 22 Dec. 1498, and was succeeded by his son William. CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 187. Just over a month earlier, on 20 Nov., he had made his will, of which his widow, Margaret, was to be sole executrix. He asked to be buried in his parish church of St. Cuthbert, to which he left 6s. 8d. for the maintenance of its fabric, as well as 40s. for the painting of the Lady altar (perhaps a reference to the reredos that had been commissioned in 1470). The fraternities of St. John the Baptist and of the Holy Trinity were each assigned annuities of 20d., so that their chaplains might pray for Vowell. The Jesus fraternity was given the lesser sum of 4d. a year. Other bequests were made to the parish clergy and churchwardens. The priories of Bruton and Buckland were each left a vessel in return for the prayers of the canons and nuns. Three of Vowell’s tenements in Wells were granted to the master and commonalty of Wells on condition that they might fund the perpetual obits of Vowell and his wife in St. Cuthbert’s. Margaret was to keep the house that the couple had inhabited for the rest of her life, and was also bequeathed her husband’s holding in Sherborne. Probate was granted on 16 Feb. 1499. PCC 29 Horne. Vowell’s son and heir entered the Middle Temple, and found employment in the service of a number of important south-western landowners and religious houses, including as chief steward of the hospital of St. John the Baptist at Wells. Baker, ii. 1600.