WALROND, Thomas

Thomas was probably related to the Walronds of Aldbourne in Wiltshire, who included John Walrond, a tax collector in that county in the reigns of Henry IV and Henry V, who attested three of the Wiltshire elections of the 1420s, and Ingelram Walrond, a ‘gentleman’ who did likewise in 1435, having in the previous year been among those of the county required to take the oath not to maintain law-breakers. The MP’s father, William Walrond, was listed to take the same oath not only in Wiltshire but also in Berkshire, an indication that he possessed interests in land in both counties. CFR, xvii. 115; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 371, 402; 1452-61, p. 448. In 1474-5 Thomas Walrond, presumably the MP, farmed land at Aldbourne belonging to Queen Elizabeth’s estate: DL29/736/12059. This is also indicated by the appearance of William’s name on the parliamentary election indentures for Wiltshire in 1426 and 1435, and for Berkshire in 1429, 1432, and 1433. William owed his standing largely to the inheritance of his wife Elizabeth, who was heiress through her maternal grandmother of the manor of Lynt (which straddled the border between the two counties), land at Kelmscott in Oxfordshire, and, most important, the manor of Rampayns in Childrey, all these having once been held by her ancestors William de Lynt and Isabel (fl.1355) his wife. VCH Berks. iv. 276, 520n, 521.

Thomas Walrond came into part of this inheritance while his parents were still living. As a settlement made on his marriage to Alice Englefield in 1437, they transferred to him and Alice possession of Lynt and the lands at Kelmscott. CP25(1)/292/69/202. Since he was described as ‘of Childrey, gentleman’ in January 1440, he may by that date have also taken possession of Rampayns. CPR, 1436-41, p. 360. To this inheritance he and Alice added land in the parish of Kintbury, Berkshire, which they acquired in 1447 from Thomas Wallington and his wife, to whom they agreed to pay 30s. p.a. for term of their lives. Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Benham deeds, 18, 41; VCH Berks. iv. 211. Walrond’s marriage linked him to the gentry family of Englefield, which numbered among its more prominent members the former shire knight John Englefield†, and the future Speaker Sir Thomas Englefield†. Yet it was of more immediate importance for his career that Alice was one of the nieces of Richard Quatermayns, an influential figure in the locality. C140/62/44. The relationship was made even closer by Richard Quatermayns’ marriage to Alice’s half-sister, Sibyl (d.1483): C141/3/33. The Quatermayns arms are displayed on the tomb of the Walronds’ da. Joan: VCH Berks. iv. 278.

Perhaps guided by Quatermayns, Walrond became a lawyer, completing his training by 1440. In January that year he stood surety for one of Quatermayns’ associates, the London merchant Stephen Forster*, and Baldwin Boteler (who was married to his wife’s sister Isabel), when they purchased from the Crown the marriages of the daughters and heirs of Thomas Baldington; and in 1442 he was enfeoffed with Quatermayns, Forster and others of the manor of Drayton in Hampshire, which had belonged to his fellow mainpernor Philip Pagan. In 1447 he and Quatermayns passed Drayton on to Thomas Pound*. CPR, 1436-41, p. 360; 1441-6, p. 144; 1446-52, p. 31. Walrond’s close connexion with Quatermayns was also indicated by their co-feoffeeship of land in Childrey. Magdalen Coll. Benham deed, 71. However, the two men are not known to have ever sat in the Commons together.

Walrond was returned to the three consecutive Parliaments assembled in February and November 1449 and in November 1450 by three different boroughs: Devizes and Marlborough in Wiltshire and Shaftesbury in Dorset. As he had no recorded connexion with any of these, or with their burgesses, it must be presumed that he was elected because of his profession. Shaftesbury, indeed, often elected lawyers who had little personal connexion with the town. Even though he was returned by a Dorset borough in 1450 he attested the Wiltshire elections to this Parliament. C219/16/1. The tax assessments of the following year show him with an income of £7 p.a. from land in Wilts. (E179/196/118), and he was listed as a burgess of Wilton from when the lists begin, in 1467, until his death: Wilts. Hist. Centre, Wilton bor. recs., gen. entry bk., G25/1/21, ff. 44, 585-9, 591-8. Since the statutes required that electors and elected should be resident in the constituencies concerned, this is further confirmation that he was in breach with respect to his parliamentary service. In the course of this Parliament, on 9 Dec. 1450, Walrond obtained keeping at the Exchequer of the manor of Cherhill, Wiltshire, then in the King’s hand because of the death of Cecily, duchess of Warwick. CFR, xviii. 182. This may suggest that he had previously been involved in the administration of her estates.

Walrond’s attendance in the Commons did not result in immediate appointment to royal commissions; for his service in administration in the localities did not properly begin until 1452, when he was named as a commissioner of gaol delivery. In May 1459 he was appointed to investigate escapes of prisoners from Oxford castle, and in carrying out this task he instructed the coroners to have a jury before him and his fellows at Dorchester in July. CIMisc. viii. 250. Further appointments followed as a j.p. of the quorum, first in Oxford in November that year, and then in Berkshire a month later and again in May 1460. The timing of these commissions suggests that the Lancastrian government regarded him as politically sound at a time when it was under threat from the military activities of the adherents of Richard, duke of York, who suffered attainder at the Coventry Parliament. Nevertheless, after the victory of the Yorkist earls at Northampton in July 1460, Walrond attested the Oxfordshire elections to the Parliament which assembled in October, then endorsing the return of Richard Harcourt* and John Stokes I*, both of them committed Yorkists. There is nothing to indicate that he was regarded with suspicion by the new regime. He continued to serve on the Oxford bench following Edward IV’s accession, as commissioned to do in July 1461. Probably through an administrative oversight, j.p.s for Berkshire were not nominated again until 1463 (or, at least, their commission was not enrolled), yet it seems likely that Walrond continued to be a member of the Berkshire bench as in Oxford.

Walrond was returned to two Parliaments of the 1460s as a knight of the shire. No Berkshire returns survive for the first Parliament of Edward IV’s reign, but action taken by Walrond in the court of the Exchequer in November 1463 provides the date of his election with John Stokes as 1 July 1461, and the place as Abingdon. Walrond brought a bill against the sheriff, Richard Restwold*, for a debt of £10 12s. owing for his wages at the Parliament. He said that he had delivered the writ dated 7 May 1462 to Restwold’s under sheriff at Abingdon on 20 May, but although the money was levied, the sheriff refused to hand over the amount due. Walrond eventually proved successful in his claim, although he received only 10s. damages instead of the ten marks he had demanded. E13/149, rot. 38d; Parliamentarians at Law ed. Kleineke, 381. The experience did not dissuade him from seeking re-election, and he again sat for Berkshire in the Parliament of 1467-8. He appears to have remained loyal to Edward IV in the troubled period of 1469-71, for during the Readeption of Henry VI he was dropped from the Berkshire bench, only to be reinstated when Edward regained the throne in the spring of 1471. Thereafter, he kept his place as a j.p. and a member of the quorum until his death.

Throughout the 1460s, and at the time of his parliamentary service for Berkshire, Walrond was acting as steward of the estates at Wantage and Hungerford belonging to St. George’s chapel at Windsor, for which he received livery and a fee of 20s. p.a. Naturally, the canons called upon him for legal advice, and to arbitrate in disputes between their tenants. St. George’s Chapel recs., XV 21/91; 48/26, 35; 60/21. In the later years of his life, he also took on private business for other landowners. For example, in 1473 his sister-in-law Sibyl and her husband Humphrey Forster† asked him to help settle their dispute with Roger Kemys*. CCR, 1461-8, no. 1568. Two years later he joined a number of people seeking to endow the chantry at Faringdon founded by the late Sir Robert Shotesbrooke*, where prayers were to be said for Shotesbrooke’s daughter Eleanor, her deceased husband Sir John Cheyne II* and their sons. C143/453/21. In his own interest in the late 1470s he brought lawsuits against Thomas Kingston regarding possession of the manor and advowson of Childrey, basing his claim to title on his descent from the Frethornes, who had held the manor in Edward III’s time. CP40/867, rot. 105d. Walrond claimed as gt.gds. of Isabel, sis. and h. of Walter Frethorne. This Isabel may have been the same woman as Isabel Lynt. There seems to have been some confusion here between Rampayns and another manor at Childrey, which Kingston could claim by descent from Sir Edmund Childrey† (d.1372) c.j.k.b. and his son Thomas† (d.1407): The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 566-7.

If Walrond produced any sons, none survived at his death, and his lands descended through his daughter Joan, who married firstly a ‘gentleman’ called Thomas Waryng, and then Robert Strangbone. In about 1478 Walrond conveyed ‘Wallingtons’ in Kintbury to feoffees including this latter son-in-law, who in January 1482 (after Walrond’s death) was to sell it for £173 6s. 8d. to Bishop Waynflete for his endowment of Magdalen College. Magdalen Coll. Benham deeds, 5, 17, 34, 38, 143. It seems likely that Strangbone was then carrying out the dead MP’s final wishes. Even so, a petition Walrond had sent to Chancery at some point in the late 1470s makes clear that he and his son-in-law were not always on amicable terms. His complaint concerned an estate in east Dorset consisting of 20 messuages, some 810 acres of land and 40s. rent in Corfe Mullen and Corfe Hubard, which Strangbone placed in the hands of Walrond and others to hold to Walrond’s use. When Walrond sold the estate to the manorial over-lord (Sir) Richard Harcourt for 200 marks and asked his co-feoffees to release it to the new owner, they refused, and Strangbone asserted that he was entitled to an life-annuity of 20 marks from the property and that Walrond had failed to divulge the sum obtained for the sale until he had concluded his bargain with Harcourt. The MP reposted that he had offered to sell the property to Strangbone himself if he paid what it was worth, but Strangbone had rejected his offer. That there was more to this quarrel is evident from the testimony of one of the feoffees, who said that the enfeoffment had been made for the performance of certain covenants between Walrond and Strangbone, which remained sealed in Walrond’s possession. C1/56/55-58. The matter seems to have been connected with the suits over Childrey, for Walrond received a transfer of this same disputed estate in Dorset from one of Thomas Kingston’s relations, Sir William Fynderne†, early in 1479. Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 410. Walrond had acted as Fynderne’s feoffee of manors in Cambs. and Suff. in the previous year: CAD, v. A10788.

Another suit which concerned Walrond in his later years saw him in confrontation with John Dauntsey of Lavington, to whom he was bound in £100 in June 1478, as a guarantee that he would carry out the terms of indentures agreed between them. CCR, 1476-85, no. 397. In addition, at the end of his life, in January 1480, he was still acting as executor of the will of John Whithorne*, who had died some 30 years before. CCR, 1476-85, no. 599; 1485-1500, no. 547. Walrond was reappointed to the Berkshire bench on 1 Feb. that year, CPR, 1476-85, p. 553. but died on 24 Sept. following. There was no response to the writ de diem clausit extremum issued to the escheator of Berkshire on 4 Oct., but several years later another writ, issued in July 1484, prompted an inquisition which gave the value of his manor of Rampayns, pastures and rents as amounting to £18 16s. p.a., and named his heir as his grand-daughter Elizabeth, the 20-year-old wife of John Kentwood. CFR, xxi. no. 564; C141/5/4. Elizabeth was the da. of Joan Walrond by her 1st husband Thomas Waryng: C1/135/101. Further writs de diem clausit extremum for Walrond were sent to the escheators of Wilts. in June 1488 and May 1501, but again they elicited no response: CFR, xxii. nos. 156, 689. After Kentwood’s death, Elizabeth married William Fettiplace and the couple sued her grandfather’s feoffees in Chancery, claiming that his lands were subject to a settlement in tail-male on Walrond and his wife Alice, with remainder to Elizabeth and her male issue by Kentwood. As neither the Walronds nor Kentwoods had produced male children, she was now entitled to inherit as her grandfather’s heir. C1/134/14. Even though Elizabeth eventually died childless, Rampayns descended in the Fettiplace family. VCH Berks. iv. 276.

Walrond had been buried in the church at Childrey, near the tombs of his parents and his daughter Joan. A monumental brass now in the Fettiplace chapel depicts two kneeling figures and scrolls bearing the inscription ‘Here under that marble stone next before the ymage of Sent Mighell resteth the body of Thomas Walrond who died in 1480 and Alice Englefield his wife’. Ibid. iv. 278.