WARWICK, William

This MP, whose family may have come from Warwick, as his name suggests, became one of the wealthiest merchants of Salisbury of his day. Over the years he became an important property-owner in the city, holding several messuages, including one opposite the wool market, while elsewhere in Wiltshire he also received an income from rents at Maiden Bradley. Warwick owned a house in Wilton, where he lived in Henry V’s reign and served a term as mayor, although he and his wife relinquished possession of it in 1425 after they moved to Salisbury. CCR, 1422-9, p. 206; E210/5084; Wilts. Feet of Fines, 402.

A cloth-manufacturer, Warwick set up racks for drying cloth in Endless Street, First General Entry Bk. 216G. and besides trading in the product, as a mercer, he shipped it through the port of Southampton to markets overseas, at the same time importing canvas and a wide variety of other items. Port Bk. 1435-6 (Soton. Rec. Ser. vii), 48, 64, 76. There was a constant traffic from Southampton to Salisbury of carts bringing produce and materials for him to sell, and in 1439-40 by far the most goods conveyed from the port for any Salisbury merchant belonged to him. They included two tuns, eight pipes and a butt of oil, six butts of wine, two barrels of honey and 19 pecks of fruit. More significant were the 14 bales of alum and 43 balets of woad (of which 37 formed one consignment, filling four carts), to be used for finishing cloth. Then too there was soap, both white and black, and eight bales of paper. Brokage Bk. 1439-40 (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1941), passim. It was the same story in 1443-4, with the addition of large quantities of salmon, some almonds and also a small boat. VCH Wilts. vi. 125; Brokage Bk. 1443-4, i. and ii. (Soton. Rec. Ser., iv, vi), passim. We might also suppose that it was the Salisbury merchant who sent large quantities of woad, madder and alum for sale in Coventry (ibid. i. 12, 33, 50; ii. 289), although three wagons containing woad were sent there in the name of William Warwick in 1448-9, after his death: Brokage Bk. 1448-9 (Soton. Rec. Ser. xxxvi), pp. xv, 219. Perhaps his widow or apprentices had continued trading in his name. There is the evidence, too, of statutes merchant which Warwick entered at the staple at Salisbury, and of his strenuous pursuit of debtors there. Those who owed him money included a baker of Devizes and a merchant from Thornbury in Gloucestershire, as well as a local hosteler who owed him as much as £100. C241/213/23; 225/67; 229/5, 26. Warwick took advantage of his office as mayor of the staple (part of the charge of the mayor of the city) to initiate writs from Chancery ordering the arrest of those who failed to pay him on the appointed days, such as a dyer from Castlecombe, various men from Shaftesbury, and a Salisbury merchant who owed him £80 15s. C241/219/33, 43, 44, 50. He also pursued his debtors in the court of common pleas. e.g. CP40/657, rot. 77; 669, rot. 18; 680, rot. 372; 715, rots. 30, 66d, 189, 365d, 559, 591d; 716, rot. 352d. One of them was John Hampton, a Salisbury grocer whom he sued for failing to honour bonds amounting to over £61, entered in 1429 and 1430. He claimed damages of 120 marks, even though the defendant protested that he had released him from legal actions; Warwick continued his suits nonetheless. CP40/700, rots. 116, 117.

Warwick played an active role in the government of Salisbury from the beginning of Henry V’s reign, when he entered the city fraternity of St. George. First General Entry Bk. 140. He attended many meetings of the civic assembly from 1416 onwards, taking a prominent part in the proceedings, which included elections to the Parliaments of 1416 (Oct.), 1423, 1429 and 1432. Ibid. 167, 236, 265, 282. Warwick appeared in the county court at Wilton as mainpernor for Robert Poynant†, on his election to Parliament for the city in 1420, and helped make assessments to raise the parliamentary wages for the MPs of 1423. Ibid. 242; C219/12/4. He also supported the civic authorities from his own pocket. When, early in 1418, the convocation agreed that John Chaundler, the new bishop of Salisbury, should receive a gift of 40 marks at his installation, Warwick was one of six men who advanced the sum on promise of repayment at Whitsun from amounts raised from the citizenry. In the event, although he personally contributed £1, he was not paid back the sum advanced until November. First General Entry Bk. 190, 193. In later years Warwick regularly contributed towards the loans which the city made to the Crown: never providing less than £1, his share was twice that amount in November 1432, the spring of 1434 (when his contribution was far in excess of any other), and July 1444 (when only one other citizen gave as much). When mayor in March 1440 he contributed £1 towards the cost of barriers for the city’s defence. Ibid. 224A, 254, 262, 273, 288, 297, 319, 345B, 350, 391.

A measure of Warwick’s standing in Salisbury was his election as mayor in 1424 and his continuation in office for a second consecutive term (which was an unusual occurrence). Yet relations between members of Salisbury’s elite were rarely harmonious. Towards the end of his first term in office a dispute arose between him and John Hunte, one of the council of 24, who at Whitsun in 1425 had an outsider run his stall in the market-place, contrary to the mayor’s injunctions and challenging his authority. William Waryn†, the previous mayor, supported Warwick, whereupon Hunte abused him. It was decided that Hunte should be discharged from his post as constable and should provide a feast for the 24. Ibid. 250. A more serious confrontation occurred a year later, when another of the 24, Thomas Freeman*, a mercer like Warwick, perpetrated falsehoods touching the mayor. Arbiters of their quarrel stipulated that Freeman should give Warwick a pipe of red wine to have his forgiveness, and pay £1 for a breakfast for the council. Freeman got off lightly: henceforth anyone slandering the mayor would incur a penalty of a cask of wine worth £5. Ibid. 256.

Warwick was elected to the Parliament which assembled in September 1427, nearly a year after the end of his second mayoralty. Ibid. 259. When he stood for election again, to the Parliament of July-December 1433, he had his own interests in mind, as well as the city’s. In a petition addressed to the Commons during the session he reported that in the autumn of 1430 he had sent Walter Trenchevile to Brittany to trade as his factor in woollen cloth worth £200, but having exchanged the cloth for other goods, Trenchevile was imprisoned and tortured in the Breton castle of Gildo on the orders of the lord of Montafiliant, and contrary to the truce between the King and the duke of Brittany. Trenchevile had been made to pay £50 for his release, but after £28 3s. 4d. of his ransom had been handed over at St. Mâlo, the lord of Montafiliant had him thrown off the castle wall into the sea, where he drowned. Warwick claimed damages of £400, and asked leave to seize the goods worth £300 belonging to the lord, his tenants and servants wherever they might be found in England or the Channel Islands. In response to his petition, the King’s Council promised that letters under the privy seal would be sent to the duke and lord for redress, but none was forthcoming. Accordingly, on 20 May 1435 letters of marque allowing the arrest of the goods were issued. SC8/27/1303-4; RP, iv. 458 (cf. PROME, ix. 156); CPR, 1429-36, p. 457. It took Warwick almost as long to obtain payment of his wages for attending the Commons over 118 days. The Parliament ended on 21 Dec. 1433, but it was not until 3 Feb. 1434 that the writ authorizing payment to him and his fellow MP Richard Gatour* was issued from Chancery, instructing the civic authorities to pay them 2s. a day (a total of £11 16s. each), and they waited until 14 Jan. 1435 for the money. First General Entry Bk. 289, 295-6.

Warwick served as mayor again, for another two-year stretch, in 1439-41. Shortly after the end of his mayoralty, in Hilary term 1442 and together with William Cokkes of Salisbury and his wife Joan, Warwick was accused in the court of common pleas by no less a person than Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, of taking £3,000 of his money at Wilton, by force and against the peace. Unfortunately, no details of this serious charge have come to light, and the records of the court do not recite the outcome. CP40/724, rot. 168. How Warwick could have incurred the enmity of the duke remains a mystery. Another mystery is how he found himself in October 1443 in the exalted company of Master Richard Andrewe, the King’s secretary, and Master Walter Sherington, the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, in a gift of goods and chattels made by a chapman from Uxbridge. CCR, 1441-7, p. 187. He continued to be active on the business of Salisbury, with regard to negotiating loans to the Crown and attending assemblies, and in April 1445 he served on a committee of five councillors assigned to advise the mayor regarding the sale of certain tenements to raise money for the repair of other buildings belonging to the commonalty. A.P.M. Wright, ‘Relations between the King’s Govt. and Bors.’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1965), 284; First General Entry Bk. 396, 397.

The following winter Warwick’s thoughts turned towards his end. He sold some lead to the churchwardens of St. Edmund’s Salisbury for works on their church, Churchwardens’ Accts. St. Edmund and St. Thomas, Sarum ed. Swayne, 358. but it was in that of St. Thomas the Martyr that he wished to be buried, in a tomb near the altar dedicated to St. Michael. On 6 Mar. 1446 Archbishop Stafford issued a commission for the probate of Warwick’s will, which had been made just 11 days earlier, on 23 Feb. Tidying up his trading concerns, Warwick released Thomas Valeys from a debt of £20 owed for merchandise, while at the same time leaving him his best gown with hanging furs and ten marks to each of Valeys’s two sons when they turned 18. Other bequests consisted of cloth, beds and bedding. Warwick instructed his wife Joan to obtain a royal licence for the foundation of a chantry, where a chaplain might pray for his soul for 20 years, at an annual salary of ten marks, and he also wanted to establish an almshouse at ‘Brediewdrew’, in Salisbury, with funding for 40 years. Joan was the sole executor, although Warwick asked the Wiltshire lawyer John Giles* and the Salisbury merchants John Aport and Simon Poy* to assist her as supervisors, each of them receiving £2 for their trouble. Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Stafford, ff. 136v-137. He left no surviving issue.

Warwick’s widow set about fulfilling his wishes. On 8 Mar. 1447 she paid 40 marks for a licence to found a chantry in her late husband’s name, where prayers would be offered in perpetuity for the souls of Warwick, his parents and her own father and mother; and to grant in mortmain to the chaplain lands to the value of ten marks p.a. An inquisition ad quod damnum conducted at Salisbury on the following 17 Apr. found that this proposed grant of 11 messuages would not be to the detriment of the Crown, and that there remained in Joan’s possession eight other properties, 40 acres of arable land and 12 of meadow. Accordingly, on 10 May she was permitted to begin the process of endowment. C143/450/25; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 48, 61. The chantry lasted until the Reformation: in 1535 the chaplain was receiving an increased salary of £10 13s. 4d. p.a.: VCH Wilts. vi. 149. The widow had been left comfortably off: in the tax assessments of February 1451 she was recorded holding lands worth £12 p.a. – which was probably an underestimate. E179/196/118. Shortly afterwards, she donated to the mayor and commonalty of Salisbury the cloth racks and their appurtenances in Endless Street, so that at every convocation they would pray for the souls of Warwick and herself. She also arranged for the authorities to receive four cottages and other racks after her death. In August 1451 Thomas Valeys, the beneficiary under Warwick’s will, acknowledged he was bound to her in £60, to be paid on the following 30 Nov. First General Entry Bk. 219G, 441, 445; Wilts. Hist. Centre, Salisbury city recs., ledger bk. 2, G23/1/2, f. 2. This may have been for the purchase of another of Warwick’s properties in Endless Street, which came into Valeys’s possession soon after, while his buildings opposite the market place were acquired by William Hore II*. Warwick was long remembered for reconstructing the city’s ‘Winchester Gate’. Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxvii. 77, 84; VCH Wilts. vi. 88; Salisbury Domesday bk. 3, G23/1/215, f. 12.