WATKINS, John

Although Watkins’s parentage has not been established beyond reasonable doubt, it is possible that he was a kinsman, perhaps even a son, of William Watkins who attested the Buckinghamshire parliamentary elections of May 1413, March 1416 and 1417 and served as under sheriff of that county in 1418-19. E13/135, rot. 11d; C219/11/1, 8; 12/2. John for his part attended the Buckinghamshire elections on no fewer than five occasions prior to his own first return. The first of these elections was that of 1426, and it was around that time that Watkins also began to adopt a more prominent position in county society. In the autumn of 1426 – then called John Watkins ‘the younger’ – he attested a settlement of lands which had formerly belonged to John Archer II* for the Spencers of Leighton Buzzard, and in subsequent years he often stood surety for his neighbours at the Exchequer. CCR, 1422-9, p. 312; CFR, xv. 163, 232, 284; CP25(1)/22/119/5. No details of his education have come to light, but he evidently received some legal training, and by the autumn of 1441 styled himself an apprentice-at-law. CIPM, xxv. 457.

Particularly close were Watkins’s ties with the important, if unruly, gentry family of Cheyne, and in June 1429 he stood surety in Chancery for the good behaviour of Thomas, the younger son of the former lollard Roger Cheyne†. CCR, 1422-9, p. 457. Furthermore, by this date he himself had achieved a degree of notoriety for his association with Thomas and his brother, Sir John Cheyne I*. In March 1430 royal commissioners were appointed to investigate complaints from Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire that the Cheynes and their chief accomplices Watkins and Hugh Billingdon had been guilty of inflicting numerous ‘oppressions, extortions, duresses, ills and injuries’ on the men of the region, some of whom had been ‘driven with strong hand from their lands and tenements, others beaten, imprisoned and tortured in prison … the houses of others being broken, their goods carried off, their wives and servants beaten and ill-treated, and those complaining being so threatened that they dare not go about their business’. In spite of the eloquence of these complaints, the commissioners proved ineffective, and it was not until four months later, when a new commission under Chief Justice Babington was appointed, that the Cheynes were formally indicted. CPR, 1429-36, pp. 75, 81-2; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 553. But although Watkins had been explicitly named as a culprit, the presenting jury made no mention of him, and it seems that he evaded the arm of the law. KB9/225/41, 71-73d; KB27/681, rex rots. 19, 20d; 682, rex rots. 3, 4d-8. That he was nevertheless not entirely innocent is apparent from the later petition to the chancellor of a Londoner, one Walter Aleyn. Watkins, so Aleyn claimed, had sent for him in London, and accused him to his face of abetting the murder in Buckinghamshire of one Turges (presumably Thomas Turgeys of Aldbury, a member of the Cheyne gang). Although Aleyn had been innocent of this crime, he had allowed himself to be blackmailed into sealing two bonds for 20 marks each payable to Watkins and Thomas Cheyne. Even after the two men had made him hand over these sums in full, he had agreed to pay them further rewards and together with the wealthy Ralph Verney* he had even agreed to find surety of 40 marks for Cheyne in the city of London’s counter. Only when Thomas refused to refund the 40 marks which they had been forced to pay by his non-appearance in court did Aleyn eventually muster up the courage to seek the chancellor’s assistance. C1/16/312.

At the heart of many of the Cheynes’ offences in the late 1420s had been a dispute over the manor of ‘Maudeleyns’ in Northchurch, which was adjacent to their property at Chesham. In July 1432 Sir John Cheyne received a grant of the manor at the Exchequer, and Watkins was on hand to provide sureties for him. CFR, xvi. 97. In subsequent years, Watkins regularly served as a feoffee, witness or attorney in settlements of the Cheyne lands, an activity which brought him into close contact with a number of leading members of London and Middlesex society such as the goldsmith William Walton and the Frowyk brothers, Henry I* and Thomas I*. E326/1457; CCR, 1435-41, p. 237; 1441-7, p. 191. Rather less is known of Watkins’s own property, but it was evidently not insubstantial, for in 1436 his holdings in Buckinghamshire and London were assessed for tax purposes at an annual value of some £30. E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14(ix)d. In view of this income, as well as his association with the Cheynes, it is hardly surprising to find Watkins included among the Buckinghamshire gentry ordered to take the general oath against maintenance in the summer of 1434. CPR, 1429-36, p. 397.

Watkins evidently conducted a busy professional practice, attesting deeds, and serving as an arbiter, surety and feoffee. CCR, 1435-41, pp. 180-1, 360, 376, 377; 1441-7, p. 283-4, 391; CP40/761, rot. 225; CIPM, xxv. 457; KB27/784, fines rot. 1d; C139/179/58. Among his most prominent clients was Edmund, Lord Grey of Ruthin, for whose future good behaviour he pledged £20 in Chancery in October 1441. CCR, 1441-7, p. 32; CP40/731, rot. 306. The bond was probably connected with a collusive lawsuit between the two men designed to establish Watkins’ non-villein status. CP40/723, rots. 308, 309; 732, rot. 405. He was otherwise connected with the Greys by ties of feudal tenure, for Lord Edmund paid him an annual rent of 11s. 6d. from the manor of Stoke Hammond. Grey of Ruthin Valor ed. Jack, 116. Within a few years, Watkins also established connexions with a different line of the family. On the day of the marriage in June 1443 of Reynold, Lord Grey of Wilton, to Tacine, the bastard daughter of John Beaufort, duke of Somerset, the duke delivered to Watkins the huge sum of 1,000 marks, which he was to pay to William Burley I* on Grey’s behalf, this being in settlement of the marriage portion of Burley’s wife, Grey’s sister Margaret. CP40/778, rot. 410; 779, rot. 409. Watkins maintained his ties with the Greys over the years, and in May 1459 he was among the sureties for a settlement of estates by Lord Reynold on Lionel, Lord Welles, and his wife, Margaret Beauchamp, dowager duchess of Somerset. CCR, 1454-61, p. 383.

Equally, Watkins retained his links with Sir John Cheyne at least into the second half of the 1440s, and probably through the latter’s good offices, he soon found an even more important patron in Henry Holand, duke of Exeter. By the mid 1450s Watkins was collecting money at the Exchequer on the duke’s behalf, and he may by then have been serving as his master’s receiver – an office he is recorded holding in Exeter’s south-western estates towards the end of the decade. E403/807, m. 7; CAD, vi. C6133. He was already closely associated with Holand by 1453, when he was among a group of the duke’s retainers who were returned to Parliament by Cornish boroughs by virtue of his influence: while Watkins was found a seat at Liskeard, two other members of the Holand affinity, John Archer II and Thomas Baron II* were chosen for Helston. There is nothing to suggest that Watkins had any interest in the proceedings of Parliament other than to serve the interest of his master, who at the time was embroiled in an acrimonious quarrel with the former treasurer, Ralph, Lord Cromwell, over the Ampthill estate. S.J. Payling, ‘Ampthill Dispute’, EHR, civ. 881-907. In view of Exeter’s abortive rising, in preparation while Parliament was still in session, it is not surprising that his loyal henchmen such as Watkins gained little from their service in the Commons. Instead of being appointed to office under the Crown, Watkins thus had to be content to serve in the duke’s administration. Yet, within a few years Watkins, like many of Exeter’s followers, was drawn into the dramatic events of the final months of Henry VI’s reign on the national stage. By the autumn of 1459 the uneasy truce between the supporters of Richard, duke of York, and the lords who rallied around Queen Margaret of Anjou, which had existed since the battle of St. Albans in 1455, had once more escalated into open civil war. In October the Yorkists were routed at Ludlow, and York had to seek refuge in Ireland, while his allies fled to Calais. A few weeks later, Parliament was summoned to Coventry, and the Lancastrian lords, now in almost absolute control of the realm, secured the return of their trusted retainers. The duke of Exeter was one of the lords now in the ascendant, and like the duke’s servants Archer and Baron who had sat alongside him in 1453, Watkins was found a seat for a Wiltshire borough. In Watkins’s case, it was not without a degree of irony that his patron Exeter had chosen one of York’s own boroughs, Wootton Bassett, to secure the return of his trusted servant. The central business of the Parliament was the attainder of the Yorkist lords and their supporters, yet within less than a year of the highly partisan proceedings at Coventry, the tables had turned once more. Although attainted, York’s principal supporters had remained at liberty at Calais and successive attempts to dislodge them remained without success. In April 1460 Exeter was sent to sea with a force of 3,500 men to settle the matter once and for all, but so fragile was the loyalty of these mariners that their ships took shelter in the harbour at Dartmouth at the first sight of the Yorkist fleet under the command of the earl of Warwick.

Meanwhile, a number of Henry Holand’s more trusted retainers, including Watkins, had remained behind in London where the duke was constable of the Tower. Suspicious of the Londoners’ loyalties in the event of a Yorkist invasion, the government dispatched Lords Scales and Hungerford to defend the fortress, but when the Yorkist lords landed at the end of June and the gates of London were opened to them, the garrison of the Tower was cut off from the King and his Lancastrian supporters. While the main Yorkist force set out for the battlefield of Northampton on 5 July, the earl of Salisbury remained behind and laid siege to the Tower, whose defenders in their turn began a bombardment of the city which was to last for several days. The return of the victorious Yorkists with King Henry in their custody proved a blow to the morale of the starving garrison, which eventually capitulated on 19 July. A number of the defenders, including Watkins, were brought for trial before the earls of Warwick and Salisbury at the guildhall four days later, and several of them were executed. With the exception of (Sir) Thomas Brown II* those beheaded were servants of the duke of Exeter, and it is curious that Watkins escaped their fate. KB9/75/1-6; E163/8/10; English Chron. (Cam. Soc. lxiv), 95-96; John Benet’s Chron. (Cam. Misc. xxiv), 227; Three 15th Century Chrons. (Cam. Soc. n.s. xviii), 169; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 857-60, 862-3; C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, i. 90, 92-93.

He appears to have lived on quietly throughout the 1460s, and – surprisingly for one who had played a part in the bombardment of London – may have settled in the city itself. Although recorded in 1467-8, in a valor of the Grey of Ruthin lands, nothing is otherwise heard of him for almost ten years after the siege of the Tower. Grey of Ruthin Valor, 116. In January 1470, however, perhaps out of an awareness of the increasing unrest in the realm, Watkins granted all his goods to trustees, including John Besyngby*, who had sat in Parliament with him in 1453 as MP for Scarborough. CCR, 1468-76, no. 433. His subsequent fate can only be guessed, but by August 1472 he had died suddenly and intestate. It is possible that he followed the example of several other former retainers of the duke of Exeter, such as the prominent Cornishman Thomas Bodulgate*, and had rejoined his former master when he returned from France in early 1471. If so, he may have been in the duke’s retinue at the battle of Barnet and lost his life defending his wounded lord. Watkins left a daughter, Alice, who married one Thomas Crikit, but died childless before the mid 1480s, when her cousin Richard Watkins laid claim to her father’s lands in Standon, Hertfordshire. The administration of Watkins’s goods had been entrusted to the London tailor John Williams, which may suggest that Watkins’s wife had predeceased him. C1/58/191; CCR, 1468-76, no. 959. It was evidently another John Watkins who was attorney for Alice, wid. of Ralph, Lord Sudeley, in 1473: CCR, 1468-76, no. 1120.