WELLES, Thomas

Of obscure background, Welles began his career in the service of the prior and convent of St. Swithun, Winchester, who in January 1432 granted him an annuity of four marks for good service and advice in the past and in times to come, as well as an allowance of cloth and lamb’s fur equivalent to that otherwise allotted to one of the prior’s esquires. Probably engaged as a member of the prior’s council, his presence at at various manors belonging to the priory in the course of the next five years also suggests that he assisted its steward. Early in 1433 he was given in addition an upstairs room at the priory, known as ‘Hullyschamber’, with a small stable underneath, fodder and hay for two horses and hospitality in the prior’s hall as befitted his position. Reg. Common Seal, 222, 232, p. 219. Precisely when he took up residence in Twyford, some three miles to the south of Winchester, is not known, but he had done so by 1454, when he and his wife Agnes obtained a licence from Bishop Waynflete to have religious services said privately in their chapel or oratory in their manor-house there. Hants RO, Reg. Waynflete 1, f. 29*. Agnes’s identity is something of a mystery, although she was described in a royal pardon of 1446 as the kinswoman and heir of Henry and John Bradway. They, father and son, had held lands at West Tytherley, Little Somborne, Minstead and elsewhere in Hants, which on John’s death in 1396 had passed to his young unmarried daughter, Katherine. But how Agnes was related to the latter has not been discovered. In any case there is no record of the Welles’s tenure of any of the former Bradway properties. C67/39, m. 10; CIPM, xvii. 752; VCH Hants, iv. 481, 520, 636.

Thomas was probably the ‘Welles’ mentioned as a member of the Inner Temple in 1440, and by then he was evidently building up a sound reputation in legal circles, Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 22; Readings and Moots, p. cxxxi. yet how he came to be selected three times as an MP for Great Bedwyn remains unclear. Perhaps the explanation lies in his association with (Sir) John Stourton II* (from 1448 Lord Stourton), the steward of the estates of the borough’s lord, the duke of Buckingham. Welles’s two later returns for another Wiltshire borough, Downton, were undoubtedly due to his position as deputy steward of the estates of Bishop Waynflete of Winchester, of which Downton formed a part. Waynflete relied heavily on Welles in the administration of all the estates pertaining to the bishopric, for although he was technically only deputy to successive stewards (initially Richard Waller and then John Audley*, Lord Audley), it was he who did all the work involved, most notably touring the manors to hold courts, and advising the bishop as a member of his council. Not surprisingly, he was present at Winchester in 1463 when tenants of the episcopal manor of Alverstoke made a supplication to Waynflete before the justices of assize regarding the rents, services and duties demanded of them. CCR, 1461-8, p. 231. Welles was employed by the bishops of Winchester (Waynflete and his successor Courtenay), for over 40 years, but it was not until April 1478 that Waynflete finally recognized the debt he owed him by appointing him steward for life, with a substantial fee of 40 marks a year.

Over the same period since the 1440s, Welles had taken on the arduous duties of ad hoc commissions of local administration, and in 1452 he replaced the recently-deceased Thomas Haydock* as a j.p. of the quorum on the Hampshire bench. He also assumed Haydock’s role as steward of the estates of Winchester College, an office he similarly filled for a very long time (upwards of 36 years). The warden of the college had previously engaged him as legal counsel for a fee of 13s. 4d. a year, which was increased to £5 on his assumption of the duties of steward. N. and Q. ser. 12, i. 361-3. Very many of the conveyances of land to the college in this period involved Welles as a feoffee, working in association with the warden and fellows, so that he played an important part in the further endowment of the college after its initial foundation at the beginning of the century. e.g., for transactions regarding just one acquisition, Winchester Coll. muns. 10152, 10154, 10158-60, 10163, 10170-1; CP(25(1)/207/34/4. Welles’s election for Hampshire in 1455 is readily explained by his evident competence as a j.p. and industrious official on the episcopal and college estates.

The pattern of Welles’s service on royal commissions reveals no discernible political bias in the civil-war years, and he continued to be appointed to the bench regardless of changes of monarch. He was assiduous in his duties, for instance sitting as a justice of oyer and terminer hearing cases of treason in the summer of 1466, and at Salisbury in January 1469 he was one of the body, headed by the duke of Gloucester, which tried and executed Thomas Hungerford* (the titular Lord Hungerford), and Henry Courtenay, the dispossessed heir to the earldom of Devon. Also at Salisbury and along with William, earl of Arundel, he considered ‘the matter between the bishop and the commonalty’, a dispute which had been going on for several years, in the course of which the citizens of Salisbury had challenged the authority of Bishop Beauchamp. On this occasion, however, Welles was probably not an impartial judge but rather an arbiter, for he was paid £2 by the civic authorities for his legal counsel. KB9/314/73, 87; PROME, xv. 166-7; R. Benson and H. Hatcher, Old and New Sarum, 171-2 (from Wilts. Hist. Centre, Salisbury city recs., ledger bk. 2, G23/1/2, f. 86v). It would seem that following his second appearance as MP for Downton, in 1467, Welles did not sit in the Commons again, and his presence at parliamentary elections in Hampshire is only recorded in 1472. C219/17/2.

Over the years Welles was frequently asked for his advice in matters of the law, For instance, the burgesses of Southampton paid him an annual fee of 13s. 4d. from 1454 to 1457, sought his help in a lawsuit in July 1471, and gave him 26s. 8d. in 1474-5; and the city of Winchester retained his services for 20s. p.a. for several years after 1465: Southampton City Archs., Soton. recs., SC5/1/8, f. 10; 13, f. 25; 15, f. 13; Hants RO, Winchester recs., W/E1/24, 25, 27, 28. and to act as a trustee of property in Hampshire – notably doing so for Michael Skilling (d.1463), another lawyer in the employment of the bishop of Winchester. He regularly came into contact with another close associate of Bishop Waynflete, (Sir) Thomas Uvedale, one of the wealthiest gentry of the region, who repaid Welles’s help by assisting in the lawyer’s own landed settlements. CP25(1)/207/32/47; 33/37, 39; 34/2. On occasion, Welles offered guidance to the abbess of Romsey, for whom he provided sureties at the Exchequer. CCR, 1454-61, p. 267; CFR, xix. 203. Perhaps of wider significance was his continued association with John, Lord Stourton, whom he served as a feoffee of estates in Hampshire, Wiltshire and Middlesex. When Stourton died in 1462 Welles was his sole surviving trustee of property in London. He promptly offered his services to the new Lord Stourton, William*, and then, on Lord William’s death in 1478, to a third generation of the family. CCR, 1461-8, pp. 125-6; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 4, 334, 1123, 1126; CPR, 1476-85, p. 141; C140/63/55. In 1465 Welles was placed on a distinguished panel of feoffees of the former Fitzalan estates in the marches of Wales and eight English counties, headed by the archbishop of Canterbury. Among his fellows was a trustee of his own landed holdings, (Sir) Maurice Berkeley* of Beverstone, who asked him to be an executor of his will in 1474. CPR, 1461-7, p. 444; PCC 15 Wattys (PROB11/6, ff. 108v-109v). Both he and Berkeley also appeared as feoffees for John Wallop†, who like Welles was closely involved in the day to day administration of the estates of the diocese of Winchester. CIPM Hen. VII, i. 187.

Much less is recorded about Welles’s own property interests, although a few of his acquisitions may be noted. From 1447 he received an annual rent of £2 from the manor of Binsted in Sussex, by grant of Edmund Turnaunt, the son of a Winchester clothier; and he had a house at Brambridge, about five miles from Winchester. CCR, 1441-7, p. 458; C67/45, m. 45. Together with a Southampton merchant he bought two tenements in the capital, in Silver Street, although whether as an investment or as somewhere to stay while conducting his legal practice is unclear. His intentions in purchasing property in Basingstoke in 1468, however, would appear to have been altruistic, for 12 years later he transferred it to Winchester College as a personal gift to the foundation he had served so long. Winchester Coll. muns. 4164-6.

Such benefactions, made near the end of his life and probably with regard for his soul’s welfare, may have been prompted by the death of Welles’s only son and heir. Of this young man little is known, not even his first name, but there are grounds for supposing that Welles had arranged his marriage to Margaret, one of the daughters of John Weston II* of Buxted in Sussex. That Welles and Weston were closely associated is clear, for in 1455, after Weston died intestate, Welles brought suits in the court of common pleas as administrator of his goods. CP40/779, rot. 621d. Margaret is known to have later married Robert Wodefold* (d.1483/4) and John Apsley† (d.1507), but when she died in 1512 her son and heir was John Welles (b.c.1476), the child of her first husband, and most likely our MP’s grandson. PCC 27 Fetiplace (PROB11/17, f. 211); C142/27/62. Welles’s acquisition in 1464 of a moiety of the manor of Eastleigh in South Stoneham (subject to the payment of an annuity of £4 to John Weston’s cousin,Thomas Basset*), was probably connected with a settlement on his son and daughter-in-law at the time of their marriage. CP25(1)/207/34/2, 5; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 390-1; 1468-76, no. 192. VCH Hants, iii. 487 mistakenly assumes that Eastleigh came to the Welles family by a marriage between Thomas himself and Margaret Weston, who as sis. of William Weston of Bramley, Surr., fell coh. to the Weston lands when William died in 1485. In fact, at that date she was the wife of John Apsley, and Thomas Welles was then still alive. O. Manning and W. Bray, Surr. ii. 79; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 162.

The date of Welles’s death is uncertain. Still living in September 1487, when Bishop Courtenay granted the stewardship of his estates in reversion to (Sir) Reynold Bray†, Reg. Common Seal, 442. in the following year the aged lawyer relinquished some of his duties as steward to William Frost. Similarly, he ceased to act as steward of the estates of Winchester College in 1488 or 1489. The college accts. for 1488-9 are missing, but he received his fee in 1487-8: N. and Q. ser. 12, i. 363. Note too that he had been listed among the ‘burgesses’ (holders of burgages) in Wilton from 1467 (the first of the extant lists), but was not so recorded in 1489: Wilts. Hist. Centre, Wilton bor. recs., gen. entry bk. G25/1/21, ff. 44, 585-9, 591-8. Writs de diem clausit extremum were issued in his name in February 1490 and again later, but no inquisitions post mortem survive. CFR, xxii. nos. 278, 589, 755.