WESTON, John I

Firm identification of this MP presents difficulties because of the existence of numerous namesakes, some as closely linked to him as his kinsman John Weston II*, who inherited Dedswell in Send, the same parish in which his own manor of Papworth was situated. VCH Surr. iii. 368. There can be no doubt, however, that John Weston I was the eldest son of the William Weston who had represented Surrey in at least eight Parliaments between 1380 and 1419. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 816-18. He received Papworth from his parents as part of the settlement made at the time of his marriage to Milicent, and in later years he enlarged the manor by acquiring land nearby. CP25(1)/231/63/34; 69/6. John probably came of age early in the fifteenth century, for the eldest of his daughters was born in about 1406, and his younger brother, William, was considered mature enough by 1415 to represent the borough of Guildford in Parliament. On his father’s death he inherited more of the Weston family estates, including the manors of West Clandon and Weston in Albury, at the same time coming into his maternal inheritance at Artington; Feudal Aids, v. 124, 127; VCH Surr. iii. 4, 74, 347; O. Manning and W. Bray, Surr. iii. 53-54. During the Mich. term of 1419, while his father’s last Parliament was in progress, he joined him in bringing separate actions for debt in the court of common pleas against a chaplain of West Clandon: CP40/635, rots. 43d, 268d. and to these properties he added more at Horsham in the neighbouring county of Sussex, where he held the advowson of a chantry. Add. Ch. 8993; C139/102/5. Although the total value of his estate is not recorded, it was thought to be worth at least £40 p.a., for he was distrained to take up knighthood. Surrey remained the focus of Weston’s interests, for although he could claim title to property in distant Lincolnshire (notably the market and two fairs at Burgh ‘in le Mershe’), as kinsman and heir of another John Weston, described as ‘late of London’, in May 1427 he made a quitclaim to Ralph, Lord Cromwell, and the latter’s nominees. CCR, 1422-9, p. 332. The older John had been granted the market and fairs with Margaret his wife in 1401: CChR, v. 416. This might suggest that he was the citizen and ‘cissor’ of London who died in 1420, for that John also had a wife called Margaret and left no direct heirs: PCC 50 Marche (PROB11/2B, ff. 397v-398v).

For an assessment of the MP’s public career in the first two decades of the century particular care needs to be taken to distinguish him from a namesake who lived nearby at Ockham and received an income of 30 marks a year from property in Surrey and London (as assessed for taxation in 1412). That John was intermittently active as a j.p. in Surrey from 1394 until 1417, and died at an unknown date between the autumn of 1421 and Michaelmas 1423. Feudal Aids, vi. 518. That John held manors in Ockham, East Horsley, ‘Coveham’, Send and Woking, in Surr., and owned St. Mary’s Inn in the London parish of St. Clement Danes. A son, Christopher, and da., Elizabeth, died before 16 Feb. 1420 when he made his will, in which the only relatives he mentioned were his wife and another da., both called Matilda. The will was not proved until July 1427, but it was his executors who in Mich. term 1423 sued his bailiff for failing to acct. for manorial revenues. CP25(1), 231/67/17; CP40/651, rot. 310. J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii. 1750, wrongly assumed that he died in 1427. It is therefore debateable whether a single John Weston attested all 11 of the Surrey elections between 1414 and 1433 listed above. Yet John the future MP may well have done so on all 11 occasions. His home at Papworth was only a few miles from Guildford, where the shire court met, and at two of the elections in question, 1415 and 1419, those present endorsed the return of his father for the shire and his brother William for the borough. C219/11/5, 7; 12/2, 3, 5; 13/2-4; 14/1, 3, 4. He himself was elected for the county for the first of three times in 1427. Naturally, both Weston brothers were among those required in Surrey in 1434 to take the generally-administered oath not to maintain malefactors. CPR, 1429-36, p. 380. On occasion John was asked to be a feoffee of property in his home county, and commitments of this kind led to an association with two other Surrey landowners, Sir Henry Norbury* and John Penycoke*. Add. Ch. 9067; CAD, i. C1359; iii. C2997.

Nevertheless, Weston remains a shadowy figure. The identity of his two wives is not revealed from the surviving sources, and although the fine monumental brass on his tomb represents him wearing complete plate armour nothing has been discovered about any military activity on his part. Towards the end of his life he appears to have resided more often at Weston in Albury than in Papworth, and it was in the church at Albury that he was buried. The inscription on the brass notes that John Weston of Weston, esquire, died on 23 Nov. 1440. Surr. Arch. Collns. xxxiv. 90-92; xxv. 42-43. This date is confirmed in his inquisitions post mortem, which, however, refer only to his property at Artington and Horsham and not to his wider interests. Since Weston’s only son had predeceased him, his heirs were his three married daughters: Agnes, wife of John atte Hull of Horsham, Joan wife of John Skyvet, and Anne, wife of Thomas Slyfield*. C139/102/5. Following fresh inquiries made in February 1443, the escheator was ordered to make a partition between the three women of those lands he had held in chief. The delay had no doubt worked to the Crown’s profit. In the event Artington passed to the Hulls, and West Clandon and Weston to the Slyfields. C139/108/1; CFR, xvii. 256; VCH Surr. iii. 4, 74 (an inaccurate account, confusing him with John II), 347. On 9 Jan. 1442, Weston’s widow, Alice, obtained a royal licence to marry John Burdet, esquire: CPR, 1441-6, p. 31. In 1463 the Slyfields sued the Burdets for wasting Anne’s inheritance at Weston: CP40/808, rot. 143d.