WHITTINGHAM, Robert I

More may be added to the earlier biography. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 841-4.

In early 1427 Whittingham was appointed to a panel of arbiters chosen to settle the disputes which had arisen between two merchants, John Burton I* of Bristol and Paolo Meliani, who was from Lucca but resided in London. E159/203, recogniciones Hil. 5 Hen. VI. By the spring of that year Whittingham had become the duke of Bedford’s receiver-general, a position he continued to hold until the duke’s death in September 1435.

At end of the same decade Whittingham was in dispute with Sir Thomas Chaworth*, who held estates in Hertfordshire in the right of his second wife. Chaworth sued the MP and several husbandmen and craftsmen in the court of common pleas, claiming that they had trespassed on his property at Aldbury in September 1426, felling trees and removing wood, a charge that Whittingham and his co-defendants flatly denied. CP40/675, rot. 287d. As the previous biography points out, the dates of Whittingham’s purchases of property outside London remain largely unknown, but Aldbury lay near Pendley, perhaps suggesting that he had acquired his manor in the latter parish by the date of the alleged trespass.

While the full extent of Whittingham’s real property acquisitions is a matter for speculation, he was reckoned to enjoy an annual income of £67 from his holdings in the City, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire for the purposes of the subsidy of 1436. E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14 (vi)d.

The security of Calais was a pressing concern for the English when Whittingham was appointed treasurer of that town. In March 1436 he received a loan of 1,000 marks from Cardinal Beaufort to cover the wages of the men-at-arms and archers sent from England for its defence, and a payment from the Exchequer for the purchase of artillery. During the Burgundian siege of Calais that year he served in the retinue of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, in spite of having incurred the duke’s serious displeasure in the previous decade. Besides himself, he contributed six men-at-arms and 21 archers to Gloucester’s relieving force. E403/721, m. 17; 723, m. 13.

Notwithstanding the time he spent across the Channel in the King’s service, Whittingham was styled as a ‘citizen and clothier of London’ in a royal pardon he received in mid 1437. C67/38, m. 7 (18 June). His trading interests were by no means restricted to cloth: during 1442-3, for example, he and two other Londoners made several sales of tin to two Venetian merchants, for a very substantial total of just over £1,100. H. Bradley, Views of Hosts of Alien Merchants, 103.

Certainly a knight by early June 1445, the MP may have received his knighthood just days earlier, at the coronation of Margaret of Anjou on 30 May.