WHITTOCKSMEAD, John

Whittocksmead, who was to sit in the Commons a remarkable 12 times, representing eight different constituencies over a period of nearly 50 years, came from a family which had held land in White Ox Mead near Wellow in Somerset since the reign of Edward I. J. Collinson, Hist. Som. iii. 327. For an earlier biography, see J.T. Driver, ‘John Whittokesmede’, Wilts. Arch. Mag. xcii (1999), 92-99. His father and grandfather, both also called John, had been returned as MPs for Bath on several occasions between 1361 and 1410, and he himself began his parliamentary career as a representative for the same city. He was already a practising lawyer when he was chosen for Bath in September 1427, and while up at Parliament he appeared as attorney in the Exchequer for Walter Rich*, one of the leading citizens, for whom he was later to act as a feoffee. E13/138, rot. 21; Ancient Deeds Bath, ed. Shickle, I 49-51. He also appeared for Rich in the ct. of c.p.: CP40/685, att. rot. Thereafter, his name was to crop up frequently as an attorney in the courts of King’s bench and common pleas, in cases concerning litigants from Gloucestershire, Bristol, Somerset and Wiltshire. From early on he was regularly named as a feoffee of landed holdings in those counties. For instance, he was a trustee of property in Bristol belonging to the late Henry Gildeney†, which from 1431 he held to the use of Sir John Juyn, then chief baron of the Exchequer and later c.j.c.p. Other transactions on Juyn’s behalf concerned the manor of Battelburgh, Somerset (in 1434), and he witnessed letters patent which Bishop Stafford addressed to him in 1437. CCR, 1429-35, p. 162; E159/211, commissiones Mich.; CPR, 1436-41, p. 255. Association with Juyn can have done Whittocksmead no harm, and it may be conjectured that the judge furthered his career at Westminster. Described as an attorney of the King’s bench, Whittocksmead was named as supervisor of the will of Ralph Hunt* of Bath, made in 1432, and received a bequest of £2 and the promise of further recompense if he worked with the executors to recover Hunt’s debts. Reg. Chichele, ii. 464.

In the 1430s Whittocksmead began to build up a landed estate for himself. Thus, he added to the family properties in White Ox Mead, in the late 1440s obtaining confirmation from the abbot of Cirencester of his right to have a chantry in his chapel in the manor-house, where religious services could be celebrated in accordance with a charter dating back to 1294. In Wiltshire he purchased land at Steeple Langford and ‘Tokynglangford’, CP40/745, rot. 412; 755, cart. rot. 2d; Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xxii), 193; Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 488. and came to own property further north at Beanacre in Melksham, as well as more in the city of Salisbury, which he held as a tenant of the bishop. VCH Wilts. vii. 98-99; Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxvii. 85. Surprisingly, it was neither in Somerset or Wiltshire that he found a wife. Rather, it was in the haunts of the lawyers gathered near the inns of court on the outskirts of London, for he married the daughter of a skinner named William Pepyr who owned a house in Fetter Lane, in the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn, with a garden attached to Barnards Inn. E. Williams, Early Holborn, ii. 1018, 1027, 1061, 1065. Whittocksmead was in possession of this garden by 1439. The house itself had been settled on Pepyr and his wife Joan and their issue in 1430, although two years later they conveyed a reversionary interest in it to Thomas Wakefield, Corp. London RO, hr 158/62, 67, 74; 160/20, 21; 167/61. so it is uncertain whether Whittocksmead and his wife ever took possession of the house or of the property in Wendlebury, Oxfordshire, which also belonged to her father. Pepyr had need of his son-in-law’s advice in the complex lawsuits arising from the will of another skinner, Thomas Duke, and the endowment of the chantry Duke had wished to found in St. Dunstan’s church; he also took counsel from the serjeants-at-law John Hody* and John Fortescue*, with whom Whittocksmead was acquainted. As one of Pepyr’s feoffees, Whittocksmead petitioned the chancellor to ensure that the issues of the Saracen’s Head Inn in Fleet Street could be put to the use Duke had intended. The matter still weighed heavily on his father-in-law’s mind when he made his will in 1442; because of the ambiguities of the situation he bequeathed the master of the Skinners Company and his successors a rent of ten marks a year from the Saracen’s Head to maintain the chantry, stipulating that the chantry priest was to be appointed by his widow and after her death by his daughter Agnes and her husband Whittocksmead. Ibid. hr 179/20; C1/11/247; Cal. Wills Ct. Husting, ii (2) 519. The latter, described as a ‘gentleman’, joined the prestigious fraternity of the Taylors’ Company of London a year or so later. Guildhall Lib., London, Merchant Taylors’ Co. accts. 34048/1, f. 373v.

As yet, Whittocksmead had not come to the notice of the government, although in May 1436 he had been granted an Exchequer lease of the manor of West Chelwood, Somerset, which he kept for nearly three years. CFR, xvi. 277; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 243-4. Meanwhile, his work in the central courts had begun to include acting as one of the officers of the sheriff of Somerset and Dorset, deputizing for the under sheriff, on whose behalf he received writs in the years 1435-7. CP40/699, rot. 525d; 700, rots. 308, 313d; 701, rots. 124d, 325d; 702, rots. 122d, 124d; 703, rots. 136d, 452; 707, rots. 1d, 139d. The sheriff of 1436-7 was John St. Loe*, an esquire for the King’s body, who subsequently asked him to be a feoffee of his estates, and when, in 1446, St. Loe obtained a licence to found a chantry in St. Mary’s church, Calne, our MP was among the several benefactors for whom prayers were to be offered. Som. Feet of Fines, 93, 94, 96-97; CPR, 1441-6, p. 459; CP40/710, cart. rot. One of Whittocksmead’s most important and long-lasting associations was with the baronial family of Hungerford, although this link does not seem to have become firmly established until quite late in the lifetime of Sir Walter Hungerford†, Lord Hungerford (d.1449). At Easter 1438 he assisted Lord Hungerford in his acquisition of the Wiltshire manors of Imber and Homanton, and a moiety of that of Folke in Dorset; he served as his attorney in the common pleas in the following year; in June 1440 he stood surety for him and his son Sir Robert Hungerford at the Exchequer; he was party to transactions regarding their property in Chippenham in 1447; and he joined Sir Edmund Hungerford* in bringing lawsuits against men of the same town. Significantly, in the years 1446-8 he received a fee of £2 p.a. for his counsel to Lord Walter. Wilts. Feet of Fines, 511; CFR, xvii. 159; CCR, 1436-41, p. 152; 1441-7, p. 228; 1447-54, pp. 147-8; Hungerford Cart. (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xlix), 358-9; CPR, 1441-6, p. 300; CP40/715, rot. 436d; SC6/1119/12. The connexion led to his involvement in the affairs of others in the Hungerford circle, such as the lawyer William Styrope*, CP25(1)/293/70/275. while another member of it, (Sir) John Baynton*, named him as his under sheriff in Wiltshire in 1443-4.

By then Whittocksmead’s career had come to be focused more on Wiltshire than Somerset, as is suggested by his elections to Parliament for the Wiltshire boroughs of Devizes and Downton. Whether his links with the Hungerfords played any part in securing these elections remains open to speculation. Personal acquaintance with men of Devizes may have counted for more: he was associated with the wealthy clothier John Coventre III* in the acquisition of the manor of Lydiard Tregoze; they had to seek royal pardon for transactions they made without licence. CPR, 1441-6, p. 312. They conveyed it to feoffees apparently acting for Margaret Beauchamp, dowager duchess of Somerset, in 1458: CPR, 1452-61, p. 461; CCR, 1461-8, p. 240; VCH Wilts. ix. 79. Perhaps the borough authorities engaged him for his legal services, in the same way as he was occasionally retained by the county town of Wilton. Wilton bor. recs., stewards’ accts. G25/1/88. An indication of his rising status was his attendance at the shire elections held at Wilton on 19 Dec. 1441 for the Parliament summoned to meet on the following 25 Jan. On this occasion he himself was to sit in the Commons for the borough of Downton, which belonged to the bishop of Winchester. However, no links between him and the bishop, Cardinal Beaufort, have been discovered.

Not everyone was on good terms with him. He quarrelled with John Hall II*, the Salisbury mercer, who was bound in recognizances in 20 marks in 1446 to abide by arbitration in all actions between them; and the ambitious lawyer Thomas Tropenell*, complaining bitterly about his opponent John Borne’s attempts to conjure up a title to the manor of Great Chalfield, spoke of Borne’s ‘subtyll and evill disposed councell, as Wittokkysmede and other’. CCR, 1441-7, p. 370; Tropenell Cart. i. 404. On the other hand, leading ecclesiastical landowners of the region fully trusted Whittocksmead to carry out their business. The abbot of Glastonbury named him as bailiff of the abbatial liberties in Wiltshire, a post he was occupying by autumn 1446 and continued to fill for about 14 years. More important, in 1447 he succeeded the recently-deceased Robert Long* as bailiff of the liberties of William Aiscough, bishop of Salisbury. The bishop’s bailiff was a powerful figure in the city of Salisbury, occupying a superior position to the mayor, who had to be sworn in before him. Yet despite the resentment of the civic authorities towards the bishop’s rule, the citizens were prepared to elect Whittocksmead as their parliamentary representative, even if they baulked at paying him the full rate for his expenses. Thus, in his sixth Parliament, summoned to meet on 12 Feb. 1449, Whittocksmead sat for Salisbury, along with another lawyer, Philip Morgan*, after the two men agreed to serve in the Commons for ‘half wages’. Even so, more than two and a half years were to elapse before their account was settled satisfactorily, with each of them receiving £5 13s. 4d. First General Entry Bk. Salisbury (Wilts. Rec. Soc. liv), 425, 444, 446. Whittocksmead did not represent Salisbury again. In the following Parliament, that of November 1449, he was returned for Bath, as he had been in his youth. He had maintained contact with the citizens there, who continued to enfeoff him of their property. Ancient Deeds Bath, IV 84.

Shortly before the Parliament assembled for its second session, in January 1450, Whittocksmead was among those whom Reynold West, Lord de la Warre, selected to be trustees of his widespread estates, in a body headed by the chancellor, Archbishop Stafford, and Thomas Uvedale*. Lord Reynold died the following August, but this was by no means the end of Whittocksmead’s involvement in his affairs, for he and Uvedale had been named as his principal executors, a duty which caused them many concerns over the next 20 years. While bringing suits for the recovery of de la Warre’s debts, they also had to face the demands of his creditors. CPR, 1446-52, p. 311; 1452-61, p. 237; 1467-77, p. 118; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 217-19; C1/20/155-6; CP40/829, cart. rot. 3. Nor, of course, was de la Warre the only prominent figure to die in that disastrous summer of 1450, scarred as it was by the catastrophic loss of Normandy and the outbreak of Cade’s rebellion. The third session of the Parliament, called to Leicester on 29 Apr., was terminated early in June when news of the uprisings in the south reached the assembly. At the end of the month Whittocksmead’s employer Bishop Aiscough was murdered and rumours spread of a general breakdown of law and order in Wiltshire. In a letter James Gresham wrote to John Paston* on 19 Aug., telling him about the fall of Cherbourg and the dispatch of justices of oyer and terminer into Kent, he reported that ‘I wrot to myn em that there were ix or xml men up in Wiltshire, and I hadde it of the report of Whittokkesmede; but I trowe it is not so, for here is now littel speche therof’. Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 42. Whittocksmead, one of the justices of the peace of the quorum in Wiltshire, was appointed to commissions to arrest and judge the rebels there (on 20 Sept.), and then as a justice of oyer and terminer on 10 Oct. CPR, 1446-52, pp. 433, 434. It was consistent with his authoritative position at the height of this crisis that he should have been elected three days later to represent the county in the Parliament summoned to meet on 6 Nov. His fellow knight of the shire was John Russell II*, a retainer of the duke of York, who having returned from Ireland had actively canvassed for his supporters to be elected to the Commons. Pertinent to Whittocksmead’s election was the fact that, while remaining linked with the Hungerfords, he had also won the confidence of the new bishop of Salisbury, Richard Beauchamp, who after his translation to the see kept him on as bailiff of the liberties for two decades. They also had dealings in property, notably an exchange of land in Ramsbury so the bp. could enlarge his park: CPR, 1452-61, p. 471.

Perhaps as a reward for his steadfast conduct during these troubled times, in June 1451, not long after the Parliament of 1450-1 ended, Whittocksmead was committed the farm of alnage in Wiltshire and the city of Salisbury, to hold for seven years along with John Manuch, a London draper. After some hiccups regarding their tenure in 1453, this farm was extended to last until 1460, although Whittocksmead lost it in May 1459. CFR, xviii. 193; xix. 10, 12, 63, 219. Also in 1451 he had been made escheator of Wiltshire and Hampshire, and during his term, in December, he shared with the keeper of the privy seal, Master Andrew Huls, the keeping of the tithes and other dues pertaining to the rectory of Broad Hinton for 15 years. CFR, xviii. 246. This farm and the alnagership may well have proved lucrative. Whittocksmead also sought to make profits elsewhere: in May 1452 he went into partnership with a Bristol merchant, obtaining a licence to trade to Bayonne; however, the loss of Guyenne little more than a year later must have put an end to their venture. DKR, xlviii. 391. There are records of Whittocksmead’s connexion with London mercers and linen-drapers, which may also relate to commercial enterprises, rather than to his practice as a lawyer. CCR, 1447-54, pp. 328, 499. Nevertheless, he had continued to be active in the law-courts, and transactions from 1449 onwards linked him closely with Richard Chokke, the serjeant-at-law and future judge, for whom he acted as a feoffee. CCR, 1447-54, pp. 242-3; 1447-54, pp. 344, 347, 349; Som. Feet of Fines, 121; E159/232, commissiones, Hil.

After sitting in three Parliaments running in the years 1449-51, Whittocksmead did not apparently gain election to the Reading Parliament of 1453. When returned to Parliament again, in 1455, it was once more as representative for a borough; he was never to sit again as a shire knight. During this decade he was kept increasingly busy as a j.p. and justice of gaol delivery as well as on numerous ad hoc commissions of local government. Such official activities left him exposed to prosecution for misdemeanours; accordingly, as ‘of Benacre, gentleman’, he purchased a pardon in January 1458, which referred to his positions as j.p., bailiff of the liberties of the bishop of Salisbury, and former escheator. C67/42, m. 40; writs of non molestetis to the Exchequer: E159/234, recorda, Hil. rot. 6, brevia Hil. rot. 21d. The civil war years of 1459-61 saw Whittocksmead continuously employed by the Lancastrian government until its defeat at the battle of Northampton. The new regime under Edward IV saw no reason to dispense with his services, finding him as useful a workhorse as its predecessor had done. Indeed, he was assiduous in carrying out his duties. KB9/135/36. Few rewards of much substance were forthcoming, although at the Exchequer in January 1462 he was committed keeping of the manor of Charlton by Upavon for seven years. Other appearances in the Exchequer were made for clients like the abbess of Wilton, and the keeper of the manor of Chesynbury, CFR, xx. 50-51, 55; E403/824, m. 3. Whittocksmead had continued to provide counsel for the borough of Wilton, which returned him to two Parliaments of the 1460s – those which assembled at Westminster in 1463 and 1467. Although stated to be a ‘non-burgess’ in 1442-3, he had been admitted to the freedom by the time lists of burgesses started to be compiled in 1467, and continued as such until his death: Wilton stewards’ accts. G25/1/88; gen. entry bk. G25/1/21, ff. 581-9, 591-8.

Throughout that decade Whittocksmead kept his position as bailiff of the liberties of Bishop Beauchamp of Salisbury, despite the increasing antagonism of such of Salisbury’s citizens as his old adversary John Hall and Thomas Freeman*. Under the terms of the will made by Walter Shirley* in 1425, a capital messuage known as ‘Balle’s Place’ and a tenement next door were to be sold to provide religious services. By 1455 the properties had come into Whittocksmead’s possession, but Hall and Freeman took exception to this, and on 10 June 1461 at the head of a mob forced their way into the buildings, asserting that they belonged to the city and that the bishop’s bailiff had defied an ‘acte made in our semble hows’. Whittocksmead, threatened with death, had the satisfaction of hearing indictments against the perpetrators at sessions of the peace at Malmesbury in 1464, although the citizens kept the property and Hall, tried in the King’s bench, was eventually released sine die in 1470. KB27/818, rex rot. 26; Wilts. Arch. Mag. lix. 161-2. There are hints that Whittocksmead backed the wrong horse during the Readeption, for he was dropped from the bench when Edward IV regained his throne in the spring of 1471. Furthermore, at an unknown date shortly after Michaelmas that year he was also removed from office as bailiff of the bishop of Salisbury’s liberties. This suggests a temporary loss of confidence in him by the restored Yorkist government. His relationship with Richard, Lord de la Warre, may have had something to do with it. As executors of de la Warre’s father, he and (Sir) Thomas Uvedale had been obstructed by Lord Richard in their attempts to pay the testator’s debts; C1/20/155-6. but nevertheless they were prepared to help him in November 1471 when his estates were handed over to feoffees to hold to the use of Edward IV, until the King should be satisfied of a fine of 1,000 marks imposed on de la Warre for his treacherous behaviour during Edward’s exile. CCR, 1468-76, nos. 807, 999.

Whittocksmead was restored to the bench in April 1472, and returned for Cricklade to his last known Parliament in September that year. His final appointment as a j.p. was dated February 1481; he was left off the list in July 1483. CPR, 1476-85, p. 577. His career had spanned nearly 55 years, so he must by then have entered his eighth decade. The precise date of his death is not known, although in a list of borough officers for Wilton chosen at Michaelmas 1482 his name was given as one of the burgesses, only to be crossed out later that accounting year and the words ‘mort est’ written alongside. Wilton gen. entry bk. G25/1/21, f. 44.

By contrast with many other contemporary lawyers, Whittocksmead was not notable for his accumulation of wealth and property. Nor did he rise to the heights of his profession like his erstwhile colleagues Juyn and Chokke. He did not marry for money or status, and nor did his only known child – a daughter who wed an obscure ‘gentleman’ called Giles Gore. Bridgwater Bor. Archs. 1445-68 (Som. Rec. Soc. lx), 858. If Whittocksmead was survived by a son or sons we have no record of it. What we do still have is a commonplace book compiled by or for him, which besides revealing a good deal about his personal interests shows him to have been well educated. Yale University, Beinecke Lib. Osborn mss, 163. It is not surprising, given that he had sat in so many Parliaments, that this miscellany contained among its numerous texts a copy of the Modus Tenendi Parliamentum. Much more unusual was a draft of the protestation of a Speaker. Written in English, the protestation relates to a Parliament opened by the archbishop of Canterbury as chancellor on a Friday in an unspecified year. Only two of the Parliaments of Whittocksmead’s lifetime fit these criteria – those summoned to meet on 3 Feb. 1413 and 10 Feb. 1447. The possibilities are that his father had been a Member of the Commons of 1413 and passed down to him a copy of the text, or that he himself sat in the Parliament of Bury St. Edmunds, albeit for a constituency elsewhere than in Somerset and Wiltshire. Alternatively, he obtained this unique early record from another MP. Ibid. ff. 16-23; Parliamentary Texts of the Later Middle Ages ed. Pronay and Taylor, 65-79 (the Modus), 198-201 (the Speaker’s protestation). Pronay and Taylor dismissed the Bury St. Edmunds Parliament of 1447 as a possibility, because the document speaks of ‘the house accustunyd’, which they took to refer to Westminster. Unaware of the date of Whittocksmead’s death, they ascribed the protestation to Edmund Dudley†, Speaker in the Parliament of 1504. Whittocksmead included in his book a treatise on equine medicine, indicating his concern for the well-being of his horses; G.R. Keiser, ‘Medicines for Horses’, Yale University Lib. Gazette (Apr. 1995), 111-30. remedies for human ailments (among them ‘medicine for a ffelon approvyd’, for ‘the pokks, the Rede evyll and the clayfykes’, and ‘A fayr medysys agenst pestylence’); a list of about 185 recipes for dishes for the table; advice about how best to keep wine (for instance what to do about ‘wyne that begynneth to boyle agen, ... that is longe and fatte in the mouthe, ... that is to grene’); a poem about falconry; the popular hunting treatise ‘The Master of Game’; and an astrological treatise ‘The Wise Book of Philosophers’. Among the works in Latin are a vision of purgatory, a treatise on the interpretation of dreams, and a collection of tales known as ‘The Seven Sages of Rome’. Not an overly pious man, Whittocksmead noted down few prayers, and, curiously, although he thought to keep verses about the Exchequer, there is nothing in his book reflecting the many hours he must have spent in the law-courts, or mulling over legal arguments; the most surprising omissions are legal texts.