Hugh Willoughby’s biography did not appear in The Commons 1386-1421, because his Membership of the Parliament of October 1416 was unknown when that work was compiled.
The Willoughbys were descended from a Nottingham wool merchant, Ralph Bugge (d.c.1250), and became one of the wealthiest gentry families in England as a result of the remarkable series of land purchases made by Sir Richard Willoughby during a controversial judicial career. At his death in 1362 he held lands in 19 counties with an annual value of between £500 and £700. Thereafter the family went into a half-century of decline: the substantial landed provision the judge made for his younger sons combined with their own alienations to break up this great inheritance. At the time of our MP’s birth in about 1380 the main estates of the family were divided between two of these sons, a cleric, Hugh Willoughby of Risley in Derbyshire, and his younger half-brother, Sir Edmund Willoughby, and Maud, the widow of their elder brother, Sir Richard (d.1369) and wife of the influential Sir John Dabrichecourt†.
Despite the survival of a substantial volume of family papers, Hugh’s early career is obscure. The first reference to him dates from as early as 3 July 1395 when his father granted his wardship and marriage to his maternal grandfather, Sir Hugh Annesley. Since his father died soon after this arrangement was made, it is clear that its purpose was to keep his wardship within the family and to defeat the claims of a feudal superior (although it is not clear what property the younger Edmund held in his own right). Annesley lost little time in contracting Hugh in marriage to Isabel Foljambe, and on 29 May 1396 the manor of Wymeswold was settled on the young couple and their issue. His father’s death at about this time left him as his grandfather’s heir-apparent. He was of age by October 1398 when he presented a kinsman to the church of Willoughby-on-the-Wolds.
By this date Willoughby’s grandfather was already an old man. The issue of the famous judge by his second wife, Joan de Charron (d.1342), he had been born in the mid 1330s,
The early years of Hugh’s tenure of the Willoughby estates were marked by the resolution of several family disputes. The attempts of Hugh the clerk to carve out an hereditary estate for his issue by his concubine severely threatened the integrity of the diminished family inheritance. Some property was permanently lost, and it was fortunate that Hugh, when he took charge of the inheritance, was able to prevent these losses going further. In 1409 an attempt was made to settle the manor of Sutton Passeys and an estate in Wollaton, lands at the very heart of his inheritance, on his cousin, Hugh Willoughby of Risley, the eldest son of Hugh the clerk, but our MP was able to defeat it by compromise. By a fine levied in the following year Hugh of Risley surrendered his claim to these lands and to the manor of ‘Nowers fee’ in Willoughby-on-the-Wolds; in return our MP accepted the loss of the Derbyshire manor of Risley despite the entail that bound it.
Less readily compromised was the claim of Hugh of Risley’s younger brother Edmund to the manor of Dunsby with property at Wigtoft and Swineshead near Boston, granted to him by his father. Our MP’s attempts to recover this Lincolnshire estate led to arbitration. On 22 Jan. 1410 at Sleaford the matter was referred to two Lincolnshire j.p.s,, Thomas Claymond of Great Hale and John Slory of Sleaford, with an umpire to be chosen by Philip Repingdon, bishop of Lincoln, of whose soke of Sleaford the disputed manor was held. This failed to resolve the dispute. In the court of common pleas in Trinity term 1411 the two parties differed as to what had been awarded: Hugh claimed that the arbiters had decreed that he should have the lands at Wigtoft and Swineshead on payment of 20 marks, and Edmund replied that the matter had been referred by the bishop to Sir William Thirning, c.j.c.p., but that the busy justice had failed to act. Despite this disagreement, however, a settlement was not long delayed. Hugh and his grandfather were in a strong negotiating position for Dunsby was bound by an entail of 1355, and it was on these grounds that, in 1412, Sir Edmund recovered the manor against Edmund in the court of common pleas. This proved the immediate prelude to a satisfactory compromise: Sir Edmund conceded the younger Edmund a life interest in the manor at an annual rent of £10 in return for the immediate surrender of the lesser properties in Wigtoft and Swineshead. Later this settlement was revised. On 20 Mar. 1423 the younger Edmund conveyed the manor to feoffees acting for our MP subject to an annual rent of 16 marks for his lifetime.
Hugh is first recorded as taking an active part in Nottinghamshire affairs in 1411. The peace of the northern part of the county was disturbed by a dispute between John Tuxford and Alexander Meryng, and at a failed loveday held at Dunham on 19 Aug. that year our MP was one of the arbiters acting for Meryng. On the following 12 Oct. he made the first of his several appearances at the county hustings, and a few years later he was himself returned to Parliament. The membership of the assembly which met in October 1416 is largely unknown, but an action for parliamentary wages shows that Willoughby was one of the Nottinghamshire MPs.
Nor is there direct evidence that Willoughby served in the campaigns of Henry V, although the possibility cannot be discounted. On 20 May 1417 he conveyed certain of his lesser properties to his father-in-law, Thomas Foljambe, Sir Thomas Gresley†, William Burton* and others. The expressed purposes of this feoffment – the payment of his debts, the marriage of his daughter Elizabeth, the schooling of his children and the reward of his servants – suggest that it may have been part of his preparations for departure on the expedition which began shortly afterwards.
The death of Willoughby’s first wife at the end of that year was the prelude to a major change in his circumstances and a reversal of his family’s declining fortunes. He lost little time in finding a new bride in Margaret, one of the three coheiresses of the wealthy and ancient family of Freville. We can only speculate on what enabled him to make so favourable a match. It is clearly significant that the Frevilles’ manor of Gunthorpe and Lowdham was only a few miles from Wollaton, but even so it might be expected that Margaret, like her two sisters, would have drawn her husband from the neighbourhood of her family’s main estates in Warwickshire. Since in all probability she was already an heiress when she married our MP, her hand would have been open to strong competition had not Willoughby acted so quickly. Her brother died on 3 April 1418; the couple were married by the following 23 May. Competition was not all that was frustrated by such swift action. So was whatever interest the Crown might claim in the bestowal of her hand, for her brother had died in its wardship. On 10 July 1419, two days after the King had ordered the division of the Freville inheritance between the coheirs, the groom bound himself in a recognizance in the sum of £300 to pay any fine due to the King if his marriage without royal licence should be judged by the Council to have been contrary to law. If any such fine was levied, it was of little consequence when weighed against the valuable lands Margaret brought the family. It remains uncertain exactly how the Freville properties were partitioned; for some time each of the heirs enjoyed a third of each component manor, but eventually Margaret was assigned the manors of Middleton, Whitnash and Wykes in Warwickshire, Gunthorpe and Lowdham in Nottinghamshire and Mowne and Ferne in Broadfield in Herefordshire. This substantial addition to his patrimony made Willoughby, on the evidence of the tax returns of 1435-6, the second richest of the gentry of his native county, with an annual income conservatively assessed at £200.
He appears to have won this valuable inheritance without settling upon his wife the large jointure that was so often the price a groom and his family paid for a wealthy heiress. Under the terms of an indenture drawn up between two sets of feoffees, the one representing the groom, the other the bride, on 23 May 1418, it was laid down that, should the couple survive either until issue was born to them or Margaret reached the age of 21, then the manors of Sutton Passeys and ‘Nowers fee’ in Willoughby-on-the-Wolds together with land in Wollaton, Radford and Nottingham should be settled on them in jointure. This was a remarkably modest settlement. Moreover, it made no specific provision for the issue of the marriage. On Margaret’s death the entire Willoughby inheritance was to descend to Hugh’s heirs.
In the immediate aftermath of this marriage Willoughby embarked on a period of intense administrative activity. He attested the four Nottinghamshire elections between November 1421 and February 1426, and in the meantime he was appointed to the county bench and served as escheator. It is unusual to find a man of his wealth holding this latter office and appearing so regularly as an election attestor. It was also out of the ordinary for one of the leading county gentry to sit as frequently as a j.p. as Hugh did in the first years after his appointment. Between October 1424 and July 1430 he attended on 39 of the 61 days on which the j.p.s came together: only the lawyer of the quorum, John Bowes*, was more active in these years.
Willoughby’s emergence into public affairs was, not surprisingly, accompanied by a greater level of involvement in the affairs of his neighbours. In February 1422 he entered into recognizance in Chancery for his cousin, Sir Hugh Annesley, presumably in connexion with Annesley’s confession before the royal council in the previous October that he had drawn military wages even though he had remained in England. As a result of this fraud, he had been committed to the Fleet and had his lands confiscated, and Willoughby was probably acting as one of the sureties for his release. A better indication of the range of his connexions at this date comes in the following year: he entered into an important indenture as a feoffee of John, Lord Grey of Codnor, and in a further agreement with Edmund Willoughby over the manor of Dunsby he employed as his own feoffees three of his wealthiest neighbours, Sir Gervase Clifton*, William Babington, later c.j.c.p., and John Cockfield of Nuthall (near Nottingham), the husband of his first wife’s sister.
In the early 1420s Willoughby was also involved in two well-documented disputes. In the autumn of 1424 Roger Flore*, John Bowes and others were called upon to arbitrate his quarrel with two of his Dunsby neighbours, who claimed to hold the park there as the farmers of his cousin Edmund. More significantly, at about the same time a dispute arose between him and the wealthy Nottinghamshire knight, Sir Nicholas Strelley†. The point of contention – a fosse separating Strelley’s lands at Bilborough from those of our MP at Sutton Passeys – hardly appears very significant, but the identity of the arbiters suggests the matter was not a trivial one. Babington (now chief justice), Clifton, Cockfield, Sir Thomas Chaworth* and Sir Henry Pierrepont*, five of the leading gentry of the county, awarded that Willoughby should have the disputed fosse together with the duty of maintaining it so that Strelley’s livestock should not wander through it and depasture his crops.
Willoughby’s second election to Parliament came soon after and proved to be controversial. He was returned at a county court held at Nottingham on 25 Aug. 1427 in an election attested only by lesser gentry and townsmen. On the following 12 Feb., three months after the Parliament had assembled and little over a month before its prorogation, the King ordered the justices of assize to inquire into the conduct of the election on the grounds that the sheriff’s return had contravened the statute of 1406. Just over two weeks later, at an assize session on 27 Feb., a jury presented that the sheriff, Sir Thomas Gresley, had held the election even though he had neither summoned the suitors of the county court nor received the royal writ authorizing the holding of an election. Further, he had made the return under his own seal alone, without those of the attestors. It was not suggested in the inquiry that the impropriety extended beyond the sheriff, but in view of our MP’s well-established association with Gresley it is possible that the sheriff’s actions were designed to facilitate his return.
In the mid 1430s Sir Hugh turned his attention to the laying of detailed plans to provide for his extensive family. It is a reflection of his wealth that he was able to find heiresses for both his sons by his first wife. By as early as 1428 the younger, Nicholas, had been married to the heiress of the manor of Rand, about ten miles to the north-east of Lincoln, and this explains why he was assessed on an annual income of as much as 20 marks in the tax returns of 1435-6. The inquisition taken on Sir Hugh’s death shows that, in the early 1430s, he transferred his rent of ten marks p.a. from the manor of Elvaston to feoffees so that they might settle it upon Nicholas and his issue, and this was probably his younger son’s deferred marriage settlement.
Nevertheless, although in contracting these marriages Sir Hugh had handsomely served the sons of his dead wife, he soon after embarked on a series of settlements very much to their disadvantage. He decided to increase dramatically the endowment of his second wife and his issue by her. Some increase was justified on two grounds. First, on their marriage he had made only modest provision for her jointure and none for any children they might have. Second, their marriage had proved to be a highly fruitful one. What was not justified was the extent of the increase. Only a few days after the covenant had been made for his eldest son’s marriage, Sir Richard Vernon and Thomas Stokes, who had estate in the family’s ancient manors of Sutton Passeys and ‘Nowers fee’ in Willoughby-on-the-Wolds under the agreement of 1418, conveyed them, not to Sir Hugh and Margaret and Sir Hugh’s issue as had been laid down in 1418, but to the couple in fee. This was the prelude to a series of conveyances even more detrimental to Richard. On 24 Mar. 1435 Sir Hugh conveyed the valuable manor of Wollaton to a group of feoffees, the composition of which can have left Richard in no doubt that his interests were not to be protected. So it soon proved. On 2 June 1438 the feoffees settled Wollaton on Sir Hugh and Margaret for their lives then to the executors of either one of them for three years after the death of the survivor. The further feoffments which quickly followed were probably designed to protect Margaret from the claims of her stepson. A week later Sir Hugh and Margaret made a deed conveying Wollaton to Sir William Plumpton*, Sir Thomas Erdington*, and others to hold for term of their lives, but these feoffees quickly surrendered their interest. Within days the manor was put into the hands of a new group of more exalted status, headed by Humphrey, earl of Stafford, and the two principal officers of state, John Stafford, bishop of Bath and Wells, the chancellor, and Ralph, Lord Cromwell, the treasurer.
The choice of such powerful men clearly demonstrates that Willoughby believed, rightly as it transpired, that the plan he had conceived – of providing his wife with a life interest not only in Wollaton and other properties but in practically the entire Willoughby inheritance – was likely to meet a vigorous challenge after his death. Highly significant in this context is the identity of the feoffees to whom he had entrusted the task of settling Wollaton in jointure and to whom, in May 1435, he had conveyed the lesser manors of Cossington, Hamilton, Car Colston and Bradmore.
In the late 1430s Willoughby became involved in a different sort of controversy. He was drawn, as an honest broker, into a dispute between two of his lesser gentry neighbours, David Preston and John Brokestowe, both of whom either were or had been in his service.
Willoughby is shown in a far less favourable light by allegations made against him in the wake of his term as sheriff of Lincolnshire. In March 1439 an approver, imprisoned in Lincoln castle, appealed Robert Browe* of feloniously receiving livestock stolen from two Nottinghamshire esquires, John Cockfield and John Hickling. On 8 Jan. following an indictment laid before the Kesteven j.p.s alleged that Sir Hugh as sheriff had procured this appeal against Browe and other lesser men with the aim of extorting money from them. Browe had been arrested and paid Willoughby as much as £10 for his release. Eighteen months later, on 16 July 1441, before the Rutland j.p.s sitting at Oakham, a similar indictment was returned, although Willoughby’s offence was re-dated to July 1439 and the jurors gave the additional information that the approver had confessed to the false appeal in the hour of his death. Juries returned the same indictment before the Rutland j.p.s on the following 1 Oct. and again as late as May 1443. Later Willoughby’s executors claimed in the court of common pleas that Browe had, on 24 July 1439, entered into two bonds of £10 each to their testator and had then defaulted upon them. It is very probable that these were bonds entered into in the circumstances described in the earlier indictments, and that the executors had turned them up in going through the dead man’s papers. What cannot be determined is whether Willoughby took these bonds as a method of extortion or for some legitimate reason. It is possible that Browe was guilty of receiving the stolen livestock and had then procured indictments against the sheriff in revenge for being called to account.
Sir Hugh, ‘seing and felyng the fraylnesse of mankynd’, drew up his lengthy will on 15 Sept. 1443.
By far the most important part of Willoughby’s will was the lengthy codicil he added in the following January. Here he gave detailed instructions to his feoffees, the proposed effect of which was to subjugate the interests of his heir, Richard, to those of his second wife and her issue. No doubt conveyances made in the late 1430s, particularly that of the manor of Wollaton, had given Richard a firm indication of what to expect, but even he was probably taken aback by his father’s disregard of his legitimate expectations. The issues of the Willoughby inheritance were to be employed to provide the considerable sum of 200 marks for each of the children who were still unaffianced at Sir Hugh’s death. Yet worse for Richard was his father’s intention to alienate two manors and a valuable parcel of land at the heart of the family inheritance from the senior line: Sir Hugh provided for the settlement of the manors of Sutton Passeys and ‘Nowers’ fee in Willoughby-on-the-Wolds together with his lands in Wollaton (not part of his manor there) on his widow with remainder over to her issue by him and, even more remarkably, to her right heirs. Moreover, other lesser properties, including the small manors of Car Colston and Carlton on Trent, were to be settled on four of his five sons by Margaret with a final legal remainder to her right heirs. Had the provisions of the codicil been carried through Richard would have inherited nothing until after his stepmother’s death, and even then his justifiable expectations would have been much reduced. He had every reason to feel deeply aggrieved, especially since she was little older than himself and had valuable lands in her own right from which she might have been expected to make at least some provision for her large brood.
In these circumstances, it is not surprising that Sir Hugh anticipated that Richard would not acquiesce in the settlement, and that given freedom of action he would attempt to overturn it either by law or force. Hence he added a clause to his will that Richard and his younger brother should, within a year of his death, find security to Margaret not in any way to hinder the performance of the will and make estate to her and her issue of all those lands of which he died seised in fee simple. If they would not do this, their disinheritance was to be carried further and the whole of the Willoughby inheritance would pass to Sir Hugh’s second family. He sought further surety by nominating as his executors, alongside his wife, several of the feoffees who were charged with making his controversial settlements: their son-in-law, Philip Butler, Robert Aston, Master William Scrope and Robert Stoke of Tamworth. The sixth of his executors, William Cumberford*, was clearly intended to provide the others with legal advice. Moreover, Sir Hugh also nominated a formidable body of overseers. Most testators were content to name but one, but he called on the services of John Stafford, archbishop of Canterbury, Humphrey, earl of Stafford, Ralph, Lord Sudley, Lionel, Lord Welles, and John, Lord Scrope of Masham. As death pressed upon him, Willoughby took more direct measures to secure obedience to his wishes. On New Year’s Day 1448 he obliged Richard to swear an oath at Ralph, Lord Cromwell’s manor house at South Wingfield before Cromwell himself, three leading local knights, Sir Thomas Chaworth, Sir Richard Vernon, and Sir Thomas Blount†, and two spiritual representatives, the abbot of Welbeck and the provincial of the Dominican friars, that he would allow Margaret undisturbed possession of the manor of Wollaton and the feoffees to dispose of the other lands according to the terms of the will.
By the time Sir Hugh drew up his will only two of his 11 children by Margaret were married. The marriage of Isabel, his eldest daughter by this marriage, is well documented. In November 1429 he had purchased the marriage and wardship of Philip, son and heir of Sir Philip Butler of Woodhall in Watton (Hertfordshire), from the executors of John Cockayne, j.c.p. Since the Butlers held a manor in Middleton, where Hugh had established a residence, it is easy to see why he should have seen Philip as a suitable son-in-law. A surviving indenture shows some of the terms on which he later contracted Philip to Isabel. Dated 6 Jan. 1436, a month after the groom had proved his age, it witnessed the delivery from our MP to the groom of plate worth £13 3s. 6d. and money to the value of £20 3s. 2d. This is not, however, to be seen as a marriage portion. Sir Hugh had earlier undertaken to provide the couple with goods worth 50 marks, not to the use of the groom but to the common avail of the couple. The indenture explains that Sir Hugh had paid part in money rather than goods so that Philip might the more easily sue livery of his inheritance out of the King’s hands. In return, Philip promised to endow his bride with plate or jewels to the same value as his father-in-law’s cash payment and also to render to Hugh all arrears of rent from the time of his minority. It is not known how much Willoughby paid Cockayne’s executors for the marriage, but, since their testator had purchased the marriage from the Crown for 300 marks, it is unlikely to have been less than that sum. Isabel’s sister Joyce was also married to a landholder from the immediate vicinity of Middleton. By May 1443 she was the wife of Richard Bracebridge of Kingsbury.
Little is known of Sir Hugh’s career in the years after he made his will, and it is likely that there is not much to know. Although he continued to be appointed to the commission of the peace up to his death, he is not recorded as sitting after October 1444.
It may, however, be unfair to accept these charges literally. Sir Hugh’s generosity may have exceeded the bounds of even his great wealth. In promising 200 marks to each of his unmarried younger children, he had placed a potential capital charge of 1,600 marks on his lands. It would thus not be surprising if Margaret had to struggle to satisfy all the demands upon her, particularly in light of the partial reversal of the testator’s land settlement in 1449. Moreover, some of her children were left with nothing to complain about. In the early 1450s she gave her daughter Margery 200 marks, in addition to the plate bequeathed to her by her father, on her marriage to Godfrey, son and heir of Sir Godfrey Hilton† (d.1459) of Irnham in Lincolnshire. Margery’s sister Eleanor did even better: in October 1457 she was provided with a substantial portion of 400 marks, sufficient to win the hand of the heir-apparent of the wealthy Shirley family. The fact that Margaret’s other two daughters seem to married less well – Alice to John Marmyon and Maud to Thomas Preston – may reflect the reduction of the assets at her disposal rather than a failure dutifully to discharge the execution of our MP’s will.
Although the archives of the Willoughby family provide a near-complete picture of Sir Hugh’s land transactions, they give much less information about the administration of his extensive estate. There are few surviving manorial accounts from his period of tenure and no more general accounts. The most regrettable omission is any indication of the value of the coal workings at Wollaton. His will strongly implies that his wealth was greater than that of even a substantial county knight, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that the explanation lies in the profits of coal. By the end of the fifteenth century the coal workings at Wollaton were producing annual profits in excess of £200 p.a., and they must have been of value, albeit a lesser one, during our MP’s tenure. In the award of 1449, which modified his land settlement, there is reference to coal ‘goten’ at Wollaton, but, in the absence of individual accounts for the manor, it is not possible to say how actively it was exploited. Other evidence suggests that Willoughby was keen both to improve and extend his property. He made an alternative residence at his second wife’s Warwickshire manor of Middleton, which he renovated after a period of neglect under its Freville lords.
The disarray in which the Willoughby family found itself on the death of Sir Hugh bears a remarkable similarity to the difficulties it had encountered on the death of Justice Willoughby in 1362. Both the judge and Sir Hugh seriously compromised the prospects of their eldest sons by over-generous provision for their numerous younger offspring. However, recovery was much quicker in the wake of our MP’s death. The childless death of his eldest son in 1471 led to the reunification of the Willoughby and Freville lands in the hands of Sir Hugh’s grandson Sir Henry (d.1528). In combination with the great profits of the Wollaton coalfield, this made him one of the richest lay landholders below the peerage and underpinned a successful political career in which he served both Henry VII and Henry VIII as a knight of the body. He returned the family to the high status it had briefly enjoyed in the mid fourteenth century.