WINGFIELD, Sir Robert

A member of a family long established in East Anglia, Wingfield was one of unruliest of that region’s gentry. The heir to an estate centred at Letheringham in Suffolk, he succeeded his father and namesake at the tender age of six. CIPM, xix. 538. His wardship was sought by several prominent figures, including the prince of Wales, the duke of York and Joan de Bohun, countess of Hereford. Another claimant was his great-aunt, Elizabeth, widow of Sir William Elmham†, who won custody of the boy from the Crown for only 100 marks in April 1410, in recognition of the great costs she had suffered in defending her claim. CCR, 1409-13, p. 1; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 17; DL42/16 (2), f. 50v. It is likely that she had also faced competition for the wardship from the Earl Marshal, John Mowbray (Joan de Bohun’s great nephew), since in May the same year a Mowbray retainer, William Petistre, paid the King a fine of 20 marks for counterfeiting various charters and other muniments relating to the Wingfield inheritance. CFR, xiii. 186. As it happened, after Elizabeth Elmham’s death in 1419 or 1420, Mowbray succeeded in gaining the wardship and he had married the boy to his half-sister, Elizabeth Goushill, by the autumn of 1422. On 3 Sept. that year, in preparation for his marriage to Isabel Mowbray, the earl’s sister of the full blood, James, Lord Berkeley, conveyed Berkeley castle and other estates to Wingfield, Thomas Stanley II* (who had married Elizabeth Goushill’s sister Joan) and other feoffees. Moye, 81.

In April 1423 Wingfield contracted with Mowbray to campaign with him in France, accompanied by his own small force of ten men-at-arms and 22 archers. Add. Roll 17209. Three years later, he and the earl’s eldest son were knighted at Leicester, where Parliament was then sitting. No doubt he enjoyed the support of Mowbray, by then duke of Norfolk, when he stood for election to the Commons in 1427 and 1429, even if the duke was never especially involved in East Anglian affairs. R.E. Archer, ‘The Mowbrays’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1984), 149, 207. In 1427 Wingfield’s fellow knight of the shire was another Mowbray retainer, Gilbert Debenham I*, whom the Crown appointed sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk after the Parliament opened. Debenham was still sheriff when the assembly dissolved in March 1428, and it fell upon him to pay the wages of those counties’ knights of the shire from the issues of his bailiwick. Shortly after he had completed his term in the shrievalty, however, Wingfield took action against him in the Exchequer. Sir Robert stated that he was owed a total of £25 8s. for his wages as an MP but that Debenham had paid him no more than £16 13s. 4d. E5/484. Whatever the outcome of the case, he and Debenham, with whom he was again returned to the Commons in 1432 and 1437, were associated with each other as partners in crime during the mid 1430s. Wingfield returned to France in 1430, accompanying the duke of Norfolk on Henry VI’s coronation expedition there. After arriving back in England, he became steward of the Mowbray estates in Suffolk, an office which his patron bestowed on him for life. Moye, 81; DKR, xlviii. 276.

The duke died in October 1432, leaving a young and inexperienced son and heir. Another John, the 3rd Mowbray duke of Norfolk proved an inept lord. Prone to acts of lawlessness, he was also unable to control his retainers, most notably Wingfield, who now embarked on a long career of wrongdoing. Not long after the new duke succeeded his father rivalries between the Mowbray following and the affinity of William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, began to cause dangerous tensions in East Anglia. These came to the fore with the murder of James Andrew†, a lawyer closely connected with the de la Poles, in the summer of 1434. Both Wingfield and Gilbert Debenham were implicated in the crime. Andrew had quarrelled with the Mowbray retainer, Richard Sterysacre†, and shortly before his death he had sought sureties of the peace from Wingfield and other supporters of his opponent. Although the authorities had prepared writs requiring Wingfield and his associates to provide the desired securities, a group of Mowbray men had ambushed and killed Andrew near Bury St. Edmunds on the night of 21 July, before they could be served. The killers had then fled to Bury, where Wingfield, Debenham and others had provided them with shelter and protected them from arrest. Denied justice, the murdered man’s widow and son, John Andrew III*, and their friends sought help from the earl of Suffolk. Fearing serious clashes between the de la Pole and Mowbray affinities, the Council summoned the two lords to appear before it in mid February 1435. The Crown’s intervention ensured the peaceful laying of indictments and these, along with appeals for murder sued by Andrew’s widow, led to lengthy proceedings in the court of King’s bench. Procs. Suff. Inst. Archaeology, xxxiv. 263-8; KB27/710, rex rot. 19. Later that year, the authorities took a bond from Wingfield as a security, upon pain of 200 marks, for his good behaviour towards John Andrew in particular and the King’s lieges in general. KB27/718, rex rot. 7.

In the meantime Wingfield became embroiled in further disputes, and by the beginning of 1436 he was a prisoner in the Marshalsea at Southwark, either in connexion with the Andrew murder or with other quarrels. One of these other disputes was with John Ulveston*, a de la Pole retainer and lawyer who had helped to secure his indictment for aiding James Andrew’s killers. Taking advantage of Wingfield’s confinement, Ulveston brought a bill against the knight in King’s bench. He alleged that Wingfield had assaulted him in the London parish of St. Dunstan in the West on the previous 1 July, putting him in such fear of his life that he dared not go about his business in the City until late the following October. Responding to the bill, Wingfield denied using any violence against his opponent. He asserted that he had merely peacefully admonished Ulveston – upon encountering him at St. Paul’s cathedral – for his role in the indictment of the previous year. In the following Easter term Wingfield, by then again at liberty, began legal proceedings of his own in the court of common pleas, claiming to have suffered an assault in the City at Ulveston’s hands in November 1435. Ulveston pleaded not guilty and the matter was referred to a trial, only for Wingfield to fail to pursue his suit, suggesting that it had never been any more than a vexatious action. KB27/700, rot. 33; 701, rot. 9d; CP40/701, rot. 131; 702, rot. 158; 703, rot. 217d. Soon afterwards, he was at odds with Sir William Wolf*, his fellow knight of the shire in 1429. Whether a symptom or the cause of their dispute, there was a fracas between him and Sir William at the shire-house in Ipswich, as a result of which he forfeited the 200 marks penalty attached to the bond he had entered into the previous year. KB27/718, rex rots. 7, 18d. In spite of Wingfield’s unruly behaviour, the Crown appointed him steward of the honour of Richmond in Norfolk a few weeks later. At the beginning of the following year he was again elected MP for Suffolk and in July 1437 he received a royal pardon. C67/38, m. 8. In the early summer of 1439 he took out letters of protection prior to going abroad with the duke of Norfolk, who was a member of a delegation appointed to treat for peace with the French. Shortly before the ambassadors departed Mowbray procured for him another pardon, for all indictments and appeals of felony, so allowing him to escape any punishment for the death of James Andrew. DKR, xlviii. 328; PPC, v. 335-407; CPR, 1436-41, p. 303.

The Andrew affair coincided with a quarrel between Wingfield and Robert Lyston, another esquire connected with the de la Poles. The dispute was over three manors at Badingham, Dallinghoo and Creeting St. Peter in Suffolk, properties which had once belonged to Sir William Carbonel, from whom both Sir Robert and Lyston could claim descent. In his will of 1423 Sir William’s grandson, Sir John Carbonel*, had directed that the Lystons should succeed to his estate if his own family died out in the male line, but an inquisition held in Suffolk after the death of the last male Carbonel in the early 1430s declared that Wingfield was his heir. Norf. RO, Norwich consist. ct., Reg. Hyrnyng, ff. 134-5; Add. 19122, f. 204; CIPM, xxiii. 623. It is quite possible that the MP had ‘laboured’ the jury to produce this finding, which Robert Lyston refused to accept. On more than one occasion Wingfield ejected his opponent from the manors and the two men went to law against each other. In one lawsuit Lyston won damages of 700 marks but Wingfield responded with a countersuit for trespass in Nottinghamshire, to have his opponent outlawed and incapable of pursuing any further action through the courts. He succeeded in his purpose and, following machinations involving the duke of Norfolk, the Crown awarded the outlawed man’s goods and the 700 marks to Mowbray, to whom it happened to be in debt. To the consternation of Lyston’s patron, the earl of Suffolk, Mowbray then assigned the money to Wingfield. CPR, 1436-41, pp. 458, 475-6; Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 21-22; M. Hastings, Ct. Common Pleas, 213; Sel. Cases in Exchequer Chamber (Selden Soc. li), 71-79. The duke and Sir Robert further aggrieved the earl by quarrelling with John Heydon*, a de la Pole retainer who had provided Lyston with legal counsel, and Suffolk appears to have played a part in securing their subsequent arrest and imprisonment. The duke of Norfolk was sent to the Tower of London and in July 1440, probably on his release, he entered an enormous bond of 10,000 marks to keep to his promise that he would do Heydon no harm. In the following September the government, having already issued a commission for Wingfield’s arrest, sent him a letter commanding him to surrender to the constable of the Tower or his deputy. He had no choice but to obey and he remained in the Tower until mid June 1441. R.L. Storey, End of House of Lancaster, 226; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 451-2; CCR, 1435-41, pp. 395, 420. As it happened, his struggle with Lyston was all for nothing, because in the end his opponent won possession of the Carbonel lands. CIPM Hen. VII, i. 700.

The unchastened Wingfield was soon crossing swords again with the earl of Suffolk, who sued him in 1442 for assaulting and imprisoning one of his servants at Framlingham. CP40/727, rot. 278. Not long afterwards he also fell out with the duke of Norfolk. During the MP’s incarceration in the Tower the duke had entrusted the stewardship of the Mowbray estates in Suffolk to Robert Crane. To his great resentment, Wingfield did not recover the office upon his release; instead it remained with Crane. Another, much more serious cause of friction between Sir Robert and Mowbray was the manor of Hoo, situated immediately to the west of Letheringham. The previous duke of Norfolk had granted it to Wingfield and his wife for life but Mowbray, having decided to annul the grant, sent Sir Robert Conyers*, Thomas Sharneburne* and other of his retainers to seize the property in August 1443. A few weeks later, a band of the duke’s men rode to Letheringham, where they were said to have assaulted Wingfield’s wife and attempted to abduct Elizabeth, one of his daughters. Wingfield struck back by forcibly ejecting one of Mowbray’s servants from lands at nearby Easton in the following October. He also complained to the Council and in November the same year the duke was obliged to enter a bond for £2,000, to guarantee that he would appear before it in the next Easter term and keep the peace towards his estranged retainer in the meantime. In due course the matter was referred to arbitration and the two men were reconciled. On 1 May 1444 the duke restored Wingfield to his stewardship, and three days later he made him and his wife tenants for life of his manor of Weston by Baldock in Hertfordshire, presumably to compensate them for the loss of Hoo. Moye, 83-84; KB27/730, rex rot. 51d; 734, rex rot. 3; 735, rex. rot. 37; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 196, 213, 215. The earl of Suffolk, who was a party to the grant of Weston to the couple, now began to draw Wingfield into his own circle. Perhaps he saw this as the best means of keeping him under control; it is otherwise hard to see why he should have wanted to associate with such a reprobate. In 1444-5 Wingfield was among those who accompanied de la Pole to France from where they escorted Henry VI’s bride, Margaret of Anjou, back to England. Add. 23938, ff. 5, 13v. Upon his return home, however, he soon fell back into old ways. In June 1445 he entered the house at Southwark of Alexander Shelton, a former soldier now serving in the administration of Ireland, and abducted his wife, Joan. In a petition he afterwards submitted to the Crown, the aggrieved Shelton complained that, as was openly known, Wingfield was keeping Joan (presumably as his concubine) in the house of another Mowbray follower, John Framlingham*, a resident of Debenham, Suffolk. SC8/248/12359; CPR, 1441-6, pp. 253, 419.

In spite of having formed links with de la Pole, Wingfield remained in the duke of Norfolk’s service for a little while longer. Before the end of 1445 Mowbray appointed him receiver-general of his lands, and in the following year Wingfield was acting as the duke’s lieutenant as marshal of England. Initially upon becoming receiver-general, Wingfield, lacking in training for such a responsibility, which involved the handling of considerable sums of money, enjoyed the assistance of his immediate predecessor, John Felyngley. Notwithstanding his co-operation with Felyngley, he soon fell out with another member of the ducal administration, John Leventhorpe, treasurer of Mowbray’s household, in the autumn of 1447. He then quarrelled violently with Mowbray himself, possibly over charges of peculation or mismanagement which Leventhorpe had levelled against him. Whatever the case, the duke went to law, claiming that Wingfield had not accounted for the year 1446-7 and seeking damages of no less than £1,000. Moye, 84-86; KB145/6/30; CP40/759, rot. 340. In the meantime Sir Robert was committed to the Marshalsea prison for his lawless activities in Suffolk. While in custody, he was the subject of a bill presented in King’s bench by his erstwhile associate, Gilbert Debenham, and of a letter to the Crown from William Weathereld* and two other j.p.s from the borough of Ipswich. In the bill, Debenham accused Wingfield of having attacked his servant, Thomas Talbot, at Ipswich on 16 Sept. 1447, an incident to which the j.p.s referred in their letter. They stated that one of Wingfield’s servants had struck Talbot with many nearly fatal blows of the sword and that Wingfield himself, along with Talbot’s assailant and three others of his followers, had broken into a house with the intention of beating up a local resident. They also alleged that on the same day two of Wingfield’s men had attacked Thomas Andrew (probably a younger son of James Andrew) in the town, striking him on the head with a sword and cutting off one of his thumbs, and that Wingfield had protected them from the borough authorities. They concluded their letter with the assertion that no local jury dared to lay any indictments against Wingfield and his men. KB27/746, rot. 115d, rex. rot. 46.

Brought to King’s bench to answer the j.p.s’ charges, Wingfield acquired licence to negotiate with them out of court and was released from prison on bail. He obtained a general pardon in February 1448, probably with the support of the queen and through friendships formed with courtiers while accompanying her to England in 1445: among those who stood bail for him were the Household men, John Trevelyan* and Henry Langton*. He certainly benefited from the patronage of Queen Margaret on another occasion, apparently in the late 1440s, when she wrote to the duke of Norfolk, requesting that he should restore his ‘good lordship’ to Wingfield and his sons. CPR, 1446-52, p. 130; Letters Margaret of Anjou (Cam. Soc. lxxxvi), 155. Just weeks before the issuing of the general pardon, however, the Crown had appointed a commission of oyer and terminer to inquire into the offences Wingfield had committed in Suffolk. At the resulting sessions the presenting juries charged him with numerous instances of assault, abduction, extortion and other wrongdoings, some of them dating back to the 1430s. It is very likely that the duke of Norfolk had briefed the jurors beforehand, as many of the indictments related to offences allegedly committed against him or his servants. According to one indictment, Wingfield had hunted in the duke’s deer park at Earl Soham in July 1446. Another related to the escape from prison of his son, Robert, whom the duke, acting in his capacity as a j.p., had imprisoned at Melton in late 1447. The jurors stated that early in the following year Wingfield had sent his son-in-law William Brandon†, husband of his eldest daughter Elizabeth, and a band of armed men to Melton, where they had assaulted the gaoler and forcibly released Robert. A third indictment found that Wingfield himself, hoping to find and kill John Leventhorpe, had led an attack on a house at Wickham Market on 10 Jan. 1448. Moye, 86-89; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 137, 259; KB9/257/44, 53-59; KB27/747, rex rots. 7, 26; 748, rex rot. 31d; Norf. Archaeology, xxxvi. 307. In response to the indictments, Wingfield protested his innocence and produced his general pardon, but within a matter of weeks he was back in the Marshalsea. This time his imprisonment related to trespasses he had committed against Mowbray’s tenant, the Suffolk esquire Robert Martin. Upon his release on 24 Apr. 1448, he was obliged to provide financial securities, he in £200 and his mainpernors, Sir John Griffith of Wichnor, Staffordshire, and Sir John Curson of Belaugh, Norfolk, in £100 each, that he would do no harm to Martin. Just three months later, however, he assaulted the latter at Rougham in west Suffolk. KB27/754, rex rot. 35.

The breach between the duke of Norfolk and Wingfield became irreconcilable after Mowbray led an armed attack on Letheringham in the summer of the same year. Following the attack, Wingfield complained to the Council that the duke and his men, among them Gilbert Debenham, had ransacked his house, hunted his deer and taken away goods and money worth some £2,200 and three chests containing charters and other muniments. The Council responded to his complaint by committing the duke to the Tower on 28 Aug., and four days later a commission of oyer and terminer was appointed to investigate the matter. Released on the following 3 Sept., Mowbray was ordered to pay Wingfield compensation of no less than 3,500 marks, but it is very unlikely that he ever satisfied the MP of that sum in full. Moye, 89-91; CPR, 1446-52, p. 236. Storey, 226-7, links the assault on Letheringham with the dispute over Hoo in 1443, but Moye’s argument (pp. 90n-91n) that it occurred in 1448 is more convincing. After the events of 1447-8, the Mowbrays never again entrusted control of their finances to any one man, an indication that financial malfeasance had indeed occurred during Wingfield’s term as the duke’s receiver-general. Moye, 91.

Following his final estrangement from the duke of Norfolk, Wingfield became firmly identified with the Court. His son Robert joined him in this switch of loyalties, obtaining royal letters of protection in May 1450, prior to embarking for Normandy with Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, one of the most important members of the Court faction. C81/1265/10. Sir Robert’s new-found connexion with the Court probably explains why he was elected to the Parliament of 1449-50 as a knight of the shire for Hertfordshire, since by now he had lost his tenancy of the manor of Weston by Baldock, Moye, 428. and he is not known to have had any other interest in that county. As it happened, this assembly was an uncomfortable one for those associated with the Court interest, since the Commons, strongly critical of those close to the King, impeached his chief minister, William de la Pole, by then duke of Suffolk. Five days after the Parliament opened, the MP appeared in King’s bench to answer for attacking Robert Martin in 1448, for which hot-headed behaviour he and his pledges stood to forfeit a total of £400, and just days after it ended a jury found him guilty of assault. In the event he escaped any penalty because the King, in acknowledgement of his ‘good services’, pardoned him his offences on 25 June 1450. KB27/754, rex rot. 35. Within two weeks of the Parliament’s dissolution, Wingfield rode to Kent to help to put down Cade’s rebellion. In spite of the rebels’ defeat, local juries were afterwards bold enough to indict him and other members of the Household for their conduct while in that county. The jurors accused them of having illegally seized horses and money there and Wingfield was also found to have led an assault against John Myche at Eynsford on 18 June, a fracas in which Myche lost his right ear. R. Virgoe, ‘Ancient Indictments in K.B.’, in Med. Kentish Soc. (Kent Rec. Soc. xviii), 242; Storey, 67. Wingfield faced further criticism when a new Parliament met the following autumn, and his name appeared in a list of those whom the Commons wished to have removed from the King’s presence. PROME, xii. 184-6. His inclusion in the list demonstrates how closely associated with the Court he had now become, although it is also possible that the duke of Norfolk, who had allied himself with the Court’s main opponent, Richard, duke of York, had insisted upon it. P. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 92.

After 1450 Wingfield seems largely to have retired from public life although he was appointed to an ad hoc commission at the end of the following year. He was still active in pursuit of his own affairs in the meantime, taking legal action against Henry Bodrugan†, then a prisoner in the Marshalsea, in early 1451. He alleged that Bodrugan had taken clothing, jewels and other household items worth £60 and £13 in cash belonging to him in the parish of St. James Garlickhithe, London, possibly from a house he owned in that parish. KB146/6/29/2. Having acquired another royal pardon on 20 June 1452, C67/40, m. 8. Sir Robert made a will for his lands while in Cambridge in the following October. PCC 1 Stockton. His heir was his eldest son, John, but he awarded his wife the manors of Letheringham and Laxfield for life, C140/81/59. and dower rights in all his other holdings, save a manor at Hollesley in south-east Suffolk which he appears to have set aside for the younger Robert Wingfield. He also provided for three other younger sons, Thomas (who would sit for Norfolk in the Parliament of 1461), William and Henry, although another, Richard, is not mentioned. Both Thomas and William were to have ten marks a year for life from the issues of his manor at Sutton (also in the south-east of the county), while Henry was to have the neighbouring manor of Shottisham. If Henry found himself troubled in his possession, he was to surrender Shottisham to his elder brother, John (who would have greater resources with which to defend the property), and to take a like annuity of ten marks from Sutton instead. Evidently Wingfield’s title to the manor, which he appears to have acquired from John Mariot and his wife in about 1444, was not as sound as he would have wished. CP25(1)/224/118/7. The will refers to three daughters, Elizabeth Brandon, Anne and Katherine. Unlike Elizabeth, Anne and Katherine were then still single and he awarded each of them a marriage portion of £100. The will also shows that Wingfield owned a house at Harwich, where he had presided at courts held in that Mowbray borough as a steward for the widow of the second duke of Norfolk. Ct. rolls for Harwich, D/B 4/38/6-8. He ordered his executors (his wife, Elizabeth, and sons, John and Robert) to sell it to help them pay off some of his debts, towards which he also set aside a year’s income from his manor of Westhall in north-east Suffolk. In a separate testament, Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Kempe, ff. 297v-298. The testament bears the date 3 Nov. ‘1453’, presumably an error for 1452 since it was proved on 12 May 1453. A writ of diem clausit extremum for him was issued to the sheriff of Norf. and Suff. on 5 July 1453 (misdated 1452 in CFR, xix. 3). Wingfield asked to be buried with his ancestors in the church at Letheringham priory. He awarded an annual fee of 20s. to a canon of the priory whom he wished to sing for his soul and he also asked his household chaplain, Thomas Brokle, to pray for him for a year after his decease. For the priory he ordered a vestment bearing his arms and those of his wife and he left ten marks towards the maintenance of its buildings. His wife was to have his best grey horse and he left horses and armour to each of his sons. He also mentioned legacies of 166 marks and 100 marks which the two brothers, Ralph and John Rochford, had respectively left to him in their wills of 1444. He was an executor for both of these men, whom he referred to as his ‘cousins’, and he instructed his own executors to dispose of the money on good works. Dead by May 1453, Wingfield was buried in an impressive canopied tomb in Letheringham priory, where in due course his widow was laid beside him. PCC 32 Luffenham (PROB11/3, ff. 249v-50); Procs. Suff. Inst. Archaeology, xxxiii. 183. Some two years after his death, Wingfield’s executors faced litigation from a couple of his erstwhile adversaries, John Heydon and John Andrew III. The pair sought £20 from his estate, a debt arising from bonds he had entered into with them at Westminster – the circumstances are unknown – in early 1449. CP40/776, rot. 430.