William Phelip the elder, the father of this shire knight, owned a manor in Dennington near Framlingham, and probably also held ‘Brakle’, ‘Phelippes’ and Brundish, properties which at the time of the younger William’s death had a total annual value of £25. The father was a tenant at Little Glemham of William de Ufford, earl of Suffolk (d.1382), whom he served as bailiff of Framlingham and also as a feoffee and executor, receiving from the earl at his death a life annuity of £10 in compensation for the expected loss of the bailiffship. He died in 1407 and his widow Juliana in 1414, both being buried in Dennington church.
In the meantime, William’s brother, John, had been found a place in the household of Henry of Monmouth and had quickly become one of the prince’s personal friends. Both brothers clearly owed their initial success in the courts of the King and prince to their uncle, Sir Thomas Erpingham, to whom they remained closely attached. All three, Erpingham and the Phelip brothers, were trustees of the estates of Sir Andrew Butler of Great Waldingfield, who married William’s sister Katherine; and together William and Butler acted as executors of the will of Sir Robert Tye (d.1414) of Barsham, who referred to Erpingham, whom he named as overseer, as his ‘uncle’. Phelip and Erpingham were often recorded together as co-feoffees of estates in East Anglia, and on occasion Phelip stood surety for his uncle at the Exchequer.
It was no doubt with Erpingham’s help, and with the full approval of Henry IV, that Phelip came to make the important marriage which was eventually to give him territorial standing in several counties. By the summer of 1408 he had secured the hand of one of the daughters and coheirs of Thomas, late Lord Bardolf, whose estates had been forfeited three years earlier for rebellion in support of the earl of Northumberland. The King had granted the confiscated honour of Wormegay to his own half-brother, Sir Thomas Beaufort, and other Bardolf lands had gone to Sir George Dunbar, Sir William Bardolf (Lord Bardolf’s brother) and the queen. Then, too, Lord Bardolf’s widow held certain properties in dower. Yet over the years Phelip and his wife, Joan, in association with her elder sister Anne (wife firstly of Sir William Clifford, who died in 1418, and then of Sir Reynold Cobham of Sterborough), gradually secured possession of all of the Bardolf estates. It was a long process: in 1408 they paid 200 marks to recover the lands held by Dunbar, along with the reversion of the properties held by Sir William Bardolf; and they brought suits in Chancery against Queen Joan and in opposition to Lady Bardolf’s claims to jointure, thereby succeeding in obtaining the reversion of the manors held by the former, but being formally required a few years later not to trouble Lady Bardolf further. In 1413 judgement in another suit won them Hallaton (Leicestershire) from the queen. Lady Bardolf died in 1421, followed by her brother-in-law two years later, but seisin of Queen Joan’s holdings was not to be secured until as late as 1439, after her death. By 1438 it was clear that Phelip’s sister-in-law, Anne, would have no issue and, accordingly, the Phelips were assured of the reversion of her moiety of the estates. Thus, eventually, the whole Bardolf inheritance fell to Sir William and his heirs.
Meanwhile, the fortunes of Erpingham and his nephews had been improved still further by the accession to the throne of Henry of Monmouth in 1413. Erpingham was promptly re-appointed steward of the Household, and his nephews were both knighted on the eve of the coronation. Sir John Phelip, promptly made a knight of the King’s chamber, was singled out for special marks of Henry’s generosity; and Sir William, although never the royal favourite that his brother undoubtedly was, still obtained confirmation of all his annuities and, two years later, was granted more property in London, rent-free.
Partly through the influence of friends, though through his own ability as an administrator as well, Phelip lost little of importance during the long minority of Henry VI, and what he was initially obliged to forgo he eventually recovered. Undoubtedly, his most useful connexion in the early years of the reign was with the King’s great-uncle, Thomas Beaufort, duke of Exeter, with whom he had probably first become acquainted through the duke’s kinswoman, Alice Chaucer, the widow of his brother. Beaufort not only made him a trustee of his estates but also, in December 1426, named him as an executor of his will, under the terms of which he was to have bequests of £40 and a covered cup of silver-gilt. Phelip took a special interest in the future of Exeter’s landed estate, for the duke held in tail the honour of Wormegay (to which his wife had a claim); and when, in February 1427, two of his fellow executors were granted custody of the honour and other manors in Norfolk belonging to the Bardolf inheritance, he himself appeared as their surety. The executorship proved to be an exacting task, involving Phelip in complicated transactions over the wardship of the earl of March’s estates, the disposal of Exeter’s valuable jewellery and financial undertakings in large sums of money. Indeed, Beaufort’s affairs had still not been finally settled by the time of his own death 15 years later.
Later in 1428 Phelip’s uncle Erpingham died, whereupon the nephew, who was an executor of his will, inherited his substantial possessions in Norfolk. Sir William was also enabled to secure custody of several valuable properties which Erpingham had leased from the Crown, notably the manor of Horstead in Norfolk (parcel of the estates of Caen abbey), and substantial holdings in London. Wardships and leases continued to come his way throughout the period of the royal minority.
As the King grew more assertive of his independence, so did his chamberlain Phelip benefit from royal patronage. Thus, in January 1437, he obtained the highly lucrative offices of constable of Wallingford castle and steward of many royal lordships in Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire, posts which had fallen vacant on the death of his sister-in-law Alice’s father, Thomas Chaucer, only to agree, just a month later, to share them with her third husband, William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, with whom he had been closely connected since the time of de la Pole’s minority. Indeed, Phelip and Suffolk long continued to co-operate to their mutual benefit, both men enjoying the personal favour of the King. On 12 May following, only some three weeks after Suffolk had been appointed chief steward of the estates of the duchy of Lancaster north of the Trent, Phelip secured the southern stewardship. Then, in July, having obtained a lease of the alien priory of Creeting St. Mary (Suffolk), he was also granted the custody of the lordship of Swaffham (Norfolk), only to surrender it four months later, in November, so that the earl might have it.
Phelip had risen from the ranks of the minor gentry of Suffolk to be one of the foremost and influential of the lesser nobility of England. A mark of this rise in status was the marriage of his only child to John, Lord Beaumont (elevated to a viscountcy in 1440), a match which had possibly been planned as early as 1428, when Phelip had assisted young Beaumont to secure possession of his inheritance.