BLAKENEY, John

A Norfolk man of obscure origin,10 He may have come from Wymondham or its vicinity: E210/9548. HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 81, suggests that he was the son of a namesake who was c.j.c.p. in Ireland in the 1420s and 1430s, but this is fanciful since the Irish judge was from a Dublin family: F.E. Ball, Judges in Ire. i. 158-9, 174. Blakeney made his way in the world as a member of the Lancastrian Household and bureaucracy. As a clerk of the signet and usher of the chamber,11 R. Virgoe, ‘Parl. of 1449-50’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1964), 266, suggests that the clerk of the signet and usher of the chamber were two different men, but this is very unlikely. he held positions that were potentially of great influence and profit, and he was an esquire of the Household by the latter 1440s.12 E101/410/3. There is no record of exactly when he joined the signet office, although he was undoubtedly one of its clerks when he accompanied the King’s secretary, Thomas Bekynton, bishop of Bath and Wells, to Gascony in 1442. The purpose of Bekynton’s mission was to discuss an alliance with Jean, count of Armagnac, who had proposed a marriage between his daughter and Henry VI, but its chief effect was to impress upon the government the need to take decisive action to save Gascony from the French. Bekynton arrived at Bordeaux on 16 July and remained in the duchy for over five months. During the mission, one of his retinue kept a diary or journal, and it is possible that Blakeney was its author. The following September the latter was at the deathbed of Sir Robert Clifton*, constable of Bordeaux, to record the dying man’s will in his capacity as a public notary of the diocese of Norwich. Bekynton and his party left Gascony early in the following year and arrived back in England on 10 Feb. 1443. Twelve days later the bishop, then engaged in discussions with Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, at Greenwich, sent Blakeney with a message to the treasurer of England, Ralph, Lord Cromwell, then staying at Edmonton in Middlesex.13 Corresp. Bekynton ed. Williams, ii. 178, 185, 244; A.J. Otway-Ruthven, King’s Secretary, 136n; Norwich consist. ct., Reg. Wylby, ff. 128-9.

The following October, the Crown rewarded Blakeney for his service in Gascony with an annuity of ten marks for life (initially charged upon a fee farm paid by the Carthusian priory at Coventry and then on the customs levied at Southampton).14 CPR, 1441-6, pp. 205, 346. This was just the first of a series of grants made in his favour, for his position in the Household gave him privileged access to the King and, like many other royal servants, he benefited greatly from Henry VI’s misguided largesse. In February 1444 he was awarded the reversion of the customs and tolls levied on carts carrying merchandise through the lordships of Marck and Oye near Calais, to vest after the death of John Montgomery*, who presently enjoyed that privilege. The following year he petitioned for and obtained another reversionary grant intended to come into effect after Montgomery’s death, this time of the offices of bailiff and receiver of the ‘scivinage’ in Calais and the Pas-de-Calais. In the event, he surrendered his future right to these offices soon afterwards, receiving in recompense an annuity of £20 drawn upon the customs of Ipswich until the Crown could find another office of like value for him.15 CPR, 1441-6, pp. 238, 361; 1446-52, p. 57; E28/75/38. In the event, this annuity fell into arrears, so it is questionable how valuable it actually proved to be: E159/226, brevia Mich. rot. 34d; 231, brevia Trin. rot. 10d; 235, brevia Easter rot. 7d. In October 1444, Blakeney obtained the reversion of the Gascon offices of bailli of Pouillon, provost of Libourne and controller of St. Eligius in Bordeaux, after the death of the present incumbent, Peter Durant, and nearly three years later the King granted him the income from certain properties in Bordeaux.16 CPR, 1441-6, p. 332; Cat. des Rolles Gascons ed. Carte, i. 230. In the meantime, he also received grants at home. He and another royal servant, David Lloyd, obtained royal letters, dated 12 May 1446, granting them the keeping of Guildford gaol for their lives in survivorship, for which they received a joint daily wage of 2d. from the issues of Surrey and Sussex.17 E159/224, recorda Mich. rot. 15d. In October the same year, Henry VI granted Blakeney a pipe of red wine from the port of Kingston-upon-Hull each Christmas for the rest of his life,18 CPR, 1446-52, p. 3. and he and Philip Wentworth* received a like grant, this time of two tuns of wine annually, from the port of Ipswich, in August 1447.19 CPR, 1446-52, p. 82. Apart from these grants, in the mid and late 1440s Blakeney gained several ad hoc sums from the Crown, including ten marks in 1444 for tasks relating to the new royal foundations of King’s College, Cambridge, and Eton.20 E404/60/225; 65/75, 205; CPR, 1441-6, pp. 377, 395. His association with King’s was of subsequent benefit to him, since he acquired the lease of the college’s manor of West Wretham, Norfolk, in January 1451.21 King’s Coll., Cambridge, archs. WEW/50. Blakeney’s household position also gave him good opportunities to acquire farms of property that had escheated to the Crown. In May 1450 the King granted him a share in a ten-year lease of a London brewhouse, and in the following month he and William Fastolf, a groom of the King’s chamber, obtained the farm of a manor at Westley in Suffolk and various properties in Cambridgeshire, London and Middlesex for seven years.22 CFR, xviii. 156-7, 159.

During the late 1440s, Blakeney became controller of customs at Great Yarmouth (a position he later held at Bishop’s Lynn), served a term as escheator in Norfolk and Suffolk and sat in three Parliaments. Political circumstances favoured the court when he and Edmund Clere*, a fellow household man for whom he acted as a feoffee,23 CAD, iv. A7875. entered the Bury Parliament of 1447, where Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, one of the foremost critics of the government, was arrested. In his last two Parliaments, Blakeney sat for East Grinstead, undoubtedly as a placeman of the court, since that Sussex borough was part of the royal duchy of Lancaster. The Parliament of November 1449 was probably an uncomfortable one for him, since it impeached the King’s chief minister, William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, and passed an Act of Resumption. In common with other household men, he managed to obtain an exemption from the Act, but he was still obliged to surrender his share of the clerkship of the exchange and Mint in the Tower of London, an office that he had held jointly with Robert Caterton since June 1447.24 PROME, xii. 126. Like other courtiers, he was the object of anti-government satires,25 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 662. and he was among those household men whom the Commons of the Parliament of 1450 asked the King to dismiss from his presence.26 PROME, xii. 184-6. This Parliament drew up another Act of Resumption, from which Blakeney sought an exemption (he was included on a draft list of those who should receive such a privilege), but he was obliged to surrender the annuity of £20 he took from the customs of Ipswich.27 E163/8/14; CPR, 1452-61, p. 90. The fall of the duke of Suffolk had consequences within East Anglia, where local opponents of the court and de la Pole affinity sought redress of their grievances. Sir John Fastolf used the sessions of oyer and terminer that sat in the region between September 1450 and May 1451 to pursue the duke’s officers and councillors, in particular John Ulveston* and John Andrew III*. Ulveston and Andrew had forged two documents purporting to record the outcome of inquisitions held before Blakeney in his capacity as escheator in Norfolk and Suffolk in mid 1449. According to the bogus inquisitions, Fastolf’s manors of Beighton in Norfolk and Bradwell in Suffolk in fact belonged to the young Thomas Fastolf† of Cowhaugh, whose wardship Philip Wentworth, by now a knight, was striving to secure for himself. Blakeney denied that he had authorized them and Sir John paid him 40s. to ride to London to make a formal declaration to this effect in the Exchequer; yet he is likely to have sympathised with Wentworth, a fellow household man.28 A.R. Smith, ‘Litigation and Politics’, in Property and Politics ed. Pollard, 64; idem, ‘Sir John Fastolf’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1982), 205-6.

In spite of the political crises of the early 1450s, Blakeney was able to retain his place at court, and in due course to win further benefits from the Crown. In June 1452, he and Robert Caterton secured new letters patent that restored to them their clerkship at the Tower of London, as well as bestowing it on them in survivorship and backdating their term of office to Michaelmas 1446.29 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 563-4; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 300-1. The following January he became usher of the exchange and Mint at the Tower, another office for life, and he was able to recover his annuity drawn from the customs of Ipswich in July 1453.30 CPR, 1452-61, p. 90. Blakeney was largely unaffected by the change in political circumstances brought about by the Yorkist victory at St. Albans two years later. He did however lose his share in the London brewhouse through the Act of Resumption passed by the Parliament that met in the battle’s aftermath and took the precaution of acquiring a pardon in December 1455.31 CPR, 1461-7, p. 297; C67/41, m. 12. There is no evidence that he participated in any battles of the civil wars, but he did act as a mainpernor for John, Viscount Beaumont, a leading Lancastrian commander, in September 1458.32 CFR, xix. 240.

Adept enough to survive Edward IV’s accession,33 Visser-Fuchs, 54n, suggests that he might have been the John Blakeney whose arrest the new Yorkist government ordered in Aug. 1461, but the commission for the arrest of this man (who in any case was married to an Isabel) indicates that he was from Barnet: CPR, 1461-7, p. 65. Blakeney managed to enter that King’s service as well, for he had rejoined the signet office by March 1463.34 Visser-Fuchs, 44. With his restoration to the royal bureaucracy he soon recovered a degree of influence, and not long afterwards he and Alfred Corneburgh†, a yeoman of the King’s chamber, lent their support to Thomas Chapman of Great Yarmouth in his dispute with John Russe† of the same port.35 Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 281-2. Under Edward IV Blakeney had fewer opportunities for self-enrichment than during the reign of the profligate Henry VI, but in February 1466 he became keeper of the royal manor of Eltham for life, a grant subsequently renewed nearly two and a half years later.36 CPR, 1467-77, p. 91. In the following year, Blakeney was in dispute with the London tailor, Roger Tygo, who had sued him in court of common pleas for his failure to pay for gowns, hoods and cloths supplied to him as far back as 1448. He disputed the claim and, in early 1468, the tailor failed to reappear in court to pursue his suit.37 CP40/825, rot. 530.

In August 1470, Blakeney was with the King at Ripon, where he signed the last datable surviving warrant for Edward’s first reign.38 Visser-Fuchs, 46. The following month he drew up a will, leaving all his possessions to his wife, whom he appointed his executor.39 PCC 3 Wattys (PROB11/6, f. 22v). This is a very short document, but it is likely that his need to prepare for every eventuality during the political crisis of the autumn of 1470, rather than a serious illness, prompted him to make it. At least one of Blakeney’s colleagues in the signet office, Nicholas Harpisfield, went into exile with Edward IV in October that year, but there is no evidence of his own whereabouts during Henry VI’s Readeption. Yet it is clear that he did not commit himself wholeheartedly (if at all) to the cause of the restored Lancastrian King, because he was able to resume work at the signet office after Edward’s return in 1471.40 Visser-Fuchs, 46, 48.

In August 1471, Blakeney was with Edward at Windsor, where on the 21st of that month he quarrelled with his colleague, Harpisfield. A violent fracas followed, during which Harpisfield stabbed him through the heart with his dagger, killing him instantly. It is impossible to tell whether this quarrel was the result of drunkenness, personal antagonism or even political differences, although professional jealousy may have played a part. (From the evidence for Edward’s signet office that survives, it would appear that Nicholas had been the busiest of its clerks until the arrival of the probably more highly qualified Blakeney.) Subsequently indicted and tried for murder, Harpisfield escaped death because as a clerk he was able to plead benefit of clergy. After a short period of imprisonment, he formally declared that he was innocent of murder, a declaration proved by the ‘compurgation’ of a panel of 14 men testifying under oath to his credibility and good character. Despite this, in mid 1475 he agreed to pay Joan, Blakeney’s widow, the substantial sum of £100 in compensation, and he subsequently spent a period in exile abroad.41 Ibid. 48-50; CCR, 1468-76, no. 1488.

It is likely that Joan Blakeney had relied upon her influential family connexions to secure such favourable terms from her husband’s killer. Although her father, John Townshend, had been no more than a prosperous Norfolk yeoman, albeit one associated with the affinity of Thomas, Lord Scales, her brother, Roger†, was a prominent lawyer who counted the queen, Elizabeth Wydeville, among his clients. Joan’s marriage to Blakeney had certainly taken place during her father’s lifetime, for John Townshend settled certain holdings in South Raynham and Wellingham on his daughter and son-in-law in his will of 1466. 42 Visser-Fuchs, 49, 57n; Moreton, 7-8, 14; Reg. Jekkys, ff. 45-46. There is little evidence for Blakeney’s own lands. Apart from West Wretham, his temporary manorial holding, he possessed property at Honingham, a few miles west of Norwich, which in due course descended to his second son and eventual heir, Thomas. Earlier in his career, he had been party to transactions involving small plots of land (not necessarily his) at Wymondham to the south-west of the city.43 E210/9548; C1/19/192. Joan Blakeney probably spent her last days at Norwich, since she was buried in the Blackfriars’ church there after her death in 1503. Whether she remembered her long dead husband with any great affection is open to question. He does not feature in her will; nor in that of Thomas, who provided for a chantry priest to sing for the souls of his mother and other relatives but not for that of his father.44 F. Blomefield, Norf. ii. 448; iv. 338; Regs. Popy, ff. 315-17, Johnson, ff. 205-7.