BAYNARD, Philip

Baynard was born in the final years of Richard II’s reign as grandson of a middling landowner with scattered holdings centring on the family seat of Lackham (in Lacock) and the manor of Hilmarton, in Wiltshire, and Silchester in the north of Hampshire.4 CIPM, xx. 322-3. His career came off to a slow start, for his grandfather and namesake survived until 1415, and at the time of his father’s death on 9 June 1438 he was already 40 years old. Little is heard of him during these early years, but he probably resided at Silchester, with part of which manor he had been endowed pending his succession to the family lands, for he periodically headed juries empanelled a few miles away at Basingstoke to testify at inquisitions post mortem.5 CIPM, xxii. 484; xxiii. 284; xxiv. 660; xxv. 5.

The family estates which should have come to his hands at his father’s death included Lackham, Hilmarton and smaller holdings in Pewsham in Wiltshire, three tenements in Bristol (the inheritance of his paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Dene), and a moiety of the manor of Silchester, known as the ‘Nether Court’. Lackham was at this time held in jointure by Baynard’s stepmother, Joyce, but it seems that they soon arrived at an amicable agreement, under the terms of which Joyce farmed the manor to her stepson in return for an annual pension of £20 and reserved to herself the use of a chapel and two rooms in the south hall.6 CP40/715, rot. 136; Misc. Estate recs. 335/155; Badminton muns., D2700/NR11/1/13-15; CCR, 1435-41, pp. 196, 209. In return for his tenure of the family seat, Baynard agreed to augment Joyce’s jointure in the second moiety of Silchester, known as the ‘Over Court’, by his own share. As a result, the entire manor was entailed on Joyce’s children, Baynard’s siblings of the half blood, and on her death in 1449 passed to our MP’s half-brother, John.7 C139/134/19; C140/80/33; C142/37/131; CFR, xviii. 97; VCH Hants, iv. 53-54. Even so, two years later Baynard’s income was assessed for tax purposes at some £40 p.a., placing him among the wealthiest quarter of the Wiltshire gentry.8 E179/196/118.

Following his father’s death, Baynard assumed his place in the county community. Although he was rarely appointed to royal commissions, he is frequently found serving on local juries, and in 1442 was present at the parliamentary elections in the county court. The following autumn, he was appointed escheator of the joint bailiwick of Hampshire and Wiltshire, and he reached the pinnacle of his career of office-holding in December 1449, when he was pricked sheriff of Wiltshire. This was hardly a desirable appointment. Less than two months earlier, Rouen, the capital of Lancastrian Normandy, had surrendered to the French, and the ports on the south coast were packed with increasingly restive soldiers, who in January killed the keeper of the privy seal, Adam Moleyns, bishop of Chichester. In Parliament, the Commons launched a full-scale attack on Henry VI’s leading minister, William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, who was impeached and exiled, but fell victim to murderers on 2 May on his way to the continent.

By the end of May, the commons of Kent were in open rebellion, and on 3 July they occupied the city of London. The King withdrew to Windsor castle, while some of his ministers whom the rebels had identified as traitors also fled to places of safety. William Aiscough, bishop of Salisbury, made for his castle at Sherborne, but was intercepted and killed at Edington on 29 June. The rioters then turned their attention to the city of Salisbury, raiding the property of the bishop and the cathedral canons in its environs. In July the unrest spread across the county and there was rioting at Tilshead, Devizes, Wilton and Biddestone. On 29 July a group of rebels attempted to ambush Baynard himself at Devizes, and throughout August and September there was further trouble, at Bradenstoke, Edington and Malmesbury. On 20 Sept., finally, the government at Westminster had recovered sufficiently to appoint a high-powered commission to restore order in the region.9 J.N. Hare, ‘Wilts. Risings’, Southern Hist. iv. 14-15; CP40/768, rot. 168d; CPR, 1446-52, p. 434. For Baynard, the risings presented an insurmountable obstacle to the execution of his official duties. In the first weeks of June he had taken delivery of the writ de expensis ordering the levy of the wages for the county’s representatives in the Parliament of 1449 (Nov.). If this levy was always unpopular, the sum sought (£68 for 170 days) came hard on the heels of the only marginally lower wage claim for the Parliament of 1449 (Feb.), which had been collected in the late summer of 1449. Although one of the MPs, Richard Warre*, claimed that Baynard had levied the money within eight days of receiving the writ, it seems more probable that the popular unrest of 1450 all but crushed any hope he had of collecting the money.10 E13/145A, rot. 15; Parliamentarians at Law ed. Kleineke, 415.

Even before the government had appointed its commissioners to put the county at rest, it issued writs for a fresh Parliament to assemble at Westminster in November. The prospect of holding elections in the still restless county must have seemed a daunting one, and the sheriff delayed until 13 Oct. before conducting the hustings in the shire court at Wilton. Baynard may have hoped to be dismissed from office at the usual time in early November, for in flagrant breach of the electoral statutes prohibiting the election of serving sheriffs he returned himself for the borough of Calne.11 C219/16/1/109-11. Yet it was almost a month into the first session before new sheriffs were pricked.

The background to Baynard’s return cannot be established with absolute certainty. It is possible that in the atmosphere of tension prevailing in the county he was simply using all available means to fill up the substantial number of parliamentary seats for which he had to find willing candidates. Alternatively, he may have allowed his name to go forward at the bidding of a powerful patron. While he was not a member of the royal household, he did hold property to farm from Queen Margaret.12 E364/85, rot. A; SC6/1055/19. Moreover, like many other members of the Wiltshire gentry, he was at least loosely attached to the circle of the Lords Hungerford. In 1446 he had served as an attorney to convey seisin of the lordship of Hungerford to Walter, Lord Hungerford† (d.1449), and in subsequent years he headed the juries taking the inquisitions post mortem of both Lord Walter and his son Robert (d.1459). At other times, he attested the property transactions of various members of the Hungerford affinity, such as the grasping lawyer Thomas Tropenell*, while Sir Edmund Hungerford* was the feudal overlord of his manor of Silchester.13 C139/134/19, 135/30, 172/17; DL37/13/48; Tropenell Cart. ed. Davies, i. 89, 102, 371; ii. 154.

The continuation of the Parliament into the spring of 1451 in the first instance protected Baynard from prosecution with regard to his failings as sheriff, but it was not long after the dissolution that his troubles caught up with him. In October, Richard Warre appeared before the barons of the Exchequer to claim his parliamentary wages: only in November 1454 was a settlement reached.14 E13/145A, rots. 1d, 15, 15d. In July 1452 the King’s commissioners sat to try those implicated in the recent unrest: Baynard found himself accused of having stolen some of Bishop Aiscough’s wine more than a week prior to the prelate’s murder.15 KB9/134/1, no. 22. Under the circumstances it is not surprising that he availed himself of the general pardons on offer in both 1452 and 1458.16 C67/40, m. 26; 42, m. 40; E159/234, brevia Trin. rot. 29d.

Few other details of Baynard’s career have come to light. He appears not to have been a quarrelsome man, although he was not above defending his feudal rights in the courts.17 CP40/738, rot. 81d; 779, rot. 497d; 780, rot. 375d; C1/61/397. Yet, perhaps on account of the earlier irregularities in his official conduct, Baynard attracted few Crown appointments in the latter part of his life. He periodically served on local juries, including those of the general oyer and terminer of 1452-3,18 KB9/134/2, mm. 110, 112, 114, 157, 159; C139/164/18, 172/17; Tropenell Cart. ii. 58. and one empanelled in an assize of novel disseisin sued by Thomas Tropenell against Joan Beaushyn in the course of the acquisition of his principal manor of Great Chalfield,19 Tropenell Cart., i. 368. but only in July 1459 was he included in even a minor commission charged with an inquiry into the goods of the recently outlawed William Temys. Nothing is heard of Baynard thereafter, and he may have died about this time. The circumstances of his death are obscure, but it is possible that he fell victim to the open civil war of the final years of Henry VI’s reign.20 In this context, it may be significant that of six successive heads of the Baynard family ranging from his grandfather Philip (d.1415) to his great grandson Robert (d.1536), he alone is not known to have left a will, nor was a writ of diem clausit extremum issued after his death.