BEAUCHAMP, Sir William

The future Lord St. Amand was born to a distinguished family, as one of the grandsons of Sir John Beauchamp† (d.c.1389) and nephew of Sir William Beauchamp† (d.c.1421) of Powick. He was to join his cousins John Beauchamp, later created Lord Beauchamp of Powick, and Ralph Butler, created Lord Sudeley, among the leading members of Henry VI’s household, enjoying a close personal relationship with the King.10 For his association with Sudeley, see CCR, 1441-7, p. 479; 1447-54, p. 16; 1454-61, p. 61. That William was destined for royal service is not surprising: his father Sir Walter (Speaker in the Parliament of March 1416), had been made treasurer of the household of Henry V and was named by that monarch as an executor of his will. Following King Henry’s death Sir Walter served not only as a member of the council of regency (one of only three commoners to be so appointed), but as steward of the household of Queen Katherine for the first year of the infant Henry VI’s reign.11 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 158-60, 458; J.S. Roskell, ‘Three Wilts. Speakers’, Wilts. Arch. Mag. lvi. 342-58.

Father and son were named together in October 1426, when Robert Long* accused the two of them of assaulting him at Bromham (the Beauchamps’ seat). The matter was serious enough for a commission of oyer and terminer to be appointed to investigate, but the background to their quarrel is not revealed.12 CPR, 1422-9, pp. 401-2. Perhaps it had something to do with our MP’s marriage. Not long before, Sir Walter had arranged for his eldest son, who had not yet come of age, a potentially lucrative match with Elizabeth Braybrooke, one of the coheirs to the estates of Amauri, 4th Lord St. Amand, who had died in 1402. At his death Lord St. Amand’s heirs had been his daughter Ida (who herself died childless in 1416) and his grandson Gerard Braybrooke, and when the latter died in 1422 his coheirs were his four daughters, three of whom (Eleanor, who died shortly afterwards, Elizabeth and Maud), were the children of his first wife, and the fourth, another Eleanor, born to his second wife, was perhaps posthumous. Lord St. Amand’s widow was yet living; by the time she died, in May 1426, Elizabeth had become the wife of our MP and her sister Maud had married John Babington; partition of the inheritance was made between them, with the Crown retaining custody of the third part, pertaining to their young half-sister. Beauchamp’s wife’s share included estates in Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Devon.13 CP, xi. 300-3; CIPM, xx. 540-2; xxii. 562-70; CFR, xv. 133-4. More bounty was to come, for Maud Babington died childless before the end of the year, and was followed to the grave by Eleanor Braybrooke in August 1428. This left Elizabeth Beauchamp as sole heir to St. Amand.14 CFR, xv. 143, 252-4; CIPM, xxiii. 225-7.

Furthermore, by then Elizabeth was also sole surviving heir to her paternal grandfather Sir Gerard Braybrooke, who died a wealthy man in 1429, able to leave in his will sums of money amounting to over £1,100. Even though much of this money was intended for Sir Gerard’s religious foundations, and Elizabeth’s inheritance was depleted by his bequests, he did bequeath to her personal gifts including an extremely precious relic – part of the True Cross – and his psalter, besides the more worldly possessions of a bed with embroidered red silk covers, curtains and cushions.15 Reg. Chichele, ii. 413; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 346-9. From Sir Gerard Elizabeth inherited four more manors in Bedfordshire, including Colmworth and Blunham, and in Huntingdonshire that of Orton Longueville.16 Harl. Chs. 45 I 28, 52 D 48; Harl. rolls A21, 22, D17, H14, O41; Add. Ch. 16471; Egerton 3540. However, some of her grandfather’s estates did not automatically fall to her and her husband, and this caused the couple difficulties in the 1430s. The overall value of Beauchamp’s wife’s estates is hard to discover. At her death she was holding lands spread over eight counties and said to be worth £337 p.a., of which about £250 came from her own inheritance, the rest from her late husband’s, but this was probably an underestimate of her income.17 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 727-34, 752.

Before his wife entered her full inheritance Beauchamp’s career had been advanced by his entry into the royal Household, where in 1428 his father was appointed one of four knights who were to attend continually on the King’s person under the supervision of his tutor, the Beauchamps’ kinsman, Richard, earl of Warwick. William’s younger brother, Richard (afterwards bishop of Salisbury) could later claim that he ‘grew up almost from the cradle’ with Henry VI (although, of course, he was several years older than the King), and this proximity to Henry applied to William too, and was to be a constant factor in his life from then on.18 CSP Milan, 64. Their father Sir Walter, who was also master of the King’s horse, cut a prominent figure at the coronation at Westminster abbey on 5 Nov. 1429, as also did William, who, knighted the evening before, was entitled to wear robes specially made for him.19 E361/6, rots. 19d, 20. Yet Sir Walter was a sick man, and having named his sons Sir William and Richard as his executors along with their mother, he died just a few weeks later, on 1 Jan. Through his marriage to the Roches coheiress Sir Walter held estates in Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire worth over £100 p.a., but these were not to fall to our MP until his mother’s death 17 years later.20 PCC 12 Luffenham (PROB11/3, f. 95v); Feudal Aids, vi. 421, 530; CIPM, xxiii. 494-6. Yet Sir William’s place in the Household was assured: he, his cousin Sir John Beauchamp of Powick and a more distant kinsman Sir Thomas Beauchamp* were all numbered among the knights of the King’s chamber,21 E101/408/9. and on 6 Feb. he and Sir John were two of the four elite knights appointed to the ceremonial office of carvers and given 40 marks each as a reward.22 E404/46/182. Naturally, they were expected to accompany young Henry to France for his coronation there, as members of an army led by the earl of Warwick, and just a few days later Sir William contracted to take with him a personal force of 12 men-at-arms and 36 archers. They sailed for Calais in April, and remained overseas for nearly two years.23 E404/46/221; DKR, xlviii. 268, 272, 274; Griffiths, Hen. VI, 57. On their return home in 1432 the four carvers were each awarded annuities of £40 for their diligent service.24 CPR, 1429-36, p. 267. Sir William was to remain a carver and leading knight of the chamber until his death 25 years later.25 E101/408/23-25; 409/8, 9, 11, 16; 410/1, 3, 6, 9.

The extent of Beauchamp’s influence on the education and development of the young King can only be guessed, yet, since it excited no lasting contemporary criticism, it would appear to have been benign in character. On a more official basis he attended the great council which met in April and May 1434 to discuss the future conduct of the war in France,26 PPC, iv. 213. and that same spring he was naturally included among those required to take the generally-administered oath not to maintain law-breakers in the localities.27 CPR, 1429-36, p. 370. He began to be involved in local government, initially as a j.p. in Bedfordshire (as was to be expected given his status as a landowner there), a role which he continued to fill almost without break until his death. A mark of royal favour came in February 1436 when he was committed keeping for five years of manors in Berkshire granted by Henry V to Sir William Porter† in tail-mail and now reverted to the Crown.28 CFR, xvi. 265. Later that year he was appointed sheriff of Wiltshire for the first of three periods in office, although in the course of the term, on 2 Apr. 1437, he was made chamberlain of North Wales, an appointment which might have been expected to take him away from his shrieval duties. In May (Sir) Thomas Stanley II* and the under chamberlain Henry Norris of Lancashire entered recognizances in £2,000 to him, promising that Norris would discharge Beauchaump of all receipts taken by him as under chamberlain and save him harmless.29 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 61, 162; CCR, 1435-41, p. 120. The office entitled Beauchamp to a fee of £20 p.a., and initially the privilege of rendering account to the King in person, ‘as is seemly for him to do’, although this provision was later changed so that he would account at the exchequer at Caernarvon. It seems likely that Beauchamp did travel to Wales at the end of the year, to carry out an important commission to raise revenues for the Crown, but he was never long from the King’s side, and it looks as if his deputy Norris generally did most of the work. Indeed, Norris formally accounted for the office from Michaelmas 1438, and Beauchamp was soon to be replaced as chamberlain.30 Add. Roll 26597; Griffiths, King and Country, 175.

For Beauchamp the 1430s were also a period when he was preoccupied with putting forward claims to more of the estates of his wife’s grandfather Braybrooke and her St. Amand ancestors. In 1432 the couple laid claim to the manor of Middleton near Bishop’s Lynn in Norfolk, as entailed on the Braybrooke line, although in the same year Beauchamp relinquished any title he might have to the Braybrooke manor of Horsenden in Buckinghamshire. In another lawsuit, concerning Harlington in Bedfordshire, the Beauchamps attempted to delay proceedings in 1433 by asserting that Elizabeth was under age, a ploy quickly exposed when she appeared in court and was seen to be a mature woman.31 Peds. Plea Rolls ed. Wrottesley, 345, 356; CP40/688, rot. 330d; CCR, 1429-35, p. 188. Harlington was later in the Beauchamps’ possession: Egerton 3540, f. 15. Other more contentious dealings in these years concerned the former St. Amand estates. Final concords made in 1433 and 1438 and relating to lands in seven counties, placed various of them in the hands of the Beauchamps’ feoffees, headed by Elizabeth’s kinsman Master Reynold Kentwood, the dean of St. Paul’s,32 Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 476; VCH Berks. iv. 28; CP25(1)/292/69/213. although they were required to make a formal quitclaim to Sir Robert Shotesbrooke*, the friend and executor of the late Lord St. Amand’s widow, Lady Eleanor, of the manor of West Woodhay and lands elsewhere in Berkshire and Hampshire, which she had held.33 CP25(1)/292/67/141; CCR, 1429-35, p. 289. Beauchamp’s mother also gave up any claim she might have had to the property. The pardon Sir William and his wife took out in July 1437 was probably intended to protect them from the consequences of litigation regarding the St. Amand estates.34 C67/38, m. 17.

This did not stop them laying claim to the valuable manors of Ampthill, Milbrook and Houghton in Bedfordshire, over which there arose considerable controversy. John, Lord Fanhope, who had purchased them from Lady St. Amand, was informed that our MP and his servants had slandered him, by asserting that they were subject to an entail in favour of Beauchamp’s wife ‘pretending her heir to the Lord St. Amand’. Fanhope personally asked the King to call Beauchamp to Chancery to show his title, but when Beauchamp did appear, in May 1438, it was only to state that he need not show his evidences ‘without lawful process’. Shotesbrooke, called to bear witness, declared that the disputed properties had been held by Lady Eleanor in fee simple; he himself had never seen documentation of any entail, and he swore that all deeds relating to the inheritance of Beauchamp’s wife which he had once had in his possession had been delivered to Beauchamp after Lady Eleanor’s death. When the court reconvened Beauchamp said it was ‘comen noyse’ in Bedfordshire that the manors were entailed to his wife, and that certain deeds showing that to be the case had been burnt in Lord St. Amand’s lifetime. Shotesbrooke filled in the picture by recalling that Eleanor had been distressed at the prospect of being left destitute if St. Amand were to be persuaded to make settlements to the advantage of his issue by his previous wife, whereupon her husband, responding that ‘I had lever that thei were all an hanged’, had refused to seal the deeds and cast them into the fire. Shotesbrooke stated that at formal sessions held in Wiltshire before the escheator Beauchamp’s father had accused Lady Eleanor herself of burning the evidences, but he swore on his life that this was not so.35 C44/27/21; S.J. Payling, ‘Ampthill Dispute’, EHR, civ. 886-7. In the event, the Beauchamps’ bid proved unsuccessful, and Sir William and his mother made formal quitclaims of the manors to Fanhope in October 1440.36 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 431-2; CP40/720, cart. rot. He had sued a number of men from Ampthill for trespass: CPR, 1441-6, p. 18.

Beauchamp’s futile strivings to increase his wife’s inheritance had not affected his position at the Court, nor the benefits he derived from his proximity to a King whose generosity was so easy to prompt. He was briefly given the stewardship of the royal courts in Bristol, and when he surrendered it four months later in March 1439 he received in lieu 20 marks a year from the petty custom collected on the quaysides there. At the same time he was granted for life a huge annuity of 100 marks from the issues of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire. This was followed in June 1440 with the reversion of the keepership of Clarendon forest and park and of other forests in Wiltshire, to fall in after the death of the King’s uncle the duke of Gloucester.37 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 220, 251, 286, 444; E159/217, recorda Mich. rot. 2. It seems that all this while he had continued to receive the annuity of £40 given him eight years earlier, although the record is somewhat confused. This annuity had initially been derived from the fee farm of Dorchester, but in June 1440 half of it was charged instead on the manor of Chesterton, Huntingdonshire, and four months later £20 p.a. was assigned less specifically on the issues of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire. Then, in March 1442 he was granted an annual rent of £15, also for life, from the farm of the manor of Ridgwell in Essex. Although subsequent changes in the sources of revenue for the annuity may indicate that he had difficulty in obtaining payment, theoretically his royal annuities at this time amounted to £122 6s. 8d.38 E159/217, recorda Hil. rots. 13, 13d, 219, brevia Mich. rots. 1d, 3, recorda Trin. rot. 1d; CPR, 1436-41, p. 472; 1441-6, pp. 43, 65, 178; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 22-23, 101.

Beauchamp’s appointment as sheriff of Devon in 1439 had presented him with practical problems, in part owing to his absence from his bailiwick and failure to carry out his official duties with due diligence. Roger Sturte, a clerk sued by the abbot of Tavistock for a debt of £1,000, claimed that the judgement of a county court held in July 1440 was invalid as the sheriff was not present and his under sheriff was not qualified to be a judge.39 CP40/728, rot. 463. In September following Beauchamp secured a commission of oyer and terminer to hear his complaint that when he had sent his bailiff to South Tawton to hear a plea, the man had been assaulted and kept prisoner.40 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 500-1. The collection of Crown revenues in Devon also caused him difficulties, and in Hilary term 1441 he brought pleas against ten men responsible for receiving issues from the county on his behalf.41 CP40/720, rot. 55. A serious charge arose from his actions in imprisoning in Exeter castle a local merchant called William Burgeyne, to answer for a debt. The merchant continued to languish there, infected by numerous illnesses, for seven years without trial; Beauchamp was to be distrained by a successor in the shrievalty to bring the prisoner to the court of common pleas.42 CP40/745, rot. 165.

Even more serious than his absenteeism from the West Country was Beauchamp’s failure to carry out the duties attached to his other posts. In August 1442 he was granted keeping of Beaumaris castle, to hold from the death of Sir Richard Walkstead. Precisely when he actually took over the office is uncertain, but his was one of a number of ill-conceived appointments of household servants to the constableships of royal castles. The prime concern of the King and his advisers was to use office as a means of reward, and the regular employment of deputies enabled courtiers to be appointed in royal franchises far afield.43 CPR, 1441-6, p. 89; Griffiths, Hen. VI, 331, 343. As with Wales, so too with the appointment of administrative personnel in Guyenne. Two years later the captaincy of Blaye, with the castles of Fronsac and Blaignac, was given for life to our MP, undoubtedly in the knowledge that he would never go there in person.44 C61/132, m. 3. Indeed, Beauchamp clearly spent most of his time at Court. Thus, in April 1443 he was present at Kennington when the King gave licence to the duke of Gloucester and others to transfer possession of Pembroke priory to Salisbury cathedral; he was associated with the secretaries of the King and Cardinal Beaufort in a gift of goods and chattels in 1445; he attended Queen Margaret’s coronation that same year, and his continued presence at Court led to him being a recipient of her New Year’s gifts.45 PPC, v. 266; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 354-5; A.R. Myers, Crown, Household and Parl. 212. Further royal grants gave him two pipes of red wine yearly in the port of London and a tun more at Bristol, sinecure posts to hold during the minority of his kinsman Henry Beauchamp, duke of Warwick,46 CPR, 1441-6, pp. 318, 432, 446; 1446-52, p. 119. Warwick had earlier written to Beauchamp as his ‘cousin’: Surr. Hist. Centre, More Molyneux Fam. of Loseley Park mss, 6729/2/14. and tenure for life of lands sometime of Baldwin Freville in Yatesbury, Wiltshire.47 CPR, 1446-52, p. 149.

Beauchamp’s election on 10 Jan. 1447 as one of the knights of the shire for Wiltshire in the Parliament summoned to meet on 10 Feb. at Cambridge was doubtless owed to his exalted and influential position in the Household. It was later held that the Parliament (which in the event assembled at Bury St. Edmunds) had been summoned expressly for the arrest and trial for treason of Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, and although the duke was indeed arrested on 18 Feb. he died five days later before charges had been made. The Commons contained an abnormally large number of Household men, many of them linked with William de la Pole, marquess of Suffolk, the duke’s opponent. Beauchamp’s fellow shire-knight, John St. Loe*, was like him a newcomer to the Commons and one of those closest to the monarch, as an esquire for the King’s body. However, of Beauchamp’s personal relations either with the ill-fated duke or with the marquess of Suffolk, little may be discovered. Gloucester was, of course, a prominent landowner in Wiltshire, and Beauchamp stood to take over his keepership of Clarendon park when he died. They were almost certainly acquainted, and in the previous September our MP had been associated with one of Gloucester’s leading servants as an arbiter in a dispute over property in Chippenham.48 Tropenell Cart. ed. Davies, i. 87-88. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 65, confusing him with his late uncle Sir William Beauchamp of Powick, states that he was the duke of Gloucester’s chamberlain. In fact, the acct. concerned, Westminster abbey mun. 12161, was dated 1419 – ten years before our MP was knighted. See, The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 161. There is nothing to indicate that he wished the duke ill. Nor was he ever a particularly close associate of Suffolk, their main point of contact coming in the following November when they were both part of a group appointed governors of Ivychurch priory, and this was an official rather than a personal matter.49 CPR, 1446-52, p. 137. The courtiers benefited from Duke Humphrey’s death: on 9 June Beauchamp was formally granted in tail-male the keeping of Clarendon park and the Wiltshire forests,50 CPR, 1446-52, p. 55. yet this does not mean that he had wished to hasten it. At Bury his mind may well have been on other things. While the Parliament attended to matters of national importance, he busied himself with private affairs. His mother had recently died, and five days into the parliamentary session writs de diem clausit extremum were issued to inquire into her landed holdings, but without waiting for any inquests to be held, just three days later, on 18 Feb., Beauchamp obtained a royal licence to enter his inheritance, and was excused payment of any relief due to the Crown.51 CFR, xviii. 44; CPR, 1446-52, p. 49; E159/224, brevia Hil. rot. 7d; CCR, 1441-7, p. 421. There is no sign that the formal inquisitions were ever held.

Beauchamp was not elected to the Commons when Parliament was next called, to meet on 12 Feb. 1449, but on the following 22 May he received a personal summons, as Lord St. Amand, to attend the second session, currently being held at Westminster. He thus joined in the Lords his cousin and fellow royal carver Sir John Beauchamp, who had been summoned to the previous Parliament as Lord Beauchamp of Powick.52 CCR, 1447-54, p. 106; Griffiths, Hen. VI, 357. It might be conjectured that he owed his elevation to de la Pole, now duke of Suffolk, yet, as we have seen, no evidence survives to suggest that the two men were on especially friendly terms. More likely, he had to thank for his elevation his personal relations with a King always willing to give intimates anything they requested. An example of this came a few months later, when Lord William and his cousin Lord John were granted the reversion of the lucrative office of chancellor of the Exchequer.53 Only to give up this reversionary interest five years later: CPR, 1446-52, p. 313; 1452-61, p. 43. The two cousins both survived unscathed the political crises of 1449-50. St. Amand was present at Westminster for Suffolk’s sentencing on 17 Mar. 1450, during the second session of the Parliament which had opened in the previous November. More important, he was one of a group of nine men who during the third session, held at Leicester in the spring, secured an exemption from the Act of Resumption of all grants made to them altogether, as individuals, or jointly with others. There is good reason to believe that the nine singled out in this distinctive way were the King’s principal counsellors at the Leicester session.54 PROME, xii. 105, 121; J. Watts, Hen. VI and the Politics of Kingship, 283. The others were Visc. Beaumont, Lords Cromwell, Sudeley, Beauchamp of Powick, Stourton* and Saye, Sir Edmund Hungerford* and (Sir) Thomas Stanley II.

It is not recorded whether St. Amand was at the King’s side in the royal army massed at Blackheath on 19 June 1450, to face Cade’s rebels, but this seems very likely. Even if so, he escaped the opprobrium heaped on the treasurer, James Fiennes*, Lord Saye, who, abandoned by the King, was arrested, sent to the Tower, tried for treason and ignominiously beheaded by command of Cade. Nor did contemporary polemic associate St. Amand with the duke of Suffolk, who had been murdered in May, or with Bishop Aiscough of Salisbury, who was killed by rioters on 29 June. Aiscough’s episcopal manors in Wiltshire were looted, and on 22 July St. Amand was commissioned to safeguard any of the bishop’s goods, jewels and money he could find. This was in preparation for the translation to the vacant see of his own brother Richard, the bishop of Hereford, which happened just three weeks later on 14 Aug.55 CPR, 1446-52, p. 387; Oxf. DNB, ‘Beauchamp, Richard’. The next day Lord William attended a service of thanksgiving in Westminster abbey following the suppression of the rebellion, and on 21 Sept. in consideration of his ‘grete attendance’ and the ‘grete costes and charges hadde of long tyme aboute our persone’, the King made him a handsome gift of £100.56 E404/67/33. Clearly, he had continued to be absent from his post at Beaumaris, where he was nominally constable. Earlier in the month the duke of York had landed there on his return from Ireland, despite the attempts of royal officers to prevent his disembarkation. York’s choice of Beaumaris was perhaps predicated by the presence there of a distinguished political prisoner, Eleanor Cobham, the widowed duchess of Gloucester, for by then the myth of the ‘good duke of Gloucester’ had been launched and adopted by him.57 Griffiths, Hen. VI, 648-9; idem, King and Country, 274-5, 266-7, 273-5. Eleanor’s transfer to Beaumaris from the Isle of Man in Mar. 1449 had been organized by Beauchamp’s deputy, at a cost of £150. Beauchamp received 100 marks a year to cover her expenses at Beaumaris, and the same amount for her burial there on 7 July 1452: SC6/1216/7, m. 10; 8, mm. 9, 12; 1217/1, m. 11. The timing of York’s arrival is likely to have caused apprehension at Westminster and uncertainty about his intentions, given that Cade’s rebels had petitioned for the duke to be readmitted to the King’s Council. A letter sent to Lord St. Amand from Humphrey, duke of Buckingham, at Maxstoke in Warwickshire on 21 Sept. offered reassurance. After two personal meetings with York, Buckingham concluded that he would be faithful to the King, even though he was accompanied by a substantial and armed retinue at least 300, perhaps 400, strong. That Buckingham decided to communicate this matter to his ‘cousin’ St. Amand is clear indication that he judged him to be the most reliable person to pass on such urgent news to the King himself and his councillors.58 Loseley Park mss, LM/COR/1/19, discussed by Griffiths, ‘Richard, duke of York, and the Crisis of Hen. VI’s Household, 1450-1’, Jnl. of Med. Hist. xxxviii. 1-6, 12.

Perhaps, too, Buckingham believed that St. Amand shared his own views, which were probably more temperate than those of others about the King. In the same way that Lord William had not been associated in the popular mind with William de la Pole and his supporters, he was not among those linked with Edmund, duke of Somerset, whose malign presence and influence on the King was the subject of a petition from the Commons in the Parliament which met in the following November.59 PROME, xii. 184-6. St. Amand accompanied the King in the early months of 1451 on his peregrinations in Kent for the conduct of commissions of oyer and terminer dealing with offences committed since the previous summer.60 Griffiths, Hen. VI, 662, 665. Another troubled region of concern to the government and its advisors was North Wales, and in April that year Beauchamp once more replaced Sir Thomas Stanley as chamberlain there.61 CPR, 1446-52, p. 419. A ‘remembrance’ sent to him by Thomas Brown II*, the former under treasurer who was still intimately involved in the Crown’s fiscal policies, relates to this time. It advocated that a writ under the privy seal be directed to Stanley ordering him to deliver up the King’s seal and all books, rolls and records pertaining to the exchequer at Caernarvon; and suggested other measures to prevent Stanley from breaking into the exchequer as he had apparently done before. Brown also advised that if a commission were to be sent to inquire about the doings of Henry Norris, Beauchamp should make sure that a baron of the Exchequer at Westminster was appointed to it.62 Loseley Park mss, 6729/7/143; Griffiths, ‘Richard, duke of York’, 6-13. Nevertheless, Beauchamp seems not to have kept the chamberlainship for long, for he had relinquished it to Stanley again before February 1452, and in July both men were appointed to make inquisition in Merioneth as to the reasons why judicial sessions had not been held there for nearly three years, and revenues due to the Crown had not been paid.63 CPR, 1446-52, p. 581.

Yet further indication of St. Amand’s continuing proximity to the King was the commitment to him in association with Thomas Rothwell, the under treasurer, of the keeping of the royal manor of Kennington, which the two men were to hold for ten years from August 1451.64 CFR, xviii. 228. A pardon issued to him in February 1452 of all outstanding fines, amercements and issues no doubt proved useful in protecting him from unwanted demands from the Exchequer.65 CPR, 1446-52, p. 512. Whether in this period St. Amand ever did travel to Wales seems unlikely. Throughout 1452 he made regular appearances in the Exchequer of pleas pursuing a lawsuit against (Sir) John Seymour I*, and in October that year he was with the King, who in view of their ‘grete charges, costes and laboure’ made him and his cousin Lord Beauchamp of Powick a gift of £166 13s. 4d.66 E13/145A, rot. 27; E404/69/45. Furthermore, as compensation for his losses caused by the Act of Resumption of 1450, that same month he was granted for life an annuity of £100, payable from the issues of Norfolk and Suffolk and with effect from the previous Easter.67 CPR, 1452-61, p. 32. His executors later sought payment of the arrears between Easter and Oct. 1452: E159/234, Trin. rot. 5d. In the Parliament which met at Reading on 6 Mar. 1453, St. Amand was named as one of the triers of petitions, and singled out for special notice by the King when, during the second session, held at Westminster, the monarch handed over various schedules on parchment, bearing his signature, which he commanded to be inserted on the parliament roll. This was to make sure that certain people, headed by King Henry’s half-brothers and including Lord William himself, were not prejudiced by any of the acts passed in the Parliament in respect to grants they had by letters patent. The King fell mentally ill shortly afterwards, precipitating a major crisis in government. St. Amand, required to be in attendance on his lord at Windsor, failed to appear at a meeting of the great council held at Westminster on 30 Nov.; nor did he turn up for the parliamentary session called there on 14 Feb. 1454. Although a fortnight later it was ordained that absentees from the Lords should be fined, exceptions were made for him and his cousin Lord Beauchamp, who were said to be needed by the King in the time of his infirmity.68 PROME, xii. 230, 249, 273; Griffiths, King and Country, 309-10. It was also at this time, in Feb. 1454, that the Exchequer was instructed to make sure he received arrears of his annuity, and to take account of his pardon of all fines, granted two years earlier: E159/230, brevia Hil. rots. 11, 20d.

St. Amand was among the peers urged by the Council on the following 17 Apr. to lend money or raise men for the defence of Calais, and among those summoned to attend great councils on 25 June and 21 Oct. Yet his personal service to his royal master remained paramount: in the new ordinances regulating the Household which were issued a month later he and his cousin Lord John were assigned to remain in attendance on the King as before, each of them accorded the assistance of a squire and three yeomen.69 PPC, vi. 177, 186, 216, 222. In view of this commitment, it seems very likely that St. Amand was at the King’s side at St. Albans in May 1455 when battle was engaged with the forces of the duke of York. Even though the Yorkists triumphed, as King Henry’s ‘well beloved knight’ and carver he was exempted from the Act of Resumption passed in the Parliament summoned in July, and formally received a pardon on 8 Nov.70 PROME, xii. 407; C67/41, m. 20. Nevertheless, he neglected to attend the second session of the Parliament, in December 1455, and had to be sent specific instructions to appear for the third session due to assemble on 14 Jan. 1456.71 PPC, vi. 282. Notwithstanding St. Amand’s exemption from the Act of Resumption, his post as keeper of Clarendon forest was annulled, but royal favour ensured that on 18 Sept. following he could secure instead a grant of the office in survivorship to him and his young son and heir, Richard.72 CPR, 1452-61, p. 323.

By a letter dated 27 Jan. 1457 Lord William was summoned to attend a meeting of the great council at Coventry on the following 14 Feb.73 PPC, vi. 334. It may therefore have been at Coventry that he died, probably on 18 Mar. On his deathbed he completed a brief will in which he asked to be buried in the chantry chapel at Steeple Lavington (near the tomb of his father), and named as his executors his wife Elizabeth and son Richard, in conjunction with the Wiltshire lawyer Henry Long*.74 PCC 16 Stokton (PROB11/4, f. 123v). However, the inqs. post mortem give his date of death as 10 or 15 Mar.: C139/164/18; E159/234, recorda Mich. rots. 9, 13. Courts on his Beds. estates were held in his widow’s name from 2 Apr.: Egerton 3540, f. 28. The widowed Lady St. Amand faced some difficulties after his death, in part because their son and heir, born late in their marriage, was still a minor. Inquests held that Lord William had died sole seised of the manor of Cherington, in Gloucestershire, but on 27 June Lady Elizabeth appeared in Chancery to claim that she held it in jointure by a settlement dated 1448. She was promptly granted keeping of the manor, on agreeing to answer at the Exchequer for the issues should they be adjudged to the King. On 12 Oct. Beauchamp’s feoffees were pardoned for acquiring certain manors from him and settling them on him and Elizabeth without royal licence, and a month later she was allowed four Wiltshire manors on the same condition and assigned dower, in the presence of Roger Tocotes† and Henry Long, described as the nearest friends of the heir.75 C139/164/18, 170/50; CPR, 1452-61, p. 393; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 234-5, 243; CFR, xix. 188, 203. These two, together with Walter Taylard* (the Huntingdonshire lawyer who had been a Beauchamp feoffee since 1433) and others were granted on 4 Dec. custody of the remaining lands and the heir’s marriage, in return for a substantial payment of 600 marks.76 CFR, xix. 206; C67/42, m. 42. Not long afterwards, on 10 Apr. 1458, Lady St. Amand obtained a licence to marry again, her choice falling on Tocotes, a Yorkshireman who had been a member of the Beauchamp household at Bromham for some time.77 CPR, 1452-61, p. 420. They married before 4 Oct. 1458: Egerton 3540, f. 40. The couple were confirmed in their possession of the manor of Woodrow by Edward IV in March 1464.78 CP, xi. 300-3; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 727; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 384-5.

In 1481 the late Lord St. Amand’s brother, Bishop Beauchamp, his son Richard (now a knight), and kinsman (perhaps younger son) Thomas Beauchamp esquire, joined Tocotes in paying as much as £300 to the Crown for a licence to found a perpetual chantry in Salisbury cathedral, where four chaplains would celebrate for his soul and those of his parents, as well as for the welfare of the founders. This chantry, to be known as Bishop Beauchamp’s chantry, was endowed with lands worth as much as £50 p.a.79 CPR, 1476-85, p. 276. Lady St. Amand lived on a further ten years.80 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 727-34, 752. In July 1492 her widower Tocotes, by then controller of the Household of Henry VII, together with her son Lord St. Amand and the latter’s wife, founded another perpetual chantry, this one being in a chapel Tocotes had built in the parish church of Bromham. There prayers were to be sung for our MP and his wife.81 CPR, 1485-94, p. 389; Richard III, Crown and People ed. Petre, 116-17. The monumental brass on Lady Elizabeth’s tomb at Bromham, once richly decorated with enamel and gilding, is now fixed to a wall on the north side of the Lady Chapel.82 Wilts. Arch. Mag. xlix. 283-7; Hist. from Marble (Cam. Soc. xciv), 54.