HOWTON, George

This MP’s family may have derived its name from Howton in Hereford, for he first appears in the records, in December 1443, styled as ‘of Hereford, gentleman’. Although he had already begun his career as a lawyer in London, his antecedents were not forgotten. Together with a man from Ledbury and two parishioners from the Holborn parish of St. Andrew, outside the bar of the New Temple, he stood surety that Richard Lye, the vicar of the church of Ross, Herefordshire, would come before the justices of the common pleas to answer in an action of debt. Lye failed to do so, and accordingly a year later his bailsmen forfeited their bonds of £5 each. Howton tried to recoup his money by bringing a suit in Chancery against the vicar. His competently drafted petition reveals a well developed knowledge of procedure in the law-courts.8 CPR, 1441-6, p. 317; C1/142/24. It is not certain how Howton came to the attention of the burgesses of Wilton, who returned him to the Parliament summoned to meet at Bury St. Edmunds in February 1447, although it seems very likely that it was through the auspices of Sir Edmund Hungerford*, whose father Sir Walter Hungerford†, Lord Hungerford, was a leading landowner in Wiltshire, and whose own influence in the county was bolstered by his prominent position at the royal court as one of the select group of King’s carvers. The Lower House in the Parliament, widely expected to take action against Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, contained an unusually large proportion of members of the royal Household or their close associates. Howton was one of the latter. Perhaps as a reward for his support, in June, three months after the Parliament was dissolved, Sir Edmund, as chamberlain of the duchy of Lancaster, authorized a writ to the abbess of Lacock abbey to provide a corrody and the office of porter to Howton and Nicholas Brytte (later clerk of the Council), both of whom were described as the King’s servitors. However, she demurred, denying that the abbey had ever bestowed corrodies in this manner.9 DL7/1, no. 61; Somerville, i. 411. Howton probably owed his office as feodary for the duchy in Oxfordshire and Berkshire to Sir Edmund too, although his term is poorly documented, and the date of appointment uncertain. He also found employment as bailiff of the liberties of Cirencester abbey, a post he held for at least five years from 1448. While in office he sat in four consecutive Parliaments in the years 1449 to 1454 for three different Wiltshire boroughs, in none of which is he known to have been resident. Hungerford may well have found his presence in the Commons useful, and made sure that he benefited from royal patronage. On 12 July 1451, not long after the dissolution of the Parliament of 1450-1, Sir Edmund partnered Howton with him in securing a grant at the Exchequer of the keeping of the Wiltshire manor of Marston Meysey for 20 years, at an annual farm of £12. Their association was long to continue.10 CFR, xviii. 208-9.

Following his fifth Parliament Howton entered the fellowship of Lincoln’s Inn, on sureties provided by Sir Edmund’s kinsman, Walter Hungerford. He was pardoned all his vacations and admitted to repasts at his own pleasure, in return for a payment to Thomas Umfray*, one of the Inn’s governors, of the sum of 20s., and a promise to give the society 6s. 8d. and the present of a buck every Trinity term.11 L. Inn Blk. Bk. i. 25, wrongly noted at Mich. 1457: Lincoln’s Inn, London, Black bk. 1, f. 167; L. Inn Adm. 12. Appointment to the potentially lucrative office of alnager of Oxfordshire and Berkshire followed in February 1455, for the long term of 20 years,12 CFR, xix. 103. but in the event the fall of the house of Lancaster meant that he was to keep the post for less than a third of that period. Also in 1455, in June, he was given the post of controller of customs at Yarmouth, despite the change of government following the Yorkist victory at St. Albans.13 CPR, 1452-61, p. 202. Howton’s patron Hungerford remained an influential figure at court in the late 1450s, well able to secure for himself and Howton a renewal of their lease of Marston Meysey for a further 20 years in November 1456, and to renegotiate it in May 1459 for 18 years, on each occasion with only a small increment being added to the original farm.14 CFR, xix. 177, 240. It is indicative of Sir Edmund’s reliance on our MP as a legal adviser that in February 1457 he sent him to the Chancery to take an oath on his behalf that important letters patent addressed to him 14 years earlier had been inadvertently lost, but would be surrendered if found.15 CPR, 1452-61, p. 336.

Where Howton had been living in the period of his parliamentary service is not known for certain, and although Marston Meysey is a possibility (after he acquired the farm of the manor in 1451), a stronger one is Boscombe, a few miles from Salisbury. There, goods and chattels belonging to him and his wife Margery were allegedly stolen by the London draper John Worsop* in September 1455. The Howtons claimed that they had lost jewelry, books, robes and plate worth over £55 and a further £55 in cash kept at Boscombe, although Worsop later brought legal action against them for making a false and malicious indictment.16 KB27/782, rot. 58. Worsop claimed damages of £1,000. The principal manor at Boscombe belonged to the family of Thorpe, whose young heir, John Thorpe (c.1432-1464) had been made Sir Edmund Hungerford’s ward a few years earlier.17 CIPM, xxvi. 519-22; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 2, 554. Howton’s later dealings with John suggest that Margery was a kinswoman (perhaps a sister) of the young man, in which case Howton probably owed his marriage to Hungerford’s gift. Howton’s attempt to establish himself as a landowner across the border in Gloucestershire was destined to be frustrated. In 1454 he had paid ‘grete sumez of money’ to Anselm Rye for a reversionary interest in two manors in that county, only to find that Rye had fraudulently sold the property to others. He petitioned the chancellor for a writ of sub poena to make Rye appear before him on pain of 500 marks.18 C1/1489/87. Although he did not entirely give up his ambitions in Gloucestershire, Howton’s dealings with merchants of Salisbury point to a more permanent residence closer to the city. In February 1459 a local mercer, Thomas Gyle, made him a gift of his moveable goods, and in May that year Howton appeared as a mainpernor at the Exchequer for John Hall II* of Salisbury when he became alnager in the county. On that occasion he was called ‘of London, gentleman’, and it is clear that at least some of the time he continued his legal practice in the capital. A month later Simon Grimsby, esquire, was bound in a debt of £20 to him at the staple of Westminster, but failed to pay on the due date in October, causing Howton to instigate proceedings against him.19 CCR, 1454-61, p. 366; CFR, xix. 219; C241/246/98. He was a recipient of the goods of a London stationer in Nov. 1468 too: CCR, 1468-76, no. 130.

During the civil war years Howton remained closely linked to Sir Edmund Hungerford and members of his household. On 25 July 1460, just a few days after the battle of Northampton, Sir Edmund’s former ward John Thorpe (perhaps our MP’s brother-in-law), expressing his gratitude to Howton for having shown him ‘kindness and friendship ... at great expense and travail’, granted him for life the manor of Oldbury and all his lands in Didmarton, Gloucestershire, at the nominal annual rent of a rose for the first ten years, with provision that if Howton died within that term Hungerford and Nicholas Statham† should hold the property, albeit paying £10 p.a.20 CCR, 1454-61, p. 487. After Edward IV took the throne and Henry VI was exiled, Hungerford was forced to tread a careful line. Nevertheless, in May 1461 he proved able to secure for himself and Howton a renewal of their Exchequer lease of Marston Meysey, and at the same time, and employing the same mainpernors, Howton obtained a continuation for four years of his post as alnager of Oxfordshire and Berkshire. However, for political or other reasons he was removed from the alnagership just a few months later.21 CFR, xx. 20, 24, 26. The pardon he purchased from King Edward in August 1462 referred to his former offices in the duchy of Lancaster and in the service of the abbot of Cirencester, as well as to his position as farmer of Marston Meysey, his addresses now being given as ‘formerly’ of London and ‘alias of Oldbury’. The pardon was a preliminary step to his securing reappointment as duchy feodary, on 15 Sept., with effect from the first day of the reign.22 C67/45, m. 16; Somerville, i. 625.

Howton thought it prudent to purchase another general pardon, on 20 Nov. 1468.23 C67/46, m. 13. This was at a time of renewed crisis in the affairs of the Hungerford family: the heir to the barony, Robert, Lord Hungerford and Moleyns (Sir Edmund’s nephew), had been attainted in Edward IV’s first Parliament and executed after the battle of Hexham in 1464, and only recently the next heir, Thomas Hungerford*, had been arrested for treason after allegedly plotting with the exiled Lancastrians to restore Henry VI to the throne. The young man was executed after a trial conducted at Salisbury in January 1469. Thomas’s great-uncle Sir Edmund had been called to account by the King, and even though he proved able to establish his own loyalty to the Yorkist regime he found himself in a vulnerable position. In the following November he wisely placed his estates in Wiltshire and Somerset for safe-keeping in the hands of a body of feoffees, among them his trusted retainer Howton.24 CP25(1)/294/74/72. Despite Sir Edmund’s long service to Henry VI, both he and Howton laid low during the Readeption and after Edward IV recovered the throne in the spring of 1471 Howton hastened to establish fresh connexions with those in power. On the following 4 July he stood surety for Cardinal Bourgchier when he was granted keeping of the inheritance of Lord Latimer’s grandson.25 CFR, xxi. 65.

This was near the end of Howton’s career. In a will made on 20 Nov. 1473 he requested burial in London in the chancel of the parish church of St. Olave, Silver Street, to which he left small sums of money for its fabric and forgotten tithes.26 PCC 26 Wattys. The candles and torches burning around his body during the exequies were to be shared between St. Olave’s and the friaries at Ludgate and Newgate, while he left 10s to the fraternity of St. Giles outside Cripplegate so that he and his wife would be entered in the bede roll. Howton’s daughter Sybil and son William were each to receive silver-gilt cups and other vessels, while the former was to have a bed with all its furnishings when she married. Howton left instructions that immediately after his death his executors should pay Anne Thorpe, ‘singlewoman’, £4 a year during the minority of her kinsman William Thorpe, a royal ward in Howton’s custody, from the profits of the Thorpes’ manor of Boscombe. It is not known when Howton had acquired this wardship of William, the son and heir of John Thorpe; indeed, eight years earlier the wardship had been granted to Walter Hungerford* (great-nephew of his former patron). Perhaps Hungerford had sold it to him.27 CPR, 1461-7, p. 423. William Thorpe was later said to have been an idiot from birth: C140/69/10. The feoffees of Howton’s house known as ‘Le Hale’ and certain lands, meadows and woods were to pass them on to his son when he reached the age of 26, but no other property was mentioned in the will, and the precise location of ‘Le Hale’ was not supplied. His executors were his widow and his brother Richard, who had made a living as a merchant in Worcester, while as supervisor he named a fellow lawyer, William Paston†. Both Richard Howton and Paston were currently Members of the Commons in the Parliament then in session at Westminster. The date of George’s death is not known; probate was granted on 29 Oct. 1474.