DYKEMAN, John

It is uncertain whether Dykeman himself was a native of Wilton, but his second wife was the coheir of Joan Stabbere, the wife of John atte Nende of that town. Joan died in 1420 in possession of a messuage and land in Great Wishford, a few miles away, which she held in chief of the Crown by service of keeping the ‘Northbailly’ in the royal forest of Grovely. Besides our MP’s wife, Agnes, her coheir was her other paternal aunt, Edith, wife of John Stone of Bath. The two women divided the inheritance between them.3 CIPM, xxi. 492; CFR, xiv. 369-70. Agnes’s share consisted of three messuages, six cottages, some 200 acres of arable land, meadows and the ‘Brodehamme’ in Wishford, Stoford and South Newton, worth about £3 p.a., as well as her hereditary right in the bailiwick of Grovely forest.4 C139/118/16.

Dykeman was present at the county court at Wilton to attest the indenture recording the election of the knights of the shire and burgesses of Wiltshire to Henry V’s last Parliament in December 1421, and did so again in 1423, when he himself was one of those returned to represent Chippenham. He is not known to have had any links with the town, situated in the north of the county. However, it is likely that his interest in Grovely forest had brought him to the attention of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, to whom the forest now pertained, and that such a connexion with the Protector might well have been deemed useful by the burgesses. He again attested the Wiltshire elections in 1425, and at those held in 1427 he stood surety for one of the MPs elected for Ludgershall.5 C219/13/5. Dykeman served on juries in Salisbury in May 1428 at inquisitions post mortem concerning the estates of Sir Hugh Luttrell† and Sir John Berkeley†.6 CIPM, xxiii. 51, 106. When elected to Parliament for Wilton in the following year he was called ‘senior’ to distinguish him from his presumed son John Dykeman junior. Successive stewards of Wilton in the years 1429-31 paid him a total of £2 for his parliamentary wages, but this was a derisory sum for attendance at a Parliament lasting 129 days. Perhaps he had agreed to forgo the customary remuneration.7 Wilts. Hist. Centre, Wilton bor. recs., stewards’ accts. G25/1/89. Dykeman’s occupation is not known, but in a lawsuit brought by the under treasurer William Darell* in Hilary term 1431 he was called ‘forester’, probably because of his wife’s tenancy in Grovely forest and the duties attached to it.8 The suit was over a debt of £10: CP40/680, rot. 373.

Early in 1433 writs de diem clausit extremum were issued to the escheator of Wiltshire both for Dykeman’s wife Agnes and her sister Edith Stone, and when he failed to act a special commission was appointed in the following June for a post mortem on Edith. The resultant inquiry found that she had died on 1 Mar. and that as she had left no issue her share of the former Stabbere estate, including the forester-ship of Grovely, should revert under the terms of a final concord she had made in 1423 to John Stafford, now bishop of Bath and Wells and chancellor of England, and his associate Richard Mayne*. Edith’s heir was said to be Hugh Moleyn, the infant grandson of her sister Agnes Dykeman.9 CFR, xvi. 103; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 300, 343-4. Not content with these findings, our MP’s putative son John Dykeman junior hastened to do a deal with Stafford and Mayne. In April 1435 he and the Hampshire esquire Walter Veer*, who was a kinsman of his wife, formally relinquished any interest they might have had in Edith Stone’s holdings in Stoford and Newton, and also in her property at King’s Somborne and elsewhere in Hampshire. In return Dykeman received back from Stafford and Mayne the estate at Wishford and the office of forester of Groveley, and in November that year he purchased for 20s. a royal pardon for failing to obtain a licence for these transactions.10 Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Somborne Regis deeds, A2; CPR, 1429-36, p. 497. Meanwhile, a post mortem had still not been held on Agnes Dykeman herself, and on the following 6 Dec. commissioners were ordered to conduct one. Again, no inquiry survives; it must be presumed that there had been deliberate attempts to conceal the Crown’s feudal rights.11 CPR, 1429-36, p. 526. Even though Agnes was dead, on 27 July 1437 her husband Dykeman, our MP, took out a pardon in both their names, he as John Dykeman ‘senior’, formerly of Wilton and Great Wishford, ‘yeoman or gentleman’, she as sister and coheir of the late Thomas Stabbere. John Dykeman the younger followed suit on the same day.12 C67/38, m. 5. It was not until October 1445 that a post mortem was finally held, the jury reporting that Agnes had died long before, on 2 Feb. 1433 (that is, a few days before her sister), and that her heir was now her 20-year-old grand-daughter Maud, wife of John Couper, the daughter of her son Thomas. Nevertheless, it had been John Dykeman junior who had taken the revenues of Wishford since her death. In May following the Coupers were given seisin.13 C139/118/16; CFR, xviii. 26-27.

Our MP is not recorded after 1437. He had probably been instrumental in arranging the marriage of John junior to Alice, kinswoman of Walter Veer, for Veer too was involved in the administration of royal forests, as riding-forester of the New Forest in Hampshire. On Veer’s death in 1442 his holdings on the Isle of Wight passed to the couple in jointure, and Dykeman junior also took over Veer’s other Hampshire estates.14 C67/38, m. 5; CCR, 1461-8, p. 51. Alice was prob. Veer’s cousin of this name, who, once the w. of John Winford, had been widowed by Apr. 1435: J. Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 240. There is more evidence that this John was retained by Duke Humphrey of Gloucester than there is for his putative father’s personal links with the duke. In February 1441 the duke successfully petitioned the King to pardon Dykeman for an alleged assault he had committed at Lyndhurst five years earlier in breach of sureties for the peace.15 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 513-14; E159/213, recorda Mich. rot. 6. Furthermore, he was closely associated with Gloucester’s retainer Robert Cappes, for whom he acted as his under sheriff of Dorset in 1444-5, his attorney at the Exchequer for the presentation of his accounts as sheriff,16 E13/144, Mich. rots. 2, 7. and as under steward of Carisbrooke castle on the Isle of Wight, where Cappes was constable by Gloucester’s appointment.17 C1/17/400. Following Duke Humphrey’s death Dykeman junior was placed on royal commissions in Hampshire, and served as bailiff of Newport on the Isle of Wight in 1449.18 I.o.W. RO, Brook mss, AC95/32.70. Pardoned in late 1455, as resident on the island and at Great Wishford,19 C67/41, m. 20; E159/232, Mich. rot. 22. he died on 30 Dec. 1460. The date of his death can only lead to speculation that he fell at the battle of Wakefield; if so, it was probably while fighting for the duke of York. His heir was his son, another John Dykeman who had been born in about 1435.20 CFR, xx. 1, 2; C140/4/36; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 50-51.