GORGES, Sir Theobald

The Gorges, a family of Norman origins, held lands in south-western England from the early thirteenth century.16 CCR, 1227-31, p. 509. Under Edward II and Edward III two generations of the family were summoned to Parliament in their own right, but with the death of Ralph, Lord Gorges, in 1344, the direct male line failed, and the family lands were divided between three coheiresses, the last Lord’s three sisters Elizabeth, Joan and Eleanor.17 CP, vi. 11-12. Elizabeth married Sir Robert Assheton and her line ended with her son Robert who had died by the end of 1387, leaving her pourparty to be split between her two sisters.18 CIPM, xvi. 170; CP40/507, rot. 311. Joan became the wife of Sir William Cheyne. In Henry IV’s reign her line was represented by her grandson, another Sir William† (d.1420).19 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 558-9. The third sister, Eleanor, married Sir Theobald Russell of Kingston Russell, and bore him a number of sons. Under the terms of an entail made by Lord Gorges in 1330, part of his estates were to remain to the younger of these, should the Gorges themselves fail in the male line. In return, so it was probably agreed at the time, they were to adopt their uncle’s family name.20 Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 137; CP40/682, rot. 463; 697, rot. 133; Peds. Plea Rolls ed. Wrottesley, 173, 190, 219. In the event, it was the third of Lord Gorges’ Russell nephews, another Theobald, and his descendants who assumed his mantle. Theobald’s two elder sons, Ralph and Bartholomew, for their part also failed to produce any male offspring, so his inheritance ultimately fell to their younger brother Thomas and his sons.21 CIPM, xvii. 499-504; CCR, 1409-13, p. 340. The younger of these, named after his grandfather, was born in late 1401, just three years before his father’s death. As a younger son he probably remained initially at Wraxall in the household of his widowed mother, who had remarried a son of Thomas Norton† of Bristol.

In 1414, Theobald’s elder brother John died, still aged less than 17. This left the 13-year-old as heir to the family’s lands, and he was taken into the King’s wardship.22 CCR, 1413-19, pp. 207, 302, 342. Five years later, his mother died, leaving him bequests that included a silver cup, a diamond ring and a gold ‘ouch’, an ornament with a figure of an angel, which he was to receive when he married, on condition that he should assist with the execution of her will.23 PCC 47 Marche. The wardship of the Gorges heir had been disputed between the Crown and the earls of Devon while Theobald’s brother was alive, and it was only in July 1421 that his own marriage was sold to the chief justice, Sir William Hankford, and his grandson, Richard*, for 300 marks. For the heir’s maintenance, the Hankfords were given custody of the Gorges’ most valuable manor in Devon, that of Brampton Gorges.24 CPR, 1416-22, pp. 375-6. As Theobald was to come of age 15 months from the date of the purchase, it is probable that Hankford was keen to secure him as a suitable husband for one of his three orphaned grand-daughters. Gorges’ bride – if the match indeed took place – died young, perhaps in childbirth, but relations with the Hankfords were nevertheless to remain close for years to come.

In late 1422 Gorges came of age, and encountered immediate problems in seeking to take possession of his inheritance. In the first place, the inquisitions post mortem taken after his brother John’s death had suggested that he was in fact four years younger than he claimed. Gorges turned to the Lords in Parliament for help, and succeeded in having a commission of inquiry appointed, which in March 1423 confirmed his legal maturity.25 PROME, x. 253-5; CPR, 1422-9, pp. 66, 89; CIPM, xx. 254-9. That autumn, he also recovered his estate muniments which his mother had entrusted to John Bathe, a clerk from Wells, in 1403.26 CP40/651, rot. 134d. There was, however, still a battle to be fought over the inquisition taken at Agnes Gorges’ death, which repeated the claims of the earlier inquiry. Once more, Gorges turned to Parliament. He had been present at the Somerset shire elections at Ilchester in the autumn of 1423, and he attended again in March 1425, when his uncle, Sir Thomas Beauchamp, was returned. It was probably Beauchamp who promoted Theobald’s renewed petition over his inheritance, this time addressed to the Commons, while Gorges in parallel also petitioned the lords of the council in similar terms. Once again his efforts bore fruit: both Parliament and the council agreed that he should have immediate seisin of his estates.27 SC8/167/8345; PROME, x. 253-5; CCR, 1422-9, pp. 180-2. These included beside Wraxall and Brampton Gorges the manor of Knighton on the Isle of Wight, a quarter of the Dorset manor of Sturminster Marshall, and a burgage in the town of Bridport, lands which had been assessed at over £100 p.a. at his father’s death, and were probably worth rather more.28 CIPM, xviii. 892-5; CP40/806, rot. 72. Nevertheless, the fight for his family estates had been a costly affair, and Theobald was forced to turn to his putative brother-in-law Richard Hankford for loans of money.29 CP40/696, rot. 130; 700, rot. 132.

It seems that in these early years, Gorges resided in Devon, and he may have struck up an acquaintance with Baldwin Fulford*, head of a landed family based at Towstock, and later a fellow Member of the Commons of 1432. It was as ‘of Towstock’ and in association with Fulford that he was accused in about 1427 of having assaulted and threatened John Gough at Aldercombe in Cornwall.30 CP40/664, rot. 103. A year later, he found a more promising outlet for his fighting instincts, when, alongside his friend Hankford, he joined the retinue of Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury, and sailed for France.31 DKR, xlviii. 258-9. In spite of their relative youth and inexperience, they probably served in the earl’s immediate entourage, and they may even have been present at Orléans when the earl incurred the heavy wounds which cost him his life. Both Hankford and Gorges were knighted around this time, and it is possible that they were dubbed by Salisbury himself before his death. His captain dead, Gorges returned to the West Country in time to attend the Somerset shire elections held at Ilchester in August 1429.32 C219/14/1.

Gorges now probably settled down to the management of his estates and began to play a modest part in local administration. In the spring of 1431 he was charged with the assessment of a parliamentary subsidy, and a year later he was himself returned to his only Parliament alongside his more experienced uncle, Sir Thomas Beauchamp. Gorges had personal reasons to seek election. In March that year Margery, the infant daughter and heiress of Thomas, only son of Sir Maurice Russell† of Kingston Russell, had died. This event provided Gorges with an opportunity to renew a legal battle of long standing. Not long after the death of the last Lord Gorges, the settlements that governed the descent of his estates had at least partly been set aside, when the Dorset manors of Lucton and Bradpole, which had been subject to the entail of 1330, were divided among his sisters on the strength of an earlier settlement of the thirteenth century.33 Dorset Feet of Fines, 137; CP40/682, rot. 463; Peds. Plea Rolls, 173, 190, 219; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 252. Throughout the later fourteenth and early fifteenth century successive generations of the Gorges had unsuccessfully pressed their claim under the entail of 1330, and with Margery Russell’s death Sir Theobald sought to do so once more.34 C81/599/1654-5; SC8/343/16179. But whereas Gorges was the Russells’ heir male, the coheirs general were Thomas Russell’s half-sisters Isabel, wife of Stephen Haytfeld*, and Margaret, wife of John Kemys*, to whom the bulk of the Russell estates passed in spite of litigation.35 CP40/682, rot. 463; 683, rot. 136; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 253. Nevertheless, Gorges’ personal appearance at Westminster had some effect, and by November commissions had been issued ordering the partition of the Russell lands and granting seisin of half the manor of Horsington, Somerset, to Sir Theobald.36 CP40/683, rot. 136; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 124-32; CFR, xvi. 98-99. By contrast, the far more valuable prizes represented by the Russell manors of Lucton and Bradpole and the surrounding hundred of Redhone and Beaminster Forum continued to elude him, despite repeated lawsuits, until the end of his life.37 CCR, 1468-76, no. 133; CP40/682, rot. 463; 836, rot. 182; Reg. Bekynton, i (Som. Rec. Soc. xlix), 335-6; C139/81/43, 82/47; C140/50/34.

Gorges’ forays into local government in England remained at best occasional. When John Holand, earl of Huntingdon, succeeded the dead duke of Bedford as admiral of England, he appointed Gorges his deputy off the Somerset coast as far as Bristol. Before long, he came into conflict with John Tilney†, an East Anglian lawyer who had held a similar appointment under the previous two admirals, Thomas Beaufort, duke of Exeter, and the duke of Bedford, and apparently continued to execute the office.38 CP40/711, rot. 242d. Gorges for his part, returned to France in 1436 in the retinue of Richard, duke of York, who had been appointed lieutenant of France in place of the deceased Regent.39 C76/118, m. 12. For the next decade of his life, the fight to preserve Lancastrian France was to dominate Sir Theobald’s career. He became captain of Fresnay in March 1438, and after a brief return to England set out again in the retinue of the new acting lieutenant, John Beaufort, earl of Somerset, in 1440.40 C76/122, m. 16. York’s return to the lieutenancy in that summer greatly advanced Gorges’ career. Having been appointed lieutenant of Domfront by the early months of 1441, he became captain of Coutances in late 1443, and for some years also served as lieutenant of the Norman capital of Rouen.41 DKR, xlviii. 310, 335, 370. He thus witnessed at first hand the gradual disintegration of English rule in Normandy, greatly accelerated in the second half of the 1440s. In the autumn of 1449 the English position became increasingly untenable, as town after town was surrendered to the French. He apparently handed over command of the Coutances garrison to Stephen Mountfort just in time to avoid being caught up in the siege and surrender of the town on 17-18 Sept.,42 Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English, ii (2), 625; Chron. Charles VII ed. Courteault and Celier, 305; Chron. Charles VII ed. Chartier, iii. 123-4. but may have been at his post in Rouen when Edmund, duke of Somerset, surrendered the capital.43 EHR, civ. 297, 304.

The loss of Normandy brought Gorges’ military career to a close. He now settled down to attend to the administration of his own affairs, and he played a part in the foundation of a chantry for John Storthwaite, chancellor of Wells cathedral, at his church of Wraxall in November 1451.44 HMC Wells, i. 456-8, 465; Reg. Bekynton, i. 549. Nevertheless, he maintained his ties with his old commander, the duke of York, and his inner circle. In particular, he forged important links with the duke’s chamberlain, Sir William Oldhall*, to whose only daughter he had agreed to marry his son and heir, Walter, in 1443.45 KB27/793, rot. 25; Add. 46410, f. 73; C131/70/1, 5; C241/240/9. In common with other of York’s former comrades-in-arms, Gorges may have resented Somerset’s unchivalrous surrender of Rouen. Over the course of the year that followed the final collapse of Lancastrian Normandy, York had increasingly positioned himself as the leader of those who blamed the surrender on Somerset’s treason rather than any military necessity. Unable to gain a hearing at a court now dominated by Somerset himself, in the autumn of 1451 the duke and his noble allies, chief among them Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon (feudal overlord of Gorges’ principal manor of Wraxall), began to rally their armed retainers. In the early weeks of 1452, they openly mounted an armed challenge to the government. Gorges and his son Walter were in the duke’s retinue at Fotheringhay, when, probably under Oldhall’s direction, armed men were raised throughout the eastern shires in late February, and they may have accompanied him in his march on London.46 KB9/94/1/12; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 695, 710. Although the main rising was brought to an end by the arrest of York and Devon at Dartford, Gorges returned to the south-west, where further unrest erupted in the following weeks largely under his leadership. Among his victims was the abbot of St. Augustine, Bristol, who was assaulted in his own abbey and later complained bitterly of having been deprived of his liberty.47 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 581-2; CCR, 1447-54, p. 411. Worse was to follow. On the night of 12 Apr. 1452 Gorges and his son with a rabble of armed followers assaulted a group of men at Kingston Seymour,48 KB9/105/1/22; 2/219. The chronology of these events is problematic: KB9/105/2/218 dates the assault at Kingston to 1 May. and later on the same night at Kenn they seized Thomas Colyns junior, a servant of James Butler, earl of Wiltshire, dragged him off to Wraxall, and held him captive until 2 June. Two of Colyns’s kinsmen, who were found at Clevedon, were also taken and imprisoned for the same length of time.49 KB9/105/1/15-17, 24; 2/121, 208-11, 213-16. Commissioners were soon appointed to pacify the region and when they sat at Wells both Gorges and his son were indicted. Although they were able to secure pardons, Sir Theobald was fined the substantial sum of £115.50 KB9/105/2/28, 30-34, 41-50, 147, 149, 154-7, 166-7, 189-94; C67/40, m. 24; C237/43/81; E403/791, m. 1; E404/69/30.

Despite the penalty he had incurred in his patron’s service, Gorges maintained his connexions both with York’s party and his erstwhile ally, the earl of Devon, standing surety for the latter in the vast sum of 1,000 marks in 1454.51 CCR, 1447-54, p. 512. This, however, was as far as he was prepared to take his association with the volatile earl. When Courtenay renewed his armed manoeuvres directed at his long-standing rival, William, Lord Bonville*, Gorges apparently remained aloof, although he did take the precaution of procuring a royal pardon.52 C67/41, m. 15. He had, in any event, more important matters to occupy him. It was about this time that he fell out dramatically with his old friend Oldhall, who had come under sustained attack from the court party during the period of his ducal master’s disgrace in the aftermath of the Dartford campaign. Oldhall was forced to take sanctuary at St. Martin le Grand in London, from which he emerged only after York’s victory at the first battle of St. Albans. Soon afterwards, he brought a suit in Chancery, complaining that Gorges and his son had stolen from his coffer in St. Martin’s a general acquittance for the debts which Sir Theobald owed him, which he had prepared in anticipation.53 C1/17/218. The debts in question in fact related to the bonds that Gorges and Oldhall had entered into at the time of their agreement for their children’s marriage, and over the course of the next four years the Westminster law courts heard a series of claims and counterclaims, at the heart of which were the bonds for the vast sum of 2,000 marks, and the undertakings that the two men were said to have made concerning provision for the young couple, and the grant to Gorges of the captaincy of Coutances, at that time held by Oldhall. At one point during the dispute, Oldhall came to physical blows with his son-in-law, causing two of his servants to hold Walter Gorges while he attacked him with a dagger, and could only be restrained by the intervention of his daughter.54 KB145/6/36, 37; C245/40/49; CPR, 1452-61, p. 541; Add. 46410, f. 73; C131/70/1, 5; C253/35/461.

It is unclear what part, if any, Gorges played in the wider politics of the final years of Henry VI’s reign. His absence from any of the commissions appointed during either the duke of York’s second protectorate in the aftermath of St. Albans or his short-lived ascendancy in the second half of 1460, may perhaps be laid at his enemy Oldhall’s door, for the latter pursued his vendetta against Sir Theobald right up to his death in November 1460. Conversely, following the accession of the young Edward IV, Gorges was rapidly added to the Somerset bench, and during the first summer of the new reign entrusted with arraying the men of that county in defence of the new regime. Periodic further commissions followed, perhaps limited in number in reflection of Sir Theobald’s advancing years. It is possible that the young King retained a boyhood memory of his father’s old retainer, but certainly Gorges soon forged further ties among the new Edwardian establishment, such as the King’s attorney, William Huddesfield†, to whom he granted an annuity of 20s. in 1463.55 CP40/836, rot. 201.

By the later 1460s Gorges was beginning to grow frail. His son and heir, Walter, had died in 1466. Walter had been in debt to his father, and Sir Theobald was now forced to seek to recover his money from his son’s executors in the law courts.56 KB27/823, rot. 26. It is possible that at the time Gorges found himself in some financial difficulties, for in the final months of his life he was in negotiations with Huddesfield over the latter’s annuity which had remained unpaid for the preceding three years.57 CP40/835, rot. 53; 836, rot. 201. In September 1467 he settled his family seat of Wraxall on feoffees for the fulfilment of his will, which he formally drew up in the following year.58 CFR, xx. 177. He died on 9 July 1470. His principal heir was his grandson Edmund (1456-1511), son of his son Walter by Mary Oldhall.59 C140/35/59; 68/59; C142/26/98, 103-4; 27/81; PCC 7 Fetiplace (PROB11/17, f. 53). He had, however, also made provision for his surviving second son, Richard (d.1481), and as a result the two branches of the family were engaged in an acrimonious quarrel over the division of Gorges’ estates for some years to come.60 C140/35/59; CFR, xxi. 565; C1/32/61, 62, 221-4; 61/49.