SAY, William

There is no direct evidence to connect Say with the family of the Speaker, John Say II*, or with James Fiennes*, Lord Saye and Sele, although it is possible that he owed his successful career in Kent to the influence of the latter. While of uncertain antecedents, he was probably related to a namesake active in Surrey in the late fourteenth century. Possibly the MP’s father, the elder William participated in land transactions in that county in the 1380s.12 VCH Surr. iii. 275; Chertsey Carts. ed. Jenkinson, iii. 337-8. Some of the property concerned lay at Chertsey, where the subject of this biography was seised of a messuage, vineyard and other holdings by the first half of the 1450s.13 C131/69/3.

Whatever his origins, Say achieved advancement through a career in the Lancastrian Household. He joined the royal service before Henry VI came to the throne, since it was as a groom of the late Henry V’s chamber that he subscribed to a petition submitted to the Crown in the Parliament of 1422. In the petition he and two other Household servants, Adam Penycoke and Robert Dawson, successfully sought confirmation of the £19 2s. 6d. p.a. they received from the subsidy and alnage of cloth in Oxfordshire and Berkshire, an annuity that the former King had granted to them for their lives in survivorship.14 SC8/28/1351. Following the accession of Henry VI, Say retained his position as a royal groom, and in the autumn of 1424 the Council sent him to France.15 E403/669, m. 1. While the purpose of his mission is unrecorded, it was the first known of several journeys he made across the Channel in the King’s service, including the coronation expedition of 1430-2, for which he was retained as a ‘yeoman of the Household’. The use of that title appears to reflect imprecision rather than a change of role. It was as a groom of the Chamber that he was despatched on a mission to Rouen in early 1431, although he was also variously known as a ‘valet’ of the Chamber and Household and a groom of the buttery in the second half of the 1430s and early 1440s, and as both a ‘valet’ and an esquire of the hall and chamber in the late 1440s and early 1450s.16 E403/695, m. 6; 696, m. 17; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 74-75; E101/408/11, 21, 25; 409/6, 9, 11, 12, 16; 410/1, 3, 6, 9. Following the coronation expedition to France, his name appeared in a couple of petitions, probably presented to the Parliament of 1435, by which those who had taken part in it sought payment of the wages due to them.17 SC8/153/7626; 7629.

At home Say appears, like a number of Household men, to have spent as much time at Westminster as elsewhere. It was as ‘of Westminster, yeoman’, that he stood surety for one William York in February 1436, when the Crown granted the latter the keeping of a mill at Goring, Oxfordshire, which had belonged to the late John, duke of Bedford.18 CFR, xvi. 316-17. Furthermore, it was in Middlesex that he was assessed for the subsidy of 1436, for the purposes of which he was found to enjoy an income of £6 p.a. from his lands and fees.19 E159/214, recorda Mich. rot. 25d. By then he was perhaps already married to Elizabeth, the daughter and heir of the obscure Robert Clerk of London, a match that had definitely occurred by the spring of 1437, when a group of feoffees, including John Somerset* and William Sydney*, settled a messuage and other lands in Twickenham and Whitton upon the couple.20 CP25(1)/152/91/79. Whatever the provenance of these holdings, Elizabeth certainly brought Say an interest in others at Westminster that she inherited from her father.21 CCR, 1454-61, p. 276.

In addition to the usual fees and robes he enjoyed as a member of the Household, Say benefited from numerous royal grants and appointments from the late 1430s onwards. In June 1437 he was made keeper of the manor and royal wardrobe at Eltham, Kent, with daily wages of 6d., a post confirmed to him for life in January 1438;22 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 74-75, 127; CCR, 1435-41, p. 413; E159/214, brevia Easter rot. 23d. at the following Michaelmas he received a grant of 6d. a day from the issues of Crown lands in Oxfordshire and Berkshire;23 CPR, 1436-41, p. 136. and a fortnight later the Crown assigned to him the keeping for ten years of the rectory of Newington by Hythe and other holdings in Kent which had formerly belonged to the abbess of Guînes in Artois. The merchant, Richard Say of London, presumably a relative, was one of his sureties for the grant of the Newington lands, subsequently re-assigned to him for a 20-year term in October 1438.24 CPR, 1436-41, p. 198; CFR, xvii. 18-19, 56. Other grants of the period reinforced the connexion that Say was establishing with Kent. In January 1438, for example, the constable of Dover, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, appointed him and Adam Chancellor to the office of warrener at the castle there, a grant that the Crown confirmed and amplified in the following month by extending its duration beyond the duke’s lifetime.25 CPR, 1436-41, p. 133. Later, in November 1440, the King granted Say, by then one of the ushers of the Chamber, the issuesof the aldermanry of Westgate ward in Canterbury for life.26 CPR, 1436-41, p. 474; CIMisc. viii. 222.

The grant may have helped to pave the way for the return of Say as one of the city’s MPs to the Parliaments of 1442 and 1447, at elections in which the circle of Sir James Fiennes probably exerted at least some influence on his behalf. A significant figure in the royal household, Fiennes achieved rapid dominance in Kent during the 1440s. He was one of the county’s knights of the shire in the same two Parliaments, and his formal summons as Lord Saye and Sele was issued as the second of those assemblies drew to a close. Following the death of Gloucester at Bury St. Edmunds, where the Parliament of 1447 assembled, he became constable of Dover, where Say was already warrener. Resentment at the influence wielded by Fiennes and his associates in Kent received its strongest expression during Cade’s revolt of 1450, when one of the complaints laid against the ‘gret extorcioners’ was interference in parliamentary elections. This charge was aimed particularly at the shire elections, where all of those returned during the 1440s were connected with Fiennes or the Household, among them the likes of William Cromer* and Stephen Slegge* who had also used their shrievalties to further Fiennes’s interests. (There is at least some sign that Say was caught up in misbehaviour on the part of members of the Fiennes circle, since he was among those alleged to have wrongfully dispossessed Roger Clitheroe of property at Ash near Sandwich.)27 KB27/762, rot. 84d; 763, rot. 54d; E13/145B, rot. 9d. Urban elections were, however, also subject to manipulation. Even though there were fewer Household connexions among those returned for Canterbury, Say was not the only royal servant to represent the city in this period, since Thomas Walter*, a yeoman of the Chamber, sat for it in the Parliament of 1449-50.28 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 634.

As it happened, Say would soon forge strong ties with Canterbury, assuming that he had not already begun to develop those links before entering his first Parliament. On 21 Dec. 1441, 11 days after his election, he was admitted as one of its citizens without payment, in recognition for the ‘great affection and honesty shown and intended to be shown by him to the city and its liberties’.29 Canterbury chamberlains’ accts. 1393-1445, CCA-CC-F/A/1, f. 280. In due course, he received wages of 40s. for 60 days’ service during the Parliament of 1442, which sat for a total of 62, a sum representing a considerable reduction in the normal daily rate, even when this was set at 12d. rather than the 2s. Canterbury sometimes paid its MPs. As its chamberlains’ accounts of this period show, there is no doubt that he was an active representative. Apart from the relatively small sums spent on food and wine for him during meetings at Canterbury, they record that William Benet* and William Rose* rode to meet him in London on separate occasions, to discuss matters relating to the butchers in the city’s Burgate ward.30 Ibid. f. 285. By the mid 1440s, and perhaps considerably earlier, Say had married his second wife, Joan, widow of John Pirie, a citizen of Canterbury who had died seised of holdings in the city, Stourmouth and Rainham.31 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 85. On 24 Jan. 1446 Say and Joan made a release to Pirie’s executors of all personal actions and acknowledged that she had received 100 marks from them. On the same day, the executors demised certain lands on the Isle of Thanet to the couple and two associates, John Thornbury* and Say’s kinsman, the London grocer Ralph Say, properties which Say conveyed to Richard Dormour and others (perhaps his feoffees) late in the following decade.32 CCA-CC-O/A/1, f. 45v; CAD, iii. C3744.

In the meantime, Say continued to advance in prominence in Kent. As well as serving on a commission of array for the county in 1443, he became especially well connected with Sandwich, which lay just a few miles north of Ripple, a parish where he possessed lands.33 KB27/770, rex rot. 32. In April 1443 he was granted the reversion of the bailiwick of the town, to vest when John Sandeford vacated it,34 CPR, 1441-6, p. 160. and he became a collector of customs and subsidies there five years later, a post he held until May 1450. Some two years or more after the latter date, several merchants from Cologne sued him and the widow of Ralph Toke*, formerly his fellow customer, over allegedly undue financial demands.35 E403/775, m. 3; 777, m. 5; 781, m. 4; C1/19/386. Say eventually became bailiff of Sandwich in June 1451, when he and Robert Whittingham II, a fellow usher of the Chamber, were granted the office in survivorship with shared wages of £24 p.a.36 CPR, 1446-52, p. 473.

The prominence Say enjoyed in Kent during the 1440s reflected his growing standing in the Household. In 1444-5 he was closely concerned with the arrangements for the marriage of Henry VI to Margaret of Anjou, being among a number of royal servants paid wages as members of Margaret’s household for the 18 months to October 1445. On 25 Apr. 1446 the Crown determined that he and 37 other Household men should receive due reward for their service ‘beyonde the see awaiting uppon oure moost dere and bestbeloved wif the Quene’, and on the following 5 July £100 was assigned to them for their ‘great costs and charges’. As well as these tasks, he was singled out for special duties, and in June 1445 he was paid 20 marks for his travels in Normandy on the King’s business.37 E404/61/248; 62/143; Add. 23938, f. 15; E403/757, m. 6; 762, m. 5.

While it brought him prominence, Says’s position in the Household also rendered him potentially vulnerable when the unpopular government and Court came in for strong criticism in 1450. He was not a passive onlooker of events, since he was caught up in the controversy surrounding the return from Ireland of the Court’s leading opponent, Richard, duke of York, featuring in one of the bills that the duke submitted to the King before reaching London in late September that year. York wrote of his arrival at Beaumaris in North Wales, where ‘my landyng was stoppid and forbarred’ by five Crown officers in North Wales. One of them, Henry Norris, deputy to the chamberlain of North Wales, stated that they had received orders requiring them to prevent his landing and ‘puttyng the blame unto William Say, usscher of your chambir, sayeng and afferming that I come ayenst your entent as your tratoure’. In his reply to York, the King wrote of the disorders affecting the realm, particularly the murder of Bishop Moleyns of Chichester, and the popular demand that York ‘schuld be fechid home with many thousandis and that ye schulde take upon you that that ye nothir aught’. York’s hostile reception at Beaumaris was excused on the grounds that he returned to England suddenly ‘withouten certayn warnyng’, an action that could be construed as threatening.38 R.A. Griffiths, King and Country, 299-30. There seems little doubt that Say was acting under instructions, either from the King or from a senior member of his Household. The King’s reply suggests an attempt to pacify York amidst the latter’s much heralded arrival in London and the imminent opening of a Parliament in which the duke’s retainer, Sir William Oldhall*, was to be Speaker.

In spite of the circumstances in which the Parliament met, Say managed to gain election as a Member for the borough of Bletchingley in Surrey and to survive the crises which brought down more prominent Household men. The lord of Bletchingley was Humphrey, duke of Buckingham, several of whose other nominees to the Commons for the borough were similarly royal servants with strong links with Kent, and his appointment as constable of Dover earlier in the year must already have brought him into contact with Say, then still warrener of the castle. Yet it may be that Say owed his election not to Buckingham but to the county sheriff, John Penycoke*, another Household man who found himself compromised by the return from Ireland of the duke of York. However this may be, Say was able to obtain a partial exemption from the Act of Resumption passed by the Parliament, in his case covering grants worth £20 p.a. Those grants he did lose, like his 6d. a day from Oxfordshire and his wages and profits as keeper of Eltham, were restored to him – backdated to 6 Nov. 1450, the opening day of the same assembly – in May and June 1452.39 E163/6/14; PROME, xii. 125; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 550, 559, 563.

In the meantime, Say’s losses were offset by gains like his appointment to the bailiwick of Sandwich, and he took care to safeguard a long-term existing grant in January 1452, when he and his old associate, Robert Dawson, then parker of Eltham, secured a confirmation of their annuity from the alnage of cloth in Oxfordshire and Berkshire.40 CCR, 1447-54, p. 309; CPR, 1436-41, p. 18. He also survived reforms to the Household, to which he was reappointed following the drawing up of ordinances for that institution in November 1454. He features in the list of members of the reduced royal establishment as a yeoman of the buttery, rather than an usher of the Chamber,41 PPC, vi. 227. but he already held the former position prior to the reforms.

It was as a yeoman of the buttery that Say had been obliged to answer proceedings for debt earlier that year. These arose from a bond in statute staple that he had given the abbot of Osney, Oxfordshire, and one of that ecclesiastic’s tenants, William Newman* of Oxford, in unknown circumstances on 1 Mar. 1453, shortly before his final Parliament assembled at Reading. Through the bond, he promised to pay 200 marks to the abbot and Newman, who sat for Oxford in that assembly, by the following 1 Nov. He failed in his undertaking but it was not until after the dissolution of the Parliament that the Chancery issued writs ordering inquiries into the extent of his possessions. The resulting inquisitions listed holdings worth just under £5 p.a.: his lands at Chertsey, a tenement called Le Taberd and two messuages at Bromley in Kent and holdings at Westminster comprising three tenements in King’s Street and six acres of arable in Colmanhedge.42 C131/69/3, 4, 7.

The delay between Say’s acknowledgment of the debt and the start of the process of recovery may have arisen from his Membership of the Commons. In contrast to his third Parliament, that of 1453 was summoned at a time of ascendancy for the Court in national politics, and no doubt he owed his election for New Shoreham, a Sussex borough with which he had no previous connexion, to his standing as a trusted royal official. The following Parliament met in very different political circumstances, since it was called in the wake of the Yorkist victory at the first battle of St. Albans. On 23 July 1455, while its first session was in progress, the Crown issued a privy seal letter addressed to Say as bailiff of Sandwich. It commanded him to make a gift on the King’s behalf of a ‘bycoket garneshed and gilt’ and other goods in his safe-keeping that had been seized from Roger, Lord Camoys.43 PPC, vi. 251-3. Yet Say’s position as bailiff was threatened by the Act of Resumption passed by the very same assembly. He managed to secure a partial exemption from the Act in respect of his post at warrener of Dover, but his other offices and grants, including his bailiwick, were officially resumed. In practice, however, he and his co-bailiff, Robert Whittingham, either held on to their position at Sandwich or recovered it soon afterwards. It was as bailiffs, for example, that they advanced money towards the expenses of the Household in the autumn of 1456. Say was likewise referred to as bailiff of Sandwich when he and its mayor received a commission to inquire into an act of piracy in March 1458, by which date he was also serving as a jurat there. It was not, however, until the following March that he and Whittingham obtained letters patent formally restoring the bailiwick to them and backdating their appointment to Michaelmas 1455.44 PROME, xii. 409; E403/809, m. 1; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 439, 481. In the meantime, Say remained active as a Household servant. During the autumn of 1458, for example, the Crown despatched him to Yorkshire with letters, touching matters of concern for the King and Council, for Richard, earl of Warwick, a task for which he was paid 26s. 8d.45 E403/817, m. 3. He gained at the earl’s expense less than two years later, since in June 1460 he was appointed chamberlain of Waterdowne in Sussex, a position Warwick had forfeited following his attainder at the Coventry Parliament of 1459.46 CPR, 1452-61, p. 593.

No doubt Say’s tenure as chamberlain was very short-lived, since the post was almost certainly restored to the earl following the Yorkist victory at the battle of Northampton in July 1460. (Somewhat surprisingly, he attested the Kent election to the Parliament summoned immediately after Northampton, at which both of those returned as knights of the shire, Sir Thomas Kyriel* and Robert Horne*, were aligned with the Yorkists.) He lost his other offices following Edward IV’s seizure of the throne in March 1461, and two years later he faced demands from the Exchequer to account as the late bailiff of Sandwich.47 E159/239, recorda Easter rot. 29d. The last known reference to him is a royal pardon he purchased in 1469. In the pardon, dated 1 Feb. that year, he was described as of Worth near Sandwich in Kent, to where presumably he had retired.48 C67/46, m. 10. By then of advanced years, he may have died soon afterwards. He long outlived his second wife, who was already dead when her feoffees, John Sheldwich* and William Benet*, made a release of lands to John Pirie’s half-sister and heir in November 1452.49 CAD, iii. C3005.