INGLOSE, Sir Henry

One of the most experienced fifteenth-century East Anglian knights of the shire, Inglose sat in no fewer than seven Parliaments. A prominent and successful soldier, he was a friend of his better-known contemporary and kinsman, Sir John Fastolf.15 Inglose’s maternal grandmother, Margaret, was a Fastolf: Smith, 107. The careers of both knights were very similar. Like Fastolf, Inglose was litigious and irascible in old age; unlike Sir John, he had children but he appears to have disliked his eldest son and heir, and the arrangements he made for his estates in his will ensured that his descendants slid down the social scale after his death, apparently the unfortunate victims of perverse malice on his part.

The Ingloses had resided at Loddon in south-east Norfolk since at least the mid 1340s,16 The claim that a Humphrey Inglose settled at Loddon in the late 11th cent. (Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, 5th ser. ix. 286) is almost certainly fanciful. and Henry inherited property there and in the hundred of Lothingland in Suffolk, from his father.17 A.R. Smith, ‘Acquisition of Sir John Fastolf’s Estates’, in Rulers and Ruled ed. Archer and Walker, 149; A. Suckling, Suff. i. 294; ii. 1. He did not succeed immediately to all of his inheritance after the latter’s death, since his mother possessed a life interest in part of it and outlived her husband by a few years. Henry had probably come of age by 1396, when he presented a new incumbent to the church at Sisland, a small parish immediately west of Loddon,18 Blomefield, x. 158. but there is no other evidence of his activities over the following decade. He reappears in the middle of Henry IV’s reign when William Lyntok, a London saddler, sued him in the Chancery. According to Lyntok, Inglose had run up a bill of £10 3s. 3d. with him for ‘les costagez’ of his horses in London, and on 8 June 1406 had given him a bond provided by two sureties, to guarantee payment of this sum. He had subsequently taken action on the bond against the sureties, only for Inglose to sue an action for deceit before the sheriffs of Norwich in an effort to make him cease his litigation. Adding that he had spent several days in prison as a result, he appealed for the chancellor’s assistance, claiming that he dared not approach the property he owned in Norwich, for fear of his opponent’s threats.19 C1/69/401. It was perhaps at about this date that the rector of Stockton, a parish near Loddon, filed another Chancery bill, alleging that he was afraid to return to his house after Inglose and a band of men had broken into it and carried away goods and chattels worth £30.20 C1/16/101.

More constructively, Inglose attested the returns of the knights of the shire for Norfolk to the Parliaments of 1410 and 1411 and served as a customs collector at Great Yarmouth in 1415. He relinquished the office in August that year when he accompanied Henry V to France. By then he had already seen military service, having campaigned in Gascony as a member of the retinue of Thomas, duke of Clarence, who held the lieutenancy of that duchy in 1412-13.21 Worcestre, 359. During the spring of 1415 Inglose made plans to return to Gascony with its newly-appointed seneschal, Sir John Tiptoft†. In May that year he and John Fastolf contracted to supply men for Tiptoft’s retinue (16 men-at-arms and 80 archers in Inglose’s case) but the King withdrew them and their contingent, so that they could join the invasion of Normandy. Inglose appears to have fought at Agincourt, since he was almost certainly the ‘Henry Ynglish’ who features in the Agincourt Roll. Despite not going to Gascony, in the spring of 1416 he accused Tiptoft of neglecting to pay his wages (thereby failing to honour the contract they had made with each other) and challenged him to a duel. Details about this case, heard in the court of chivalry, have not survived but, given that he had not in the end served under the seneschal, it is hard to discern any justification for his claim.22 N.H. Nicolas, Agincourt, 386; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 623; M.G.A. Vale, English Gascony, 76. But Richmond, 208n, argues that Inglose did go to Gascony with Tiptoft.

In August 1417 Inglose returned to France with the duke of Clarence, having taken out letters of protection the previous May.23 DKR, xliv. 601. Clarence, who was constable of the English army, led the advance on Caen, and Inglose was the first of his men to enter the town during a successful assault on 4 Sept. Already captain of Beaumont in the Côtentin by this date, such a feat must have enhanced his reputation. It was at Caen that the dying Sir Hugh Fastolf, another kinsman of the recently knighted John Fastolf, appointed him one of his executors.24 Richmond, 208; Worcestre, 359; Smith, ‘Acquisition’, 146. Inglose himself was still an esquire at this date, as he was when he and Sir John Godard were commissioned in the following January to take musters and review the garrisons of ‘Dangeul Seint Remy, Beauvant, Seint Anyan and Tamys’.25 Rot. Normanniae, 359. By 2 June 1418, however, when he received further letters of protection as a member of Clarence’s retinue, he was a knight.26 DKR, xliv. 605. At some stage before his knighthood, he fell briefly into the hands of the French although the circumstances of his capture are unknown. A letter Sir John Fastolf wrote to his ‘cousins’, Inglose and John Berney, either in November 1416 or a year later, shows that he had recently secured their release, as well as that of Berney’s son-in-law, John Mautby, by exchanging them for French prisoners of war he had bought.27 Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, ii. 50; Richmond, 123, 207. Yet there is some disagreement over when this letter was written. Richmond posits a convincing case for rejecting Gairdner’s dating of ‘after 1440’, not least because it addressed Inglose as ‘esquire’. Less convincingly, Paston Letters ed. Davis, Beadle and Richmond, 46, suggests ‘between 1436 and 1440’, arguing that it is ‘undoubtedly’ in the hand of Fastolf’s factotum, William Worcestre (who was born in 1415 and had joined Fastolf’s service by the later 1430s: K.B. McFarlane, Eng. in the 15th Cent. 199) and that the address was a mistake on Worcestre’s part. Fastolf was no doubt prompted to act for the three men by bonds of kinship, but it is also possible that they were his sworn brothers-in-arms, obliging him to strive for their freedom if they were captured.

During the second half of 1418 Inglose took part in the siege of Rouen, which finally fell in January the following year. While at the siege, he was one of the knights who lodged with Sir William Bowet, a Cumbrian who had acquired a landed interest in East Anglia in the right of his first wife, Joan, the daughter and heir of Sir Robert Ufford.28 Worcestre, 361. This was not the earliest association between Inglose and Bowet, since in about 1416 two London merchants had sued them and Sir George Felbrigge in Chancery for receiving wines and other goods from a wrecked ship.29 CPR, 1413-16, pp. 412-13; C1/6/311. Sir Henry remained in Clarence’s service until the battle of Baugé in March 1421, a defeat for the English in which the duke was killed and he himself was captured for a second time.30 DKR, xliv. 612; E. Hall, Chron. ed. Ellis, 106; Gesta Hen. V ed. Williams, 275. The date of his release is unknown but in the autumn of 1422 he was back in England arranging to secure the freedom of his brother-in-arms, Sir William Bowet, also taken prisoner in the same battle. On 30 Nov. that year Inglose and three associates entered a recognizance for £1,000 to the duke of Exeter and others, to guarantee that he would at his own cost secure Bowet’s release from France before 2 Feb. next, in accordance with all covenants he and Sir William had made with each other. He fulfilled his promise, for Bowet was freed and the bond was cancelled.31 CCR, 1422-9, p. 54. On the same 30 Nov. Sir Henry obtained letters of protection as a member of the retinue of William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, the governor of Lower Normandy, but it is possible that this journey to France was in pursuit of Bowet’s freedom rather than action in the field.32 DKR, xlviii. 221. Whatever the case, Bowet – if not already dead – died soon afterwards and Inglose, by then himself a widower, married his widow, Anne. Nothing is known about Sir Henry’s first wife, save that she was a Wychyngham, that she was buried at Langley Abbey near Loddon and that she bore him his eldest son and heir. It is possible that she was also the mother of one or more of his other children.33 Blomefield, x. 149; Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, ser. 5, ix. 287.

Despite the burden of raising Bowet’s ransom, Inglose had won enough wealth as a soldier to begin investing in the land market at home, and opportunities to do so soon arose. In 1423 his maternal uncle, Sir John Genney, died without any surviving children, having outlived his son, Roger. In his will Sir John had ordered his executors to sell his manor of Pickworth, Rutland, to his nephew for 1,000 marks, provided Inglose paid this sum within a year of his death. Genney also directed that he should have the opportunity to buy his manors of Dilham and Haveringland in Norfolk for £300 after the death of his wife, Alice, who had a life interest in these properties. In the event, Inglose acquired all of these lordships, as well as two other Genney manors at Lound, Suffolk, and Reedham, Norfolk. Furthermore, he managed to gain possession of Haveringland and Dilham by 1426, 12 years before the death of Alice, who moved to Norwich during her widowhood. Probably it was in return for yielding them to him at an earlier date that in 1427 he assigned Lound and Reedham to her for life, to hold at a symbolic annual rent of a rose.34 Norwich consist. ct. Reg. Hyrnyng, ff. 114-15; Richmond, 209-10; CP25/1/292/66/55.

Having acquired Dilham, Inglose made the castle there his home in preference to Loddon, and it was ‘of Dilham’ that he took out letters of protection in the autumn of 1426 prior to accompanying the duke of Bedford to France. He must have crossed back to England after just a few months, since he also obtained letters of attorney in May 1427, before returning to France.35 DKR, xlviii. 244, 250. Inglose was active on both sides of the English Channel in this period, since Bedford, who held the office of admiral of England, had appointed him lieutenant admiral for the east coast by mid 1427. As such, Sir Henry had his own deputy, John Parker†, but on one occasion he himself arrested the captain of a Catalan galley at Sandwich, even though this was outside his area of jurisdiction.36 CPR, 1422-9, p. 502; PPC, iii. 275. He also pronounced sentence in a maritime case in late 1429: this involved the alleged capture of goods belonging to merchants from Bishop’s Lynn by a group of merchants from the German port of Hamburg.37 CPR, 1429-36, pp. 36-37. At the beginning of that year, Inglose had been in France as a member of the retinue Sir John Fastolf assembled at Chartres for the siege of Orléans. Whether he was still at the siege when Joan of Arc appeared with a relieving force three months later, or with Fastolf at the defeat at Patay the following June, is unknown. There is little evidence for Inglose’s soldiering after the 1420s, save that he was deputy of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, lieutenant of Calais, in 1437, and that an unspecified number of Flemish prisoners of his received safe conducts to return home to raise their ransoms in July the following year.38 Richmond, 208n; Add. Ch. 11611; DKR, xlviii. 324. By the late 1430s his military career was probably drawing to a close.

At home, just as in France, Inglose remained close to Sir John Fastolf, his long-term friend and associate. A feoffee of Fastolf by as early as 1415, he frequently acted as such in subsequent years,39 Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Boyton Norf. deed 32, Beighton Norf. deed 31, Caldecotes deeds 7, 27, 51-52, Briggs and Boyton deeds 2, 25, Titchwell deed 34, Norf. and Suff. deed 35, Benyers deed 19; CPR, 1422-9, p. 483; 1429-36, pp. 368-9; CP25(1)/169/186/30, 48; 187/88; 224/115/5; CCR, 1429-35, p. 257; 1441-7, pp. 480-2; 1447-54, pp. 228-9. and sometimes he supported his fellow knight in legal disputes over land.40 E159/226, brevia Mich. rot. 4d. He also stood proxy at Windsor for Fastolf when Sir John was admitted to the Order of the Garter in 1426. During the 1440s Fastolf always kept a room for him at his residence, Caister castle. This bore Sir Henry’s name and was comfortably furnished with a bed, carpet, wall hangings and other items.41 Richmond, 208 and n. Later, when Fastolf drew up a draft will in November 1459, he would ask for prayers for the already dead Inglose, one of his ‘consangwynite’.42 Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner, iii. 157. The enduring friendship between Inglose and Fastolf ensured that the two knights co-operated rather than competed with each other in the East Anglian land market.43 Smith, ‘Acquisition’, 149. Apart from Fastolf and Sir William Bowet, Inglose shared a military connexion with other friends and associates. He served Sir Edmund Thorpe†, who died in France in 1418, as a feoffee, in which capacity he acted in a settlement for Sir Edmund’s daughter Joan in 1428. Joan married Sir John Clifton, one of those who had shared lodgings at Rouen with Inglose and Bowet, as indeed had Sir John’s relative, Sir Robert Clifton*.44 Blomefield, i. 375-6; Worcestre, 361. Inglose was likewise a feoffee for Sir John Clifton, in which role he was active after that knight’s death in 1447. Inglose was also on good terms with two other war veterans, Sir John Radcliffe* and Sir William Oldhall*, both of whom stood surety for him in 1439 when the abbot of St. Benet of Hulme brought a suit (of which no record now survives) against him in the Chancery.45 CPR, 1446-52, p. 111; CCR, 1435-41, p. 274.

All of these friends and associates shared a connexion with East Anglia where Inglose, while still pursuing his military career, was increasingly active from the early 1420s. In 1423 he was returned to his first Parliament as a knight of the shire for Suffolk. His mainpernors at his election included the father of his first wife, Nicholas Wychyngham, for whom he was a trustee and who later appointed him the supervisor of his will.46 C219/13/2; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 277-8; 1435-41, pp. 9-10; CIPM, xxiv. 201-4; Reg. Surflete, ff. 138-40. Parliament dissolved on 28 Feb. 1424 and five months later Inglose joined the bench in Norfolk. He was removed from the bench near the end of the decade but again served as a j.p. in the mid 1440s. Sir Henry was re-elected to the Parliament of 1425, this time for Norfolk, the county he would represent for the rest of his parliamentary career. During the first session of that assembly, he was one of those appointed to arbitrate in a quarrel between the lawyer, William Paston, and William Aslak. It is likely that he was on good terms with Paston, who had chosen him to take part in the arbitration process and later appointed him as a feoffee.47 Paston Letters, ed. Davis, ii. 14; Richmond, 210; CP25(1)/169/186/44.

In the mid 1420s Inglose had his own quarrels to attend to, since he was pursuing at least two actions in the court of King’s bench in Trinity term 1426. In one he and his second wife accused Alice, the widow of Henry Reppes of Herringfleet, Suffolk, of abducting their ward, John Reppes (Henry’s son and heir), from Dilham; in the other he sued John Bacon of Loddon, gentleman, and others for trespass.48 KB27/661, rot. 92d. The second suit soon led to further litigation in the Exchequer, where he filed a bill in May 1427 against Oliver Groos†, the sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk in 1426, for his alleged failure to serve a writ of distraint. Following pleadings in that court, a trial by jury was determined upon, but this does not appear to have taken place, suggesting that the parties reached an out of court settlement.49 E13/137, rot. 22d. In later years, however, Inglose must have had a more amicable relationship with Groos, who had also served on the Agincourt campaign, since his daughter Margaret took for her first husband Oliver’s eldest son, Simon.50 Richmond, 187n.

Inglose was no stranger to the law courts because he was an enthusiastic litigant and aggressive in the defence of his rights. Between 1422 and 1442 he brought no fewer than 39 suits in King’s bench, more than any other person in the kingdom, 33 of which involved property matters. Most of the defendants were his social inferiors, including a dozen husbandmen he accused of having illegally cut turf on his manor of Dilham in 1433. Despite their relatively lowly status, the 12 had sufficient courage and resources to file a bill in Chancery (claiming the customary right to cut turf) just before a King’s bench jury found against them in Easter term 1435. The jurors awarded Inglose damages of £40 although eventually he dropped his claims against all bar one of these opponents. Another man of lesser social status, Thomas Kecham, a servant of Sir Richard de Vere, fell foul of Sir Henry some years later. De Vere was the brother of the earl of Oxford, and in about 1450 the earl asked John Paston* to speak with Inglose about a malicious and ‘wrongful suette’ he was pursuing against Kecham.51 P. Maddern, Violence and Social Order, 35, 135-7; Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 70. See C1/73/153 and C. Moreton and C. Richmond, ‘Henry Inglose: A Hard Man to Please’, in The Fifteenth Cent. X ed. Kleineke, 39-52, for other disputes between Inglose and men of lesser means. Although keen to defend his own property rights, Sir Henry did not always pay due respect to those of other landlords and tenants. In the mid 1420s, for instance, he was found to have used the warren at Tunstead, a duchy of Lancaster manor neighbouring his own property at Dilham, as a hunting ground for his greyhounds.52 DL30/102/1423. Two decades later, he and other landowners acted to the detriment of the rights of common of tenants of the duchy, by making conflicting claims to certain lands in Norfolk.53 H.R. Castor, King, Crown and Duchy of Lancaster, 96-97. In a similar vein, Inglose was far from prompt to settle with various creditors, including Londoners whom he had failed to pay for goods and services and a fellow soldier and renowned jouster, Sir John Astley.54 CP40/660, rot. 122d; 675, rot. 649d; 738, rot. 123; 742, rot. 340d; 746, rot. 496d; 755, rot. 124d.

One of the main items of business of Inglose’s third Parliament was the preparations for the King’s coronation expedition to France. There is no evidence that Sir Henry participated in the expedition, which embarked for France in the spring of 1430. He was certainly in England the following December, when he attested the return of Norfolk’s knights of the shire to the Parliament of 1431, and in March and April 1431 when he was appointed a commissioner to raise loans for the Crown. He himself was returned to the Commons in 1432 when one of those who stood surety for him upon his election was his brother-in-law from his first marriage, Edmund Wychyngham.55 C219/14/3. A councillor of both Sir John Fastolf and Richard, duke of York, Wychyngham remained on friendly terms with Sir Henry who addressed him as ‘cousin’ and later appointed him one of his executors.56 Smith, ‘Acquisition’, 142, 148; CPR, 1446-52, p. 231; Richmond, 142n; Reg. Betyns, ff. 62-63. The Parliament of 1432 opened in May that year and dissolved in the following July after a single session.

Ten months later, Inglose witnessed the return of his former comrade-in-arms, Sir Robert Clifton, and Sir John Fastolf’s councillor, John Roys*, as Norfolk’s representatives to the succeeding Parliament. A major preoccupation for the Parliament of 1433 was the problem of lawlessness. In East Anglia Norwich was particularly disturbed, and late that year Sir Henry was placed on two commissions charged with investigating bad governance in the city, where an attempt to manipulate a mayoral election had led to a riot. There was also disorder in the county of Norfolk, where he was among the gentry required to swear a widely administered oath to keep the peace in 1434.57 CPR, 1429-36, p. 404. By now Inglose was one of the leading figures in his shire, and the Crown summoned him to attend the great council of April and May 1434, where he witnessed the dispute between the dukes of Bedford and Gloucester over the direction of the war in France. Military matters were probably also up for discussion at a meeting of the King’s Council to which he and two fellow veterans, Sir William Oldhall and Sir Stephen Popham*, were summoned in February 1439.58 PPC, iv. 212; v. 108. In the meantime Inglose was returned to the Commons for the fifth time. The war and the desertion of Burgundy from the English side were burning issues for the Parliament of 1435, and anger at the Burgundian volte face prompted the Commons to grant a subsidy and a graduated tax on incomes.59 PROME, xi. 174-9. No doubt Inglose concurred with the sentiments expressed by Sir John Fastolf, who belligerently advised the King’s council in France to launch a destructive raid into Artois and Burgundy.60 Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, ii (2), 575-85.

A few weeks after the dissolution of the Parliament of 1435, Inglose and his fellow MP, Sir Thomas Tuddenham*, received a commission to distribute a tax allowance in Norfolk. A former follower of Thomas Beaufort, duke of Exeter, Tuddenham had become close to William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, a peer with whom Inglose was also on good terms at this date. In 1435-6 Sir Henry attended courts on Suffolk’s manor at Costessey near Norwich with Tuddenham and other de la Pole councillors.61 Richmond, 235n. In the same year he was among those whom the earl sent to Norwich in response to an appeal from its citizens for help in their dispute with the abbot of St. Benet of Hulme,62 Norf. RO, Norwich city recs., chamberlains’ accts., 1384-1448, NCR 18a, f. 212. and in the latter part of 1436 Robert Inglose, presumably his younger son of that name, served under de la Pole in France.63 Add. Ch. 7986. Furthermore, in this period Sir Henry appears also to have supported Robert Lyston, an esquire linked with de la Pole, against Sir Robert Wingfield* in a quarrel over three manors at Badingham, Dallinghoo and Creeting St. Peter in Suffolk.64 C66/441, m. 32d.

As it happened, Inglose’s friendship with Sir John Fastolf brought his association with de la Pole to an end before the 1430s were out. Fastolf had likewise enjoyed good terms with the earl of Suffolk, only to fall out with him over the wardship of Anne Harling, Sir John’s niece, in 1437. After the rift became serious, Inglose chose to forfeit his own relationship with the earl rather than lose the friendship of his fellow knight. A courageous step to take, his decision also demonstrated that he was a substantial figure in his own right and not dependant on the patronage of a great magnate.65 Richmond, 235n. Some years later, Inglose clashed directly with de la Pole and, as a result, he, seven of his servants (who included Peter Dengayne, an esquire from Brunstead, and two ‘gentlemen’ from Dilham) and over a dozen others were indicted on 26 Sept. 1444. They were charged with having forcibly entered a moiety of the manor of Hempstead, Norfolk, a property over which de la Pole, now marquess of Suffolk, and (Sir) Miles Stapleton* claimed ownership, ten days earlier. In the following Hilary term the attorney representing Inglose and his fellow defendants in King’s bench appeared to defend his title to the moiety, which had once belonged to Sir Henry’s maternal uncle, James Genney. In the event, a jury acquitted Inglose and his fellow defendants of forcible disseisin when the case came to trial in July 1448.66 KB27/734, rex rot. 37; Blomefield, ix. 309. By the 1440s Inglose was associating with de la Pole’s chief rival in East Anglia, John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, and serving him as a councillor, estate officer and feoffee in East Anglia and beyond,67 CCR, 1441-7, p. 215; DL29/651/10531, m. 3; CPR, 1446-52, p. 145; L.E. Moye, ‘Estates and Finances of the Mowbray Fam.’ (Duke Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), 449, 450. but whether his estrangement from Suffolk had prompted him to associate with Mowbray is unknown. At the end of the same decade the de la Pole retainer, (Sir) Philip Wentworth*, challenged Sir John Fastolf’s title to the manors of Beighton, Norfolk, and Bradwell, Suffolk, and engineered false inquisitions to uphold his claim. Fastolf succeeded in traversing the inquisitions but was obliged to farm the properties from the Crown while he tried to establish his rights of ownership. It is likely that Inglose supported his old friend in this dispute, since his eldest son and namesake was associated with Sir John when he received grants of the farm of Beighton from the Crown in July 1449 and again on two subsequent occasions.68 A.R. Smith, ‘Litigation and Politics’, in Property and Politics ed. Pollard, 64; CFR, xviii. 116, 156, 206.

Immediately prior to the breach with de la Pole, Inglose was re-elected to the Commons. No doubt the Norfolk electors regarded an experienced soldier like him as a suitable representative, since one of the reasons for calling the Parliament of 1437 was to discuss the defence of the realm and the keeping of the sea.69 PROME, xi. 202. While Parliament was sitting, Inglose entered an indenture with Sir John Fastolf, by which he undertook to convey a manor in Gorleston to his friend. The property was not his and the purpose of the indenture is not entirely clear, but it may have had a connexion with a purchase Fastolf was planning.70 Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Spitlings deeds 189; Smith, ‘Sir John Fastolf’, 31n. On the last day of the Parliament, 27 Mar. 1437, the Crown announced a general pardon covering the first decade of Henry VI’s reign, an offer Inglose chose to take up by purchasing a pardon dated the following 13 July.71 PROME, xi. 199; C67/38, m. 10. He also bought another royal pardon nine years later: C67/39, m. 40 (6 July 1446). After 1437 Inglose participated in two further parliamentary elections in Norfolk, in February 1445 when he witnessed the return of his stepson, William Calthorpe*, and in January 1449 when he himself was returned to his last Parliament. Naval affairs were an important concern of the Parliament of 1449. Late in its first session, the Council sent letters to him and his fellow knight of the shire, Sir Miles Stapleton, as well as others around the country, requesting them to requisition and victual ships to deal with pirates who were robbing vessels and interrupting trade. At the end of the same session the King, on the advice of the Lords, agreed to assign £2,000 for the keeping of the sea out of the half fifteenth and half tenth he had received from the Commons.72 E28/78/87; PROME, xii. 36.

While Inglose ceased to hold public office after the Parliament dissolved in July 1449, he remained active until his death. By 1450 he was a feoffee for Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, having previously participated in a settlement, possibly made for the benefit of Stafford’s half-sister, Eleanor, duchess of Norfolk, in 1448.73 CCR, 1447-54, p. 244; Cat. Med. Muns. Berkeley Castle ed. Wells-Furby (Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc.), ii. 727. During the first half of 1451, Inglose was associated with Fastolf’s efforts to have the de la Pole henchmen, Sir Thomas Tuddenham and John Heydon*, indicted.74 Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, ii. 212, 238-40. Six weeks before his death, Inglose settled 14 manors in Norfolk, along with other lands in the same county, on a group of feoffees appointed to act to the use of his last will. Headed by Walter Lyhert, bishop of Norwich, they included his son, Robert, his sons-in-law, Sir John Colville and Thomas Beaupre (who had respectively married his daughters, Anne and Margaret), his brother-in-law, Edmund Wychyngham, his friend, Sir John Fastolf, and Sir Robert Conyers* (a friend of Fastolf and, like Wychyngham, a councillor of Richard, duke of York).75 CAD, iv. A7907; Richmond, 210n. Margaret had married Beaupre after the death of her first husband, Simon Groos: Richmond, 214.

By the end of his life, Inglose had taken up residence at Norwich, where he had gained admittance to the prestigious guild of St. George,76 Norwich city recs., guild of St. George acct., NCR 8e. and where he made his will. In the will, dated 20 June 1451,77 Reg. Betyns, ff. 62-63. he sought burial in the Benedictine priory of Horsham St. Faith beside his second wife, Anne, who had predeceased him. As well as awarding 20s. to the prior of that house and 6s. 8d. to each of its monks, he left 20s. to every Franciscan, Carmelite and Augustinian priory in Norfolk and made bequests to several other religious houses, including Langley abbey, his first wife’s burial place. He remembered several Norfolk parish churches, including that at Dilham, by bequeathing them gifts of money and vestments. The will mentions no fewer than 25 servants, of whom Thomas Selers and his wife Katherine were especially favoured, since he left him a gown and her various small items of silver and cutlery. Another of its beneficiaries was Inglose’s confessor, Master Peter of Horsham St. Faith, to whom Sir Henry awarded an annuity of six marks for a term of seven years, in return for praying for his soul. Inglose left his eldest son, Henry, various household valuables (items of plate, arras hangings depicting the ‘Nine Worthies’ and the ‘Egle deorum’ and some silk bed hangings), all his livestock at Loddon and Dilham, a half share of the crops at Dilham and his flock of sheep at Ashby, Suffolk. He added that Henry should forfeit all these bequests if he impeded the will in any way, an indication that relations between father and son were not what they might have been. To Robert, his younger son, Inglose made similar bequests of plate, some gold jewelry, linen, a gown, hangings, 500 sheep and a primer, but was far from generous to his daughters. He directed that Anne should have a primer and bequeathed silken belts decorated with gold to her and her husband, Sir John Colville, while Margaret was to receive no more than a silver-gilt cup and her husband, Thomas Beaupre, nothing. Inglose also made bequests to Anne, daughter of Edmund Wychyngham, and to Elizabeth and Sibyl, the daughters of Sir William Bowet by his first and second marriages respectively. Elizabeth, Anne Inglose’s stepdaughter, had married Sir Thomas Dacre and Sibyl, Anne’s daughter by Bowet, Robert Osbern of Essex.

The directions relating to his estates are the most striking part of Inglose’s will. He left no more than four manors, Dilham, Loddon and Wassingford (in Loddon) in Norfolk and Ashby in Suffolk to his heir Henry, again stressing that he should not interfere with the performance of the will. His younger son, Robert, was to have a single manor at Haveringland, along with lands in Haveringland, Brandeston and Cawston and a messuage at Eccles by the Sea. Notwithstanding his apparent military service in France, it appears that Robert was originally intended for the Church, since it was as Robert Inglose, ‘clerk’, that he features as his father’s co-defendant in a lawsuit brought by John Lematon*. In 1435, having acquired the advowson of Filby in east Norfolk some years earlier, Sir Henry had agreed to allow Lematon, a retainer of the duke of Norfolk, to present to that living when it next fell vacant. Whatever the reason for this arrangement, he and Robert subsequently prevented John from exercising his right of presentation, prompting him to sue them in the common pleas. He won his case, since they were unable to contradict his claims in pleadings of 1437.78 CP40/705, rot. 136. Other sources explain the Ingloses’ willingness to renege on the agreement with Lematon. First, in November 1445 Robert received a pardon for an outlawry he had incurred for failing to answer a suit for debt brought by William Alnwick, bishop of Lincoln. The letters patent in question referred to him as ‘late of Dilham, Norfolk, esquire, late parson of the parish church of Filby’.79 CPR, 1441-6, p. 380. Secondly, Blomefield’s Norfolk records that Sir Henry installed Robert Inglose to the living in 1436.80 Blomefield, xi. 220. In other words, when a vacancy arose, the MP had ignored Lematon’s rights in order to present his own son. Possibly he was closer to Robert, whom he named as one of his executors alongside Edmund Wychyngham and the priest John Parham, than to his other children. As for those estates that he did not assign to his sons, Inglose ordered the executors to sell ten other manors in Norfolk, Suffolk and Rutland, using the money raised to pay off his debts and perform his will. Of these properties, Buckenham Ferry and North Walsham were not completely free of encumbrances, since they bore the annual pensions he had awarded to three of his servants, including one of five marks to John Parham. He also directed that Isabel, widow of the long dead Sir Thomas Ilketshale, should remain in possession of two other manors, Hedenham and Kelling in Norfolk, for the rest of her life, after which his executors should dispose of them to the use of his will. Presumably he had purchased the reversion of these manors, in which Isabel owed her life interest to her late husband. Immediately after making his will, Sir Henry added a codicil bearing the same date. In it he directed his executors to sell three of his messuages (‘le Berneys Inne’, the house in Norwich in which he was then living, and those of ‘Drakes’ and ‘Seynes’ in Worstead), and to use the money arising from the sales to pay off his debts and for good works. He had bought the Norwich residence from Joan, Lady Bardolf, widow of Sir William Phelip†, a purchase for which he had still owed £100 at her death in 1447. He therefore ordered his executors to pay hers that sum in settlement of the debt.81 Richmond, 212n, 214; CAD, iv. A7907.

Within two weeks of making his will, Inglose died at Norwich on the night of 31 June. Margaret Paston, then staying in the city, informed her husband of his death when she wrote to him the following day. She told him that Sir Henry’s body had been taken to the priory at Horsham St. Faith at 9 o’clock that morning, acquisitively adding that ‘If ye desyer to bey any of hys stuff I pray you send me word ther-of in hast’, and she would speak to the executors.82 Paston Letters, ed. Davis, i. 243. The news was probably not unexpected: a year earlier a premature report of the MP’s death had prompted the Chancery to issue a writ of diem clausit extremum (dated 25 June 1450) to the escheator in Norfolk and Suffolk. A few months after Inglose had actually died, an inquisition post mortem was held for him in Rutland although another two years would elapse before the Norfolk escheator convened an inquiry about his lands in that county.83 CFR, xviii. 133, 178. The inq. post mortem held in Rutland states that he died on 1 July; that held in Norf. says 20 July: C139/141/9; 151/48.

It is hard to understand why Inglose left so little to his heir, so ensuring that his descendants could not occupy the position among the upper ranks of the gentry he himself had enjoyed. Personal dislike seems the only explanation, since he did not mention any serious debts in his will and there is no evidence that financial problems prompted him to dispose of much of his lands. If he had possessed property in France, he would have lost it in the latter stages of the Hundred Years’ War, but his estate at home must have provided him with a significant income. The £66 p.a. at which it was assessed for tax purposes in February 1451 was almost certainly a considerable underestimate.84 R. Virgoe, ‘Norwich taxation list of 1451’, Norf. Archaeology, xl. 149. It appears that the gentry contributing to the tax (a subsidy granted in the Parl. of Nov. 1449) declared the value of their own lands. The £66 must have been a provisional assessment, since Inglose had still not made a firm declaration of his income nearly a month later: Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 68. He certainly had not lacked for resources earlier in his career: even though twice captured by the French and obliged to raise a ransom for Sir William Bowet, he had been able to buy the three Genney manors. If he had overextended himself in doing so, his marriage to Bowet’s widow would have provided timely relief, since it was a lucrative one. Anne had brought him £1,000 in money and jewels, along with a further 500 marks which Bowet had raised by selling the inheritance of his daughter, Sibyl. Inglose had also profited at the expense of Anne’s son, William Calthorpe, having sold his wardship and marriage to Reynold, Lord Grey of Ruthin, for 800 marks.85 C1/19/40a. Moreover, by the 1430s he could afford to lend 100 marks to Sir John Fastolf for the building of Caister castle, and the King expected him to provide a loan of the same amount when the government was equipping an army for France in the middle of the same decade.86 Richmond, 208; PPC, iv. 323, 327. On a far lesser scale, in July 1445 he advanced five marks to Gilbert Debenham I*, whom he sued subsequently for failing to repay that loan: KB27/746, rot. 4d. Furthermore, like Fastolf, Inglose also had commercial interests. He was a shipowner with a quay at Great Yarmouth, a port through which he imported wine,87 Norf. RO, Gt. Yarmouth recs., ct. rolls, 1446-7, 1449-50, C4/153, m. 16d; 156, m. 1. and his associates included his relative, John Welles II*, Fastolf’s financial agent or broker.88 Corp. London RO, hr 159/56; 170/7; CCR, 1441-7, p. 226; McFarlane, 162n, 179-83. It is possible that Welles performed the same role for Inglose, who in turn acted as a receiver for a merchant named Robert Clyderowe (probably Robert Clyderowe of Calais) in May 1441-3. Later that decade, Clyderowe sued Sir Henry at Westminster for failing properly to account in London for £86 with which he had been entrusted to trade for the plaintiff’s profit. The case never came to trial, since Inglose obtained successive licences to negotiate with his opponent out of court between early 1447 (when Clyderowe entered his plea) and 1451.89 CP40/744, rot. 324; C1/10/335.

Mean though he was towards his children, Inglose’s grotesque treatment of other family connexions during his lifetime caused the most trouble after his death. Soon after he had died, his stepdaughter, Sibyl, and her husband, Robert Osbern, filed a bill in Chancery against his executors. They informed the court that she and her elder half-sister, Elizabeth, were the daughters and heirs of Sir William Bowet, and that Bowet had sold Elizabeth’s wardship and marriage to Thomas, Lord Dacre of Gilsland, who had subsequently married her to his son and namesake. Having secured a future share of half of Sir William’s Cumberland estate (comprising the manors of Blackhall, Botcherby and Stainton) for his own family, Dacre had then persuaded Bowet to sell him Sibyl’s share in the same properties for 500 marks. According to the Osberns, Bowet had decided in a fit of conscience before he died that he and his wife, Anne, should compensate their daughter for her loss with goods worth 500 marks. They complained that she had never received these goods although Anne, who had acted as Bowet’s executor after his death, and Inglose, in his capacity as her third husband, should have ensured that they were handed over. Sibyl’s half-sister, Elizabeth, had also suffered at Inglose’s hands. Having obtained the evidences relating to the three Norfolk manors of Great Hautbois, Horsford and Burgh St. Margarets, all of which were part of her Ufford inheritance, he had asserted the right to hold them during his wife’s lifetime, despite the fact that Anne was not Elizabeth’s mother and had no title to them. After Anne’s death, he had even claimed that the manors were his to hold in fee simple. To head off such a preposterous claim, Elizabeth had allowed him to have Horsford and Burgh for life, in return for an annual rent of only 40 marks (although Burgh, the less valuable of these two properties, was alone worth that amount), and he had permitted her to take possession of Great Hautbois. He had also occupied the Suffolk part of her Ufford inheritance, having somehow managed to have had it settled on his wife, Anne, for life and ‘ten years over’, preventing Elizabeth and her husband, Sir Thomas Dacre, from taking possession before 1447. What is more, his treatment of Elizabeth and Sybil caused a quarrel between the two half-sisters. While on his deathbed, he had told Elizabeth that he had enfeoffed Great Hautbois on the cleric, Master Henry Bowet, to the use of her and her heirs, and after his death Elizabeth had had the manor settled on her own feoffees. Despite this, he had also arranged for the Osberns to take the issues and profits from the property during Sibyl’s lifetime, and for Elizabeth to pay them an additional £100 over a period of ten years (presumably as a way of compensating the Osberns for the loss of Sybil’s 500 marks at Elizabeth’s, rather than his own, expense). Not unreasonably, she resisted their claims when they came to seek these revenues. Litigation in Chancery was the result, and during the dispute Henry Bowet, whom Elizabeth asked to prove that she had an unencumbered right to the property, was murdered while riding to London. (Robert Osbern claimed his death resulted from a drunken fall off his horse. Whatever the truth of the matter, his was not the only sudden death, since one of Osbern’s men also died during the quarrel.) The Osberns tried to cast aspersions on Elizabeth’s character by suggesting that she and her husband no longer cohabited, perhaps a sign of desperation on their part, for Elizabeth appears successfully to have defeated their claims regarding Great Hautbois. If the Osberns had resorted to lying and defamation it was a scarcely surprising reaction to their plight, given that Sybil had lost both her inheritance and the 500 marks her father had intended for her.90 C1/19/40a; 21/44-49, 50-55; 22/157; Richmond, 217-20; CP25(1)/169/188/136.

Another person who had suffered at the hands of Inglose was his stepson, William Calthorpe. It appears that Sir Henry had also managed to acquire possession of some of William’s inheritance, for among the properties he had settled on his feoffees in May 1451 were the manors of ‘Roses’ in South Creake and Stalham Hall, both of which belonged to his stepson. Yet he did not attempt to dispose of the manors in his will and William was subsequently able to recover them. Some 20 years earlier Calthorpe had other grievances against his stepfather, which he had expressed in a letter to Inglose’s confessor. The first of these related to his marriage to Elizabeth, the daughter of Reynold, Lord Grey of Ruthin, to whom Sir Henry had sold his wardship. He claimed that his stepfather was denying him half of his marriage money (presumably he was referring to the 800 marks Grey had paid for the wardship), despite having promised to allow him this sum if he married according to his ‘ordenauns’. He also objected to the way that Inglose had managed part of his inheritance at Smallburgh. In the event, Sir Henry refused to accept either of these complaints, although he was conciliatory about another source of contention, William’s enclosure of lands in Dilham. Although the lands in fact pertained to the Calthorpe manor at Smallburgh, it is possible that the enclosure impeded the movement of livestock on the Inglose manor nearby.91 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 976; Norf. RO, Le Strange mss, P. 20, no. 10.

Arguments about the respective jurisdictions of these manors are likely to have featured in a yet another quarrel that broke out after Inglose’s death, this time between his eldest son and Calthorpe. According to a Chancery bill the younger Henry filed against him in or shortly after the late 1460s, Calthorpe had broken into his fish house at Smallburgh in September 1459 and pulled it down. He also alleged that William had ousted him from lands in Smallburgh, Westwick and Dilham, entered his pasture at Loddon and taken legal action on a bond given to him when the two men had attempted to resolve their differences peaceably. Calthorpe’s side of the story is unknown, but it is likely that Henry was an equally aggressive participant in the quarrel. Quite probably embittered at having succeeded to so little of his father’s estate, he was certainly capable of countenancing violence, for he had clashed with the inhabitants of Tunstead, an encounter in which his servants had killed two men, some 18 months after Inglose’s death. As a very young man, Henry had entered the service of Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury, and he was a retainer of Montagu’s grandson, Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, when he filed his bill against Calthorpe.92 C1/31/509; Paston Letters, ed. Davis, i. 252-3. He no doubt valued such powerful patronage, since with his diminished inheritance he could not aspire to his father’s social rank.

There were yet other suits connected with Sir Henry Inglose’s estate after his death. In the mid 1450s his executors sued his heir for trespass in King’s bench, and late in the same decade they took action in Chancery against his son-in-law and feoffee, Sir John Colville, for refusing to release his title to properties they had sold in accordance with his will. In the same period Robert Danvers*, to whom the executors had sold the manor of Pickworth in Rutland, filed a bill against John Browe* for forcibly disputing his title to the property. Immediate responsibility for the quarrel lay with the younger Henry Inglose (against whom the MP’s executors had won a suit for unlawful entry on the manor heard before the Rutland justices of assize on 22 May 1456), who had made his own sale of the manor to Browe, in contradiction of his father’s will.93 KB27/779, rot. 74; 782, rot. 8d; C1/26/135, 618; E326/10471. If a desperate measure on the part of a man determined to gain something from a property he was not to inherit, the MP himself was to blame for it, through his meanness to his son, just as he was largely culpable of causing the other dissensions that arose after his death.