MULSHO, Sir Edmund

From a gentry family of middling rank, Mulsho and his elder brother Thomas made their way in the world by following the example of their uncle, Henry Mulsho, and becoming followers of the house of York. Thomas opted for service in France while waiting for his inheritance, and he continued his military career there after his father’s death in 1446. His decision to do so was doubtless prompted by the survival of his mother, who retained a dower interest in her late husband’s estate in Northamptonshire, as well as the generosity the dead man had shown Edmund and another younger son, William, in his will. Edmund succeeded to property at Geddington and William to the manor of Newton and land at Stanion, meaning that their elder brother’s inheritance was restricted to the manors of Stoke Doyle and Pilton and various other holdings.15 Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Stafford, f. 131.

Edmund also pursued a military career, and in June 1441 he crossed the Channel with the newly appointed lieutenant-general of France, Richard, duke of York.16 E101/53/33. Upon his arrival he served in the field at Pontoise and Lisieux under William Neville, Lord Fauconberg, and then as one of York’s envoys. During his time as an envoy he received payments ‘a employer a certaine causes secretes’ and was perhaps on one of his missions when he received a gift of a harness from the French dauphin. By June 1442 he was leading his own troops, and he was captain of Pont-Audemer, the first of several garrison commands, by the autumn of the following year. He soon outshone his brother, receiving a knighthood in the spring or early summer of 1446, and by the following November Thomas was serving under him at Pont-de-l’Arche.17 Archives Nationales, Paris, K67/12/16; Marshall 62, 63.

Before crossing the Channel, Mulsho received a grant of lands in France forfeited by Denis de Heugeville.18 Marshall, 63. By 1445 he possessed holdings, probably in the bailliage of the Caux, with an estimated annual value of 500 livres tournois,19 R.A. Massey, ‘Lancastrian Land Settlement in Normandy’ (Liverpool Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1987), 160-1. and in 1447 he was ‘seigneur de Saint Denis de Tibault et d’autres fiefs’.20 Marshall, 63n. His French possessions were temporary assets which he lost when the English were driven out of Normandy but York, for whom he had become a leading counsellor, had already begun to reward him with property in England. The duke granted him ‘Grays’, a manor at Cavendish in south-west Suffolk, in November 1443, and two more manors, at Thaxted and Pentlow in Essex, in 1446.21 Ibid. 63, 64. Described as ‘of Cavendish’ or ‘late of Cavendish’ in pardons of 1447 and 1452, he may have moved to Pentlow in later years, since he was referred to as of that parish in a later pardon of 1455.22 C67/39, m. 13; 40, mm. 16, 34; 41, m. 27. At one stage he also held York’s manors of Finmere, Oxfordshire, and Barton, Buckinghamshire, but the duke had taken them back into his own hands by the late 1440s. To compensate him for the loss, York granted him other lands in Suffolk.23 Johnson, 235; Marshall, 64. As he was often absent from home, Mulsho leased Cavendish and Pentlow to farmers during the early 1450s, and he relied on his receiver, John Smyth of Cavendish, to supervise the day-to-day business of his estate.24 DL29/430/6905.

Serving York also brought Sir Edmund rewards in the shape of offices. In 1446 the duke appointed him constable of the castle at Fotheringhay, for which he received an annual fee of five marks, and steward of that and other lordships in Northamptonshire, for which he was paid £10 p.a.25 Johnson, 235. (It was as ‘of Fotheringhay’, one of the most important centres of the ducal administration, that he stood bail for his fellow Suffolk knight, Sir Robert Wingfield* in November 1447.)26 KB27/746, rex rot. 42; CPR, 1446-52, p. 130. At Fotheringhay he was constable and steward for life, and he held the office of joint steward of York’s lordship of Rayleigh in Essex on like terms. In possession of the stewardship by the late 1440s, he and his associate at Rayleigh, John Doreward, received a fee of £10 p.a. At this date Mulsho also enjoyed an annuity of £20 from York’s East Anglian estates, and by Michaelmas 1451 he was York’s steward at Grantham, a position which brought him a further five marks p.a.27 Johnson, 235; SC6/1113/10; 1115/6. While York was always his principal patron, Mulsho was also associated with other magnates. Near the end of his career he served the duke’s ally, Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, at Calais; and his feoffees included two of the sons of Anne, dowager countess of Stafford (a noblewoman with whom his father had been linked), Henry, Viscount Bourgchier, and Thomas Bourgchier, bishop of Ely.28 PCC 24-25 Stokton (PROB11/4, ff. 186v-188v); The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 808. In July 1447 Bishop Bourgchier granted him the offices of bailiff and steward of the see of Ely’s liberties in Norfolk and Suffolk for life. Apart from the Bourgchiers, Anne’s sons by her final marriage, Mulsho had at least some association with Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, her son by her previous match. In September 1450 and December 1451 he and the duke were nominally parties to conveyances made on behalf of the west Suffolk landowner, Thomas Gedding.29 Suff. RO (Bury St. Edmunds), Hengrave mss, 449/2/153, 368.

As it happened, Mulsho was absent from the realm on the first of those two dates, having accompanied the duke of York to Ireland.30 CPR, 1446-52, p. 233. The King had appointed the duke his lieutenant in the lordship at the end of 1447 although York and his retinue, including Mulsho, did not cross the Irish Sea until July 1449.31 E. Curtis, ‘Richard, Duke of York as Viceroy of Ire.’, Jnl. Royal Soc. Antiquaries Ire. lxii. 162, 165. Soon after their arrival, the duke appointed Sir Edmund steward of Meath and granted him the lordship of Fercullen. The stewardship was something of a sinecure, since the great council which met at Dublin in October 1449 and the Drogheda parliament of the following year licensed him to appoint a deputy steward. In addition, both assemblies exempted him from the Irish statute of absentees, so enabling him to return to England without fear of sanction. Fercullen was a territory of strategic importance because it lay on the edge of the English Pale, and he successfully petitioned the Drogheda assembly for the right to found a borough within it.32 Stat. Rolls Ire. ii. 177, 214-21. It is unlikely that the intended settlement, to have been called ‘Mulsoes Court’, was ever established. Mulsho also obtained property in Dublin, receiving a grant of the keeping of a messuge, shops and houses in Winetavern Street and Cook Street in August 1450.33 Rotulorum Patentium et Clausorum Hibernae ed. Tresham, 265. His stay in Ireland was relatively brief, since he accompanied York back to England in the following autumn. He is not known to have returned to Ireland, although he retained business interests there, including a ship called the Mary of Dublin, a vessel of 70 tons. In about 1454 he took action in the Chancery against Thomas Bodulgate* for an act of piracy, alleging that Bodulgate had seized the England-bound Mary and its cargo on the Irish Sea in November 1451 and taken it to Fowey in Cornwall. He claimed that the ship was worth £100 and the cargo (comprising hides, cloth, tallow and a Breton prisoner with a ransom worth £20) some £137, and put his total losses at £400. Bodulgate’s answer has survived. He asserted that Mulsho had exaggerated the value of the ship and its cargo (and in any case did not own either), and that the matter was determinable at common law, but the outcome of the case is unknown.34 C1/25/207-8; New Hist. Ire. ed. Cosgrove, ii. 523-4.

Soon after returning to England in September 1450, York submitted a couple of bills to Henry VI, to assure him of his loyalty and to complain about the machinations of his political opponents. According to the second of these bills, there had been a plot to execute his chamberlain Sir William Oldhall* and to imprison himself, Mulsho and another leading retainer, (Sir) Walter Devereux I*, in the Welsh castle of Conway, either while they were on their way to Ireland or on their return.35 Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, i. 81, which misnames Devereux ‘Sir William’. Once back in England, York was actively involved in canvassing for the return of his supporters to the Parliament summoned to meet on 6 Nov. 1450. In Northamptonshire he engineered the election of Sir Edmund’s brother, Thomas Mulsho, as a knight of the shire for that county, and there seems little doubt that he likewise worked to secure the return of Sir Edmund in his adopted county of Suffolk.36 K.B. McFarlane, Eng. in the 15th Cent. 233-4; Johnson, 87, 105. Shortly after the Parliament opened, Mulsho and others stood surety for one of the knights of the shire for Sussex, Robert Poynings*, to guarantee that he would appear before the King and House of Lords.37 CCR, 1447-54, p. 238.

It is possible that Poynings, in trouble for acting as a lieutenant to the rebel leader Jack Cade, was linked to the duke of York, with whom Cade himself had claimed a connexion. Sir Edmund and his brothers Thomas and William were very much associated with York’s political and military manoeuvres of 1451-2. It is uncertain if any of them accompanied the duke to his confrontation with the King at Dartford in March 1452, although they were all accused of treason in subsequent indictments. In one Mulsho and others were claimed to have held York’s stronghold of Ludlow in arms from 10 Feb. to 3 Mar., but in another he and his brothers and Thomas Mulsho’s son, John, were said to have been fermenting insurrection at Fotheringhay and elsewhere in Northamptonshire on 22 Feb.38 R.L. Storey, End of House of Lancaster, 94-95, 98-99; KB9/94/1/12; 103/1/16; 270A/77. Whatever his activities and whereabouts, Mulsho suffered no serious consequences, although in the wake of Dartford he and his brothers had taken the precaution of securing royal pardons. He purchased two such pardons, the first issued on 6 Apr. 1452, and the second, in which he was described as ‘late of Ludlow and Cavendish’, on the following 3 Aug.39 C67/40, mm. 4, 8, 16, 34. In November the same year he stood as a guarantor for the good behaviour of Fulk Eyton, another of those accused of holding Ludlow in arms against the King.40 CCR, 1447-54, p. 400. Mulsho still found time to attend to his own affairs during the crisis of 1451-2, since at the beginning of 1452 he pursued an action in the Exchequer against John Jermyn, sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk in 1450-1, for his wages as a Member of the last Parliament. Stating that he had received none of the £33 4s. owing to him, he duly won his case. The court awarded him the sum in demand, plus damages of 20s.41 E13/145A, rots. 30, 61.

The fortunes of York and his followers improved dramatically in March 1454, when the duke was appointed Protector of England for the first time. Early in the protectorate, he sent Mulsho and Louis Gallet, one of the King’s French secretaries, to Flanders, to negotiate the return of goods seized from the staple at Calais by the duke of Burgundy in retaliation for the piratical activities of Sir William Bonville*, Lord Bonville. The mission, for which Mulsho was paid a daily wage of 20s., proved unsuccessful because York failed to keep Bonville in check, and because it was hindered by the actions of Lords Rivers and Welles, who had seized wool and victuals belonging to the staple in lieu of unpaid wages.42 E404/70/1/83; SC8/295/14735; E403/798, m. 12; Johnson, 151; Marshall, 187-8. Mulsho had returned to England by early June.43 Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 93. He is next heard of in June 1455, so it is not known whether he had accompanied his patron to the battle of St. Albans in the previous month. On 19 June York sent him and Lord Fauconberg to recover control of Calais, the captaincy of which the duke had lost to the late duke of Somerset (killed at St. Albans) at the end of his first protectorate. For his part in this mission Mulsho received £10, half the sum given to Fauconberg. One of their main tasks was to deal with demands for unpaid wages from members of the Calais garrison. Mulsho returned to England shortly afterwards, but he and representatives of the garrison met for further discussions at Dover in July.44 G.L. Harriss, ‘The Struggle for Calais’, EHR, lxxv. 40-41; E404/70/2/85-86, 3/46; E403/801, mm. 5, 7. In the following November and December, he took part in negotiations with emissaries of the dissident French duke of Alençon in London, acting as the principal spokesman on the English side when the subject of a possible match between York’s eldest son, Edward, earl of March, and one of Alençon’s daughters was discussed.45 Johnson, 171. In March 1456 Mulsho, along with Fauconberg and others, was again commissioned to go to Calais to settle accounts with the garrison. Before crossing the Channel he obtained letters of protection as one of the retinue of the earl of Warwick,46 DKR, xlviii. 412. who assumed the captaincy of the town a few weeks later.47 Harriss, 46; E159/232, communia Trin. rot. 3. Warwick appointed him marshal of the town, a position he held until his death in the autumn of 1458.

It is likely that Sir Edmund died at Calais, where he drew up his last will, a lengthy and wide-ranging document.48 PCC 24-25 Stokton. Dated 1 May 1458, it superseded a previous will made in England in the autumn of 1453. He asked to be buried in the Lady Chapel of the collegiate church of St. Michael Paternoster Royal, London, beside the tomb of Hartung von Klux, a foreign Knight of the Garter who had died in the mid 1440s. Klux had served the English as an ambassador and soldier and it is possible that Sir Edmund had met him in France.49 F.B. Fahlbusch, ‘Hartung von Klux’, in Studia Luxemburgensia ed. Fahlbusch and Johanek, 353-403. It is not known why he chose to be buried in London, although it is more than likely that he owned a house in the City.50 In a case pending in the ct. of c.p. while the Parl. of 1450 was sitting, Thomas Lane accused John Mareys of having stolen £20 from Mulsho in London, possibly from such a house: CP40/761, rot. 225. He set aside £40 for a tomb bearing an alabaster effigy of himself and his heraldic achievements, a monument lost when the medieval St. Michael’s was destroyed in the Great Fire of London.51 N. Pevsner, Buildings of Eng.: London, i. 174. Mulsho left his garments of cloth of gold and velvet to the same chapel in St. Michael’s and the parish churches of Great and Little Newton in Northamptonshire, so that they could be made into vestments bearing his arms, and ordered an altar cloth, frontal and curtains depicting the arms for the chapel of Our Lady of the Pew in Westminster Abbey. He also donated £20-worth of books, jewels and ornaments to the Newton churches, asking in return for prayers for the good estate of York and his duchess and for the souls of himself, his parents and John Washbourne†.52 It is not known how Mulsho was connected to Washbourne, unless John was related to the MP’s unidentified wife. For his further spiritual welfare, he set aside 100 marks for his executors to spend on masses and works of charity. Sir Edmund was survived by both his brothers, although only William, to whom he bequeathed £40, features in the will. He did, however, leave Thomas’s son John £20 and various items of clothing. Other relatives whom he remembered were his sister Margaret, the wife of York’s servant, John Langley,53 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 702; Johnson, 79, 234. to whom he left £40 and a silver cup, and his daughter, Elizabeth (by then the widow of no fewer than three husbands, Reynold Lathbury, Baldwin Bugge* and Sir Robert Moton*), to whom he bequeathed several items of plate. He also bequeathed £20 to Alice Reynham and ten marks to each of her daughters. Possibly another sister of his, Alice was the wife of Simon Reynham, cofferer of York’s household. A striking omission from the will is any mention of the MP’s own wife, whose identity is a mystery. Other beneficiaries included Sir John Neville (probably Warwick’s younger brother), to whom Mulsho left a black horse, the widow of a London mercer (William Chamber), to whom he gave ten marks, and Thomas Tanner, a scrivener from London to whom he left 40s. Calais features prominently in the will and Mulsho entrusted his ‘cousin’, Warwick’s retainer Richard Whetehill, with sole responsibility for distributing the sums he had bequeathed to people and religious institutions in Calais, and with the task of helping his ‘dere suster’ Margaret Langley to dispose of 250 marks’ worth of his goods. Mulsho outlived Walter, his only known son, and this probably explains why he ordered the sale of most of his lands.54 Although probably a relative, the Edmund Mulsho who was a ‘King’s servant’ under Hen. VII (CPR, 1485-94, p. 256) is unlikely to have been another of the MP’s sons, since he did not succeed to any of Sir Edmund’s lands. He did however assign the manor and advowson of Pentlow to a chantry he wished to have founded in St. Michael’s Paternoster. He directed that two chaplains, each receiving a salary of ten marks p.a., should serve the foundation, which was to bear the name ‘Mulso’s Chantry’. Mulsho appointed five executors, headed by Sir William Oldhall. Oldhall, who had appointed the MP a feoffee to the use of his own will,55 CAD, i. B1244.survived him by just two years (he too was buried in St. Michael’s Paternoster), so the main burden of executing the will fell upon the other executors, Mulsho’s brother William, Simon Reynham, Richard Whetehill and the rector of Cavendish, Robert Wyott.56 Biog. Reg. Univ. Cambridge to 1500 ed. Emden, 622. Mulsho left £20 and a cloak to Oldhall and £20 to each of his other executors, except Whetehill to whom he awarded £50. He named four overseers: Richard, earl of Warwick, Thomas Bourgchier (by then archbishop of Canterbury) and his brother Henry, and Thomas Eborall, rector of St. Michael Paternoster and master of the college of St. Michael Royal.57 Biog. Reg. Univ. Oxf. ed. Emden, 622-3. For their trouble, he left the harness which the dauphin had given him to Warwick, £20 to each of the Bourgchiers and £10 to Eborall. Having appointed his executors and overseers, Mulsho added further instructions to the end of his will. These included the request that a suitable priest should pray in the ‘Scala Coeli’, a church in the Tre Fontane outside Rome, for a year and 30 days, for the souls of himself, his parents and all those to whom he was especially obliged. For the further benefit of the same souls, he directed that the priest should sing a trentale according to the use of St. Gregory in ‘certeyn principall’ churches in Rome. He also asked his executors to acquire a gentle and ‘wele doyng’ horse with a harness for the earl of March, who was also to have his chamfrain (a decorative head-piece worn by a war-horse) with four white feathers, ‘for my Remembrance to his good lordshipe’. Following Mulsho’s death the duke of York retook possession of ‘Grays’ and other lands in Essex but his justification for doing so is not known. The exact nature of Mulsho’s title to these properties is unclear, but the will demonstrates his own belief that he had free disposition of all the lands York had granted him. Soon after the earl of March came to the throne as Edward IV, the MP’s feoffees petitioned the Crown for redress. The matter was referred to the judges, serjeants of law and other legal advisers of the King at Westminster, and they found for the petitioners on the grounds that York had acted unlawfully.58 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 180, 205; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 114-15.