NEWBURGH, John II

Newburgh had to wait until 1444, when he was already in his forties, to inherit his father’s principal estates in Dorset, although before that date he had been allotted some of the family lands in the county, located at Broadway.10 Feudal Aids, ii. 114. Nevertheless, as a young man and before he first entered the Commons he had taken possession of substantial properties, acquired through his first marriage. This took place in the spring of 1423, when a contract drawn up between his father and Joan, widow of Robert More, settled between them responsibility for the costs of the espousals of Joan’s stepdaughter Edith and our MP, including payments for clothes, furs and ‘necessities’ purchased in London. The match had been arranged between the two fathers before More’s death in the previous year. More had ranked among the wealthiest landowners of the region, and his own estates as amalgamated with those of his second wife were worth at least £180 p.a. Although his only child, Edith, the child of his first marriage, was not entitled to inherit all of this, she was an heiress of considerable note. Yet her stepmother retained most of the substantial More estates for life,11 Hutchins, i. 368; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 770-1; C139/23/29. and in 1424 John and Edith were forced to bring a suit against her in the court of common pleas for unjustly detaining a pyx full of title deeds.12 CP40/653, rot. 434. They also sued her for wasting Edith’s inheritance: CP40/661, rot. 387d. Probably under the terms of the marriage settlement the couple took possession of the More family manor of Wootton Glanville, Dorset, which John proved able to keep for his lifetime. A further suit in the common pleas in 1427 was probably collusive, and intended to strengthen the Newburghs’ title to the manor.13 Feudal Aids, ii. 79, 128; Hutchins, iii. 743; CP40/667, rot. 329d.

Unfortunately for Newburgh his wife died prematurely, leaving two young daughters as her heirs. In Hilary term 1435 he made suit on behalf of the girls and their kinsman Thomas Manston with regard to their rights to Wootton Glanville, and completed further transactions relating to the manor later that year.14 CP40/696, rot. 105; Harl. Ch. 58 E 32; Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 345. For his continued interest in Wootton Glanville, see CP40/738, rot. 127. Naturally enough, he took a keen interest in his daughters’ affairs when their grandfather’s widow Joan More eventually died in 1436 and they finally came into their maternal inheritance. On 11 Sept. 1440 the elder girl, Joan, married the Wiltshire landowner John Lye* of Flamston, after her father had negotiated for her a handsome jointure. At that time her younger sister, Agnes, was ‘thorw visitacion of God strongly syke’, but her father was hard-headed enough to insert into the marriage contract with Lye a clause that if Agnes died within a year Lye would abide by the award of John Conge, a canon of Salisbury cathedral, and the lawyers Thomas Hussey I*, Robert Rempston* and others regarding payments to be made to Newburgh from his late wife’s estates, in consideration of the great amount of money he had spent protecting his daughters’ inheritance.15 C139/79/6; Hutchins, iv. 317; Harl. Chs. 53 C 9, 11; 54 D 18. Furthermore, following the death of his son-in-law in 1452, and even though John Penycoke*, one of the esquires for the King’s body, managed to obtain the wardship and marriage of Newburgh’s grandson, the nine-year old John Lye†, in November 1453 Newburgh successfully secured from the child’s uncle Henry Lye custody of certain of the former More manors in Dorset, for which he paid £20 p.a.16 CFR, xix. 18; Harl. Chs. 53 A 24; 54 D 19. Young John Lye was to sue the executors of his gdfa. for the issues of these properties during his minority, in a case which went to arbitration as long afterwards as 1498: Harl. Ch. 53 C 13.

Newburgh’s dealings with regard to the inheritances of his daughters and grandchild were typical of many which engaged this astute and self-seeking lawyer in the course of his long career, and testify to his mastery of the common law relating to land tenure. Where he received his legal training is not known.17 J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii.1153 gives an incorrect date of death for his father and confuses him with his son and grandson, who all bore the same name. His career began soon after he came of age, and was marked by the insertion of his name as one of the elected representatives for Shaftesbury in the Parliament of 1425 on the schedule accompanying the Dorset electoral indentures to Chancery. Newburgh’s wife’s inheritance, which included property in Shaftesbury, may have qualified him to represent the borough. Yet it remains uncertain whether he took a seat in the Commons on this occasion, for the indenture itself recorded instead the name of Thomas Hat*, a local man who had sat for Shaftesbury previously.18 C219/13/3. In the 1470s he received an annual fee of 26s. 8d. from the borough of Shaftesbury for his counsel: Hutchins, iii. 15. If John did go to Westminster, it was in the company of his father, who sat as one of the knights of the shire. Newburgh junior attested the Dorset elections in 1427, and was himself returned for the county in 1429 and on two further occasions before his father’s death. That it was he rather than his father who sat in these Parliaments may be attributed to his usefulness as a lawyer, although it has been suggested that he had established links with Cardinal Beaufort, and such an important connexion would have worked in his favour.19 G.L. Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort, 203, cites no source for this suggestion. Even so, it was not until after the dissolution of his third Parliament as a shire knight, that of 1442, that he began to be appointed to ad hoc royal commissions, the first requiring him to apportion tax allowances in his county, as all shire knights were expected to do. Two years later his father died, and soon after came Newburgh’s appointment to the quorum on the Dorset bench, a position which he occupied scarcely without a break for the next 38 years. If nothing else, such service is indicative of his standing in the county as a landowner and recognition of the worth of his knowledge of the law.

At an unknown date before 1445, Newburgh married again, taking as his second wife Alice Carent, whose father, the lawyer William Carent, was a fellow member of the Dorset bench with whom he had long been acquainted. Unlike his first wife, Alice was not an heiress, but from the point of view of his territorial ambitions she did not come empty-handed. As the widowed daughter-in-law of William Westbury j.KB and the heiress Katherine Fitzwaryn she held for life the former Fitzwaryn manor of Ridelowe in Wiltshire, together with six messuages and some 280 acres of land elsewhere in that county, besides her Westbury jointure in more land and property in Alcombe and Foxham.20 C140/84/36. In addition, Alice held a life-interest in the manor and advowson of Berkley and 15 messuages and 860 acres of land in Somerset, which were to revert after her death and that of her son William Westbury to her sister-in-law Agnes Westbury, the wife of Robert Liversedge. Her tenure of these properties and also the Gloucestershire manor of Castle Combe in Old Sodbury was confirmed in final concords of 1459 and 1475.21 Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 639, 695; CP25(1)/79/92/147; 293/73/440; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1163. Newburgh himself settled on her in jointure a selection of the former Poyntz estates (which he had inherited through his grandmother) in Dorset and Somerset.22 Hutchins, iv. 443. The marriage brought him into closer contact with Judge Westbury (who, in his will of 1448, left him and his wife all the household goods at Ridelowe), and also led to close dealings with his father-in-law Carent, whom he assisted in various legal transactions.23 R.C. Hoare, Modern Wilts. (Westbury), 16-18; Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xxii), 112. It was Carent who bought out Agnes Liversedge’s reversionary interest in the Somerset property held by Alice, and in 1460 he and Newburgh together successfully petitioned the bishop of Bath and Wells for a licence to unite the neighbouring churches of Berkley (held by the Newburghs for Alice’s lifetime) and Fairoak (held by Carent), on account of the impoverishment of the parishes and dwindling number of parishioners.24 Reg. Bekynton, i (Som. Rec. Soc. xlix), 1216, 1296, 1529.

Newburgh’s relations with the major landowners of the region lack clear definition, as does the part he played in the factional politics building up to civil war. On 4 July 1447 he entered recognizances in £200 to the duke of York’s retainer Sir Edmund Mulsho*, and although the purpose of the bonds is not stated it may have been connected with York’s escalating rivalry with Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, whose estates focused on Corfe castle in east Dorset were situated in close proximity to Newburgh’s home. Nearby too was the manor of Povington, pertaining to the alien priory of Ogbourne St. George, of which Newburgh managed to secure a lease at the Exchequer on 8 Dec. 1450. This was a critical time in the clash between the two dukes. During the parliamentary session then in progress York, recently returned from Ireland, challenged Somerset over the latter’s reprehensible behaviour as lieutenant general in France which had led to the collapse of English rule in Normandy, and Somerset’s London house was ransacked by York’s followers. Coincidentally, in the night of 10 Dec. a band of ‘riotous people’ led by John Newport I* raided Corfe castle, assaulted Somerset’s servants and made off with goods valued at 1,000 marks.25 CCR, 1441-7, p. 487; CFR, xviii. 181; Procs. Chancery Eliz. ed. Caley and Bayley, i. p. xlvi; CPR, 1446-52, p. 417. Whether the Newburghs did anything to help defend the Beauforts’ land is not recorded, nor is there any evidence to show that the MP was in Somerset’s service. Yet following Somerset’s death at St. Albans in 1455, the widowed Duchess Eleanor called on Newburgh for assistance in her affairs, and in June 1456 he stood surety for her at the Exchequer when she was given custody of the castle and lordship of Corfe during the minority of her son Duke Henry.26 CFR, xix. 163.

Ambiguity attaches to Newburgh’s relations with another important Dorset landowner, James Butler, earl of Wiltshire, who in the late 1450s emerged as a strong partisan of the Lancastrian government. The two men had conflicting claims to the manor of Sutton Poyntz and hundred of Culliford Tree, which the earl’s first wife, Avice Stafford, considered to be part of her Bryan inheritance, and which Newburgh asserted belonged to him as great-grandson of the last Lord Poyntz. He may not have been entirely happy with the compromise decided in 1451 whereby he would obtain possession only if the earl and his countess both died without issue – although this is what eventually happened. His later involvement in fines regarding the Dorset manors of Manston and Wirgrede whereby inter alia the earl gained a remainder interest, reveals nothing about their relationship.27 Dorset Feet of Fines, 372, 374, 378-9. Similarly, of Newburgh’s political stance in these years, little may be deduced from the fact that he sued out royal pardons in July 1446, May 1455 and January 1458 – they may simply point to a sensibly cautious approach to protect himself and his family against all eventualities.28 C67/39, m. 34; 41, m. 3; 42, m. 36. Nor is the record of his public service particularly revealing, for he was appointed to commissions of array to resist the Yorkist forces after the attainder of their leaders in the Coventry Parliament of 1459, yet continued to be a j.p. without break after their victory at Northampton in the following year.

Then, after a ten-year absence from the Commons, Newburgh was returned as a shire knight for Dorset in the Parliament summoned in the aftermath of that victory to meet on 7 Oct. 1460. A strong case may be made that he exerted influence on the borough elections held in his county, and to positive effect, for at least five of his intimate circle joined him in the Commons: Sampson Brown* sitting for Melcombe, John Calowe* for Bridport (where Newburgh was recorder), William Chyke* for Wareham, Thomas Hussey II* for Poole and Christopher Wood* for Shaftesbury. All five were closely attached to Newburgh, looking to him as a mentor or patron. Save for Brown they were all newcomers to the Lower House. Yet Newburgh’s motives for seeking election himself and for supporting the candidacy of his associates (if so he did) remain a mystery. As we have seen, there is nothing to suggest that he favoured the house of York, yet after sitting in the Parliament of 1460-1 he showed himself just as ready to serve the new regime as he had the old. The names of the MPs for Dorset in the first Parliament of Edward IV’s reign, assembled in November 1461, are not known, but it may be that Newburgh was one of them. When the estates of the executed earl of Wiltshire were declared forfeit, he promptly obtained a proviso to the Act of Attainder guaranteeing that his title to Sutton Poyntz and Culliford Tree would not be prejudiced. Furthermore, the authorities at Bridport paid his clerk half a mark ‘pro parliamento’, which suggests that the recorder and his clerk were both at Westminster for the session.29 PROME, xiii. 55; Bridport ‘Red Bk.’, f. 25.

Not long afterwards Newburgh was drawn into a very serious dispute. He was alleged to have been among the accessories to the murder of William Bastard* of Shrewsbury, one of the filacers in the court of King’s bench, who was killed in Hertfordshire on 9 Jan. 1462. Bastard’s widow appealed his assailants, chief among whom was her kinsman Thomas Thornbury, in the King’s bench, but neither the result of this appeal nor any corresponding indictment before the county j.p.s has been traced.30 KB27/808, rot. 84. How Newburgh had come to be involved in the affair and the extent of his culpability remain matters for conjecture. Yet there is no doubt that he and Thornbury were acquainted, for Thornbury had involved him in litigation over the manor of Whitelackington in Somerset. This manor, once held by Sir Thomas Beauchamp* (d.1444), had been settled by Beauchamp on Thornbury in tail-male, in a move to disinherit his own grand-daughter, Alice. At an unknown date Thornbury enfeoffed Newburgh and others of it, and the co-feoffees brought a plea against Alice and her husband Henry Hull* in 1463, asserting their title by virtue of Thornbury’s grant.31 CIPM, xxvi. 218; CP40/810, rot. 312. He and his co-feoffees, with the exception of Christopher Wood, later conveyed the manor and other lands in Som. to Thornbury’s bro. and h. John: C1/61/102. Despite the allegations made against him, the succession of Newburgh’s appointments as a royal commissioner were not interrupted, and together with his wife’s uncle John Stourton II*, Lord Stourton, he conducted sessions of oyer and terminer at Dorchester in May 1462. He obtained another pardon on 12 Jan. 1463.32 KB9/21/28; C67/45, m. 22.

This pardon coincided with the one accorded to Henry Beaufort, duke of Somerset, whose attainder in the first Parliament of the reign was effectively reversed in the summer of 1463 by the King’s leniency and offers of friendship, only for his subsequent treachery to result in execution at Hexham in the following year. The Beaufort estates in Dorset were parcelled out between Edward IV’s brothers. The names of the Dorset MPs for the Parliament of 1463-5, meeting in these turbulent times, are not known, but to that of 1467 the shire returned Newburgh’s eldest son, William, at an election which John himself attested. Curiously, in a pardon granted to William a year later he was described as ‘of Corfe Castle, esquire’, which suggests that he had been made lieutenant of the castle, perhaps by the duke of Clarence.33 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 197, 261, 292; Hutchins, i. 470; C67/46, m. 15. A later period of crisis and rebellion against Edward IV, in July 1470, saw John Newburgh and William Martin† securing from the Crown a grant of 100 marks p.a. from certain manors forming part of the jointure of Eleanor Beaufort, the widowed countess of Wiltshire, to hold for her use. Eleanor was the daughter of the duchess of Somerset to whom Newburgh had offered assistance in the 1450s, and it may have been such continuing links with the Beauforts (or else to more recent ones formed with Clarence) which prompted the younger generation of his family to lend their support to the government set up in the name of Henry VI by Warwick and Clarence later that same year. William went so far as to fight at Tewkesbury on 5 May 1471 in the army of Margaret of Anjou and the Lancastrian prince of Wales, by whom he was knighted. Despite receiving Edward IV’s pardon he was beheaded by the victors.34 J. Warkworth, Chron. Reign Edw. IV (Cam. Soc. x), 18.

This disastrous event caused immediate problems for the Newburghs. Sir William’s father himself fell under suspicion of having opposed Edward IV, and was removed from the Dorset bench accordingly. However, he managed to obtain a pardon from the restored King, which was granted on 1 Sept. 1471 and specially enrolled on the patent roll.35 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 211, 273. That autumn Newburgh conveyed the principal family estates to feoffees to safeguard the interests of his new heir apparent, Sir William’s eldest son, John; while meanwhile his widowed daughter-in-law, Christine, probably fearing forfeiture of the estates of her own Gouvitz inheritance, had hastened to put them into the hands of a brother-in-law and a Newburgh kinsman on 30 July. She too sued out a pardon, in December.36 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 38-40, 747; C67/48, m. 25. Newburgh’s younger son John was returned to the Parliament summoned in the autumn of 1472 as a representative for Bridport (where Newburgh was still recorder), and he himself was restored to the bench in the following spring, there to remain, as one of the quorum, for the next ten years. Another of his sons, Thomas, sat in the Parliament of 1478, for the same borough. Newburgh saw fit to contribute to the royal coffers by giving King Edward a ‘benevolence’ of 100 marks at Michaelmas 1480.37 E405/69, rot. 2d. That he may have sympathized with the rebels against Richard III is suggested not only by his removal as a j.p. at the time of the revolt but also from his purchase of yet another pardon on 14 Mar. 1484, just a fortnight before his death.38 C67/51, m. 19.

Throughout his career Newburgh had been greatly in demand as a lawyer to oversee conveyances of land, and occasionally he was asked to arbitrate in disputes over title.39 e.g. CCR, 1435-41, p. 388. For at least 24 years he officiated as recorder of the borough of Bridport, which besides paying him a regular fee of 20s. also covered the expenses incurred while he was holding courts in the town, shoed his horses, and proffered hospitality.40 Bridport ‘Red Bk.’, f. 25; Bridport cofferers’ accts. M6, 1/3. Among the many landowners of Dorset for whom he acted as a feoffee were Sir John Chideock* and John Roger of Bryanstone, both of whom died in 1450,41 CCR, 1447-54, p. 153; CPR, 1446-52, p. 411; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 162. while leading clerics of the region also sought his services: for example, Bishop Stafford of Bath and Wells had commissioned him to administer the goods of a canon of Wells cathedral who had died intestate.42 Reg. Stafford, ii (Som. Rec. Soc. xxxii), 255. Gilbert Kymer, the dean of Salisbury cathedral and onetime friend and physician to Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, thought so highly of Newburgh as to ask him to act on his behalf in property transactions and to be one of his executors. This demanding task, which Newburgh took on in 1463, culminated 12 years later with the foundation of a chantry in the cathedral in Kymer’s memory.43 CCR, 1447-54, pp. 314, 323; Dorset Feet of Fines, 375; PCC 1 Godyn (PROB11/5, f. 6); CPR, 1467-77, pp. 565-6. In the 1460s and 1470s he offered his advice to Margaret, Lady Botreaux and Hungerford, helping her in her extreme financial troubles following the ransom, attainder and death of her son Lord Moleyns and Hungerford, and the execution of her grandson (Sir) Thomas Hungerford*, and protecting her inheritance from the demands of her stepmother.44 Wilts. Feet of Fines, 650; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 225-6, 271-2; 1468-76, nos. 235-8, 240, 247; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 462, 1198. As Lady Margaret’s councillor he received a fee of 66s. 8d. in 1464-5 and 53s. 4d. four years later, and in her will in 1476 she left her executors and trustees instructions to present their accounts to him along with the dean and other officials of Salisbury cathedral for a period of ten years following her death.45 SC6/1119/14, 15; Hoare, Modern Wilts. (Heytesbury), 95-103. In his turn, Newburgh, as a man of wealth and influence, employed other notable figures in Dorset to be officials on his estates (such as William Oliver I*), and his attorneys and feed legal counsel (such as John Byconnell* and William Huddesfield†).46 CAD, vi. C4383; SC6/1243/1-8; CP40/745, rots. 123, 410. His association with another Dorset lawyer, Thomas Hussey I, and the latter’s son Thomas II, proved to be especially close, and they enjoyed a mutual friendship with Dean Kymer.47 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 481-2; Harl. Chs. 52 A 41; 54 D 20. Although his relationship with William Browning I* is less well documented, as one of Browning’s feoffees Newburgh obtained a royal licence in 1482 to grant part of the manor of Maiden Newton to Cerne abbey for a chaplain to pray for Browning’s soul.48 CPR, 1476-85, p. 256.

A constant theme of Newburgh’s career was litigation to further his family’s interests. Yet while he was frequently the plaintiff in such suits, it is those in which he was the defendant which are more revealing about his character. Walter Clerk of Blandford tried for several years to persuade him to relinquish land in Cranborne, Dorset, and Dounham, Wiltshire, which Clerk’s father had entrusted to his keeping, eventually petitioning the chancellor in 1456 with testimony that Newburgh had done him ‘grete injur and wronge’. Newburgh denied the charge, saying Clerk’s father had demised the property to him and his heirs in perpetuity.49 CP40/753, rot. 306; C1/17/392; 25/24-26. In another Chancery suit it was alleged that our MP, as sole surviving feoffee of the lands of the Somerset esquire John Pokeswell, had failed to pay Pokeswell’s debts as instructed.50 C1/58/233. Many of the lawsuits in which Newburgh was involved arose from his ambitions for territorial expansion, and in this he showed a remarkable persistence, sometimes continuing to press his claims over several decades. His father had begun the process of acquiring the manor of Coombe Keynes, which although completed in fines with Sir John Cressy* in 1441, led years later to Sir John’s mother suing him for her dower portion.51 Hutchins, i. 347; Dorset Feet of Fines, 358-9; CP40/768, rot. 404; CCR, 1468-76, no. 257. Similarly, he continued his father’s attempts to regain the Poyntz estates, once belonging to his great-grandfather. Thus, the former Poyntz lands in Isle Abbotts, Somerset, were the subject of pleas he brought against Walter, Lord Hungerford† and others including William Styrope*, a filacer in the King’s bench, in 1447. Newburgh was careful to inform the justices that as he was the son-in-law of the sheriff, William Carent, the writs to summon a jury should be directed to the coroners so that he would not be accused of embracery. Even so, it was not until 1465 that he obtained a judgement in his favour, in a collusive action against Styrope and the earl of Worcester (whose father Sir John Tiptoft† had contested the title of Newburgh’s father).52 CP40/745, rot. 123; 753, rot. 337; 817, rot. 542. As we have seen, in respect of Sutton Poyntz Newburgh was eventually successful, and he also managed to beat off challenges to his tenure of another part of the former Poyntz estate, Lullingstone Castle in Kent, which his father had successfully recovered in the 1420s. He added to his holdings property in the neighbourhood of Lullingstone, at Shoreham; in 1453 he won his suit against Henry Tymberden, a London cutler, for forging deeds to defeat his title; and in the following year an assize of novel disseisin at Deptford confirmed his tenure of Lullingstone Castle, despite the justices’ concern that the suit had been collusive. Nevertheless, this was not the end of the affair. In the 1470s Lullingstone was taken into the Crown’s possession in response to the claims of the St. Cler coheirs, but in December 1472 Newburgh obtained custody of the manor at the Exchequer, and in the following Easter term secured a favourable verdict in his suit against the coheirs, one of whom, Christopher, son of (Sir) Richard Harcourt*, formally relinquished his title three years later.53 CP40/768, rot. 145; 779, rot. 515; CP25(1)/116/325/785; CFR, xxi. no. 143; CCR, 1476-85, no. 50; KB27/847, rot. 47d.

Newburgh always vigorously pursued his case, however tenuous its foundation. He said he was the heir of John Cutting, a Wiltshire ‘gentleman’, and in the 1440s petitioned the chancellor regarding the lands in Warminster of which Cutting had enfeoffed (Sir) John Stourton II, Newburgh himself and others including Cutting’s wife Christine, to perform his will. Owing to disagreement between the feoffees as to the testator’s intentions the will could not be performed, so Newburgh sought a writ addressed to William Westbury (the former judge and father-in-law of his wife), to examine witnesses, and subsequently gained possession of the disputed property.54 C1/14/31; VCH Wilts. viii. 103. It was later alleged that he had unjustly dispossessed the cleric Henry Sutton of land in Bishopstrow and Bugley, and a fishery at Warminster: Genealogist, n.s. xxiv. 273, but as Sutton subsequently agreed to be his executor this seems unlikely. Then, in 1455, Newburgh secured a promise from Walter Bergh*, who also claimed to be Cutting’s heir, that if Bergh and his wife failed to produce surviving issue certain substantial holdings in Hampshire and Wiltshire would pass to him.55 CP25(1)/293/73/402; CP40/797, rot. 409. Indeed, he obtained a remainder interest in lands in the region so frequently as to point to a conscious policy of purchasing such interests (or else offering loans on this basis), in the hope that the remainders would eventually fall in, to the benefit of himself or his heirs. This was a strategy he employed from early on in his career,56 Dorset Feet of Fines, 355-6, 370-1; CP25(1)/294/74/40; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 1101-2; Hutchins, iv. 522. and even used against members of his own family, such as his sister’s stepson Richard Turberville.57 Dorset Feet of Fines, 386-7; C1/110/9-13. To add to his holdings in Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire, by the 1470s Newburgh had extended his reach west into Devon, by laying claim to land in Axminster against the heirs of Sir William Bonville*, Lord Bonville – his determination to succeed clearly revealed by his personal appearances in the common pleas in successive terms over three years from Michaelmas 1472.58 CP40/844, rots. 408-9. There is much evidence in the legal records of his persistence in pursuing his debtors, such as the abbot of Bindon (in a case in which he was acting as an executor of his brother-in-law William Turberville*), and the executors of Edward Cullyford* and the bishop of Salisbury; while on another occasion he sued John Aport† of Salisbury for a muniment chest.59 CP40/745, rot. 277; 768, rots. 75, 266, 508; 817, rot. 374; 844, rot. 490d.

All this legal activity and his many and complex property deals led to Newburgh’s enhanced social standing. In the sixteenth century Leland referred to ‘a little fisshar toun caullid Lilleworth, sumtyme longging to the Newborows’, whose ‘goodly maner place’ next to the parish church contained stained glass windows depicting Newburgh’s genealogy and heirs.60 J. Leland, Itin. ed. Toulmin Smith, i. 253. According to the jurors at inquisitions post mortem following the death of his grandson John, his estates were worth at least £104 p.a.,61 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 38-40; ii. 954. but since a rental for just four of his Dorset manors shows that they alone provided an income of £75, his overall wealth must have been of much greater magnitude.62 SC11/9. Young John’s brother and heir Sir Roger Newburgh later received over £212 p.a. from his inheritance,63 SC6/Hen VII/115. even though it had been reduced in size by the settlements their grandfather, our MP, had made on his own younger sons. For instance, the manors of Warmwell and Little Maine, which Newburgh acquired by purchase, were intended for his son John (and passed after John’s childless death to his brother Thomas), and other lands were also bought expressly to endow these cadets.64 Hutchins, i. 428-9, 435; ii. 503; Dorset Feet of Fines, 371. Then, too, Newburgh had paid careful attention to the marriages of his younger daughters, choosing their husbands, as in the case of their half-sister Joan Lye, from among the gentry families of Wiltshire: one of them was married to Henry Long* and another to John Scrope, son and heir of Stephen Scrope (the stepson of the East Anglian knight Sir John Fastolf). To Newburgh paid £200 to Stephen Scrope for the youth’s wardship and marriage in 1467, receiving as security the Scrope manors of Castle Combe, Wiltshire, and Oxendon, Gloucestershire, which even if young Scrope died unwed were to remain in the possession of Newburgh’s daughter for her lifetime.65 CCR, 1461-8, pp. 441-2; Add. Chs. 18240, 18251-2, 18254. Transactions whereby Newburgh’s feoffees conveyed to Robert and Katherine Andrew lands in North Barcombe and Chilhampton, Wilts., in 1481, point to a similar family relationship: Add. Chs. 28873, 28918, 28919.

Among the arrangements Newburgh made for his family in the 1470s were settlements of manors in Somerset on his grandson and future heir John to provide a jointure for the latter’s wife, and he placed in the hands of feoffees the much disputed manor of Bradpole and hundreds of Redhove and Beaminster, Dorset, which he had acquired from the heirs of John Worsop* in about 1474.66 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 38-40; ii. 954; SC6/1243/1. The aged lawyer eventually died on 29 Mar. or 1 Apr. 1484.67 C141/4/41. The writs de diem clausit extremum were issued on 2 Apr.: CFR, xxi. no. 740. He had commissioned a marble tomb for himself in the Trinity chapel of Bindon abbey, at the foot of his father’s and in proximity to the remains of their ancestors, and in his will (to which he made final adjustments on his deathbed), he requested 1,000 masses to be sung there for his soul. In return, the monks at Bindon received the gift of a flock of 200 sheep. The testator provided for repairs to local bridges and to the new quay at West Lulworth (for which 50 marks was set aside), and left sums of money to the churches on his estates, to the monastic houses of Dorset, and to the friars at Dorchester. The abbess and nuns at Tarent were to be given £20 for prayers for him and his two wives. Newburgh was fairly even handed in his bequests to his kinsfolk, leaving £2 to each of the younger sons of his late son Sir William and various nephews and nieces; while his own surviving sons, John and Thomas, his daughters, Margaret Long, Anastasia Frampton and Isabel Scrope, his nephew John Fitzjames and his wife’s niece Margaret Carent each received ten marks and his grandson John Lye £5. Three churchmen, Masters Richard Fitzjames (a kinsman, who later became bishop of Rochester), Henry Sutton and John Sperwell were each left £5 and a silver cup, and these three, together with John Fitzjames senior and Newburgh’s servant William Ashley, were named as executors. The testator’s surviving sons, his son-in-law Henry Long, and another servant, John Calowe (who had sat for Bridport in Newburgh’s last Parliament of 1460), were nominated as overseers.68 PCC 20 Logge (PROB11/7, f. 149).

The executors’ task was not an easy one, especially as Isabel Scrope’s marriage failed after her father’s death. They petitioned the chancellor saying that Newburgh had acquired the marriage ‘at great charge and coste’, but Scrope, of ‘his wilfull simple disposicion’, had evicted his wife from their home, refusing her board and clothing and denying her the agreed jointure in land worth £30 p.a. The executors had tried to persuade Scrope to conform by giving him goods of Newburgh’s worth £100 for Isabel’s ‘exhibicion’ (thinking that the testator would have wanted them to do so), but Scrope had broken his promise to treat her kindly.69 C1/135/86..

Newburgh was not long survived by his grandson and heir John, who died just 19 months after him, in October 1485. The bulk of the Newburgh estates then passed to the latter’s brother Roger.70 CIPM Hen. VII. i. 38-40. John the grandson’s will was dated 18 Oct. 1484: PCC 14 Logge (PROB11/7, f. 103v).