WOTTON, Robert

Wotton was probably an outsider to Great Bedwyn, the borough he represented in Parliament, and is not known to have had any landed interests in the neighbourhood. It is possible, however, that he was related to Nicholas Wotton II*, who at the date the Parliament assembled was shortly to acquire (if he had not already done so) part of the manor of Little Bedwyn, and may therefore have become known in the locality through his introduction. Robert’s place of residence at the time of his parliamentary service has not been discovered. He was simply called ‘of Wiltshire’ when, five years later, a kinsman, Richard Wotton, the London tailor, transferred to him and others his goods and chattels,2 CCR, 1441-7, p. 53. although by the middle years of the century he was living either at Hindon or at Faulstone, both in the south-west of the county, and according to the subsidy return of 1451 his lands were worth £5 p.a.,3 Wilts. Hist. Centre, Yeatman-Biggs mss, 906/W.158; E179/196/118.

Of significance in the context of Wotton’s election to Parliament is his description in a lawsuit as a yeoman from Faulstone, near Wilton,4 KB27/817, rot. 13d. for Faulstone was the home of (Sir) John Baynton*, one of the county’s knights of the shire in the same Parliament of 1437, and his subsequent involvement in Baynton’s affairs suggest that he may have travelled to Westminster as one of his servants. Like his fellow shire-knight, John Fortescue*, Baynton belonged to the intimate circle of Sir Walter Hungerford†, Lord Hungerford, and it was to that nobleman’s descendants that Wotton also became attached. In Hilary term 1450 he was summoned to the court of common pleas to answer the King and William Stafford* in a plea for breach of the statutes against embracery. Stafford alleged that Wotton and other jurors who had been called to give their verdict on 4 Oct. 1449 at Beckington (Somerset) in a trespass suit between Lord Walter’s grandson, Robert, Lord Moleyns, and Reynold Croke of Hazelbury next Box, had each accepted large sums of money to find for Hungerford – in Wotton’s case as much as 12 marks (£8) – as well as food and drink worth 20s. The Hungerfords’ receiver-general, Thomas Tropenell*, was held responsible for the offence.5 CP40/756, rot. 370. This may well imply that Wotton, like Baynton and Tropenell, was a permanent retainer of the Hungerfords. In 1455 Christopher Wood* accused him of a trespass at Hampreston in Dorset, another of Baynton’s residences, while Baynton himself associated him with Sir John’s cousin Richard Beauchamp, bishop of Salisbury, and the Wiltshire esquire John Cheyne† as a feoffee of a manor in Sussex. After Baynton’s death in 1465 Wotton and the same co-feoffees brought suits in King’s bench in relation to Sir John’s lands in Wiltshire, but these and other properties in Somerset were later confiscated from them by the Crown, following the attainder of Baynton’s son and heir Sir Robert for fighting on the side of the Lancastrians at the battle of Tewkesbury.6 CAD, v. A10511; KB27/817, rot. 13d; CIMisc. viii. 440.

In the meantime Wotton’s association with the Hungerfords and members of their circle had continued. He had witnessed a grant made by Lord Moleyns’ father Robert, 2nd Lord Hungerford, to his retainer Gregory Westeby in 1452, and served as a juror in 1466 at formal inquiries about settlements the same lord had made shortly before his death in 1459. Westeby (probably the son of George Westeby* who had sat with Wotton in the Commons of 1437), took on the office of receiver-general for the dowager Margaret, Lady Hungerford and Botreaux, and Wotton was present when he completed a transaction in 1471, and at the sealing of a charter by his lady five years later.7 Hungerford Cart. i (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xlix), 361; ii (ibid. lx), 1442, 1444, 1454.

Wotton had attested three of the elections conducted at Wilton to Parliaments of the 1440s, and at those held in 1450 he stood surety for John Seymour II*, one of the representatives returned for Hindon, where he himself was then living. He was party to Hindon’s separate indenture in 1453.8 C219/15/2, 4, 7; 16/1, 2. In addition, he was called upon to testify at Salisbury for inquisitions post mortem on Anne, duchess of Exeter (1458), and John, duke of Norfolk (1462), and serve on juries at judicial sessions in May 1462 and December 1475.9 CP40/779, rots. 52d, 256d; C139/170/41; C140/5/46; KB9/135/36; 136/7.

Wotton’s undated will was granted probate on 10 Oct. 1488. He evidently died an old man, for the heir to a moiety of the house where he lived in Hindon, and its adjacent close, was his great-grandson John Gilbert (the grandson of his late daughter Joan). The other moiety was to pass to John Cokerell, one of Wotton’s executors, whose relationship to the testator is not explained. The two heirs, Gilbert and Cokerell, were also to share the MP’s lands in Hatch, which his feoffees – headed by (Sir) John Cheyne, his long-term associate – were to transfer into their possession. A burgage in Hindon and land and tenements at Bishop’s Knoyle were left to Wotton’s grandson Robert Gilbert, while other properties in the neighbourhood were bequeathed to Master George Hardgill, the rector of Bishop’s Knoyle, and John Baker of Lamport and their respective heirs in perpetuity. It was in Hardgill’s church that Wotton requested burial, although he bequeathed sums amounting to £5 5s. to a number of other parish churches in the vicinity as well as to the fabric of Salisbury cathedral, while the mendicant orders in Salisbury received £4, and a canon was given 20s. to pray for his soul in the chapel at Hindon. Besides remembering his late wife and daughter Wotton asked for prayers to be said for Sir John Baynton.10 PCC 16 Milles.