SERGEANT, Walter

There is little doubt that Sergeant, a servant of Sir Walter Hungerford†, Lord Hungerford, owed his election to three consecutive Parliaments to his patron, the chief manorial lord at Chippenham. Of unknown background, he may well have originated from outside Wiltshire. It appears that he resided in south-east England in the late 1420s, for Walter Sergeant of Kent stood surety at the Exchequer when in July 1429 the Crown granted the farm of the subsidy and alnage of cloth in Wiltshire and Salisbury to Edward Palling.2 CFR, xv. 284-5. There is good reason to identify the surety as the subject of this biography, since Palling’s other mainpernor was John Giles*, a Wiltshire lawyer and Hungerford feoffee.

Possibly Sergeant was himself a lawyer. He participated in settlements on behalf of Lord Hungerford in 1429 and 1430, in the role of an attorney to deliver seisin of various manors and other lordships at Chippenham and elsewhere in Wiltshire to the peer. Although his involvement in such transactions does not prove that he was a member of the legal profession it is worth noting that he also acted in the same capacity alongside Walter Styrope*, who certainly was, when Lord Hungerford purchased the Wiltshire manor of Corton in 1434. In the same decade, Sergeant served Hungerford as a witness and a messenger at the Exchequer, and he was associated with his patron in 1436, as a feoffee of the will of the Devon esquire, John Cheyne of Pinhoe.3 Hungerford Cart. (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xlix), nos. 303, 436; CCR, 1429-35, p. 252; 1435-41, p. 61; E403/721, m. 16; CAD, i. C273; vi. C6409.

The Hungerford link must have helped Sergeant to secure grants from the Crown. In November 1429 he and a monk, Robert Wyse, gained the keeping of the alien priory of Stogursey in Somerset, for a term of 30 years at a farm of £25 6s. 8d. p.a., and in the following May he and John Spencer III* were granted the wardship and marriage of Walter Wothe*, heir to estates in that county and Dorset.4 CFR, xv. 285-6, 321. In the grant of the wardship the name of the by then dead original heir, Wothe’s elder brother John, is mistakenly given. It was with the Exchequer that those applying for such grants were required to agree the farms or other sums of money they should pay the Crown and, significantly, Hungerford was the treasurer of England when Sergeant and his associates acquired the keeping of Stogursey and the Wothe wardship. In July 1435, Sergeant obtained another royal grant, of the farm of the subsidy and alnage of cloth in Wiltshire and Salisbury formerly held by Edward Palling. The grant recorded that Palling had relinquished the farm in favour of Sergeant, who was to hold it for seven years from the following Michaelmas, during which term he was to pay the Crown just over £80 p.a. On this occasion, Sergeant’s mainpernors at the Exchequer were the previously mentioned John Cheyne of Pinhoe and another gentleman linked to the Hungerfords, Thomas Bonham.5 CFR, xvi. 223. By now Lord Hungerford was no longer treasurer, having left office over three years earlier, but Sergeant’s association with his still influential patron probably helped him to obtain the grant. Just a few months after securing this farm, Sergeant gained election to the last of his recorded Parliaments, the short assembly that sat in the late autumn and early winter of 1435.

In the following year William Sergeant, almost certainly the MP’s relative, drew up his last testament, although Walter does not feature in this document, dated 20 July 1436. Evidently from Heytesbury, one of Lord Hungerford’s main places of residence, William requested burial in the parish church there, and he bequeathed money to members of Hungerford’s household and to his son, Robert Hungerford. Notwithstanding William’s Heytesbury connexion, the testament also shows that he had links with Kent, London and Derbyshire. He (and perhaps, therefore, the MP) may have originated from the latter county, since he left 6s. 8d. to a chapel in Chesterfield, a gift intended for the good of his forebears’ souls. There is, however, no last will attached to the testament, meaning that nothing is known about any lands that he may have held in Wiltshire or elsewhere. He was reasonably well to do, since he had several servants and established a seven-year chantry in Heytesbury church, although his testament does not reveal his social rank or indicate whether he followed any particular profession or trade. Among those named in the testament are his wife Iseult, his brothers William and Thomas Sergeant and John Sergeant, a monk. His executors included the London fishmonger John Fairefold and the Hungerford follower Walter Bergh*, and he asked Lord Hungerford to supervise their work. Should the peer decline that role, he requested that the recently knighted (Sir) John Paulet*, a member of the Hungerford circle, should take it on. William Sergeant was no longer alive by 24 Apr. 1437, the testament’s date of probate.6 PCC Luffenham (PROB11/3, f. 166). The MP himself disappears from view after the mid 1430s but it would appear that he was still alive at the end of the 1450s. In May 1456, the Crown granted a pardon to Walter Sergeant, described as a ‘gentleman’ of Stogursey, where the MP had acquired an interest in the priory in 1429. Presumably, the grantee was still alive in April 1459 when the Crown directed the Exchequer not to pursue him over any offences covered by the same pardon.7 C67/41, m. 2; E159/233, brevia Mich. rot. 3; 235, brevia Easter rot. 3.