STONOR, Thomas II

When he succeeded his father in early March 1431 Thomas was a child still a few weeks short of his seventh birthday. In his will the elder Thomas Stonor appointed the influential Thomas Chaucer* as his son’s guardian. Previously the guardian and patron of the testator, and one of the most important figures in the Thames valley, Chaucer was intimately involved in the Stonors’ affairs. He shared control of the marriages of the boy and his siblings with two others, their widowed mother, John Warfield*, receiver of the Stonor estates, and John Hampden II*. The half-brother of the elder Thomas Stonor, Hampden was also related to Chaucer by marriage. Following Chaucer’s death in November 1434, Warfield assumed control of the Stonor estates in association with Humphrey Forster†, who by this date had probably already married the eldest sister of the young heir.

These estates were substantial, for Thomas Stonor I appears to have enjoyed a landed income of nearly £250 p.a. Much of the Stonor lands lay within areas in which sheep-farming was of prime importance and their fortunes rested largely on wool. The elder Thomas had inherited no fewer than 15 manors and other holdings in Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Devon, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Lincolnshire, London and Westminster, and he came into possession of a manor at Horton and other lands in north Kent through his marriage to Alice Kirby. He sold the house in London, the Lincolnshire estates and, apparently, lands at Stoke Mandeville in Buckinghamshire, but evidently not out of financial need since he spent large sums improving the manor-house at Stonor and added to his holdings elsewhere, most notably in Berkshire.4 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 484. In 1465 his son purchased an estate, comprising a couple of manors and other lands in and around Rotherfield Peppard, Oxfordshire, for 500 marks, although four years later he disposed of most of the family holdings in Buckinghamshire, including the manor of Bierton which he sold to Ralph Verney*. The younger Thomas did however acquire a temporary interest in other property in Buckinghamshire, for in the spring of 1465 he and Thomas Ramsey (an old friend and trustee of the Stonor family) obtained an Exchequer lease of lands in that county which the Crown had confiscated from one of its former sheriffs, Peter House.5 CFR, xx. 158-9.

Following the death of Thomas Stonor I, his widow Alice retained a substantial interest in the family estates. Her dower comprised the manors of Bierton, Harnhill in Gloucestershire, La Mote in Westminster and Ermington in Devon, of which the last, worth some £56 p.a. in the later fifteenth century, was the single most valuable Stonor property.6 Stonor Letters, ii. (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, xxx), 68. She also held for life another manor at Penton Mewsey in Hampshire, as well as lands her late husband had purchased in Kent for the maintenance of their daughters. Alice was not long a widow, for in late 1432 she married Richard Drayton* in a ceremony held at the Stonor family chapel in Pyrton parish church.7 Early Lincoln Wills ed. Gibbons, 119. During the early years of their marriage the couple appear to have lived at Stonor, although they subsequently took up residence at Horton, perhaps as soon as her son came of age in 1445. As it happened, the latter came fully into his own only very late in life since Alice survived until 1468. Thomas nevertheless remained on affectionate terms with his mother and stepfather, who died within days of each other. He employed Thomas Mull, apparently the husband of a daughter she had borne Drayton, as his factotum, and it was from Drayton that he bought the Rotherfield Peppard estate. Upon making the purchase, he agreed to allow the couple to retain possession of the estate for the rest of their lives. A potential obstacle to these arrangements was removed in the following year when, by means of arbitration, he and the Draytons reached an agreement with his brother-in-law Humphrey Forster, who also had interests at Rotherfield Peppard.8 CAD, vi. C6944; E210/9712.

No doubt the Stonors’ connexion with Thomas Chaucer facilitated Alice’s second marriage, since Drayton was a nephew of their patron’s onetime associate, the late Sir John Drayton†. It would appear that her son was also married within the Chaucer nexus, for tradition has it that Joan Stonor was the natural daughter of Chaucer’s son-in-law and political heir, William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk. According to John Leland, Joan was Suffolk’s bastard child by Jacqueline, countess of Hainault, the divorced wife of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester; although a roll of charges drawn up against Suffolk at the time of his impeachment stated that she was his daughter by a French nun, Malyn de Cay.9 J. Leland, Itin. ed. Toulmin Smith, ii. 19; CP, xii (1), 446n, 447n; Notes and Queries, clxxxi. 156-7; HMC 3rd Rep. 279-80. Whatever the case, it is known that Stonor was one of Suffolk’s feoffees,10 HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 815. and that Joan was certainly French. On 11 May 1453 the Crown granted her letters of denization, as a native of Normandy who had resided in England since becoming Stonor’s wife. The date of the marriage is unknown although the couple’s eldest son William (perhaps named after de la Pole) was probably born in 1449 or 1450.11 C140/48/1. It is possible that Suffolk was the boy’s godfather. The Stonors maintained their links with the de la Poles following Suffolk’s downfall and death in 1450, and in the early 1470s Stonor was one of the feed men of his widow, the dowager duchess of Suffolk.12 CCR, 1468-76, nos. 666, 806; Stonor Letters, i. (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, xxix), 120; E. Noble, World of the Stonors, 119-20. In the same period he became involved in the affairs of Alice de la Pole’s Cornish kinsman, Sir John Arundell of Lanherne. Edward IV had fined Arundell 6,000 marks for supporting the Lancastrians at Tewkesbury, but after receiving 2,000 marks the Crown assigned the remainder of the fine to one of its Italian creditors. At Arundell’s request Stonor, (Sir) Richard Harcourt* and Edward Grimston bound themselves to pay what was still due, and they were enfeoffed of certain of his and his wife’s estates to enable them to honour this commitment.13 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 181; Stonor Letters, i (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, xxix), 129; Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR3/304; 8/413; 19/15-16, 22-24; CCR, 1468-76, nos. 1384-5.

Like his father, Stonor pursued the career of a wealthy country gentleman. His manor at Stonor was always his principal residence, although from time to time he visited his estates in other parts of the country or went to London on business. Indeed, he was away often enough to earn a mild rebuke from his wife on one occasion, for his ‘litylle abydynge at home’.14 Stonor Letters, i. 110. In spite of serving two terms as sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire, he was never particularly active in local government. It was not until the reign of Edward IV that he became a j.p. or was appointed to ad hoc commissions with any degree of regularity, possibly because Richard Drayton was treated as the senior representative of the Stonor family before the 1460s.15 C.L. Kingsford, the original editor of the Stonor papers, mistakenly thought that Stonor did not serve as an ad hoc commr. in Hen. VI’s reign: ibid. p. xxiii. In common with his father, and in testimony to his family’s standing and connexions, Stonor began his parliamentary career at an early age and before serving in local government. He happened to sit in two politically momentous Parliaments, assemblies which marked the respective downfalls of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and William de la Pole. Given their connexions with de la Pole, Stonor and his fellow knight of the shire in 1449-50, his uncle (Sir) Edmund Hampden*, must have found the second of these Parliaments an unsettling experience. To make matters worse, he was not paid the wages he was due for his attendance at this Parliament. In December 1451 he began a suit in the Exchequer against William Wykeham*, sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire in 1449-50, for £33 12s., the sum he was owed for the 168 days he had spent attending and travelling to and from the assembly of November 1449, although with what result is not known.16 E13/145A, rots. 22d, 23d.

Later in the same decade, Stonor found himself at the receiving end of two other Exchequer suits. In November 1454, while visiting that government department in person to account for his recently expired first term as sheriff, a bill was brought against him in the name of Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury. The suit was over £50, a sum which the King had assigned to the earl from the issues of Oxfordshire and Berkshire to cover his expenses on an embassy to the Scots. Stonor obtained successive licences to treat with Salisbury out of court, where this dispute was probably settled. In Hilary term 1455, Margaret, Lady Darcy, brought a bill in the same court against Stonor, again in his capacity as the former sheriff of the two counties. She appeared in the Exchequer in person but on this occasion he was represented by Thomas Combe*, who had served him as deputy sheriff. Margaret claimed that he should pay her £4, in settlement of debts the King owed her. According to her bill, the Crown had assigned her this sum during the first protectorate of Richard, duke of York, from the issues of properties which York’s political opponent, Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, had forfeited in Oxfordshire and Berkshire. Stonor obtained licence to negotiate with Margaret out of court until the following term, when Combe admitted that he was unable to plead anything in bar of her suit. The barons of the Exchequer responded by awarding her the sum in question and damages of one mark.17 E13/145B, rots. 17d, 38; 151, rot. 101d.

A month after the conclusion of this latter suit, York won the first battle of St. Albans, the engagement at which Somerset lost his life. Stonor took an interest in such events, keeping amongst his papers the official Yorkist account of the battle. He did not commit himself to either side during the civil wars although he took the precaution of securing royal pardons in the wake of St. Albans, just as he would do in January 1458 and again in June 1462.18 C67/41, m. 23 (4 Nov. 1455); 42, m. 19; 45, m. 20. In December 1459 and again in the following spring he was appointed to an anti-Yorkist commission of array, but he had begun serving in local government under Edward IV by the summer of 1463. In the same summer he and other Oxfordshire gentry were summoned for military service against the Lancastrian rebels in the north, but he was away from home when the royal writ arrived and there is no evidence to confirm that he took part in this expedition.19 Stonor Letters, i. 62-63. Stonor began a second term as sheriff in 1465, having secured a reduction of 100 marks in his charge for that office,20 Ibid. 72-73; CPR, 1461-7, p. 479. He had petitioned for, but was not allowed, the greater sum of £100. and in the late summer of 1466 he was appointed a j.p. In April 1470 he was among those to whom Edward IV dispatched letters requiring their service against the rebel duke of Clarence and earl of Warwick. Just as in 1463, it is unclear how he responded, although the fact that he was by then a ‘servant’ of the earl’s brother and ally, George Neville, archbishop of York, might suggest that he did not obey the summons. Dating back to at least 1466,21 Stonor Letters, i. 70, 115-16. the nature of his connexion with the archbishop is now unknown, although it is possible that Neville had made him the steward of one of his manors. Stonor was placed on three commissions in Oxfordshire during the Readeption of Henry VI – no doubt because of his links with the archbishop – but after the battle of Tewkesbury the government of the newly restored Edward IV was happy to appoint him to a commission of array for the county. The pardon he obtained at the beginning of 1472 is unlikely to have had any political significance.22 C67/48, m. 17 (28 Jan.). In any case, the fact that he had remained on the commission of the peace throughout the upheavals of 1470-1 is further evidence that he was never a partisan of either side. The fate of his uncle Sir Edmund Hampden, a diehard Lancastrian who suffered years of exile and then death at Tewkesbury for Henry VI, proved the very real dangers of such political commitment. A decade later, Stonor’s son and heir William was less cautious and rebelled against Richard III. William forfeited his estates as a result, although he was able to recover them at the accession of Henry VII.

Family affairs rather than high politics were always the main concern for William’s father, the principal battle of whose career was fought in the law courts. The most considerable topic of the Stonor papers dating from the MP’s lifetime is a major dispute concerning his interests at Ermington. Quite possibly this was a revival of an earlier quarrel between his father and Richard Fortescue, the unruly brother of the famous chief justice (Sir) John Fortescue*, whose family held a neighbouring estate in the same part of south Devon. Whatever the case, in the 1460s Fortescue’s son, another Richard*, renewed hostilities, by challenging the rights of lordship Stonor exercised at Ermington. The new quarrel appears to have begun when Fortescue and his servants began intimidating John Frende, Stonor’s bailiff there, in the spring of 1462. Responding to Frende’s appeals for help, Stonor rode to Ermington, where in May that year Fortescue and his men were said to have waylaid and assaulted him. A year later the matter was referred to arbitration, a process in which Richard and Alice Drayton were associated with Stonor by virtue of her dower interest at Ermington.23 C47/37/22/32. In the event, this attempt to reach an out of court settlement failed because Fortescue failed to abide by the terms of the subsequent award and resumed his campaign of harassment against Stonor’s adherents. Presumably it was at Fortescue’s behest that Richard Drayton was subsequently assaulted at Ermington. Fortescue himself claimed to have suffered an assault at the hands of Stonor in a bill he brought to the court of King’s bench in November 1464, alleging that Thomas had attacked, wounded and mistreated him at Westminster on the previous 10 May. In another bill lodged in the same court that autumn, Fortescue asserted that it was Stonor who had breached the arbitration award of 1463 and demanded that his opponent should pay him £100, the penalty attached to the bonds exchanged prior to the arbitration.24 KB27/814, rot. 26d; 816, rot. 28. Two years later, he further vexed Stonor over the same matter with a suit in the Exchequer.25 E13/152, rots. 63d, 71d, 79, 79d. Back in Devon, Fortescue and his supporters arrested and held Frende for four days in December 1465, having previously secured a writ authorizing them to take action against him and others of Stonor’s men. In response, Frende sued Fortescue in the Chancery for riot and in the court of King’s bench for false imprisonment. Taking advantage of the fact that George Neville was then chancellor of England, Stonor brought a common law suit against his opponent in the same court in 1466, a privilege available to him as one of the chancellor’s servants. In Trinity term 1467 the case was transferred to King’s bench, from where it was referred to trial at the following Lammas assizes in Exeter. There Stonor scored only a partial victory, for the jurors found that he had suffered an assault but not wounding in May 1462, and dismissed his assertion that Fortescue and his men had issued threats to Frende’s life and limbs. He was awarded damages of £32, from which £12 was deducted for the false claims he had made, and Fortescue settled with him for the outstanding £20. There matters would have rested, had not Fortescue chosen to prolong the quarrel by claiming that the Exeter jurors had perjured themselves and formally challenging their verdict, but the case was settled against him in Michaelmas term 1468 after he had failed to pursue his suit. In the midst of his sorrow at the recent deaths of his mother and stepfather, Stonor allowed himself to exult over the defeat of his ‘adversari of Devenshere’.26 Stonor Letters, i. 61-62, 63-66, 73-87, 97.

Perhaps before the end of the quarrel with Fortescue, Stonor became involved in a dispute over the estates of the young John Cottesmore, the grandson and namesake of a former chief justice of the common pleas. By the later 1460s he had acquired the wardship of the boy, whom he was to marry to his eldest daughter Joan, probably in 1470. The estates in question were centred in south-east Oxfordshire, although they also included manors and other holdings in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and the Isle of Wight. The boy’s mother Margaret possessed a dower interest in these lands, and it was over her rights that she and her new husband Oliver Wittonstall fell into dispute with Stonor. Judging by the friendly tone of a couple of letters which the latter received from Wittonstall before the parties referred their differences to the arbitration of (Sir) Edmund Rede*, the disagreement was far from a bitter one and was probably settled amicably. In his award, made at some stage before 1470, Rede directed that during the minority the Wittonstalls should receive an annual income from two manors at Dorton in Buckinghamshire and Holcombe in Oxfordshire, and that they should lease from Stonor all the Cottesmore holdings on the Isle of Wight.27 Ibid. 110-12; VCH Oxon. vii. 125.

Rede was in a good position to arbitrate, since he was both connected to Cottesmore (the nephew of his late first wife) and knew the Stonors well. In all likelihood he counted the MP, who witnessed a settlement on his behalf in 1461, as a friend.28 Boarstall Cart. (Oxf. Historical Soc. lxxxviii), 40. Another witness of the same settlement was the as yet un-knighted Richard Harcourt, a man who was certainly close to Stonor. He helped in the preparations for the Stonor-Cottesmore wedding and his wife provided the ring used on that occasion. In a letter he wrote to Stonor shortly before the ceremony, he addressed the MP as ‘my ryght worshepfull fadyr’, referred to Joan Stonor as his ‘modyr’ and William Stonor as his ‘brothyr’, although there is no evidence of a previous marriage between him and another of Stonor’s daughters. Just as difficult to explain is his reference to Cottesmore’s bride as ‘my dowter and yours’. Perhaps she was Harcourt’s god-daughter; or perhaps she had been previously the child wife of one of his sons, since deceased.29 Stonor Letters, i. 112-14. Another gentleman with whom Stonor was on good terms was Edward Langford* of Berkshire, a long standing acquaintance who had also sat in the Parliament of November 1449. When he wrote to Stonor on behalf of an old servant in the early 1470s, Langford signed himself ‘Your old ffellawe’ and in the same period the two men were co-feoffees of a property in Berkshire.30 Ibid. 122; CCR, 1468-76, no. 117. Stonor was probably also a friend of William Lovell, Lord Morley, who was hoping to ‘sojourn’ with him on one occasion, probably in 1470.31 Stonor Letters, i. 110. He was probably also a feoffee for Lovell, who was perhaps the William Lovell who sat for Oxon. in the Parl. of 1459: CPR, 1461-7, p. 538; VCH Herts. iii. 154. Although the offspring of a peer, Lovell was a younger son and not an established magnate since he held his title in the right of his wife. Notwithstanding the Stonors’ links with the de la Poles, noblemen do not feature particularly prominently in their surviving letters and papers, perhaps because they impinged less on the affairs of the gentry in the Thames valley than in some other parts of England.32 See C. Carpenter, ‘The Stonor Circle’, in Rulers and Ruled ed. Archer and Walker, 175-200, and Noble for much fuller analyses of the family’s networks.

It was in the Thames valley, where the core of his family’s estates lay, that Stonor was primarily active as a feoffee, although his associations with the Arundells and his own interests in Devon ensured for him a similar role in the south-west. During the mid 1460s he counted among his associates Philip Courtenay†,33 CP40/817, rot. 103. and in the same period he was party to a collusive action in the common pleas, through which Charles Dynham† and his wife were confirmed in the lands she held in dower from her previous marriage to William Champernoun. The properties in question included a third part of the Oxfordshire manor of Aston Rowant, although most of them lay in Devon.34 Arundell mss, AR3/304; 8/413; 19/15-16, 22-24; CP40/818, rot. 115. It was in his capacity as a feoffee that Stonor was sued in the Chancery for breach of trust on at least two occasions in his later years. He was among those against whom Thomas Billing the younger (son of Thomas Billing*), brought a bill in the late 1460s or early 1470s for failing to make a release of his wife’s estates in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, and in the autumn of 1472 he and other feoffees were sued by William Gardener over lands in the latter county which Gardener had likewise acquired by marriage.35 C1/33/144; 47/202-5; C253/44/106.

This latter suit occurred late in Stonor’s life, for he died on 23 Apr. 1474. The probate version of his last will has not survived, and it is not clear whether it differed in any substantial respect from the imperfect draft of a will made in late 1468.36 Stonor Letters, i. 141-3; Noble, 50. In this document he awarded each of his daughters, none of whom was married at that date, a substantial dowry of 200 marks and provided for his two younger sons, Thomas and Edmund, with land. He left Thomas his manors in Rotherfield Peppard and Edmund his estate at Buscot in Berkshire, although he also assigned some £78 from the issues of the Rotherfield properties to Richard Drayton’s executors, probably in settlement of his purchase of 1465. He himself appointed three executors, his wife, his cousin Thomas Hampden (son of John Hampden II) and Thomas Ramsey. Stonor was buried in Pyrton parish church following an elaborate funeral which cost almost £75.

The fortunate survival of many of his family’s letters and papers has ensured that at least something of Stonor’s personality is revealed to us. While he was an affectionate son to his mother and stepfather and a loving husband to his wife, for whose ‘cumfort’ he yearned after the Draytons’ deaths, he also comes across as a rather formidable figure. On one occasion in the early 1470s, a servant of Edward Langford dared not take legal action against three of the MP’s tenants for breach of contract until such time as he had Stonor’s ‘leve’ to proceed against them.37 Stonor Letters, i. 97, 122. Even taking into account medieval attitudes to parenting, he appears a stern father, perhaps overly so towards his eldest son and heir, William. William was sometimes deserving of rebuke, not least when he resorted to using threats and intimidation against a tenant of his uncle, Humphrey Forster,38 Ibid. 118-19. although in a letter of 1472 Thomas Mull urged Stonor to show his son greater understanding: ‘when he is at home… let him walke with you, and gevyth wordes of good comforte, and beth good ffader unto hym’.39 Ibid. 128.

No doubt Stonor wished his son, whom Mull considered inclined to be a ‘musyr and a studyer’ (muser and studier), and others thought too lavish in his expenditure, to apply himself more to practical affairs. As it happened, William did not lack aptitude for business matters, and it would appear that he played some part in the management of the family estates in his father’s lifetime.

When Stonor died William had yet to find a wife, although it was not for want of trying on the part of the younger man. While visiting Kent in 1472 William met Margery Blount, the daughter of Sir Thomas Etchingham and widow of the Yorkist William Blount† who had been killed at the battle of Barnet. He duly paid suit to her but a failure to agree on the size of her jointure ensured that the marriage never occurred. It is striking that Stonor appears not to have made a greater effort to secure a match for his heir. By the time William met Margery, Stonor’s second son and namesake was already betrothed to Sibyl, the grand-daughter of John Brecknock*,40 Sibyl is mistakenly referred to as Brecknock’s da. in Stonor Letters, i. p. xxiv, but CAD, i. C1106, proves that her father was in fact John’s son David. although the resulting marriage seems not to have occurred until after the MP’s death. So far as the evidence goes, Stonor’s third son Edmund never married. Like his brother Thomas, Edmund served on Edward IV’s expedition to France in 1475 and he may have died as early as the following year. As for the MP’s daughters, only Joan had a husband when he died: her younger sister Mary married the son and heir of John Barantyn† at a later date. Stonor is nevertheless known to have sought to secure a match for one of his daughters (which is not known) following the death of his brother-in-law Thomas Sackville of Fawley, Buckinghamshire, in 1466. Sackville had failed to father any surviving children by his wife, Stonor’s sister Isabel, meaning that the dead man’s heir was his cousin Thomas Rokes†. Already on hand to help Isabel with various matters in the wake of her bereavement, Stonor began negotiations to marry the daughter in question to Rokes’s eldest son. According to a draft agreement, Rokes was to settle on the couple the reversion of lands worth 20 marks p.a. which the widowed Isabel held for life, and Stonor was to provide his daughter with a dowry of 170 marks, but the proposed match seems never to have occurred.41 Stonor Letters, i. 53, 95-96; C47/37/9/38-9. It is unclear whether a receipt for £80 which Stonor, acting for his sister Isabel Sackville, gave to Rokes in June 1467 was connected to the negotiations, or with other business relating to the Sackville estates: CAD, i. C1288.

The MP’s own widow 42 CAD, i. C1541. For a time Joan appears to have resided at Penton Mewsey, but she was living at Henley when she drew up her will, dated 13 Apr. 1493. Although she made arrangements for a relatively elaborate funeral, she requested burial at the entry of the west door of Henley parish church, a somewhat incongruous last resting place for a lady of her status. She appointed two executors, Sir William Stonor and Thomas Ramsey. Her choice of Sir William for that role indicates that she had made her peace with her son, with whom she had engaged in several quarrels during her widowhood. Her will was not proved until 16 Nov. 1494 but she had died in the previous February.43 CFR, xxii. no. 475; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1016. Sir William was never to exercise his duties as executor, for his own death occurred on 21 May the same year.