WALWYN, Makelin

The Walwyns were an ancient family which, by the early fifteenth century, proliferated in several branches. Our MP’s father, Thomas, although not the representative of the senior line, was then its most important member. An MP for Herefordshire in four Parliaments, he held successively intimate places in the service of Roger Mortimer, earl of March (d.1398) and of William Beauchamp, Lord Abergavenny, both of whom named him among their executors. His successful career, together with the lands of his mother and wife, provided him with the resources to both make generous provision for his younger children and preserve a significant estate for his eldest son, Richard. By his will of 12 Mar. 1415 he set aside the manors of ‘Thatteley’ and ‘Farley’ (probably Fawley near Ross-on-Wye) for one of his younger sons, Makelin.3 Fifty Earliest English Wills (EETS lxxviii), 25. This Christian name poses difficulties. In the Latin record it is invariably ‘Maculinus’ not ‘Malculinus’ (the Latin form of Malcolm). In French texts it is rendered ‘Makelond’, ‘Maclyn’ and ‘Maklom’; and in English ones it appears as ‘Maclun’, ‘Makelyn’ and ‘Macalen’. On chronological grounds, there is reason to doubt that this son is to be identified with the MP of 1453, and it has been assumed that there were two Makelins, father and son, the latter of whom was the MP.4 HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 918. Since his parents were married by 1382, Thomas Walwyn’s son would have been an old man by the time of his election and even older when he served as escheator in 1466. Yet a deed of 1457 demonstrates that Thomas’s son was then living and is, therefore, almost certainly to be identified with the MP.5 Herefs. RO, Barton Colwall mss, AA26/II/36-37. It is also very likely that he was the escheator and j.p. of the 1460s, and that, remarkably, 40 years passed between his first and last terms in the former office.

Makelin thus had a very long career, although it is only very sporadically documented. As early as October 1418 he offered surety in respect of a royal lease to the Herefordshire esquire, Thomas Parker, and by this date he was probably already embroiled in an obscure dispute among the county’s gentry. Two Leominster burgesses, Thomas Hood* and Thomas Turball, complained to the keeper of the realm, John, duke of Bedford, that, for their temerity in truthfully indicting William Croft of Croft for the murder of another gentleman, Thomas Lingen, they had become the victims of a campaign of intimidation by Croft and his adherents, among whom was Walwyn and Parker. Makelin’s interest in the affair probably arose from the fact that Croft was already (as he certainly was later to be) the husband of his sister, Margaret.6 CFR, xiv. 259-60; SC8/306/15292. At about this time he was also involved in disturbances in connexion with a matter of more personal concern. His father had purchased the manor of Longworth (in Lugwardine), and settled it upon feoffees to hold to the use of his executors for 20 years with remainder to his widow for her life, and then, in successive fee tail, to our MP’s brother, William, and Makelin himself. According to a petition presented by the executors, this settlement was quickly threatened by one of the feoffees, Sir John Skydemore*, who on 11 Nov. 1418 forcibly occupied the manor. Makelin acted as surety for the prosecution of this petition, but also provided more robust support for his family’s claim. On 28 June 1419 he was obliged to pledge in Chancery £500 on his own account and find sureties in £100 each that he would keep the peace towards Skydemore and appear before the royal council ten days later. Shortly thereafter the manor was committed to John Merbury* pending a settlement, which, judging from the family’s later tenure of the manor, went in favour of the Walwyns.7 Fifty Earliest English Wills, 25; C1/69/230; CCR, 1419-22, p. 49; CPR, 1416-22, p. 218.

It is possible that Makelin spent some of his early career in London, perhaps receiving a legal training. That he offered surety in Chancery is suggestive, as is his appearance in person in the court of King’s bench in 1419 to file against Skydemore a plea for trespass committed in Middlesex. His appointment as escheator twice in very quick succession – in 1426 and 1428 – adds to this impression that he had some legal training, as does his occasional appearances, in person, to sue his own actions and act as surety in the central courts.8 KB27/634, rot. 13; 662, rex rot. 12; CP40/672, rot. 162. His legal training, if such it were, did not, however, preclude a period of military service in his early career: he served in the campaign of 1421 in the retinue of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Worcester.9 E101/50/1, m. 2. Nor did that training diminish what appears to have been a combative temperament. Two Chancery petitions of the 1420s make serious allegations against him. In one, he was accused of forcibly occupying property in Colwall, near Ledbury, belonging to John Bridbroke, a prebendary in Hereford cathedral, threatening Bridbroke with death and oppressing his tenants.10 C1/6/145. Bridbroke was prebendary of Colwall from 1416 to 1427: Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae: Hereford, 19. Much later, in 1445, his executors sued our MP for debt: CP40/738, rot. 383. In the other, it was alleged that he used his powers as escheator to support his kinsman, John Walwyn, in a campaign of intimidation against their gentry neighbour, Philip Dumbelton.11 C1/7/40.

Walwyn’s status rose in the following decade. The death of his mother in 1430 brought him the lands his father had settled upon him in reversion expectant on that event, namely, lands in the parishes of Ledbury and Eastnor in the south-east of the county, including, presumably, the land at Massington in the former parish where he made his home. To this he added the temporary custody of a small estate at nearby Tarrington, granted to him in February 1430 by the Crown for the period of a minority. Two months later, he committed himself to participating in the King’s coronation expedition: on 19 Apr. he sued out letters of protection as about to depart for France in the retinue of John, Lord Tiptoft†, who, in right of his wife, Joyce Charlton, had considerable estates in the marches.12 CFR, xv. 276; xvi. 22; DKR, xlviii. 273.

If Walwyn did travel to France, he was back in England by Easter term 1431, when he sued two yeoman of Ledbury for worrying his sheep there with dogs, and the following 16 Nov. he sat on a jury assembled at Hereford to make assessments to the parliamentary subsidy.13 CP40/681, rot. 275d; Feudal Aids, ii. 416. At this stage of his career, however, his activities outside the county were more important than those within it. In February 1432 he offered surety in a royal grant made to two west-country landholders, John Paulet* and John Fortescue*, and in the following July he acted with his brother, William, in the same capacity in a grant made to the Welsh knight, Sir William ap Thomas. More significantly, in May of that year he had been jointly appointed with Thomas Russell as customs collectors in the port of Bristol.14 CFR, xvi. 54, 75, 84, 98. This was to prove a most unwelcome appointment. As a minor inconvenience it led him into litigation in Chancery: Richard Mayne*, whom Walwyn had replaced as collector, complained, in a vaguely worded petition, that he had tricked his servant, Roger Mayne, into surrendering plate worth £40.15 C1/16/498. This petition is difficult to date, for it omits the name of the chancellor. In May 1433 Richard Mayne provided surety for our MP as defendant in an action of debt, suggesting that the two men were then on friendly terms: CP40/688, rot. 300d. It also appears to have exposed him to physical danger, for in 1434 he brought an appeal of robbery against two Bristol merchants.16 KB27/693, rot. 64d; 694, rots. 33, 61. Very much more serious, however, was the charge, at suit of the Crown, that he and Russell were guilty of concealing customs’ revenue, a charge also made against Mayne and Russell from their period as collectors together. On 17 Nov. 1433 John Shepard, responsible for examining Bristol’s customs accounts, appeared in the Exchequer and claimed that, between 27 May and 19 Oct. 1432, customs of £148 4s. 6¾d. due on goods valued at £1,250 5s. 2d. had been concealed (in other words, misappropriated) by Walwyn and Russell. On the following day Walwyn came to defend himself against condemnation in the ruinous sum of nearly £450, for such offences were punishable, under the statute of 6 Hen. IV, ch. 3, with a fine of three times the sum concealed. Thereafter he produced a series of sureties for further appearances, but in February 1435 he defaulted and in Michaelmas term 1436 he was duly condemned in statutory damages. Unfortunately no further record of the matter has been traced, but, even if the fine was paid (and that must be doubtful), he fared better than Russell who spent four years in the Fleet for his debts as customer before compounding to pay a fine of £100.17 CPR, 1429-36, p. 224; E159/209, recorda Mich. rots. 18d, 22; 210, recorda Mich. rot. 34; 213, brevia Trin. rot. 33.

In the following decade Walwyn briefly returned to his earlier violent ways. In 1444 he and his servants allegedly raided property at Ledbury belonging to the Gloucestershire esquire Thomas Pauncefoot*, and assaulted one of Pauncefoot’s female servants.18 KB27/734, rots. 73d, 81. More positively, it was at this period that he augmented his wealth by marriage, as a second or even later wife, to the widow of the Leominster lawyer, Richard Winnesley. She was both widow and heiress, and a fine levied in Hilary term 1444 embodies the terms of an agreement he entered into with his newly-acquired stepson, Roland Winnesley, over her inheritance. Walwyn was to have a life interest in her manor of ‘Nether manor’ in Stoke Lacy (to the south of Bromyard) and an interest, for the term of her life, in ‘Over manor’ there. In view of these temporary acquisitions, it is surprising to find that in the subsidy returns of 1450-1 he was assessed on an annual income of only £10. This suggests that either his landholdings before marriage were negligible, or, more probably, his income was under-assessed.19 CP25(1)/293/70/285; E179/117/64. These new lands help explain the late flowering of his career. A third term as escheator, after a break of 20 years, was followed, on 10 Mar. 1453, by election to Parliament in company with Henry Oldcastle*. In the meantime, on 27 Sept. 1452, he had served on the grand jury before royal justices sent to Herefordshire to investigate the disturbances in the county, led by the duke of York’s lieutenants, (Sir) Walter Devereux I* and Sir William Herbert*.20 C219/16/2; KB9/34/1/3.

For the rest of that decade, however, little is known of Walwyn, and the remainder of his long career can only be sketched in a few details. It is possible that, despite his second wife’s lands, he laboured under some financial difficulty in the mid-1450s. According to letters testimonial drawn up on 8 March 1459, four years before he had pretended a readiness to sell his manor of Massington, which seems to have been his residence, to Richard Beauchamp†, son and heir-apparent of John, Lord Beauchamp of Powick, but when the hopeful purchaser had spent £40 on the costs of the transaction Makelin had refused to complete the sale.21 Add. Ch. 72943. Where his political sympathies lay in the disorders that overtook his native county in these years or in the civil war of 1459-61 can only be a matter of speculation. Little can be deduced from his appearance as a juror in 1452, and if one may place any interpretative weight on his appointment to the county bench in 1463 and as escheator in 1466 he was trusted by the Yorkist government (as were other members of his family). His advanced age make these appointments surprising, and he did not long survive them. On 10 June 1468 he sued out a general pardon, adding to its efficacy by having it enrolled on the patent roll, and seemingly died childless soon after.22 CPR, 1467-77, p. 83.