WENLOCK, John

Born into a family of no great distinction, Wenlock faced limited prospects at the beginning of his wide-ranging and prominent career as a soldier, servant of the Household, politician and diplomat.34 Unless otherwise indicated in the endnotes, this biography is based on Roskell, ‘John Lord Wenlock of Someries’, in Parl. and Politics, ii. 229-65. Although evidently a man of great ability, his several changes of allegiance during the turbulent reigns of Henry VI and Edward IV have earned him the reputation of a notorious timeserver and turncoat. Such switches were far from unique in this period, but he was probably considerably more machiavellian in his behaviour than most contemporaries likewise involved in the hazardous world of high politics.

The Wenlocks originated from Shropshire, although Wenlock’s father, William Wenlock, had settled in Bedfordshire.35 Other Wenlocks remained in Salop, among them a namesake of the MP who entered the service of the Talbot earls of Shrewsbury and died in 1477: CCR, 1441-7, p. 156; E101/54/2; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, Fr. mss, 25776/1581; CFR, xix. 295; C1/66/105; PCC 33 Wattys (PROB11/6, ff. 254-5); A.J. Pollard, John Talbot, 89n. Although the MP maintained links with that county, it is assumed that it was this or another namesake who swore the oath to keep the peace there in 1434 (CPR, 1429-36, p. 408) and who attested the elections of its knights of the shire to several Parls. of the 1430s and 1440s. In seeking his fortune away from his native county, William was following in the footsteps of a clerical uncle and namesake, who became a canon of St. Paul’s cathedral in London and archdeacon of Rochester. The elder William was the first to arrive in Bedfordshire, where in the late 1370s he bought an estate in Luton, worth some £8 p.a., and acquired the office of master of Farley hospital. Soon after he became master of Farley, he was joined in the county by his nephew, who bought land of his own in Luton and married a local woman. The elder William was buried in Luton parish church after his death in 1391, following which his namesake succeeded to his lands in Bedfordshire. By that date William the younger held manors at Houghton Conquest and Stondon which his wife had inherited from her childless brother. He was never a substantial landowner, for he was found to possess estates worth no more than £24 p.a. when assessed for taxation in 1412, and he probably owed his election as a knight of the shire for Bedfordshire to the Parliament of October 1404 to his personal connexions. Following his death, which is likely to have occurred soon after 1415, he was succeeded by his eldest son Thomas, who spent much of his career campaigning in France. A retainer of Sir John Cornwall, a magnate with estates in both Shropshire and Bedfordshire, Thomas fought at Agincourt, where he and a comrade-in-arms, William Ludsopp*, took several prisoners. Knighted in 1419 or 1420, he appears to have served almost continuously in France until the early 1420s. He probably spent the remainder of his relatively short life in England, where he sat as a knight of the shire for Bedfordshire in the first four Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign and died in 1429. He must have died childless, for he was succeeded by his younger brother, John, the subject of this biography. It was in his capacity as Sir Thomas’s heir that a few years later the latter was found to owe the Crown just over £13. The debt arose from bonds which Sir Thomas had entered into with Henry V, apparently to guarantee that the King would receive a share of any ransom money he won in France.36 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 806-7; E159/211, recorda Trin. rots. 10, 11. Roskell, 233, failed to establish that Sir Thomas was definitely John’s er. bro.

By the time Sir Thomas died John had already begun to make his own way in the world. He had followed his brother’s example by serving in France, perhaps crossing the Channel for the first time in the early summer of 1421. On 15 June that year he and Sir Thomas mustered with Sir John Cornwall at Sandwich before taking ship, and in the following October they and other members of Cornwall’s retinue joined the siege of Meaux. Cornwall’s son and heir was killed at the siege, prompting him to return to England before the town fell in May 1422.37 E101/50/1; A.C. Reeves, Lancastrian Englishmen, 168. Roskell, 233, was unaware that the MP was connected with Cornwall as early as 1421. Sir Thomas either accompanied Cornwall home or made his own way back to England shortly afterwards, but John must have remained in Normandy. In August 1421 he received a grant in tail-male of lands in Gisors worth 600 livres tournois p.a., for which he was expected to render the Crown a nominal yearly rent of a dagger, and before the end of Henry V’s reign he became constable of Vernon-sur-Seine. In late 1423 he was serving at Gisors under Sir Richard Merbury, whom he accompanied to the siege of Compiègne soon afterwards.38 DKR, xlii. 415; Massey, 80; Fr. mss, 25767/51, 63. It is possible that Wenlock remained in France for most of the 1420s, although he was certainly back in England by September 1429 when he attested the election of the knights of the shire for Bedfordshire to the Parliament of that year. Both of the men elected, John Enderby* and John Fitzgeffrey*, were followers of Reynold, Lord Grey of Ruthin, the senior aristocratic landowner in the county. Grey and Wenlock’s own patron, Sir John Cornwall, were to quarrel bitterly with each other in the following decade, but until then they appear to have kept on relatively cordial terms. Several months after the election, Wenlock was back in France, perhaps as a member of Henry VI’s coronation expedition. In the summer of 1430 he was at Gisors under the command of Edmund Beaufort, count of Mortain, although by the following December he was serving with the King’s governor, Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, at Rouen.39 Evreux, Archives Départementales de l’Eure, sous-série II F 4069; Fr. mss, 25769/517; Add. Ch. 7969. He must have returned to Gisors soon afterwards, since he was contrôleur of the garrison there in 1431.

The royal expedition to France ended in February 1432, and Wenlock had also returned to England by the following month when he attested the election of Lord Grey’s retainers Sir Thomas Waweton* and John Fitzgeffrey as the knights of the shire for Bedfordshire to the Parliament of that year. His own parliamentary career began following his election to the succeeding assembly. The Bedfordshire indenture for the Parliament of 1433 names Sir Thomas Sackville* and William Whaplode* as the men who the county’s electors had returned to the Commons, but this is due to a scribal error. Sackville and Whaplode did indeed sit in that Parliament, but as the knights of the shire for Buckinghamshire, which shared the same sheriff as Bedfordshire. Although the indenture was never amended, a separate schedule listing the representatives of both counties correctly names Wenlock and James Gascoigne*, another associate of Sir John Cornwall, who now bore the title Lord Fanhope, as the men elected for the latter county.40 Roskell, 233, suggests that the Beds. election for 1433 was disputed, although on what basis is not clear. A pressing concern for the Parliament was the problem of lawlessness throughout the kingdom, and during the assembly both the Lords and the Commons swore an oath to uphold the peace. A month after the Parliament was dissolved, Wenlock, Gascoigne and the other knights of the shire were ordered to draw up the names of all those in their respective counties whom they thought should likewise swear the oath,41 CCR, 1429-35, p. 271. which afterwards they were commissioned to administer.

It is not clear whether Wenlock was already married when he entered the Commons for the first time, although Elizabeth Drayton was certainly his wife by 1435. The widow of Christopher Preston, an obscure Northamptonshire landowner who had died earlier that decade,42 CP, xii (2), 484. she was also the younger of the two daughters and coheirs of the leading Oxfordshire knight, Sir John Drayton. Her share of her father’s estates included the manors of Clifton Hampden, Oxfordshire, and Long Wittenham, Berkshire, along with the moieties of two others, at Burghfield Regis in the latter county and Kempston in Bedfordshire. She and Wenlock did not gain full possession of her inheritance until after the death of her mother Isabel, who had remarried Stephen Haytfeld*, in 1437. They seem to have had some trouble in securing these lands, for Wenlock went to the trouble of suing her long dead father’s feoffees in the Chancery, to ensure that they complied with the terms of his will.43 VCH Oxon. vii. 19; VCH Berks. iii. 400; iv. 387; VCH Beds. iii. 299; C1/38/39.

Wenlock is likely to have added to his own estates before the end of the same decade since by mid 1438 he was known as ‘of Someries’, suggesting that he already held Greathampstead Someries at that date.44 CPR, 1436-41, p. 186. The deed by which John Aylesbury of Edstone, Warws., quitclaimed the manor to him in July 1464 must have been no more than a legal tidying up or clarification of his title: CCR, 1461-8, p. 186. The manor was just one of several with which he augmented his inheritance in Bedfordshire. He continued this process until late in life, acquiring the reversions of another manor in Luton and the lordship of the hundred of Flitt in the spring of 1467. At least some of his purchased lands in the county appear to have come from the estate of his patron Lord Fanhope, for whom he acted as an executor.45 Feudal Aids, vi. 396; CPR, 1446-52, p. 228; VCH Beds. ii. 307, 351; CP25(1)/6/82/7; E13/153, rot. 106d; CCR, 1476-85, no. 210; Notes and Queries, 5th ser. ix. 373. Outside Bedfordshire, he took possession of various lands which he claimed by inheritance in Wenlock and Much Wenlock, Shropshire, before the end of the 1440s,46 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 246-7. and he also acquired property in London, where his chief holding was a messuage in the parish of St. Michael Paternoster named ‘le Ryall’, and Southwark.47 CP40/805, rot. 319d; 809, rot. 107d; CPR, 1467-77, p. 538. Sometimes known as ‘of London’, he spent a considerable amount of his time there during his career as a royal servant. The City’s tailors awarded him honorary membership of their prestigious Company in the mid 1440s, and his associates included the leading London mercer, Geoffrey Boleyn*, whom he served as a feoffee.48 CPR, 1461-7 p. 141; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 206-7; C66/509, m. 7d; Corp. London RO, hr 181/21; 185/2; 192/22; 196/43; 197/33; jnl 5, f. 251v; CP40/809, rot. 373; Guildhall Lib. London, Merchant Taylors’ Co. accts. 34048/1, f. 388. After 1461 Wenlock’s most significant acquisition of lands was Edward IV’s grant to him of estates in Hertfordshire and elsewhere forfeited by the Lancastrian (Sir) John Fortescue*, although following his second marriage he must have enjoyed access to at least some of the estates held by his new wife. At the end of his life he also owned lands at Kimpton and King’s Walden in Hertfordshire.49 CCR, 1476-85, no. 210.

When Wenlock was returned to his second Parliament, the short assembly of 1437, it was alongside John Ragon*, a follower of Reynold, Lord Grey. By then the relationship between Grey and Wenlock’s own patron, Lord Fanhope, was breaking down, since the latter had begun to contest the elderly Grey’s pre-eminence in the county. He built a castle for himself at Ampthill, just a few miles away from the Grey residence at Silsoe, a dramatic symbol of his challenge to the more established peer. Unlike Ragon, who died shortly after the Parliament met, Wenlock was active in the quarrels between the two magnates. He was present when Fanhope and his retainers confronted Grey and his men at Silsoe in the spring of 1437. Before riding to Silsoe on this occasion, he and another of Fanhope’s retinue took the precaution of donning habergeons, although in the event there was no serious disorder. Wenlock was also present during the Bedford ‘riots’ of January 1439. On that occasion Fanhope and his servants clashed with Grey’s followers at the sessions of the peace in the town, a mêlée causing a panicky stampede in which several men were crushed to death. At the time Wenlock was escheator in Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire but he cannot have made any pretence at neutrality, since he was included in the general pardon granted to Fanhope and 55 of his supporters two months later. It was a mark of the favour that Fanhope enjoyed at Court that it was secured weeks before a like pardon was issued to Grey’s men. Shortly after the disturbances, he and a number of his followers were appointed to a new commission of the peace from which Sir Thomas Waweton and other leading retainers of Grey were excluded.50 Griffiths, 570-2; P. Maddern, Violence and Social Order, 206-15; CPR, 1436-41, p. 246.

In the following June Wenlock mustered as one of the retinue which the recently appointed lieutenant of Aquitaine, Fanhope’s stepson John Holand, earl of Huntingdon, had raised to accompany him to France. By then he had already conveyed all his goods and chattels to John Broun of London, and Joan Wenlock (presumably a relative), to hold in trust while he was overseas.51 E101/53/22; CCR, 1436-41, p. 273. He cannot have remained abroad for more than a few months, for he was returned to the Parliament of 1439, which opened on 12 Nov. that year. The Bedfordshire election to the Parliament of 1439 provides further evidence of the waning local influence of Grey, for Wenlock’s fellow knight of the shire was another Fanhope retainer, William Pekke*, who had played a leading role in the confrontations at Silsoe and Bedford. In the end, the factional divisions in the county were resolved by the deaths of Grey in 1440 and Fanhope in late 1443, and in subsequent years it was possible for Wenlock to associate with Grey’s grandson and successor and members of the Grey interest. Immediately after Fanhope’s death Wenlock was kept busy in the capacity of one of his late master’s executors. Fanhope had left no surviving legitimate issue and his Ampthill estate passed to another of his executors, Ralph, Lord Cromwell, who bought it for 5,000 marks, a sum representing less than its true market value. The purchase provoked some controversy, for Fanhope had not authorized any such transaction in his will. At first Wenlock and four of the other executors refused to support it, prompting Cromwell to take action against them in the Chancery at the beginning of 1444. The court upheld the claim that Fanhope had promised Cromwell Ampthill on such favourable terms, and a few months later the estate was conveyed to the latter’s feoffees.52 Griffiths, 571-2; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 218-19, 229; 1447-54, p. 123; 1454-61, p. 143; Beds. Historical Rec. Soc. xiv. 108-11; CPR, 1441-6, pp. 230, 273; E159/222, recorda Hil. rot. 4; 224, brevia Mich. rot. 26d; S.J. Payling, ‘Ampthill Dispute’, EHR, civ. 885 and n.

Within a couple of years of taking up his seat in the Commons of 1439, Wenlock had entered the King’s household. He was certainly one of its esquires by September 1441,53 E101/409/9. at which date he was already working for the Crown as a royal messenger and ambassador. At the end of June 1441 he departed on an embassy to the dukes of Brittany and Alençon and other French magnates discontented with the government of Charles VII of France. He was back in England for a few weeks in December of the same year, presumably to report on his progress, and then again in the following spring. In July 1442 he was advanced 12 weeks’ wages (at a daily rate of 13s. 4d.) prior to accompanying Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley, to negotiations with the duke of Orléans in the marches of Brittany. He must have established personal contacts in that duchy, for in the mid 1440s he acted as an attorney for the owner of a Breton ship plundered off the Cornish coast. In September 1442 Wenlock was appointed to an embassy headed by the lieutenant-general of France and Normandy, Richard, duke of York, and instructed to treat for peace with France. In England again in early 1443, he returned to France with letters for Orléans shortly afterwards. He was back in England by the following 26 July, but in September the same year he once more took ship for France, where he remained until late June 1444. During this period he was almost certainly engaged in ‘secret service’ and other preliminary diplomatic work ahead of an embassy led by William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk. He himself was appointed to this embassy in February 1444 and he joined Suffolk’s party when it arrived in France in the spring of that year. By 16 Apr. Suffolk and his colleagues had reached Tours, where on 24 May Margaret of Anjou was betrothed to Henry VI and a truce of two years between England and France was agreed. In the autumn of 1444 Wenlock returned to France as a member of the large retinue with which Suffolk escorted the new queen back to England. Just a week before he took ship, he was pricked as sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, but his part in the expedition meant that he was an absentee for much of his term in the shrievalty.54 PPC, v. 238; vi. 315; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 232-4.

By the time Margaret landed at Portsmouth in April 1445, Wenlock may already have secured the position of an usher of her chamber, an office he certainly held at her coronation on the following 30 May. As an usher he was entitled to a daily salary of 1s. 6d., along with an allowance of 6d. for a yeoman, and the queen supplemented these wages with ad hoc gifts and allowances. No doubt he viewed such additional rewards as no more than his just desserts, since by the mid 1440s the Crown owed him some £430 for his work as an ambassador. By now, however, he was well placed to tap into royal patronage. In May 1446 he and another of the queen’s ushers, Edmund Hampden*, received a grant in survivorship of the offices and Crown lands which Giles Thorndon then held in Ireland, contingent upon Thorndon’s death or retirement. Potentially this grant was very significant, for Thorndon was then treasurer of Ireland and constable of Dublin and Wicklow castles, but it was opposed by the lieutenant governor of Ireland, John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, as well as by Thorndon himself. Talbot objected to it on the grounds that it was his right as lieutenant to appoint or dismiss officers of the Crown in the King’s Irish lordship, and in the following July Thorndon was confirmed in all his offices there. In the meantime, however, Wenlock was able to obtain a grant of the offices of constable of Cardiff castle and steward and master forester of the lordships of Glamorgan and Morgannok, for all of which he received fees totalling 100 marks p.a. The castle and lordships had belonged to Henry Beauchamp, duke of Warwick, whose estates had escheated to the Crown following his death since his heir was a baby daughter, whose wardship was granted to the queen. Following the infant’s death in 1449 most of the Beauchamp estates passed to Richard Neville, the husband of Beauchamp’s only full sister and the lord with whom in later years Wenlock was to become most closely associated.55 E101/409/14, 17; 410/2; CPR, 1441-6, pp. 424, 457; 1446-52, pp. 5, 28, 152; E368/220, rot. 122; Oxf. DNB, ‘Beauchamp, Henry, duke of Warwick’.

No doubt Wenlock’s membership of the Household facilitated his election to the Parliament of 1447. The government mobilized its resources to secure the return of royal servants to this assembly, summoned with the purpose of bringing down its principal critic, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. The other knight of the shire for Bedfordshire in 1447 was William Gedney*. Almost certainly he owed his seat to his position in the Household since, unlike Wenlock, he was not an established member of the county’s gentry. At the time of his election to this Parliament Wenlock was still an esquire, although he received a knighthood at some stage later in the same year. The following Parliament, which opened in early 1449, was a less overtly political assembly. Re-elected to it as a knight of the shire for Bedfordshire, Wenlock found time for private matters during its first session, for on 24 Mar. that year he, in association with Sir Willam Peyto* of Warwickshire and Edmund Brudenell of Buckinghamshire, obtained a reversionary grant of the wardship of John Barantyn†, son and heir of Drew Barantyn*. The reversion was intended to vest after the latter’s death but Drew, a landowner with substantial interests in the Thames Valley and Bedfordshire, lived for several more years. Wenlock was well placed to bid for such a grant since Drew’s late first wife Joan, the elder of Sir John Drayton’s daughters and coheirs, had been his sister-in-law, although it is more than possible that he and his two associates were acting on the Barantyns’ behalf.56 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 244-5; C139/151/40; Early Lincoln Wills ed. Gibbons, 179.

By the time he took up his seat in the Parliament of February 1449 Wenlock had risen to the position of chamberlain of Queen Margaret’s household, an office for which he received an annual fee of £40 and which he held for about five years. It was as her chamberlain that in April 1448 he had laid the foundation stone of Queens’, her new college at Cambridge, an institution of which he himself became a benefactor. In the following July he received letters patent, addressed to him as Margaret’s chamberlain and the ‘King’s knight’, granting him the reversion of the office of constable of Bamburgh castle in Northumberland. This was to vest upon the death of the then constable, John Heron*, but in the end nothing ever came of the grant.57 CPR, 1446-52, p. 165. By the early 1450s Wenlock was a steward for the queen in Kent and, probably, one of the principal members of her council, and in this period he and his wife received occasional gifts of plate, jewels and other valuable items from her.58 E101/410/8; A.R. Myers, Crown, Household and Parl. 152, 181, 223; CPR, 1446-52, p. 165; Griffiths, 258, 271.

In spite of his association with the queen, Wenlock escaped the savage criticism levelled at some of his fellow courtiers in the late 1440s and early 1450s. He made sure of securing an exemption from the Act of Resumption passed by the Parliament of 1449-50,59 PROME, xii. 129. but otherwise remained out of the limelight. No doubt he had no wish to draw attention to his past connexion with William de la Pole. By then duke of Suffolk and the King’s chief minister, de la Pole was impeached in the same Parliament for the government’s failings, especially in France where Wenlock had worked with him on the diplomatic front. If never actually a member of the de la Pole affinity, Wenlock had also associated with de la Pole and his followers back at home in England, in the capacity of a feoffee.60 C1/26/117; CP, vi. 567; E159/235, brevia Mich. rot. 16, Trin. rot. 14. Having avoided parliamentary censure, Wenlock was not among the courtiers condemned by the rebels who followed Jack Cade in the summer of 1450, and there is no evidence that he helped to put down their revolt. Private affairs occupied at least part of his attention over the next several months. In September, perhaps in the hope of renewing his claim to the office of treasurer of Ireland, he appointed two attorneys to act for him there until such time as he himself could cross the Irish Sea,61 CPR, 1446-52, p. 400. Just under eight years later he and Michael Tregurry, abp. of Dublin, agreed to submit their differences to arbitration, but their quarrel need not have had any connexion with Ire. Wenlock could have encountered Tregurry (a Cornishman who had received licence to absent himself from his Irish see) in the Household since the cleric had at one time served the King and queen as a chaplain: Oxf. DNB, ‘Tregurry, Michael’. and in October he and his wife secured a papal indult granting them full remission of their sins when at the point of death. Early in 1451 he was helping to make arrangements to secure the release of John Ormond, a brother of the earl of Wiltshire, from captivity in France, but it is not known how he became involved in the negotiations over Ormond’s ransom.62 CPL, x. 70; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 266-7.

By the beginning of the same year Wenlock had fallen into dispute with the widowed duchess of Suffolk, Alice, in spite of his previous links with her late husband and members of the de la Pole affinity. The quarrel concerned a dowry of 750 marks awarded by Henry VI to the wife of an usher of the chamber, Robert Whittingham II*. The King had prevailed upon the duchess to act as his pledge for the payment of this sum and, in turn, she had persuaded Wenlock and Edmund Hampden, now also a knight, to stand as sureties on her behalf. After his wife had not received any of the dowry within the time allotted for its payment, Whittingham had gone to law against Wenlock and Hampden, who had reacted by daily ‘labouring’ and ‘vexing’ the duchess for relief from their difficulties. To resolve the mess he had created, the King issued a writ in January 1451 ordering the Exchequer to content the Whittinghams of the 750 marks, either by direct payment or assignment.63 E404/68/73.

Shortly afterwards Wenlock found himself at odds with Hampden, having become embroiled in another, more serious dispute with the duchess Alice, this time over the former Drayton manor at Nuneham Courtney in Oxfordshire. In 1425 Sir John Drayton’s widow Isabel and her then husband Stephen Haytfeld had sold the reversion of the manor, to vest after their deaths, to Alice’s father Thomas Chaucer*. In the event, Isabel outlived Chaucer but Alice inherited her father’s right to Nuneham, a claim which Wenlock and Drew Barantyn chose to challenge in the early 1450s. They entered the property in June 1451, prompting legal action by Alice and her followers. A suit brought by a group of de la Pole councillors headed by Hampden and Sir Thomas Tuddenham*, led to an assize of novel disseisin at Henley-on-Thames on the following 16 Sept. but this ended in disorder. In the wake of these disturbances, several of the j.p.s for Oxfordshire, acting in association with the county’s sheriff and under sheriff, informed the Crown that Wenlock, Barantyn and no fewer than 3,000 armed ‘malefactors’ had disrupted the proceedings and threatened their opponents and the presiding justices (who included none other than the two chief justices) with death. It would appear that Wenlock and Barantyn paid for their temerity with a brief period of imprisonment in the Marshalsea, since in February 1452 the King sent Sir John Fortescue, c.j.KB, an order for their release. On the following 15 Mar. Wenlock was among those who entered a recognizance for 500 marks to guarantee that Barantyn would appear in the Chancery on 9 May, and he and his fellow sureties also undertook to deliver him to the Fleet prison if he failed to make such an appearance. Five days after putting his name to this recognizance, Wenlock entered another for 2,000 marks, to guarantee his good behaviour while the assize that he and Barantyn had disrupted was still pending. Barantyn was also obliged to provide a like security, although this bore a greater penalty of £2,000. Wenlock turned to the queen for support soon afterwards, for it was at her bidding that he received a royal pardon, dated 21 Apr. 1452, for all the trespasses, riots and other offences he had committed. Two years later, he produced the pardon in the court of King’s bench, so as to forestall any further proceedings against him for his behaviour at Henley, although in the meantime the duchess of Suffolk pressed ahead with another suit in the same court against him, his wife and the Barantyns. In the end the de la Poles won the quarrel, for at the beginning of the following December Wenlock and Drew Barantyn formally quitclaimed Nuneham Courteney to Alice and her heirs.64 VCH Oxon. v. 240; KB27/766, rot. 96; 767, rot. 13d; 772, rex rot. 7; KB145/6/30; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 338, 339; CPR, 1446-52, p. 530; 1452-61, p. 98. But CCR, 1447-54, p. 339, confuses Nuneham Courtney with Newnham Murren, which lay near the de la Pole manor at Ewelme.

Shortly after the quarrel over Nuneham had flared up, Wenlock was among those commissioned to arrest the vicar of Standon in Hertfordshire. The commission may have had political overtones since the lord of the manor of Standon was Richard, duke of York, who had granted it to his chamberlain and close adviser Sir William Oldhall* for life. By now York was the leading opponent of the government and the Court, but there is evidence to suggest that Wenlock, who knew the duke from their diplomatic work together nearly a decade earlier, was not necessarily hostile towards him and Oldhall. In about 1454, just after losing the position of queen’s chamberlain, Wenlock received a letter from Henry VI granting him permission to go on pilgrimage overseas. In the letter, the King informed him that his proposed absence abroad was not the only reason for discharging him from the office, since ‘oon of the gretteste causis wherfore we discharge you ys bicause that in the untrewe troubelous tyme ye favored the duc. of .Y. and suche as longed to hym as .O. and othre’. This tantalizing allusion appears to refer to contacts between Wenlock on the one hand and York and Oldhall on the other during the politically troubled years of 1450-2, perhaps the first example of the sort of double dealing for which Wenlock was to become notorious. The King nevertheless went on to assure him in the same letter that, ‘yif your demeanyng be in alwise from hensforthe as may and oughte tobe to the pleasir of us and of the quene aftre your said pilgrimage … we in som othre thing [presumably a grant to compensate him for his loss of office] wol shewe you our favorable lordship’.65 The letter, transcribed in John Vale’s Bk. 173, is discussed in D.A.L. Morgan, ‘The House of Policy’, in The English Court ed. Starkey et al., 49. Morgan suggests that it dates from mid 1453, but Wenlock was certainly still chamberlain in Dec. that year: DL28/5/8, f. 12. While remaining attached to the Lancastrian Court for several more years, Wenlock was sufficiently well regarded by York and his allies to attend at least one Council meeting during the duke’s first protectorate.66 Corp. London RO, jnl 5, f. 183.

In spite of his contacts with York, Wenlock was still far from ready to join him in rebellion, and in the spring of 1455 he turned out for the King at St. Albans. According to one contemporary account, he was carried home in a cart ‘sore hurt’ after the battle,67 Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, iii. 28. but he had recovered sufficiently to stand for the Parliament which opened on 9 July, and to gain election as Speaker of the Commons three days later. Although he had fought against the Yorkists at St. Albans, he was perhaps not such a surprising choice for the office. In the unique political circumstances created by the battle, an apprehensive Commons House may have felt it politic to elect a Speaker who, while acceptable to the Court, had worked with York and was not an especially partisan member of the King’s establishment.68 Griffiths, 750. It is also possible that Wenlock had adopted a neutral stance by aligning himself with the powerful Bourgchier family, whose leading members represented the political middle ground between the Court and its opponents.69 But this hypothesis, raised by Roskell, 248-9, rests on the fragile foundation of his association with John Bourgchier, Lord Berners, in founding a fraternity and chantry in the parish church at Staines, Mdx., shortly after the Parl. was dissolved: CPR, 1454-61, p. 287. Late in the first parliamentary session, the Roman Curia granted Wenlock an indult exempting him from the full rigours of fasting at Lent and other days of observation. The exemption was justified on the grounds of his old age rather than any injury received at St. Albans. He was certainly of a relatively advanced age by this date, even if the indult’s statement that he was in his ‘eightieth year and more’ is not credible.70 CPL, xi. 16. During the recess following that session, which ended on 31 July 1455, he found time to pursue a debtor in King’s bench.71 KB27/778, rot. 54. The nomination of York to a second term as Protector of England was the most important item on the agenda when Parliament re-opened on the following 12 Nov. A day later, a delegation from the Commons went to the Lords to discuss the appointment, which was confirmed on 19 Nov. Its leader was a former Speaker, William Burley I*, York’s councillor and one of the knights of the shire for Shropshire, rather than Wenlock, suggesting that the latter was reluctant to commit himself to the Yorkists. Striking though Wenlock’s absence from the delegation is, there is no evidence that he had forfeited York’s trust, since on the following 1 January the duke was to retain him with an annuity of £20 for life from his manor of Hitchin in Hertfordshire.72 Griffiths, 752-3; SC6/870/4, m. 3d.

During the third and final session of the Parliament Wenlock took action to safeguard the repayment of an unpaid loan of £1,033 6s. 8d. he had made to the King before December 1449. This necessitated acquiring two exemptions; first from legislation in favour of those merchants of the Calais staple who likewise had advanced substantial sums to the Crown, and secondly from the Act of Resumption passed by the assembly. Startling in its size, Wenlock’s loan was just one of several that he provided the Lancastrian Crown. At some stage before mid 1451 he advanced it £200 for the defence of the realm, and he also lent the queen sums totalling well over £100.73 CPR, 1446-52, p. 452; E159/230, brevia Mich. rot. 33d, Hil. rot. 24d; 231, Trin. rot. 8; A.P.M. Wright, ‘Relations between the King’s Govt. and Bors.’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1965), 234. It is possible that he made loans to others as well, although it is unclear whether the debts of 400 marks and £600 for which he was respectively pursuing William Saunderton of Buckinghamshire and John Brecknock*, a fellow Household man, in the spring of 1451 related to advances he had afforded them.74 C241/235/54, 56. In this period Wenlock was still not a landowner of any great significance, so he must have owed much of his ability to lend so substantially to the grants and offices which had come his way. It is also possible that he had become wealthy through engaging in trade, although no evidence of any mercantile ventures has survived. The loan of just over £1,033 was secured against the customs of Southampton, but it was still completely unpaid in March 1459,75 CCR, 1454-61, pp. 162, 318. a state of affairs which may have played its part in persuading him to change his political allegiances.

It appears that Wenlock transferred his loyalties to the Yorkists during 1458. A royal pardon he received on 10 Mar. that year suggests that he was spending more time away from the capital and the Court, since it describes him as of Bedfordshire and ‘late of London’, although he did attend a meeting of the King’s Council at the London Blackfriars just six days earlier.76 C67/42, m. 42; PPC, vi. 295. In the following May he was among those appointed to go to Calais to treat with commissioners of the duke of Burgundy about breaches of the Anglo-Burgundian truce. Whatever the ostensible purpose of this embassy, two of his fellow ambassadors were the Yorkist earls of Salisbury and Warwick, and it is conceivable that the three men used the mission to establish links between York and foreign powers. Wenlock remained in Calais until at least the end of June, although he was certainly in England in late August, when he was preparing to depart to Antwerp on further diplomatic business. Prior to setting out for the Low Countries, he was summoned to a great council which was to meet at Westminster on the following 11 Oct., but he was to remain overseas until after the New Year. He and a fellow envoy, Louis Galet, met first with representatives of Burgundy before proceeding under safe conduct to France in the autumn. To the Burgundians they proposed matches between the sons of Henry VI, the duke of York and Henry Beaufort, duke of Somerset, and the daughters of Charles, count of Charolais (son and heir of Philip of Burgundy), and the dukes of Bourbon and Gueldres; to the French they suggested alliances between the same boys and the daughters of King Charles VII, the duke of Orléans and the count of Maine. Neither offer came to anything, for both the Burgundians and the French were reluctant to commit themselves to proposals from such an informal embassy. The French in particular were right to feel wary, since at the time Wenlock, in common with the Yorkist lords, supported an alliance with Burgundy. After arriving back at Calais he supplied the Burgundians with details of his dealings with them, and upon his return home in early 1459 he reported to the King that the French were preparing to attack England.77 DKR, xlviii. 429; PPC, vi. 297; M. Hicks, Warwick, 150, 153; Griffiths, 816, 846.

By the following autumn Wenlock had committed himself openly to York’s cause, for he was with the Yorkist forces scattered by a royal army at Ludford in his native Shropshire on 12 Oct. 1459. Following the rout, he fled with the earls of March, Salisbury and Warwick, first to Devon and then, via Guernsey, to Calais.78 P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 199n, mistakenly states that he accompanied York to Ire. after Ludford. Two days after Ludford, the government commissioned John Cornwall (possibly the bastard son of the late Lord Fanhope) and Robert Wodfell to seize Wenlock’s goods and chattels for the Crown, and on 20 Oct. a band of men, led by an ostler from Hertfordshire, took the opportunity to loot his manor of Someries.79 CPR, 1452-61, p. 555; KB27/799, rex rot. 3. In the Parliament which opened at Coventry on the following 20 Nov., Wenlock and other Yorkist leaders were attainted of high treason. During the Parliament the King’s loyal subjects were ordered to do their utmost to apprehend York and his most prominent allies and supporters and a price of £500 was put on Wenlock’s head. In mid January 1460 Wenlock took part in a surprise attack on Sandwich, where the raiders captured Lord Rivers and his son Anthony Wydeville and took them back to Calais.80 Griffiths, 822, 848; Hicks, 169, 175; PROME, xii. 461; Egerton Ch. 7359; E404/71/4/28. Two months later the government entrusted the estates confiscated from York, Wenlock and other Yorkists to a committee of receivers headed by Thomas Thorpe*, who were immediately ordered to use the income from these lands to repay a loan of 100 marks which the Lancastrian loyalist Thomas, Lord Grey of Richemont, had made to the Crown. On the following 11 June the Chancery directed the sheriffs of 11 southern counties to proclaim as a traitor anyone who assisted York and his allies, including Wenlock, or anyone who claimed that the King had played no role in the decision to attaint them.81 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 572, 597; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 409-10, 415-16.

Later that month, Lord Fauconberg, Wenlock and John Dynham led another raid against Sandwich from Calais, seizing armaments and capturing Osbert Mountford, who was there raising troops for the Lancastrian garrison at Guînes. Mountford was also conveyed back across the Channel but, unlike Rivers and his son, his life was not spared and he was beheaded at Rysbank. This second raid preceded the return to England of the earls of March, Warwick and Salisbury, who landed at Sandwich on 26 June. Within a week of their return, the Yorkist earls entered London. Wenlock did not participate in the battle of Northampton on the following 10 July, since he had remained in the City with Salisbury to besiege the Tower of London where a Lancastrian garrison led by Lords Hungerford and Scales was holding out. On the night of 19 July the garrison, which had already begun to negotiate its surrender, staged a mass breakout. It appears that Wenlock was ready to allow some of the more high born defenders to make good their escape, although Scales was caught and killed by a group of Thames watermen.82 Griffiths, 859, 863, 877; C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, i. 85, 89-90, 92; Three 15th Cent. Chrons. (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xxviii), 75. Following Northampton Wenlock was restored to a reconstituted royal Council, and in early August he attended this body at Canterbury, where arrangements were made to ensure that the great royal castles in Wales were not left in the hands of constables hostile to the new regime. Not long afterwards he was nominated as a Knight of the Garter in place of John, Viscount Beaumont, who had died fighting for the Lancastrians at Northampton. After a new Parliament opened on the following 7 Oct., his attainder was annulled and he was appointed chief butler of England for life. The names of the knights of the shire who sat for Bedfordshire in the Parliament of 1460 are not known, although it is possible that Wenlock represented the county in this Yorkist-dominated assembly.83 Griffiths, 864; PPC, vi. 304, 307. A week into the Parliament and just two days before Richard, duke of York, formally presented his claim to the throne, he was associated with York and his sons, the earls of March and Rutland, in a quitclaim of the Buckinghamshire manors of Drayton Parslow and Mursley, a transaction to which they were all party as feoffees of the serjeant-at-law, William Lacon I*.84 CCR, 1454-61, p. 483. Before the end of the decade, however, Wenlock fell out with Lacon. By 1467 he was suing the lawyer in Chancery, in defence of the interests of the wid. and children of Thomas St. John*, a fellow MP of 1447 for whom he had acted as a patron: C1/26/372; 33/249-50. On 1 Dec. 1460 the Parliament was prorogued to the new year but at the end of the same month York met his death at the battle of Wakefield.

At the time of Wakefield Wenlock was with the earl of March at Ludlow. It is likely that he accompanied March to the Yorkist victory at Mortimer’s Cross in early February 1461, for he was with him in Gloucestershire when the earl of Warwick was defeated at the second battle of St. Albans later that month. Prior to St. Albans, Wenlock was commissioned by the Yorkist-dominated government to arrest its opponents in southern England and the Midlands, and appointed steward of the duchy of Lancaster in Essex, Hertfordshire and Middlesex. It was at St. Albans that the hapless Henry VI was freed from Yorkist control and reunited with his queen, who now hoped to march to London. Following the battle, an anxious mayor of London made arrangements to send victuals and money to the victorious Lancastrians, but a band of Londoners, assisted by Wenlock’s cook John Bishop, intercepted the baggage train before it could leave the City.85 Historical Collns. Citizen London (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xvii), 214; W.A. Shaw, Knights of Eng. 13. While Margaret and the other Lancastrian commanders hesitated to advance on London, the earl of March seized the initiative by marching eastwards, entering the City on 26 Feb. and having himself proclaimed Edward IV a week later. If Wenlock did not accompany March to London he followed on soon afterwards, for on 10 Mar. he was with the new King at Baynard’s Castle, the late duke of York’s house there, to witness the reappointment of George Neville, bishop of Exeter, as chancellor.86 Foedera, v (ii), 104.

Later that month Wenlock marched north with Edward IV to Yorkshire, where he commanded the Yorkist rearguard at Ferrybridge on 28 Mar. and took part in the bloody battle of Towton on the following day. On 1 Apr. Edward ordered him to besiege Thorpe Waterville, a castle in Northamptonshire belonging to the Lancastrian duke of Exeter. Three days later it was reported to have surrendered, as if the mere threat of a siege had sufficed to persuade the garrison to yield. In reality there probably was a short siege, since subsequent payments which Wenlock received from the Exchequer included his expenses ‘before Thorpewatervyle’.87 McFarlane, 241n; E403/823, mm. 6, 7; 824, mm. 6, 9. Whatever the case, he had returned to northern England by the following 10 May, when he and others were commissioned to investigate the treasons committed by the Lancastrian civil lawyer, John Morton, who had fallen into Yorkist hands after the battle of Towton.

Confirmed in office as chief butler of England by letters patent of 1 May, and one of those whom the new monarch placed on his Council, Wenlock was also involved in the preparations for Edward’s coronation on 28 June. It fell to him and the lawyer Thomas Young II* to discharge the duties of steward of England at the coronation, owing to the youth of the nominal steward, the King’s brother George, and it was in this capacity that he and Young received bills of claims to render services during the ceremonies. Among the successful petitioners were the mayor of Oxford and six of his fellow burgesses, whose claim that they should assist Wenlock at the coronation feast in his capacity as chief butler was upheld. Within days of the coronation the Crown appointed Robert Stowell, a yeoman in the King’s butlery, to purvey wines for the Household, because the increasingly busy Wenlock lacked the time to attend to his duties as butler. Another of the chief butler’s duties was to act as the King’s coroner in the City of London, an office which was likewise assigned to another deputy, Wenlock’s second cousin, John Lawley* of Shropshire.88 Recs. Med. Oxf. ed. Salter, 69-70; CPR, 1461-7, p. 14; CCR, 1461-8, p. 9. Lawley was just one of several deputies who helped Wenlock perform his duties as butler: CPR, 1452-61, p. 637; 1461-7, pp. 11, 28, 128, 323, 331-2, 346, 359, 424, 547; 1467-77, pp. 24, 113, 183. Within a month of the coronation, Wenlock was appointed chamberlain of the duchy of Lancaster for life and in the following autumn steward of the duchy of Cornwall lordship of Berkhampstead, again for life. At the end of the same year he attended the Parliament of 1461 as a lord, having received a writ of personal summons to the Upper House. He was subsequently summoned to the Lords on three further occasions, although the last of these summons was for the Parliament of 1469, which never met. As a member of the Lords, he was probably only active in the Parliament of 1463, in which he served as a trier of petitions. He was able to attend most of this much prorogued assembly since he was in England in the spring of that year and in early 1465, the only periods in which it sat for any length of time. His absences abroad as an ambassador must mean that he would have missed much of the Parliament of 1467, although he was placed on a parliamentary committee directed to hear and determination allegations of corruption made against Hugh Brice, one of the governors of the royal mint at the Tower of London.

Two days after the Parliament of 1461 opened, Wenlock was appointed governor of the person and estates of the new duke of Norfolk, then a minor of 17 years of age. On the following 11 Dec. he was made constable of Hertford castle, part of the duchy of Lancaster, for life, and five days later steward of the royal manors and lordships of Langley Marish, Wyrardisbury and Bledlow in Buckinghamshire. On the 21st he and the Irish knight Sir Roland Fitzeustace were jointly appointed treasurer of Ireland, the position which he had failed to secure in the mid 1440s. He and Fitzeustace, who were granted the office for their lives, shared an annual fee of £60 and the keeping of the royal manors of Newcastle Lyons and Saggart in Co. Dublin. Early in the New, Year Wenlock was appointed steward of the duchy of Lancaster in Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, again for life, and reappointed steward of the Langley Marish group of lordships, to which was now added the manor of Ruislip in Middlesex. He also attracted the patronage of the dowager duchess of Buckingham. Anxious to win the favour of those at the centre of the new regime, she appointed him steward for life of her estates in Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, with a fee of 20 marks p.a.89 McFarlane, 253n.

The young duke of Norfolk was not the only important figure for whom Wenlock took responsibility in this period, for the King also appointed him governor of the persons and lands of three Lancastrian ladies, Eleanor, countess of Wiltshire, Eleanor, Lady Hungerford and Moleyns, and Lady Hungerford’s mother, Anne Hampden, in March 1462. The countess was a daughter of the late Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, killed at the first battle of St. Albans, and the widow of James Butler, earl of Wiltshire, executed shortly after Edward IV took the throne, and the other women were the wives of the rebels Lord Hungerford and Moleyns and Wenlock’s erstwhile associate Sir Edmund Hampden, who was then in exile with Henry VI in Scotland.90 CPR, 1461-7 p. 181.

In the same month Wenlock benefited from a series of potentially lucrative grants from the new King. On 12 Mar. he obtained the custody of the lands which the late Katherine, the deceased wife of the judge Robert Danvers (and possibly a daughter of Drew Barantyn), had held at Abbeyfield in Berkshire, along with the wardship of her three daughters and coheirs. Two days later, he received the keeping during pleasure of the Norfolk estates of Sir Thomas Tuddenham, recently executed for treason. Wenlock was well placed to secure such a grant since Tuddenham, possibly acting under duress, had appointed him one of his executors while awaiting his fate as a prisoner in the Tower of London. The grant confirmed a fait accompli, for in a short will made just before his death, the doomed knight had already assigned to him four manors in Norfolk and a share of the barony of Bedford, to hold for life.91 PCC 12 Godyn (PROB11/5, f. 381). The Tuddenham grant was superseded by another of the following August, by which Wenlock was given custody of all of Sir Thomas’s lands, save two manors in Suffolk. On 18 Mar. the King granted the keeping of the estates of Tuddenham’s supposed co-conspirator, John de Vere, 12th earl of Oxford, to Wenlock, Sir John Fogg†, Sir John Scott† and John Say II* to hold jointly during pleasure. (Presumably these lands remained in their hands until the beginning of 1464, when the new earl of Oxford, de Vere’s second son, was licensed to enter his estates.) A grant issued to Wenlock, his cousin John Lawley and William Clerk, an auditor of the Exchequer, proved of much shorter duration. On 20 Mar. the three men received the keeping of the temporalities of the priory of Much Wenlock priory in Shropshire, to hold while the office of its prior remained vacant, but the vacancy was filled shortly afterwards. While profitable, none of these grants extended beyond Wenlock’s lifetime. Of far greater significance were letters patent issued to him on the same day as those for the Danvers wardship, by which the Crown granted him in fee tail estates in Hertfordshire and Middlesex and the reversion of the manor of Ebrington, Gloucestershire, all of which the attainted Sir John Fortescue had forfeited. Wenlock disposed of some of these holdings when he conveyed away lands in Essendon, Hertfordshire, to his associate John Say in the mid 1460s,92 E210/2609; CAD, i. B412. although he retained the bulk of them for himself. He took care to obtain an exemption from the Act of Resumption passed by the Parliament of 1467 to protect his valuable grant, which was substantially augmented by fresh letters patent in June 1468. By virtue of these letters he now held the same estates, along with Fortescue’s lands in Wiltshire and Somerset, in fee simple, an important concession in the light of his failure to father any children.

Such grants at home were in part Wenlock’s reward for his activities abroad, since his main service to the Yorkist regime was in foreign affairs. Edward IV exploited his considerable experience in this field and from 1461 to 1470 he spent part of every year abroad on diplomatic missions. He was placed on the first of these embassies in August 1461, when Edward appointed him, (Sir) John Clay* and Peter Taster, dean of St. Saviour’s, Bordeaux, to negotiate with the duke of Burgundy. He and his fellow ambassadors were given several objectives. First, they were to negotiate a truce and commercial treaty with Burgundy; secondly, they were to try with the duke’s help to obtain a truce with France; finally and secretly, they were to propose a match between Edward IV and the duke’s niece, the Mademoiselle de Bourbon. The ambassadors, who crossed to Calais within a month of their appointment, met the duke of Burgundy at Valenciennes. In the end, their only real achievement was to confirm and strengthen the existing friendship between the Yorkists and Burgundy, for the marriage proposals came to nothing and attempts to seek a truce with France proved abortive. At Valenciennes the bishop of Arras entreated the English ambassadors and the duke to support a crusade called by Pope Pius II but Wenlock and his associates refused to make any promises regarding a matter they had no authority to discuss. The duke lavishly entertained the ambassadors throughout their stay. He held a banquet in their honour before they left and sent them gifts of silver plate just as they were preparing to depart. They returned to England via Calais, reaching London on 21 Nov. Nine days before they arrived back in the City, Wenlock and Taster were among those commissioned to determine infractions of the Anglo-Burgundian truce. In spite of the limited success of their mission, they were well rewarded for their efforts. Clay and Taster each received £82 in wages (£1 for each day they were away) and Wenlock twice that amount, and they were also allowed an additional £20 for their travelling expenses.93 Ross, 80, 84; C76/145, m. 24; Scofield, i. 191, 208, 211-13; E403/824, m. 2; J. de Waurin, Receuil de Croniques (Rolls Ser. xxxix), v. 412-14; Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 250-2; E403/825, m. 9; CPR, 1461-7, p. 102.

In the following February the King sent Wenlock on an embassy to the Scottish earl of Ross. Scotland was an important concern for the Yorkists at the beginning of Edward IV’s reign, since it was the home of the Lancastrian Court in exile. Wenlock’s mission was linked to the diplomatic manoeuvring of the earl of Warwick. Warwick was working to turn the Scottish Queen-Mother, Mary of Gueldres, against the Lancastrian refugees north of the border. Wenlock, who may have attended the talks which Warwick held with her at Dumfries, returned to Scotland in the summer, as a member of an embassy headed by the earl. Later in the same year he was occupied elsewhere, for in the autumn of 1462 he and other ambassadors crossed to Flanders to meet representatives of the duke of Burgundy. He was paid £112 for his part in these negotiations,94 Scofield, i. 259. which achieved an extension of the Anglo-Burgundian truce for another year, as well as a trade agreement covering the same period. Wenlock returned to England before the end of 1462, since he participated in the siege of the Lancastrian fortress of Dunstanburgh castle and spent Christmas in Northumberland, staying with Warwick at Warkworth. By now Wenlock was drawing ever closer to the earl. Among Warwick’s most important offices was that of captain of Calais, and following Edward IV’s accession Wenlock periodically acted as his ‘lieutenant’ or deputy there.95 Oxf. DNB, ‘Neville, Richard’; Add. 46455. As this was not an official appointment it is excluded in the cursus above.

The Scottish-Lancastrian incursions into England which necessitated the campaigning in the borders in the early years of Edward’s reign were a pressing priority for the Yorkists because they were partly sponsored by Louis XI of France. Even limited foreign support for an insurrection against his insecure throne was a serious concern for the new King, and in the latter half of 1463 Wenlock was involved in the diplomacy which removed the immediate threat of direct co-operation between the French and the Lancastrians. He did so as a member of an embassy which met representatives of France and Burgundy on Burgundian territory in the autumn of that year, first at St. Omer and then at Hesdin. Originally the English ambassadors, headed by the chancellor, George Neville, bishop of Exeter, and Henry Bourgchier, earl of Essex, were to have arrived in Flanders in June 1463. According to one report, they were delayed by rumours of French plans to attack Calais, a somewhat unlikely scenario given that Louis had assented to a conference between the three sides. In fact, the main reason for the delay was Edward’s desire to settle the unstable situation on the Anglo-Scottish border before dispatching his embassy, which did not leave England until late August. In the meantime Wenlock attended a meeting of the Council on 4 July, at which plans for the forthcoming negotiations were discussed, and on the same day the ambassadors received an advance of 40 days’ wages, of which his share was £80. On 8 July he was among those commissioned to investigate complaints from members of the Calais garrison about their unpaid wages, although he had returned to England before 21 Aug., when he and the other English delegates finally set sail from Dover. Upon arriving at Calais, Wenlock rode ahead to Boulogne, where he met the duke of Burgundy and obtained assurances that it was safe for the main party to continue to St. Omer. The English ambassadors spent almost the whole of September at St. Omer, from where Wenlock corresponded directly with Edward IV to keep him informed of events, before travelling to Hesdin. Primarily intended to achieve an agreement between England and France, either directly or through the mediation of Burgundy, the conference almost foundered on the English ambassadors’ insistence that Louis XI should cease providing support to Henry VI and his queen. At length an Anglo-French truce, the first since 1449, was concluded at Hesdin, where Wenlock and his colleagues met Louis in person. Signed on 8 Oct., it suspended hostilities between the two sides on land for a year, while leaving a truce at sea to future negotiation. In addition, Louis promised neither to make war against England nor to provide succour to the Lancastrian King, queen and prince of Wales. While at Hesdin the English ambassadors also agreed a treaty with Burgundy. Dated 7 Oct., this extended the trading agreements already in place between the two sides.96 E.L. Meek, ‘English Delegation to the Conference of St Omer (1463)’, Ricardian, xii. 554-62; E404/72/3/48; L.S. Woodger, ‘Hen. Bourgchier’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1974), 171-2.

In the following spring Wenlock and the earl of Warwick engaged in further discussions with the French. Another conference at St. Omer was planned for 21 Apr. but Warwick was kept at home by further disturbances in northern England and negotiations with the Scots. As a result, the meeting was postponed and all that was immediately achieved was a temporary truce at sea, agreed on the 24th of the same month. When the delayed conference finally opened on 1 July, Wenlock and Richard Whetehill were the only English representatives to attend, and it was adjourned until October. In the event, Edward IV’s secret marriage to Elizabeth Wydeville had already put paid to Warwick’s schemes for a match between the English King and Louis’s sister-in-law, Bona of Savoy. In due course the King’s marriage became public knowledge and the conference never reconvened. In spite of this setback, Warwick continued to press for a French alliance but Edward’s preference for closer ties with Burgundy and Brittany sounded the death knell for such a project. In March 1465 Warwick, Wenlock and others were appointed keepers of the truce with Brittany, and two months later both men were dispatched on a powerful embassy authorized to treat at will with Burgundy and France, meaning that they were abroad when Elizabeth Wydeville’s coronation took place. By now constantly associated with Warwick, Wenlock seems to have shared his dismay about the Wydeville match,97 Oxf. DNB, ‘Wenlock, John’. and to have come to have identified with the earl’s foreign policy aims. He and Warwick took part in further embassies in the following two years, including discussions with the representatives of Burgundy in the spring of 1466. On the agenda were proposals for a marriage between the King’s sister, Margaret of York, and the heir to the duchy, Charles, count of Charolais, towards whom Warwick conceived an extreme dislike. Much more to the earl’s taste were the negotiations with the French in the spring and early summer of 1467. These were held on both sides of the Channel and he, Wenlock and their fellow envoys were warmly and lavishly received when they met Louis in Rouen. By now, however, it was clear that Edward IV was moving towards an agreement with the Burgundians, and simply using the rival French negotiations as a bargaining chip. In the following year Wenlock was among those who escorted Margaret to Burgundy for her marriage with Charolais, by now duke of Burgundy. Even if not a willing participant, he was no doubt too skilful a dissembler to reveal his true feelings. He received an advance in wages of £100 prior to his departure on this embassy, which also dealt with commercial disputes between the two sides. Wenlock ended his diplomatic career in mid 1469, when he was involved in further mercantile negotiations, with the Burgundians and representatives of the Hanseatic League at Bruges.98 Ross, 90-91, 95, 106-9; Oxf. DNB, ‘Neville, Richard’.

99 CP, xii (2), 484; Oxf. DNB, ‘Wenlock, John’. The failure of their marriage to produce any surviving children meant that her heir was Richard Preston (d.1489), apparently her son by her first husband. Richard succeeded to the Drayton manor at Clifton Hampden but not to her properties in Long Wittenham, Burghfield Regis and Kempston, which she had conveyed away to Wenlock and his heirs shortly before her death. No doubt her willingness to alienate these holdings is explained by Preston’s mental incapacity, since he was later deemed an idiot incapable of attending to his own affairs. As it happened, Wenlock did not retain either Long Wittenham or Burghfield Regis, both of which he formally quitclaimed to his former adversary the dowager duchess of Suffolk in March 1466, presumably after she had purchased them from him.100 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 496; CP25(1)/294/74/19; CPR, 1485-94, p. 112; HMC 14th Rep. IX, 270. In all likelihood Wenlock married his second wife Agnes before the end of the 1460s. The widow of the distinguished lawyer, Sir John Fray, she was herself from a prominent legal family, since she was the sister of Sir Robert Danvers, j.c.p. (whose stepdaughters had earlier been in Wenlock’s wardship), and half-sister of William Danvers, who was to become a justice of the common pleas in 1488. When she married Wenlock she held the Fray manors at Great Munden and Cottered in Hertfordshire and Wenden in Essex, although these properties were to pass to her daughters by Fray.101 C140/67/45. It is unlikely that the elderly Wenlock expected her to bear him any children since she was also well advanced in years when they married.

By the time of his match with Agnes, Wenlock had already taken steps to safeguard his well-being in the hereafter. In early 1466 he had obtained a papal indult requiring the congregation of St. Mary’s, Luton, to include him in their prayers, both during his lifetime and after his death. This was granted to him after he had submitted a petition seeking ‘spiritual remuneration’ in return for his efforts in helping the church’s parishioners to obtain an exemption from the dietary regime customarily expected of the faithful at Lent and on other fast days, for his devotion to the Holy See and for the assistance he had proffered papal nuncios in the past. Just over three years later, he obtained a second such indult, this time awarding him the right to receive a plenary remission of his sins in the hour of his death from a confessor of his choice, provided that he had truly and penitently admitted all his sins.102 CPL, xii. 492-3, 704. But nothing is known about any dealings Wenlock may have had with representatives of the Roman Curia. Beyond his own immediate private affairs, Wenlock had his duties to perform as the executor of Sir Thomas Tuddenham and as the overseer of the will of his fellow ambassador Sir John Clay following Clay’s death in September 1464. He was also a trustee for Sir John Scott and Thomas Hoo II*, and, by the later 1460s, a feoffee to the use of the last will of his former charge, John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk. Not forgetting his roots, he helped the town of Much Wenlock, a settlement of little economic importance, to obtain the status of a parliamentary borough, a privilege granted to it by a charter of November 1468, after he had petitioned the King on the townsmen’s behalf.103 PCC 6 Godyn (PROB11/5, f. 41); CPR, 1461-7, p. 429; CCR, 1468-76, no. 1149; L.E. Moye, ‘Estates and Finances of the Mowbray Fam.’ (Duke Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), 448-9; CChR, vi. 229-32; VCH Salop, iii. 233.

Remarkably, Wenlock was still in favour with the Crown at this date, in spite of his close association with Warwick, now increasingly estranged from Edward IV, and the uncovering of a treasonable conspiracy earlier in the same year. Among those arrested at Whitsuntide 1468 was one of his servants, John Hawkins, who was executed for receiving correspondence from the Lancastrian queen in exile, Margaret of Anjou. Before he was put to death Hawkins was said to have accused Wenlock and other prominent Yorkists of treasonable activity. The King chose to ignore the allegations, just as he decided not to act against the scheming Warwick, and it was in the immediate wake of the arrests that he granted Wenlock the Fortescue estates in fee simple. There is no evidence that Wenlock participated in Warwick’s unsustainable coup of 1469, probably because he was in Calais, attending to his duties as the earl’s lieutenant there.104 CP, xii (2), 483. He was certainly in the town when Warwick led another revolt against Edward IV in the following spring. In the wake of this second unsuccessful rebellion, the earl and his son-in-law and ally, George, duke of Clarence, took ship for Calais. Their arrival off the coast presented Wenlock with a tricky dilemma since the town had remained loyal to Edward IV. No doubt fearing for his own safety, he refused the refugees entry, although he secretly sent them word that it was too dangerous for them to land and advising them to seek refuge in France. Edward IV rewarded Wenlock for his apparent loyalty by making him his own lieutenant of Calais, although the King’s brother-in-law Anthony Wydeville, Earl Rivers, was to take over from him in that office very soon afterwards.105 Ross, 145-6, 148-9.

According to the chronicler Philippe de Commines, the duke of Burgundy also tried to ensure that Wenlock would remain loyal to Edward by granting him a pension of 1,000 ėcus. If so, his efforts were to no avail, for when Henry VI was restored to the throne in the autumn of 1470 Wenlock came out in support of Warwick and the Readeption government. Still in Calais when he did so, Wenlock appears to have remained across the Channel for some time yet, for he was not summoned to the Readeption Parliament. He probably returned to England with his old mistress Queen Margaret, whom he accompanied to the battle of Tewkesbury. At the battle, fought on 4 May 1471, he and Sir John Langstrother, prior of the Hospitallers in England, had the responsibility of advising her young son Edward, prince of Wales, the nominal commander of the Lancastrian centre. The Tudor chronicler Edward Hall† (who sat for the borough of Much Wenlock in Henry VIII’s reign) records that he was killed by one of his own side, Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, who suspected him of treachery in the midst of the battle. Apocryphal or not, this story has probably done more than most to reinforce his reputation as a turncoat.106 HP Reg. ed. Wedgwood, 380n; Myers, 154; A. Goodman, Wars of the Roses, 82. Although it is commonly accepted that Wenlock died on the field, a short chron. of events between 1431 and 1471 claims that he was among those Lancastrians who were captured and then beheaded two days after the battle: John Vale’s Bk. 179. It would seem that he was not interred at Tewkesbury, since a local chronicle records that his body was ‘take fro hens to be buryed’, perhaps in the Wenlock chapel in Luton parish church. He was never formally attainted, although after his death Thomas Rotherham, bishop of Lincoln and chancellor of England, obtained a grant of much of his estates.107 C.L. Kingsford, English Historical Literature, 377; VCH Beds. ii. 307, 352, 358, 364, 368; iii. 292, 299; Oxf. DNB, ‘Rotherham, Thomas’; CPR, 1467-77, p. 538.

Before Tewkesbury Wenlock had deposited various pieces of plate, a locked casket containing jewels and other valuables and a breviary with the abbot of Glastonbury, John Salwood, for safekeeping, and 16 days after the battle Salwood formally agreed with his widow Agnes that he would return them whenever she requested. Presumably it was over these items that the abbot and Agnes quarrelled not long afterwards. In a letter which he wrote to Agnes at some stage after Tewkesbury, Salwood warned her that if she went to law against him he would ‘opyng such thyngges that shal turne yow to as much trobill as I shal haue by yow’ and confidently predicted that he would have the best lawyer in England on his side.108 CAD, iii. D1278; SC1/44/65. In about 1474 Agnes married (Sir) John Say II. She also outlived Say, if only by a couple of months. In the will she made on the eve of her death in June 1478, she asked to be buried alongside Sir John Fray, the second of her four husbands, in the church of St. Bartholomew the Less, London. She also set aside £10 for a priest to celebrate mass annually for the souls of Fray, Wenlock and Say, although not for that of her long dead first spouse, Thomas Baldington.109 C140/67/45; PCC 34 Wattys (PROB11/6, ff. 261v-262v). The childless Wenlock’s heir at law was his Shropshire cousin, Thomas Lawley. Thomas succeeded to the lands which Wenlock had held at Much Wenlock but surrendered all claim to the estates in Thomas Rotherham’s hands, in return for a certain sum of money which the bishop paid him. He and his uncle John Lawley formally renounced any title to these lands in May 1477.110 VCH Salop, x. 417; Notes and Queries, 5th ser. viii. 462; CCR, 1476-85, no. 210.