WARRE, Richard

In comparison with the careers of his grandfather John and his father Robert, Richard’s was singularly lacking in distinction, and despite his marriage into one of the leading gentry families of Somerset and Wiltshire he was not considered to be of sufficient standing to take up knighthood. This was partly because he did not become the head of his family until his father died in 1465, and before that date his personal income was comparatively modest. The Warres were affluent: our MP’s grandfather, John Warre (d.1443) of Hestercombe, held estates in Somerset and Dorset estimated in 1412 to be worth as much as £76 p.a. for the purposes of taxation, and to these were subsequently added the manors of Burlescomb in Devon and Pitton in Wiltshire – the latter acquired through John’s marriage to Joan Maubanke (d.1439).4 Feudal Aids, iv. 437; vi. 423, 513; C139/90/7; C140/84/37; Som. Archs., Sanford of Nynehead mss, DD\SF/1636. Besides serving on the benches of Dorset and Somerset, John was appointed escheator and twice held office as sheriff of the two counties, and for a while he was joint custodian of the estates in the region formerly belonging to Edmund Mortimer, earl of March.5 CFR, xv. 98, 120; John contracted a good match for his son and heir, Robert, to one of the grand-daughters of Chief Justice Sir William Hankford, who promised her £200 as a marriage portion. The marriage took place by 18 Nov. 1423, a few weeks before Sir William died, when John settled on the couple and Robert’s issue a reversionary interest (to fall in after the deaths of himself and his wife) of the manor of Wellisford and a moiety of that of Bradford by Wellington, in Somerset, as well as Burlescomb and his other holdings in Devon.6 Reg. Chichele, ii. 290-3; CP25(1)/291/65/23. Our MP was born about two years later.

Although a descendant of one chief justice and related by marriage to another, Sir John Juyn, c.j.KB,7 C1/29/83. Richard Warre himself did not enter the legal profession. Nor is it clear what role was intended for him. Alliance by marriage with the important family of Stourton could be presumed to be an advantageous move for the Warres, especially as his father-in-law Sir John Stourton was a member of the King’s Council. After young Richard was married to Joan Stourton, on 30 July 1440 the couple received in tail from his father the latter’s reversionary interest in Pitton (a settlement which was confirmed by his grandfather who then held the manor by the courtesy), and at the same time they were given property in Dorset, and Joan was promised jointure in three Warre manors, including Hestercombe, after the deaths of her husband’s grandfather and father.8 C140/16/17; 84/37. Richard’s father Robert was of standing in Somerset as a j.p. from 1441 until his death 24 years later, and through his links with Stourton he came to the attention of Sir John’s kinsman Edmund Beaufort, marquess of Dorset, whom he nominated as a feoffee of his inherited estates in the mid 1440s. Among the nobleman’s co-feoffees were our MP and John Bishop III* of Taunton, a relation of theirs. Richard’s first recorded public act was to join his father in witnessing a deed on Bishop’s behalf.9 Sanford of Nynehead mss, DD\SF/1578; CCR, 1441-7, p. 286.

Thus, at the time of his election for Wiltshire to the Parliament of November 1449, Warre was still young (probably not yet 25), and lacking any experience of royal administration, and although he may have taken possession of the family manor of Pitton he is not known to have then held any other lands in the county he represented. Nor can his holdings in Dorset and Devon have provided him with an income of much substance, and his father still possessed the bulk of the family estates in Somerset and elsewhere.10 CCR, 1447-54, p. 488. The explanation for his return to the Commons must lie with the influence of his father-in-law, by then elevated to the Upper House as Lord Stourton, and currently serving as treasurer of the King’s household. It is worthy of remark that at the elections held at Wilton on 14 Oct. 1449 Stourton’s close associate and future executor William Twyneho* came forward to offer sureties for the newly-elected shire knight.11 C219/15/7. While the first session of the Parliament was in progress Richard’s father made a loan of ten marks to the Crown in its severe financial difficulties, to which he had no doubt been alerted by Stourton.12 E401/813, m. 10. The reactions of Richard himself to the successive crises occasioned by the loss of Normandy, the impeachment of the King’s chief minister the duke of Suffolk, and finally the outbreak of rebellion in Wiltshire and the south-east are not known. Parliament, meeting at Leicester for its third session, came to a close on 7 June 1450, whereupon Warre and his colleague from Wiltshire, John Dewall*, received the customary writs de expensis, which instructed the sheriff to pay them each for 170 days at the statutory rate of 4s. per day. Warre delivered his writ to the sheriff, Philip Baynard*, at his father-in-law’s house at Stourton five days later, but although Baynard duly levied the money, he refused to pay Warre his share, causing him to bring an action against Baynard in the Exchequer of pleas in October 1451. Although the court found in his favour, the then sheriff failed both to obtain the money and to arrest Baynard, and it was not until 1454 that Warre declared himself satisfied of the sum due.13 E13/145A, rots. 1d, 15, 15d.

In the meantime, in 1452-3, Warre had himself served a term as sheriff, but not of Wiltshire. As sheriff of Somerset and Dorset he was responsible for conducting the parliamentary elections at Ilchester and Dorchester in February 1453, and it may be reasonably conjectured that he played a significant part in the returns of his wife’s cousin John Carent* and of his own cousin’s husband John Sydenham*.14 C219/16/2. The suits for debt he brought subsequently in the court of common pleas against men of Dorset may have been related to payments due to the Exchequer for which as sheriff he had to make account.15 CP40/773, rot. 359. Yet he evidently failed to make a mark. The shrievalty was not followed by further public appointments while his father and father-in-law yet lived; Warre neither excelled in office nor took advantage of Lord Stourton’s influence at the centre of government. Indeed, he neglected to render proper account for his term as sheriff, and after he absented himself from the Exchequer without licence, the barons prosecuted him and his attorney William Lovell I*. In accordance with Exchequer procedure he was forbidden to appear before them by attorney in future, only in person, and this caused him ‘grete hurt and hynderaunce’ until in July 1456 the strictures were relaxed.16 E159/232, brevia Trin. rot. 9d. On 20 Apr. 1458, during his father’s shrievalty of Somerset and Dorset, he obtained a royal pardon as former occupant of the office.17 C67/42, m. 13; E159/234, brevia Trin. rot. 21(i)d.

In the will Warre’s father made on 7 July 1465, the day before he died, Richard and his mother were named as executors.18 Som. Med. Wills (Som. Rec. Soc. xvi), 207-8; C140/16/17. Technically, he was currently under sentence of outlawry for failing to appear in court to answer a London draper in a suit for a debt of £14 13s. 3d., but managed to secured a formal pardon on 8 Oct. following.19 CPR, 1461-7, p. 416. Except for anything his mother held as her dower and jointure, he could now enter his full inheritance. Thereafter, as befitted his new status as head of the family, he was sometimes asked to be a feoffee for other gentry of Somerset and Wiltshire and to witness their transactions.20 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 121, 156; Devon RO, Rayer mss, 1782M/T19; CAD, i. C1104. He was appointed to a commission of array in the troubled summer of 1470, took out another pardon as ‘son and heir of Robert Warre, deceased’ on 30 Nov. 1471,21 C67/48, m. 32. and was appointed to a commission of inquiry in 1473. Nevertheless, distinction continued to evade him.

In the 1470s Warre took a close interest in the chantry in the parish church of St. Mary Magdalene in Taunton founded by his kinsman John Bishop, where prayers were to be said for Bishop Waynflete of Winchester and the souls of Cardinal Beaufort and members of the founder’s family, including Warre’s father and grandfather. Warre was among those, headed by the precentor of Wells cathedral, who were to hold the properties intended for the endowment in trust after Bishop’s death.22 E328/180. Whether he himself ever formed close links with the bishops of Winchester, his feudal overlords at Hestercombe, is not possible to say, but a continued association with the family of the late Cardinal Beaufort is implied by his engagement as a trustee in 1480 of certain manors in Dorset and Somerset on behalf of Beaufort’s natural daughter, Joan, by then the widow of Sir Edward Stradling.23 C140/75/52. In February 1481 Warre witnessed a settlement on John Bonville of Shute and his wife Katherine of estates in five counties.24 W. Suss. RO, Goodwood Estate archs., E277. In his final years he was the subject of a petition brought to Chancery regarding the manor of Tetton in Kingston near Taunton (situated in the same parish as Hestercombe), of which his grandfather had been a feoffee-to-uses.25 C1/61/44.

Warre died on 25 Nov. 1482. A number of writs de diem clausit extremum were issued to escheators in the four counties where he had possessed land, but inquisitions were not held until nearly a year later, and then only in Devon and Somerset. The jurors testified that as he had died childless his heir was his kinsman and namesake Richard Warre of Chipley in Somerset, a minor aged 15. Their grandfathers had been brothers.26 CFR, xxi. nos. 666, 719, 743. In December 1483 three men, including John Brokeman* (a former member of the Beaufort affinity) were granted keeping of the inheritance until young Richard came of age, together with his marriage, for which they paid 200 marks. The MP’s widow Joan was assigned dower two months later, provided she took an oath not to marry without the King’s consent.27 CFR, xxi. no. 782; CCR, 1476-85, no. 1072. The heir duly received his inheritance after making proof of age in June 1491,28 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 616; CFR, xxii. no. 365; CCR, 1485-1500, no. 527. while Joan, who did indeed remain single, took out a pardon as her late husband’s executrix in April 1494.29 C67/53, m. 37. In the will she made on 2 May 1499 she asked to be buried in St. Katherine’s chapel in the parish church of Ilminster, Somerset, making the unusual request that the body of her mother, Margery, Lady Stourton, be moved from its burial place and reinterred in the same chapel as speedily as possible. In her widowhood she had grown very close to her mother’s family the Wadhams, and now named as her executor her kinsman Sir John Wadham of Merrifield. She died on 28 July, and the will was proved in the following November.30 PCC 38 Horne (PROB11/), printed in Som. Med Wills, 377-8; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 320, 321, 368. Wadham proved somewhat tardy in fulfilling all her requests. In his own will in 1501 he left a ‘gilte coppe’ which had been hers to Athelney abbey (where Richard Warre’s father lay buried), for prayers for the Warres and himself, and instructed that legacies listed in Joan’s testament ‘the which resteth at Merifild in the parlor’ be completed. A portous (breviary) was to be kept chained in the chantry at Ilminster, as a gift in memory of the Warres and Joan’s mother.31 Som. Med. Wills 1501-30 (Som. Rec. Soc. xix), 28-29. The Warre estates which Joan had held in jointure passed to her late husband’s heir, although it was not until June 1502 that he finally took possession of Pitton.32 CFR, xxii. no. 659; CCR, 1500-9, no. 78.