WHITEFELD, William

The Whitefelds were a minor gentry family who took their name from their residence in the parish of Marwood to the immediate north of Barnstaple. William’s parentage and early life are obscure, but it is possible that he received some training in the law, for he frequently served his neighbours as a feoffee, attested their deeds, stood surety for them, or arbitrated in their disputes.2 CFR, xv. 325; C1/26/3; 29/288; N. Devon RO, Chichester of Devon mss, 50/11/18/1, 2. As early as 1416 he was of sufficient importance in his native county to be appointed one of the collectors of a parliamentary subsidy there, but whether by some misdemeanour in the execution of his duties or by his own choice he would never again hold even minor office under the Crown in a career that spanned half a century.

Equally, it is unclear why he sought (or at least agreed to) election to the Parliament of 1425. Perhaps, if he had professional interests at Westminster, he was prepared to serve at a lesser wage than other men, and was thus agreeable to the burgesses, who increasingly sought to avoid paying their representatives at the customary rate of 2s. per day. Thereafter, he took some limited interest in parliamentary affairs, as his presence is documented at least at one Devon county election in the 1440s. His service in the Commons allowed him to forge new ties and to strengthen existing ones: four years after his return for Barnstaple he would stand surety in the court of common pleas for his former parliamentary colleague Thomas Passeware*, who in that same autumn of 1429 was elected mayor of the borough.3 CP40/672, rot. 104d.

Among Whitefeld’s clients were relations like the Cornish landowner Arnulph Chagestey who had married the MP’s widowed kinswoman, Elizabeth,4 CFR, xiv. 360. but also more substantial landowners, such as the wealthy Sir Oliver St. John, who drew upon his services in the transfer of the Devon manor of Littleham (sold in 1414 by his father, Sir John St. John*, to Sir William Hankford) to the heirs of Richard Hankford*.5 CP25(1)/46/82/51; SC8/308/15357; Devon RO, Hankford mss, 47/5/1. A particularly close bond connected Whitefeld with the powerful Beaumont family. He stood godfather to William, the son and heir of Sir Thomas Beaumont, attested Sir Thomas’s property deeds and served as a principal feoffee of the family’s extensive property.6 KB27/703, rot. 61d; N. Devon RO, Incledon-Webber mss, 3704M/ET3/2/3-5; Chichester of Devon mss, 48/25/9/1; Reg. Lacy, i (Canterbury and York Soc. lx), 298; ii. 7, 45, 190, 192, 194, 196; Reg. Lacy ed. Hingeston-Randolph, i. 117, 160, 196, 229, 247, 256, 259.

The extent of Whitefeld’s own landholdings is uncertain, but those at Whitefield were evidently substantial enough to include a deer park, and by 1422 he had acquired the Devon manors of Plaistow (in Shirwell) and Farleigh by his marriage to an heiress.7 KB27/703, rot. 61d; CP25(1)/45/79/13; Exeter bp.s’ regs., Neville, f. 7v. Like many of his neighbours, Whitefeld was regularly involved in niggling disputes over small debts or incursions into property in the royal law courts.8 KB27/729, rot. 18; 774, rot. 18d; 778, rot. 71; CP40/734, rot. 141; CP40/760, rot. 192d. In the autumn of 1432 he was among a group of individuals from the vicinity of Barnstaple whom Sir John Speke* accused of a trespass,9 KB27/686, rot. 60. and four years later his park at Whitefield was raided by two local gentlemen who bagged no fewer than six of his deer.10 KB27/703, rot. 61d.

By the mid 1450s Whitefeld, who had first held public office under Henry V was growing old. He was not permitted a quiet retirement. Having outlived many of his old associates he was now forced to defend alone the enfeoffments which his former clients had made. One protracted lawsuit which arose from such a transaction was brought by the newly appointed royal justice Walter Moyle* and his wife’s brothers-in-law William Devyok and William Rosmodros during Bishop Waynflete’s chancellorship in the second half of the 1450s over their respective wives’ inheritance from their mother, Joan Graunt. The matter had not been settled by the time that George Neville replaced Waynflete at the Chancery in the aftermath of the battle of Northampton.11 C1/26/3; 29/288. Whitefeld himself survived for a few years into the reign of Edward IV. In the autumn of 1463 he was a witness to a grant of lands in the parish of Broadwoodwidger to feoffees headed by Fulk Bourgchier, the future Lord Fitzwaryn,12 Incledon-Webber mss, 3704M/ET3/1/3. and in the following year he was party to a settlement of property in Plymouth, the witnesses to which were headed by his old patron’s third son, Philip Beaumont†, a cousin of Fitzwaryn’s brother-in-law, John Dynham.13 Plymouth and W. Devon RO, Plymouth mun. recs., 1/425/55; Plymouth deeds, 196/1.