WHITE, Robert

There is little doubt that White was the wealthiest and most influential of Sandwich’s MPs in Henry VI’s reign. According to a sixteenth-century visitation, he was born at Yateley in Hampshire,7 Vis. Hants. 81. although his family had lived at nearby Farnham since the early 1400s. His father and namesake was a merchant of the Calais staple who possessed extensive connexions with the mercantile communities of London and the Kentish ports.8 CCR, 1405-9, pp. 275-6. Yet the elder Robert’s business dealings in Kent were not always legitimate, since in Trinity term 1420 he and others stood accused of attempting to smuggle wool through Faversham.9 E159/196, recorda Trin. rot. 7.

It is likely that the MP married some years before first taking up office at Sandwich, since the jury at his inquisition post mortem of 1467 declared that his son and heir, John, was then aged 40 or more.10 C140/23/5. It is a measure of his standing at Sandwich that he was elected its mayor in December 1434, only two years after serving his initial term as a jurat, and that, while mayor, he was returned to the Commons of 1435.11 ‘Old Black Bk.’, f. 26v. In December that year, while still an MP, he was re-elected to a second term in the mayoralty. Although it was usual for mayors of Sandwich to serve as parliamentary barons, his election may also have served his own interests as well as those of the community he represented. The Parliament of 1435 saw two successful petitions presented on behalf of the merchants of the staple at Calais, confirming the ordinance of partition of bullion and the company’s trading privileges.12 PROME, xi. 184-6. Along with the Londoner, Robert Large*, and the Lincoln burgess, Hamon Sutton I*, White was one of the most prominent staplers to sit in that assembly and he was undoubtedly involved in advancing the company’s interests at Westminster.

Soon after the close of Parliament, litigation forced White’s return to Westminster. In early 1436 John Haytele, searcher in the port of Sandwich, appeared before the barons of the Exchequer to claim that he had recently arrested a Flemish ship for attempting to smuggle bullion, only for White’s servants to seize it from him. On 27 Jan. that year White appeared in person before the barons, to explain that he had ordered the seizure after receiving information that a couple of Kentish merchants were planning to export wool, fells and woollen cloth on that vessel without first taking them to the staple at Calais, contrary to the petition agreed in the recent Parliament. He added that Haytele had subsequently assembled his own men and tried but failed to retake the ship by force. A month later, White delivered the vessel and its contents to the customs collectors at Sandwich and they sold it to a syndicate of local men for £38 5s. 11d. On the following 20 Mar., a Sandwich jury reported to the lieutenant of Dover castle, Geoffrey Lowther*, and other royal commissioners appointed to investigate the matter that the mayor’s officers had indeed seized the ship and discovered the bullion before Haytele could arrest it. In early May White returned to the Exchequer with royal letters patent, dated 24 Apr., which recited the staplers’ parliamentary petition of the previous year to justify his actions. He was allowed a share in the profits of the seizure and received a special reward of £10 for his ‘diligence and labour’.13 E159/212, recorda Hil. rots. 3-3d; E403/723, m. 4.

In the meantime, White attended the extraordinary meeting of the Brodhull of 4 Apr. 1436, at which Sandwich promised to provide three ships for the duke of York’s expedition to France.14 White and Black Bks. of Cinque Ports (Kent Rec. Ser. xix), 8. In the following month he and other leading staplers advanced loans to the Crown, and in June he persuaded his fellow jurats at Sandwich to make a corporate loan towards the costs of defending Calais from the Burgundians.15 E403/723, m. 2; 725, m. 13. His own contribution to the staplers’ loan was £40: E401/747, m. 7. White was elected to a third consecutive term as mayor of Sandwich in December 1436 and in the following April he travelled to New Romney to attend another meeting of the Brodhull, his last recorded duty in that office.16 ‘Old Black Bk.’, f. 28v; White and Black Bks. 9. His other commitments must have regularly taken him away from Sandwich during his third mayoralty, since in January 1436 the local lawyer, John Green I* had been chosen to act as his deputy during his absences.17 ‘Old Black Bk.’, f. 28v. On 14 May 1437 White purchased a general pardon, as ‘of Sandwich, merchant’ and ‘of Farnham, woolman’.18 C67/38, m. 24. In December he was recorded again among the jurats of Sandwich, but in the following year, despite being one of the unsuccessful candidates for the mayoralty, he was not sworn to the jurats’ bench. Indeed, it was not until a special election held on 1 June 1442 that he was once again elected to that body.

There is little doubt that the demands of his burgeoning career as a merchant of the staple had taken White away from Sandwich. The wool trade must have generated substantial profits for him, although the loss of many of the customs ledgers for London and other ports obscures the exact nature of his business in the 1430s. The Sandwich ledger of 1439-40 does, however, show that he exported 64 sacks of wool from there to Calais in December 1439, making him one of the few staplers to ship wool between those two ports.19 E122/127/18. The wealth White acquired through trade allowed him to invest in land. In November 1438 he bought the manor of South Warnborough, Hampshire, from Roger Pedwardine, cousin and heir of Sir Robert Pedwardine (d.1432) of Lincolnshire, for 600 marks. South Warnborough lay only a few miles from White’s main residence at Farnham and his other property at Yateley, and its acquisition must have made him one of the largest landowners on the Surrey/Hampshire border.20 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 436, 439; CPR, 1436-41, p. 223. He also acquired further property in Kent, purchasing property in Tilmanstone and Barfrestone in 1439.21 CP25(1)/115/309/379.

During the 1440s, White rose to become one of the largest wool exporters in England and a powerful member of the company of the Calais staple. As a consequence, his involvement in Sandwich affairs waned and after December 1443 he was not sworn again as a jurat for another six years. From the mid 1440s onwards, the staplers began to emerge as the Crown’s most important creditors. By the end of 1448 the King was indebted to them for loans amounting to some £10,366, and the MP was among those to whom he owed the most. In May 1447 White, by then mayor of the staple, received a licence to ship from London 500 sacks of wool free of customs – save for a payment of 20s. of the wool subsidy reserved for the Calais garrison – so that he might recover debts of 500 marks.22 English Trade in 15th Cent. ed. Power and Postan, 295; C76/129, m. 5. On 20 Oct. 1449 the King granted that the staplers might ship specified quantities of wool and woolfells from London, free of customs, for a term of four years, until they were satisfied of debts of £10,700 contracted during White’s mayoralty. White himself, along with his factor, Thomas Wymark, and the Berkshire stapler, John Prout*, received a licence to ship wool free of customs worth £91 18s. 6d. p.a., so that he might recover loans totalling £367 14s. Subsequently, in 1451 and again in 1452, he was allowed to carry over this yearly allowance.23 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 314-5; English Trade, 296-9. On 20 Mar. 1450 he was also among the group of staplers licensed to recover a further 1,000 marks in London, in repayment of a loan of £2,000 towards the wages of the garrisons at Calais and Rysbank Tower.24 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 323-4.

In the meantime, the Parliaments of 1449 (Feb.) and 1449-50 saw further petitions in defence of the staplers’ liberties and the familiar call for a ban on licences to export wool to places other than Calais. It was therefore as an interested party that White witnessed the parliamentary elections of his home county at Guildford in January and October that year. By now he was one of the principal exporters of wool from London to Calais. The ledger of 1450-1 records that he shipped 218 sacks out of a total of 797 sacks exported in that period, while for the six months from October 1452 his shipments amounted to 149 out of a total of 587 sacks exported.25 E122/73/28; 75/47.

White’s standing among the staplers also involved him in diplomatic and administrative tasks. In July 1449 the Crown chose him and other merchants to accompany John Sutton, Lord Dudley, and Thomas Thurland*, then mayor of the staple, to Flanders to discuss ending the Calais staple partition ordinances and the ban on Burgundian goods. Later, in August 1451, amidst fears that the French would attack Calais, and while once again serving as mayor of the staple, he was among the commissioners appointed to muster the contingents for the defence of the town assembled by the staplers and the city of London.26 DKR, xlviii. 380; CPR, 1446-52, p. 480.

The staplers’ financial dealings with the Crown again occupied White’s attentions in the early 1450s. Between February and June 1451, the staplers lent a further £11,200. The money was mostly for the upkeep of the Calais garrison, although it also covered the costs of the royal household and payments to the Burgundians for renewing the truce and securing the release of English goods seized in the Low Countries. Negotiations for the repayment of the loans occurred during the Parliament of 1450-1 but it was not until that of 1453-4 that a settlement was reached. On 16 Oct. 1454, six months after the dissolution of the latter Parliament, the Council granted licences to ship wool free of customs to the staplers. White’s permitted him to make shipments to the value of £165 17s. 6½d., so that he might recoup his share of the money paid to the duke of Burgundy. At the same time his son, John, also received licences to recover debts in the port of Boston.27 English Trade, 296, 299; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 5-6, 13-14; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 210-13. The negotiations surrounding the repayment of these loans were soon superseded, however, by ones of far greater political importance. Following the appointment of Richard, duke of York, as Protector of the realm in March 1454, the control of Calais became an important issue in his struggle with the duke of Somerset, then its captain. York began negotiations with the staplers, led by White, and on 12 Apr., in the final session of the Parliament of 1453-4, a further petition was presented on the staplers’ behalf. It was agreed that they should advance a further 10,000 marks for the garrison’s wages, repayable from the clerical subsidy, in return for promises of repayment of their outstanding debts and a reduction in the amount of the wool subsidy.28 G.L. Harriss, ‘The Struggle for Calais’, EHR, lxxv. 34-37; PROME, xii. 273-4. York hoped to secure immediate entry into Calais as its new captain by these means, but this was not forthcoming and on 9 May White was summoned to appear before the Council to explain why a settlement had not been reached. Despite these difficulties, he was rewarded with £80 for his troubles in negotiating on the staplers’ behalf.29 E404/70/1/70; E28/94. The need to settle the matter of the garrison’s wages became more pressing in the early summer when the soldiers seized the staplers’ wool in Calais, planning to sell it themselves to realize the arrears owed to them. In the face of this crisis, the merchants agreed to provide more money for the soldiers, while commissioners, led by Henry, Viscount Bourgchier, travelled to Calais to open negotiations with them. The garrison’s seizure of the wool weakened the position of the staplers, who eventually were forced to agree to finance York’s appointment as the new captain of Calais on 17 July. Events, however, intervened: the King’s recovery in February 1455 saw the duke surrender both his offices of Protector and captain of Calais.30 Harriss, 37-39.

On the following 21 May York clashed with the King and his court at St. Albans. Somerset was killed and in the wake of the battle Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, was appointed the new captain of Calais. Throughout July and August fresh negotiations continued between the staplers, led by White as mayor, the garrison and York’s commissioners, William, Lord Fauconberg and Sir Edmund Mulsho*. They were far enough advanced on 4 Aug. for Warwick to indent as captain, but it was not until 27 Oct. that White and other staplers appeared before the Council in the Star Chamber to finalize arrangements. Initially the company agreed to advance £12,000 in cash, repayable from the wool customs, before assenting just four days later to lend another 2,000 marks immediately and a further 3,000 marks in April 1457. Nevertheless, the mutinous soldiers demanded full payment of the sums due to them before they would allow Warwick to enter the town and it was not until July 1456 that he finally did so, with the garrison satisfied by the staplers of its arrears and current wages to the tune of over £20,000.31 Ibid. 39-46. White’s contribution to these loans is unknown but, as both mayor of the staple during the crucial period of the crisis and one of the principal exporters of wool from London, it was probably substantial. He remained personally involved in the arrangements for the financing of the Calais garrison throughout the later 1450s, even after having relinquished office as mayor of the staple sometime in the middle of that decade.

In January 1458 White purchased a general pardon as ‘of Farnham, Surrey, merchant of the staple’.32 C67/42, m. 45. A month later, the treasurer of Calais, Gervase Clifton*, appointed him and the London stapler, John Croke, as his attorneys in the ports of Southampton and Poole. Their task was to collect that part of the wool subsidy reserved for the payment of the Calais garrison’s wages in accordance with the agreement made in the Parliament of 1453-4.33 PROME, xii. 370-81; E159/234, commissiones Hil. White’s financial support of the government was not restricted to Calais, for in May 1458 he and seven other staplers received licence to ship 421 sacks of wool free of customs, in repayment of £843 6s. 8d. they had lent in support of an embassy sent to treat with the ambassadors of Duke Philip of Burgundy at Calais, a meeting he himself may well have attended.34 CPR, 1452-61, p. 423.

The company’s dealings with the Crown and the duke of York were not the only issues to exercise White during the 1450s, since in 1455 the governor of the English Merchant Adventurers in the Low Countries arrested Thomas Wymark, his longstanding factor there. The staplers and Merchant Adventurers had been in dispute since at least 1429 when the Calais Partition Ordinance had allegedly disrupted the Adventurers’ trade. In July 1455 White used his influence with York’s government to obtain a royal letter addressed to the duchess of Burgundy requesting Wymark’s release. Even so, the matter was not settled for another three years. Part of the brief of John Thirsk*, the new mayor of the staple, and the other merchants appointed to treat with the Burgundians in May 1458 was to settle this dispute. The duke decided in favour of the staplers and jurisdiction over trading by English wool merchants in Flanders, Brabant, Holland and Zealand was temporarily wrested from the hands of the Merchant Adventurers.35 PPC, vi. 253-4; A.F. Sutton, Mercery of London, 257-9; English Trade 315-16.

In spite of spending so much time on the staplers’ business, White maintained his connexion with Sandwich during the 1450s. Throughout that decade, he served as a jurat and in December 1452 he and his wife demised a tenement in St. Mary’s parish there to William Fennell* and a fellow jurat, John Palmer.36 ‘Old Black Bk.’, f. 92v. It was well worth his while to preserve the connexion, since it was mutually beneficial, providing him with a base from which to conduct much of his business in Calais and giving the Portsmen an influential and potentially useful patron. Nevertheless, he cannot have played an especially active role in the government of the town in this period, in which he did not attend a meeting of the Brodhull or stand as a candidate for the mayoralty.

There is no evidence of White’s activities in early 1460, when the Yorkists twice descended upon Sandwich from their base in Calais to attack Lancastrian shipping, or in the following June, when the Yorkist earls landed at Sandwich before marching on London. Equally, it is not known whether he had been among those staplers who, according to one London chronicler, lent £18,000 to the Yorkist cause in January that year.37 English Trade, 318-20. Yet there are signs that by this time his influence in the company was waning. Between November 1457 and January 1459, he had shipped 207 out of a total of 498 sacks exported by denizens from London, as well as a further 474 sacks free of customs in repayment of the loan that he and the seven other staplers had made for the Burgundian embassy. Between March 1460 and August 1461, however, he shipped just 208 out of a total of 1,272 sacks so exported.38 E122/73/32; 74/37.

In his private affairs White acquired connexions typical of one of the country’s leading merchants. Most of these were with other members of the mercantile elite, exemplified by the match he made around 1450 between his elder daughter, Agnes (d.1466/7), and the London grocer and stapler, John Young*.39 C1/52/43. Other associations included trading partnerships with leading Londoners like the alderman and fishmonger, Robert Horne, and the skinner, John Croke.40 Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, p. 116. White also had business interests at Southampton, where he was involved in the export of finished woollen cloths, iron and salt.41 E122/142/2; 209/9. In 1462 or 1463 a local merchant, Richard Ludlow, complained to the chancellor that White, with whom he was then at odds, exerted ‘grete myght’ there, and that its mayor, John Payn I*, and other officers ‘be more favourable to þe said Robert White then to your said besecher’.42 C1/29/391.

White’s wealth and standing also allowed him to forge links beyond the mercantile community. While the identity of his second wife, Alice, whom he married at some point after 1453, is uncertain, she may have been a daughter of the prominent Kentish esquire, William Scott of Brabourne, since a later Chancery petition referred to him as ‘brother-in-law to Sir John Scott’, William’s eldest son. If so, the match probably resulted from his close contacts with her stepfather, Gervase Clifton.43 C1/67/324. White certainly made a good match for his own eldest son, John, who married Eleanor, the daughter of Robert, Lord Hungerford and Moleyns (exec. 1464).44 Vis. Hants 81-83; Vis. Essex (Harl. Soc. xiii), 618; C1/52/43. The marriage probably arose from White’s involvement in the ransoming of Hungerford from the French after his capture at Castillon in 1453. To raise the sum required, amounting to some £6,000, Hungerford’s mother, Margaret, Lady Hungerford, obtained loans from Italian bankers and English merchants, including, it seems, White. It is nevertheless unclear whether Margaret’s alienation of parts of the Hungerford estates in Hampshire to the MP and his son in 1465-7 was to facilitate repayment of loans made by them or other creditors. Having sold the manors of Bodenham (near Fareham) and Rockford Moyles to the Whites in 1465, she made over those of Binstead and Pennington to them two years later.45 M.A. Hicks, Ric. III and Rivals, 188-206; Oxf. DNB, ‘Hungerford, Robert, 3rd Baron Hungerford and Baron Moleyns’. Apart from his gains from the Hungerfords, White made other augmentations to his estates. In Kent, he acquired the manor of Ringleton in Woodnesborough (between Sandwich and Canterbury) in April 1450 and purchased the manor of Southcourt in Tilmanstone from William and Elizabeth Steveday in 1453. The latter acquisition led him into a dispute with William’s brother, Robert Steveday of Canterbury, against whose claims he successfully defended his title to Southcourt at law.46 CP25(1)/116/324/730; 325/773; CP40/770, rot. 27; KB27/776, rot. 70. White also obtained further holdings at Farnham, and at nearby Puttenham in Surrey, in 1457.47 CP25(1)/232/74/64.

During his latter years, White’s trading activities continued to decline. Between Michaelmas 1462 and the following July, for example, he shipped 67 sacks and 12 cloves of wool out of a total of 312½ sacks and 40 cloves exported by members of the staple company from London. By contrast, none of the 232¾ sacks shipped from the City to Calais between July and December 1464 belonged to him. Furthermore, he shipped just seven short cloths from Southampton in 1463-4, his only recorded activity there that year.48 E122/73/35, 37; 142/2. Clearly his main focus of interest at this time was his estates in Surrey and his native Hampshire, where Bishop Waynflete of Winchester had appointed him and his son, John, joint keepers of the episcopal castle and park at Farnham. By now he appears to have severed his links with Sandwich: he was not re-elected to the jurats’ bench in December 1460 and it appears that he settled his property there on a local gentleman, Henry Greenshild*.49 ‘Old Black Bk.’, f. 182. Indeed, it is possible that his loss of influence, both in the town and among his fellow staplers, had arisen from a failure to commit himself wholeheartedly to the new Yorkist regime, of which his Hungerford family connexions were opponents. He was, however, among those staplers who received a general pardon of all trade offences and debts on 5 July 1465.50 CPR, 1461-7, p. 487.

White drew up his will on 16 Oct. 1467. He asked to be buried in the chapel of the Virgin in Farnham church and made bequests to the fabric of that building, to Winchester cathedral and to the parish churches of Yateley and South Warnborough. Underlining his wealth, he provided for his passage through purgatory by leaving 300 marks for a chantry priest to sing for his soul, as well as those of his parents, children and friends, for 30 years. White also left £10 for the repair of the road from Farnham to ‘Froyle Cross’, assigned £30 for alms, gave £20 to each of his three grandsons and two grand-daughters and made bequests to his servants. He entrusted the disposal of the remainder of his goods and chattels to the discretion of his executors, whom he named as his son, John, his son-in-law John Young, Master Richard Newbridge, vicar of Farnham, and William Boylett, a London draper. An undated codicil provided for White’s eldest son and heir to take over his household and business interests and for the executors to make restitution to any who could prove they had suffered ‘wrong or iniurie’ at the testator’s hands. White died just eight days after making the main part of the will, and an inquisition post mortem held for him in Hampshire on the following 4 Nov. found that he had held no lands in chief in that county and named John as his heir. Probate was granted ten days later.51 PCC 21 Godyn (PROB11/5, ff. 160-60v); C140/23/5.

John White did not long outlive his father, since he died in 1469. In the mid 1470s the former Hungerford manors in Hampshire, including Bodenham, Pennington and Rockford Moyles, featured in suits that his widow (acting in association with her new husband, Sir Henry Fitzlewis) and John Young (son of Agnes White by her husband of the same name) brought against the MP’s feoffees and executors and each other in the Chancery.52 C1/48/470; 52/43-52. Presumably the Robert White who featured as a defendant in another Chancery suit at the end of the fifteenth century was the MP’s grandson of that name. The plaintiff, Thomas Byflete, sought to recover the manor of ‘Ryvesden’ in Hampshire which his family had lost to the MP through a mortgage he had afforded them in 1442-3.53 C1/188/62.