WHITTINGHAM, Robert II

A political diehard who suffered years of exile and death on the battlefield for Henry VI, Whittingham was the son of a distinguished Londoner who had withdrawn from civic life to become a landowner and a prominent servant of the Lancastrian Crown. As a young man and probably before he had attained his majority, he followed in his father’s footsteps by joining the royal household. In Household accounts from the period 1441-52 he features as an ‘esquire of the hall and chamber’,14 E101/409/9, 11, 16; 410/1, 3, 6, 9. although he was certainly an usher of the chamber by the beginning of 1451.

It was through entering the royal service that Whittingham met his wife Katherine Gatewyne. A naturalized Englishwoman, she was one of the ladies-in-waiting who had accompanied the new queen, Margaret of Anjou, across the Channel in 1445.15 D. Dunn, ‘Margaret of Anjou’, in Crown, Govt. and People ed. Archer, 122. In February 1448 the King granted the couple (who were certainly husband and wife by the following autumn) the reversion of an annuity of 40 marks in survivorship from the issues of Kent, to vest upon the death of the King’s former dry nurse Maud Fossebroke.16 CCR, 1446-52, p. 165; CPR, 1441-6, pp. 180, 332. The annuity vested in the Whittinghams before the end of the same decade although it was soon found that the revenues of Kent could no longer support such a charge. The Crown therefore ordered the Exchequer to pay the couple their 20 marks and it fell to the same government department to make good subsequent instalments to them.17 E403/773, m. 6; 775, m. 10; E404/65/68, 183. The King further demonstrated his favour to the Whittinghams by awarding Katherine a substantial dowry of 750 marks when they married. As a security for its payment, he prevailed upon Alice, duchess of Suffolk, to act as his pledge and, in turn, she persuaded (Sir) John Wenlock* and (Sir) Edmund Hampden* to stand as sureties on her behalf. In the event, the King’s generosity placed all three guarantors in legal jeopardy, for none of the dowry was paid within the given time. Whittingham reacted by going to law against Wenlock and Hampden on the basis of a bond they had given him, and they sought relief from their difficulties by daily ‘labouring’ and ‘vexing’ the duchess. In January 1451 the King was obliged to resolve the mess he had created by ordering the Exchequer to content the couple of their 750 marks, either by direct payment or assignment.18 E404/68/73. Whether the sum was ever actually paid is unclear. The dorse of the warrant sent to the Exchequer in Jan. 1451 records that a cash payment was issued to Whittingham’s servant John Parker in Easter term 1454, but there is no sign of any such payment in the corresponding issue roll: E404/68/73; E403/798.

Shortly after his marriage, Whittingham followed his father’s example by going to France to serve the Crown in a military capacity. By late November 1449 he was captain of Caen, by then one of the last remaining English strongholds in Normandy following the fall of Rouen the previous month.19 In an acct. of the fall of Caen to the French in 1450, Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English, ii. 631, describes him as the town’s lt., but the Exchequer issue roll for Mich. 1449 refers to him as capt. and he is described as the former capt. of Caen in a pardon of 1458: E403/777, mm. 7-8; C67/42, m. 27. The loss of Rouen, the duchy’s capital, impelled the government to try to strengthen the defences of Caen and the major port of Cherbourg, and on 21 Nov. it ordered Gilbert Parr, keeper of the artillery at the Tower of London, to dispatch longbows, arrows, gunpowder and other supplies, along with two gunners and a carpenter, to Whittingham’s aid. In the following February the Crown made further preparations for an inevitable French onslaught against Caen, instructing the Exchequer to provide £28 for the costs of delivering additional supplies to Whittingham and ordering Parr to send 1,000 sheaves of arrows and 500 lb of brimstone to the town. The siege, which began on 7 June 1450, was conducted by an army of about 20,000 men in the presence of Charles VII of France. In defending Caen Whittingham had the support of some 3,000-4,000 of his compatriots, including the lieutenant-general and governor of Henry VI’s rapidly diminishing French territories, Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, who had withdrawn to the town after Rouen’s surrender. Following a 17-day-long battering, Caen capitulated on 24 June and the garrison was allowed to withdraw. By the end of the summer, the English had lost all their possessions in northern France, save for Calais.20 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 518, 421; Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English, i. 501, 513, 521; E403/777, mm. 7-8.

Upon his return from Normandy, Whittingham resumed his duties as an esquire of the Household. In October 1450 he was awarded 20 marks for his costs in riding on the King’s errands, and in the following February he was paid for his expenses in going to Plymouth on Henry VI’s behalf.21 E404/67/233; E403/781, m. 5. In the same month he was entrusted with the task of supervising the exhumation and return to France of the body of Jean, duke of Bourbon, a prisoner of the English from his capture at Agincourt until his death in England in 1434.22 CPR, 1446-52, p. 410. In November 1451 Whittingham was assigned £20, to compensate him for a palfrey which he had delivered to Jean de Luxembourg, Bastard of St. Pol, at Canterbury, and in May the following year the Exchequer was ordered to pay him £40 in part payment of costs of no less than £100 that he had sustained at the King’s command.23 E404/68/17, 184. In spite of the important responsibilities which he undertook on the Crown’s behalf, Whittingham never benefited to the same extent as some of his more rapacious colleagues in the Household in terms of lands and fees, but then he had been born into greater wealth and privilege than many of them and might not have felt so impelled to seek such rewards. It would appear that his only sinecure was the bailiwick of Sandwich, an office to which he was jointly appointed with William Say, a fellow usher of the chamber, at the beginning of 1451.

Later that year Whittingham was pricked for the shrievalty of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, certainly no sinecure. One of his most expensive and time consuming tasks as sheriff was helping to organize the trial and subsequent executions of three men in Buckinghamshire for high treason. First, he had to persuade those of the ‘most honour and substance’ in the county to come to Colnbrook where the investigating commissioners of oyer and terminer were sitting; secondly, he and no fewer than 30 followers (presumably a mixture of his subordinates and his own personal servants) had to spend six days at Colnbrook while the proceedings were taking place; finally, he had to supervise the executions of John Causton and John Hull, who were put to death at Aylesbury, and John Gyle, who was executed at Chipping Wycombe. It is not known how they were guilty of treason, although Gyle and Hull were also convicted of having robbed Eton College. Whittingham was also entrusted with significant responsibilities at a national level while sheriff, for he was made a royal councillor at the beginning of July 1452.24 E159/230, brevia Mich. rot. 34; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 431, 584.

Just days before his term in the shrievalty expired, Whittingham succeeded his father, who died on 4 Nov. 1452. His inheritance was a substantial one, even though the elder Whittingham had left his manors at Moulsoe, Buckinghamshire, and Northchurch, Hertfordshire, to his second and third sons, Richard and William, respectively, and bestowed various holdings at Weston Turville, Beachampton and Kimble in the former county on his youngest son John. The share which fell to Robert, one of his father’s executors, comprised Pendley and other manors in Tring, Hertfordshire, manors at Salden in Mursley, Great Kimble, Stone and Dinton in Buckinghamshire and extensive properties in London. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the manors at Salden, Dinton and Stone were together worth at least £120 p.a. and those in Tring at least £20. Whittingham did not come fully into his own immediately, for his mother Agnes was awarded an interest for life in Salden and various tenements in the parish of St. Stephen Walbrook, London. He subsequently added to his estate by acquiring another manor at Hambleden in Buckinghamshire.25 C139/151/47; Lambeth Pal. Lib., Reg. Kempe, ff. 269-70; C67/42, m. 27; VCH Herts. ii. 247, 284-5; VCH Bucks. ii. 273-4, 300, 307-9, 369; iii. 50, 403, 407; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 842-3; CIMisc. viii. 288-91; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 44, 111, 888; CPR, 1494-1509, p. 191.

A little over three months after his father’s death, Whittingham was returned to the Commons as a knight of the shire for Buckinghamshire. He was just one of many Household men returned to the Parliament of 1453, an assembly summoned following the Court’s recovery from the political crises of the early 1450s. His fellow MP Robert Manfeld* was another trusted royal servant, although one of obscure background and modest estate. Presumably ties with the Crown played a larger part in Manfeld’s election than they did for that of Whittingham, who in terms of lands and status was eminently qualified to represent Buckinghamshire as a knight of the shire. During the second session of the Parliament Whittingham obtained an allowance of £65 10s. on his account as sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire. His letters patent referred to ‘old farms’ which he had been unable to collect, although a writ subsequently sent to the Exchequer referred to the great costs he had sustained in attending to the trial and execution of John Causton and the other traitors.26 CPR, 1452-61, p. 78; E159/230, brevia Mich. rot. 34. During the recess following that session he was made a j.p. for the first time.

Either shortly after leaving the Commons or while still an MP, Whittingham was chosen as an executor by his father’s old friend Sir Andrew Ogard*, who died in mid October 1454.27 PCC 2 Stokton (PROB11/4, ff. 13v-15); Norf. Archaeology, xli. 13-14. It is possible that he had served part of his time in France under Ogard, who appears to have been his immediate predecessor as captain of Caen. Like his father, he had acted as a feoffee for Sir Andrew and had supported his controversial acquisition of the greater part of Sir John Clifton’s estates in Norfolk.28 DKR, xxxvii. 569; CFR, xviii. 184. The connexion with Ogard ensured that Whittingham was well placed to bid for the keeping of the former Clifton manors of Hilborough, West Braddenham and Cranworth in that county, even though these were not among the properties which Sir Andrew had acquired. On 14 May 1455 the Crown farmed them out to Whittingham and his fellow Household esquire, William Tyrell I*, for £14 p.a., but the pair lost the properties in the following autumn, after John Knyvet, Clifton’s nephew and heir at law, had proved his right to succeed to them.29 CFR, xix. 133; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 90-92.

On the same 14 May the King’s Council issued instructions and letters of credence to commissions set up to raise money for the defence of Calais. Whittingham was appointed to the commission for Buckinghamshire, but he must have found the outbreak of civil conflict at home of more pressing concern than Calais. It is not known whether he was with the King at the first battle of St. Albans on the following 22 May, although he took the precaution of obtaining a pardon a few months later.30 C67/41, m. 29 (7 Oct. 1455). The Parliament which met in the wake of the Yorkist victory at St. Albans passed an Act of Resumption, and he was obliged to secure an exemption from the Act to safeguard Salden, then still in the hands of his mother.31 PROME, xii. 415. It is possible that Salden passed to him while the Parliament of 1455 was still sitting, for the assembly was not dissolved until 12 Mar. 1456, several weeks after his mother’s death.32 CFR, xix. 136. During the later 1450s Whittingham became ever more closely associated with the queen, after whom he named his daughter, his only child to survive him.33 The acct. of the treasurer of Queen Margaret’s chamber for 1451-2 reveals that Whittingham also had a son who predeceased him, probably in infancy, since it records that in that period the queen bestowed £20 upon the boy at his baptism: E101/410/8. In September 1456 he was appointed receiver-general of the infant prince of Wales, and it was through him that she had direct access to the prince’s financial resources. He and others of the queen’s men who dominated the prince’s council went about strengthening her control over her son’s estates, and in the late summer of 1459 he held judicial sessions at Beaumaris and Caernarvon in the prince’s name.34 Griffiths, 782-3. By then Whittingham was also a leading figure in Margaret’s household, holding the position of keeper of her great wardrobe.

Apart from his official duties, in the same period Whittingham acted for William Waynflete, bishop of Winchester, as a feoffee for lands with which Waynflete was to endow his college at Oxford,35 V. Davis, ‘Wm. Waynflete and the Wars of the Roses’, Southern Hist. xi. 21; Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Stainswyke deed 65; F.N. Macnamara, Mems. Danvers Fam. 511-15. and was kept busy as one of the executors of Sir Andrew Ogard. In Trinity term 1458 he and three of his co-executors, John Bourgchier, Lord Berners, Edward Ellesmere and John Randolf, brought two bills in the court of King’s bench. Drawn up in accordance with a statute of 1455 concerning servants who plundered their deceased masters’ goods, they were directed against the testator’s former servants, John Fadyr and John Clyf, by then prisoners in the Marshalsea. They alleged that within a week of their master’s death the two men and 20 unknown accomplices had stolen a large number of his possessions from his castle at Buckenham, Norfolk, and from The Rye, his manor in Hertfordshire. The haul was said to have consisted of furniture, bedding, clothes, vestments, plate, jewels, books, cash and other valuables amounting to a total worth of some £5,000. It is difficult to take these lawsuits, the outcome of which is not recorded, completely at face value (for instance, the looting of both properties, a good few miles apart, was said to have occurred on the same day, 22 Oct. 1454), although it is impossible to distinguish legal fiction from reality.36 KB27/789, rots. 104, 107; PROME, xii. 432. The three plaintiffs also found themselves at the receiving end of litigation, for it was also about this time that the late knight’s old comrade-in-arms Sir William Oldhall* sued them and Alice, Ogard’s widow and principal executor, for compensation in the Chancery. In his bill Oldhall claimed to have suffered at law as a consequence of a security which he had entered into on Ogard’s behalf in 1447, namely a bond for £400 given to the then marquess of Suffolk, William de la Pole.37 C1/26/142. Political divisions may have given the suit added piquancy as far as Whittingham was concerned, since Sir William was a leading Yorkist.

By now completely committed to the opposing cause, in the latter stages of Henry VI’s reign Whittingham was placed on several anti-Yorkist commissions in the Midlands and southern England, and in March 1460 his younger brother William, another of the queen’s servants, was made receiver of the estates confiscated from the duke of York in Buckinghamshire.38 CPR, 1452-61, p. 568. The battle of Northampton on the following 10 July changed everything, for it allowed the Yorkists to recover control of the person of the King and the government. It was probably after this sudden change in political fortunes that one Thomas Myrydale, then a prisoner in London, accused Whittingham of murder. By means of a Chancery suit, Myrydale claimed that he and his father John had entered a bond to Whittingham and his servant John Parker, a scrivener from London, as a security for a debt of £12 which John Myrydale owed the MP. He further alleged that his father had visited Whittingham ‘after the last field of St. Albans’ in order to settle the debt, to pay the MP a further ten marks for his ‘good mastership’ and to seek the bond’s return. Whittingham was said to have told his visitor that he would issue him with an acquittance because the bond was in London, and then to have summoned his servants, who at his command had dragged John Myrydale outside and beheaded him. To add to his tale of woe, Thomas Myrydale said that Parker had afterwards gone to law against him with the bond, resulting in his imprisonment. Unfortunately, no other evidence relating to this intriguing suit has survived, making it impossible to gauge whether Whittingham really had acted in such an arbitrary and brutal manner or how the Myrydales could have come to have any dealings with him in the first place.39 C1/27/478. Filed between 1 Sept. 1459 and 3 Mar. 1466, the bill must date from the earlier part of this period. Assuming that his allegations were true, it would have made sense for Thomas to have sought redress in the latter half of 1460, when the political fortunes of Whittingham and his fellow Household men were waning. Presumably the ‘field at St. Albans’ is the first battle of St. Albans, since Whittingham, who was dubbed immediately after the second battle there in Feb. 1461, is not referred to as a knight. Moreover, it is unlikely that John Myrydale could have visited the MP at a later date, since in the last days of Hen. VI’s reign Whittingham was campaigning with Queen Margaret and after the accession of Edw. IV he went into exile.

It is impossible to tell whether Whittingham was at Northampton, although after the battle he may have taken refuge across the Channel. A ‘Whyttyngham’ was at Dieppe with Henry Beaufort, duke of Somerset, in the autumn of 1460, shortly before Beaufort, the erstwhile Lancastrian appointee as captain of Calais, returned to England to raise the West Country against the Yorkists. Whatever the case, both Whittingham and Somerset fought for Henry VI at Wakefield at the end of 1460 and at the second battle of St. Albans, where the MP was knighted on the field by the seven-year old prince of Wales, in February 1461. Following St. Albans the queen dispatched him, (Sir) Edmund Hampden, (Sir) John Heron* and others to London to ascertain the loyalties of its citizens. In doing so she displayed a fatal lack of decisiveness, so allowing York’s eldest son and heir to seize the opportunity to enter the City and proclaim himself Edward IV.40 Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 216-17; Oxf. DNB, ‘Beaufort, Henry, second duke of Somerset’; C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, i. 145. On 6 Mar., two days after seizing the throne, Edward put a price of £100 each on the heads of Whittingham and other followers of Henry VI whom he considered beyond redemption and wished to have killed.41 CCR, 1461-8, pp. 56-57. On the following 29 Mar. Whittingham was in the Lancastrian army decisively defeated at Towton,42 Historical Collns. Citizen London (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xvii), 217. after which he fled to Scotland, either independently or in the company of Henry VI, his wife and their young son.43 Scofield, 165. It was probably in June 1461 that Whittingham accompanied Queen Margaret back across the border, on a foray in which her force besieged Carlisle and burnt its suburbs.44 A. Goodman, Wars of the Roses, 57. In the following month Margaret sent the duke of Somerset, Lord Hungerford and Whittingham on a mission to seek the support of Charles VII of France. Unfortunately for the envoys, the French king died before they arrived, and in early August they were arrested on the orders of his son and successor, the pro-Yorkist Louis XI. Somerset was imprisoned in the castle of Arques and Hungerford and Whittingham were confined at nearby Dieppe. While at Dieppe Hungerford and his companion wrote several letters to Queen Margaret in Edinburgh, to inform her of their predicament, but the Yorkists intercepted at least one of these letters at sea. In September the captured ambassadors were brought before Louis at Tours, where Somerset was given a safe-conduct to leave for Flanders.45 Paston Letters, ii. 250-3; Scofield, i. 188-90, 209.

Inevitably, Whittingham was among the Lancastrian diehards attainted in Edward IV’s first Parliament, which opened in the following November.46 PROME, xiii. 42-55. On 27 Feb. 1462 Edward IV’s household servant, Sir Thomas Montgomery†, obtained a grant for life of the bulk of his lands, and on the same day George Neville, bishop of Exeter, acquired Pendley, also for life. It was presumably through administrative error that Montgomery’s grant also included Pendley since it was Neville who took possession of the manor. At the end of the decade the cleric, by then archbishop of York, received a further grant of Pendley, this time to him and his heirs.47 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 105, 121-2, 135. Confusingly, Pendley was also included in lands awarded to Humphrey Bourgchier*, Lord Cromwell, in Aug. 1467, but George Neville’s grant held good: CPR, 1467-77, p. 47; CIMisc. viii. 399. In December 1464 Montgomery acquired fresh letters patent by which the Whittingham manors in Mursley, Dinton and Stone, along with properties in the London parishes of St. Christopher le Stocks, St. Peter le Poer and St. Peter Cornhill, were awarded to him and his male heirs. In the meantime Whittingham’s advowson of the parish church of St. Stephen Walbrook was obtained by one of his feoffees, the Londoner Richard Lee*, and in 1465 the Crown assigned his other holdings in the same parish to George Neville’s brother Richard, earl of Warwick. Other, unspecified parts of Whittingham’s forfeited estates fell into the hands of Richard, duke of Gloucester.48 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 211, 367-8, 434-5, 444; 1467-77, p. 329.

Presumably Whittingham had accompanied Somerset to Flanders in the autumn of 1461, although he was certainly back in France early in the following summer. In the spring of that year Queen Margaret had arrived in France to negotiate with Louis XI in person, and Whittingham was with her on 28 June when she and Louis signed the treaty of Tours, by which Louis agreed, in return for Calais, to finance an expedition to England. Whittingham was a member of the small force which finally set sail in October under the command of the queen and Pierre de Brézé, a leading French supporter of the Lancastrian cause. After the expedition, financed by de Brézé rather than Louis, landed on the Northumberland coast, it captured Alnwick castle, where Whittingham was installed as one of the leaders of its new Lancastrian garrison. He remained at Alnwick until January 1463, when he and the bulk of the garrison withdrew and the castle fell back into Yorkist hands. In the following summer Queen Margaret again departed Scotland for the continent, taking with her the prince of Wales and a small band of dedicated supporters including Whittingham.49 Scofield, 252, 262, 266; Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English, ii. [780]; John Vale’s Bk. ed. Kekewich et al. 85. The court she established for herself at Koeur, her father’s castle in the duchy of Bar, was far from luxurious for her followers, who depended on her for their upkeep.50 . Griffiths, 888-9; Scofield, 368; Oxf. DNB, ‘Margaret of Anjou’. It is likely that Whittingham’s wife and daughter joined him in his penury at Koeur, for in November 1466 the authorities at Dover were ordered to permit them and two servants freely to depart from that port.51 Egerton 2090, f. 4v.

During his time in exile, Whittingham played his part in helping to keep the cause of Henry VI alive in England and Wales. In June 1468 one of his servants, Cornelius Sutor, was captured while carrying letters from the Lancastrian exiles to friends in England, among them Thomas Danvers*. Under torture, Sutor implicated his own master and various prominent individuals in a conspiracy against Edward IV, leading to further arrests and prompting fears of invasion among the Yorkist authorities. Such fears were far from unfounded, for in the same month Henry VI’s half-brother, Jasper Tudor, landed near Harlech, where the castle had remained in Lancastrian hands since 1461, and marched across north Wales with a small force from France. The invasion failed and in mid August Harlech castle finally fell to the leading Welsh Yorkist, Sir William Herbert*, Lord Herbert. Among those taken prisoner were Sir Richard Tunstall†, Sir Henry Bellingham, Sir William Stoke and ‘Whityngham’; of whom Tunstall and Bellingham were pardoned soon afterwards. If the captured Whittingham was the MP rather than one of his brothers, it is extremely surprising that he escaped the fate of the two other prisoners, who were taken to London and executed.52 Scofield, 454, 459; Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English, ii. [790-1]. Scofield assumes the MP was the man captured at Harlech but, unlike Tunstall, Bellingham and Stoke, he is not described as a ‘knight’: Letters and Pprs. ii. [791]. It is unlikely that Herbert granted the MP a safe-conduct out of the realm or that Whittingham temporarily made his peace with Edward IV.

Whatever the case, Whittingham may have been in England shortly after the Readeption of Henry VI, for on 17 Dec. 1470 the newly restored King made a grant to him and John Clampard of the farm of two meadows beside Sandwich castle.53 CFR, xx. 285. Even if he did return home before Queen Margaret, who did not land at Weymouth until the following April, Whittingham was certainly with her at Tewkesbury on 4 May, when he gave his life for the Lancastrian cause. According to contemporary chroniclers, he died on the battlefield, meaning that he was spared the ignominy of execution, the fate meted out a day later to those prominent comrades-in-arms who survived the battle but were taken prisoner. Probably initially buried at Tewkesbury, he was afterwards re-interred at Ashridge, the religious college on the Hertfordshire-Buckinghamshire border where his late father lay. He was placed in a fine altar tomb at Ashridge, where his wife was laid alongside him after her own death.54 J. Warkworth, Chron. Reign Edw. IV (Cam. Soc. x), 18; John Benet’s Chron. (Cam. Miscellany xxiv), 233; VCH Herts. ii. 147; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 844.

Upon returning to London after Tewkesbury, the victorious Edward IV knighted Ralph Verney*, one of his most loyal supporters in the City. A former associate of Whittingham, Verney had interests in Buckinghamshire as well as London, for he had inherited a manor at Fleet Marston and acquired another at Ellesborough. Right up until Edward IV’s accession, he and the MP had enjoyed a cordial relationship. Each appointed the other as a feoffee, and it may be that the two men had settled upon a match between Whittingham’s daughter and heir Margaret, and Verney’s son and heir John† by the summer of 1457 when Whittingham enfeoffed Verney of property in several London parishes.55 VCH Bucks. ii. 335; iv. 74; CIMisc. viii. 291. It was not until after he became mayor of London in the autumn of 1465 that Verney made his first attempt to recover the confiscated inheritance of his daughter-in-law, Margaret Verney. The fact that Whittingham was still alive, though living in exile, made this a delicate task, and to begin with Verney limited himself to those properties in London for which he had acted as one of the MP’s feoffees. In July 1466 a commission was established to investigate his claim that the Crown should never have seized the properties, since he and his fellow feoffees had acquired their title to them before Whittingham’s attainder. It cannot have reached a conclusion, since a new commission was appointed to inquire into the same matter in the following December, but this too would appear to have come to nothing.56 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 521-2, 553.

After the MP’s death, the newly knighted Verney renewed his efforts to recover the Whittingham lands, trusting that his own loyalty to Edward IV would outweigh the demerits of Margaret’s Lancastrian father. In February 1472 he and his kinsman by marriage, Richard Fowler†, paid the Crown ‘certain sums of money’ for the reversion of those manors and lands in the hands of Sir Thomas Montgomery, should Montgomery die without male issue. This purchase represented a gamble, although one that stood every chance of success since by now Montgomery was elderly and still childless. In the following month Verney secured letters patent allowing Margaret to succeed to her inheritance free from the stain of her father’s attainder. In practical terms the grant was largely nullified by a proviso excepting the lands given to Gloucester and Montgomery, although it did allow the Verneys to recover Pendley. Not content with this limited success, the Verneys submitted a petition to the Parliament of 1472 which opened in the following autumn, a process eased by the fact that Sir Ralph had gained election to the Commons as an MP for London. Brought in the name of John and Margaret Verney, the petition cited Sir Ralph’s ‘humble and faithfull servyce’ to Edward IV and asked that Margaret and her husband might enter her inheritance. The petition was granted, although Sir Thomas Montgomery continued to occupy the manors and other lands granted to him in the previous decade, having reached an accommodation with the Verneys, who agreed that he should remain in possession of those properties for the rest of his life.57 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 309, 329; PROME, xiv. 62-63; Verney Pprs. (Cam. Soc. lvi), 18-20; CP25(1)/294/76/86; 78/6. In the meantime, the Verneys conveyed certain of the Whittingham holdings in London to William, Lord Hastings, Sir John Pilkington†, and others. The purpose of these transactions is not clear, although it is possible that they had chosen these two members of the Yorkist establishment to act as feoffees on their behalf. They also came to an arrangement with the son and namesake of the late Richard Lee in 1473, agreeing that the younger Richard should have the advowson of St. Stephen Walbrook for life, after which it was to revert to them.58 Corp. London RO, hr 203/5, 6, 21.

Following Henry VII’s accession, John Verney, by then a knight, and his wife successfully petitioned the Parliament of 1485 to have their title to the manor of Salden validated. In contrast to that of 1472, the petition omitted all mention of the Yorkist Sir Ralph Verney, who had died in 1478, and instead emphasized the services which Margaret’s father had performed for Henry VI.59 PROME, xv. 187-9. The couple finally took possession of Salden and the other manors Edward IV had granted to Sir Thomas Montgomery after the latter’s death in 1489. By then Margaret had already inherited the estate at Weston Turville which had belonged to her childless youngest uncle John Whittingham, who had died on 22 Aug. 1485, possibly at the battle of Bosworth.60 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 111. The couple also managed to acquire Moulsoe, the manor which Margaret’s grandfather had settled on her eldest uncle Richard Whittingham in 1452, but failed to recover other parts of the Whittingham estates, including manors at Great Kimble and Beachampton which the same uncle sold to the notorious early Tudor careerist Richard Empson†.61 VCH Bucks. iv. 407; CCR, 1485-1500, nos. 1166, 1170; CP25(1)/22/128/47, 77. Although it appears that the Verneys’ son and heir was able to recover some, if not all of Empson’s acquisitions: G. Lipscomb, Bucks. ii. 344. The Verneys came into conflict with Richard Whittingham over another manor, Northchurch in Hertfordshire, which both he and they claimed after the death without heirs of Margaret’s second paternal uncle William. In the end, neither they nor Richard could make good their respective claims and Northchurch passed to Robert Morton†, who also had asserted a right to the manor.62 VCH Herts. ii. 247-8; C1/234/25. Sir John Verney and his wife were interred in her father’s tomb at Ashridge College after their deaths in the early 1500s, as subsequently were their son, another Sir Ralph Verney, and his wife. The college was suppressed in 1539, and 36 years later Whittingham’s great, great-grandson, Edmund Verney (younger brother of Edmund Verney†), moved the tomb and its enclosing stone screen to Aldbury parish church in Hertfordshire. Still at Aldbury, the tomb bears effigies of the MP and his wife. Appropriately, he is depicted wearing full armour and a Lancastrian collar of SS.63 VCH Herts. ii. 147.