WYCHECOTES, John

Wychecotes had an unusual career, holding major county office in two widely separated counties and representing in Parliament a borough distant from both. He was from a minor Shropshire gentry family, perhaps the son and heir of another John Wychecotes, who was returned in 1431 as seised of property at Whichcott, near Ludlow, and at nearby Great Sutton (in Diddlebury).4 Feudal Aids, iv. 268. For earlier references to the fam.: CIPM, v. 83; xiii. 55. Either this John or an earlier one served in the Welsh wars under Thomas Neville, Lord Furnival, between 1401 and 1406, and attested the Shropshire parliamentary elections of 1410 and 1420.5 E101/44/6, mm. 2, 5; C219/10/5; 12/4. This aside, however, the family was a very obscure one before the time of our MP.

The stages by which Wychecotes’s curious career developed are difficult to discern. The first reference to him comes in an unexpected context: on 29 Aug. 1444 he was implicated in the death of one Richard Southcote at Toller Porcorum in Dorset. This was an episode in the violent dispute between Sir James Butler, son and heir of the earl of Ormond, and William Stafford* over the inheritance of Stafford’s niece, who was Butler’s wife. Wychecotes was acting as one of Butler’s retinue, and it must be assumed that he had been drawn into his service through the Shropshire lands Butler had acquired from his grandmother, Joan Beauchamp, Lady Abergavenny. The matter was soon brought to what was, from Wychecotes’s point of view, a satisfactory conclusion: on 25 Oct. 1445 he appeared to answer an appeal of murder sued by the victim’s brother, calling on two Shropshire men, John Horde* and Thomas Luyt*, as his sureties, and, on the following 12 May, he pleaded a pardon.6 KB27/737, rot. 83; KB29/78, rot. 25.

Yet, if acting in support of Butler in Dorset is a surprising context in which to find the head of an insignificant Shropshire family, even more so is his marriage to the coheiress of a junior branch of one of the principal gentry families of Lincolnshire, the Tirwhits. This match transformed his prospects. It had been made by 20 Dec. 1445, when he and his wife Elizabeth entered into an indenture with the head of that family, Sir William Tirwhit*. The knight agreed that Elizabeth, as one of the three daughters of his late younger brother, John, and Wychecotes should have all the lands he and others held by John’s feoffment, principally the manor of Harpswell, not far from Gainsborough. The couple were to hold the lands at a nominal rent during their own lives and those of Elizabeth’s issue, but on the failure of that issue, a rent of £100 p.a. (far in excess of the value of the lands), was to be payable to the feoffees and their heirs.7 W. Yorks. Archive Service, Leeds, Newby Hall mss, WYL5013/752. Aside from Harpswell, the property comprised the manors of Dunston and Anwick, both lying to the south of Lincoln, with lands in the region of Harpswell at Spital-in-the-street, Upton and Hemswell. In addition, there was outlying property at High Melton in south Yorks. In addition, the bride also brought Wychecotes an interest in the property of her first husband, who had been from a leading mercantile family of East Retford in Nottinghamshire; these holdings are largely undocumented.8 J.S. Piercy, Hist. Retford, 96. In 1452 the couple surrendered her interest in property in Chesterfield which she had by grant of her first husband’s fa., John Roley: Lancs. RO, Towneley of Towneley mss, DDTo/K24/77; 32/53. His wife’s inheritance led Wychecotes to take up residence at Harpswell and to lease out his manor of Witchcott. At Easter term 1448 he granted a lease of 20 years to a local husbandman, Edward Heynes, at an annual rent of five and a half marks.9 This rent seems to have gone unpaid: CP40/771, rot. 125d.

Although his marriage cannot be explained on the surviving evidence, it is clear that, by the time it was made, Wychecotes was establishing himself as a man of greater substance than his ancestors. He seems to have moved from the service of Butler to that of Butler’s brother-in-law, Sir John Talbot, son and heir-apparent of John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, by Maud Furnival: on 23 June 1445 he named Sir John and the Shropshire lawyer, William Lacon I*, as trustees in his goods and chattels.10 CCR, 1441-7, p. 309. Soon afterwards he became a member of the expanding royal household, no doubt through the patronage of Butler and Talbot. He first appears in the wardrobe accounts for 1446-7 when he was in receipt of robes as one of the esquires of the hall and chamber, and he continued wear the King’s livery at least until 1451-2, when the accounts fail.11 E101/409/16; 410/1, f. 30v; 6, f. 40; 9. This Household service explains his first appearance in local government. Although scarcely qualified to do so (he may have had a life interest in lands in East Retford), he attested the Nottinghamshire parliamentary election of November 1449, being named sixth among the 223 attestors. The naming of so many implies that the election was contested, and it is likely that Wychecotes was present to support the two successful candidates, John Stanhope* and Henry Boson*, both like him members of the Household. A year later he was named as escheator of his native Shropshire, an appointment he probably owed to Talbot.12 C219/15/7; CFR, xviii. 187.

When Wychecotes next emerges in an administrative role it is in a different guise again. On 14 May 1458 he was appointed as deputy butler in the port of Kingston-upon-Hull, and here there can be no doubt that he owed his appointment to Sir John Talbot, who had succeeded to the earldom of Shrewsbury in 1453. Talbot, then treasurer, had been appointed as chief butler only eight days before.13 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 428, 430, 497, 502. The earl’s death at the Yorkist victory at the battle of Northampton in July 1460 left him without a patron, but he was quick to adapt to the new situation. He was elected to represent the Surrey borough of Bletchingley in the Yorkist Parliament of the following October. The explanation for this surprising election has, like so much about Wychecotes’s career, to be inferred. Bletchingley was a borough belonging to another Lancastrian victim of the battle, Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, and had passed into the control of his widow, Duchess Anne, a sister of the leading Yorkist, Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury. Her servant, John Roger III*, was elected alongside Wychecotes, and it is a reasonable inference that the latter also owed his return to her, although by an indirect rather than a direct connexion. His Lincolnshire neighbour, Thomas Burgh† of Gainsborough, was making his mark as a supporter of York, and he also had a close connexion with the duchess. On 1 Apr. 1461 she named him as her surveyor general, and as Burgh had been a member of her late husband’s household they were associated before that date. Wychecotes’s own connexion with Burgh is undocumented, but the proximity of Harpswell to Gainsborough implies that there was one. In this reading he was elected after Burgh had nominated him to the duchess.14 C219/16/6; C. Rawcliffe, Staffords, 55-56, 200, 225.

Wychecotes’s election to the Parliament suggest that, despite his earlier service to the Lancastrian Butlers and Talbots and in the household of Henry VI, his political sympathies lay with York. This suggestion is confirmed by his inclusion, alongside the duke of York, and the earls of March, Salisbury and Warwick, among the feoffees of the Lincolnshire knight, Sir Henry Retford of Castlethorpe, who fell in the Yorkist cause at the battle of Wakefield.15 CPR, 1461-7, p. 112. This attachment to York, perhaps mediated through Burgh, explains his emergence as an important figure in his adopted county of Lincolnshire. He was named to his first ad hoc commission of local government in May 1461, when, alongside Burgh and others, he was entrusted with the task of seizing the lands of the Lancastrian renegade, (Sir) William Tailboys; in February 1463 he was appointed to the bench in Lindsey; and in November 1465 he was pricked as the county’s sheriff. He also found employment with local magnates: in August 1462 Bishop Chedworth of Lincoln appointed him, jointly with his son John, as keeper of the episcopal castle of Sleaford and steward of his lands in Lindsey, at a combined annuity of as much as 20 marks.16 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 34, 567; CFR, xx. 168; Reg. Chedworth, f. 52. His prominent place in local affairs allowed him to contract favourable marriages for two of his children. By a final concord levied in the spring of 1467 he and his wife settled her manors of Dunston and Anwick on John and his wife, Katherine, plausibly identified in the traditional pedigrees as a daughter of the Lincolnshire knight, Sir John Bussy of Hougham. Her brother, Hugh, is said, in the same pedigrees, to have married our MP’s daughter Joan.17 CP25(1)/145/162/19; Lincs. Peds. ed. Maddison, i (Harl. Soc. l), 216-17; iii (Harl. Soc. lii), 1069.

Alongside his administrative duties, Wychecotes also acted as a merchant. It may be that his trading interests, perhaps originating in the mercantile connexions of his wife through her first husband, may have recommended him to Talbot as a deputy butler in 1458, but there is no firm evidence of these interests until a little later. On 1 Nov. 1460, while an MP, he joined two merchants of Coventry in entering bonds totalling about £90 to the Hull customs collectors, and it is probable that these related to the export of wool through that port. At this date he was still the port’s deputy butler and he continued in the office in the 1460s. On the following 7 July he appeared in person in the Exchequer to pursue a local merchant for the non-payment of customs due on a cargo of wine, and three days later he was re-appointed as deputy butler in Hull under the new chief butler, John Wenlock*, Lord Wenlock.18 E159/238, recorda Hil. rot. 29, Trin. rot. 14; CPR, 1461-7, p. 129. His continuation in the office probably promoted his own business, and the customs accounts show him exporting at least ten cargoes of wool through Hull between July 1461 and September 1473. Indeed, by the late 1460s, he numbered among the merchants of the Calais staple, for it was as such that he sued out a royal pardon in 1468.19 Customs Accts. Hull, 1453-90 (Yorks. Arch. Rec. Ser. cxliv), 39, 116-17, 132-3, 181-2; C67/46, m. 4.

In the 1470s Wychecotes was less active. Given his Yorkist sympathies, it is surprising that he should have retained his place on the Lindsey bench during the Readeption, only to be removed, albeit briefly, when the bench was re-ordered on Edward IV’s restoration.20 CPR, 1467-77, p. 621. Beyond his attestation of the Lincolnshire parliamentary election of 1472, little else is known of him, and he died between 11 Mar. 1477, when he was named as a j.p. for the last time, and the following 21 May, when administration was granted to his son John after his executors had refused to act.21 C219/17/2; CPR, 1476-85, p. 565; Reg. Bourgchier (Canterbury and York Soc. liv), 216. A brass to his memory survives in the church of Harpswell. He was succeeded by John (d.1510), who appears to have had a legal training at Gray’s Inn, and like his father became a merchant of the Calais staple. The son was active as the MP’s administrator as late as Hilary term 1486 when he was pursuing a London draper as one of his father’s creditors.22 J.H. Baker, Men of Ct (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii. 1660; C1/78/138-40; CP40/895, rot. 84d. Much later, in the 1550s, the family faced a challenge to their title to their Lincolnshire estates. Sir Robert Tirwhit†, great-grandson of Sir William Tirwhit, unsuccessfully and falsely claimed that our MP’s wife had died without issue and thus that the lands settled on her should have returned to his family.23 C1/1477/77-80. The Wychecotes had a distinguished later history. George Wychecotes† and his son Thomas† both represented Lincolnshire in Parliament between 1698 and 1774.24 Lincs. Peds. iii. 1069-73; The Commons 1690-1715, iv. 846-7; 1715-54, ii. 533; 1754-90, iii. 628-9.