WRYTHE, William

A lawyer, Wrythe advanced sufficiently as such to become an attorney in the courts of common pleas and King’s bench at Westminster. He practised there from at least 1447 until 1451 or later, representing William Darell*, Sir Robert Shotesbrooke*, Robert Collingbourne*, the prior of the Hospitallers in England and others in cases emanating from Wiltshire and Dorset.1 CP40/747, att. rot. 5; 749, rot. 320d, att. rot. 3d; 750, att. rot. 3d; 751, att. rot. 6; 752, att. rot. 1d; 753, att. rot. 6; 754, att. rot. 2d; 755, att. rot. 9d; 757, att. rot. 4d; 759, att. rot. 8; 760, att. rot. 2; KB27/756, att. rot. 1d. Wrythe was also involved in suits at Westminster as a party. During the later 1440s, he and other executors of the chaplain William Passynger sued various men, including Hugh Payn*, in the common pleas, alleging that the defendants owed debts contracted in Wiltshire to the deceased’s estate. In the same period, he took action on his own account there and in King’s bench, appearing in person to sue a husbandman from Highworth in the same county and others for debt, and to pursue several individuals over trespasses that they had allegedly committed against him in Wiltshire, among them a carpenter from Cricklade.2 CP40/748, rots. 91, 293d; KB27/755, rot. 2.

Given that he was so often at Westminster, Wrythe cannot have found it particularly inconvenient to attend the Parliament of 1450, and no doubt the electors of Cricklade fully appreciated his legal qualifications and connexions when they returned him to the Commons. Wrythe is said to have served as the receiver of John Beaufort, earl and then duke of Somerset,3 B.W. Greenfield, ‘Wriothesley Tomb in Titchfield Church’, Procs. Hants Field Club, i. table between pp. 82-83. but it seems unlikely that an association with the Beauforts played a part in his election, which occurred six years after the death of Duke John. If indeed attached to the family when he became a MP, he must have found the Parliament an uncomfortable experience, given the strong criticism that it levelled against the duke’s brother and successor, Edmund Beaufort.

Although a lawyer, Wrythe does not fit the category of a typical carpet-bagger MP. It appears that he was a native of Wiltshire, if not of Cricklade itself, and that he was the father of the herald John Wrythe, who served as Garter King of Arms from 1478 until his death in 1504. John’s will has survived, and this shows that he died in possession of a house, two shops and lands that his father (unfortunately not referred to by name) had held in Cricklade, along with properties in Salisbury and the parishes of Chelworth and ‘Bibery’ (perhaps Bibury in Gloucestershire).4 Reg. Order of the Garter ed. Anstis, i. 365n-366n; PCC 9 Holgrave (PROB11/14, f. 71). With regard to the Salisbury holdings, it is worth noting that a William ‘Writhe’ resided there in the early 1420s, raising the possibility that the MP originated from that city.5 CP40/647, rot. 132d.

The most direct evidence of a family connexion between the herald and the MP is a pedigree commissioned by John Wrythe’s eldest son Thomas, who succeeded him as Garter King. According to this, John was the son of William Wrythe, receiver of John Beaufort, by his wife Agnes, daughter of John Gibbs, and William’s parents were another William Wrythe and his wife Nicola, the daughter of Peter Fontaville of Normandy. There seems no reason to doubt these details of Thomas Wrythe’s immediate paternal antecedents although it is necessary to view other parts of the pedigree with considerable scepticism, given that he was anxious to credit himself with a respectable ancestry. For example, the pedigree would have it that his mother Barbara was descended from the Dunstanvilles, anciently lords of Castle Combe in Wiltshire, but quite possibly she was the daughter of John Castelcombe*, for whom it is not possible to prove such illustrious forebears. Presumably because it was grander than that of Wrythe, Thomas adopted the new surname of Wriothesley, even going to the trouble of acquiring a confirmatory patent applying it retrospectively to his father and ancestors. He also referred to his father as ‘Sir John’ but there is no evidence that John Wrythe was ever a knight. Whatever his pretensions to grandeur, Thomas – who did receive a knighthood – was happy to acknowledge his association with Cricklade, where he resided for some years. It was his nephew, another Thomas Wriothesley†, who served as the King’s principal secretary and chancellor in the later years of Henry VIII’s reign. This younger Thomas was elevated to the peerage in 1544 and created earl of Southampton three years later.6 Greenfield, 76-77, 82-83; W.H. Godfrey et al., The College of Arms, 41-42; Oxf. DNB, ‘Writhe, John’; ‘Wriothesley, Sir Thomas’; ‘Wriothesley, Thomas, first earl of Southampton’; Reg. Order of the Garter, i. 155, 365n, 366n, 367, 369, 371, 373; A. Wagner, Heralds of Eng. 129, 147.