BAILEY, John I

The full extent of Bailey’s landholdings was not made clear in the earlier biography, The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 103. but is apparent from the claim for dower that his widow, Joan, made against his son and heir, William. The property of which she requested the customary third part consisted of a messuage, a carucate of arable land, 21 acres of meadow, 24 acres of pasture and 18s. of rent in Cricklade and Great Chalworth. CP40/716, rot. 309d. It was at Cricklade that in about 1435 Bailey had come into conflict with the wealthy landowner David Cervyngton, who accused him of forcibly liberating certain livestock that he had impounded by way of distraint. CP40/698, rot. 347.

Bailey’s association with the Montagu earls of Salisbury dated back to the days of Earl John at the end of the fourteenth century, when he was serving as constable of the comital castle of Christchurch in Hampshire. Following the earl’s attainder and execution, he was replaced in this office by the royal nominee Thomas Gerard. CPR, 1399-1401, p. 219. Perhaps by way of compensation the dowager countess, Maud, granted him in May 1400 a holding called ‘Holmes’. CPR, 1401-5, p. 7. Bailey was among the dowager’s most trusted servants: in 1417 he was associated with her as joint beneficiary of a bond for the vast sum of 1,000 marks, sealed by the former courtier Sir Alan Buxhill. C131/61/5. In subsequent years he was regularly among the Montagu retainers entrusted with custody of one part or another of the family estates and property, and it was probably in this context that in 1418 he came into conflict with Sir John Reynes and John Turvey over possession of Upton Scudamore (a manor in Wiltshire of which the earls of Salisbury were feudal overlords). CPR, 1408-13, p. 271; 1416-22, pp. 208, 321; C1/5/36; E210/543, 2614, 4209; E326/5543; VCH Wilts, viii. 81.

It was, however, the death at the siege of Orléans of Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury, without legitimate male issue that was to cause protracted troubles for his executors and feoffees, Bailey among them. Apart from the heirs general, Richard Neville and his wife Alice Montagu, the new earl and countess of Salisbury, Earl Thomas’s cousin William Montagu* also staked his claim to some of the estates of the earldom in the Westminster law courts. It seems that Bailey rapidly came to terms with the Nevilles, to whom he released his title before the end of 1429. CP40/675, att. rot. 1; C1/12/227; CCR, 1429-35, p. 28.