BRAUNCEPATH, John (d.1448), of Exton, Rutland.

The first reference to Brauncepeth, a younger son of a family established in the Midlands by his father, dates from as early as February 1416, when, as a young man, he attested the Northamptonshire parliamentary election. It may or may not be coincidental that one of those elected was William Huddlestone†, whose widow his elder brother was to marry. More interestingly, in May 1422 Brauncepath undertook in Chancery to do no harm to the parker of the royal park at Brigstock, which lay near his family manor at Boughton Ho. This undertaking was no doubt connected with commissions issued in the same month for the arrest of his younger brothers, Thomas and Nicholas, together with such prominent local figures as Sir Laurence Berkeley*, and William Beaufo*. The latter was the brother of our MP’s stepfather, Sir John Beaufo†, who not only stood mainpernor for his good behaviour but was himself required to find security of the peace to the parker. C219/11/8; CCR, 1416-22, pp. 259-60; CPR, 1416-22, p. 444. It seems probable that Brauncepath was here only peripherally concerned in a dispute that principally concerned the Beaufos. At this date he must have been landless or near-landless and he played no real part in local affairs until his marriage to a wealthy widow in 1435.

This marriage probably arose from Brauncepath’s connexion with Juliana’s first husband, Sir John Culpepper. In Trinity term 1432 the two men had appeared together in the court of common pleas to pursue an action of debt, and in 1433 Culpepper’s daughter had married John Haryngton or Harrington of Fleet (Lincolnshire), probably a kinsman of Brauncepath’s mother. CP40/686, rot. 67; Rutland Mag. iii. 131-2. But however it came about, the match elevated our MP’s standing. Culpepper had generously given Juliana a life interest in all the lands he had inherited from his mother, Eleanor Green, namely the manors of Isham (Northamptonshire) and Exton (Rutland) with the advowson of the church of Conington (Huntingdonshire), together with the manors of Saleby and North Kelsey (Lincolnshire), once of his paternal grandmother. CP25(1)/145/158/33; 292/67/140. Juliana’a interest in the manor of North Kelsey was only reversionary because Sir Thomas Cumberworth* had a life interest. Brauncepath and his new wife seem to have made their home at Exton, for he is described as resident there when he attested the Rutland parliamentary return of 1435. C219/14/5. Thereafter he immediately assumed an important role in the administration of that county, serving successively as sheriff and escheator between 1435 and 1437 and being appointed to the bench at the conclusion of his shrievalty. The wealth he enjoyed in right of his wife fully entitled him to such prominence, for in the subsidy returns of 1436 he was assessed at an annual landed income of £67. Recognition by the Crown as a suitable workhorse of local administration was quickly followed, on 10 Jan. 1437, by election to a Parliament to which his elder brother had been elected for Northamptonshire a week before. E163/7/31/1; C219/15/1.

Not long afterwards, his brother’s childless death further supplemented Brauncepath’s estates. From him, John inherited the manors of Boughton Ho in Weekley in Northamptonshire, Glooston in Leicestershire and Glaston in Rutland, albeit burdened until at least 1444 by the interest of his brother’s widow. But this addition was offset by the loss of some of his wife’s lands. Her late husband’s half-brother and heir male, Walter Culpepper, had disputed her title to the lands Sir John Culpepper had inherited from their father, Sir Thomas (d.1429). In Trinity term 1435 he had sued her and our MP for close-breaking and taking trees and underwood worth £40 at Hartshill (Warwickshire). This was the prelude to a settlement. By two final concords of Michaelmas term 1437 Braunspath and Juliana conceded their interest in Hartshill and two other Warwickshire manors at Anstley and Monwood Lea to Walter; and, in return, Walter conceded to the couple a life interest in the manor of Ashton by Northampton. CP40/698, rot. 233d; Warws. Feet of Fines (Dugdale Soc. xviii), 2596; CP25(1)/179/94/82; Harl. Ch. 80 G 32. It is probable that these fines were also intended to extinguish the claims of Juliana’s daughter or stepdaughter, Katherine, the common-law heir of Sir John Culpepper. She was the uncontested heir only to those lands which had descended to Sir John from his mother, the heiress of Exton and Isham. What appears to have happened in 1437 is that Sir John’s half-brother successfully claimed that the Culpepper patrimony was entailed in the male line, and persuaded Juliana and our MP to surrender her claim to dower in three of these manors in favour of a life interest in a fourth. Katherine’s claim was resurrected in the 1470s by her second husband, Brian Talbot†: CP40/859, rots. 438-40.

Little else is known about Brauncepath’s career. In May 1441, with other leading Rutland men, he witnessed an important deed by which the valuable Northamptonshire manor of Collyweston was quitclaimed to the feoffees of Ralph, Lord Cromwell. On 4 Jan. in the following year he was elected to Parliament for Rutland for the second time (curiously, he attested the Northamptonshire election to the same Parliament). In a loan commission issued at the conclusion of this Parliament he is styled ‘knight’, but this is undoubtedly a clerical error. CCR, 1435-41, p. 476; C219/15/2; CPR, 1441-6, p. 61. He was still an esquire in the summer of 1446, when, with his wife, he sued out two general pardons, and as late as the following Easter term he was described as an ‘esquire’ when sued for debt by Thomas Palmer*. C67/39, mm. 1, 2; CP40/745, rot. 288d. Nevertheless, it seems that he did take knighthood before the end of his life. In Trinity term 1447 he is described as a knight when sued by the Crown for hunting without licence in the park at Brigstock; and in an inquisition post mortem of April 1455, he is said to have been a knight when, on 5 Nov. 1447, he conveyed the manor of Boughton Ho to Thomas, Lord Roos, William, Lord Zouche, and his own younger brothers, Thomas and Nicholas. On the following 9 Jan. he made a parallel settlement of the manor of Glaston with the probable intention of ensuring that both these manors passed to Thomas in the event of his childless death. CP40/746, rot. 378d; E149/197/4. He was dead by 8 July 1448 when Nicholas, as his executor, released all personal actions to Juliana and her new husband, Robert Fenne*. He was buried in the church of Glaston, where the inscription on his tomb (now lost) described him as a knight. CCR, 1447-54, p.62; F.A. Greenhill, Incised Slabs of Leics. and Rutland, 195. For the dispute over the former Harrington manors of Glaston and Glooston that followed the death of his brother Thomas in 1454: Leics. Village Notes ed. Farnham, ii. 323-5; VCH Rutland, ii. 184; E149/243/17.