BROWNING, William I (1400-72), of Melbury Sampford, Dorset.

William’s father John Browning had sat for Gloucestershire in three Parliaments, having inherited estates in that county (notably property in Slaughter and the manor of Nethercote in Bourton-on-the-Water), from his own father. Through his mother, the Mautravers coheiress, John had inherited the Dorset manors of Melbury Sampford and Melbury Osmond, as well as part of the barony of Nantwich in Cheshire. When William, the younger of John Browning’s sons by his second wife, was born in 1400, the prior of Deerhurst and his father’s friend Robert Whittington† stood as his godfathers, CIPM, xxi. 875. and before going abroad in 1412 John made provision for him in the event of his failure to return home: he was to have the Gloucestershire properties. By settlements made on John’s departure on Henry V’s expedition of 1415 he also received a reversionary interest in the manors at Melbury, should his elder brother die childless. Sloane Chs. xxxiii 59, 60; J. Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 657-9 (with ped.). In his father’s will, of 18 Jan. 1416, William received bequests of a bed of red worsted and some livestock. PCC 34 Marche (PROB11/2B, f. 272). His half-sister Cecily, wife of Guy Whittington*, then came into her maternal inheritance, while his brother John fell heir to the principal Browning family estates. Both brothers were under age, CPR, 1413-16, p. 401; 1416-22, p. 33; DKR, xxxvii (2), 94. and while still a minor John also inherited certain of the estates of their maternal grandfather, Sir Thomas Fitznichol, consisting of a moiety of the manor of Nymphsfield, the advowson of the chantry of Kynley and a rent of 18 marks from Filton and Harry Stoke, all in Gloucestershire. The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 80-82; iv. 132; CFR, xiv. 269-70. John came of age in December 1419, only to die on 3 May following. His heir, our MP, had yet to attain his majority. CIPM, xxi. 369, 521-2. Before he did so, he attested the Gloucestershire elections held on 4 Nov. 1420, and was presumably then living on the family property in that county. It is uncertain to whom his wardship pertained until he made proof of age in June 1421, then obtaining seisin of the Fitznichol part of his inheritance together with estates in Dorset. CIPM, xxi. 875; CCR, 1419-22, pp. 158-9; Hutchins, ii. 681. It took much longer for the Cheshire estate to come into his possession, probably because of a failure of communication with the administrators of the palatinate: a year later John Kingsley was granted custody of it, along with William’s marriage, and it was not until William petitioned for a writ for proof of age to be found in Cheshire that one was issued in June 1426. Even so, he proved unable to wrest livery of this part of his inheritance from Kingsley’s grasp until the spring of 1428. Not surprisingly, he later decided to sell his sixth part of the barony of Nantwich, in 1443 obtaining royal licence to convey it to William, Lord Lovell. DKR, xxxvii (2), 94, 145, 432, 479. The value of Browning’s widespread estates is not known, although there can be no doubt that it well exceeded the £40 p.a. indicated by his eligibility for knighthood.

Browning’s first marriage was to a daughter of the late Laurence Drew (once prominent legal counsel to Richard II), and sister of Thomas Drew, a lawyer with lands in Wiltshire and Berkshire. The match, possibly arranged by the couple’s fathers before they died, almost certainly took place by December 1427, when Browning, curiously described as ‘of Henley on Thames, esquire’, was associated with his brothers-in-law Thomas and Robert Drew in contracting a debt of £20 at the staple of Westminster. When they failed to pay on the appointed day, their property in London was valued for confiscation in February 1430, although as the three men could not be found in the City, they escaped arrest. Browning was then in possession of a messuage in St. Michael’s parish, Crooked Lane, two more in St. Mary Abchurch parish, and another and two shops in St. Leonard’s in East Cheap, in all worth £15 6s. 8d. Genealogist, n.s. xiii. 149; C131/62/19. While it may have been useful to have property in the capital, he continued for some time longer to live mainly in Gloucestershire, and it was there that he again attested the parliamentary elections (in 1429), held office for a term as escheator and, along with his kinsmen, witnessed deeds. CCR, 1435-41, pp. 100-1. However, it was in Dorset that he took the oath against maintenance in 1434, CPR, 1429-36, p. 382. and thereafter this county became the focus of his interests and public service, notably as a member of the bench.

Meanwhile, Browning had seen military service in France, as letters of attorney issued to him in the summer of 1434 imply, yet where and under whose command he served are not revealed. DKR, xlviii. 299. He took out a pardon in May 1437, C67/38, m. 25. but there are no signs of any royal favour shown to him, save that in the following February he was permitted to purchase for 100 marks the marriage of Thomas, son and heir of Robert Baynam, an associate of the Whittingtons. CPR, 1436-41, p. 132. There are occasional glimpses of him acting as a j.p., E101/586/32, m. 3, 586/11. and it was while a member of the Dorset bench that he was elected to Parliament for the county for the first time in 1439. Following the dissolution of the Parliament in 1440 Browning became more closely involved in the war-effort. He was sent from London to Poole with £2,860 for delivery to Lord Scales for his wages of war, paid by the Exchequer on 17 July, and the same month he and John Clay* received prests upon the wages of 200 men-at-arms and 600 archers retained to serve in France under the new lieutenant-general, Richard, duke of York. E403/739, mm. 14, 16. It may be assumed that for some time previously he had himself been retained by York, and henceforward he was to remain in his service for the rest of the duke’s life. A year later he accompanied York to France, in June 1441 receiving a prest of £7,115 on the duke’s behalf, and a month later with Master Walter Colles and (Sir) Lewis John* he was given another for £3,180 for the wages of a force of 600 men, payable on their disembarkation in Normandy. E403/741, mm. 4, 7; P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 55; E101/53/33. He himself was back in England by January 1442, and attested the Dorset elections to Parliament.

Shortly after Browning’s return from France his second wife’s kinsman, the wealthy John Golafre, died childless, on 23 Feb. 1442, leaving her, Agnes (the grand-daughter of Golafre’s aunt Juliana), as his presumed heir. C139/112/74. The extensive Golafre estates were well worth having, and Browning had paid ‘great sums’ of money for the marriage in the expectation that he and Agnes would come into possession of substantial landed holdings. But it was not to be. The couple were in France when they learned of Golafre’s death (or so Browning claimed), and on their homecoming they found Golafre’s feoffees on the verge of selling off the ancestral estates. He protested, saying that these should stay in Golafre’s family and blood-line, especially considering the ‘grete gode’ Golafre had received from him to guarantee that Agnes would be his heir. He asserted that a man of such integrity as Golafre would never have reneged on their agreement. Following negotiations with the treasurer, Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley, who was supervisor of Golafre’s will, Browning was permitted to purchase the Oxfordshire manor of Brize Norton for £100 instead of the 400 marks the sale might otherwise have raised, but this was only after his wife relinquished her title to Bury Blunsden in Wiltshire, the most ancient part of her inheritance. At the same time, others aspiring to the estates hastened to press their claims, notably Robert Arderne* who asserted that his wife was the true heir, and Mary, wife of John Spechesley, allegedly a descendant of Golafre’s uncle Roger, who obtained a judgement against the trustees in Easter term 1444. In the end, Browning’s relatively strong case came to little, for in the midst of the dispute Agnes died (in September 1444), without surviving issue. C1/13/36; CP40/733, rot. 105d; C139/119/27; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 202; C139/119/27. Over the next two years Browning was party to transactions confirming the sale of several former Golafre manors to William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, E210/4065, 4379, 5169, 5371, 9923, 9946; VCH Berks. iv. 346. although he managed to persuade Golafre’s widow to lease him the manor of Sarsden in Oxfordshire in return for an annual rent of £10. C1/28/422. Had she lived Agnes would also have brought Browning her paternal inheritance, that of the manor of Wytham in Berkshire, which was retained for life by her mother. Browning later managed to secure a reversionary interest, and to profit from the manor’s sale to Richard Harcourt, one of his new brothers-in-law. VCH Berks. iv. 428-9; CP25(1)/13/86/23, 293/73/439.

Browning’s links with the old and prominent family of Harcourt had been formed by the spring of 1446, and in July that year he entered a contract with the formidable Lady Joan Harcourt and her sons Sir Robert and Richard that he would marry Joan’s daughter Isabel on the following 1 Sept. The Harcourts agreed to pay Browning 200 marks, to cover all the expenses of the wedding, and to provide lodgings for the couple and their servants in Joan’s household for three years. In turn, Browning agreed to give his wife a sufficient estate for life in lands in Oxfordshire, Berkshire and elsewhere valued at 40 marks p.a. But, more important, he also made the extraordinary promise, ‘of his owne fre wille’, that she should have jointure in all the lands which he already had or might have in future. The parties were bound in 300 marks to keep the agreement. Bodl. D.D. Harcourt mss, c. 1/2. Isabel was given jointure in the manor of Melbury Sampford accordingly. Hutchins, ii. 659-60; Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica ed. Nichols, vi. 357.

The Harcourts are well known to posterity for their venomous dispute with the Staffords of Grafton, a cause of much bloodshed, and it is worthy of remark that at the time of the marriage Browning could himself look back on a serious quarrel he had had with the Staffords’ kinsmen, who were seated at Hooke in Dorset. In this quarrel he had sided with Sir James Butler, son and heir of the earl of Ormond, who had married Avice, daughter and heiress of Sir Richard Stafford*, in opposition to Avice’s uncle, William Stafford* (Browning’s fellow shire knight in the Parliament of 1439). The latter had been outraged to see his family estates pass into the hands of Butler, and the ill feeling between them broke out into open violence in August 1444, when their followers clashed at Lower Kingcombe and Toller Porcorum in Dorset. These were no minor brawls, for Browning was to be appealed by Agnes, widow of Robert Fayrechild, of striking the first blow (with a two-handed sword) on the side of her husband’s head, which had led to his death on 22 Aug. Butler and some 50 others, including Walter Cheverell* and Butler’s retainer Henry Filongley* were named as accessories. Butler allegedly gave Browning shelter at his seat at Hooke. Stafford himself was accused by the widow of John Yerdeley, of her husband’s murder in another fray a week later. In separate suits brought in the common pleas in Trinity term 1445 Stafford claimed damages of £1,000 against Butler for assaulting him, and of £300 against Browning and other of Butler’s men for attacking his servants. At the same time Butler alleged that Stafford and a number of his followers had taken his livestock and goods worth £40 on 5 Sept. 1444, and claimed damages of £500 for this offence and for assaults. CP40/738, rots. 121, 123, 339d; E13/144, rots. 2, 11, 19, 20; KB27/738, rots. 25, 26. There was also another important cause for dissension. This concerned goods worth 700 marks and the huge sum of £240 in cash found in the possession of Richard Porter of Evershet at the time of his outlawry in 1442. Stafford had apparently taken possession of them, perhaps in his capacity as sheriff, and had refused to hand them to the royal escheator. Now, in 1445, he alleged that Butler, Browning, John Stork† and Porter’s widow had wrongfully removed the goods and money from his keeping. In court, Butler and the widow said they were entitled to hold them as Porter’s executors. CP40/738, rot. 321; CPR, 1441-6, p. 439. Stafford and many of his associates obtained royal pardons on 11 May 1446, and although they were not formally enrolled Browning and his co-defendants in the King’s bench did likewise on the same day. Browning successfully pleaded his pardon to secure acquittal in the Fayrechild case. CPR, 1441-6, p. 438; KB27/738, rots. 25, 26.

What initially linked Browning to Butler and Stork was their mutual service to the duke of York. Browning and Butler had served together in France under York’s command in 1441, and both men continued to be associated with the duke, who named Butler as steward of his estates in Dorset and elsewhere, from 1446. Browning was effectively put in charge of revenue collection for the duke in Somerset and Dorset, being made surveyor of his estates by appointment of May 1447, and as principal bailiff for life and receiver he received annual fees of £18 13s. 4d. As he continued in office on the ducal estates for at least 21 years more, there is good reason to believe that he was a member of York’s council. SC6/1113/11; Johnson, 17, 229; Bridgwater Bor. Archs. 1445-68 (Som. Rec. Soc. lx), no. 773. With Stork, another of York’s councillors, as well as with the earl of Shrewsbury’s son and Filongley, Browning was enfeoffed by Nicholas St. Loe in the park and forest of Gillingham, Dorset, in March 1449; it seems likely that they were acting on behalf of Butler. Later that year Browning attested the Wiltshire elections to the Parliament due to meet in November. It transpires that he was then under sentence of outlawry for failing to appear in court to answer the executors of Master Henry Penwortham, Archbishop Chichele’s registrar, touching a plea that he render £40. On 12 Nov. he obtained a pardon of this outlawry in which he was described as ‘late of Bosworth, Leicestershire, gentleman, alias of Devon, alias of Wytham, esquire, alias late of Fyfield’. Penwortham had made his will in 1438, at a time when Browning had still been married to Agnes Wytham, which explains the references to Wytham and Fyfield; Bosworth belonged to his third wife’s family, the Harcourts. CPR, 1446-52, pp. 242, 289. In pleadings in the suit in 1448, Browning’s defence rested on the fact that the original writ supposed that he lived at Brize Norton, whereas he was then living at Bosworth: CP40/750, rot. 119d.

Browning was elected to Parliament for the second time in the autumn of 1450. Parliament had been summoned in the wake of the loss of Normandy and the insurrections which had swept south-east England. York had returned home from Ireland and he and his friends are known to have ‘laboured’ the elections in the shires where they had influence. Browning’s role as the duke’s receiver probably counted for much at the hustings in Dorset, and while at Westminster he doubtless lent his support to York’s chamberlain Sir William Oldhall*, who was chosen Speaker. He was also called upon to assist his brother-in-law Sir Robert Harcourt, who now gave himself up for trial for his part in the murder of one of the Staffords of Grafton. On Harcourt’s admission to bail for the third time, in Trinity term 1451, Browning was among his bailsmen. Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iii. 207-8. York’s fortunes took a turn for the worse in the course of that year, and in the spring of 1452 he was up in arms at Dartford. If Browning took any part in that affair as a member of the duke’s army it is not recorded; certainly, he escaped serious repercussions. However, he did take advantage of the issue of a general pardon, obtaining his on 25 Sept. following, while a third pardon, issued to him on 22 Apr. 1453, was of a further outlawry for failing to answer a London tailor for a relatively small debt. C67/40, m. 8; CPR, 1452-61, p. 9.

In Easter term 1454 Browning himself sued John Pympe of Nettlestead, Kent, and Sir John Cheyne II* of the same county for a debt of 50 marks, CP40/773, rot. 33d; 779, rot. 255d. yet he nevertheless took out letters of protection to join Cheyne in France, probably to help reinforce the garrisons at Calais. DKR, xlviii. 400. His third Parliament, summoned to meet on 9 July 1455, assembled in the aftermath of the Yorkist victory at St. Albans. In Dorset, the influence of York’s supporters is evident in the return of Browning for the shire and of his younger son Alexander for Wareham, a borough belonging to the duke. Under the terms of the Act of Resumption passed in the Parliament, a number of properties reverted to the Crown, and on 13 Mar. 1456 (the day after the dissolution), Browning obtained a lease of one of them, the manor of Cory Malet in Somerset. CFR, xix. 158. His continued commitment to York is clear from the bonds he entered with other of the duke’s men in February 1458 guaranteeing payments to Alice, dowager duchess of Suffolk, of the portion of York’s daughter Elizabeth for her marriage to Alice’s son, the young duke of Suffolk. CAD, iv. A6337-43. Surprisingly, his links with York did not prevent his continuing association with James Butler, now earl of Wiltshire, who in the following October made him a feoffee of the manor of Ashby de la Zouche. CPR, 1461-7, pp. 549-50. The duke and earl are generally held to have been by this time in opposing political camps, with the earl moving ever closer to Margaret of Anjou: a few days after completing this transaction, he was reappointed treasurer of England. This may have presented Browning with a dilemma, especially after the Coventry Parliament of 1459, when the duke and his closest allies were attainted and their estates confiscated. The immediate intention of the Crown was to raise loans against the security of the confiscated estates. This required the smoothest possible transition of ownership, which in turn required the retention of both the administrative structure and the personnel of the former owners, whenever possible. This essential administrative framework was constructed in the first two weeks of December 1459, and a number of York’s servants, including Browning, were re-employed by the Crown, although the delay before Browning’s appointment at the end of February following may indicate some reluctance on his part to conform. Johnson, 193n; CPR, 1452-61, p. 592.

Browning’s appointments to commissions following the Yorkist victory at Northampton and the accession of Edward IV in March 1461 indicate his continuing loyalty to Duke Richard and his heirs, and this is confirmed by his effigy in Melbury Sampford church which bears the collar of suns and roses. Early in the reign, in June 1461, he and William Milford II* were committed keeping of the manor of Sevenhampton Denys, Somerset, and lands in Devon, on a seven-year lease. CFR, xx. 16; CPR, 1461-7, p. 210. He assisted John Stourton II*, Lord Stourton, to hold important sessions of oyer and terminer at Dorchester in May 1462, KB9/21, m. 28. and he was kept on as receiver of the Dorset and Somerset estates now held by the King’s mother Cecily, dowager duchess of York, at least until the end of that year. He served on Cecily’s council. The fact that when he left his post as receiver, his son, William II, took it over (at some point before Michaelmas 1468) is further proof that the Brownings were regarded as completely reliable. SC6/1113/16, 1114/1, 3, 4; Bridgwater Bor. Archs. nos. 825, 825a (a peremptory letter from Browning to the portreeves of Bridgwater, stating that ‘my lady in cowncelle mervellith that ye were natt att her awdite at Sheftisburi’ bringing the fee farm of £8, and demanding payment or else they would have to ‘make a Rekeneg for other thynges that shalle turne you to lytille ese’).

In the early 1460s John Golafre’s elderly widow Margaret petitioned the chancellor to complain that Browning, ‘undrestandyng himself so myghti’ in Oxfordshire, had failed to pay her the £10 p.a. rent due for Sarsden for more than three years. C1/28/422. Browning’s standing in that county was no doubt bolstered by his relationship with the Harcourts, who had come out in strong support of the Yorkists. In June 1462 he joined the brothers Sir Robert and Richard Harcourt and their cousin (Sir) Thomas Erdington*, in bonds to the King in the sum of £133 11s. 9 ¾d., payable at Easter following, and in the same amount payable at Christmas 1463, although he himself was released from all liability in July 1463. CPR, 1461-7, pp. 300, 478. These sums may have been loans promised by the Harcourts for the royal campaigns in the north of England. Browning took on the shrievalty of Somerset and Dorset that autumn, and it was as former sheriff that he purchased another pardon in October 1468. C67/46, m. 26. Also in that decade he offered guidance to the young, erratic and unpopular Humphrey Stafford IV*, Lord Stafford of Southwick, the King’s friend who was created earl of Devon in May 1469 only to die at the hands of rebels in the following August. His quarrel with Stafford’s father now seemingly forgotten, Browning witnessed deeds for Humphrey, and was named by him as a feoffee and executor. Reg. Stillington (Som. Rec. Soc. lii), nos. 193, 242; C140/32/30; CCR, 1461-8, p. 369; C1/38/214. The earl was survived by his wife, Isabel, who married Sir Thomas Bourgchier, a son of the earl of Essex. Her dower was soon agreed upon by the majority of Stafford’s feoffees, but Browning dissented and refused to hand over the revenues of certain Dorset manors until challenged by Countess Isabel in the court of Chancery. C1/41/217.

The countess was not the only widow to accuse Browning of unjustly withholding money. Earlier in his career he had been the executor of the will of Richard Fitton*, the former steward of the estates of the bishop of Salisbury, and although he allegedly had in his keeping goods worth 1,000 marks belonging to the deceased, he refused to hand over 316 marks due to Lucy, the widow of Fitton’s ward William Everard. She and her second husband John Bishop (perhaps John Bishop I*) petitioned the chancellor for redress. C1/15/90. On the other hand, Browning proved to be assiduous in pursuing Fitton’s debtors. For instance, while at Westminster for the Parliament of 1455 he had sued Isabel, widow of John Gargrave, the former receiver-general of the bishop’s estates, on a bond for 50 marks. Isabel, now married to John Pury*, contended that her late husband had duly paid the sum 20 years earlier, and produced the necessary documentation to prove it. CP40/779, rots. 182, 558. Browning had energetically pursued his own debtors throughout his career, as is evidenced by his many lawsuits. Nevertheless, several people outlawed for failing to answer him in court were able to obtain royal pardons. e.g. CP40/667, rot. 363d; 715, rot. 256; 745, rot. 15d; CPR, 1441-6, p. 210; 1452-61, pp. 10, 182; 1461-7, p. 172; 1467-77, p. 79. On occasion he himself was the defendant, for example in Hilary term 1461 when Sir John Popham* accused him of failing to repay a debt of 100 marks contracted in London three years before. CP40/800, rot. 182. Popham’s executors were still seeking justice in 1468: CP40/829, rot. 279.

Over the years Browning had various dealings in property. In 1454 he relinquished his title to messuages and land in the parish of St. Anthony, London, which he perhaps held as a feoffee for his kinsmen the Drews, CAD, ii. B2285. and in the 1460s he acquired from William Beaushin of Bradford, Wiltshire, the manor of Beaushin and lands in the parishes of Marshwood and Abbotistoke, Dorset. CAD, i. C1770; CCR, 1461-8, p. 211. Earlier in his career he had encountered difficulties on the family estate in Gloucestershire when his farmer and servants at Nethercote had been violently ejected by John Brown, a brasier who claimed land there in right of his wife. In 1444 he made settlements so that after his death this manor and land in Lower Slaughter would pass to his younger son, Alexander (thus repeating the pattern of settlement favoured by his father). C1/11/108; E210/4344. Our MP married for the fourth time in 1462, taking as his new wife the twice-widowed Alice Burton, who brought with her dower from two former shire knights, John Basket and Robert Tourges. In Michaelmas term he brought a suit against the latter’s feoffees for Alice’s dower in Melcombe and elsewhere. CP40/810, rot. 310. He settled the manor and advowson of Melbury Sampford on Alice as jointure, an arrangement which was confirmed by his three sons, William, Alexander and John Browning, parson of Symondsbury, in 1467. Two years earlier he had arranged that after his death Melbury Osmond would pass to his son William and the latter’s wife Katherine in jointure. Hutchins, ii. 559-60; C140/41/41; Collectanea Topographia, vi. 357. John had been presented to the church by the abbot of Cerne in 1455, and died in 1479: Hutchins, ii. 244.

Having taken out yet another royal pardon on 1 Jan. 1472, C67/48, m. 1. Browning died later that year, on 27 Sept., C140/41/41. and was buried in the church at Melbury Sampford in a handsome altar-tomb made of Purbeck marble, surmounted by an arched canopy. The recumbent effigy of white alabaster, finely executed, represents a man in plate armour, his feet resting on a lion, and his neck bearing the Yorkist collar from which is suspended the lion of the house of March, proof enough of his long dedication to the house of York. Hutchins, ii. 676-7; RCHM, W. Dorset, 161-2, plates 23, 136. The inscription on the brass around the verge of the tomb may have been renewed at a later period by some ignorant hand, which would account for its inaccurate statement that Browning’s wid. Alice had the tomb made in 1467. There is an almost identical tomb at the entrance to the south transept, which is said to be that of Sir Giles Strangways† (d.1546), but it is scarcely likely that it was erected for Strangways as it is so similar to Browning’s tomb of 75 years earlier. The same crest surmounts the helmets of both effigies, and both have Yorkist collars. Perhaps it was erected for William Browning II. Browning’s widow presented an incumbent to Melbury Sampford church in 1473, but not in June 1479 when the living again fell vacant, so presumably she died in the meantime. Hutchins, ii. 681. A royal licence was granted on 11 Feb. 1482 for his feoffees, John Newburgh II* and others, to grant one third of the manor of Maiden Newton, worth eight marks a year, to Cerne abbey, for the maintenance of a chaplain to celebrate daily at the altar of St. John Baptist in the monastery for the welfare of the King and queen and the souls of William Browning and ‘Elizabeth’ his wife. CPR, 1477-85, p. 256.