The manor of Wood Hall in Watton-at-Stone came into the hands of the Butler family late in Edward III’s reign, when Ralph Butler married an heiress from Hertfordshire. Ralph was a younger son, so his elder brother John succeeded to the Butlers’ extensive estates in the Midlands, Yorkshire and the east of England. In due course, these lands descended to John’s son and heir, Sir Edward Butler, but Sir Edward failed to produce any children, and they passed to Ralph’s grandson, Philip of Wood Hall, at his death in 1412. Philip, who received a knighthood after succeeding Sir Edward, died eight years later. He left two sons, Edward, who survived him by less than a month, and his namesake and eventual heir, the subject of this biography. Only six years old when he succeeded to the Butler estates, the younger Philip was initially the ward of his maternal grandfather, the distinguished lawyer John Cockayne, and Henry Langley, although the Crown would re-grant the wardship to Cockayne alone in December 1425. He was still a minor when Cockayne died in May 1429, and in the following December he was committed to the care of a new guardian, Sir Hugh Willoughby of Nottinghamshire, who in due course married him to his daughter, Isabel. Willoughby undertook to settle goods worth 50 marks on the couple for their common use but, in the event, he provided for them partly in cash, to ensure that his son-in-law would have the ready means to sue livery of his inheritance out of the King’s hands. The couple were man and wife by 6 Jan. 1436, when Butler, having recently reached his majority, received from Willoughby plate worth £13 3s. 6d., along with the sum of £20 3s. 2d. In return, he promised to provide Isabel with a share in further plate or jewels to the same value as the cash payment and to pay the knight all arrears of revenue due to him from the Butler estates for the period of his wardship. The marriage did not augment those estates, for Isabel held no lands in her own right.
Butler never enjoyed full possession of the Butler lands because he was outlived by his mother, who had married Laurence Cheyne* soon after Sir Philip Butler’s death. She had a jointure interest in the Butler manors of Wood Hall and Sele in Hertfordshire and Bromham in Bedfordshire, and held Higham Gobion, another of the family’s manors in Bedfordshire by right of dower. Although these were valuable properties (at the very least, Wood Hall and Bromham alone produced a combined annual income of over £22), her son was able to take possession of estates worth well over £100 p.a. and consisting of manors and other lands in Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire and Yorkshire. The Lincolnshire estate alone was valued at £70 p.a. by the inquisition post mortem held for Sir Philip Butler in that county.
Although his mother retained the Butler estates in Hertfordshire, Butler remained a resident of his native county. He was known as ‘of Watton-at-Stone’,
Butler’s heir was his son John. He was just short of his 18th birthday when his father died, and on 18 Oct. 1453 the Crown granted custody of his estates to John Say II, John Cheyne II* (Butler’s half-brother) and Ralph Gray I*. John Butler attained his majority in 1456 but it was a long time before he came fully into his own. It is not clear if Elizabeth Cheyne was still alive when he reached his majority, but his mother Isabel, who also had a dower interest in the Butler estates, survived the MP by many years. She had taken a second husband, the minor royal servant John Besyngby*, whom she had married shortly after April 1454.