BYSHOPPESTON, Sir William (1379-1444), of Bishopton, Warws.

The Byshoppestons were a family of real antiquity. They had been established as tenants of the bishopric of Worcester at Bishopton near Stratford-upon-Avon since the early twelfth century, and they later became tenants of the Beauchamps at Waresley in Worcestershire. In the thirteenth century they twice temporarily forfeited their lands when drawn into baronial rebellions against King John and Henry III, but they quickly regained their local prominence. W. Dugdale, Warws. ii. 700; VCH Worcs. iii. 384. In 1319 Sir John Byshoppeston† had a royal grant of free warren in his demesne lands at Bishopton, Lapworth and elsewhere in Warwickshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, before he too followed the family tradition of rebellion against the Crown. He was captured in the rebel army at the battle of Boroughbridge, although on this occasion the family escaped with a fine of £40. CChR, iii. 415; Knights of Edw. I (Harl. Soc. lxxx), 96-97; Parlty. Writs ed. Palgrave, ii (2), app. 201, 209.

Thereafter the more prosaic difficulty of dowagers and minorities sent the family into a period of temporary eclipse, and our MP also inherited the patrimony when but a child. The sources tell different stories about his wardship. A testimony drawn up in connexion with a lawsuit of 1445 claims that he passed briefly into the custody of Thomas Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, before becoming an object of barter: the earl sold his wardship and marriage to Sir Richard Arundel, who sold them on to Robert Walden†, one of the leading townsmen of Warwick. William Wilcotes, an Oxfordshire lawyer in the service of Queen Anne, then purchased his marriage for one of his daughters, although the marriage was delayed until Byshoppeston was 24. E40/4501. The official records provide a slightly different account. On 7 Nov. 1393 Richard II, although no inquisitions had yet been held to establish royal rights, gave our MP’s wardship and marriage to the King’s knight, Sir William Arundel, but this grant was quickly vacated. Nine days later the Crown sold the wardship and marriage to Wilcotes, Walden and two others, for £60, a price discounted because the purchasers had prosecuted ‘at their own expense’ the King’s right to the wardship. It was presumably to establish these rights that inquisitions were belatedly held into the lands of Byshoppeston’s father early in 1394 and again a year later. CPR, 1391-6, p. 331; CIPM, xvii. 301-2, 437. However this may be, Bysshopeston had no reason to resent his guardian or guardians: the marriage he made was a good one and all was set fair for him to restore the family to its proper place in local affairs.

Little is known of the early years of William’s majority. His few appearances in the records concern his involvement in the affairs of his immediate neighbours and kinsmen. In 1408, for example, John Brome of Lapworth entrusted him with the task of founding a chantry in the church there after the deaths of himself and his wife – a trust Byshoppeston then seemingly abused by keeping the lands intended for the foundation. E40/4262, 4406. In July 1412 he was named among the feoffees of the lawyer, John Barton I*, in the manor of Padbury (Buckinghamshire), preparatory to its settlement in jointure upon Barton’s wife, Isabel, one of the sisters of our MP’s wife. Cat. Archs. All Souls Coll. ed. Martin, 94-95.

By this date William had taken up knighthood. First described as a knight in a deed of 16 May 1412, it is likely that the occasion of his dubbing was the expedition to France led by Thomas Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, late in the previous year. E42/305. His first recorded military activity, however, dates from somewhat later and his career as a soldier began rather fitfully. He undertook, almost certainly in the summer of 1415, to serve with two archers under Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, in the keeping of Calais. Cott. Ch. XIII 7; P.J.C. Field, Sir Thomas Mallory, 55-56. If he went on to serve on the Agincourt campaign this has left no trace on the records: the fact that he is recorded as witnessing a deed in Gloucestershire on 15 Aug. 1415, two days after Henry V had landed at Harfleur, may be taken to imply that he did not. CCR, 1413-19, pp. 281-2. Further, in the context of his later near-constant service in France, it is curious that he temporarily abandoned war for local administration. He was conspicuous by his absence from the earl of Warwick’s retinue for the campaign of 1417, and the reason for that absence lies in his secondment to look after his master’s affairs at home. The death of the earl’s father-in-law, Thomas, Lord Berkeley, in July 1417, as preparations for the forthcoming campaign were almost complete, left the earl in need of a reliable man to support, in his absence, his countess’s claim to the Berkeley inheritance against the heir male, James Berkeley. This explains Byshoppeston’s appointment in the following November to the shrievalty of his native county, and, on the day his term of office ended, his pricking to the shrievalty of neighbouring Gloucestershire (where he held a manor just over the border at Lark Stoke), in defiance of the 1377 statute against consecutive terms. It was also in these years that he was named to his only two ad hoc commissions of local government, and it is striking to note that, although he lived for another 30 years, he received no further administrative appointments after the end of his second shrievalty. E101/51/2, m. 11; A.F.J. Sinclair, ‘Great Berkeley Law-Suit’, Southern Hist. ix. 36-40.

After this brief administrative interlude Sir William followed what was probably his natural inclination and became a career soldier. On 6 May 1420 he mustered at Southampton with a retinue of an esquire and seven archers, and he may have remained in France until Henry V’s death. E101/49/36, m. 1; Cat. des Rolles Gascons, Normans et Francois ed. Carte, ii. 242. He then entered the service of the Regent of France, John, duke of Bedford, perhaps through the agency of the earl of Warwick. In May 1423 he was described as one of the duke’s knights when the searcher of ships in Southampton Water confiscated uncustomed cloth from him. E122/184/3, pt. 1. By the following autumn he was in office as captain of Château Gaillard, and it is to be assumed that he fought in Bedford’s retinue at the battle of Verneuil on 17 Aug. 1424. In the following year he served briefly as the duke’s maître d’hotel. Massey, 106. When his master returned to England in the first days of 1426, Sir William came back with him. Bedford’s purpose was to put an end to the destabilizing dispute between his brother, the duke of Gloucester, and Cardinal Beaufort, and to this end a Parliament was summoned to meet at Leicester. Here Sir William showed himself ready to serve his master in England as in France. On 11 Feb. he won election for Warwickshire in company with Sir Thomas Burdet, whose son, Nicholas, was also in Bedford’s service. The county court was poorly attended, at least if one may judge from the list of attestors, headed by two minor esquires: C219/13/4. He remained in England until the duke returned to France in the spring of 1427. Cat. des Rolles Gascons, ii. 260; DKR, xlviii. 249. Later, on 20 Feb. 1428, his service was recognized by a grant of the lordship of Thony-sur-Seine, close to Château Gaillard, to an annual value of 200 livres parisis. Actes de la Chancellerie d’Henri VI ed. le Cacheux, ii. 359.

Byshoppeston’s lengthy service in France in the 1420s explains why very little is known of his domestic affairs in these years. The account of his receiver-general, John Fayreford, survives for 1422-3 and provides a few incidental details. It shows that his wife’s sister, Margaret Beaufo, had the custody of his children, perhaps because his wife was with him in France; and that he was farming the manor of Alscot (near Lark Stoke) in Gloucestershire from his mother-in-law at an annual farm of eight marks. SC6/1043/28. In the late 1420s, on the death of her brother, Sir John Wilcotes, his wife became a coheiresses, although this had no immediate impact upon her husband’s prosperity. His mother-in-law, herself a considerable heiress, was still alive, holding not only her own inheritance but also a substantial part of the lands of her late husband. C139/122/33. The marriage of Sir William’s elder daughter, Elizabeth, also took place at this time. Shortly before 17 Jan. 1429 she married a rising lawyer, Thomas Palmer*, who settled upon her a handsome jointure to the potential disinheritance of his daughters by his first wife. Leics. RO, Peake mss, DE221/4/1/96. It is tempting to conclude that Palmer made this sacrifice to obtain the hand of a coheiress-presumptive and one whose prospects had been improved by her mother’s new status as an heiress. But, at this date, Byshoppeston had at least one living son, another Sir William (although, a soldier like his father, his life was at something more than ordinary hazard).

The two Sir Williams were together in the garrison at Château Gaillard in early 1430 when our MP’s seemingly distinguished military career suffered a serious setback. When he had assumed the captaincy in 1423 he had commanded a garrison of ten men-at-arms and 33 archers, but only two years later this had declined to four men-at-arms and 15 archers. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, fr. 4485, pp. 237-9; Actes de la Chancellerie d’Henri VI, i. 295. The weakness of the garrison may partly explain why, in February 1430, the castle, seemingly unexpectedly, fell to the French. This resulted in our MP’s capture and ransom, but, even worse from his point of view, his release from French captivity led to imprisonment at Rouen on suspicion that the castle had been lost through his negligence. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, fr. 25768/443; C. Allmand, Lancastrian Normandy, 190. He spent 32 weeks confined there, ‘a grant povreté et misere de son corps telement qu’il est moult debilité de son oye’, and it was not until 12 Dec. 1431 that his petition for exoneration received a favourable response. That exoneration came at a heavy financial price: he had to pay the wages of the garrison for three months together with a fine of 2,000 livres tournois. Actes de la Chancellerie d’Henri VI, ii. 157-60; J. Barker, ‘The Foe Within: Treason in Lancastrian Normandy’, in Soldiers, Nobles and Gentleman, ed. Coss and Tyerman, 319. Further, many of his goods were seized, including a chest containing valuable plate and jewels that he had recently shipped back from Rouen. Not until 24 Feb. 1434 did the royal council instruct the Exchequer to restore the chest to him. PPC, iv. 206-7; E159/206, recorda Easter rot. 18; 210, brevia Hil. rot. 18.

In these circumstances it is not surprising that Byshoppeston should have become burdened with debt. As a consequence, he sold his French property at Thony-sur-Seine to Thomas Wintringham, who had served under him at Chateau Gaillard, and there are indications that he resorted to asset stripping at home. On 9 Apr. 1434, for example, he sold all his trees and underwood at ‘Peytosgroue’ in Waresley for 14 marks; and on 24 June 1443 he received a modest two marks for timber at ‘Campyons More’ near Lapworth. Massey, 52; E40/1317, 4245. Debt may also explain his apparent willingness to continue his military career despite his advancing age and the humiliation of 1430. In the spring of 1436 either he or his son was serving in the retinue of John, Lord Talbot, but, if this was our MP, it is the last record of his service abroad. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, nouv. acq. fr. 8602, m. 23.

Sir William’s last years were spent in retirement, and he played little recorded part in local affairs. In the subsidy returns of 1435-6 he was assessed on an income of £50 p.a., an accurate assessment judging by a later valor which assigns them a clear value of a little over £57. E179/192/59; SC12/41/8. On 5 July 1437 he secured a general pardon, probably as insurance against any remaining debts to the Crown. Interestingly, he gave as one of his addresses in this pardon, ‘late of Poynings, Sussex’. This was the residence of another soldier, Robert, Lord Poynings, with whom Byshoppeston had been connected much earlier in his career. In 1417 he had acted as a mainpernor when Poynings had been required to find heavy surety to the Crown to do no harm to Beatrice, countess of Arundel, and their friendship obviously continued although it has left no other trace on the surviving records. C67/38, m. 15; CCR, 1413-19, p. 451. There are only a handful of other references to him in these years. In July 1438 he witnessed a conveyance of property at Lapworth in favour of William Catesby*, who was soon to marry his younger daughter, Philippa. CAD, iii. A4477. In the late 1420s, when Byshoppeston was absent in France, his sister-in-law, Isabel Barton, had sponsored plans for Philippa’s marriage to either ‘Purfrey or else young Gyfford’, but neither match seems to have been made: E207/14/8. In the following year he witnessed a deed for the Stratford-upon-Avon guild, in whose affairs he had long been active; and in July 1440 he acted for his late wife’s sister, Isabel, widow of John Barton, in a quitclaim. C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 339; CCR, 1435-41, p. 377.

Sir William’s main concern in these years was the future of his estates. The failure of his male issue – he had at least one son but that son predeceased him without issue – led to the complicated settlements into which he entered in 1439. By a final concord, to which his son-in-law, Palmer, was a party, he settled his entire inheritance on himself for the life of one Thomas Chapman of Drayton, with remainders to three different sets of feoffees, who were to hold successively for the lives of three other named individuals. Only on the termination of these life interests were the lands to pass to the descendants of his late wife Philippa. One can only speculate on the purposes of this conveyance. Significantly, those for whose lives Sir William and the feoffees were successively to hold were all associates of Palmer. Warws. Feet of Fines (Dugdale Soc. xviii), 159-60. One of the probable aims of the feoffment was to allow the profits of the lands to be applied to the execution of Sir William’s last will for a period after his death, another indication, perhaps, that he had considerable debts. Indeed, the fact that this task was entrusted to connexions of his son-in-law suggests that Palmer, a wealthy lawyer, was one of his main creditors. No mention is made of Catesby, which implies that he had not yet become Byshoppeston’s son-in-law.

Byshoppeston died shortly before 28 Nov. 1444, when writs of diem clausit extremum issued out of Chancery in respect of his lands in Warwickshire and Gloucestershire. CFR, xvii. 300. The death of his late wife’s mother a year later added to the property he left to his two daughters. C139/122/33. So ended an ancient male line – a demise hastened, on the assumption that the younger Sir William met his premature death there, by the war in France. Our MP seemingly gained little from his service abroad and his career was seriously compromised by the temporary loss of the castle of which he was captain. From the point of view of his parliamentary career it is significant that he would never have sought election had it not been for his place in the service of the duke of Bedford and the exceptional circumstances of the assembly to which he was returned.