CARENT, John (c.1418-83), of Ash in Stourpaine, Dorset and Toomer in Henstridge, Som.

John’s father William was highly influential in county affairs, both in Dorset and Somerset, owing his prominent position in part to his close connexion with the prominent family of Stourton, especially when his brother-in-law Sir John Stourton came to enjoy a position of trust in the household of Henry VI and was raised to the peerage. Probably a lawyer, William was active for well over 50 years on behalf of religious houses and the leading gentry of the region, and his public service as five times sheriff, six times a knight of the shire for either Somerset or Dorset, and for many years a j.p. is ample indication of his standing. John was his first-born son and heir to the family estates, which, while not overly substantial, were worth at least £52 p.a. The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 280-2. John’s father and uncle Stourton were able to negotiate for him a marriage which, while not to an heiress, nevertheless attached him to a family of baronial status, that of Brooke. The match had been arranged by February 1438 when a settlement was made of William Carent’s manor of Swanage, Dorset, so that after his death it would fall to John and his wife Joan, daughter of Sir Thomas Brooke, Lord Cobham, in jointure, and to their issue in tail. Joan, although still under age, brought to her new husband property which had been settled on her when she had married William Bush, whose mother Eleanor was the heiress of the valuable estates of the late Sir Ivo Fitzwaryn†. Eleanor had intended that Bush should have the bulk of her inheritance, in preference to the son of her first marriage, Sir John Chideock*. It was to safeguard his reversionary interest in the Fitzwaryn inheritance (which on Bush’s death had fallen to him), that Chideock drew up an indenture in 1439 in which he promised that if John Carent died before his wife came of age, and if Joan then quitclaimed to him all her right in the former Fitzwaryn estates, then a statute staple made at Exeter in which her father Brooke was bound to him in 500 marks would become void. Add. Ch. 15451; Harl. Ch. 48 B 8. Joan retained a reversionary interest in the manors and advowsons of Winterbourne Houghton and Up Cerne as well as other properties, to fall to her after the death of Ralph Bush, her first husband’s father. These she would hold for life, and only on her death would they revert to Chideock and his heirs. The Carents duly entered the property when Ralph Bush died in 1441. Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 357-8; CPR, 1441-6, p. 34. Bush also held for life by the courtesy (following Eleanor’s death) the Fitzwaryn manors of Fifehead Neville, Burcombe and Melbury Osmond and the advowson of the church at Povington, these also fell to Joan after his death, probably in accordance with the settlement made on her early marriage to his son. CP25(1)/292/69/232; C1/43/258-61. Thus, although Carent was not to inherit his patrimony for very many years (indeed, until he was nearly 60), he held through his marriage sufficient property to give him an income probably well in excess of the £40 p.a. which made him eligible for knighthood.

Carent’s first public act was to attend the parliamentary elections held at Ilchester early in 1442, being named next after his father at the head of the list of those attesting the indenture; but when he next witnessed an election it was at Dorchester in 1450 for the return of the shire knights for Dorset, one of whom was John Filoll*, perhaps already the husband of his cousin Margaret. C219/15/2, 16/1. The latter’s father, another John Carent, lived on until 1478, so it is sometimes difficult to determine which royal commissions were intended for our MP and which for his uncle. However, the two men were often distinguished as ‘the younger’ and ‘the elder’, and while our John’s activities were more concentrated on Dorset, his uncle’s focused on Somerset. It was certainly the younger John who was returned for Dorset to the Parliament summoned to meet at Reading in March 1453. The Lower House was dominated by men associated with the royal court, where Carent’s maternal uncle, Lord Stourton, was still treasurer of the Household. Significantly, the sheriff of Som. and Dorset making the return was Stourton’s son-in-law Richard Warre*: C219/16/2. Although Carent himself is not known to have ever served in the Household, he is known to have had other links with the royal court. While the Parliament was in progress he was party to fines regarding manors in Dorset, apparently on behalf of James Butler, earl of Wiltshire, subsequently a staunch supporter of the Lancastrians, Dorset Feet of Fines, 374, 378-9. while his uncle Nicholas Carent, the dean of Wells, was employed as secretary to Queen Margaret for the ten years from 1448 to 1458. Furthermore, either our John or his uncle and namesake was a feoffee of a manor in Oxfordshire to the use of their kinswoman Margaret Beauchamp, dowager duchess of Somerset, at that time wife of another man who was to die in the Lancastrian cause, Leo, Lord Welles. CPR, 1452-61, p. 466. That our MP was assumed to be loyal to the King is evident from his appointment as sheriff of Somerset and Dorset in November 1459, shortly before the meeting of the Coventry Parliament at which the Yorkist opponents of the government were to be proscribed. Nevertheless, there is no sign that he showed overt partisanship in favour of either side in the civil war. What mattered most to Carent were the ties of family. When he conducted the Dorset elections to the Parliament of 1460, summoned after the Yorkist victory at Northampton, he returned his cousin (Sir) William Stourton* and brother-in-law the prominent lawyer John Newburgh II*. Carent’s appointment to a commission of arrest in December that year suggests that he was acceptable to the new regime, as too does his appointment to a commission of gaol delivery in July 1461 after Edward IV came to the throne. He obtained a pardon from the latter, as ‘of Ash, esquire’ and former sheriff, on 5 Feb. 1462. C67/45, m. 44.

Carent’s mother died in the following year, and his father had a tomb built for her in the church at Henstridge, where by grant of Bishop Bekynton all persons praying for her soul and for the welfare of William Carent and his brothers and son John would receive a 40 days’ indulgence. Reg. Bekynton, i. (Som. Rec. Soc. xlix), 1568. One death in the family was soon followed by others: Nicholas Carent, the dean of Wells, left his two brothers and John his nephew silver goblets in his will of April 1467, naming all three as his executors; Som. Med. Wills (Som. Rec. Soc. xvi), 211-12. and in the meantime our MP’s wife Joan had also died, in 1465. Joan left their eldest son William, aged 12, as her heir. C140/18/51. Her death led to ‘certayn variaunces’ between Carent and his cousin William Stourton, now Lord Stourton, and Sir John Arundell of Lanherne, who had married the two daughters and coheirs of Sir John Chideock. Stourton and Arundell were of the opinion that now, as Joan was dead, the former Fitzwaryn manors of Fifhead Neville, Burcombe and Melbury Osmond and the advowson of Povington, which had all been settled on her for life, should be removed from Carent’s possession and revert to their wives as Chideock’s heirs. Their dispute went to the arbitration of William Huddesfield†, John Byconnell* and William Twyneho*, who after studying the legal evidences ruled that if Carent paid Stourton and Arundell £100 he might keep the manors for life, with remainder in tail to his son William and daughter Margaret, the properties only returning to Sir John Chideock’s right heirs if these two died without issue. However, Stourton refused to abide by the award, and even though Carent put his case to the chancellor in 1467 he evidently failed in his bid, for the disputed estate fell to Stourton and his wife before Carent died. C1/31/172, 451, 43/258-61; CP25(1)/294/77/133B. Yet another member of the family died in 1467: this was John Filoll, husband of Carent’s cousin. On 19 July that year Carent joined his father and uncle John (the young heir’s grandfather) in obtaining the wardship and marriage of Filoll’s eldest son, for which they paid the Crown £200. CFR, xx. 206; CPR, 1467-77, p. 39. Carent’s removal from the Dorset bench in December 1470 might indicate that he was viewed as an opponent of the Readeption of Henry VI, although his father continued to serve as a j.p. throughout the political changes of the period. John was reinstated on the bench a year later, following Edward IV’s return to power, there to remain until his death. Both he and his uncle John obtained pardons in February 1472, his own being coupled with a pardon to his second wife, Margaret. C67/48, mm. 1, 12.

Margaret was one of four daughters of the Berkshire landowner Edward Langford, who, even though the women were not his heirs, had successfully contrived to marry them all to heirs of wealthy gentry families. Margaret’s first husband had been a notable catch: Nicholas Carew, the former constable of Southampton castle, had inherited substantial estates in Surrey and other counties, and on his death in 1466 she had been left possessed of jointure in the Berkshire manors of Great Purley, Hyde and Sulham, worth at least £27 p.a., as well as the expectation of a sizeable dower. C140/21/40. As widow of a tenant-in-chief Margaret was required to take an oath not to marry again without royal licence. She may have broken her oath to wed Carent. The latter’s father settled on them and their male issue his manor of Thornton in Marnhull, worth 100 marks a year. CCR, 1461-8, p. 429; C67/48, m. 12; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 951; Hutchins, iv. 318. In November 1474 the couple were pardoned for breach of the peace and trespasses committed in connexion with the inheritance of Margaret’s young son, another Nicholas Carew, the King’s ward, and it was not until then that the escheator in Surrey and Sussex was finally ordered to assign her dower in the Carew estates. C67/49, m. 3; C54/326, m. 7 (the calendered version, CCR, 1468-76, no. 1240, erroneously refers to him as son of John Carent). Margaret’s father Langford, for whom Carent acted as one of the many feoffees of his estates, had died shortly before. CIPM Hen. VII, i. 934.

On 12 Nov. 1476 Carent’s aged father died, and it was only then, towards the end of his own life, that John finally came into his full inheritance. C140/56/46. He was also now technically the sole owner of certain of the Stourton estates, which his father had held as the last surviving feoffee under an arrangement made many years earlier in 1430. John handed them over in March 1478 to the new Lord Stourton, John, son and heir of his cousin William. C140/63/55. Over the years Carent had often been of service as a feoffee to other of his relations. He had acted as such for his uncle John Carent the elder, who died in April 1478, C140/65/5. and as a consequence of his sister’s marriage to John Newburgh II he had often been a party to Newburgh’s transactions. For instance, back in 1459 he had helped Newburgh in his dealings with Richard Turberville over the manor of Turner’s Puddle, Dorset Feet of Fines, 386-7. and nine years later had assisted in finalizing contracts for one of Newburgh’s daughters (his own niece) to marry the heir apparent to the Scrope estates in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. As a feoffee of the Newburgh estates from 1471 he was responsible for making settlements on Newburgh’s grandson John, son and heir of (Sir) William Newburgh†. CCR, 1461-8, pp. 441-2; 1476-85, no. 140; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 38, 39; Add. Chs. 18251-2, 18254, 28918-19.

The precise date of Carent’s own death is not known, but it presumably occurred shortly before writs de diem clausit extremum were issued on 25 Mar. and 11 July 1483, CFR, xxi. nos. 668, 737. No inq. post mortem survives. and perhaps after his reappointment as a j.p. on 3 Mar. that year. An appointment to a commission dated 27 Apr. relating to subsidies granted in Edward IV’s last Parliament was probably made posthumously. CPR, 1476-85, pp. 353, 559. He apparently left three surviving children: his heir, William (c.1453-1517), who married a daughter of Sir John Willoughby†; Hutchins, iv. 111-12. another son, John, who was later a feoffee of property in Wiltshire for John Wroughton* (d.1496), the second husband of our MP’s cousin Margaret Filoll; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1152, 1216; ii. 52. and a daughter Margaret, to whom in 1484 her uncle John Newburgh II left ten marks for her marriage. PCC 20 Logge (PROB11/7, f. 149). Our MP’s widow Margaret Langford took as her third husband William Twyneho†, CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 372. whom she also outlived. An unusually devout woman, in her will of 21 July 1501 Margaret made many bequests for prayers for her soul and those of her parents, her three husbands and her son Nicholas Carew. With respect to her second husband there were bequests of 20s. each to the churches of Henstridge and Marnhull to have ‘my husband Carant and me’ placed on their bede rolls. She left no sons by Carent, and it was her ‘moste kynde nevewe’ Sir John Langford who received the residue of her estate. She died the following February. Her inq. post mortem gives the year of death as 18 Hen. VII (1502-3), but her will was proved on 4 Mar. 1502: PCC 15 Blamyr (PROB11/13, ff. 133-4); CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 951.