The Courtenays of Haccombe and Boconnoc, one of the cadet lines of the Courtenay earls of Devon endowed by Hugh, the second earl, in the later years of Edward III’s reign, were the branch of the family most closely related to the comital line itself. Sir Hugh’s synonymous father was the younger brother of Edward, the third Courtenay earl, and uncle of Hugh, the fourth, who died young in 1422. As a result of his nephew’s minority, Sir Hugh of Haccombe for a few years became the effective head of the family, but in the face of the more emphatically pressed rival claims of Sir Walter Hungerford†, later Lord Hungerford, and Sir William Bonville*, later Lord Bonville, he failed to assert the Courtenays’ traditional dominance in the south-west. At his death in 1425 his line lost in prominence, not least to their cousins, the Courtenays of Powderham, who had intermarried with the Hungerfords and Bonvilles. Other factors were the extreme youth of Sir Hugh’s sons, and the division of his estates. Although he had married four times, only his last marriage had produced male offspring, and his three sons, Edward, Hugh (the future MP) and Walter, were minors of less than eight years when he died.
The young Hugh’s immediate fate after his father’s death is uncertain. At the time, his elder brother was the heir to the family lands, which were held from the earldom of March in socage. By virtue of this tenure, the wardship of the heir reverted to his nearest relations. It is thus probable that Hugh and his younger brother Walter in the first instance remained in their mother’s custody. Then, at some point after May 1431, their brother Edward died, leaving Hugh as next heir. Even after the loss of the Archdeacon estates, the lands that would eventually descend to him were substantial, encompassing seven manors in Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset, centred on the manor of Goodrington, fifteen burgages in the town of Totnes, and other holdings throughout these counties, and were valued at more than £53 p.a.
The reality was different. In the first instance, Hugh’s widowed mother, Maud Beaumont, held a jointure in the Devon manors of Goodrington, South Allington and Stancombe and other property in Paignton and Stokenham, which she retained until her death in 1467, thus reducing her son’s expectations by more than a third.
Courtenay’s nearest adult relations, and heirs general to the family lands in the event of the childless death of both Hugh and his younger brother Walter, were his half-sisters, and it appears that it was Joan and her husband Nicholas Carew who arranged his marriage into an ancient south-western family. By the mid 1430s the Carews had betrothed their young son and heir to Joan, younger daughter and coheiress of the wealthy landowner Thomas Carminowe of Ashwater and Boconnoc. By October 1441, her sister Margaret had married Courtenay. It seems that in spite of their close kinship Carminowe sensed future trouble between the heirs, for in a series of transactions in the summer and autumn of 1442, not long before his death, he settled his lands on feoffees, with instructions for their partition between his two daughters. Thus the manors of Ashwater and Luffincott, as well as lands in Bradford, Tuphill and Monehous were to fall to Joan Carew and her heirs, whereas Margaret and her husband Courtenay were to inherit Beaworthy in Devon and various Cornish holdings. With immediate effect, Courtenay and his wife were granted the manor of Tinten (in St. Tudy).
As a result of his marriage, the focus of Hugh’s life shifted from his ancestral county of Devon to the west into Cornwall. It was mainly here that he received periodic appointments to royal commissions, and it was also here that he commanded some authority in the local community. He was called upon to arbitrate in his neighbours’ disputes, and was treated to regular gifts of wine by the burgesses of the duchy of Cornwall borough of Launceston.
There is no record of how he was occupied during the brief parliamentary session, and his failure to secure (perhaps even to seek) re-election to the Parliament of 1449 (Feb.) two years later may indicate a degree of disinterest in matters of state. Alternatively, it may have been during the intervening period that he formed a close attachment to his cousin, Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, who was becoming increasingly alienated from the court, where his local rivals Lord Bonville and James Butler, earl of Wiltshire, were well connected. It was becoming clear that at least some part of the battle against the court party would be fought in Parliament, and it was thus in Devon’s interest to ensure the return of his retainers by a number of south-western boroughs. It was most likely also on account of Thomas Courtenay’s influence that Sir Hugh once more found himself in the Commons, in the second Parliament of 1449, and it is probable that he, along with the other Courtenay men, supported their patron’s critical attitude towards Suffolk’s regime. There is, however, no definite evidence of Sir Hugh’s conduct when Suffolk came under attack.
In any event, his personal affairs now suddenly caught up with him. Like many other south-western landowners, Courtenay had an interest in the shipping industry. While Parliament was in session, a Catalan merchant called Francisco Jungent appeared at Westminster to accuse him of complicity in an act of piracy by a ship called the Edward, of which Sir Hugh was the joint owner. It is probable that Jungent’s claims were true, for Courtenay sought to use his membership of the Commons as a defence, claiming to have been actively engaged in the affairs of the realm at Westminster at the time of the alleged taking of the Catalan vessel. Yet, piracy was a charge against which the privileges of Parliament afforded no protection, and by early May 1450 Courtenay was imprisoned in the Tower, and must thus have been absent from part, if not all, of the third session of the Parliament, held at Leicester. He secured his release on 17 May, when he bound himself to the King in £2,000 and found four mainpernors who each provided further securities of 1,000 marks for his appearance in Chancery. The case continued for several months and in June Courtenay was forced to find further sureties to remain at liberty.
Now, however, the activities of the earl of Devon, with whom Sir Hugh continued to be closely associated, began to take a dangerous turn. In September 1451 the earl assembled his forces at Taunton to strike at his longstanding adversaries Bonville and Wiltshire. Sir Hugh was among the most prominent leaders of the army, and probably was present at the siege of Taunton until it was brought to an end by the duke of York’s intervention. The following February he was once again in armour, as the earl of Devon led his followers east in support of the duke of York’s march to Dartford to challenge the court directly. Along with other important leaders of the south-western force like Sir Edward Brooke*, now Lord Cobham, and Thomas Wyse*, Sir Hugh was later singled out for assisting in York’s ‘false and traitorous purposes’.
The humiliation of his arrest and imprisonment had done nothing to assuage the earl of Devon’s ill feelings towards Lord Bonville, and in the spring of 1454 he renewed his attempts to settle his quarrel with armed might. In the increasingly polarized south-west the various branches of the Courtenays were being forced to chose sides, and whereas the Courtenays of Powderham had sided with Bonville, the representatives of the Goodrington line of the family (who apart from Sir Hugh also included his brother-in-law Sir Robert de Vere), were firmly in the earl of Devon’s camp. In April Courtenay and de Vere in the company of the earl’s sons disrupted the sessions of the peace which Bonville was holding at Exeter.
By the middle of 1456 the armed intervention of the duke of York, reappointed Protector, had at last brought the worst of the disturbances in the south-west under control. Both Devon and Bonville were placed under arrest and had to find sureties for their good behaviour. In the course of 1457 the King gradually began to issue pardons to the leaders. Already, the political landscape had begun to change. Bonville had reacted to York’s ascendancy in the aftermath of the battle of St. Albans in 1455 by seeking a rapprochement with him and his allies, while Devon for his part had been alienated by the duke’s failure to repay his support at Dartford. The earl’s unexpected death in early 1458 cemented this state of affairs, as his successor was married to Marie de Maine, Queen Margaret’s cousin.
Indeed, Sir Hugh rapidly came to terms with the new Yorkist regime, which, recognizing his worth as a naval commander, in the spring of 1462 charged him with the conscription of ships for the King’s fleet. For this task he was unquestionably well qualified, for during the months of civil war his own vessels had been at sea successfully engaged on his private enterprises. It is indicative of just how much he identified with these maritime exploits that his principal ship was named Le Petre Courtenay, after his famous kinsman, the distinguished sea captain Sir Peter Courtenay†, Richard II’s chamberlain. In the early 1460s, this ship’s notoriety and the complaints about its activities increased in equal measure. On 27 Jan. 1460 its crew took a ship of two London merchants with a cargo said to be worth 700 marks near Fountenay; while around the same time a group of Bristol merchants complained that Le Marie, variously described as ‘of Dordrecht’ or ‘of Danzig’, which they had loaded at Bordeaux with wine and other goods worth over £2,000, had been seized by Le Petre Courtenay and Le Galyot on its voyage to Bristol. Then on 27 Mar. 1461, two days before the battle of Towton, Le Petre Courtenay intercepted a Breton vessel called La Margarete and took it to Fowey. Repeated attempts to bring Sir Hugh to justice proved abortive.
While Sir Hugh’s piratical activities account for his failure to play a more prominent role in local government in this period, they did not diminish his standing in the south-west. He was well connected among the regional gentry, including the greatest of Cornish landowners, John Arundell of Lanherne. An early disagreement with Arundell had been settled by arbitration in 1452, and Courtenay was subsequently frequently associated with him.
Such considerations may have combined to incline Courtenay to look favourably on the uprisings stirred up by the earl of Warwick and his son-in-law, the duke of Clarence, in various parts of northern England in the summer and autumn of 1469, ostensibly on the pretext of ridding the King of his rapacious favourites, including Stafford, who was killed in July. If so, he may have played his cards carefully. His caution was rewarded in November 1469, when Edward IV, newly at liberty after spending the summer as the earl of Warwick’s captive, accorded him a place on the Devon bench. Nevertheless, the King’s trust was soon to prove misplaced. Early in 1470, fresh disturbances were orchestrated, and this time – undoubtedly at Clarence’s bidding – the Courtenays did their part to raise the south-west. On 16 Mar. the King (himself bound for the north to quash the rebellion in that region) ordered John, Lord Dynham, and his brother-in-law Fulk Bourgchier, Lord Fitzwaryn, to arrest Sir Hugh and his kinsmen of the Powderham line, (Sir) William Courtenay* and four of his brothers, as well as other family retainers. Once again, Sir Hugh moved with care. He waited for Dynham and Fitzwaryn to reach Exeter, before himself laying siege to the city and demanding the surrender of the two lords trapped within. He was joined two weeks later by Warwick and Clarence, who – having fled south after the military disaster at Empingham – promptly set sail for France. Courtenay’s own movements are unknown, but in view of his maritime expertise he may well have played a part in finding shipping for the company, which, indeed he quite likely joined on its voyage. On 25 Apr. the seizure of his possessions alongside those of Warwick, Clarence and other rebels was ordered.
If Sir Hugh’s fortunes appeared to have reached their lowest ebb, the tables soon turned once more. In a remarkable reversal, by the end of September King Edward had himself been forced into exile, and Warwick and Clarence, with the Courtenays in their wake, had returned in triumph to England and restored Henry VI to the throne. Sir Hugh now became one of the Readeption government’s principal lieutenants in the south-west. Since John Courtenay of Tiverton, the titular earl of Devon, had yet to come back from French exile, he became the most significant resident landowner appointed to royal commissions, as well as to the commission of the peace in both Devon and Cornwall.
Yet, this was as far as the King took his vengeance. On 27 Aug. 1472 he granted Sir Hugh’s forfeited goods to his executors to fulfil his will, and ten days later his eldest son and heir Edward received a general pardon.