COWDRAY, Edward

More can be added to the earlier biography. The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 680-1.

Cowdray was for many years on good terms with the prior of St. Swithun’s, who in 1402 directed the reeve of one of the priory’s manors to send him a cask of cider as a gift. The length of his term as steward of the estates of the priory is not recorded, but he witnessed the prior’s confirmation of a grant made by Bishop Beaufort in 1411, so was probably already a member of his council by that date. Reg. Common Seal, no. 130, p. 205. Cowdray was named as an executor of the will of John Chamflour, who held property in Winchester and Alton, in 1408. Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Arundel 2, ff. 103v-4. He assiduously paid Chamflour’s debts and fulfilled his bequests: Jervoise mss, 44M69/C/429-35.

News of the victory at Agincourt was brought to the warden and fellows of Winchester College by Cowdray’s son, John, probably after being relayed through Cowdray himself, who was then described as ‘armiger domini Episcopi Wyntoniensis’. N. and Q. ser. 11, xii. 495. This suggests a closer personal connexion with Beaufort than hitherto indicated.

Cowdray’s second marriage, to Joan the widow of the Wiltshire landowner Nicholas Baynton, increased his income by bringing him her jointure in the manor of Faulstone and land in Wroughton, as well as Compton Chamberlayne and four houses in Salisbury which Baynton had settled on her for her lifetime. CPR, 1416-22, p. 411; CIPM, xxi. 800-3. Although she was not the mother of Baynton’s son and heir, John Baynton*, Joan had borne him four daughters, who on her marriage to our MP in about 1422 joined her in the Cowdray household and themselves became drawn into his family. One of them, Agnes Baynton, was married by 1426 to Cowdray’s son and eventual heir Peter (after the death of his first wife Maud Popham), while another, Alice, was remembered by Cowdray in his will in 1428. Jervoise mss, 44M69/C/524, 526; Reg. Chichele, ii. 375-6.

Within a year of our MP’s death Joan took as her third husband William Whaplode* of Chalfont St. Giles in Buckinghamshire, who like Cowdray was a member of Cardinal Beaufort’s circle. It was with Whaplode that her stepson John Baynton renegotiated the terms of the landed settlement made on her by his father. Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xlix), 440; CP25(1)/207/32/26.