CULPEPPER, John

The earlier biography seriously underestimates the extent of Culpepper’s inheritance. The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 710-11. While his expectations were compromised by the generous provision his father made for his half-brothers, Sir Thomas did not attempt to divert from his eldest son a valuable Warwickshire estate, centred on the manor of Hartshill, which had come to the Culpeppers through Sir Thomas’s mother, Elizabeth, daughter and coheiress of Sir John Hardreshull. Indeed, it is by no means clear that Sir Thomas was inimical to the interests of his eldest son: the accidents of inheritance had brought him a very considerable estate with two distinct nuclei, the ancient patrimony in the south-east and property acquired by marriage in the east Midlands. His division of this estate between the issue of his two wives was a rational solution to the problem of dispersal with the choice of the lands in the Midlands as the portion of his eldest son determined by the fact that these lands were entailed on the issue of his first wife. By a fine levied in 1378 the manors of Hartshill and Ansley in Warws. had been settled on our MP’s parents in fee tail: Warws. Feet of Fines (Dugdale Soc. xviii), 2248.

Culpepper became an independent landholder before his father’s death. His maternal grandmother died on 28 June 1421, and he inherited the manor of Exton and other property from her. CIPM, xxi. 829-30; CFR, xiv. 404-5. In 1412 ‘Joan, lady of Exton’, had been assessed on an income of £20 p.a. from land in Rutland: E179/387/21. Early in 1429 he inherited his father’s lands in Warwickshire and Lincolnshire, and, by his own assessment, then had an income of at least £100 p.a. KB27/672, rot. 69d.

According to an appeal Culpepper sued in the court of King’s bench in Easter term 1429, on the previous 17 Jan. he had been attacked at Exton by a yeoman of Morcott, William Wright, and as a result of this premeditated assault had lost the use of two fingers. Among the 15 men he named as Wright’s abettors were two men of rank: Thomas Greenham†, who had sat with him as a Rutland MP in the Parliament of December 1421, and John Zouche, a younger son of the baronial house of Zouche of Harringworth. The latter’s alleged involvement is suggestive for, on 5 Feb. 1429, his brother, William, Lord Zouche, had been obliged to enter very heavy securities to keep the peace to Culpepper and his wife. It appears, therefore, that the assault on our MP was a result of his dispute with Lord Zouche, alluded to in the earlier biography, over ‘the Zouche fee’ in Exton. KB27/672, rots. 69, 69d; VCH Rutland, ii. 130.

In 1428 Culpepper’s niece, Eleanor, daughter of his sister Eleanor by Sir Reynold Cobham of Sterborough in Surrey, married Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. Suss. Arch. Colls, xlvii. 56-57 ; CP, iii. 354; v. 736. This led our MP into the duke’s service: in December 1429 and January 1431 he offered mainprise on behalf of the soldier, Sir John Keighley, whom the duke was maintaining in a dispute with Walter Tailboys*, and in the following May he acted as a mainpernor in the Exchequer for the duke himself. KB27/674, rex rot. 30; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 109-10; CFR, xvi. 38. This exalted connexion may explain why he was one of those knighted on the eve of Henry VI’s coronation at Westminster Abbey, and it is a reasonable speculation it lay behind both his election to the Parliament of January 1431 and his appointment to the shrievalty of Northamptonshire in the following November, only a year after surrendering the office in Rutland. As custos Anglie during the King’s absence in France, Gloucester was well placed to influence shrieval appointments. KB27/672, rot. 69d; C219/14/2.

Shortly before our Culpepper’s death, by fines levied in Trinity term 1433, he and his wife surrendered the property that had descended to him through his mother and the Hardreshull manors of Saleby and North Kelsey (Lincolnshire) to a group of feoffees including John Burgh I* and Thomas Palmer*. CP25(1)/145/158/33; 292/67/140. This enfeoffment was probably made in fulfilment of the contract he entered into on the previous 10 Mar. for the marriage of his only child, Katherine, to John, son and heir of Sir Robert Haryngton of Fleet (Lincolnshire). Under the terms of this agreement Katherine’s inheritance was to be restricted to the lands that had descended to him from Nicholas Green. Rutland Mag. iii. 131-2. The daughter’s maternity is uncertain. The marriage indenture, known only in a modern calendar, describes her as our MP’s da. by his 1st wife. Yet a surviving deed of 1437 has her as his da. by his 2nd: Harl. Ch. 80 G 32.

Culpepper died between May 1434 and Trinity term 1435, by which date his widow was the wife of John Brauncepath*, who was probably a kinsman of our MP’s son-in-law. E179/387/21; CP40/698, rot. 233d. By a fine levied in 1437 his widow surrendered her claim to the Hardreshull manors to her late husband’s half-brother Walter Culpepper and his male issue. Warws. Feet of Fines (Dugdale Soc. xviii), 2596. The deflection of these lands away from his daughter, apparently agreed at her marriage, was much later challenged by her second husband, Brian Talbot†. In October 1475 he and Walter’s son and heir, another Sir John Culpepper, entered into mutual bonds in as much as 1,000 marks to abide the award of the two chief justices. The award does not survive but collusive litigation in the court of common pleas shows that the manors were awarded to the Culpeppers. R.C. Dudding, Saleby with Thoresthorpe, 57-9; CCR, 1468-76, no. 1518; CP40/859, rots. 438-40.