A combination of an advantageous early marriage and service to the house of York won Devereux promotion to the peerage. He was one of the few men known to have fought both at the battle of Towton in 1461, when the house of York laid firm hands on the Crown, and that of Bosworth in 1485, when Yorkist rule came to an end. He also had another curious claim to fame in that he knew as many as four Kings of England as boys. His father’s prominent place in the retinue of the Richard, duke of York, ensured that he was acquainted with both Edward IV and Richard III from their earliest years; he was one of the councillors of the ill-fated prince of Wales (the future Edward V) in the 1470s; and, in 1469-70, he played host to Henry Tudor, the ward of his sister, at Weobley.
As a young man, Devereux benefited from the success of his father’s career in the form of a profitable marriage. By the autumn of 1446, soon after his father had returned from years of military service in France, the young Walter had been contracted in marriage to Anne, only child of Sir William Ferrers of Chartley. A generous settlement was made in the couple’s favour: her father settled the manors of Keyston and Southoe in Huntingdonshire on them and their issue, to which our MP’s father added the manors of Market Rasen (Lincolnshire), Arnold (Nottinghamshire), Cottesbache (Leicestershire) and Hyde (Bedfordshire).
Before this gain could be realized, however, Walter and his father had an immediate difficulty to overcome. The bride was below the canonical age of consent at her father’s death, and the Crown thus had a claim not only to her wardship but also to her marriage. Initially it appeared that such a claim would be made. Eleven days after her father’s death, before the holding of any inquisitions into the Ferrers lands, the Crown entrusted their keeping to Ferrers’ friend, Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley, to hold during Anne’s minority. Sudeley would no doubt have liked to add the girl’s marriage to his grant, and it was thus very important to the Devereux family that, in the relevant inquisitions, the jurors should return her as Walter’s wife. This they duly did, and the Crown showed itself ready to treat the young couple favourably. Sudeley had a new grant, for the minority, of those Ferrers lands not in the widow’s hands at a modest annual rent of £40, but, as a married woman, the heiress’s minority came to an end at the age of only 14. The couple may not even have had to wait that long. On 17 Mar. 1453 they were granted livery of those lands her father had died seised without the need to prove the bride’s age, and three days later they entered into the manor of Chartley, her family’s caput honoris, together with other property in Oxfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Berkshire and London.
The indulgence shown to Devereux here is significant in the context of his father’s treasonable activities, for the elder Walter had played a major part in the duke of York’s rising in 1452. The family were shown further leniency a couple of months later, when, in June, our MP was entrusted with the wardship of the lands of a royal ward, Thomas, son and heir of Edmund Cornwall of Ashton (Herefordshire), despite an earlier grant of the same to the ward’s kinsman, namesake and self-proclaimed feudal overlord, Thomas Cornwall of Burford (Shropshire), an esquire of the royal household. He was to hold the lands as his father sought to secure title as Edmund’s feoffee.
Early in 1455 Devereux and his wife were called upon to find undertakings that they would not disturb her mother in possession of the lands she held for life. On 13 Feb. a notarial instrument was witnessed in the vestry of the low chapel of St. Stephen, Westminster, by which the couple covenanted to protect the interest of her mother’s feoffees even if, as she proposed to do, Elizabeth should enter a religious house. By a final concord levied in the following Easter term the mother’s life estate in her jointure and dower was confirmed. Perhaps she sought this new security because she feared her son-in-law’s intentions, but she may have done so, as the instrument implies, simply to protect her lands if she were to become a nun.
In another regard, however, Devereux did show himself ready to pursue his wife’s interests with vigour. Late in his life her father had laid claim, as heir under an entail of 1320, to the important manor of Tong in Shropshire, which had descended to the powerful Derbyshire knight, Sir Richard Vernon*, from Vernon’s great-uncle, Sir Fulk Pembridge†. In February 1450, with a trial pending at common law, their rival claims went to the arbitration of Sir John Talbot and Lord Sudeley, who confirmed Vernon’s title, but this was not the end of the matter. In an inquisition taken after Vernon’s death in 1451, a jury returned that he had died seised ‘per intrusionem’ to the disseisin of the heirs in tail, Anne Devereux and her kinsman, Richard, son and heir of George Longville†. Either this finding itself was the product of the lobbying of the Devereuxs, or it encouraged Walter to claim against Vernon’s son and heir, (Sir) William Vernon*. In Easter term 1454 he and his wife joined Longville in suing for the manor, but, before the justices of assize at Shrewsbury in July 1456, they defaulted, perhaps in return for some compensatory payment from Vernon.
Weightier matters were soon to occupy the young Devereux. Despite the Crown’s apparent efforts to seduce them from their Yorkist allegiance, in the late 1450s he supported his father in a series of disorders in the marches that were far more serious than those of 1452. The particular local rivalries that provoked these disturbances are uncertain, but as in 1452 the violence of the duke of York’s servants in the county arose, in part at least, out of developments in the national politics. After the end of his brief second protectorate in 1456, the duke found himself once more in the political wilderness. In Herefordshire this had a destabilising effect, exacerbating divisions among the county’s gentry, and provoking violent disturbances. These were initiated early in March 1456 when Walter Vaughan of Bredwardine, half-brother of Sir William Herbert*, was murdered in Hereford by a townsman, Thomas Glover. Anxious for immediate vengeance, a Yorkist gang headed by Herbert and the younger Devereux entered the city on 15 Mar., intimidated the local j.p.s into taking an indictment of murder against six citizens, the most important of whom was a dyer, John Glover, no doubt a kinsman of the murderer, and then promptly hanged the indicted. More alarmingly from the government’s point of view, in the following August Devereux joined his father and Herbert in taking Carmarthen castle, and imprisoning its keeper (the King’s half-brother, Edmund Tudor, earl of Richmond), before marching to Aberystwyth, where they held sessions as if they were the lawfully constituted authority. These actions represented a violent reassertion of the duke of York’s weakening lordship, for he had been appointed as constable of these two castles in the aftermath of his victory at St. Albans, but had failed to secure control.
For Devereux, the consequences of these acts of open treason were, initially at least, severe (although not as severe as they were for his father). Early in April 1457 various treason and other indictments were laid against both men and their local allies before royal commissioners at Hereford, headed by two of the leading Lancastrian lords, Humphrey, duke of Buckingham, and John, earl of Shrewsbury. Soon after our MP found himself confined to the Marshalsea: on 13 May, in company with 14 other Herefordshire Yorkists, he was obliged to post a recognizance in the massive sum of 5,000 marks to William Brandon†, marshal of the Marshalsea, and John Wingfield†, that he and others committed with him would be true prisoners there. Six weeks later he again appeared in the court to plead not guilty to an appeal of murder filed by the unfortunate John Glover’s widow. He was not again certainly at liberty until the following quindene of Michaelmas, when his father was among those who offered surety that he would answer her appeal. A few months later, on 3 Feb. 1458, a Herefordshire jury came into King’s bench to acquit him and many others on the indictments.
Given the seriousness of the charges laid against him, an imprisonment of six months was a modest punishment, yet Devereux may have viewed it as harsh. Whatever really happened in Herefordshire in 1456, the indictments made against the Yorkists gave only a Lancastrian narrative of the disturbances. It was widely rumoured that some of the indictments were false, and this sense of injustice is echoed in the legal records. In Michaelmas term 1457, on regaining his liberty, Devereux claimed damages of £1,000 in King’s bench against a local Lancastrian, Henry Oldcastle*, for the illegal maintenance of the appeal of Glover’s widow, and he later sued several others for conspiracy. More significantly, only five days after his acquittal, the leaders of the two rival factions in the county entered into mutual bonds in £1,000 to abide the arbitration of the King’s former confessor, John Stanbury, bishop of Hereford, and the earl of Shrewsbury, then treasurer, in respect of the indictments.
Devereux’s fortunes began to recover later in the same year. On 1 Oct. 1458 he secured the assurance of a general pardon against any further royal suits arising from the events of 1456. It may have been in connexion with this pardon that, at the end of the same month, together with his father and two of their adherents, John Lingen and Thomas Monnington†, he entered three bonds, in a total of 130 marks, to the chief justice, (Sir) John Fortescue*.
Much more important, however, was the death of Devereux’s father in April 1459, which made him a much richer man. Intriguingly, there was a long delay before any inquisitions were taken in respect of his patrimony. Writs of diem clausit extremum for inquiry into his father’s lands in six counties and London were issued between 27 and 30 Apr., but nothing was done until 12 Oct., the very day on which the Yorkist lords, with our MP in their company, disastrously confronted the King at Ludford Bridge. Three inquisitions were held between then and 5 Nov.; and all three returned that the father held no lands at his death, presumably because the juries, even though they do not appear to have been provided with details of the feoffments, accepted that all his lands were in the hands of feoffees.
When Parliament met at Coventry five weeks later, the Commons, in which Lancastrian supporters predominated, were anxious to enforce this reservation. The King, however, exempted the three men from the Act.
Devereux may have wished he had taken his chance in exile with the duke of York in Ireland. His decision not to do so is surprising. Perhaps he was constrained by an awareness of both what he had to lose as head of the family and the calculation that hitherto Yorkist rebels had not been treated with the full rigour of the law. It is also possible that he relied on the intercession of Bishop Stanbury, with whom his father had been on friendly terms. However this may be, the penalties imposed upon him after his surrender were enough to persuade him that the time for compromise and equivocation was passed. As soon as hope dawned again for York, he returned to his master’s colours. On 17 Aug. 1460, five weeks after the invading Yorkists had defeated the Lancastrians at the battle of Northampton, the new government commissioned him and his brother-in-law, Herbert, to subdue rebellion in Wales. No doubt both men greeted their lord as, having returned from his exile in Ireland early in September, he made his way through the Welsh marches before arriving in London on 9 Oct. Indeed, it is likely that they accompanied him, for on 4 Oct. they had been elected to represent Herefordshire in the Parliament scheduled to assemble two days before the duke’s arrival in the city.
After the dramatic first session of the Parliament ended on 1 Dec., Devereux returned to the marches instead of going north with the duke of York. He thus fought not at the terrible Yorkist defeat at the battle of Wakefield, where the duke met his death, but rather, in the first days of February, at the earl of March’s victory at Mortimer’s Cross, near Leominster. He then travelled with the earl to London, and on 3 Mar. 1461 at Baynard’s Castle he was among those who proclaimed him King. On the following 29 Mar., he was knighted when in the Yorkist ranks at the decisive battle of Towton.
In the period between this summons to the Lords and the assembly of Parliament, Devereux and Herbert played an important part in reducing Lancastrian resistance in Wales and the marches. On 12 Aug. they were commissioned to receive submissive rebels and to array a force to assemble at Hereford four weeks later. According to a letter written at Bristol the day after the force had been due to assemble, the two new lords ‘ben gone afore to clense the countreye’, that is, Wales, as the King prepared to lead a campaign for the reduction of the Welsh castles still in Lancastrian hands. In the event, however, that campaign was left to the two lords, who at the end of September took the surrender of the Lancastrian stronghold at Pembroke castle, commanded by (Sir) John Skydemore*. They then travelled north, defeating a Lancastrian force commanded by Jasper Tudor at Twt Hill, just outside the walls of Caernarvon.
Devereux was probably back at Westminster by 4 Nov. to take his place in the Lords in the first Parliament of the new reign. He was certainly present for at least part of the parliamentary session. In discharge of a promise they had made to Skydemore on the surrender of Pembroke, he and Herbert gave evidence of the terms on which he had surrendered and so prevented the passage of a bill of attainder against that Lancastrian captain.
This estate was both a reward for service and an endowment for Devereux’s new rank. In this he had nothing to complain about, but, in their location, he may have considered his new lands less than ideal. Sir William Vaux’s moiety of the Herefordshire lordship of Richard’s Castle and three Gloucestershire manors forfeited by James Butler, earl of Wiltshire, were situated so as to strength his position locally, but most of his new properties lay much further afield in Rutland, Warwickshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Northamptonshire. The grant thus added to the dispersed nature of his hereditary estate derived from his father and wife. Further, if he was given to jealously, he may have wondered why his rewards, although by no means insignificant, paled beside those given to Lord Herbert, with whom his career had run in parallel. In the early uncertain years of Edward IV’s reign these rewards were hard earned. According to ‘Benet’s Chronicle’, in early February 1462 the King sent John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, Ferrers and Herbert into Essex, where they arrested, as rebels, John de Vere, earl of Oxford, and three of his sons. In the following December Ferrers participated in the campaign to reduce the northern strongholds of the Lancastrians, and by May 1463 he numbered among the King’s councillors.
As the tide of Lancastrian resistance began to ebb, the problem facing the new King’s grantees was not earning their rewards but keeping them. All had reason to fear that the attainted Lancastrians, whose estates they held, might recover sufficient favour to lobby successfully for the restoration of their lands, or, indeed, that the Crown might simply resume the grants it had made in the name of economy. This possibility was brought home strongly by the Act of Resumption of 1465. Ferrers was among those who secured a specific exemption (to add to the exemption the Act provided for the grantees of forfeited Lancastrian property) – on 17 Mar. 1465 he personally delivered his proviso to the clerk of Parliament in the Parliament Chamber – but all must have realized that exemption could end.
For Ferrers such precautions were probably premature, for his gains from royal patronage were not yet exhausted. In March 1466 the Crown made a new grant to him (on the more favourable terms of tail-general rather than tail-male) of all the lands he had been awarded in 1462, the Tresham estates apart, together with additions, presumably as compensation for what he had sold to Tresham. The most significant of the new lands were the Lincolnshire manors of Bamburgh and Elkington, forfeited by (Sir) William Tailboys*.
None the less, for all these grants of patronage, there are some grounds for thinking that his financial position was not robust. At first sight, it is odd that in the midst of this apparent prosperity he should, on 14 Apr. 1467, have laid in pledge 12 silver dishes to Bishop Stanbury to raise the modest sum of £40; and it is likely that the sale of the Tresham lands was as much to raise cash as it was to insure against resumption. This evidence is little enough, but it gains added significance in the context of indications from the 1470s that he was financially compromised. Further, such difficulties are not as surprising as they might first appear. Certainly he made worthwhile gains from the King’s patronage; yet his rewards were probably insufficient in themselves to support his new rank. At least while his mother-in-law continued to hold the bulk of the Ferrers inheritance, he counted among the poorer peers at a time when, as a newcomer to the rank, he was probably under a greater pressure to spend on display than those already established.
Such speculation aside, it is surprising that in the crisis of 1469, when the earl of Warwick’s alienation from Edward IV produced rebellion, Ferrers was not with his brother-in-law, the recently-created earl of Pembroke, at the battle of Edgcote on 26 July 1469. In the aftermath of that defeat, at which the earl met his death, Edward IV found himself detained by Warwick at Middleham. During this brief period Ferrers continued to serve on the royal council in London: on 7 Sept. he was at a council meeting at Blackfriars and five days later he was again present when the council deputed him to go to South Wales to resist the King’s enemies.
The King may have taken the same view. On 15 Nov. 1469 Ferrers’ sister, the dowager-countess of Pembroke, was granted the custody of her young son and the Herbert estates. On the following day Ferrers’ claims as the political heir of the first earl of Pembroke were recognized by a royal grant of the keeping of the Stafford marcher lordships of Hay, Huntington and Brecon to hold during the minority of Henry, duke of Buckingham (a custody formerly held by the first earl). Thus, when, in the late autumn of 1469, the government of Wales was reconstituted around the King’s young and untried brother, Richard, duke of Gloucester, who was appointed chief justice of both North and South Wales, Ferrers could expect to exercise a very considerable influence while Gloucester grew into the role formerly played by the victim of Edgcote.
Ferrers played an active part in the two years of campaigning that followed Edgcote. On 14 Apr. 1470 he was in the royal company when it came to Exeter in vain pursuit of the rebel army of the earl of Warwick and duke of Clarence. It is not known whether, when the King carelessly let power slip from his hands in the following autumn, Ferrers accompanied him into exile, but the Readeption government removed him from the Herefordshire bench, a sign that he was considered an irreconcilable Edwardian. Predictably, he was among the lords who entered London on 11 Apr. 1471 with the returned and victorious Edward, and it may be inferred that he fought at the battle of Barnet three days later. On 26 Apr. he was commissioned to array the men of Herefordshire and Shropshire, and it is likely that he brought these troops to the field of Tewkesbury on 4 May, when his brother, John, was one of several Herefordshire men knighted.
With Edward IV restored, an important personal matter came to concern Ferrers, namely the death of his wife’s mother, Elizabeth, on 28 May 1471. This promised a significant augmentation of his wealth, but one that depended upon royal indulgence. His wife had died just over two years earlier; and her death meant that he had no title by courtesy of England to the considerable part of the Ferrers of Chartley inheritance that had remained in his mother-in-law’s hands.
With this new wealth, his career prospered in the early 1470s. Just as in the wake of Edward’s first accession, he found himself prominently involved in suppressing the remains of Lancastrian resistance in Wales. On 27 Aug. 1471 he was empowered to raise forces in South Wales and the marches, and to pardon surrendering rebels. Eight months later, his long military endeavours were honoured: on 24 Apr. 1472, at Garter celebrations presided over by the King himself, he was nominated a Knight of that distinguished Order in place of Sir Robert Harcourt*. Soon afterwards he was constituted as one of the King’s justices itinerant in the duchy of Lancaster lordships in South Wales.
The early 1470s may have marked the high point of Ferrers’ influence and standing. The point is an arguable one, but, viewed from the perspective of the late 1470s, the further reorganization of the government of Wales in the marches in 1473 appears to have diminished his local power. In the 1460s he had been the principal lieutenant in the region of his brother-in-law, Herbert, in the suppression of Lancastrian resistance in Wales; on Herbert’s death, he assumed the leadership of the Herbert connexion; but after Edward IV had decided to establish a ruling council in the Welsh marches with the young prince of Wales as its titular head, he was left as one councillor among many on a council under the effective leadership of the prince’s uncle, Anthony Wydeville, Earl Rivers. This is not, of course, to say he was excluded. In February 1473 he was named among the prince’s ‘tutors and councillors … with full power to administer his possessions’. Soon after, as part of the King’s efforts to restore order to the marches, he presided over three sessions of the peace at Hereford (in company with Earl Rivers, on two occasions), taking a long series of indictments from a high-ranking jury headed by five knights, including his brother, Sir John Devereux.
The apparent revocation of a grant may be taken as an early sign of this decline. On 28 July 1470 Ferrers had been given, for life, two of the first earl of Pembroke’s lesser offices, the shrievalty of Caernarvon and the master forestership of Snowdon. Yet the grant either never took effect or was superseded in favour of Earl Rivers, who was named to both offices on 20 Aug. 1473. Ferrers may also have lost to Rivers his manor of Richard’s Castle, forfeited by William Vaux and granted to him in 1462. On 11 Feb. 1474 all the Vaux lands, with the specified exception only of property in Cornwall, were committed to Rivers in tail-male.
Ferrers’ domestic affairs in the mid and late 1470s are unusually well documented in that contracts survive for the marriages of two of his daughters and for his own second marriage. He put himself to considerable expense to marry these daughters into families of greater gentry connected with Edward IV’s household. On 20 June 1474 he entered into an indenture with William Berkeley† of Beverstone in Gloucestershire for the marriage of his daughter, Katherine, to Berkeley’s young son and heir, John. In offering as much as 800 marks as a portion he may have overstretched himself. The sum should have been paid in full by November 1477, but by the spring of 1480, 225 marks remained outstanding. Ferrers was obliged to place a charge on part of his late wife’s property for its payment.
Debt may also explain why Ferrers took the unusual step of selling the marriage of his son and heir, John, to the King. Such an arrangement had several advantages from his point of view. Had he himself contracted a socially-appropriate marriage for his heir, he would have had to commit himself to the settlement of a jointure, perhaps sacrificing present income that he could ill afford. To this general difficulty faced by all fathers with heirs to contract in marriage, Ferrers also had a particular one. Any private negotiation for his son’s marriage was likely to throw into relief the questionable terms on which he held that part of the Ferrers of Chartley inheritance that had not descended to his first wife in her lifetime. He held those lands only because the King had abrogated royal rights, but, on coming of age, the son would inherit as his mother’s heir. That day was not far off, and it was likely that a potential father-in-law for his son would ask that, when it came, the son should have his legal due. It appears that Devereux’s finances were not robust enough to contemplate such a loss. From his point of view, it was easier to sell the marriage, albeit at a discount, to an indulgent King. Here the King was being doubly generous: not only had he set aside his claim to the wardship of the Ferrers lands, but he now showed himself ready to pay for the marriage he might reasonably have claimed as pertaining to a royal ward. The sale had been made by Michaelmas term 1478 when Ferrers received payments of £350 in part payment of an unspecified larger sum. The total was at least £576 17s. 5d.
Ferrers may also have had another motive for this sale, namely, a desire to avoid entering any arrangements that might limit his freedom in negotiating his own second marriage. This marriage came after 13 years as a widower and was a curious one. Men of his rank rarely took mercantile brides, and it is thus noteworthy that he should have married Joan, widow of Thomas Ilam, a London mercer.
It is possible that Ferrers had trading interests of his own. This would give an additional context to the marriage, and explain several other apparently anomalous references to him. On 15 June 1472, for example, he had secured from the King a safe-conduct for a 100-ton French ship, called La Marye, to trade with England. Later, in 1479 and 1481, his servant, Robert Harding, sued out royal licences to export horses, presumably on his master’s behalf.
Now relieved of financial concerns, Ferrers used some of his wife’s money to extend his property interests in London. Late in 1482 he contracted to pay the London goldsmith Miles Adys £450 for the settlement on himself and Joan of a large number of tenements in the parishes of St. John Zachary, St. Mary Staining and St. Anne in the ward of Aldersgate. After his death Joan mortgaged this property to her son-in-law, John Shaa†, another goldsmith, only for Adys to claim a continued interest on the grounds that Ferrers had not paid the full price.
This is not to say that Ferrers became a marginal figure. Only that, in part at least because of the fall of his nephew, he was not as important a component of the council of the prince of Wales, dominated by Earl Rivers and his family, as his local estates and long service to the house of York entitled to him to be. Nor, it should be noted, is there anything to indicate animosity between him and the Wydevilles, at whose door one modern commentator has lain the blame for the earl’s demotion.
In any event, Ferrers remained very much part of the Yorkist establishment. On 16 Jan. 1478, for example, he was named as a trier of petitions (albeit of only the lesser, namely Gascon, variety) in the controversial Parliament that condemned Clarence; three months later he attended the Garter knights’ observance of the feast of St. George; and in the summer he was among an impressive group who travelled to the Leicestershire church of Ashby de la Zouche to give evidence in support of the validity of the marriage of Edward, son and heir-apparent of the King’s chamberlain, William, Lord Hastings, to Mary Hungerford, the heiress to Hungerford, Moleyns and Botreaux.
There is, regrettably, no evidence to show how Ferrers, as a longstanding servant of the house of York, viewed the dramatic events of the next few months, which saw the deflection of the Crown from the son to the brother of Edward IV. He was certainly not openly hostile – for he was among those who attended Richard III’s coronation in July 1483 – yet there is one tantalizing indication that some at least thought him a likely opponent of the new King.
This begs the question of Ferrers’ role. The duke’s presence at Weobley implies that he believed, wrongly as it transpired, that Ferrers was ready to support his rebellion.
Ferrers may have been compromised, in the new King’s eyes, by the duke’s ill-fated resort to Weobley. Yet his record of service to the house of York and his importance in an area where Tudor might, with reasonable hope, look for support, made him a man who could not be ignored. He soon became a recipient of the new King’s patronage. On 8 Mar. 1484 he was granted the office of master forester and keeper of the duchy of Lancaster chase of Enfield and keeper of the park, offices with total annual fees of about £15.
These grants, although by no means negligible, are not enough in themselves to explain why Ferrers should have been prepared to fight for Richard III at the battle of Bosworth. Another factor may have been the recovery of his Herbert nephew’s fortunes, most clearly manifest in the earl’s marriage to the King’s bastard daughter, Katherine, early in 1484, and with it the promise of a reconstruction of Welsh government on the Herbert-dominated model of the 1460s. On the other hand, some of Ferrers’ extended family were quick to embrace the Tudor cause. His son-in-law, Richard Corbet, was one of the first to join Henry on his landing, and (Sir) William Berkeley was in Tudor’s retinue in Brittany. Further, Ferrers had himself been given some cause, albeit slight, for resentment against the King: on 7 May 1485 he had been required to find surety of the peace in the large sum of £1,000 to the abbot of Waltham Holy Cross in the course of an ill-documented dispute over property in Chesthunt. All this might be taken to lead some slight credence to the story, in a near-contemporary poem, that Ferrers was in contact with Tudor in advance of his landing. This story, although clearly wrong in detail (it places him among the lords in exile with Tudor), may reflect a contemporary tradition that he was considered a potential supporter of the man he had known as a youth. As such, he may even have known of Henry’s plan to marry a sister of the earl of Huntingdon, that is, his niece.
His attainder did not cast a long shadow over the family. Rather surprisingly, his kinsman, William Devereux, was named as constable of Aberystwyth only a month after the battle.