FOXLEY, Thomas (bef. 1375-1436), of Bray, Berks. and Bramshill, Hants.

Coming from a distinguished family, Thomas was a direct descendant of Sir John Foxley (d.1324), who was appointed a baron of the Exchequer in 1309. His grandfather, Sir Thomas† (d.1360), held the prestigious office of constable of Windsor castle in the 1330s, and his father, Sir John, achieved prominence through long service to Edward III, by whom he was made the first constable of Queenborough castle and keeper of various crown estates, including Windsor forest. Sir John, whose royal annuities amounted to at least £60, received a personal gift from King Edward of a great bugle horn mounted with gold, which in his will he bequeathed to the young Richard II. CPR, 1377-81, pp. 145, 190; Arch. Jnl. xv. 267-71. For fam. pedigrees, see M. Burrows, Brocas of Beaurepaire, 368, based on Collectanea, iii. 178-82. The Foxleys established a tradition of parliamentary service, for Sir Thomas sat for Berkshire three times, and Sir John six between 1363 and 1377 as well as appearing in the Commons twice for Hampshire. In the course of the fourteenth century the family estates expanded considerably, in part through advantageous marriages, so that by the end of his life Sir John’s widespread and sizeable holdings included the manors of Apperfield in Cudham, Kent, Rumboldswyke in Sussex, Bramshill in Hampshire and East Court in Finchampstead in Berkshire. VCH Hants, iv. 35. His chief place of residence, however, was at Bray, where besides his own substantial estate, formed out of numerous parcels of land acquired piecemeal by the Foxleys over nearly a century, he also farmed the King’s manor. CFR, viii. 79-80; VCH Berks. iii. 101-2. By his first wife, Maud, a member of the prominent family of Brocas of Beaurepaire which shared his intimate links with the court at Windsor, Sir John produced a son, William, and two daughters – Katherine, who married John Warbleton, and Margaret, the wife of Robert Bullock†. But he also fathered three bastard sons, born of a liason with a Kentishwoman named Joan Martin, whom he married after Maud’s death. The legitimate son and heir, William, leased Apperfield from his father in 1374, but died without issue at some point between June 1375 and October 1376, whereupon Sir John made arrangements for his other, illegitimate sons to inherit his estates. The three of them were what was called ‘bastard aisne’, and were by the civil law and under certain conditions by the law of England capable of inheriting real property. W.H. Cope, Bramshill, 7-9. In his will, made on 5 Nov. and proved on 1 Dec. 1378, the wealthy Sir John left his widow impressive chapel ornaments, which were to remain to our MP after her death. In accordance with his instructions his tomb in the church at Bray bore a monumental brass depicting his first wife on his right, wearing an armorial dress charged with Foxley impaling Brocas, and his second wife on his left, bearing his arms alone. This suggests that Joan Martin was not of gentle birth. Arch. Jnl. xv. 267-77; VCH Berks. iii. 108.

Thomas, as the eldest surviving son, inherited the bulk of his father’s estates, but not immediately, for his mother, who lived on for at least 33 years longer, held Apperfield and other properties for life. In January 1411 he joined Joan in making an enfeoffment of Apperfield, which was ratified by his younger brother, John. Collectanea, iii. 11-14. Even so, in the following year his income from land in Hampshire and Berkshire was assessed at 50 marks a year for the purposes of taxation, and presumably he received an additional sum from his Kentish holdings. VCH Berks. iii. 243; Feudal Aids, vi. 401, 452. At the same time his brother John, on whom their father had settled the Sussex manor of Rumboldswyke, enjoyed an income estimated at £20 p.a. E326/9213; Feudal Aids, vi. 522. This was also eventually to pass to Thomas, although not without considerable difficulty. Following John’s death in April 1419 his Sussex holdings were taken into the King’s hands during the minority of his five-year-old daughter, Alice, C138/38/36; CFR, xiv. 273, 286. but in a plea brought in Chancery in Hilary term 1420 Thomas produced evidence that Rumboldswyke had been settled by his father in tail-male, and should therefore have passed directly to him. The serjeants-at-law were asked to consider the matter, and the case was adjourned. Although Thomas may have successfully gained possession of Rumboldswyke after his niece’s death on 6 Dec. that year, his title to certain properties in Chichester remained open to question, especially when further inquisitions held in August 1421 stated that Alice’s heir to these was one John Fowle, a kinsman on her mother’s side. C44/24/25; C138/57/34. It was presumably these holdings which were farmed out by the Exchequer in 1423, but in November 1424 jurors in Chichester stated that their descent was subject to an entail made by Alice’s maternal grandparents which stipulated that if their daughter died without issue the property should remain to our MP and one John More. As the latter was now dead, Foxley was the sole heir. C139/20/39. Yet even so, it was not until June 1425, when Foxley’s Parliament was in session, that the justices finally ruled that no part of his late brother’s estate had been held of the King in chief, and he was fomally allowed to enter into possession. CCR, 1422-9, pp. 179-80.

As was to be expected in view of his illegitimate birth, Thomas’s right to other of the Foxley estates long remained subject to challenge, with the most notable and persistent claimant being William Warbleton* (the grandson of Katherine, Sir John Foxley’s legitimate daughter), who in 1412 commenced actions against our MP in the court of common pleas for land at Bramshill. CIPM, xviii. 887-8; CP40/603, rot. 277. With the object of rebutting further claims, in September 1429 Foxley obtained from Sir John’s grand-daughter Margaret, the daughter and heir of Margaret Bullock and widow of John Hartington†, a comprehensive quitclaim of her title to the manors of Bray, Finchampstead, Bramshill, Rumboldswyke and Apperfield, and to lands in the counties of Berkshire, Hampshire, Kent, Sussex and Wiltshire which were currently in his possession. CCR, 1429-35, pp. 22-23. Nothing is known about the background to Foxley’s first marriage, not even with certainty the name of his wife’s father, but it is clear that little material benefit derived from it during his lifetime, since his mother-in-law, Margaret, wife first of Thomas Galyon and then of William Westington, was still living in 1433. However, Foxley’s daughter Elizabeth was to inherit through her mother the Hertfordshire manor of Westington in Ayot St. Peter. VCH Herts. iii. 64; R. Clutterbuck, Herts. ii. 264.

Little is recorded of Foxley’s early years. He came of age well before November 1402, when he was listed among the 46 esquires who accompanied Henry IV’s half-brother Henry Beaufort, bishop of Lincoln, to Brittany to escort the queen, Joan of Navarre, over to England. They returned home on the following 8 Feb. E101/320/38. Foxley’s connexion with Beaufort was to continue for the rest of his life. Together with Thomas Beckingham†, who had also sailed to Brittany in the bishop’s entourage, he appeared in the Exchequer in September 1404 as surety for Beaufort’s lease of the lands of the alien priory of Mortain, and did so again in January 1406 when Beaufort, now bishop of Winchester, obtained a renewal. Another appearance in the Exchequer, in December 1404, was as mainpernor for William Swinburne†, assigned keeping of other manors in Kent. CFR, xii. 250, 278, 294; xiii. 24. For a while Foxley, like Swinburne, may have been attached to the royal household, for it was as ‘King’s esquire’ that he received a grant for life in September 1407 of custody of a stretch of the river Fosse near York, with wages of 6d. a day. However, he relinquished this in March 1410, and there is no further sign of direct royal preferment. CPR, 1405-8, pp. 346, 370. Membership of Beaufort’s circle led not only to an association with Richard Wyot*, the steward of the estates of the diocese of Winchester, whom he enfeoffed of his property in Kent, but more importantly to the selection of a husband for his only child: he, Thomas Uvedale*, was the heir to a leading Hampshire family closely linked to Beaufort. Furthermore, he was to choose as his own second wife the sister of William Mareys of Faversham, who for several years served Beaufort as treasurer of Wolvesey and was ultimately an executor of the cardinal’s will. Significantly, Cardinal Beaufort himself agreed to take on the trusteeship of Foxley’s manors. Collectanea, iii. 14, 16; G.L. Harris, Cardinal Beaufort, 360-1, 383; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 182-3.

Although Foxley’s landed interests were so widespread, his somewhat limited career in local administration was concentrated in Berkshire, where he served on the bench for the last 13 years of his life. His election to represent the county in the Parliament of 1425 may have owed much to his connexion with Beaufort, who as chancellor perhaps also played a part in securing a satisfactory outcome of Foxley’s suit in Chancery over his Sussex estates, concluded while he was in the Lower House. Although this proved to be his only Parliament, Foxley attended the Berkshire elections held at Grandpont on 10 Sept. 1427 (when John Golafre*, his kinsman and fellow member of Beaufort’s circle, was returned) and at Wallingford on 28 Sept. 1435. C219/13/5, 14/5. In the meantime in 1430 he had been listed among the esquires of the county distrained for failing to take up knighthood, and four years later among the local gentry required to take the oath against maintenance. CPR, 1429-36, p. 402. Foxley was sometimes engaged as a feoffee of land in Berkshire, situated for the most part in the neighbourhood of his home at Bray. e.g. St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, recs. XV. 45/63, 82; 58/D/57. For instance, he was enfeoffed on behalf of members of the family of Lovell of an acre of land and the advowson of the parish church at Eton, which passed after his death to Henry VI to use for the foundation of Eton College. CCR, 1461-8, p. 151. More out of the ordinary was Foxley’s involvement in the affairs of landowners in Sussex, leading to his association early in 1427 with Henry, earl of Northumberland, Robert, Lord Poynings, and other prominent figures as a feoffee for Thomas Poynings, Lord St. John. CP25(1)/292/66/51; E13/141, rot. 6. How he came to know a glasier from Lewes with whom in February 1430 he entered recognizances to the King is a mystery. The two men guaranteed under pain of £100 that a ‘gentleman’ named Roger Curson would appear in Chancery to answer charges laid against him by his ‘captain’. This coincided with the departure of the King and his army for France, so it may be that Curson had broken his military contract, but why Foxley had an interest in the matter is not known. CCR, 1429-35, p. 65.

Towards the end of his life Foxley sowed the seeds of a family quarrel. As part of the contract for his daughter, Elizabeth, to marry Thomas Uvedale, he had apparently settled on the couple his manor of Apperfield. Yet, when he took Theobalda Mareys as his second wife he asked his kinsman John Martin j.c.p. (the only surviving feoffee from among those selected in 1411), to grant her the manor in jointure, thus providing her with an interest for life. Another kinsman and servant, Robert Fowler (a ‘gentleman of Bray’), whom he asked to act as his attorney for delivery of seisin, The date for this transaction, as taken from ‘The Oxonhothe Evidences’, is given as Apr. 1436 in Collectanea, iii. 15, but according to Fowler’s later deposition it took place in the week before Easter 1435: CCR, 1454-61, pp. 182-3. was later to declare that when he arrived at Apperfield to complete the transaction according to Martin’s instructions and read out the deed to the farmer of the manor, he was warned that William Uvedale I* would be incensed to discover that his nephew had been dispossessed, and would make Fowler ‘sore repente it’, so the attorney hastily left the neighbourhood before daybreak. CCR, 1454-61, pp. 182-3.

Foxley died on 2 Nov. 1436, and was buried with his ancestors in the church at Bray, under a gravestone adorned with brass effigies of himself and his two wives. He was depicted wearing armour, with his feet resting upon a fox. E. Ashmole, Antiqs. Berks. iii. 4-5; Collectanea, iii. 15. His estates were split up between his daughter Elizabeth Uvedale and William Warbleton, the latter claiming as the right heir of Sir John Foxley on the failure of the male line. Thus, Elizabeth inherited Bray, the holdings in Sussex, Bramshill in Hampshire, and her late mother’s Hertfordshire lands, VCH Suss. iv. 171; Cope, 8. but Warbleton took possession of Finchampstead, Add. Ch. 38562. and for at least ten years he successfully occupied Apperfield too, even though his title was challenged by our MP’s widow. She, Theobalda, who outlived Foxley by over 40 years, took two more husbands: Thomas Mauncell esquire and Humphrey Eveas of Easthall in Murston, Kent, who died in 1454. C139/152/13. In 1446 Thomas Uvedale had agreed to pay her an annual rent of £10, but within 11 years this fell seriously in arrears, so that he owed her £60 and she had to pursue him in the law courts. In turn, in Michaelmas term 1456 Warbleton took legal action against her, alleging fabrication of a suit against him for muniments relating to Apperfield, and for land in Kingsclere, Hampshire, and it was probably in the context of this litigation that Robert Fowler made his formal declaration, which was enrolled on the close roll that November. However, in July following Warbleton and his wife gave up the battle and demised the manor to Theobalda for the rest of her life. CP40/783, rot. 600d; 784, rots. 138d, 439; 910, rots. 605-6; Collectanea, iii. 19. She died at an unknown date between 12 Apr. 1478, the day she made her will, and 8 Apr. 1479, when it was proved at Canterbury. Foxley was not mentioned in it, and she chose to be buried in Faversham abbey, rather than next to him at Bray. Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, Canterbury consist. ct. wills, reg. 2, ff. 426-7v.