FRAUNCEYS, Henry, of New Windsor, Berks. and Guildford, Surr.

Fraunceys was resident in New Windsor by March 1432 when he witnessed a deed in the town. St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, recs. XV. 45/11. His family may have already been established in the locality. By the autumn of 1438 he had been appointed to the office of clerk of Windsor castle, an administrative post bringing with it a stipend of 6d. per day, which he probably owed to the patronage of the newly appointed constable of the castle, Edmund Beaufort, earl of Dorset. Among his responsibilities was the maintenance of the royal parks which lay within the constable’s jurisdiction, including those at Guildford and Windsor. By the time he first entered the Commons he had acquired property in and around both the neighbouring towns. Before the summer of 1443 he had come into possession of a tenement and croft in New Windsor, and in September 1448 he was enfeoffed of lands there and at Clewer and Old Windsor by Richard Smyth, one of several individuals for whom he acted as a feoffee in the course of his career. Ibid. XV. 43/19, 45/167, 177, 186; Eton Coll. Archs., Windsor deeds, 775. Meanwhile, by Easter 1448, he had acquired four messuages in Guildford from William Bridges I* and his wife, and three years later he obtained another building in the town from Benedict Brocas. In both transactions his feoffees included Nicholas Consell*. CP25(1)/232/73/29, 34. So it is perhaps not surprising that by 1449 Fraunceys was sufficiently well regarded in both boroughs to be selected to represent them successively in the Parliaments assembled in February and November of that year. This regard may have been due to his official position: one of his successors as clerk of Windsor castle, John Frampton III*, was likewise chosen to represent both Guildford and New Windsor. During his time as clerk Fraunceys also acquired interests up-river from Windsor at Maidenhead. In July 1443 he was described as a gentleman of that place when he acted as a mainpernor in the Exchequer for John Jew of London, and a few years later he brought a suit in the court of common pleas against a man from Bristol for burning down his house at Maidenhead, causing the loss of goods worth £40. CFR, xvii. 257; CP40/744, rot. 32.

Yet Fraunceys probably owed his elections to Parliament more to his influential connexions, themselves an outcome of his employment by the Crown, than to his local standing as an owner of property. His term of office as clerk of Windsor castle coincided exactly with that of Edmund Beaufort (successively earl and marquess of Dorset and duke of Somerset) as constable, and he is frequently recorded receiving assignments at the Exchequer on Beaufort’s behalf. e.g. E403/733, m. 9; 740, m. 12; 753, m. 3; 777, m. 5. In February 1446 William de la Pole, marquess of Suffolk, and his co-feoffees of the manor of Le Mote in Windsor, who included the prominent courtier John Norris*, named Fraunceys as their attorney to deliver seisin of the manor to the King, to use for the endowment of Eton College. Windsor deeds, 780. Norris represented Berkshire in the same two Parliaments of 1449, summoned during a period of political and financial crisis when both de la Pole and Beaufort needed the support he and to a lesser extent Fraunceys could have given them in the Commons. Norris and Fraunceys maintained their links: together in December 1451 they became founder members of a guild in Maidenhead, established by royal licence for the purpose of maintaining the bridge over the Thames. CPR, 1446-52, p. 576; VCH Berks. iii. 97.

Despite such useful contacts, by 1453 Fraunceys seems to have fallen into financial trouble, for in June that year he was granted a pardon of outlawry for failing to appear in the law-courts to answer a London merchant for a debt of 73s. 4d. CPR, 1452-61, p. 12. These problems may have been related to difficulties which he was experiencing in gaining possession of family lands, for at about the same time he complained in a petition to Chancery that Alice Wodewyke, a widow, was withholding a deed relating to his inheritance. C1/15/57. He was dismissed as clerk at Windsor in 1455 after his superior, Beaufort, fell at the battle of St. Albans. The MP’s reliability as a feoffee was also called into question when, in the late 1450s, he was accused by the dean and canons of St. George’s chapel, Windsor, of failing to release Richard Smyth’s manor of Amerys in Berkshire to the Lords Sudeley and Beauchamp of Powick, who with others had been charged with establishing Smyth’s obit in the chapel. C1/26/335.

In November 1457 Fraunceys’ son William relinquished to him title to lands and rents in Winkfield, apparently in order to facilitate their sale, for he disposed of them early in the following year. Later in 1458 he and his wife handed over seisin of two messuages in New Windsor, which they held in her right, to a group of feoffees headed by John Norman*, and this too may have presaged a sale. Eton Coll. Archs., Winkfield deeds, 187, 190; CP25(1)/13/86/25. By November 1461 Fraunceys was again in debt, this time to a London tailor named John Martyn, to whom he owed 40 marks. The debt had been acknowledged in March before the mayor of the staple of Westminster, and the creditor had begun legal action against him in June. A valuation of his property, undertaken by the sheriff of Surrey at the end of the year, revealed that he was currently in possession only of a messuage and garden in Holy Trinity parish in Guildford, yielding no more than 13s. 4d. p.a. This suggests that either he had been forced to sell his other properties in the town, or that the true extent of his holdings was deliberately concealed. C131/71/2; C241/246/91. Not surprisingly, Martyn’s patience ran out, and, employing the provisions of the statute staple, he secured Fraunceys’ imprisonment in Guildford castle. The MP’s friend Consell managed to obtain his release only after convincing Martyn that ‘the seid Herry Fraunceys was but a pore man not hable to pay hym’, and, it was later alleged, by agreeing to buy Fraunceys’ messuage and take on the debt himself. C1/62/281-3.

Although he had ceased to be clerk of Windsor castle, Fraunceys was permitted to lease arable land at Windsor and Shawe from the castle authorities for some 15 years after he left office. SC6/755/19, f. 7v; 20, f. 8; 21, ff. 6v, 26v, 27. It may have been in this period, too, that he served as under steward and keeper of the courts of New Windsor. He clearly remained a person of some consequence there, and in August 1460 was one of those to whom a local woman, Margaret Salveyn, made a gift of her goods and chattels. CCR, 1461-8, p. 89. Yet the appearance of respectability masked shady dealings. It was later claimed that Margaret, by the ‘counsell and procurement’ of Fraunceys, who wished to have a tenement she had already sold to John Fremley of Eton, began a false action of trespass against Fremley in the court at Windsor, alleging forcible entry into the property and the theft of a horse. When Fremley was summoned to the court, he found that the jurors would do nothing to damage Fraunceys’ interests, as he was one of the magistrates. C1/46/312. On 24 Mar. 1462 Fraunceys (described as a gentleman not only of Maidenhead and New Windsor but also of Southwark) took out letters of protection for one year in the retinue of John Wood III*, the victualler of Calais, C76/146, m. 20. although whether he did indeed serve there all that time is not known. Perhaps the letters were a ploy to escape the attention of the law-courts.

Fraunceys may have continued to exert influence over the affairs of New Windsor through his son, William, who officiated as bailiff there in 1463-4 and 1467-8, Berks. Arch. Jnl. lxv. 39. and although William was not directly responsible for holding the election (which took place in the summer before his re-appointment), in 1467 he was returned to Parliament for New Windsor a second time. The MP is not recorded alive after 1470. He died before 1481, by which date Nicholas Consell’s executors had clashed with John Martyn’s widow over the alleged non-payment of the debt Fraunceys had incurred in the 1450s. In one of the petitions submitted to Chancery it was claimed that Fraunceys had in fact paid off ten marks of the debt before his death and it is possible that this reflected an improvement in his fortunes in his final years. C1/62/281-3. If the date of this dispute is correct, Fraunceys must be distinguished from the man of the same name who lived at Shere near Guildford and whose will was dated and proved in 1487: London Metropolitan Archs., archdeaconry ct. Surr. wills, DW/PA/7/1, f. 53v.