GEDNEY, William, of Cardington, Beds. and Woodford, Northants.

A man who rose to prominence as a trusted servant of the Lancastrian dynasty, Gedney almost certainly owed his seat in the Commons to his links with the Crown. Of obscure background, he was perhaps a relative of the Gedneys of Lincolnshire. Vis. Lincs. ed. Metcalfe, 50; CFR, xii. 319; C139/176/26. HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 370, mistakenly states that the MP was one of the customers at the port of Boston in that county in 1444. The official in question was actually William Godyng: E403/755, m. 2; 759, m. 4; 762, mm. 5, 11. He may have inherited lands in Northamptonshire, Feudal Aids, iv. 33. and it is probable that he did not have any meaningful links with Bedfordshire before the early 1440s. Yet it is worth noting that a William Gedney began a suit for debt, against two yeomen from Kempston in that county, in 1436: CP40/700, rot. 83. In 1417 and 1418 a William Gedney was a member of the retinue of Thomas Beaufort, duke of Exeter, at Harfleur, E101/48/17, 19. Although one of Exeter’s mounted men-at-arms in the spring of 1417, this William was no more than a humble foot soldier in the autumn of 1418. but the MP may well have entered minor orders and never borne arms. The earliest definite reference to him is contained in a letter the dowager Queen Katherine, widow of Henry V, sent to Jehan le Sac, her receiver-general in France, in December 1433. In the letter she ordered le Sac to send her £30 in cash and related how she had received details about his handling of her affairs from ‘notre bien ame secretaire’, William Gedney, suggesting that the latter had recently been in France on her behalf. By 1436, Gedney was one of her stewards in Lincolnshire, an office he held for the term of her life and for which he received an annual fee of ten marks. Katherine’s lands reverted to the Crown after her death at the beginning of the following year, and the King granted the stewardship to his household esquire Ralph Babthorpe in the following August. Wars of English, ii. 263; E163/7/31/2, no. 32; SC6/911/13. The Crown compensated Gedney for his loss in November 1438, by appointing him steward for life of the royal honour of Berkhampstead in Hertfordshire, Northamptonshire and Leicestershire.

By 1438, Gedney had become a clerk of the signet, perhaps through the patronage of the King’s secretary, Thomas Bekynton. The office was potentially a position of influence and profit and he benefited from a series of royal grants during the late 1430s and first half of the 1440s. At the beginning of 1438 the King jointly rewarded him and three other signet clerks, William Crosby, Robert Osbern and George Ashby*, with a ‘regard’ of £20. In May 1440, Gedney received a renewal of his Berkhampstead stewardship, with the additional grant of the office of surveyor of the honour, an appointment backdated to November 1438. In October 1441 he obtained the wardship of James, the young son and heir of James Gascoigne*, from the Crown, and in May 1443 the King awarded him, Crosby and Osbern (all described as ‘King’s serjeants’) £20 p.a. in survivorship out of the annual fee farm paid by Coventry priory. Renewed just over 12 months later, the latter grant was afterwards superseded by fresh letters patent of December 1444, charging the annuity upon the customs of Sandwich. E404/54/149; CPR, 1441-6, pp. 186, 280, 323; CCR, 1441-7, p. 95.

The grants that came Gedney’s way did not just concern offices and fees in England. In June 1441 he, Anthony Cave and John du Pont received letters patent awarding them in survivorship the offices of clerk of the umbary in Bordeaux and executor royal of the same city. Du Pont predeceased his co-grantees, who at some stage after January 1443 complained to the chancellor that they had enjoyed peaceful possession of the offices until Arnold Brangre had begun disputing their right to them. A Gascon, Brangre was evidently in England when they filed their bill, since they requested that he ‘passe not this Reaulme’ until he answered their complaint. Brangre duly put in his answer, in which he claimed that he held the offices by grant of John Holand, earl of Huntingdon, the royal lieutenant of Gascony in 1439-40. According to him, the Crown had granted them to du Pont alone in December 1422. An omission in the wording of the letters patent had rendered this grant invalid but du Pont had taken possession of the offices nevertheless and exercised them through unqualified and incompetent deputies and attorneys, so forcing Huntingdon to take them back into the King’s hands. In further defence of his right to these positions, Brangre added that the Crown had ratified the grant the earl had afterwards made to him. C1/75/34; C4/2/156. Du Pont was still alive in Jan. 1443: Corresp. Bekynton ed. Williams, ii. 235.

Whatever the outcome of this Chancery case, it is unlikely that Gedney ever exercised the disputed offices in person, even though it is possible that he went to Gascony in his capacity as a royal servant. The King frequently employed him at home and abroad, as a messenger and commissioner. He received expenses for carrying letters and instructions from the King at Windsor to Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, at Tenby in Wales in December 1440, and he went to Calais, as a member of a commission instructed to inquire about the state of that town’s defences, in early 1442. The commission began on 1 Feb. and expired on the following 28 June, although Gedney must have come home early since his role in its work ended on 19 Apr. He returned to France in the autumn of 1443, when he and Chester Herald travelled to Normandy on the King’s business. E403/740, m. 9; 751, m. 1; E404/57/152; 60/28. Gedney also spent part of the early summer and autumn of 1444 riding about southern and eastern England searching for a copy of Henry V’s will. The King must have found a reason to refer to the will, but what this was is unknown. Gedney began his mission on 31 May, when he set off from Berkhampstead castle, where the King was then in residence, for London. From London, he rode to William Alnwick, bishop of Lincoln, at Sleaford. The late King’s secretary and confessor, Alnwick had received a copy of the will and its codicil for safekeeping 18 years earlier, when he was keeper of the privy seal. From Sleaford, he went back across the country to Walter, Lord Hungerford†, in Somerset, presumably after hearing that this document was now in the hands of the late King’s feoffees. He must also have returned empty-handed from Hungerford, the senior surviving feoffee and one of Henry V’s executors, for he subsequently rode to Essex, where he finally secured a copy from John Leventhorpe, the son of another of the executors and feoffees. In the autumn, he set off back to Somerset from the royal manor in Windsor park, apparently to retrieve the copy he had found with Leventhorpe from Thomas Bekynton, by then bishop of Bath and Wells. In all Gedney spent 32 days on his journeys in pursuit of the will, for which subsequently he received expenses of over £10. P. and F. Strong, ‘Last Will and Codicils of Hen. V’, EHR, xciv. 82-83; E404/61/210; Issues of the Exchequer ed. Devon, 453; E403/771, mm. 3, 5.

Not long after completing the last of these journeys, and having relinquished his position as a clerk of the signet, Gedney became secretary to the new queen, Margaret of Anjou. In that capacity, he made ready to take part in the expedition that left for France in November 1444 and escorted her back to England in the following year. In the event he did not go, for Nicholas Carent replaced him as the queen’s secretary and went to France instead. The reason for this change of plan is unknown but it is possible that the Crown needed him for duties at home. Gedney had certainly not incurred any royal displeasure, for the King, recognizing his costs in preparing for the expedition, ordered that he should still receive the £9 2s. in wages assigned to him and the yeoman who was to have accompanied him to France. Add. 23938, ff. 14, 15v. This acct. bk. for the expedition records that ‘Henry Qarraunte’ went to France as the queen’s secretary, but ‘Henry’ must be a scribal error for Nicholas. The brother of William Carent*, Nicholas became dean of Wells and remained in Margaret’s employment until at least 1458: R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 258, 272.

Although short-lived, Gedney’s appointment as Margaret’s secretary is a further demonstration of the trust in which the King held him. There is little doubt that he owed his seat as a knight of the shire for Bedfordshire in the Parliament of 1447 to the support of Crown, since the government and court mobilized their resources to secure the return of members of the Household to this assembly. The Parliament met at Bury St. Edmunds, well away from London where the government’s principal critic, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, enjoyed considerable popular support. Upon his arrival at Bury, Gloucester was arrested on trumped up charges of treason and he died soon afterwards. John Wenlock*, the other knight of the shire for Bedfordshire in this short Parliament, was another household man, but he was also an established member of the gentry of that county, a status Gedney certainly lacked. Gedney could nevertheless claim a connexion with Bedfordshire through his ward, James Gascoigne, whose inheritance included a manor at Cardington and a share of the barony of Bedford. Assuming that he was already married when returned to the Commons, Gedney also possessed interests in Bedfordshire in the right of his wife, Margaret, since she held property there in dower from her previous marriage.

In all likelihood, Gedney had married Margaret some considerable time before entering Parliament, since her previous husband, Richard Chamberlain, had died in the summer of 1439. Chamberlain’s estates, situated in Bedfordshire, Lincolnshire, Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire, had passed to his son and namesake by his first wife, but the younger Richard had died without issue just a few months later. CIPM, xxv. 411-12. The bulk of these estates had then passed to the Chamberlains’ ‘cousin’ William Rokeby, although the elder Richard had set aside his manor at Stanbridge in Bedfordshire to provide for his issue by Margaret. In due course, the manor passed to their son William Chamberlain, but Margaret retained a third of it in dower during her lifetime. C139/167/14. In January 1451 the Gedneys brought a bill in Chancery against William Aldewyncle*, a feoffee of her previous husband, for refusing to acknowledge her dower rights. Before marrying Margaret, Richard Chamberlain had conveyed his manors in Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire to Aldewyncle and other trustees. According to the Gedneys, he had made a last will in which he had instructed Aldewyncle (the sole surviving trustee by 1451) to permit her dower in the enfeoffed estates. It seems unlikely that Aldewyncle, a relatively minor figure, could have withstood the claims of a successful royal bureaucrat. The dorse of the bill records that the court subsequently dismissed him sine die with the Gedneys’ consent, presumably after he had made the desired acknowledgement. VCH Bucks. iv. 340; C1/18/18; C253/32, no. 134.

Within three years of sitting in Parliament, Gedney became sheriff of Bedfordshire and neighbouring Buckinghamshire, yet he never served as an ad hoc commissioner within England. This was perhaps through personal choice on his part, since in the spring of 1441 he had acquired letters from the Crown exempting him from holding office against his will. CPR, 1436-41, p. 567. Gedney served as sheriff at a difficult time for an increasingly unpopular government and court. He was pricked as such some six weeks after the opening of the Parliament of November 1449, the assembly that impeached the king’s chief minister, William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk. It fell to him as sheriff to preside over the elections of the knights of the shire for Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire to the following Parliament, and one of those returned for Bedfordshire was William Herteshorn*, probably a follower of Richard, duke of York, the leading opponent of the court. In the Parliament of 1450, the Commons petitioned the King to dismiss several of his leading courtiers and passed a stringent Act of Resumption. Gedney’s name appears in a draft list of those who were to receive exemptions from the Act, in relation to the annuity the King had awarded to him, Osbern and Crosby in 1443. E163/8/14. Yet the Act itself contained no proviso in his favour and it is likely that he was obliged to surrender at least some of his offices and fees.

It appears that Gedney largely retired from public life after completing his term as sheriff, although as late as April 1452 the Exchequer received the order to pay him, the King’s ‘welbeloued squire and seruant’, just over £65 for ‘certain causes’. Whatever the case, he had affairs of his own to attend to in this period. During the same spring, he sued several husbandmen from Northamptonshire for debt in the court of common pleas, and he was involved in litigation in Chancery in 1454, when Richard Austen sued him in that court over lands at Old in the same county. In his bill, Austen claimed that Eleanor, his late mother, had made Gedney a feoffee to the use of her last will and that the MP was breaching this position of trust by refusing to convey these to him. Gedney’s answer suggests that Austen was one of his relatives because it reveals that Eleanor had been the wife of Thomas Gedney before marrying Austen’s father. He asserted that in fact she had conveyed the lands to him and other feoffees to hold to her use for her life, with remainder to her son by her previous marriage, another Thomas Gedney, and his heirs. The court dismissed Austen’s suit and awarded Gedney 40s. in damages and expenses. E404/68/182; CP40/765, rot. 70; C253/34, no. 165; C1/23/21; 24/159-60. A William Gedney, perhaps the MP, is recorded as holding lands in Old in 1428: Feudal Aids, iv. 33. Gedney himself probably resided in Northamptonshire for a time, since a pardon he received in January 1458 described him as late of Woodford in that county, as well as late sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire and late of Cardington. C67/42, m. 4.

It is unclear if Gedney was still alive when his wife died in the following May, although he was certainly dead by the spring of 1460. Inquisitions post mortem held for Margaret (described as late the wife of Richard Chamberlain) in Bedfordshire and London found that she had held a third of the manor of Stanbridge in dower but no property in London, and that her heir was her son William Chamberlain, by then some 22 years of age. C139/167/14. It is claimed that William Chamberlain was also the heir of the Chamberlain manors at Petsoe, Bucks. and Raunds, Northants. (see VCH Bucks. iv. 340 and VCH Northants. iv. 33), but the inquisitions post mortem held for his elder half-brother in 1439 record that William Rokeby was the heir to the younger Richard Chamberlain’s estates in those counties: CIPM, xxv. 409-12. Other records, of the court of common pleas, reveal that Gedney had died, intestate, before Easter term 1460. In that term, a lawsuit brought in the common pleas by Thomas Disery, a London chandler, came to pleadings. He asserted that the by now deceased Gedney had entered into a bond with him in July 1455, for the payment of £20 at the following Christmas, an undertaking that had remained unfulfilled. Disery’s suit was against William Chamberlain (to whom the see of Lincoln had entrusted the administration of his stepfather’s estate in association with William Knyvet†) for likewise failing to pay that sum. CP40/797, rot. 436.