GILES, Robert, of Coombe Bissett, Wilts.

Robert’s father the lawyer John Giles had represented Calne in the first two Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign, but neither of them appears to have resided in the town, at least not on a regular basis. Robert himself lived in the south of the county at Coombe Bissett, about three miles south-west of Salisbury and not far from Wilton, where the county court met and parliamentary elections were held. His father, a veteran of nine Parliaments, was still clerk of the peace for Wiltshire when elections took place for the Parliament of 1442 at which Robert was returned for Calne. At some point father and son together sued a Salisbury mercer called Thomas Parys in the court of common pleas (where John was a filacer) for a debt of £20, a suit which resulted in the man’s outlawry. CPR, 1461-7, p. 419. Then, in 1446 both of them were named among those for whose welfare prayers were to be offered in the chantry in St. Mary’s church, Calne, newly-founded by John St. Loe*, the esquire for the King’s body. CPR, 1441-6, p. 459. Robert’s father died not long afterwards.

Robert’s mother had inherited the manor of Ugford St. James near Wilton, which fell to our MP before 1458. For undisclosed reasons on 12 Oct. that year he conveyed all his lands and tenements there, as well as those in Coombe Bissett and elsewhere in the county, to a body of feoffees, headed by none other than Richard, duke of York, and including Masters John Cramburn and William Crowton and the lawyers John Whittocksmead* and John Mundy. He used the seal of the mayor and city of Salisbury as his own seal was not widely known. Wilts. Hist. Centre, Wilton deeds, G25/1/209. How this Wiltshire ‘gentleman’ had established a link with the duke has not been ascertained, yet whatever the nature of their relationship it had no discernible effect on his political alignment in the civil-war years. Nor did the accession of York’s son as Edward IV lead to his appointment to any position of authority in local government. Giles is only recorded intermittently in this period. In June 1460 he was a juror at the inquisition post mortem held at Wilton regarding Sir Maurice Berkeley II* of Beverstone; C139/179/57. and in Trinity term 1465 Bishop Beauchamp of Salisbury and others brought a plea of trespass in the King’s bench against him in association with William Shirewode of Salisbury. The cause of their differences is not known. KB27/817, rot. 13d.

Giles appears to have been childless: in November 1469 the surviving feoffees of his property granted the manors of Coombe Bissett and Ugford St. James to his brother William for 50 years, at a token rent. Misc. deeds, 492/51. But William died before September 1472, and in the following March Robert quitclaimed his title to Ugford St. James to John Mundy, and the feoffees duly relinquished their interest to Mundy too. Misc. deeds, 492/216-18. It may have been straitened financial circumstances which led the MP to part with his inheritance. Several years earlier his father had conveyed other landed holdings to John Gardener of Chicksgrove. Robert confirmed the grant, formally giving up his own interest in the same in 1477. CCR, 1476-85, no. 469. Then, in April 1488, he transferred to his niece Isabel, daughter of William Giles, and to her sister Joan, wife of William Dowley, the manor of All Cannings (which he had inherited from his father), a messuage called ‘Tylekyll’ and 40 acres of pasture called ‘Littledoune’, all in Wiltshire, together with a vacant plot of land in Christchurch and four acres of pasture in the New Forest in Hampshire. CCR, 1485-1500, no. 334; C1/497/13. About the same time, or so it was later claimed, he sold various properties in Coombe Bissett to one Thomas Wynselegh. The latter remained in possession for 40 years until William Giles’s grandson, another William Dowley, asserted in 1529 that he had been wrongfully disinherited. C1/497/13-16. Our MP had not been recorded alive since the late 1480s.