HAUKESSOK, William, of Somerford, Wilts.

Despite his unusual name, little may now be discovered about this MP. Yet he was a landowner of some standing, for in the subsidy return of early 1451 he was assessed on land in Wiltshire worth £7 p.a. E179/196/118. Yet whether these holdings had come to him by inheritance or rather as an outcome of his marriage is not clear. It is similarly uncertain as to what he owed his status as an ‘esquire’ as he had been styled earlier, although it may be guessed that this derived from his service in a noble household, that of the wealthy and influential Sir Walter Hungerford†, Lord Hungerford.

Haukessok was first recorded on his return to the Parliament of 1435 for Ludgershall, and then as an MP for Chippenham two years later. Chippenham is not far from Somerford, where he lived, but even so there is no firm evidence of any links between him and the burgesses of this or the other borough he represented. His connexion with the Hungerfords had probably already been forged, and in July 1442, Lord Hungerford named him with William Styrope* (who had been his fellow Member for Chippenham) as an attorney for delivery of seisin to his feoffees of property set aside for his religious foundations at Heytesbury. Tropenell Cart. ii. 264-5. At some point before 1444 Hungerford granted him lands and tenements at Little Somerford to hold for life, for the nominal rent of a red rose. SC6/1119/11. This may well have been as a reward for his services, perhaps in a military or administrative capacity. Unlike Styrope, he does not seem to have been a lawyer. He was next recorded, described as ‘esquire’, attesting the county elections of 1447 held at Wilton, and his name was again listed on the shire indenture of 4 Feb. 1449. C219/15/4, 6. Lord Hungerford died later that year, but Haukessok continued to be closely linked with his family. The heir, Robert, 2nd Lord Hungerford, promptly retained him with an annuity of 36s. from lands known as ‘Hayes’ in Farleigh Hungerford, and by the mid 1450s he was also in receipt of a grant for life of 40s. p.a. from another Hungerford manor. SC6/971/9, 12. In August 1450 Haukessok was associated with his lord’s younger brother, Sir Edmund Hungerford* (with whom he had sat in the Commons in 1435 when Sir Edmund represented the county), as a feoffee of property in Great Chalfield, of which they had been put into possession by Thomas and Joan Beaushyn, Haukessok’s parents-in-law. Tropenell Cart. i. 375-6.

Haukessok’s wife, Isabel Beaushyn, was not herself an heiress, and the only land the couple are recorded holding together was a close called ‘the Rowles’ in Cotell’s Atworth, which had previously belonged to her parents. Ibid. i. 134-6. But her mother Joan had inherited a claim to a number of properties which the acquisitive lawyer Thomas Tropenell* sought to obtain. Tropenell, the receiver-general of the Hungerford estates, enlisted the help of Haukessok in April 1451, by naming him as one of the attorneys to receive seisin on behalf of himself and Lord Robert of other holdings in Cotell’s Atworth, and our MP reported to Tropenell in the late 1450s that his widowed mother-in-law had enfeoffed him and others of her manor there, in a deed sealed by her while she was staying at his house. Yet, he explained, the transaction was invalid as ‘there passed never lyvere therby, and that is verry trouth’. He told Tropenell that if this deed or any other ‘naughty dede’ were to be exhibited, it should be regarded as a forgery. Haukessok was not among those named as feoffees by Joan in June 1460 for a conveyance to Tropenell, Ibid. i. 131-3. and it may be that he died before that date.

Meanwhile, like Tropenell, Haukessok had been remembered in the will that Lord Robert made on 22 Apr. 1459, in his case with a bequest of £5. PCC 17 Stokton (PROB11/4, ff. 131v-133). He is not recorded thereafter, and certainly died before 1465 when Tropenell wrote into his cartulary his detailed explanation of how he came by his title to Joan Beaushyn’s family lands. While considering the merits of other potential claimants, Tropenell noted that our MP had left a son, Thomas, and four daughters, one of whom was a nun at Wilton abbey, and that after his death Isabel had married a man from Bristol. Tropenell Cart. i. 283. This son would appear to have been the Thomas Haukessok who was ordained priest in 1466 and also lived in Bristol, where he served as chaplain at the chantry of St. George in the church of St. Mary Redcliffe, which was founded by the wealthy merchant William Canynges*. Bristol Wills (Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. 1886), 152, 282; Gt. Red Bk. of Bristol, iv (Bristol Rec. Soc. xviii), 52-54, 56. Thomas died in 1496. There is nothing in Thomas’s will to show his parentage: PCC 1 Horne (PROB11/11, f.10).