HOPWODE, James, of Hopwood, Lancs. and Islingham, Kent and London.

James was one of at least four sons fathered by Geoffrey Hopwode, a Lancashire gentleman. While one of them Robert, apparently the eldest, entered the Church (eventually becoming vicar of Middleton, Lancashire), Hopwood mss, DDHp 14/1a, 2b, 2c. James trained as a lawyer. The details of his education are obscure, although his employment in the courts of the admiral and constable suggests that he was versed in civil as well as common law, perhaps obtaining a degree at one of the universities, for in later years he was called ‘master’. By July 1421, when he made a release of all legal actions to his brother Robert, Ibid. 14/1b. he had left his native county and moved to Kent, a move which had almost certainly been encouraged by his maternal uncle, Bishop Thomas Langley, then chancellor of England. It was Langley who arranged his marriage to Joan Rickhill, one of the grandchildren of the Kentish judge Sir William Rickhill (d.1407), and heiress to the lands of her father, John, and uncle Nicholas, situated in Kent, Essex, Surrey and London. The match negotiated between Langley and Joan’s father was fixed to take place between 24 July and 2 Nov. 1421, and Langley was to pay Rickhill 100 marks in two instalments as his part of the contract. CCR, 1422-9, pp. 42-43, 45-46. The Rickhills and Bishop Langley were important patrons of Rochester bridge and it is probably this common interest that explains how Langley found such a potentially lucrative match for his nephew. For the bride’s father the promise of kinship with the chancellor was no doubt a sufficient incentive. As sheriff of Kent, Hopwode’s father-in-law presided over the shire elections to the Parliament summoned to meet at Westminster on 30 Apr. 1425, and was party to the indenture recording Hopwode’s return for Rochester. C219/13/3.

In 1431 Joan succeeded to her father’s lands, principally his manor of Islingham near Rochester, but on 25 Nov. that year Hopwode entered into an indenture with her uncle Nicholas Rickhill and Richard Bruyn*, a rising lawyer connected with Humphrey, earl of Stafford, whereby he agreed to divorce her. The circumstances in which this was arranged are obscure but the document suggests that there were existing tensions between him and his wife’s suitor, Bruyn. Both parties agreed to release each other from all existing actions and ‘vex tham ne none of hem by sute worde ne dede’. Their quarrels had involved other local men, including the Rochester lawyer, Henry Hickes*, who had apparently sided with Hopwode against Bruyn and Rickhill. These two now promised to help Hopwode recover debts owed to him. Finally, Hopwode promised ‘to do his diligence’ to make Bishop Langley ‘gode gracious and well willyng’ lord to them. The agreement appears to have been brokered by Bruyn’s and Hopwode’s fellow lawyers in London and Westminster (where Bruyn was a filacer of the court of common pleas). Both agreed to put all documentation in the safe-keeping of John Portington, the future judge, while the list of witnesses to the indenture included Thomas Hewster*, one of the prothonotaries in the common pleas, Bruyn’s kinsman William Lee*, William Gernet* (a Lancashire lawyer with connexions in Kent), Henry Langley, another of Bishop Langley’s nephews, and the rising star John Fortescue*. On the same day the parties made a second agreement, by which Rickhill and Bruyn were to deliver £40 to Thomas Radcliffe, son of the Lancashire knight and treasurer of Bishop Langley’s household, Sir John Radcliffe*, and Hopwode’s proxy, ten days after the divorce had been concluded. Hopwood mss, DDHp 39/35a, 35b; Hist. Dunelmensis Scriptores Tres (Surtees Soc. ix), pp. ccxli-ccxlvii. On 9 July the following year, after the death of Joan’s uncle Nicholas, Hopwode and his feoffees conveyed her Rickhill inheritance (comprising the property of both her father and uncle), to a group of feoffees headed by Bishop Stafford of Bath and Wells and the earl of Stafford and including the earl’s half-brother Henry Bourgchier, earl of Eu, acting in the interest of Bruyn, who made Joan his wife. CCR, 1429-35, p. 187.

Exactly why Hopwode agreed to the divorce is not made clear. The affair caused scandal and some parties felt aggrieved by the settlement. They brought the matter to the attention of Pope Eugenius IV, who was informed that James and Joan’s marriage was valid, that they had lived together as man and wife for several years, and that Bruyn, ‘aspiring to the great heritage to which she was probably to succeed’, had induced Hopwode to consent to the divorce, after securing false depositions to achieve that end. In April 1435 the Pope ordered the bishops of Rochester and Norwich and John de Obizis, a canon of York, to interrogate those concerned and, if they found the accusations to be correct, to compel Bruyn to put away his new wife and she to return to James. Although the findings of the ecclesiastical inquisition do not survive, Bruyn’s continued tenure of the Rickhill lands is evidence that the divorce was allowed to stand. CPL, viii. 545.

It is likely that after his divorce Hopwode largely severed his links with Kent, although previous commitments prevented this from being total. In November 1436 John Martin, the son and executor of his namesake (a Kentishman and one of the justices of common pleas), appointed him and William Norton trustees of his and his late father’s goods and chattels. Previously the two had been feoffees for Judge Martin and this now involved them in litigation: in Easter term 1437 they sued William Thornbury, a clerk from Faversham, for close-breaking in Langdon. CCR, 1435-41, p. 115; CP40/705, rot. 204d. At the same time Hopwode needed to pay attention to family affairs in his native county of Lancashire. Over the years Robert the cleric, who had inherited the bulk of the Hopwode lands, had quarrelled intermittently with his father’s widow and all his brothers, including James. Hopwood mss, DDHp 14/1c, 1e, 1f, 2c The latter, who had inherited some lands from their father in Middleton and Manchester, demised a life-interest in these on 1 Oct. 1437 to Alexander de Oldham for a substantial annual rent of 100 marks, but this caused further friction between him and Robert, requiring the mediation of their friends. On the following 25 Mar. James formally released all legal actions against Robert, and by an indenture between them he agreed that these properties and the manor of Hopwode should be held by Robert for life, and on his death should revert to James for his lifetime and then descend in tail-male to his son, also named Robert, with successive remainders to his younger sons, James and Thomas, and to seven other named members of the clan. Ibid. 14/2b, 2d, 17/1, 42/5. The fact that Hopwode’s sons never laid claim to the Rickhill estates strongly suggests that he had married their mother after his divorce in 1431.

Meanwhile, by June 1426 Hopwode’s professional skills had led him to the service of Thomas, duke of Exeter, as whose lieutenant he acted in the court of admiralty. This involvement with the work of the admiralty court, although obscure in detail, clearly became long-lasting, for in March 1443, described as ‘master’, he made a judgement in the court as deputy of John Holand, earl of Huntingdon and later duke of Exeter. Although he was replaced by Hugh Payn* before May 1447, CPR, 1422-9, p. 343; 1441-6, p. 162; 1446-52, p. 63. on 5 Aug. 1450 he was appointed along with the duke’s son Henry as one of the commissioners to investigate an alleged theft of arms and armour from the Tower of London, where Duke Henry was constable. By the following July Hopwode was acting as deputy for Edmund, duke of Somerset and constable of England. CPR, 1446-52, pp. 388, 466. Little evidence survives of his private affairs in London and at Westminster but a transaction recorded in the city court of hustings in May 1458 shows him to have been well connected within the legal profession. On this occasion (when he was described as an apprentice-at-law), he was enfeoffed by a Londoner with property in Bridge Street along with Peter Arderne, chief baron of the Exchequer, and two other apprentices, Thomas Neville† and John Metley. Corp. London RO, hr 188/37. Further evidence of the circles in which Hopwode moved derives from a transaction made earlier, in 1443, by John Chitecroft* whereby seisin of the manor of Leasam and other property in Sussex passed to a group of men headed by Thomas Etchingham, lord of Etchingham, and Sir Roger Fiennes*, the treasurer of the King’s household, and including our MP alongside a number of prominent lawyers. CCR, 1441-7, p. 462. In 1457 Hopwode was acting as attorney for the abbot of Dureford, Sussex, in his long-running dispute with a local knight, Sir Henry Hussey. In July of that year Hussey entered into a recognizance for £100 to Hopwode and the abbot to keep the peace towards the latter and his servants. VCH Suss. ii. 90; CCR, 1454-61, p. 222.

After the Yorkist victory in 1461 Hopwode appears to have accepted the new regime, and on 4 Feb. 1462 he was commissioned to arrest Lancastrian rebels in Yorkshire and the Midlands. It was there, too, in Derbyshire, that in March 1463 he was appointed a j.p. Why he had decided to move to that part of the country is not known. For at least eight years previously he had held property in Derbyshire at ‘Boudon’ (perhaps Bowden near Chapel-en-le-Frith), and in 1455 had sued a number of local men in the King’s bench for breaking his closes there. KB27/777, rot. 12. He is not recorded after his appointment to the bench, and may have died before the next commission of the peace for the county was issued in February 1467. CPR, 1461-7, pp. 102, 562; E179/91/73.