HORE, Gilbert (d.1453), of Great Childerley, Cambs.

While the antecedents of the Hores of Cambridgeshire are unclear, it is possible that Gilbert’s father came from the Hore family of Elmdon in Warwickshire. John Hore made his way in the world by serving in the household of Richard II, and he greatly enhanced his standing as a landowner through his three marriages. Gilbert was John’s son by his first wife, through her mother the coheir of extensive estates spread over several counties. The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 416-17. John also held a knight’s fee in Gissing, Norf. in the right of his 3rd wife, Margaret, the wid. of Sir Robert Butlevyn, whom he married bef. 1427: Feudal Aids, iii. 560. Exactly when Margaret died is unrecorded, but her idiot son and heir by Butveleyn had succeeded to Sir Robert’s manors at Gissing and Flordon by 1451: C139/145/4. Probably born in the first decade of the fifteenth century, he first appears in May 1427, as a party to a quitclaim. Add. Ch. 34000. Three years later, he and his wife Margaret obtained a papal indult permitting them to keep a portable altar. The indult referred to him as a ‘donzel’ (an unknighted youth of good birth). CPL, viii. 188.

In 1430 or early 1431 Gilbert went to France on the young Henry VI’s coronation expedition. He crossed the Channel as a member of the retinue of Sir John Baskerville, but there is no evidence to explain how he developed an association with that Herefordshire knight. His name afterwards appeared in a couple of petitions presented to Parliament by the duke of York, the earl of Warwick and others who had taken part in this enterprise. The petitioners sought their wages for a period of ten months beginning in March 1431 and suggested that they should receive them from the revenues of the late duke of Bedford’s estates, indicating that they drew up the petitions after Bedford’s death in September 1435. E101/408/11, f. 1; SC8/153/7626, 7629. Probably, the petitions were submitted to the Parl. of 1435, which opened a few weeks after Bedford’s death, or to that of 1437, when Hore himself would have been present. Gilbert would have had little opportunity to distinguish himself in the field since the expedition’s military successes were slight. R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 191; M.R. Powicke, ‘Lancastrian Captains’, in Essays Presented to Bertie Wilkinson ed. Sandquist and Powicke, 378, 379.

If Gilbert did not return to England with the King in January 1432, he had probably done so before his father’s death in or around 1434. John Hore appointed him his executor, in which capacity the younger man received a royal pardon in 1437. As Gilbert Hore, esq., executor of John Hore, late executor of Philippa, late duchess of York: C67/38, m. 16. Upon coming into his own, Gilbert succeeded to manors at Great and Little Childerley and to other lands in Cambridgeshire. Outside that shire, he inherited through his mother a manor at Elsfield and holdings at Chalgrove in Oxfordshire, and a manor and advowson at Wishaw in Warwickshire. VCH Oxon. v. 118; C139/148/2; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 416. He also held lands in Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire when subsidy commissioners assessed him for taxation in 1436. They estimated that he enjoyed a total landed income of £50 p.a. E179/240/268. Near the end of his life, in 1451, another subsidy assessment calculated his landed income at the same amount: E179/81/103. It is impossible to gauge the accuracy of this assessment but, at the very least, he was a landowner of respectable means.

Shortly afterwards, Hore gained election to his only Parliament. If he had received any external support when standing for the Commons, it may have come from the Crown, for it is possible that he was already an esquire of the Household, which he had certainly joined by 1438-9. As such, he received 40s. p.a. in fees and robes, and he remained a member of the Household for the rest of his life. E101/408/25, f, 7; 409/9, 11, 16; 410/1, 3, 6, 9. Another possible supporter of his candidacy is the royal councillor, John, Lord Tiptoft†, with whom he was associated in a disputed shire election two years later. R. Virgoe, ‘Cambs. Election of 1439’, Bull. IHR, xlvi. 95-101. One of the principal tasks of the Parliament of 1437 was to try to bring about peace and justice among the King’s subjects, Griffiths, 147. yet Hore appears to have fallen short in upholding the law while sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire in 1438-9. He was amerced for failing to secure the appearance in court of a defendant accused of trespass (a monk from the Cistercian abbey of Tilty, Essex), and no fewer than four individuals sued him in the Exchequer for his actions as sheriff following his term in office. E13/141, rots. 10, 13, 16d, 24, 44d. One of them claimed that the authorities had issued a writ of capias against him, after Hore had made a wrong return to an earlier writ of attachment. Another claimed that the under sheriff, Richard Est (who was also Hore’s attorney in two of these Exchequer suits) had wrongfully arrested and imprisoned him; Hore responded that he was taken upon suspicion of stealing a horse. A third, Nicholas Caldecote*, alleged that when he was being distrained for knighthood Hore failed to inform him of a day given him to appear at the Exchequer, whereby he was fined for non-appearance. Finally, a servant of the chancellor, John Stafford, bishop of Bath and Wells, claimed that he had delivered to Est a writ of attachment against a Huntingdonshire man for debt, but that Hore had deliberately made no return so as to forestall the suit. Hore replied that Est had never received the writ. Individually, none of these suits proves much; but taken together they suggest that, at best, Hore was at least guilty of incompetence, if not of deliberate maladministration.

The most dramatic episode of Hore’s term as sheriff was Cambridgeshire’s disputed parliamentary election of 1439. In Cambridgeshire, the election of the knights of the shire became the focus of a struggle for hegemony between Sir James Butler (later earl of Wiltshire and Ormond), a newcomer trying to assert himself locally, and the dominant magnate in the shire, Lord Tiptoft. The parliament roll shows that, on 16 Nov., four days after Parliament had opened at Westminster, the King and Lords ordered a new election in the county because, for ‘certain reasons’, Hore had not returned two knights for that shire. While the roll does not specify those reasons, it appears that Hore’s justification for abandoning the original election was the presence of men not eligible to vote and the riotous behaviour of those supporting Butler’s candidates. In reality, he had aborted it at Tiptoft’s behest, although some sort of disturbance must have occurred, since the writ for the fresh election ordered that none who was armed or not statutorily entitled to attend should take part. In the end, Tiptoft’s interference failed, for at the second election on 19 Nov., presumably held by Henry Langley, Hore’s successor as sheriff, two of Butler’s allies, William Allington II* and William Cotton*, were elected. Virgoe, 99.

The association with Tiptoft did not prevent that peer from suing Hore for debt in early 1442, although the action appears never to have progressed to pleadings. CP40/724, rot. 410. There is no sign of this case on succeeding plea rolls before Tiptoft’s death a year later. It is likely that any breakdown in relations between the two men was short-lived, since in the following year Hore appointed Tiptoft’s son-in-law, (Sir) Edmund Ingoldisthorpe*, as a feoffee of his manor of Great Raveley, Huntingdonshire. Add. Ch. 34003; CAD, ii. B3031. In turn, he served Ingoldisthorpe in the same capacity, C139/165/20. and it was probably on Sir Edmund’s behalf that he and others conveyed various holdings to a chantry founded at Burrough Green, Cambridgeshire, by the rector of that parish, John Bateman, in 1446. CPR, 1441-6, pp. 329, 358; VCH Cambs. vi, 146. Like Ingoldisthorpe, he was one of Bateman’s benefactors and the rector included him among those for whom the priests serving the chantry were to pray. Add. 5826, f. 10. Apart from Ingoldisthorpe, Hore was on good terms with several other substantial gentry, since Henry Langley, his successor as sheriff and a nephew of a former bishop of Durham, John Chalers* and John Barley* of Hertfordshire, Langley’s brother-in-law, were likewise feoffees of Great Raveley. Add. Ch. 34003. As it happened, the Hores did not retain the manor after Gilbert’s death, for he chose to bequeath it to Ramsey abbey, Huntingdonshire, in his will. He also disposed of lands in his lifetime, selling his holdings in Clopton, Cambridgeshire, to Robert Clopton* for 100 marks in 1445. CP25(1)/30/98/68.

In the following year, Hore obtained another royal pardon, as of Great Childerley. C67/39, m. 39. To all intents and purpose, he had ceased to serve in local administration by the 1440s, although in October 1452 he was a member of the grand jury that indicted those in Cambridgeshire who had conspired against the King. KB9/7/1/4. It is not clear why his career in local administration, confined to the late 1430s, was so brief, although it is possible that he was frequently absent from Cambridgeshire after joining the Household. His jury service came just months before he died, on 30 Jan. 1453. Only Hore’s manors in Childerley and lands in Oxfordshire feature in the inquisitions post mortem taken after his death, presumably thanks to trusts he had established in his lifetime. C139/148/2. His will is no longer extant but an indenture of February 1453 shows that his executors were his eldest son and heir, John, his younger son, Thomas, and Roger Keye, clerk. This document, drawn up between the executors and the abbot and convent of Ramsey, set out the arrangements, made in accordance with the will, for transferring the manor of Great Raveley to the abbey in return for £200 and a perpetual chantry for the good of Hore’s soul. The abbot, John Stow, put up the purchase money at his own expense. Add. Ch. 34004; VCH Hunts. ii. 200. According to a bill that Thomas Hore brought in Chancery against a family feoffee in the following year, Gilbert also directed in his will that his younger son should have his manors in Childerley. C1/24/184. While the outcome of his suit is unknown, Thomas certainly had possession of Great Childerley and the manors of Wishaw and Langley in Warwickshire at his death in 1479 and they passed to his own son and heir, another Gilbert. This Gilbert Hore died under age and childless in 1497, whereupon Thomas’s estates reverted to the main line of the family in the person of Edith, the daughter and heir of John, who had died in 1471. C140/37/31; 75/48; VCH Warws. iv. 259 (although this incorrectly states that the younger Gilbert died in 1480); VCH Oxon. v. 118.