HOTOFT, John

Hotoft’s family background is not as obscure as previously suggested. The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 427-9. First, an entry in the close rolls reveals that he was the son and heir of Robert Hotoft of Braughing. The entry in question records a quitclaim of 10 June 1428, by which he acknowledged the possession of his mother, Beatrice, and her then husband, John Poyntz, in lands at Braughing, property in which Robert had awarded her an estate for life but which would revert to the MP upon her death. CCR, 1422-9, p. 384. Secondly, his will indicates that he was a kinsman of Richard Hotoft† and therefore related to the Hotofts of Leicestershire. In the will he devised the land that he himself owned at Stretton in that county to Richard’s son and heir, Richard Hotoft* the younger. It was thanks to the MP’s patronage that the younger Richard became deputy chamberlain at the Exchequer, a position he lost after John’s death. PCC 15 Rous (PROB11/1, f. 119); E. Acheson, Leics. in 15th Cent. 152, 236; PRO List ‘Exchequer Officers’, 169. Hotoft reinforced his ties with Leicestershire late in life when he married his second wife, an heiress from the county.

Through his first marriage to the widow of a London saddler, Richard Forster, Hotoft acquired property in the City and elsewhere. These holdings included a moiety of two brewhouses on the west side of Coleman Street (le Cok on the Hoop and le Gerlaund on the Hoop) that he and Idonea conveyed to John Credy and others, probably to hold in trust on their behalf. Corp. London RO, hr 139/15; 144/21. It appears that these properties were divided between Forster and Creswyk in 1399. Creswyk’s will of 1405 indicates that Alice was not Idonea’s sis.: Cal. P. and M. London, 1458-82, p. 123n; Cal. Wills ct. Husting, ii. 371-3. Given his links with London, it is possible that he was the John Hotoft who sued Henry and Richard Galon (respectively a brewer of London and tanner of Southwark) at Westminster in the mid 1420s, alleging that they had assaulted him at Southwark in June 1423. CP40/657, rot. 280d. Later in the same decade, a John Hotoft was caught up in a dispute between two London skinners, Henry Barton† and Nicholas Waldegrave, over property at Clothall in Hertfordshire, being named as one of Waldegrave’s accessories in a lawsuit brought by Barton and several associates. The plea roll in question identifies this John Hotoft as another skinner of London, indicating either that the MP had gained admission to the Skinners’ or that he had a namesake who was a member of that Company. CP40/669, rot. 114.

Although he had pursued a career in London, Richard Forster had owned estates in Leicestershire, Kent and Hertfordshire, including Knebworth, the manor that Hotoft made his home and which he appears to have bought from the saddler’s feoffees. PCC 23 Marche; VCH Herts. iii. 114, 116. In the late 1430s, Hotoft and his feoffees made arrangements confirming that his daughter Idonea and her husband, Sir John Barre*, should succeed to Knebworth after his death. He himself did not retain physical possession of the manor in his later years, for he leased it to Thomas Ledburn and John Edam, to hold for the term of his life, in October 1439. Herts. Archs., Lytton mss, DE/K/21915, 21916, 21919. Presumably Hotoft had negotiated his daughter’s match with Barre’s mother and her brother, John Talbot, Lord Furnival, since she and Talbot (later earl of Shrewsbury) had bought her son’s wardship from the Crown in 1421. While the date of the marriage is unknown, it had certainly taken place by December 1438. Ibid. DE/K/21916; CPR, 1416-22, p. 315. It was a natural alliance to make. The Barre manor of Ayot St. Lawrence lay only a few miles from Hotoft’s home at Knebworth, and Hotoft and the groom’s grandfather, Sir Thomas de la Barre†, had sat together as Hertfordshire’s knights of the shire in the Parliament of March 1416.

While suggesting that Hotoft was a lawyer, the previous biography was unaware of his service on the commissions of gaol delivery and novel disseisin listed above, all of which lend further support to that hypothesis. It also failed to realize the extent of his service in France. It appears that he did in fact go there in Henry V’s reign, since on 20 Oct. 1418 he acquired letters of protection prior to crossing the Channel in the service of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. He obtained like letters ten years later, as a member of the retinue of John, duke of Bedford, and again in February 1431, as a retainer of Thomas Beaufort, count of Perche. DKR, xlviii. 607, 257, 280. Beaufort was a nephew of Cardinal Beaufort, with whom the MP had crossed to Brittany to provide an escort for Henry IV’s new queen, Joan of Navarre, nearly 30 years earlier. As the previous biography notes, Hotoft helped to arrange Henry VI’s coronation in Paris at the end of the same year. Yet the letters of 1431 suggest that either he had not accompanied the young King to France in April 1430 at the outset of his coronation expedition, or that he had gone home some time after that date and returned with Thomas Beaufort. A John Hotoft also received letters of protection, prior to departing to France with Sir Walter Cressoner in 1440, and was a member of the earl of Oxford’s retinue that mustered with the rest of the duke of York’s army at Portsdown in March 1441. Ibid. 335; E101/53/33, m. 1. Given the MP’s connexion with the earl, it seems likely that he, rather than a namesake, was the John in question.

Another lord with whom Hotoft enjoyed a connexion was Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, who retained him as a counsellor for life with a fee of four marks p.a. in the spring of 1429. The MP received this sum in the form of a rebate of the rent he paid for lands he held of the Hertfordshire manor of Ware, a property belonging to the earl in the right of his countess. Private Indentures (Cam. Miscellany xxxii), no. 117; VCH Herts. iii. 387.