JENNEY, William (c.1415-83), of Theberton and Knodishall, Suff.

A man who features prominently in the Paston correspondence, Jenney was the first of a family of distinguished lawyers to attain the highest ranks of that profession. Of undistinguished lineage, it is unlikely that the Jenneys were connected to the Geneys, an old knightly family from Dilham, Norfolk, As claimed by Norf. Archaeology, xxxii. 68. The ‘John Jenney’ who took part in the Agincourt campaign and served successive earls of Suffolk in the early 15th cent. (E101/46/24; DKR, xliv. 622) was probably one of the Dilham Geneys, perhaps Sir John Geney (d.1423): Norwich consist. ct., Reg. Hyrning, ff. 114-15. and William’s father, John, almost certainly another lawyer, He is commonly claimed as such (e.g. Ives, 142, 467), although it is impossible to prove that the John Jenney who features in the Black Bks. of L. Inn was William’s father, rather than John, his yr. bro. settled in east Suffolk from where the Bokeles, his first wife’s family, came. Through William’s mother Maud, who died before the autumn of 1437, he inherited a claim to a manor situated in Leiston and surrounding parishes, including those of Theberton and Knoddishall. Unfortunately for the Jenneys, the abbots of Leiston had appropriated this property, known as Wade Hall, after the death of Maud’s ancestor, William Leyston, in 1365. No doubt it was the Jenneys who procured an inquisition of 1437 which found that the heirs to Wade Hall were the subject of this biography, his late mother’s sister, Joan Puttok, and two female cousins, Margaret Cuddon and Joan Roughhed, and that the abbots’ right and title to the manor were unknown. CIPM, xxv. 25. Yet it appears that Jenney struggled to make good his claim, since the then abbot, Clement, was one of several neighbouring landowners in that part of east Suffolk (mainly minor figures but also including the prior of Snape) with whom he, his father and younger brother engaged in disputes and rights of lordship over the following decade and more. CP40/754, rots. 326-8, 330, 341, 374d, 404d.

Having entered Lincoln’s Inn by 1430, when about 15 years of age, William was practising as an attorney in the court of King’s bench by 1435. Baker, 943. His younger brother, John, also attended the inn, and in 1458 they sued an attorney of the court of common pleas for breaking into their chamber there in June that year. CP40/790, rot. 325. Nearly 33 years after joining the inn, where he served seven terms as one of its governors, the Crown ordered him to take up the position of serjeant-at-law. CCR, 1461-8, p. 173. Upon becoming a serjeant he was liable for service on the assize commissions, and as a justice of assize he rode the northern and then the western circuit. While a serjeant he was involved as a defendant in a case which aroused the interest of his contemporaries in the law. In 1471 Sir John Paston† sued him by means of a bill of debt in the court of common pleas, to which he pleaded that it was an immemorial custom to commence a suit against a serjeant with an original writ (a less effective process). Having referred the matter to Exchequer chamber, the court decided the bill should abate, meaning that serjeants-at-law were held not to be officers of the common pleas. CP40/840, rot. 145d; Order of Serjts. at Law (Selden Soc. supp. ser. v), 47-48.

Near the end of his life, Jenney became involved in a far more sensational case arising from the murder of one of his servants, clubbed, hacked and stabbed to death at Halesworth in east Suffolk in late December 1480. Almost certainly at his urging, the victim’s widow brought an appeal against the alleged assailants in King’s bench, and he actively intervened to ensure their indictment. Realising that the initial verdict against them was insufficient in law, Jenney took it upon himself to order one of the local coroners to exhume the body and to return a fresh indictment against the defendants, the Suffolk esquire, William Wingfield, and six of his servants. It was Wingfield’s involvement that made the case politically delicate rather than a straightforward matter of law, since he was a member of Edward IV’s household, and at one point his nephew and fellow Household man, William Brandon†, tried in open court to intimidate (Sir) William Hussey*, c.j.KB. For his pains, Brandon earned a stern rebuke from Hussey but politics probably explain why the court subsequently adjourned, declaring the case ‘subtle’. It certainly aroused the interest of the legal profession, since it features in the Year Books. The Year Book entries provide some colourful and illuminating extra detail contained in the new indictment procured by Jenney: according to this, at the landing of a blow on the unfortunate victim during the assault, one of Wingfield’s servants said ‘I wish the stroke had stuck his master’s neck’. It would therefore appear that the murder arose out of a local quarrel between Jenney and Wingfield, a landowner from the same part of Suffolk. Ives, 238; KB27/880, rot. 40, rex. rots. 23, 23d; CPR, 1476-85, p. 242; Year Bks. Mich. 21 Edw. IV, p. 55, ff. 70b-71a; Mich. 2 Ric. III. pl. 5, f. 2.

Notwithstanding the wider ramifications of this affair, Jenney, like most prominent lawyers of the period, enjoyed a career uninterrupted by political events (although he took the trouble to obtain a royal pardon during Henry VI’s Readeption), C67/44, m. 3. and he joined Hussey on the judge’s bench in May 1481. A year later the Crown granted him an annual fee of 110 marks drawn upon the customs of London, Bristol and Hull, along with a yearly allowance for robes amounting to £8. CPR, 1476-85, p. 332. In this period judges were knighted almost as a matter of course, C.E. Moreton, Townshends, 12n. and he received that honour from Richard III in July 1483, a few months before his death.

As a judge Jenney was summoned to the Parliament of January 1483 (where he was a trier of petitions), He was also summoned to the Parlt. of 1484 (CCR, 1476-85, no. 1152) but died before this assembly met. but his parliamentary career had begun over 30 years previously. He probably owed his election as a burgess for Horsham in 1449 to John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, lord of that Sussex borough and feudal overlord of the Jenney manors at Knodishall and Theberton, whom he had served as a legal counsellor for some five years or more. The Commons 1386-1421, i. 656; Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 23. It is also likely that the duke supported his candidature as a Member for Dunwich in the following Parliament, since before the elections for this assembly Mowbray and his ally, Richard, duke of York, were active in East Anglia ‘labouring’ to secure the return of men sympathetic to their cause. Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 54-55. Whatever the extent of aristocratic interference, the burgesses of Dunwich were probably not averse to having an able and rising lawyer as one of their MPs, particularly since Jenney was from a family with lands near the borough and was likely to have known about its affairs and concerns. Jenney’s contemporaries certainly respected his abilities. Before the elections of 1450 took place one of the servants of William Yelverton* suggested to John Paston* that Jenney or John Dam* should stand for Norwich and that Jenney’s brother John would make a suitable burgess for Great Yarmouth, adding that the ‘Jenneys mown ben in the parlement, for they kun seye well’. Ibid. 48. Although William did not sit for Norwich in 1450, he must have stood a chance of representing the city, where he had already served as a j.p. and had acted as an arbiter during one of its disputes with Norwich priory, and which was retaining him for his counsel by the late 1450s. Norf. RO, Norwich city recs., bond of arbitration, 1450, NCR 9d/16; chamberlains’ accts., 1457-60, NCR 7d; 1463-4, NCR 7e. His retainer rose from two marks p.a. in the late 1450s to 40s. p.a. after he had become a serj.-at- law: assembly bk., 1434-91, NCR 16d, f. 59v.

Jenney is also likely to have enjoyed the duke of Norfolk’s support when returned as a knight of the shire for Suffolk to the Parliament of 1455, for York’s ascendancy in national affairs at that date gave his ally, John Mowbray, an unprecedented influence over the elections in East Anglia. Nevertheless, no fewer than 156 men witnessed the indenture attesting the return of Jenney and his fellow MP, Robert Wingfield*, which suggests that a contested election had occurred. This hypothesis is supported by evidence of opposition to the candidature of Jenney in particular. In June 1456 Walter Writtle*, who had sat for Maldon in the Parliament, by then recently dissolved, asserted in the court of the Exchequer that the sheriff, Robert’s brother, John Wingfield†, had wrongfully returned Jenney, because the majority present had actually chosen William Lee‡ to sit in the Commons with Robert Wingfield. (Assuming this was true, it is hard to explain why Lee himself had not taken action against the sheriff.) In response to Writtle’s claim, John Wingfield stated that he was already subject to a similar action by William Mounteney and that this was still sub judice. No doubt Writtle was motivated by the prospect of financial gain, since he made a claim for £100, the sum awarded by statutes against sheriffs who made false returns. (There is no record that his action ever came to a conclusion, so he probably missed out on his hoped for reward.) R. Virgoe, E. Anglian Soc. ed. Barron, Rawcliffe and Rosenthal, 57-58, 64 (although Virgoe mistakenly states that the indenture lists 205 attestors). The fact that he was a Mowbray retainer like Jenney, suggests that personal rivalries among the duke’s followers could have lain behind the whole affair. It is not surprising if such rivalries existed, since Mowbray was an inept lord. H.R. Castor, King, Crown and Duchy of Lancaster, 112.

Divisions within the Mowbray affinity might explain an episode later in the same decade, an assault that Jenney suffered at the hands of Thomas†, brother of Robert and John Wingfield. In April 1459 Thomas Wingfield and a band of followers disrupted the Ipswich sessions of the peace, at which Jenney and John Wingfield were the presiding j.p.s. According to a subsequent indictment, Thomas and his men, armed with a ‘pollex’ (presumably a poleaxe), swords and daggers launched an attack on the jurors and Jenney himself. They had then pursued the latter from the shire-house to a local tavern, le Sunne, and seized a schedule of indictments from the clerk of the jurors. KB27/792, rex rot. 28. This episode is given an incorrect reference in Baker, 944, which also bafflingly dates it 1462. Despite the duke of Norfolk’s shortcomings, Jenney appears to have retained links with the Mowbrays over the succeeding decades, since Duchess Katherine (widow of the second Mowbray duke), who lived until 1483, appointed him one of her executors. Ives, 467.

Whatever the rivalries within Mowbray’s following, Jenney had much more serious enemies among members of the rival de la Pole affinity. During the early 1440s he, along with his father and brother, incurred the displeasure of William de la Pole, earl (later duke) of Suffolk, for allegedly trespassing on his warren at Benhall, CP40/727, rot. 475. and in subsequent years the three men were targeted by Suffolk’s followers. According to indictments taken by commissioners of oyer and terminer in December 1450 (several months after Suffolk’s downfall and death), the de la Pole retainer, John Ulveston*, had extorted 100 marks from the Jenneys at Norwich some nine years earlier (the exact circumstances are not specified). It was also found that previous to this Ulveston and others had unjustly and violently disseised three young sisters and coheiresses, Agnes, Christine and Alice Chestan, all minors, of a manor in Westleton, Suffolk. Furthermore, after Jenney and his brother, John, had provided legal counsel to the sisters and their guardian, John Lynton, Ulveston and John Belley had pursued false actions against them and their father and threatened them with de la Pole’s ‘vi potencia’. It was further alleged that Sir Thomas Tuddenham* and John Heydon* had subsequently so oppressed the three Jenneys that they had given bonds to de la Pole and his men, to try to soften his indignation against them. In due course the duke had used one of the bonds to sue them for £100, and in execution of this suit Ulveston, Belley, Clement, abbot of Leiston, and others had entered the Jenneys’ property at Knodishall and other parishes and seized 6,500 sheep, 80 cows and other livestock (worth in total £200) belonging to William. Belley and Ulveston were also indicted for having procured two men in July 1450 to smash a stained glass window in the chancel of Buxlow parish church, an act intended to disparage the name and honour of the Jenneys, since William was patron of the church and the window depicted the arms of his Bokele ancestors. This particular charge probably had a basis in fact because he subsequently brought a civil action against Ulveston and one of the window-breakers, John Brame, a yeoman or husbandman from Buxlow. The participation in these events of the abbot of Leiston, of whose house the de la Poles were patrons, must be viewed in the light of his own long-running quarrel with the Jenneys. Yet another indictment stated that Clement, along with Ulveston (then his steward) and Belley, had schemed to appropriate jurisdictional rights belonging to the Jenney manor at Theberton to the abbot’s manor at Leiston, and that in March 1449 Ulveston had held a court at Theberton in the abbot’s name. It was also found that Tuddenham, Belley and John Waryn had illegally maintained an assize of novel disseisin concerning lands in Leiston, Knodishall and elsewhere which the abbot had brought against the elder John Jenney. William struck back at Clement in the courts. In Michaelmas term 1450 he brought an action for trespass against him and others in King’s bench, and in the same term he and one of his coheirs of Wade Hall, his aunt Joan Puttok, sued the abbot for £200 in the court of common pleas. They claimed that this sum represented the arrears of an annual rent of £20 which the abbey of Leiston had paid to their Bokele ancestors since Edward III’s reign but which Clement had withheld from them over the last ten years. KB27/662, rot. 68; 798, rex rot. 9; KB9/267/18; VCH Suff. ii. 118; CP40/759, rot. 330.

No doubt the involvement of de la Pole retainers prolonged the quarrel between the abbot and the Jenneys (some contemporaries believed that outside interference had ‘sterid’ matters to the hurt of both parties). Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, ii. 216. It was resolved in the spring of 1451, within a year of the duke of Suffolk’s death. Tainted by his association with the disgraced duke’s followers, the abbot was not in a position to dictate terms and the settlement favoured the Jenneys. He and his religious house were obliged to restore those lands which they had won in the action of novel disseisin, to allow the Jenneys to owe only fealty and the annual rent of a rose for lands which they held from the abbey and to acknowledge the family’s title to all its properties in east Suffolk. The abbey also accepted the Jenneys’ right to hold their own manorial courts and agreed that they and their descendants should be exempt from like courts held in the abbot’s name. In return the Jenneys agreed that the abbey should owe no more than fealty and the rent of a rose for those lands which it held from them. CCR, 1447-54, pp. 287-9.

The de la Pole affinity was not so easily beaten. After the death of its patron, many of its members rallied around Alice de la Pole, his widowed duchess, who in the early 1450s took legal action against William and other Mowbray men for trespasses that they had allegedly committed on her lands. KB27/766, rot. 71d; 767, rot. 66. By the beginning of 1453 political events were moving in her favour, since the Household faction previously led by her late husband had regained control of the government. In February that year Jenney and his father were among the duke of Norfolk’s retainers indicted at Ipswich for various unspecified ‘traisons’ and felonies, but it is unlikely that these indictments came to anything, since in the following April the King, for ‘certaine causes and consideracions’, ordered the suspension of all further process against these men until further notice. KB9/118/2/164-5.

Given the Jenneys’ clashes with members of the de la Pole affinity, it is scarcely surprising to find that William served one of its leading opponents, the old soldier, Sir John Fastolf of Caister. By 1444 he was advising Fastolf in connexion with the knight’s claims against Hickling priory in Norfolk, and he soon became one of Sir John’s most trusted counsellors. He helped him in his legal battles against de la Pole men (so becoming embroiled in the knight’s dispute with (Sir) Philip Wentworth* in the 1450s) and acted as one of his feoffees. Sir John held him and two other lawyers and advisers, William Yelverton and John Paston, in high esteem. In a letter of about 1456 Fastolf’s factotum, William Worcestre, appealed to Paston to wait upon his irascible master as soon as possible, for it was beyond the ‘simple wyttes’ of the knight’s household servants to ease his spirits. He added that when Fastolf ‘spekyth wyth Maister Zelverton, yow, or wyth William Geney, and such othyrs as be autorised yn the law... he ys content and haldeth hym pleased wyth your aunsuers and mocions.... So wold Jesus one of yow iij or som such othyr yn your stede myzt hang at hys gyrdyll dayly to aunsuer hys materes.’ A.R. Smith, ‘Sir John Fastolf’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1982), 195; Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Hickling deeds, 71; Norf. and Suff. deeds, 68; Spitlings deeds, 3; C.F. Richmond, Paston Fam.: First Phase, 238; Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, i. 196; Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 106-7, 141-2, 156-7, 180; CP40/782, rot. 37; CCR, 1447-54, p. 228; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 300-1, 314. Fastolf was not the only veteran of the French wars with whom Jenney formed a connexion, since he was also a feoffee (and, perhaps, a counsellor) of two of Sir John’s former comrades-in-arms, Sir Henry Inglose* and Sir William Oldhall*. CAD, i. B1244; iv. A7807, 7907, 7936; v. A11669.

Apart from Fastolf and the city of Norwich, Jenney won other notable clients, including Westminster Abbey, Isabel, Lady Morley (even though she was the sister of William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk), the borough of Ipswich, the Stonors of Oxfordshire, the Knyvet family and Richard, duke of Gloucester. The abbey had retained him by 1456 and Lady Morley (from whom he received two marks p.a.) and the burgesses of Ipswich (who paid him 20s. p.a.) by the early 1460s. Jenney was serving the Stonors by about 1470, the Knyvets by 1471 and Gloucester by the early 1480s. He received annual fees of 66s. 8d. and 40s. from the Kynvets and the duke respectively. Baker, 944; Add. 34122A; Suff. RO (Ipswich), Ipswich bor. recs., chamberlains’ acct., 1463-4, C1/3/1/1; Norf. RO, Norf. Rec. Soc. mss, 18575, mm. 5, 6, 12, 18, 23, 26; DL29/295/4848. Presumably the size of his fee from the Knyvets, whom his brother John also served as a legal adviser and chief steward, reflected the importance of his advice during their struggle to make good their claim to the Clifton estate in Norfolk. C.F. Richmond, John Hopton, 61, 71-72, 153, 182-3, 183n.

Jenney also gave professional advice to a Suffolk gentleman, John Hopton of Blythburgh. In the 1460s he took part in trying to settle a long running dispute between Hopton and the borough of Dunwich, ending up helping to impose a settlement on the burgesses after the King had decided that its inhabitants were being obstructive. Although Jenney went out hunting with Hopton on at least one occasion in the late 1470s, it is unlikely that they were on especially friendly terms with each other, not least because the Jenneys were tardy in paying their rent for lands which they held from the Hoptons. C.F. Richmond, John Hopton 61, 71-72, 153, 182-3, 183n. Among those with whom Jenney was certainly close was Hugh atte Fenne*, who appointed him one of the overseers of his will before his death in 1476, E41/168. and Katherine, the widow of John Fastolf* of Great Yarmouth, a cousin of the better known Sir John. During the late 1450s he acted as one of Katherine’s feoffees, and she chose him to supervise her will of 1478. CCR, 1454-61, pp. 432-3; Reg. Gelour, f. 221. By then he had probably already married Eleanor, her daughter by her earlier marriage to John Sampson whose own previous husband, Robert Inglose (a younger son of Sir Henry), had died in late 1475 or early 1476. Nothing is known about Elizabeth, William’s obscure first wife, save that she was the mother of his children.

Jenney was also on good terms with John Paston, until they fell out spectacularly over Sir John Fastolf’s will. There was nothing amiss between the two men shortly before the knight’s death in November 1459, Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 182. but soon afterwards their friendship turned into enmity. By the second half of 1461 Jenney, who was acting as an attorney for Fastolf’s executors, and William Yelverton, one of those executors, were disputing the validity of the knight’s purported will, which made Paston the heir to the testator’s estates in Norfolk and Suffolk. In September they seized possession of Cotton and other former Fastolf manors in Suffolk, and over the next few years both they and the Pastons entered and re-entered these properties. During the quarrel Jenney took it upon himself to sell Cotton to Gilbert Debenham I*, and he joined William Yelverton in pursuing a law suit against the Pastons’ servant, Richard Calle, in King’s bench. Ibid. i. 99-102, 114-16, 285-6; ii. 247-8, 253-6, 271; Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, i. 209-210. Jenney was also drawn into controversies, not solely with the Pastons, over property that Fastolf had purchased in Southwark. Late in life the knight had faced claims to some of his holdings there from Richard Weltden*, the son-in-law of the vendor. Weltden continued to press his claims after Sir John’s death, exploiting to his own advantage differences between the knight’s executors and feoffees and the wider dispute over the settlement of the Fastolf estates. In response to a suit that he and his wife brought in Chancery in the early 1460s, Jenney and Yelverton denied any knowledge or responsibility for the matter, stating that John Paston and Thomas Howes had possession of Fastolf’s will and the evidences relating to it. Although both Paston and Howes subsequently appeared in Chancery to refute Weltden’s allegations, the plaintiffs won their case. Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 180; C1/29/277; CCR, 1461-8, p. 327. This was not, however, the end of Jenney’s involvement with the Fastolf holdings at Southwark. In February 1464 he, Yelverton and William Worcestre appointed Robert Kirton surveyor and receiver of various properties which the knight had held in Southwark and elsewhere in Surrey. It was agreed that Kirton should occupy the properties in question and receive a fee of six marks p.a., along with all reasonable costs he might incur in keeping the Pastons out. William of Worcestre, Itins. ed. Harvey, 387-8.

In the same year Jenney and his servant, William Hogan, brought actions for trespass against John Paston, but Paston, trusting that Edward IV would save him from this and other vexatious suits, managed to obtain licence from him to establish a college at Caister in accordance with Fastolf’s will. The King promised him immunity from legal actions brought by Yelverton and Jenney while their accusations were investigated, and undertook to compel them to pay compensation should these charges prove false. Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 300-2. Paston also trusted that his friendship with the sheriff, William Calthorpe*, would protect him from outlawry. Calthorpe admitted to him that Jenney, who had given him legal advice over the last two years, was a ‘goode frende’, but he said that he would rather ‘lose the lessere frende than the greete frende’ and promised to help. Ibid. 299; Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, i. 216-17. In the event he did not, and Paston, who was outlawed in September 1464, was committed to the Fleet prison on the following 3 Nov. Paston died in May 1466, still at odds with his opponents, although he had met Jenney at Westminster Hall the previous February in an effort to resolve their differences. Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 375.

Some 15 months later it appeared that the quarrel was nearing an end. In August 1467 the ecclesiastical court hearing the dispute over Fastolf’s will arrived at a compromise by which Paston’s eldest son and heir, Sir John Paston, was awarded Caister castle and a number of other properties in Norfolk and Suffolk, and in the following January Jenney was party to a formal release of these lands to him. Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, iv. 289, 292. Before the end of 1468, however, Thomas Howes, one of Fastolf’s executors and hitherto an ally of the Pastons, formally declared that the version of Fastolf’s will upon which this settlement was based was a forgery. Howes and Yelverton then recommended to the archbishop of Canterbury that the duke of Norfolk (son of the MP’s former patron) should buy Caister and other Fastolf lands, and that the money raised from the sale should go to charity, for the good of the dead man’s soul. In October that year Jenney and others joined them in conveying the properties to Norfolk, who in 1469 made good his claim to Caister by seizing it by force. The duke was obliged to surrender the castle during Henry VI’s Readeption, but he retook possession in 1471, and it was not until his sudden death in January 1476 that the Pastons were finally able to recover it or other Fastolf properties which he had taken into his hands. Ibid. i. 241-3, 258, 260, 262, 294-8; v. 92; CCR, 1468-76, no. 622; C140/63/58. Jenney’s opposition to the Pastons has harmed his reputation, for it is easy to fall under the sway of the unrivalled but extremely biased Paston letters, much of which do not paint an attractive picture of him. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the quarrel over Fastolf’s will, he appears to have buried his differences with the Pastons remarkably quickly, since his eldest son, Edmund, carried a message on behalf of John Paston† within a month of the duke of Norfolk’s death. Paston Letters ed. Davis, i. 559.

During the early years of Jenney’s quarrel with them, the Pastons made several retaliatory raids on his Suffolk estates, afterwards leading to a lawsuit in which he claimed that, as a result, he and his servants had suffered an assault and he a loss of contact with clients for four years. CP40/840, rot. 157. At the centre of these estates were the manors at Knodishall (a particularly valuable property), The inq. post mortem held in Suff. in 1523 following the death of the MP’s son, Edmund, found that Knoddishall alone brought in no less than £56 13s. 4d. p.a.: C142/40/53(2). It is worth noting that such inqs. commonly under-valued property. Theberton and Buxlow, as well as properties in that part of Suffolk which he had obtained for himself. In the north-east of the county he held manors at Herringfleet, one of which he had purchased, and Gisleham. He also acquired an interest in lands near Framlingham, but it is unclear whether this was as an owner or feoffee. Copinger, ii. 108, 161; v. 45-6, 76; Vis. Suff. ii. 296; A. Suckling, Suff. ii. 194; CP25(1)/224/118/14; 119/9; Norwich consist. ct., Reg. Brigges, ff. 108-116. There is far less evidence for his landed interests in Norfolk. He did, however, inherit minor holdings at Hethell to the south-east of Norwich, from his mother’s family, CP40/734, rot. 122. and some years after their father’s death he and his brother, John, were involved in a dispute over ‘Raffys’, a manor in that county. In about 1468 John filed a bill in Chancery, asserting that their father had left the manor, along with certain lands at Knodishall and elsewhere in Suffolk, to him and his wife, Elizabeth, and that William’s claim was based upon a forged version of the elder John Jenney’s will. The bill was also directed at the dead man’s widow, Alice (the brothers’ stepmother), and her answer has survived. She said that the testator’s real will had appointed her and William his executors but had contained no directions regarding ‘Raffys’. Adding that William had kept the will from her and prevented it from being proved, she also supported John’s claim to the manor, but it is not known whether the court was persuaded to award it to him. C1/33/295-6.

A few years earlier, the MP had been involved in a dispute concerning the inheritance of Katherine, the daughter and heir of Robert Boys. Soon after buying her wardship from (Sir) Edmund Hampden* at the end of the 1450s, he had fallen into a quarrel with Edmund Blake*, who had purchased various properties at Holme Hale from Katherine’s grandmother, Sibyl Boys. By Michaelmas term 1460 he was suing Blake in King’s bench for abducting Katherine from his household at Theberton, but he ensured that the Boys manors at Holme Hale and elsewhere in Norfolk passed to the Jenney family by marrying her to his son, Edmund. CFR, xix. 227; C.F. Richmond, Paston Fam.: Fastolf’s Will, 10n; KB27/798, rot. 66; 799, rot. 19; C142/40/58. In August 1465 Jenney acquired a share in the much more significant and profitable wardship of Robert Willoughby, for which he and Hugh atte Fenne paid the Crown 500 marks. The son and heir of the late Sir Robert Willoughby, Robert died, still a minor, in March 1467, but it appears that Jenney and atte Fenne obtained the wardship of Christopher, his younger brother and heir, as well. In early 1470 Christopher was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn at the special request of Jenney, who married him to Margery, one of his daughters. CFR, xx. 159-60; R. Virgoe, ‘Will of Hugh atte Fenne’, Norf. Rec. Soc. lvi. 33; Vis. Suff. ii. 296; Richmond, John Hopton, 226.

Later in the same decade, Jenney was associated with his son Edmund in acquiring a manor formerly owned by the Groos family at Sloley in 1478, but in this instance he was probably acting for Edmund rather than himself. CP25(1)/170/19; Richmond, Paston Fam.: First Phase, 187n. He also added to his landed interests by obtaining a temporary interest in holdings from the Crown. In November 1461 he and others acquired the farm of Cratfield Hall, Suffolk, in royal hands during the minority of the young earl of Northumberland, although he and his co-grantees struggled to retain the lease in the face of keen competition for it on the part of William Whelpedale. CFR, xx. 46, 66-67, 91; CPR, 1461-7, p. 387. It is unclear what (if any) lands Jenney’s first wife brought to their marriage. His second, Eleanor, held property at Oulton and Gunton in Suffolk, but because he did not have any children by her it did not pass to his family. Reg. Gelour, f. 221. He nevertheless tried to acquire a manor at Oulton in which her mother, Katherine, held a life interest. The property had belonged to John Fastolf, Katherine’s second husband, so Eleanor had no title to it, but Jenney bought it from Fastolf’s executors. This purchase might have involved some sharp practice on his part because he was unable to retain Oulton, the reversion to which Katherine afterwards sold to James Hobart†. Richmond, Paston Fam. First Phase, 222n (although this mistakenly refers to Sampson as Katherine’s 2nd husband); Norwich consist. ct., Reg. Wylbey, f. 64; Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 268; CP25(1)/224/121/9.

Eleanor, who was considerably younger than Jenney, survived him by more than a decade. Neither the MP’s inquisition post mortem nor will has survived, but an inscription on the stone (long since disappeared) which once covered the grave of him and his first wife in the south aisle of Theberton church recorded that he died on 23 Dec. 1483. Chorography Suff. (Suff. Rec. Soc. xix), 74, 120. Eleanor was buried in St. Margaret’s church, Norwich. In her will of 1494 she requested prayers for both Jenney and her previous husband, Robert Inglose. Reg. Typpes, f. 119.