KNOTTESFORD, John (d.1457), of Bowley in Pagham, Suss.

Although John’s father does not appear in the pedigrees of the Cheshire family of Knottesford, his earliest appearances in the records, in the 1390s, refer to him as ‘of the county of Chester’, and his name was evidently derived from the vill of Knutsford. G. Ormerod, Palatine and City of Chester ed. Helsby, iii. 135, 137; CFR, xi. 101, 172, 210, 247. At the turn of the century he moved to Sussex, and married before April 1399, when his father-in-law Thomas Jardyn settled on him land in Denton, for which he paid homage to the bishop of Chichester. Chichester Cart. (Suss. Rec. Soc. xlvi), 250. At the very beginning of Henry IV’s reign he was made keeper of the estates of the alien priory of La Luzerne, with Jardyn acting as his mainpernor. CFR, xii. 9, 20, 67, 97. James came to the attention of influential landowners in the south of England: he stood surety at the Exchequer for Sir John Pelham* in 1405 and for Thomas Fitzalan, earl of Arundel (whose tenant he was at Poling), two years later; the archbishop of Canterbury appointed him bailiff at Pagham; and he also served the Mowbrays, most notably as steward of the dowager Duchess Elizabeth’s third part of Bramber for ten years from 1412, and of the Mowbray estate at Bosham in roughly the same period. CFR, xiii. 15, 75; Two Fitzalan Surveys (Suss. Rec. Soc. lxvii), 124; Reg. Chichele, iv. 5; L.E. Moye, ‘Estates Mowbray Fam.’ (Duke Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), 315, 398-9, 438, 440. In addition, he was employed as steward of the Sussex estates of Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, with a fee of 26s. 8d. p.a., which was paid to him for life. Petworth House mss, receivers’ acct. 7211 (MAC/3). Developing interests in trade, which he exercised as co-owner of a ship called La Marie of Chichester, CCR, 1405-9, p. 178. he was active for many years in the customs service as controller or collector of customs at Chichester and deputy to the chief butler in that and the other Sussex ports. Having been committed keeping of the La Luzerne estates again in February 1414, while the earl of Arundel was treasurer of England, following the earl’s death the next year he also took over his lease of the manor of Poling. A term as escheator of Surrey and Sussex in 1417-18 was followed by two as sheriff (1418-19 and 1422-3), and a spell as one of the guardians of the temporalities of the bishopric of Chichester from July 1420. CFR, xiv. 57, 136, 350, 439. As sheriff, James conducted the parliamentary elections of 1419 and 1422, and he was present at the shire court in Chichester to attest the returns to the Parliaments of 1416 (Mar.), 1420 and 1425. C219/11/8; 12/3, 4; 13/1, 3. Nevertheless, despite his qualifications for election as a shire knight, there is no record that he ever sat in the Commons.

At the time that James married Thomas Jardyn’s daughter she was not an heiress: when Jardyn died in 1410 his heir was his son John, then aged 13. However, Knottesford received the profits of the manor of South Mundham and Bowley which the Jardyns held of John Mowbray, earl of Nottingham, himself a minor, and following the deaths of John Jardyn in 1426 and his father’s widow in October 1427, Knottesford’s wife Beatrice and her sister Margery, wife of John Soper†, inherited the estate, dividing the manor between them. The two of them also inherited the Berkshire manor of Marlston in Bucklebury. CIPM, xix. 797; C139/33/26; L. Fleming, Hist. Pagham, i. 162-3; Feudal Aids, v. 157; CFR, xv. 211; VCH Berks. iii. 293. James died at an unknown date before the spring of 1434. His son John, styled ‘esquire’, was among the Sussex men then required to take the oath not to maintain anyone who broke the peace. CPR, 1429-36, p. 372.

It was only to be expected, given the ties linking Knottesford’s maternal grandfather and father with the late earl of Arundel, that he himself would be retained by the earl’s widow, Countess Beatrice. By 1436 he was in receipt of an annuity of ten marks by grant of her and her second husband, the earl of Huntingdon, and two years later he provided securities at the Exchequer when in association with John Bartelot* and William Okehurst* the countess secured a lease of the alien priory of Lyminster. It seems likely that his mother was still alive and in possession of her inherited estate at Bowley, for he himself was then living at Poling. E163/7/31/2, no. 30; CFR, xvii. 41. Together with Okehurst he was made a feoffee of land in Chichester and Pagham on behalf of Nicholas Hussey, the younger son of Sir Henry Hussey*, in 1444. CCR, 1441-7, p. 225. It is surprising that Knottesford failed to emulate his father’s energetic participation in local administration, although he may have sometimes been absent on military service in France. There were no appointments to ad hoc commissions before he took on the escheatorship of Surrey and Sussex in 1446. It was during his term of office that he was elected to the Parliament summoned to meet at Bury St. Edmunds, but no evidence survives of any participation in the business of the brief session. Knottesford attested the two subsequent elections at the county court held in Chichester and later also witnessed the parliamentary indenture of 1453, C219/15/6, 7; 16/2. before being appointed to the shrievalty of Surrey and Sussex in the following year. Towards the end of his term, on 24 Aug. 1455, he took out a pardon which gave his place of residence as Bowley. C67/41, m. 32. He encountered difficulties collecting the revenues of his bailiwick, and in the following law term he and his under sheriff were busily engaged in suits in the court of common pleas in an attempt to recover them, without much success. CP40/779, rot. 41. Even though, in November, he was exonerated payment of £40 of the arrears due, and appeared by attorney before the barons of the Exchequer in the Hilary term of 1456 to render account, certain of his landed holdings (a messuage and 50 acres of land worth 53s. 4d. p.a.) were confiscated to make up the deficit. Knottesford died on 7 Jan. 1457, whereupon on 12 Apr. more of his properties, in Tortington, Wick and Arundel, were seized to cover his debts to the Crown. At the same time his widow and executrix, who had the administration of his estate, was required to hand over livestock and goods valued at £10. E159/234, brevia Mich. rot. 2d; E364/92, m. Sd; E199/43/13.

Knottesford’s heir was his son William, who in 1468 objected to the proposals of his cousin Thomas Soper for a fresh partition of their joint inheritance of South Mundham and Bowley (although it appears that he later took Bowley while Soper had South Mundham). They also quarrelled over the estate at Denton. Although William did homage to the bishop of Chichester for the land there once held by his grandfather, he was still arguing with his cousin as late as 1493 over how they should divide the manor itself. Fleming, 163; Add. 39376, f. 204; CP40/829, rot. 668; Chichester Cart. 252. In 1479 he was engaged in litigation over the patronage of Denton church, which his grandmother Beatrice had previously exercised: CP40/869, rot. 359d. He also had to respond to a petition sent to the chancellor by Robert Aleem, who claimed to have enfeoffed our MP of property in ‘Welyndon’, Sussex, to hold to his use, but that William refused to return it to him. C1/61/175. On William’s death the Knottesfords’ lands passed through the marriage of his daughter and heir to the Darell family.