LEWKNOR, Roger (c.1418-78), of Trotton, Suss. and South Mimms, Mdx.

The eldest of Sir Thomas Lewknor’s many sons and principal heir to his widespread and valuable estates, Roger did not come into his inheritance until 1452, when he was well into his thirties. That, long before then, he had been elected knight of the shire and appointed sheriff was due not only to the prominence and wealth of his father but also, and primarily, to the lands he acquired through his first marriage. In the late 1420s, and while he was still under age, his father had arranged for him a match with the younger of the two sisters of Hugh, Lord Camoys, who died childless and a minor in the King’s wardship in June 1426. The two heiresses, Margaret, wife of Ralph Rademylde†, and her sister Eleanor, now married to Roger Lewknor, brought with them the social standing of minor nobility, for they were grand-daughters of Thomas, Lord Camoys, who had commanded the left wing at Agincourt, and nieces of Robert, 4th Lord Poynings, one of the more substantial landowners of the region. Their uncle Sir Roger Camoys adopted the title of Lord Camoys and took possession of some of the family properties, but in 1428 the Radmyldes and Lewknors began legal proceedings to recover from him Trotton and other manors in Sussex, and in 1433 Camoys ceded his right to seven of these as well as to Honeydon in Bedfordshire and Stukeley in Huntingdonshire. C139/28/26; CP, v. 507-8, 510-12; Add. Ch. 20055; CP40/669, rot. 121. Roger, Lord Camoys, is confused with Roger Lewknor by G.L. Harriss in Cardinal Beaufort, 159. The inheritance, consisting of no fewer than 17 manors in Bedfordshire, Oxfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Hampshire and (especially) Sussex, was partitioned fairly equally between the two sisters: Lewknor’s wife was said to have lands worth £53 p.a. in London and elsewhere, according to the tax assessments of 1436; EHR, xlix. 637. It is just possible, however, that this assessment relates to the stepmother of Sir Thomas Lewknor, also called Eleanor, who was living in London at the time of her death in 1436. while Rademylde’s share was valued at his death in 1443 at £55 p.a. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 167-8; C139/109/34. It is likely that both evaluations were underestimates. Following their marriage, Lewknor and his wife made their home at Trotton, and in July 1437 they took out a royal pardon, quite likely to protect themselves from lawsuits arising from disputes over her inheritance. C67/38, m. 12.

The straightforward division of the former Camoys estates into two halves, with each sister receiving a moiety of every manorial estate, inevitably led on occasion to disagreements between the Lewknors and Rademyldes, in particular where shared patronage of ecclesiastical livings was concerned. Lewknor and Ralph Rademylde acted together amicably as patrons of the churches at Rusper and Trotton in 1430, but they failed to agree over the choice of a new incumbent for the church at Broadwater two years later, when Rademylde promoted as candidate first his wife’s cousin, John, a son of Lord Poynings, and then one of his own feoffees, Richard Crowner. This led to a lawsuit in the course of which Lewknor’s nominee was confirmed as incumbent, only for Crowner to take his place subsequently. Reg. Chichele, i. 267-8; VCH Suss. vi (1), 77; CP40/687, rot. 125d. Yet in other pleas the two men stood together to defend their wives’ interests, doing so for example in a plea brought in 1442 by John Cornwall, Lord Fanhope, who accused them of holding a weekly market in Broadwater which conflicted with his rights to hold markets at nearby Steyning. CP40/725, rots. 328, 444d. Nevertheless, the original partition proved unsatisfactory in practical terms, and in the mid 1450s after the inheritance had fallen to the next generation (to Rademylde’s son and heir, Robert*, and Eleanor Lewknor’s son and heir, Thomas), Lewknor, who retained his wife’s estates ‘by the courtesy’, set about negotiating new terms. It would appear that he wished to consolidate his heir’s interests in Sussex and that Rademylde preferred to increase his holdings in Oxfordshire. At least, transactions regarding their respective moieties of manors in those counties had this effect, although Rademylde took a greater share of the manor at Broadwater. However, it may be the case that Lewknor, being older and possessed of influential connexions had an advantage in selecting the more profitable properties. Westminster Abbey muns. 9204; VCH Oxon. v. 50, 110; vii. 11, 123-4; VCH Suss. iv. 35; vi (1), 69-70; vi (2), 15; vii. 81, 226; C139/163/15. The precise details of the new partition are now obscured by the fact that after the death without legitimate issue of Rademylde’s son William in 1499 the Lewknors took over a large part of the Rademylde portion. According to the inquisitions held after his death, Lewknor took control of all of the Camoys manors of Lasham (Hampshire), and ‘Chesilhampton’, Wheatley and Tythrop in Kingsey (Oxfordshire), but the bulk of his holdings were in Sussex, for which no inquisition survives. C140/66/37.

Lewknor’s recorded career began with a voyage to France early in 1433, DKR, xlviii. 293. probably to join the retinue of the Regent, the duke of Bedford. Shortly after Bedford’s death he twice stood surety in the Exchequer, in September and November 1435, for the lessees of the duke’s manor of Canford in Dorset. The fact that one of them, William Mareys, was a retainer of Cardinal Beaufort (to whom the King was soon to grant Canford for life), may indicate that he too was then linked with the cardinal, although firm evidence for such a connexion is lacking. CFR, xvi. 250, 252. Since he was appointed sheriff of Surrey and Sussex on 5 Nov. 1439, he was in breach of the statutes prohibiting the election of sheriffs to Parliament when he entered the Commons as a knight of the shire for Sussex just a week later. Nevertheless, although the parliamentary indenture has not survived to provide proof, it is unlikely that he returned himself; almost certainly the election was conducted by his predecessor. Roger’s youthful rise to prominence was short-lived. Save for the commission to distribute tax allowances arising from the grant of subsidies made by the Commons in this Parliament, he was not to be appointed to any other royal commissions until after his father’s death 12 years later. In the meantime, he busied himself with the private affairs of his kinsmen. He and his half-brother John were witnesses when Robert Lisle* mortgaged his manor in Pulborough to their father and others in 1447, and he was among the members of the family who were party to a final concord in 1448 concerning the estates in Norfolk, Kent and Wiltshire inherited by John’s wife Joan Halsham. CCR, 1441-7, pp. 471, 473, 477; 1461-8, pp. 206-7; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 215-16; Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 587.

Sir Thomas Lewknor died on 22 June 1452, leaving his eldest son, our MP, the principal family estates, including, besides his substantial holdings in Sussex, manors in Leicestershire, Middlesex, Northamptonshire and Staffordshire, and an inn called The Christopher as well as other property in London. C139/150/35; VCH Northants. iii. 132-3; SC6/1120/3, 4. The transfer of seisin proved far from straightforward. Roger encountered such difficulties in taking possession of Ronton in Staffordshire (of which his father had demised life-tenancies to Edward Doyley and his son John), that eventually, some 20 years later, he decided to relinquish his title to the manor. Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xi. 240; n.s. iii. 213-15; iv. 191-4; CP40/848, cart. rot. 2d. More seriously, his stepmother Elizabeth and her sons, his five half-brothers, challenged his right to the manors in Surrey and Sussex which his father had inherited from the Tregoz family, and so acrimonious did their quarrel become that it led to confrontation in the law courts. The dispute is merely inferred in the suit which Lewknor and his uncle Richard Dallingridge brought in the court of common pleas in Easter term 1453 against his half-brother Thomas for taking livestock worth £10 at one of these manors, Wiggonholt. More is revealed by Elizabeth’s petition to the chancellor, made in the previous November, for she asserted not only that her late husband Sir Thomas had left the London inn to her for life, with the intention that she should use its profits for the maintenance of the Tregoz chantry at Goring, but that her stepson had forcibly disseised her of the manors of Goring and Preston in which she also had a life-interest. Roger countered with an allegation that her claims were based on a forged will, CP40/769, rot. 253d; C1/72/42, 43. and in other suits in the common pleas he sued Elizabeth and her fellow executors of his father’s true will for refusing to hand over to him a muniment chest and pyx. At the same time Lewknor was himself facing an action brought in King’s bench by a formidable body of men, headed by the chancellor (his kinsman Cardinal Kemp), and Ralph, Lord Sudeley, whom his father had enfeoffed of the Tregoz estates. They alleged that Roger was in breach of the statute of Westminster for illegally entering five of the manors on 26 Nov. 1452, and in the summer of 1453 damages and costs amounting to £76 13s. 4d. were awarded against him. Although he satisfied the surviving plaintiffs of this sum in November 1454, he was not prepared to let the matter drop, insisting that the jury had given false testimony. The court instructed that a new jury composed of 24 men of knightly status be summoned to adjudicate. Meanwhile, also in Michaelmas term 1454, Lewknor had gone further onto the offensive by alleging that his stepmother and three of his half-brothers, with the connivance of Richard Profit, another of his father’s executors, had unlawfully expelled him from the Tregoz property in Southwark two years earlier. In this regard, a jury found in his favour in Easter term 1455, and he was awarded damages, but contention over the rest of the former Tregoz estates still continued, and on 13 Nov. following the parties were forced to enter mutual recognizances in £1,000 to accept the arbitration of the then chancellor, Thomas Bourgchier, archbishop of Canterbury. CP40/769, rot. 396; 775, rot. 607; 779, rots. 429, 431; KB27/768, rot. 68d; 774, fines rot. 1; 780, rot. 39. While negotiations continued, further actions were brought in the King’s bench in Hilary term 1456, with Elizabeth Lewknor alleging that her stepson had dispossessed her of the manor of Itford in Beddingham which had been settled on her for life. KB27/779, rot. 63. The precise details of Bourgchier’s arbitration award have not been found, yet it would seem that although Roger was successful in his bid for the Southwark property, in the end he failed to secure the bulk of the Tregoz inheritance. Yet once the acrimony of the mid 1450s had subsided there is nothing to indicate a failure to compromise on his part, for immediately after Elizabeth’s death in early 1465 he reached an agreement with his five half-brothers. A collusive suit was enrolled in the common pleas, whereby William Sondes (one of the executors of Sir Thomas’s will), John Wood III* and others recovered seisin of the Tregoz estates against Lewknor and all five of them, probably with the intention that fresh settlements could now be made on the different members of the family. Add. 39376, ff. 130-1.

In the meantime, the death of his father had led to Roger’s adoption of a role befitting a landowner of considerable substance. When, at a ceremony conducted in the Tower of London on 5 Jan. 1453 the King’s half-brothers Edmund and Jasper Tudor were elevated to the earldoms of Richmond and Pembroke, other esquires dubbed knights with them and two sons of the earl of Salisbury included Lewknor and William Catesby*. Both Lewknor and Catesby were to be returned to the Parliament summoned to Reading on the following 6 Mar., but whether their recent elevation indicates a long-lasting commitment to the Lancastrian court remains impossible to say. Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed.Stevenson, ii (2) [770], misdated 1449; John Benet’s Chron. (Cam. Misc. xxiv), 208; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 698-9. As we have seen, while the Parliament was in progress Sir Roger had perforce to devote attention to the lawsuits over his inheritance, but the political crises of the winter of 1453-4, brought about by the King’s mental collapse and the death of the chancellor and primate Cardinal Kemp, led to his increased participation in national affairs. He was linked with the new archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Bourgchier, when on 6 Apr. 1454, together with Bourgchier’s close kinsmen, he received a grant of the guardianship of the temporalities of the archbishopric pending his installation. While he may have been included simply because the Lewknors were important tenants on the archiepiscopal estates in Sussex, more personal links with the Bourgchiers are suggested by subsequent transactions, and the connexion proved a useful one in years to come. CFR, xix. 86; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 154, 233; Reg. Bourgchier, p. xvi. The Parliament was dissolved a few days later, but it was not until July 1455 that Lewknor brought an action in the Exchequer of pleas against the former sheriff of Surrey and Sussex, John Devenish*, for failing to pay his parliamentary wages of £32 4s. Devenish asserted that he had handed him £5 at Westminster on 10 July 1454 and the remainder at Battle two days later, though Sir Roger denied this. E13/145B, rot. 70d.

Lewknor had been made a j.p. earlier in 1455, shortly after Archbishop Bourgchier became chancellor, and thereafter he continued to be a member of the bench almost without break until his death. In this as in other respects his public service was concentrated in Sussex, despite his landed interests elsewhere. He took out a pardon as former sheriff on 25 Aug. 1455, and another as the son and heir of Sir Thomas and tenant of his lands on 4 Feb. 1458. C67/41, m. 32; 42 m. 40. At an unknown date between then and 1461 he was a feoffee of property in Charlewood and Southwark for settlement in jointure on Robert Poynings* (his first wife’s cousin) and the latter’s wife Elizabeth Paston. CIPM Hen. VII, i. 436. If this is an indication that Lewknor had earlier sided with Poynings in his major confrontation with his niece Eleanor, countess of Northumberland, over the inheritance of the Poynings estates, then it points to another area of disagreement between Sir Roger and his half-brothers, who saw fit to support the countess. Yet it would seem that partisanship in this affair did not lead Lewknor to take up arms against either Lancaster or York in the civil war years of 1459 to 1461. During that period he continued to be appointed to ad hoc commissions and as a j.p. whatever the political complexion of the current regime. Perhaps his association with the Bourgchiers smoothed his path when the Yorkists eventually took control, and it may be noted that he was at that time a co-feoffee of property in Southwark with the archbishop’s brother Lord Berners. CCR, 1461-8, p. 201. He proved acceptable to the government under Edward IV, although it may have been with some reluctance that he agreed to be reappointed sheriff of Surrey and Sussex in November 1467, after a gap of 27 years. To encourage him to take up office, the King, being informed that it was customary to discharge the sheriff £40 on his account owing to the additional costs of levying revenues in the bailiwick, made him due allowance at the beginning of his term. E404/73/3/56. He took out a pardon as former sheriff on 6 Nov. 1468, the day after his term ended: C67/46, m. 22.

During the previous decade Lewknor had been concerned with private matters, notably with planning the marriages of his children in accordance with their social standing. In 1456 he had completed arrangements for his daughter Elizabeth to marry John, the son and heir of the late William Wroth*, one-time knight of the shire for Middlesex, negotiating on her behalf jointure in Wroth’s estates in Somerset. CPR, 1452-61, p. 280. One of his sons, Roger ‘the elder’, is believed to have married a daughter of Reynold West, Lord de la Warre, an alliance perhaps confirmed by the association of Sir Roger and two of his half-brothers with Reynold’s heir, Lord Richard, in June 1457. CCR, 1461-8, p. 152; Suss. Genealogies, 150-3. Curiously, the marriage of his son and heir, Thomas, appears to have been delayed, unless Katherine Pelham, the widow of John Bramshott, whom Thomas married after 1468, was his second wife. The match served to reinforce the links between the families of Lewknor and Pelham, which had been cemented earlier by the marriage of Sir Roger’s half-sister Alice to the Pelham heir. Suss. Genealogies, 150-3; Add. Chs. 29687, 30419; C140/81/54. In addition, he was also concerned with the affairs of other members of his family. In the 1460s he was party to the transactions of his half-brother John, which involved him in a suit in Chancery in 1465 when John wished to sell his wife’s manor of Brabourne in Kent; and for several years he acted as a feoffee-to-uses of the latter’s property in Wiltshire. C1/28/85-89; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 429, 493-4; CCR, 1468-76, no. 311.

John made a fatal misjudgment in deciding to support the forces of Margaret of Anjou in the spring of 1471, and died fighting for the house of Lancaster at Tewkesbury, but the head of the family, Sir Roger, appears to have remained aloof from the events of the Readeption. Instead, he concentrated his energies on lawsuits over the estates of his uncle Richard Dallingridge, who had died without legitimate issue on 7 Jan. that year. The estates had been valued earlier in the century at the round figure of £100 p.a. and were probably worth much more, but Lewknor was not to succeed to them in their entirety without a struggle. It was reported at the inquisition post mortem held in October 1471 that his uncle had placed nine specified manors in Sussex in the hands of feoffees, instructing them on his decease to grant seisin of seven of them to Lewknor, while one of the others, Iden, was to pass to him after the life-tenancy of John a Chambre, and the profits of the last, Iford, were to be used to support two chantry priests at Havant for a period of 20 years. Lewknor duly took possession of the seven manors and also of Lockerley in Hampshire, worth altogether some £63 p.a., and in November he obtained a pardon in which he was called Dallingridge’s kinsman and heir. C140/33/48; C67/48, m. 12. Yet the most important and valuable part of his late uncle’s estate was not mentioned in the post mortem. This was Bodiam castle and its appurtenant manor, the descent of which had been governed by an entail made a century before in the 1370s. Dallingridge, having broken the entail in 1443, had placed Bodiam in the hands of his own appointees, the lawyers William Sydney* and Edmund Mille*, but with what intention is unclear. Quite possibly he did not want Bodiam to pass to his nephew. Such was the contention of John Wood III, who asserted that Dallingridge had meant Mille and his son and heir, Richard, to have the castle and manor after his death, and had agreed to its subsequent sale to him. Wood had paid a large sum of money for the reversion, and obtained a release from Richard Mille just three days after Dallingridge’s death. Furthermore, in July a jury at an assize of novel disseisin had found that Lewknor had unjustly ousted Wood from the estate at Bodiam, and the court of common pleas in Easter term 1472 also found in Wood’s favour. Sir Roger characteristically refused to let the matter drop, and after hearings before the courts of Exchequer chamber, King’s bench and Chancery, he eventually succeeded in persuading Wood to relinquish his title in June 1473. Mille then formally released his interest to him in association with Archbishop Bourgchier, Lord Berners and others. At what stage in the proceedings Wood was married Lewknor’s daughter Margery remains uncertain, but it may well be the case that the match was arranged in part to compensate him for his loss of Bodiam. Lewknor also tried, albeit with less success, to deprive Thomas Pound* and his wife Mercy of the legacies they had received under his late uncle’s will. He claimed in petitions to the chancellor that Dallingridge had given Pound the manor of Lymbourne (worth 45 marks p.a.) only as security for repayment of a loan, intending that it should revert to him, Dallingridge, and his heirs after the creditor had been satisfied. He also claimed that Pound, his co-executor of Dallingridge’s will, had retained and converted to his own use at least half of the deceased’s jewels and other goods and chattels, which were worth over 1,000 marks, and had also kept a further 200 marks in cash. Nevertheless, Pound was absolved and acquitted of the charges in Trinity term 1476. Yet another suit in Chancery arose subsequently from Lewknor’s refusal to release the profits of the manor of Iford first to the Pounds and then to Mercy’s second husband and executor Edward Tauk for the maintenance of the chantries specified in Dallingridge’s will. In this suit Sir Roger disingenuously claimed to know nothing about the will reported in the bill, and, against all the evidence, asserted that Iford was his by right of descent not from Dallingridge but from his own father and grandfather. Add. 39376, ff. 167v-169v, 179; Sel. Cases in Exchequer Chamber, ii (Selden Soc. lxiv), 25-28; Add. Ch. 20050; C1/41/35-38; 66/44, 45; 168/37, 38; CFR, xxi. no. 120.

Sir Roger had married at least twice more since the death of his first wife, Eleanor Camoys. Nothing is known about his second wife, save that she was called Mary and bore him a son named Roger, on whom was entailed the Lewknor manor of ‘Wylyottys’ in Middlesex. C140/66/37. A year after Mary’s death in 1473 Sir Roger made provision for another son, Richard, to have in tail-male after his death the former Dallingridge manor of Sheffield together with some 2,100 acres of land and annual rents of £33 8s. 4d. from other lands in Sussex and Surrey, with successive remainders to three other sons (Edward and the two named Roger). CP25(1)/241/93/8. Also in 1474 he gave his ‘servant’ George Baynbridge, to whom he was later to refer in his will as his son-in-law, a rent of £5 p.a. from the former Tregoz manor in Kent. CCR, 1468-76, no. 1269. Baynbridge was his receiver in 1475-6: SC6/1120/4. One of the reasons for making these settlements may have been Sir Roger’s plans to remarry. This time he set his sights on Katherine Arundell, the twice-widowed daughter and coheiress of the late Sir John Chideock of Chideock in Dorset. When her father had died in March 1450 Katherine and her younger sister Margaret, the wife of William Stourton* (afterwards Lord Stourton), had inherited from him substantial holdings in Dorset, Somerset, Cambridgeshire and Wiltshire. C139/139/26. CP, xii (1), 303 wrongly gives Margaret as the elder da. She was also possessed of a dowager’s portion of the estates of her two previous husbands: William Stafford, who had been killed by the rebels at Sevenoaks just three months later, and the wealthy Cornishman Sir John Arundell of Lanherne. The value of these potentially lucrative holdings is now impossible to estimate, although the Stafford estates in the West Country and London alone brought in at least £87 a year, C140/71/47. and it would appear from the marriage contract made between Lewknor and Katherine that her annual income was expected to exceed 650 marks. Such expectations had, however, to be weighed against serious financial liabilities, for Sir John Arundell had been fined 6,000 marks for supporting the Lancastrian army at Tewkesbury, and had died leaving both his own and his wife’s inheritances encumbered with massive debts. Careful negotiations for the marriage took place in the early months of 1477, but such was Sir Roger’s determination that the match should take place that he agreed to very generous terms. He promised Katherine jointure in the Lewknor family estates to the value of 250 marks p.a., and allowed her to keep £100 p.a. from her paternal inheritance, from which 100 marks a year might be set aside to pay Arundell’s debts and the remainder paid into her private chamber. Furthermore, other of her estates were earmarked to provide 500 marks a year until the debts had been paid, and above that the sum of 800 marks for the marriages of her two daughters; after this had been done her son, Thomas Arundell, was to receive a life-annuity of 100 marks. Final arrangements for the nuptials were made at Chideock on 25 Mar., Dorset RO, D16/F2. and Sir Roger instructed John, Lord Dynham, and the other feoffees of the family estates to settle the agreed jointure on his new wife. Although nothing was mentioned about it in the draft contract, it would appear that Lewknor was given possession for his lifetime of Katherine’s manors of Isle Brewers, Pitney and ‘Alreshay’ in Somerset, which were settled in remainder on his sons Richard and Roger Lewknor the younger. C1/56/268.

Sir Roger’s final years were troubled by yet more lawsuits, running concurrently with the disputes over the former Dallingridge properties. CP40/842, rot. 219. Notable among them was a quarrel with his kinsmen the Frowyks. Sir Roger and his half-brother Richard and eldest son Thomas were bound to Thomas Frowyk II* in £450 by statute staple at Chichester in 1473, and in 500 marks at the staple at Westminster at an unknown date. Frowyk pursued them for payment of the first in January 1475, but a year later acknowledged receipt of the 500 marks in full settlement. The transaction was undoubtedly connected with a suit which Lewknor had brought against his brother-in-law Henry Frowyk II* for a debt of £72 13s. 4d. He appeared in court shortly afterwards to declare himself satisfied of this particular debt, but it was not until 6 Nov. following, after Henry had surrendered to the Fleet prison, that the latter was pardoned his outlawry. C241/255/7; CCR, 1468-76, no. 1589; CPR, 1476-85, p. 8. The Frowyks held land in South Mimms of the Lewknors: CIPM Hen. VII, i. 159. Ten days later, Lewknor obtained from the Crown an exemption for life from holding any offices against his will. CPR, 1467-77, p. 603. In his last year (during the summer of 1478) he was sued in the court of common pleas for the valuable manor of Harting, Sussex, formerly held by Nicholas Hussey, who had died eight years earlier leaving two daughters as his coheirs. Lewknor’s interest was probably that of a feoffee, although one of the heiresses, who was then the wife of Henry Lovell (the son of his sister-in-law Elizabeth St. Cler), was later to marry his grandson and namesake. Peds. Plea Rolls ed. Wrottesley 443; CP40/867, rot. 141; VCH Suss. iv. 15 (although this account confuses the two Sir Rogers).

‘Remembring my tyme of deth drawyng nygh’, Lewknor made his will on 23 July 1478, and died the same day. Cat. MSS Lambeth Palace, no. 545. The inqs. post mortem variously give his death-date as 20 July or 4 Aug.: E149/239 (8); C140/66/37. He asked to be buried in the parish church of St. George at Trotton, in a marble tomb next to the high altar and with the reinterred bones of his second wife. The church was left bequests of £10, the Horsham stone in the churchyard and his wife’s russet satin gown to be made into vestments, while his London inn was to be amortized to provide for the salary of a chantry-priest. Although Lewknor’s first wife had died many years before, he had only recently purchased some marble for her tomb at Trinity College, Arundel; this was now finally to be put in place. His debts were to be paid, and if named claimants could prove their titles against him at law they were to be duly recompensed, as too was a certain widow he had wronged. She, however, was to receive just 2s. a year for 13 years. Bequests to the testator’s children included a great chain of gold for Roger ‘the younger’, who was also to have a silver basin and ewer which had belonged to his mother. The entail he had made in 1474 by excluding his eldest son, Thomas, from inheriting certain of the family estates, had aroused considerable ill-feeling. Now, desiring a ‘final pees’ to be concluded between his quarrelling sons, he permitted them to take the advice of learned counsel to alter the terms of the entail, giving Thomas the first remainder should Richard die without male issue. He made provision for his six other sons, for the most part from the former Dallingridge estates, all now settled in tail-male. The will was proved on 28 Nov. PCC 1 Logge (PROB11/7, ff. 5v-6).

Sir Roger’s eldest son now inherited his mother’s share of the Camoys estates which Lewknor had held ‘by the courtesy’ ever since her death. It had been foreseen that Thomas might make trouble for his stepmother, Katherine, and Sir Roger had promised her that he would be bound in £1,000 to abide by the terms of their marriage contract, but disregarding this he hastened to take possession of his paternal inheritance. In a petition to the chancellor Katherine complained that even though Thomas had been ‘prive’ to the conditions of the contract, he had entered the nine Lewknor manors set aside as her jointure, and the feoffees could not, or would not, make estate to her. Nevertheless, she was prepared to make concessions: on 26 Jan. 1479 she agreed to release to Thomas all her rights to five of the manors and to cease her legal actions against him and Sir Roger’s executors. In return, Thomas agreed that before 13 Feb. he would confirm her feoffees in their estate in the remaining properties, which he would lease from her for 100 marks p.a. The arrangement did not stand for long as Katherine herself died on 9 Apr. C1/56/268; CCR, 1476-85, no. 474; C140/71/47. In her will, dated 2 Apr., Katherine had requested burial in the chancel of the Franciscans’ church outside the south gate of Exeter: Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR21/2. Thomas was knighted at the coronation of Richard III, but subsequently rose in rebellion against him, and was attainted in the Parliament of 1484. Although he made his peace with the King in May that year (when he and certain kinsmen were bound in 1,000 marks to guarantee his loyalty henceforth), he died before the reversal of his attainder in Henry VII’s first Parliament. Suss. Genealogies, 150-3; Add. Chs. 29687, 30419; CPR, 1476-85, p. 428; CFR, xxii. no. 6; CCR, 1476-85, no. 1242; PROME, xv. 25-26, 102-5. The next heir to the principal Lewknor estates, Sir Thomas’s son Roger, was knighted on the eve of the new King’s coronation.