LEWKNOR, Thomas (d.1492), of Horsted Keynes and East Grinstead and Goring, Suss.

In the later part of his career this Thomas Lewknor becomes difficult to distinguish from his nephew and namesake, the eldest son of (Sir) Roger and heir not only to the principal Lewknor estates but also to the moiety of the former Camoys lands which belonged to the inheritance of his mother. We can be certain, however, that it was our MP who was enfeoffed in 1448 with his father and two of his brothers in the Halsham family estates in Norfolk, Kent and Wiltshire which had been inherited by the wife of his brother John. He continued to be involved in transactions relating to these properties for at least 17 years. Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 587; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 215-16; 1461-7, pp. 429, 493-4. When his father died in 1452, Thomas and his four brothers of the whole blood supported their widowed mother Elizabeth in the lawsuits arising over the former Tregoz estates, which their half-brother (Sir) Roger insisted should pass in their entirety to him, in contradiction to their father’s wishes. In Easter term 1453 Sir Roger brought a plea specifically against Thomas for the theft of livestock worth £10 from Wiggonholt, one of the Tregoz properties in west Sussex. As he was then styled ‘of Horsted Keynes, gentleman’, Thomas would appear to have been living at the principal family seat with his mother. CP40/769, rot. 253d. He was party to the recognizances made in Michaelmas term 1455, when Sir Roger on the one side and Elizabeth and her five Lewknor sons on the other entered mutual recognizances in £1,000 to accept the arbitration of the chancellor, Archbishop Bourgchier. It seems likely that the compromise reached between the parties enabled Elizabeth’s sons to inherit at least part of the disputed property. After her death in early 1465, further divisions of these estates were agreed; and it was probably then that Thomas was allotted the valuable manor of Goring which he occupied later in life. CP40/779, rots. 429, 431; Add. 39376, ff. 81, 130, 131; 39377, f. 6.

It is worthy of note that when the dispute over the Tregoz estates had been the subject of suits in the court of common pleas and in Chancery, Thomas may have been sitting in the Commons as a representative of the Somerset borough of Bridgwater. How he had come to be elected by the burgesses there remains unclear; no connexion with them, or with the feudal lords of the borough (one of whom was the duke of York, fresh from his victory at St. Albans), has been discovered. Indeed, there seems to have been some opposition to his candidacy, for although Lewknor’s name appears on the sheriff’s indenture it was replaced by that of a local man, Robert Cotys II*, on the schedule accompanying the indenture to Chancery at the start of the Parliament. Which of the two men actually entered the Commons on that occasion is not known. C219/16/3.

Previous to the election, in May 1454 Thomas had been appointed in Sussex with two of his brothers and their kinsman Sir Richard Fiennes to arrest the troublesome Robert Poynings, in response to acts passed in the Parliament of 1453-4 as an alleged traitor. It seems that in the long-lasting and violent dispute over the Poynings estates between Robert and his niece Eleanor (who from the death of her father-in-law at St. Albans in 1455 was countess of Northumberland), these commissioners supported the latter. Their half-brother Thomas Hoo II was actively engaged in the late 1450s as the financial agent for Eleanor’s husband, Henry Percy, the new earl of Northumberland, his brief also covering Percy’s shipment of wool through Chichester harbour by special licence of the King. When, in the autumn of 1456, Thomas secured appointment as customer in Chichester for a year, this can only have worked to the Percys’ advantage, and eased Hoo’s tasks. No doubt he owed the office to their influence. The Lewknors were also on good terms with Richard West, Lord de la Warre, and in June 1457 Thomas and his brothers Sir Roger and Richard joined Lord Richard in receiving a gift of goods and chattels. CCR, 1461-8, p. 152.

Thomas’s movements during the period of civil war from 1459 to 1461 are undocumented, and a suit he initiated in the court of common pleas in Hilary term 1461 raises more questions than it answers. In his plea he accused Eleanor, the widow of (Sir) Thomas Brown II*, and two of her sons of assaulting him at Southwark with the intention of killing him. The date of the alleged attack is not given in the record. Brown, who had incurred the enmity of the duke of York, had been executed in the previous July following the Yorkist victory at Northampton, but why his widow should have quarreled with our MP is hard to say. The political implications of the pardon Lewknor obtained from Edward IV on 12 Dec. 1462 remain obscure. The pardon, of any offences committed before the opening day of Edward’s first Parliament, described him as ‘formerly of Horsted Keynes, esquire, alias late of London’, and as it referred to his post in the customs service was probably intended to protect him from the consequences of any failings while in office. C67/45, m. 13; E159/240, recorda Hil. rot. 7. His second election to Parliament occurred in the following spring, when he was returned as knight of the shire for his home county, although it was again as a parliamentary burgess (for Lewes) that he was elected to the Parliament summoned for 3 June 1467. His brother Richard was currently serving as constable of Lewes castle, by appointment of John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, while Thomas Hoo was a leading member of the duke’s council; their support can only have guaranteed Thomas’s success at the election, which took place during his term as escheator of Surrey and Sussex. In the parliamentary recess early in 1468 he failed to make full account at the Exchequer for the issues of his bailiwick, and a messuage and 40 acres of land belonging to him at East Grinstead were confiscated accordingly. His brother Richard, while serving as sheriff from 1469 to 1470, accounted for the sums raised from the property in the ten days from 23 Jan. until 1 Feb. 1470, on which latter date Thomas eventually came to the Exchequer to cover his deficit. E364/106, m. B.

When Henry VI was restored to the throne in the following autumn, the Lewknor brothers were as usual primarily concerned with their own family affairs. Three of them – Thomas, John and Richard – stood as guarantors that their half-brother Hoo would re-pay debts amounting to over £800, by entering bonds which were sealed while the Readeption Parliament was in progress in November or December 1470, although whether any of them were then Members of the Commons is not known. At the same time Thomas and John were enfeoffed of Richard’s estates in Sussex, perhaps to safeguard them in the disturbed political climate. CCR, 1468-76, no. 650; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 814. Despite their mutual attachment, the brothers displayed different allegiances when Edward IV returned from exile in the spring. While John committed himself to the Lancastrian cause, only to die at Tewkesbury fighting for Queen Margaret of Anjou, Thomas did nothing to offend the Yorkist regime, as is clear from his appointment to the Sussex bench in June 1471 (taking John’s place). He took the precaution of obtaining another pardon on 3 Feb. 1472. C67/48, m. 21. Family matters continued to preoccupy him, even while serving as a j.p., since on one occasion he heard an indictment of a husbandman who had assaulted one of his relations. KB9/337/34. In February 1473 he stood surety at the Exchequer for his brother Richard and Hoo when they obtained keeping of the manor of Queencourt in Ospringe, Kent, which Richard’s wife Elizabeth St. Cler claimed as part of her inheritance; and in May he joined their kinsman Lord Dacre and John Audley*, Lord Audley, as a feoffee of property which Richard had purchased in East Grinstead. CFR, xxi. no. 152; CAD, vi. C4242. It was as a representative for the late duke of Norfolk’s borough of Reigate in Surrey (now held in dower by the Duchess Elizabeth) that Thomas was returned to the Parliament of 1478, although continued links between the Lewknors and the Percy earls of Northumberland may also have been a factor in his return. Earlier in the 1470s he had farmed the manor of ‘Hallynglond’ from the restored Earl Henry (d.1489), and by 1479-80 he was in receipt of a fee of ten marks by his grant. Petworth House, Suss. mss, 7227, 7229 (MAC/20, 22). The fee was no longer being paid in 1484-5: ibid. 7231 (MAC/24). Along with Richard Lewknor he continued to be of use to their half-brother Hoo, who in this period entrusted them with the Sussex manor of Wartling and responsibility for holding courts there. Thomas was now usually described as ‘of Goring, esquire’, so it is clear that he had taken up residence in the former Tregoz manor, the subject of the earlier dispute with his brother Sir Roger, the head of the family, who died in 1478. Add. roll 31515; Add Ch. 23826.

Sir Roger’s son and heir, Thomas, our MP’s nephew and namesake, had been making his mark in the early 1470s as a commissioner of array and as sheriff of Surrey and Sussex in 1473-4; and it was he who on 24 Nov. 1474 had contracted to serve in Edward IV’s army for the invasion of France. E101/72/1/1026. After his father’s death, the younger Thomas took up the role expected of one of the leading landowners of the region. He offered the King hospitality at his home at Trotton in September 1479, and fulfilled his function as a magistrate by holding sessions of gaol delivery at Guildford castle in 1481, VCH Suss. i. 515; Suss. Arch. Collns. xcvi. 29; C66/548, m. 6d; 549, m. 23d (called junior). but although he was knighted on the eve of the coronation of Richard III in July 1483, he baulked at accepting Richard’s usurpation, and rose in rebellion against him that autumn. Certain of his estates, most notably Bodiam castle, were forfeited following his attainder in the Parliament of 1484. The rest of the Lewknor clan hastened to prove their loyalty, and our Thomas was named with his brother Richard and another one of their nephews on the commission of array set up in May that year, before Sir Thomas received a pardon made conditional on heavy financial securities. Excerpta Historica ed. Bentley, 384; R. Horrox, Ric. III, 158, 173, 274; CPR, 1476-85, pp. 397-8, 428, 435, 444, 535. Sir Thomas had to agree to live with his brother-in-law, the treasurer, John Wood III*. It was thus probably he rather than our Thomas who became a feoffee of Wood’s property in Essex, which was settled in jointure on his sister Margery: CIPM Hen. VII, i. 278; ii. 629. His uncle went on to sit in Parliament at least one more time, in 1491, as a representative for the Sussex borough of New Shoreham.

On 1 Jan. 1492, while the Parliament was in recess, Lewknor made his will. He asked to be buried in St. Mary’s church at Goring, and left 52s. to be shared among 12 paupers at the rate of 1d. each every week for a year. The residue of his estate was left to his wife Elizabeth, who along with his brother Richard and two of his nephews, Roger and Edward Lewknor, were to act as executors. Although probate was not granted until six years later, it is clear that he died soon after making his will, and most likely on 6 Feb. 1492, the day that a writ de diem clausit extremum was issued from Chancery. PCC 22 Horne (PROB11/11, f. 182v); CFR, xxii. no. 367. No inq. post mortem survives. On that same day Lewknor enfeoffed a distinguished body of men, headed by Archbishop Morton, Bishop Storey of Chichester, and Sir Reynold Bray†, in his manor of Goring, which they were to hold to the use of his heirs. His widow kept for life the former Tregoz manor of Preston, which in 1494 his son and heir, Francis, calling himself ‘lord of Goring’, settled in reversion on his cousin Edward, promising that if Edward or his heirs were ever troubled in their possession they would be compensated with property at Goring worth £23 6s. 8d. p.a. Francis also leased to Edward and his wife the mansion at Goring for 43 years in return for £11 13s. 4d. p.a., and later granted him an annuity of ten marks. Nor was this the only grant Francis made from his inheritance, for in 1495 he confirmed to his kinsman Thomas Lewknor ‘senior’ an annual payment of five marks for life, as well as giving him other property in Goring. Whether he was prompted to make these settlements to fulfill the promises of his late father does not appear. Besides Francis, our Thomas left at least one other son, John, who died before March 1496. Francis then sold to Edmund Dudley †for £161 18s. a reversionary interest in land which John’s widow held for life at Goring. He fell heir to his uncle Richard in 1503. CP40/941, cart. rots. 1-4; CCR, 1485-1500, no. 979; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 814.