LONG, Henry (c.1417-90), of South Wraxall, Wilts.

The date of Henry Long’s birth is uncertain. According to the inquisition post mortem held in Hampshire after his father’s death in 1447, he was then aged 30 ‘and more’. This might mean that he was born in about 1417, and was only 18 or so when returned to the Parliament of 1435 for Old Sarum, although as the date of his parents’ marriage is not known he may well have been older. His father attested the shire elections for that Parliament, but did not on this occasion accompany him to the Commons. Henry apparently trained to be a lawyer (and was probably still studying at the time of his first Parliament). In the following year he was associated with his father and with William Ringbourne* (probably his brother-in-law) in the acquisition of land in Box and Haugh in Wiltshire, and in 1438 Ringbourne settled the manor and advowson of Draycot Cerne in remainder on Henry’s younger brother, John. Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 497, 510. The latter married one of their stepsisters, Margaret Cowdray, and in the same year Henry joined his father and stepmother in making settlements on his other stepsister, Maud Cowdray, and her husband William Vyell. Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xxii), 91; CP25(1)13/83/24.

These were the earliest of very many legal transactions to which Henry was a party. His father had long been linked with the powerful family of Hungerford, whose members he frequently assisted in their affairs, and he himself continued this association for much of his life. In March 1438 he, the Hungerford retainer Thomas Tropenell* and Richard Chokke, having been pardoned for acquiring without royal licence the manor of Imber from William Rous, were permitted to grant it to Walter, Lord Hungerford†, in return for a yearly rent of £24 payable to Rous. The conveyance, along with that of another Wiltshire manor and a moiety of Folke in Dorset, was completed shortly afterwards. Long’s undefined role in Hungerford’s service led on one occasion to him accompanying Tropenell to deliver a large sum of money from the peer to his grandson, Robert, Lord Moleyns. CPR, 1436-41, pp. 144, 152; Wilts. Feet of Fines, 511; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 147-8; SC6/1119/12. To what extent he owed his first three elections to Parliament to this connexion with a prominent member of the King’s Council can only be guessed.

Henry’s first marriage, no doubt arranged by his father, was contracted before the summer of 1441. His wife, Joan Malwyn, was the heiress of the Wiltshire manors of Etchilhampton and Marden, which together with a number of other properties and the advowson of Marden were then settled on the couple and their issue. Wilts. Feet of Fines, 544; VCH Wilts. x. 72. In the following year Henry accompanied his father and two of his younger brothers to the Parliament summoned for 25 Jan. 1442, with each of them representing a different Wiltshire borough. Although the process whereby this outcome was achieved is now obscure, it may be assumed that Robert engineered their returns; his standing as bailiff of the bishop of Salisbury’s liberties and close associate of Lord Hungerford must have carried weight at the hustings. On Robert’s death five years later, Henry inherited the principal family home at South Wraxall in Bradford-on-Avon, as well as property in Salisbury and lands elsewhere, VCH Wilts. vii. 22; Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxvii. 90. which taken together with his wife’s inheritance provided an income assessed at £120 p.a. for the purposes of taxation in 1451. At his death he also held the manor of Combe beside Wotton-under-Edge in Gloucestershire, although his estates were then given a lower value of £75. E179/196/118; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 630, 657. Another measure of Henry’s wealth was the quantity of silver plate, said to be worth 50 marks, which together with £129 in cash was said to have been stolen from his house at Wraxall in September 1451, when the earl of Devon’s army rampaged through the neighbourhood. KB9/134/1, m. 23.

Henry’s inheritance qualified him for election as a knight of the shire early in 1449, together with (Sir) John Baynton*, a leading member of the Hungerford affinity. From then on he was kept busy in the administration of the region, serving most notably on commissions of gaol delivery, to which he was nearly always named on the quorum. While again a MP in 1453 he was appointed to the quorum of the Wiltshire bench, on which he was to remain without break until his death – a period of 37 years all told. While in the Commons that same summer he was associated with two members of the Upper House, the cousins Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley, and Sir William Beauchamp*, Lord St. Amand, in transactions concerning the Wiltshire manor of Tytherton Lucas, which he seems to have acquired for himself, Wilts. Feet of Fines, 604. However, it was not in his possession when he died. and his links with the Beauchamps became especially close. In March 1457 Lord St. Amand named him as an executor, and a few months later he joined a consortium including Roger Tocotes† and Walter Taylard* which purchased the wardship and marriage of the lord’s heir, for which they undertook to pay 600 marks. PCC 16 Stokton (PROB11/4, f. 123v); CFR, xix. 206. He kept in close contact with the heir, Sir Richard Beauchamp†, to whom he transferred property in 1476: CIPM Hen. VII, i. 732; CCR, 1485-1500, nos. 563-4; Wilts. Feet of Fines, 711. Following Tocotes’s marriage to St. Amand’s widow, Long demised to the couple certain of the Beauchamp manors. In the same period of the 1450s he was employed as steward by Lord St. Amand’s brother, Richard Beauchamp, bishop of Salisbury, who in December 1458, seeking to enlarge his park at Ramsbury, obtained a royal licence to exchange some land there with him. Service to the bishop drew him into litigation in 1460, in which it was alleged that the Southampton merchants Robert Bagworth and John Payn I* had conspired to deprive his lord of property in Salisbury. CPR, 1452-61, p. 471; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 727, 729-32; CP40/799, rot. 393.

It would seem that Long avoided taking a partisan approach in the civil war years of 1459-61, for there was no noticeable interruption in his appointments to royal commissions through changes of regime, nor to his diligence in carrying out his assignments following the accession of Edward IV. In the summer of 1462 when funds were needed to man and victual The Trinite of Lymington, putting to sea under the command of the earl of Kent and Lord Audley*, he contributed £2, the largest sum raised in Salisbury. The pardon he purchased on 20 Oct. that year referred to his earlier post as sheriff, and was presumably intended to exonerate him from unpaid dues and fines. KB9/135/36; Salisbury ledger bk. 2, G23/1/2, f. 56; C67/45, m. 29. Nevertheless, he could not escape a penalty of as much as £4 13s. 4d. for refusing to take up knighthood in response to the proclamation of 1465. E405/43, rot. 1d. He had shown caution in continuing his links with the Hungerfords after the attainder of Robert, Lord Hungerford and Moleyns, who was executed in 1464, yet was ready to assist that Lord’s widowed mother, Margaret, Lady Botreaux and Hungerford, as a legal advisor and trustee. Lady Margaret faced enormous financial difficulties, exacerbated by raising Moleyns’s ransom after Castillon and the forfeiture of his Hungerford inheritance. In September 1464 Lady Margaret conveyed substantial parts of her own inheritance, the Botreaux estates in Cornwall and Wiltshire, to feoffees headed by Bishop Beauchamp and numbering Long among them; and often called on the MP to witness her deeds and complete other transactions on her behalf. Her belief in his friendship endured, so that in the will she made in 1476 she named him as someone whose help should be enlisted if a member of the select body she had appointed to supervise her affairs happened to die within a period of ten years. CCR, 1461-8, pp. 225-6, 271-2; 1468-76, nos. 236-8, 247; R.C. Hoare, Modern Wilts. (Heytesbury), 95-103. As late as December 1487 Long was pardoned regarding grants of former Hungerford manors and other settlements he had carried out without royal licence. CPR, 1485-94, p. 210.

Although Long is not recorded as sitting in Parliament for nearly 20 years after his election in 1453, it is possible that during this period he occupied one of the seven seats for which returns for Wiltshire are no longer extant. At Salisbury in April 1470 he contributed 53s. 4d. (much more than anyone else) to pay the men sent by the city to join Edward IV’s army in pursuit of the rebellious duke of Clarence and earl of Warwick, yet his connexion with the duke’s retainer (Sir) Roger Tocotes made him acceptable to the new regime that autumn, after the King had fled into exile and Warwick and Clarence reinstated Henry VI. At this crucial time, in October 1470, he was recorded with Tocotes and Bishop Beauchamp as recipients of the goods and chattels of William Beaushyn. Salisbury ledger bk. 2, G23/1/2, f. 94; CAD, ii. C1913. It was along with Tocotes that he was returned as a knight of the shire for Wiltshire to the first Parliament to be summoned by Edward IV after his return to England. The Parliament of October 1472 lasted through several sessions before finally being dissolved in March 1475. While it was still in being Long was appointed sheriff of Wiltshire for a second time (in November 1474), so he was holding this office while the last session was in progress. If assiduous in his attendance in the Commons, he must have been absent from his bailiwick for three months. Edward IV died during Long’s third shrievalty, in 1482-3, but neither that event nor the usurpation of Richard III led to his dismissal from office or from the Wiltshire bench. On 3 Feb. 1484 Long sued out a general pardon of any offences committed by him, and any revenues, fines and debts due from him to the Crown, and a further pardon dated 27 May 1485 covered any misdemeanours as sheriff, commissioner and j.p. under the Yorkist Kings. CPR, 1476-85, p. 457; C67/52, m. 9. Henry VII’s government found no reason to dispense with his services.

Throughout his career Long had been a popular choice as a trustee of landed estates on behalf of fellow members of the gentry of Wiltshire and Hampshire, among them Sir Maurice Berkeley II* of Beverstone, CPR, 1452-61, p. 145; CCR, 1454-61, p. 417. John Wroughton*, CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1152, 1216. and John Borne (d.1477), the nephew and heir of Robert Andrew*. For Borne, he was a feoffee of the manors of West Chalfield and Cricklade, and in 1481 when West Chalfield was settled by entail he himself was given a final remainder. Wilts. Hist. Centre, Suff. and Berks. mss, 88/1/12; Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxvii. 592; Wilts. Feet of Fines, 709. Over the years he had been involved in complicated dealings regarding the nearby manor of Great Chalfield, acting on behalf of the acquisitive lawyer Thomas Tropenell, with whom he had long been on amicable terms. Tropenell looked to him for support in suits in Chancery, Tropenell Cart. i. esp. 112-13, 284-6, 318-19, 324-5; VCH Wilts. vii. 60-61; CCR, 1441-7, p. 463. but Long was no stranger to that court, where he was summoned to answer pleas concerning the estate of the late John Combe*, C1/26/453; 686/10. and, as an executor of William Swayn* (d.1484) of Salisbury, claims made by the widow of Edward IV’s secretary, Master William Hatcliffe. C1/59/30. Swayn had left him ten marks for acting as executor: PCC 20 Logge (PROB11/7, ff. 153v-155). Litigation in the Westminster courts often proved protracted and costly, as in Long’s dispute with John Benger* over title to a substantial estate at Collingbourne, which was prolonged for more than seven years from 1479. Sel. Cases Exch. Chamber, ii (Selden Soc. lxiv), 69-73; KB27/898, rot. 47.

Naturally, the members of Long’s own family relied on him as a trustee, a role he performed for William Ringbourne and his wife (presumed to be Long’s sister), and their son and heir, Robert (d.1485); CPR, 1446-52, p. 414; CAD, ii. B2253; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 612. and for his nephew Thomas Long (son and heir of John) of Draycot Cerne. CPR, 1476-85, p. 173. After the death of his first wife our MP married Margaret, one of the daughters of the wealthy and influential lawyer John Newburgh II, whom he assisted as a feoffee for the marriage settlement on Newburgh’s grandson in 1471. Long received royal pardons specifically as one of Newburgh’s feoffees, and his father-in-law named him as a supervisor of the will he made in 1484. CIPM Hen. VII, i. 38-40; C67/54, m. 3; PCC 20 Logge (PROB11/7, f. 149). His wife received a bequest of ten marks. Margaret did not survive her father for many years, for before Long made his will, on 1 May 1490, he had married for a third time. He settled on this wife, Joan, land worth just over £15 p.a. and left her all his property in Salisbury and the contents of their house there for life. Long requested burial in the church at Wraxall, where masses were to be sung for his parents, his former wives and two of his late brothers, Reynold and John. Four religious houses (the Bonhommes at Edington, the priories at Monkton Farleigh and Bradenstoke in Wiltshire and Stonleigh abbey in Warwickshire), received bequests allotting to the head of each house 3s. 4d., every priest 8d., and every novice 4d. An unusual interest in visual display is revealed by the testator’s gifts of money to purchase vestments for as many as 20 parish churches. Long’s executors were his widow and Richard Key, the vicar of Box. He died two days later. The manor of Etchilhampton, belonging to the inheritance of his first wife, now passed to her kinsman John Erneley, the future chief justice of common pleas. As the MP died without surviving issue the Long family estates passed to his nephew Thomas, thus uniting the branches of the family seated at Wraxall and Draycot Cerne. PCC 43 Milles (PROB11/8, f. 281v); CIPM Hen. VII, i. 630, 657; VCH Wilts. x. 72. Erneley was the gds. of John Erneley* (d.c.1453). Although the provision was not mentioned in his registered will, Henry had arranged that the revenues from certain of his lands should pay for his annual obit and for a priest to provide religious services for him for 20 years; and in the will his nephew made in 1508 this period was extended for a further 20 years, with the testator as an additional beneficiary. PCC 6 Bennett (PROB11/16, ff. 40v-41).