LONG, John (c.1422-78), of Draycot Cerne, Wilts.

John was a younger son of the prominent Wiltshire lawyer Robert Long, and some five years the junior of Henry Long, who was the first of the brothers to enter the Commons. Curiously, the jurors at Robert Long’s inq. post mortem in Som. stated that John, aged 25, was Robert’s heir, whereas those in Hants named his er. bro. Henry, aged 30 or more: C139/126/16. The fact that Henry inherited Wraxhall confirms that the latter return was correct. Even so, his father made sure that he would be well provided for. At Easter 1438, when John was about 16, he was promised the manor and advowson of Draycot Cerne, as next in line after the life-interests of Edward Cerne’s widow and of William Ringbourne* (probably his brother-in-law); while successive remainders in tail favoured his brothers Richard and Reynold in the event of his death without issue. Wilts. Feet of Fines, 510; CPR, 1436-41, p. 346. Accordingly, John was to inherit Draycot on Ringbourne’s death in 1450, and to pass it on to his descendants. His father also grasped the opportunity presented by his marriage to the twice-widowed Margaret Popham to make sure that at least some of her inheritance would be kept in the Long family. With her previous husbands Margaret had produced a son, Thomas Wayte, and two daughters, Maud and Margaret Cowdray. The older girl was married to William Vyell of Claverham, Somerset, but in due course it was arranged that the younger one should be wedded to her stepbrother, our MP. She was not Margaret ‘Wayte’, as given in the biog. of Long’s father in The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 616-18. Rather, she was a gdda. of the former knight of the shire for Hants, Edward Cowdray* of Herriard, whose sons Peter and John Cowdray had wedded sisters, the daughters and coheiresses of Sir Philip Popham. Although it is not known precisely when this match took place, in 1444 a settlement was made on the couple of the reversion of a number of properties in Shrewton, Netton, Orcheston St. George and Maddington, Wiltshire, as well as a manor in Warblington near Havant, Hampshire, which John’s stepmother and mother-in-law held for life. Wilts. Feet of Fines, 563. Furthermore, after the deaths of the latter and her son Thomas Wayte (d.1448), the Cowdray girls (Maud, now the wife of the Cambridgeshire knight Sir John Chalers*, and John Long’s wife Margaret), inherited more of their mother’s estates, sharing between them a moiety of Barton Stacey in Hampshire, and the manor of Hartridge in Berkshire. C139/133/12; CFR, xviii. 152. Maud already held the manor of Lyford in Berkshire as part of her share of their mother’s property, but the sisters together stood heir to the entailed manors of Titcomb and Haslewick in that county, on the death of Isabel, widow of John Romayn, and in 1450 they brought an action against Isabel and her then husband, Nicholas Banaster, for wasting their inheritance, in which they claimed damages of £200. They finally inherited Titcomb and Haslewick on Isabel’s death in 1453, and partitioned them between them. CP25(1)/13/83/24; CP40/756, rot. 68d; 757, rot. 397; VCH Berks. iv. 209 (where it is wrongly stated that Maud and Margaret were Margaret Popham’s daughters by her husband William Wayte); C139/150/32; CFR, xix. 78-79. The total value of the Longs’ holdings is not certain, but it probably well exceeded the £20 p.a. given in the tax assessments of 1451, or the £26 p.a. suggested at their inquisitions post mortem. E179/196/118; C140/65/13; C141/1/1.

Long’s marriage may have taken place before his election to Parliament in 1442, but even so he was still a young man, perhaps under age, with no experience of local administration to commend him to the electors. His father sat in the same Parliament for Salisbury, and his brothers Henry and Richard represented other Wiltshire boroughs. That Robert and three of his sons should all be elected together indicates the extent of his political influence in the county, bolstered as it was by his position as bailiff of the liberties of Bishop Aiscough of Salisbury and his close association with Sir Walter Hungerford†, Lord Hungerford. John never became such a prominent figure in the locality as his father or older brother Henry; nor was he ever formally linked with figures of importance or appointed to office by the Crown. Furthermore, he was rarely named as a feoffee, although in the autumn of 1443 he was party to a transaction whereby property in Wootton Bassett was settled on John Gibbs and his wife. Wilts. Feet of Fines, 560. His was always a subordinate role. On their father’s death in 1447, Henry inherited the principal family estates, and when he was elected as a knight of the shire for the first time, on 4 Feb. 1449, John supported him at the county court at Wilton by attesting the electoral indenture. C219/15/6. In the following year John took up residence at Draycot Cerne, and it was as ‘esquire alias gentleman’, that he obtained a royal pardon on 23 May 1452. C67/40, m. 23. That year he presented a rector to the church at Draycot, and he may have subsequently altered or rebuilt the manor-house there, for his parents’ coat of arms was depicted in the oriel window of the hall. VCH Wilts. xiv. 77-78, 81. Although he leased a house in Broun Street, Salisbury (near another occupied by his brother Henry), he is not known to have ever participated in civic affairs. Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxvii. 85, 90. He and Henry were both fined for failing to take up knighthood in response to royal proclamations in 1458 and 1465, with John charged four marks on the latter occasion, considerably less than his brother. E403/43, rot. 1d.

John served as a juror at the inquisition post mortem on (Sir) John Lisle II* at Salisbury in October 1471, and at the belated inquiries about the late Sir John Popham*’s estate at Malmesbury five years later. C140/39/59; 56/39. He himself died on 20 Sept. 1478, leaving his son Thomas, aged 30, as his heir. C140/65/13. Draycot was formally settled on Thomas and his wife Margery in the following year, and he succeeded not only to his mother’s holdings at her death in 1483, but also to those of his uncle Henry at Wraxhall in 1490, thus becoming the first of the Longs to hold both Draycot and South Wraxhall. Later knighted, he died in 1508. CFR, xxi. nos. 5667, 717, 719, 783; CPR, 1476-85, p. 173; VCH Wilts. vii. 22; xiv. 77-78.