LUDLOW, William II (d.1478), of Ludgershall and Salisbury and Hill Deverill, Wilts.

Although late in Ludlow’s life his son-in-law, the ambitious lawyer and social climber Thomas Tropenell*, could proudly refer to him as ‘lord of Hille Deverell, boteler to iij kynges of England, that is to sey, with Kyng Harry the iiijth, the vth and the vjth, which beareth the arms: a feld of silver, a cheverone of sable, iij martron hedes of the same, rased’, Ludlow’s background was much more humble than all this implies. Far from ever being the King’s chief butler he was in fact merely one of the staff of the royal cellar (a ‘yeoman trayer’), and did not even rise to be its serjeant. Ludlow may not have been his original name: in his cartulary Tropenell reveals that his father-in-law sometimes used the alias of Harper, Tropenell Cart. i. 151-2, 182, 274. Interestingly, he was called ‘bowteller’ (butler) in 1448 when wine was dispatched to Ludgershall for him: Port and Brokage Bks. 1448-9 (Soton. Rec. Ser. xxvi), 178. and his origins are obscure. Wiltshire’s historian Hoare further muddied the waters by stating that the Ludlow family had settled at Hill Deverill in the mid fourteenth century, and that the MP’s wife was the daughter and heiress of a Hampshire landowner called William Rymer, R.C. Hoare, Modern Wilts. (Heytesbury), 13-15. but nothing has been found in contemporary records to lend credence to either statement. In these, Ludlow was not described as ‘of Hill Deverill’ before the late 1450s, C67/42, m. 32. and it seems very likely that his first wife was a close relation of Robert Warmwell, a prominent citizen and draper of Salisbury, and that it was through this marriage that he came into his substantial number of properties in the city and its vicinity.

In 1423 Warmwell and the town clerk of Salisbury, William Lord, made a settlement on Richard Ecton* and his wife Joan of 20 messuages, several acres of land and annual rents of £4 in Salisbury, Old Sarum, North Tidworth and Ludgershall for the term of Joan’s life, with remainder to Ludlow and his wife Margaret and their issue. Wilts. Feet of Fines, 386. It looks as if Joan was a widow of a member of the Warmwell family, and after her life interest expired this estate did indeed pass to the Ludlows. VCH Wilts. xv. 159. The relationship with Warmwell is suggested too by the favour the draper showed to Ludlow’s daughter, another Margaret, whom Warmwell described as his kinswoman and to whom in 1439, when she was the wife of John Erle*, he granted property in Fisherton Anger and Stratford sub Castle, as well as in Minster Street, Salisbury. (Although, having changed his mind, two years later these same properties were re-settled on himself and his wife.) In the will Warmwell made in 1447 Margaret Erle was given a remainder interest in three tenements in Minster Street, while her father Ludlow, who was asked to be an executor, was left £5. Tropenell Cart. i. 151-2, 232-3, 234-9. There is, however, doubt about the legality of earlier transactions, one of which is noted to be ‘vacat quia falsa’. All this suggests that Ludlow’s first wife was Warmwell’s daughter, but predeceased him. Whatever the connexion, it led to Ludlow’s close and enduring links with the citizens.

Ludlow made his career in royal service, which he seems to have entered in Henry IV’s reign by becoming one of the men employed in the King’s cellar. Using the seal of the principality of Wales, on 1 July 1414 Henry V granted him and one of his colleagues the profits of the mill outside the gates of Carnarvon to hold for life, CPR, 1422-9, p. 57. and Ludlow kept his place in the cellar in Henry VI’s reign, then being joined there by his putative kinsman, Richard Ludlow, who having like him benefited from royal patronage became in the 1440s serjeant of the butlery. E101/409/8; PPC, vi. 220-33. Keeping the offices of the cellar in their family, they were later to be joined by the MP’s son John. William was probably to remain a yeoman in the cellar right up to King Henry’s deposition, E101/408/11, 25; 409/9, 11, 16; 410/6, f. 41v; 9, f. 44v. yet the various Crown offices to which he was appointed in the localities must have taken him away from the Household for long periods of time. Most notably, in 1427 he was granted the lucrative post of clerk of the statute merchant in Salisbury, which he retained for more than 33 years, CPR, 1422-9, p. 396. and in 1429 Henry IV’s widow Queen Joan appointed him parker of her estate at Ludgershall, ‘in consideration of the good reports which had been made to her of his person’, with wages of 3d. a day. Furthermore, it was then too that Ludlow was assigned the farm of the manor and town of Ludgershall. After attaining his majority the King confirmed him in the parkership for life. CPR, 1429-36, pp. 266-7; 1436-41, p. 193; SC6/1054/25.

Ludlow sailed to France in the spring of 1430 on the King’s coronation expedition, along with other yeomen of the Household, DKR, xlviii. 270; E404/46/302-3; E403/693, m. 20; 695, m. 6. Several years elapsed before, in 1446, he was paid in full: E404/62/112; E403/762, m. 7. and returned with the royal entourage early in 1432. He was promptly elected to the first of his six Parliaments, meeting on 12 May, as a representative for Ludgershall, where he had taken up residence. During his second Parliament, in 1433, he was appointed by the chief butler Thomas Chaucer as his deputy in Bristol, a post which he probably relinquished late in the following year when different appointment made him joint gauger in Hull, at the other end of the country. To this was added in 1437 the gaugership in the port of London, the office being awarded to him for life as a reward for his good service, and later that year he shared that of warrener of Purbeck, with an additional daily wage of 3d. CPR, 1429-36, pp. 289, 450; 1436-41, pp. 40, 44; CCR, 1441-7, p. 85. When given the London office Ludlow was sitting in his fourth Parliament, once again for Ludgershall. Queen Joan died that summer, but Ludlow’s position of authority in the Crown’s estates in the locality was further confirmed in November 1438 when he was committed keeping of the manor and town of Ludgershall for ten years at an annual farm of £12 6s. 8d. (thus continuing his role of farmer as granted by the late queen). The Exchequer agreed to meet the cost of repairs to two granges and a stable at the start of the lease, and to make Ludlow due allowance for his wages as parker. CFR, xvii. 50; E159/216, brevia Easter rot. 24d.

Ludlow had also been considered for election to the Parliament of 1437 by the citizens of Salisbury, but stood down, perhaps when his return for Ludgershall was confirmed. Ludlow was nominated with two others on 7 Dec. 1436, the names of all three being subsequently crossed out in favour of William Pakyn* and George Westeby*: First General Entry Bk. no. 325. The sheriff’s return for Wilts. and its boroughs was made on 25 Dec.: C219/15/1. However, his candidacy for election by Salisbury to the next Parliament, summoned to meet on 12 Nov. 1439, proved successful. After the dissolution in May 1440 a writ was issued for payment of him and his fellow MP, Richard Payn*, for 88 days at 2s. a day each – making a total of £8 16s. apiece. First General Entry Bk. nos. 348, 351. At the same time the King granted Ludlow the manor and town of Ludgershall for life, in place of his temporary lease at the Exchequer, and also allowed him to share with Richard Ecton an annuity of £10 which Ecton had long received from the Staffordshire manor of Rowley. (He gained the full amount when Ecton died shortly afterwards.) From November that same year he also shared the post of launder of Clarendon park. CPR, 1436-41, pp. 301, 420, 495; CCR, 1435-41, p. 392. Yet Henry VI’s careless generosity did not always hit its mark. In March 1442 he granted Ludlow, along with his son John and Henry Baret*, another member of the Household, a reversionary interest in the offices of constable of Carisbrooke castle and master forester of Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight, to fall in after the death of the duke of Gloucester, but in the event after Gloucester died none of the grantees succeeded in securing these posts. CPR, 1441-6, p. 74. To compensate, Ludlow did receive the alnagership of Salisbury and confirmation as gauger at Hull, and he was also given the custody of lands pertaining to royal wards, such as the wealthy William Sandys, to whom he opportunistically married one of his daughters. CPR, 1441-6, pp. 236, 244, 278; Hoare, 13-15; CP40/742, rot. 309d. William was the gds. of Sir Walter Sandys†: The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 303-4. His son John was permitted to share with him the parkership of Ludgershall and post of gauger in London, which they held in survivorship. Furthermore, and as a significant mark of royal favour, his estate in Ludgershall was granted to him in tail-male in February 1449. CPR, 1441-6, p. 250; 1446-52, pp. 56, 247. Ludlow was not excessively troubled by the Act of Resumption of 1450 (exemption being readily allowed to him in all respects, save for his annuity from Rowley), and the King’s largesse continued in November 1452 with a share in the lease of the town of Pennanllowe in Penlyn, Merioneth. PROME, xii. 127; E163/8/14; CFR, xix. 18-19.

After an absence from the Commons of 13 years, Ludlow was elected to Parliament for Ludgershall again in 1453, then taking his place in the House alongside an unprecedented number of fellow members of the Lancastrian court. It might be assumed that he readily supported all the measures put forward by the government, but if he did so he suffered an unwarranted blow. On 4 Apr., during the recess following the first session at Reading, Ludgershall, which had been granted him in tail-male only four years earlier, was bestowed instead the King’s half-brother Edmund Tudor, newly elevated as earl of Richmond. VCH Wilts. xv. 125; CPR, 1452-61, p. 79. The MP never received adequate compensation for his loss, even though after the dissolution a year later he shared with John Roger III*, a fellow member of the Household, a grant of the marriage of Joan, daughter and heir of Humphrey Eveas of Kent, for which they paid £20. CFR, xix. 89-90.

Ludlow was kept on in the Household during the King’s intermittent periods of mental incapacity in 1453-5, and following Henry’s recovery he was returned again to the Commons when Parliament was summoned to meet on 9 July 1455. By then the Yorkists were in control of the government following their victory at St. Albans. Shortly before the start of the second session in November Ludlow took out a pardon, as ‘yeoman trayer’ of the King’s cellar, C67/41, m. 17; CCR, 1454-61, p. 169. and it would seem that he remained in favour in the Household as although there survives no formal patent for his recovery of Ludgershall after the earl of Richmond’s death a second pardon, granted him in February 1458, referred to him as keeper or occupier of the castle, manor and town of Ludgershall. C67/42, m. 32; E159/235, brevia Mich. rot. 6d. Even so, he is not known to have been returned for the borough again.

Needless to say, Ludlow lost all the offices given him by Henry VI when the latter lost his throne in 1461, CPR, 1461-7, pp. 15, 25, 128. and by the time he was pardoned by the new King Edward IV on 18 May 1462 he was no longer employed in the royal cellar, as gauger of London and Hull or as clerk of the statute merchant at Salisbury. C67/45, m. 23; C241/247/9. Whether he actually took up arms in the civil war is unclear. Sir Robert Harcourt*, a supporter of the new regime, later alleged in the court of common pleas that Ludlow had illegally entered his close at Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, and assaulted him in breach of the peace of Henry VI, an incident which might have been linked to events prior to the battle of Northampton in July 1460, when Harcourt had been held prisoner by Lancastrian loyalists. CP40/808, rot. 342. In those troubled years Ludlow took on the offices of alderman and reeve in Salisbury, but these were in the main honorific positions, which did not involve participation in civic assemblies. Salisbury ledger bk. G23/1/2, ff. 35, 54v. In fact, he is only known to have attended Salisbury’s convocation once, in March 1469. Ibid. f. 86v. On the national scene there is nothing more to recite, save for a further and final pardon, issued to the aged Ludlow as ‘gentleman of Hill Deverill’, on 6 Mar. 1472. C67/49, m. 27.

In the course of his years of service to Henry VI, Ludlow had become a man of considerable property not only in Wiltshire but also in the neighbouring counties. In Berkshire he had acquired in the 1430s the manor of Quarrelstead in Appleton; CCR, 1429-35, p. 231; 1435-41, pp. 176-7, 180; VCH Berks. iv. 339. and in Hampshire he had an interest in an annual rent of £10 from the manor of Cams in Fareham by 1437 (transferring it to Richard Ludlow in 1466), as well as the reversion of land in Faccombe. VCH Hants, iii. 214; CCR, 1447-54, p. 342; 1461-8, p. 381. The messuages in Over Wallop and Lekford in the same county which he held at his death may, like the estate known as ‘Ryvers’ (some 200 acres of land in Fittleworth and holdings at Stopham and Shoreham, all in Sussex), have come to him through transactions with Thomas Lekford alias Ryvers. C140/66/36; CPR, 1446-52, p. 201. In Easter term 1454 a lawsuit brought against Ludlow and Robert Warmwell’s widow Margaret by the lawyers William Kaylewey* and John Newburgh II* alleged they had breached the statute of Westminster by their illegal entry into a messuage and 180 acres of land in Charleton by Knowlton in Dorset. The plaintiffs recovered the property in the following year, by which date Margaret was Ludlow’s wife. CP40/773, rot. 187d; 775, rot. 90; Dorset Feet of Fines, 380.

It was in Wiltshire that Ludlow accumulated the bulk of his landed holdings. There, for example, he acquired from the Chancy family in the 1440s the manor of Buttermere (which he passed on to a younger son, William). CCR, 1441-7, pp. 464-5; 1461-8, pp. 327, 369; VCH Wilts. xvi. 85; C1/331/18; 334/55. Shortly before his death in 1453 Philip Butler* temporarily alienated his manor of Salterton to Ludlow, but regained possession of the property after paying him 100 marks. Perhaps these arrangements represent a mortgage or some other commercial transaction between the two men. C139/149/27; E210/2822. Meanwhile, in the tax assessments of February 1451, Ludlow had been put down with lands worth as much as £266 p.a., and although a substantial part of this income came from the estates of royal wards in his custody, E179/196/118. there can be no doubting his personal wealth. In Salisbury alone he possessed a large number of properties, and was prepared to pay a carpenter £20 to build him a house within the Blue Boar in the Market. By 1455 he possessed a principal dwelling in Castle Street and 41 other buildings, including besides the Boar another inn called The Saracen’s Head in Carter Street. Wilts. Hist. Centre, Salisbury misc. docs. 164/1/14; Trin. Hosp. mss, 1446/63; Wilts. Arch. Mag. xv. 329-36; xxxvii. 78-79. To supply his properties with victuals and furnishings Ludlow imported goods through Southampton, notably quantities of wine for his household at Ludgershall and wainscots for that at Salisbury. Port and Brokage Bks. 1448-9, 111, 115-16, 172, 178, 192-3, 214.

Ludlow’s status and wealth attracted marriages for his children from among the gentry of the region. As already noted, his daughter Margaret was first married to John Erle of Burbage, the son and heir of Robert Erle* (who was himself the nephew of the influential Sir William Sturmy*), and Ludlow was probably instrumental in securing his son-in-law’s election for Ludgershall in 1450. After Erle’s death Margaret married Thomas Tropenell, who proudly displayed the Ludlow arms in the Tropenell chapel in the church at Great Chalfield, and decorated his manor-house with the heraldic devices adopted by his father-in-law, Wilts. Arch. Mag. xciii. 82, 86. Ludlow, called the ‘father’ of John Erle, was executor of Erle’s will, along with his own wife, Margaret, his son John, and his da. Margaret, Erle’s widow: CP40/781, rot. 244d. whom he asked to be a feoffee of his property and custodian of his moveable goods. Tropenell Cart. i. 369-71, 377, 407-8; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 152, 156. Even so, Ludlow was reluctant to part with the original deeds to property at East and West Codford and Maiden Bradley for Tropenell to keep, only allowing the lawyer to copy them into his cartulary. As Tropenell said, Ludlow ‘wolle not departe from theym by cause his maner of Hille Deverell is comprised in the same dedes’. Tropenell Cart. ii. 109, 134. According to Hoare, Ludlow’s son and heir married a daughter of Thomas Ringwood, a Hampshire esquire, while two other of the MP’s daughters married his wards William Sandys and John Norwood, Hoare, 13-15; Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxvi. 173. and a fourth apparently wed another heir to wide estates, Robert Dingley* of Wolverton (who sat with Ludlow as his fellow MP for Ludgershall in 1453). VCH Hants, iii. 241; Vis. Essex, ii (Harl. Soc. xiv), 548.

Ludlow died an old man on 23 Dec. 1478. C140/66/36. But note that some writs de diem clausit extremum had been issued on 24 Oct.: CFR, xxi. nos. 449, 451, 510. He was buried in St. Thomas’s church, Salisbury, beneath a marble tomb placed at the end of the high altar. According to Tropenell, following the collapse of the chancel of St. Thomas’s in 1447 Ludlow had himself paid for the roof to be ‘new siled, and paynted and sette with scochyn of armes of hymself, his wyf and his children’. Tropenell Cart. i. 274-5; VCH Wilts. vi. 150. Our MP’s eldest son John inherited his lands in Hampshire, Wiltshire and Sussex, but although he served as alderman of Salisbury in 1480-1, he did little else of distinction before his death in 1488. CIPM Hen. VII, i. 274-5, 368-9; Salisbury ledger bk. G23/1/2, f. 141v. Members of the family are not known to have sat in Parliament again until the reign of Elizabeth I.