MANSTON, William, of Manston, Isle of Thanet, Kent.

The Manston family had held the manor of the same name on the Isle of Thanet, near Ramsgate, since at least the reign of King John. E. Hasted, Kent ed. Drake, x. 380. William’s parentage is obscure, but he must still have been quite young when he served as a man-at-arms in the retinue of John Styward, one of the esquires for the King’s body, at the battle of Agincourt. N.H. Nicolas, Agincourt, 39. Unlike his brother, Roger (who served with Sir Reynold Cobham and other leading Kentishmen in the duke of Gloucester’s retinue), William does not appear to have taken part in the conquest of Normandy two years later. E101/51/2. Nevertheless, he appears to have enjoyed a reputation as a man of military prowess in the county: when, in December 1419, the sheriff and j.p.s were ordered to send in a list of those best suited for service in defence of the realm, he was one of 12 ‘lances’ named. E28/97, no. 15. Two years later he was present at Canterbury for the parliamentary election, heading the attestors to the indenture with two others also named in the 1419 list, Edward Guildford* and John Digges*. C219/12/6.

Manston’s activities in the early years of Henry VI’s reign are poorly documented, but it is likely that they were spent consolidating his position as a landowner on the Isle of Thanet. Little is known about Juliana Hils, Manston’s first wife, Cotton, 194, 200. but his second, to whom he was married probably in the spring of 1428, was the daughter of a former mayor of Sandwich, Thomas Loveryk. The latter’s feoffees settled the manor of ‘Gosehall’ in Thanet upon the couple, no doubt as a marriage portion. CCR, 1422-9, p. 460. In Michaelmas term 1429 Manston was sued in the court of common pleas by Thomas Wykes†, one of his neighbours. Both men had submitted to the arbitration of John Barton I* in their dispute over a moiety of the manor of ‘Cleveyshende’ in the parishes of Minster and St. Laurence, but Wykes now claimed that Manston had failed to keep to Barton’s award that Manston should retain the property on payment to Wykes of £58 6s. 8d. in compensation for his loss. CP40/639, rot. 454d. The value of all of Manston’s landed holdings cannot now be ascertained, although in 1431 he was assessed towards the parliamentary subsidy on property worth £5 p.a. in the hundred of Ringslow (which covered most of Thanet). Feudal Aids, iii. 64.

In 1434 Manston was among those in Kent instructed to take the oath not to maintain law-breakers. CPR, 1429-36, p. 388. This marked his return to the public affairs of the county. In February 1435 he and his brother, Roger, were rewarded at the Exchequer for their part in the capture of a Dutch ship whose crew had attempted to smuggle wool out of Thanet, and also with Roger he travelled to Rochester that September, to attest the parliamentary election. E403/717, m. 10; C219/14/5. He was pricked as sheriff of Kent a few weeks later, and ex officio, appointed to his first ad-hoc commission in February 1436. Manston’s military experience would prove vital during his shrievalty. In June Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy laid siege to the Calais Pale and Manston took on the responsibility of arranging musters and organizing the transport of reinforcements and supplies to the beleaguered town. C54/286, m. 4d; E28/57. It was in the aftermath of the successful lifting of the siege that, on 17 Dec. 1436, he was elected as one of the knights of the shire for Kent, in company with John Digges, whose father had served alongside Manston at Agincourt. The military character of the election is further suggested by the fact that it was presided over by James Fiennes*, himself a veteran of Agincourt, and that the list of attestors to the parliamentary indenture was headed by the experienced soldiers, Sir Thomas Kyriel* and William Clifford. Manston’s neighbours from Thanet, his brother Roger, John Septvance and John Daundelyon, were also present to witness his return. C219/15/1. The Parliament of 1437 was dominated by concerns over the campaigns across the Channel, particularly the captaincy of Calais under Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and while there is no evidence to link Manston with the duke, it is probable that his experience of warfare was a factor in his election to the Commons.

On his return home, Manston continued to play his part in the public affairs of Kent. In 1438 his local knowledge was called upon when he was commissioned to inquire into wastes at the rectory of Newington by Hythe, and three years later he was one of those nominated to treat for an advance of the subsidy granted in the Parliament of 1439-40. In March 1443 he was named on the first of several commissions of array, suggesting that this was a task in which he excelled. Although in July 1450, during Cade’s rebellion, he was named twice in separate royal pardons (both as resident in the hundred of Ringslow), this does not necessarily mean that men from the Isle of Thanet formed part of Cade’s host. There is no evidence that Manston personally joined the rebels at Blackheath, and the purchase of pardons was probably mere prudence on his part. His appointments in the following spring to commissions to deliver the gaol at Canterbury and array the men of the Isle of Thanet to resist the French, rumoured to be preparing to attack the coast of Kent, demonstrate both that the Crown had no reason to doubt his loyalty and that he remained one of the leading military men of the county. CPR, 1446-52, pp. 370, 373, 443. In April 1454 he was among those appointed, along with the sheriff, to treat for a loan from merchants to pay for an expedition to guard the seas around Calais, and two years later he was one of the local gentry instructed to attend upon the commissioners of oyer and terminer sent to Maidstone in the wake of fresh popular disturbances. PPC, vi. 288.

Manston’s private concerns were centred upon the Isle of Thanet. He was frequently called upon to act as a feoffee for his neighbours there and elsewhere in east Kent, in these duties coming into regular association with other landowners and local lawyers. CCR, 1429-36, pp. 113-14, 121-2; CP25(1)/115/323/750; Centre for Kentish Studies, Canterbury consist. ct. wills, PRC 32/1, f. 69. For instance, in November 1446 he was among a group of feoffees, including Sir John Cheyne II*, who quitclaimed the manor of St. Nicholas on the Isle of Thanet to Edmund Beaufort, marquess of Dorset, and certain of his servants. This quitclaim brought an end to a dispute over the St. Nicholas estate, formerly belonging to Nicholas St. Nicholas, which Manston and his co-feoffees had defended at common law three years earlier. Representing the interests of Christine, one of Nicholas St. Nicholas’s daughters, who had become a nun in The Minories, London, they had brought an action against Beaufort’s retainer John Sandeway for breaking into the manor to assert Beaufort’s title by grant of her now dead sister Elizabeth. They claimed that before she died Elizabeth had enfeoffed Thomas Langley, bishop of Durham, and others, from whom they themselves had received seisin. Even so, by 1446 Manston and the rest had bowed to the influence of the marquess. CCR, 1441-6, p. 441; CP40/731, rot. 523. That same year he was involved in litigation as one of the administrators of another of his Thanet neighbours, John Daundelyon, and in 1456 he and the other trustees to whom Richard Chayne had demised the manor of Halle and property in Elham and Barham near Dover were similarly forced to defend their interest in the property. CP40/740, rot. 452; 782, rot. 187; KB27/717, rot. 8d.

One of the factors which drew the leading men of Thanet together was their tenancy of land pertaining to St. Augustine’s abbey in Canterbury. In 1441 anger over the rents charged by the abbot on the manors of Minster and Heagrave had reached a crisis and the abbot was forced to negotiate new leases with the leading tenants. J. Lewis, Hist. Isle of Thanet, 106. By the early 1450s relations appear to have become more harmonious, and Manston led the tenants in the defence of Thanet against possible French attack in both 1451 and 1458. Manston’s relationship with the other great religious house in Canterbury, Christ Church priory, also seems to have been amicable, and he became well known in the city, where he sometimes initiated suits in the bailiffs’ court. He frequently employed a Canterbury lawyer, Hamon Bele, as his attorney in the King’s bench and common pleas. C1/11/250; KB27/706, rot. 77; 721, rot. 40; CP40/718, rot. 442d; 751, rot. 368.

Manston last Crown appointment was the commission of array to which he was assigned in January 1458. His omission from various similar commissions sent into Kent during the turmoil of 1458-61 may suggest that he died soon afterwards. He was buried, next to his brother Roger, in the Greyfiars, Canterbury. His son Nicholas, his putative heir by his first marriage, had died in 1444, leaving as his sole heir his daughter, Joan. She married Thomas St. Nicholas, a kinsman of the Thanet family for whom Manston acted as feoffee in the 1440s. The recognizance for 1,000 marks which Thomas made to the MP in 1447 may have been related to the settlement of the St. Nicholas estate or to his marriage. Hasted, x. 380; CCR, 1447-54, p. 21; W.D. Belcher, Kentish Brasses, 109. Manston’s widow, Joan, made her will in February 1476, in which she requested burial in the parish church of Herne, but made provision for her soul and that of her late husband to be remembered in the chapel of St. Pancras within the cemetery of St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, and in the church of St. Laurence on Thanet. She named one son, John (who had predeceased her) by her marriage with Manston, but also referred to an unspecified number of other children from the union. Her brother, Thomas Loveryk, served as her executor. Archdeaconry ct. wills, PRC 17/2, f. 324. Manston’s daughter and heir died in 1493 and was buried in St. Laurence’s church. Belcher, Brasses, 109.