MARE, Richard de la (d.1436), of Hereford and Credenhill, Herefs.

Richard de la Mare was the illegitimate son of the first known Speaker, Sir Peter de la Mare, and was probably born in the late 1360s. He first appears in the records when named as a remainder-man in a final concord of 1382. If it is correct to draw the most plausible inference from the unusual settlement embodied in that fine, its levying was prompted by Sir Peter’s abandonment of the hope of legitimate issue. It settled the reversion of the family’s manors of Yatton and Little Hereford, expectant on Sir Peter’s death, upon his younger brother, Malcolm†, and Malcolm’s wife, Alice, and their issue, with remainders over, successively in tail, to three other de la Mares, Thomas, James and our MP, with final remainders to another kinsman, Roger de la Mare, a London draper, in tail-male, and the right heirs of Sir Peter. Later litigation shows that James was a bastard son of Sir Peter, and a deed of 1389 that our MP and Thomas were his brothers. CP25(1)/83/48/21; JUST1/1525, rot. 12; CAD, iv. A8934. All three must have been illegitimate: the preference given by the settlement to their father’s younger brother permits of no other sensible interpretation. Yet illegitimacy did not prevent our MP from contracting two excellent marriages, the second to the daughter of a peer, and becoming one of the most important of the Herefordshire gentry of the first part of the fifteenth century. It was the marriages that made him, particularly the lands brought to him by the first, setting him on a higher trajectory than that of his elder brother, James, to whom the family manor of Little Hereford in north Herefordshire eventually came.

In the spring of 1387 de la Mare participated in the naval expedition of Richard Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, but other early references to him do not portray him in a favourable light. On 19 Feb. 1395 he and James allegedly murdered one Nicholas Maugne at Kimbolton, near Leominster, and on 4 Aug. 1399 they raided the property of one of the county gentry, Henry Hakluyt, at nearby Eaton, abducting his daughter-in-law, Joan. E101/40/33, m. 1d; CPR, 1399-1401, p. 103. This latter offence may have arisen from a family dispute. Joan is perhaps to be identified with the young daughter and heiress of their brother, Thomas, to whom, under the terms of the 1382 fine, the two de la Mare manors descended on the deaths, in quick succession, of her father and great-uncle, Malcolm. Malcolm died between May 1398 and July 1400: The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 686. This identification is certainly consistent with the commission issued by the Crown in September 1400 for an inquiry into whether these manors should be taken into royal hands through her minority. However this may be, the brothers did not suffer for their lawlessness: on 22 Nov. 1399, soon after the accession of Henry IV, they secured a pardon for their crimes, and it may be that the commission was issued at their petition as a more lawful method of wresting Joan’s estate from the Hakluyts. CPR, 1399-1401, pp. 103, 349. Unfortunately the commission’s findings are illegible: C145/272/9; CIMisc. vii. 10.

By that date de la Mare had the influence to resort to such tactics. He had been quick to identify himself with the new monarch, perhaps because of a connexion with Lancaster predating the usurpation, and soon found a place among the esquires of his household. The first documented benefit of this service came on 19 Jan. 1400, when he shared with another King’s esquire, William Phelip† (later Lord Bardolf), a grant of the considerable annuity of £40, to be taken at the Exchequer (an annuity he was to enjoy until his death), together with the custody of the alien priory of Chepstow during the duration of hostilities with France. CPR, 1399-1401, pp. 103, 179; 1413-16, p. 62. His marriage to a wealthy widow and heiress, Isabel Boulwas, was probably also a result of his Household service. The couple were married between 28 Apr. 1402, when her feoffees were licensed to settle her manors of Bolas and Isombridge (Shropshire) and Brimfield (neighbouring Little Hereford) upon her as a widow, and 5 Feb. 1404, when the same feoffees were licensed to settle Brimfield on the couple and others. CPR, 1401-5, pp. 100, 352. Isabel’s inheritance also comprised property at ‘Muryvale’ in Ashton, near Brimfield, and at Tyberton and Dorstone in south-west Herefordshire. In dower and jointure from her first husband, Sir John Eynesford, she had additional Herefordshire property at Howton (in Kenderchurch in the south-west of the county), Tillington and Burghill (both near Hereford), with small holdings at Westbury-on-Severn and Bollow in Gloucestershire. She also, by title unknown, had a life interest in the manor of Edvin Ralph near Bromyard in north-east Herefordshire. None of these properties was particularly valuable – the largest, the manor of Brimfield, was assessed at £10 p.a. in her inquisition post mortem – but the sum of their inquisition valuations was nearly £40 p.a. CIPM, xvii. 624-6; xxi. 772-3. Even if they were worth no more, they were enough to number de la Mare among the richest gentry in the comparatively-impoverished county of Herefordshire.

This wealth, however, threatened to be only temporary, for de la Mare stood to lose all his wife’s lands should she predecease him without issue. Given her age (her first marriage, which was childless, had taken place before March 1369), CPR, 1367-70, pp. 226-7. this was a probability, and he prudently took measures to ensure death would not be his material ruin. By a final concord levied in 1404 Isabel’s feoffees made the settlement of Brimfield licensed shortly before; and by deed of 1407 the same settlement was made in respect of her manor of Bolas and Isombridge. CP25(1)/83/51/10; CPR, 1405-8, p. 315; CIPM, xxiv. 463-4. Her inquisition post mortem shows that similar settlements were made of the rest of her inheritance. Further, de la Mare also moved to ensure that he would retain part of the lands she had from her first husband: by a fine levied in 1408 her first husband’s cousin and heir, another Sir John Eynesford, conceded that, should she die in our MP’s lifetime, de la Mare would retain the manor of Howton for the term of his own life. CIPM, xxi. 772-3; CP25(1)/83/51/24.

In making this marriage de la Mare was clearly thinking in material rather than dynastic terms. Perhaps he was depending on his surviving illegitimate brother and earlier partner in crime, James, for the perpetuation of the family. Their niece, Joan, was dead without issue or disinherited by July 1402, by which date, at the latest, James was in possession of, or at least claimed title to, the manors of Little Hereford and nearby Yatton. From 1402 James was forced to defend his title against his fa.’s legit. heirs, Maud, wife of Sir Hugh Cheyne† and daughter of Sir Peter de la Mare’s aunt, Joan, and Roger Seymour, son of Maud’s sister, Margery: CCR, 1399-1402, p. 543; CPR, 1401-5, p. 168; JUST1/1525, rot. 12. In 1407 he conceded their title to Yatton, although the dispute continued into the 1460s: CP40/585, rot. 139d; CIPM, xxi. 429; KB27/825, rot. 89d. The two brothers were then seemingly on good terms: on 8 Apr. 1402 they came before John Falk†, mayor of Hereford, to seal a statute merchant in £100 to the local lawyer, Stephen White. Later, however, their relationship came under strain. In October 1408 James entered into a bond in 500 marks to abide the arbitration of the chancellor, Thomas Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, in a financial dispute with Richard, perhaps arising out of the failure to discharge this statute merchant, and was obliged to pay his brother 150 marks, a massive sum for someone of his attenuated resources. C241/198/64; CCR, 1405-9, pp. 462, 470.

By this date the brothers’ careers were set on very different paths. James’s place among the county’s lesser gentry was made apparent by his appointment, in 1410, as a collector of the fifteenth and tenth; by contrast, Richard served only on much more socially-prestigious commissions, to which he began to be appointed soon after contracting his remunerative marriage. CFR, xii. 258; xiii. 182; CPR, 1405-8, p. 147. Our MP’s high standing was also validated by the leading gentry of his native shire. In 1406, for example, he acted as a feoffee for Thomas de la Hay* in a complex agreement for the conditional purchase by de la Hay of the manors of Fownhope and Wellington, property of the childless Sir John Chandos†; and in 1407 he employed de la Hay and Thomas Bromwich among his own feoffees. Herefs. RO, Urishay Estate mss, W85/3; Hereford Cathedral Archs., 2695A.

At the beginning of Henry V’s reign, de la Mare secured confirmation of the royal annuity he shared with Sir William Phelip. Although, in 1420, he and James were named among those Herefordshire gentry fit for military service, there is no evidence that he earned this continued reward by participating in Henry V’s French campaigns. CPR, 1413-16, p. 62; E28/97/12B, 12C. Indeed, he seems rarely to have been absent from his native shire, attesting six of the seven parliamentary election indentures which survive for the reign. His services to the Crown, such as they were, concerned purely local affairs: in November 1416 he was added to the county bench (although he was one of six removed when the commission was reissued in July 1419); late in the reign, he was named to raise loans for the continued persecution of the war; and in May 1421 he himself advanced the sum of 100 marks, a considerable contribution to the 766 marks raised from lay landholders in the county. CPR, 1416-22, pp. 251, 416, 453; CFR, xiv. 317; E401/696. He also continued to act for other leading Herefordshire gentry. By 1420 he was a remainder-man in the Welsh lordship of Talgarth in an arrangement by which James, Lord Berkeley, offered John Merbury* surety for the repayment of a large loan; on 12 Dec. 1420 he was among the feoffees of Sir John Chandos pardoned for the unlicensed acquisition of the castle of Snodhill, held in chief; and in June 1421, as a feoffee of Thomas de la Hay, he made a settlement of the manor of Arcleston. CPR, 1416-22, pp. 306-7, 310; CIPM, xxv. 415. What else is known of him in these years relates to his purely personal affairs. In July 1416 James resettled the family’s manor of Little Hereford, giving his wife, Katherine, a life interest, although preserving the estate in remainder enjoyed by our MP under the fine of 1382. By a fine levied in the following year, Richard conceded that, after his wife’s death, her first husband’s small Gloucestershire manor of Bollow would pass to the Eynesford heir, John Melbourne. DL25/869; CP25(1)/291/64/79.

De la Mare’s wife did not long survive this agreement. Her death is dated to 17 Sept. and 24 Sept. 1421 in her two inqs. post mortem: CIPM, xxi. 772-3. Her monumental inscription is in error in dating it to 14 Feb. 1422, the date on which her inq. was taken in Glos.: Mon. Brasses: Portfolio Plates of the Mon. Brass Soc. 152. Her death did not involve him in the loss of any significant part of her estates. Her own inheritance was much more extensive than the property, like Bollow, that she had held in dower, and the precautions he had taken soon after their marriage meant that he retained (for the term of his own life) that inheritance together with the manor of Howton, once belonging to her first husband. On 1 May 1422, after the formality of her inquisitions post mortem, the escheator of Herefordshire was ordered to take de la Mare’s fealty for the manor of Brimfield, held in chief, and to remove royal hands from the other lands in which he had a joint estate with her. CCR, 1419-22, pp. 240-1; 1422-9, pp. 240-1. On 14 Dec. 1422 the escheator of Glos. was ordered to deliver a third of the manor of Westbury-on-Severn to John Melbourne and Melbourne’s wife, Elizabeth: CCR, 1422-9, p. 6; CPR, 1422-9, p. 39. With his economic position more or less maintained, he soon made a socially-better match to the daughter of a peer and the widow of a knight. Their marriage cannot be precisely dated but as, judging from de la Mare’s inquisition post mortem, a daughter was born to the couple in 1423, it must have taken place soon after his first wife’s death. The match brought him another manor, probably in lieu of a marriage portion: the feoffees of Alice’s brother, John, Lord Talbot, headed by Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, settled the manor of Credenhill, a few miles from Hereford, on the new couple. CIPM, xxiv. 463-4; A.J. Pollard, ‘The Talbots’ (Bristol Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1968), 12, 64. What Alice brought from her earlier marriage is not known: her first husband, Sir Thomas Barre the younger, had predeceased his father, so she had no right to dower in the estates of the Barres, but, given her status, she must have had a jointure interest in part of these estates. Unfortunately, that interest is not recorded in either her own inq. post mortem or that of her Barre father-in-law: CIPM, xxi. 498-9; xxiv. 670. In return, de la Mare settled upon her a life interest in his first wife’s property at Tyberton and Dorstone, both lying not far from Credenhill. CIPM, xxiv. 463-4, 670. One other detail, a curious one, is worth noting about the match: in the Gloucestershire inquisitions post mortem taken on the death of our MP’s first wife, John Barre*, the young son of his future wife, is returned as heir of his first, the jurors, unhelpfully, giving no descent. De la Mare’s two wives were either quite closely related, or, more likely, his first wife was a kinswoman of his second’s former husband. CIPM, xxi. 772-3. The jurors in Isabel’s Herefs. inq. name her heir as Walter Bourghill, again giving no descent.

So socially significant a marriage was the prelude to a late flowering in de la Mare’s career. He served successively as sheriff and escheator between 1423 and 1425, as MP in the Parliaments of 1425 and 1427, and again as sheriff soon after the end of his second Parliament. CFR, xv. 12, 54, 244; C219/13/3, 5. So intensive a period of administrative activity was rare in the context of any career, and the explanation probably lies in the employment he had found in the service of his new Talbot kinsmen. In 1430 he was joint-plaintiff in various actions of debt with Lord Talbot’s receiver-general, Richard Leget, suggesting that he himself also had a place in the family’s estate administration; in 1433 Talbot’s wife, Margaret, sent her auditor, Richard Clerk, to Credenhill, to invite de la Mare and his wife to spend Christmas with her at Corfham near Ludlow in Shropshire; and in 1435 he acted in a final concord by which Lord Talbot, then absent in France, purchased a small estate in Bridgnorth from Sir Richard Lacon*. CP40/678, rot. 144; Salop Archs. Bridgwater pprs. 76/1433-4; CP25(1)/195/22/17.

By this date de la Mare, although the father of relatively young children, was already an old man, probably not far short of 70, and he died on 1 Feb. 1436. CFR, xvi. 245; CIPM, xxiv. 463-4; CCR, 1435-41, p. 76. Routine inquisitions held after his death returned his two daughters, Margaret, born in about 1423, and Anne, born in about 1426, as his coheiresses, but other evidence shows that he had also had a son named Thomas, all three children being the issue of his second wife. When, in 1474, his stepson, Sir John Barre, established a chantry he named his three siblings of the half blood on the bede roll. CIPM, xxiv. 463-4; CPR, 1467-77, p. 425. Clearly Thomas had lived long enough to make an impression, but, accepting the inquisition findings are correct, he must have died as a boy. The fate of his sisters is less clear. Their mother did not live to promote them, surviving de la Mare by only six months, and they had little or nothing to look forward to in the way of inheritance. CIPM, xxiv. 670. The acres that had sustained their father had been the property of his first wife, and their mother, although of aristocratic birth, was not an heiress. Yet, if one may judge from later conveyances, de la Mare could have deflected to them part at least of his first wife’s lands. After his death his feoffees acted, presumably on his instructions, as if they had been his to bestow, and the fact that they were not bestowed on his daughters suggests that they, like their brother, died young. On 17 June 1437 the feoffees granted the manor of Bolas and Isombridge to John, Lord Talbot, Ralph, Lord Cromwell, Sir Christopher Talbot*, and others, in what was an alienation to the Talbot family; and, on the following 6 Dec., they conveyed the manor of Brimfield to Edmund Cornwall, Hugh Warton* and others, seemingly the representatives of the wealthy Hereford citizen, Henry Chippenham*. CPR, 1436-41, pp. 73, 125; Salop Archs., deeds 6000/4503.

De la Mare may have resided in Hereford for at least part of his career. In a royal commission of 1405, he is described as ‘of Hereford’; and residence there would explain the nomination of a Hereford man, Walter Mibbe, among his feoffees in 1407, his own appearance as a feoffee of another citizen in 1428, and his frequent appearances at county parliamentary elections there. CPR, 1405-8, pp. 147, 315; Hereford Cathedral Archs., 84. It would also explain why he chose to be buried in Hereford cathedral, where his memorial survives in the form of a fine brass, a product of the London D workshop, to himself and his first wife. That he should have been memorialized with Isabel suggests that the brass may have been commissioned at the time of her death. Mon. Brasses, 152; Hereford Cathedral ed. Aylmer and Tiller, 334.