MICHELGROVE, John (d.1459), of Falconhurst, Kent and Michelgrove in Clapham, Suss.

The manor of Falconhurst on the border of Sussex and Kent had long been held by the family of Fauconer as tenants-in-chief of the Crown by the service of keeping a royal falcon. Appurtenant to it was the manor and advowson of the chapel of St. Giles at Wootton, and further west in Sussex the Fauconers also possessed property in Clapham, to the north-west of Worthing, which became known as the manor of Michelgrove. This last, providing the Fauconers with their alternative surname, they held of the honour of Bramber, as feudal tenants of the Mowbrays. The estate passed down intact in the male line from the late twelfth century until the deaths of our MP and his son and heir in1459. The MP’s father succeeded to it in 1398, following the deaths of his elder brother Henry and the latter’s posthumously-born son, VCH Suss. vi (1), 13-14; Suss. N. and Q. v. 77-79; CIPM, xvii. 491-2, 1064-5; xviii. 304; CFR, xi. 146-7, 177-8, 261. and on his marriage to the heiress Joan Wheghelton he settled Falconhurst on her in jointure. His lands at Michelgrove were valued at £20 p.a. in the tax assessments of 1412. CPR, 1405-8, p. 263; Feudal Aids, vi. 524. Joan was the youngest of three daughters of Richard Wheghelton, who had died in 1383 possessed of property at Bosham in west Sussex, held of the Crown by serjeanty in return for presenting the monarch with two white capons whenever he rode by. After the childless death of one of her siblings Joan came to share this property with her surviving elder sister, Margaret, afterwards the wife of John Scardevyle. VCH Suss. iv. 185; CIPM, xvi. 73, 481; CFR, x. 87, 201. The two women were also the next heirs of a kinsman, John Taverner, who by royal licence of 1414 settled on them his manor of Kingsham near Chichester should he and his wife Alice die without issue. Taverner’s holdings, valued at £4 16s. 8d. a year, remained in the possession of his widow, who, however, before her death in 1422 transferred them to the sisters and their husbands Scardevyle and Michelgrove. CPR, 1413-16, pp. 199, 245; 1422-9, p. 12; CIPM, xx. 185; CCR, 1413-19, pp. 152-3; C145/302, no. 3.

A John Michelgrove, called ‘the younger’, was among the esquires who enlisted in the earl of Arundel’s retinue for Henry V’s first expedition to France in 1415, but it seems unlikely that this was the future MP, who may not yet have been old enough for military service. E101/47/1. But if this was the MP his age (25) as given in his mother’s post mortem of 1439 cannot have been correct: C139/91/18. His father, who attested the Sussex elections to six of the Parliaments summoned between that year and 1422, died at an unknown date preceding the death of his lord the duke of Norfolk in October 1432. C219/11/7, 8; 12/2, 4, 6; 13/1; CIPM, xxiv. 117. By then the younger John had been present at the hustings at Chichester for the first time, and again witnessed the shire electoral indenture in 1435. C219/14/3, 5. He had not yet entered his full patrimony, as his mother survived in possession of the bulk of the family lands as her dower and jointure. Accordingly, in the tax assessments of 1436 he was recorded with land in Sussex and Kent worth just £5 p.a. E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14(x)d. To this was added, on Joan’s death on 30 July 1439, her inheritance in west Sussex, together with the Michelgrove properties in the east of the county and in Kent, given in her inquisition post mortem a clear annual value of just under £19 – probably a substantial underestimate of their total worth. C139/91/18; CFR, xvii. 130. In the course of his career Michaelgrove made additions to his holdings, by acquiring more land in Bosham. CP25(1)/241/89/12.

Michelgrove was frequently called upon to assist others of the Sussex gentry in their landed settlements, which may imply that he received some training in the law or in estate management. Before 1432 he was enfeoffed of lands at Shoreham, which shortly afterwards came into the possession of the lawyer Richard Jay*, and in June 1438 he witnessed a confirmation made by his feudal lord John, duke of Norfolk, of a grant to the prior of Sele of property in the same neighbourhood. CCR, 1429-35, p. 169; Magdalen Coll. Oxf. Sele deeds, 33. Two years before his only return to Parliament, he was made a feoffee of the important castle and manor of Bodiam, recently inherited by Richard Dallingridge*. CP40/731, cart. rot. 2d. In this regard he was closely associated with the Sussex lawyers Edmund Mille* and William Sydney, with whom he established amicable relations. In 1441, together with Mille and his brother Edward*, he dealt with property in Middlesex belonging to John Weston II*, and he not only assisted Edmund in 1445 in the acquisition of land in Horsham but later agreed to be an executor of his will. The two men were linked too in the administration of the estates of Syon abbey. CCR, 1435-41, p. 451; CP25(1)/241/89/24; Lambeth Palace Lib. Reg. Kempe, ff. 306v-7. Michelgrove’s dealings with Sydney were more complex, and it has been credibly suggested that he married one of Sydney’s kinswomen. The families of Sydney and Michaelgrove both had interests in land at Kingsham, and in 1423 Sydney obtained possession from the Scardevyles of some of the former Taverner property there. Whether Michelgrove subsequently sold him his manor of Kingsham, or Sydney proved an earlier title to it, remains unclear, but it may be that the manor formed part of a marriage settlement. When serving as a knight of the shire in the Easter term of 1445 Michelgrove was party to a collusive suit in the court of common pleas regarding Kingsham and extensive lands in the same area of west Sussex, and in the following term he settled these properties on Sydney and his male issue by his second wife, Isabel St. John. Later, Michelgrove appeared as a feoffee of Sydney’s land in the hundred of Godalming in Surrey, and in 1451 he was party to a settlement on the lawyer and his third wife. In his will Sydney asked Michelgrove to help maintain his son William (the heir to Kingsham), and his daughter Anne, and when William came of age to make sure of his title in tail-male of his inheritance in accordance with the fine of six years earlier. Feudal Aids, v. 157; CP40/ 737, rot. 420d; CP25(1)/141/89/19; HMC De Lisle and Dudley, i. 4-5; Harl. Ch. 54 A 21. The acct. in Suss. Arch. Collns. lxiv. 124 is confused and unreliable, and there is no evidence for the statement in VCH Suss. iii. 105 that this John Michelgrove married a da. of Sydney called Mary, although his son John may well have done so. It appears from the shields of arms on the brass of his gdda.’s husband, John Shelley (d.1527), that her mother was a Sydney by birth: Suss. Arch. Collns. lxxvii. 143-5. Michelgrove subsequently obtained a royal pardon as tenant of Sydney’s manor of Kingsham, and lent his support to his widow, Thomasina, both as a trustee of her landed holdings and as fellow guardian of her son William Lunsford. When she made arrangements for the marriages of her children, he received a rent-charge from her manor of Lambourne Hall in Essex. C67/40, m.7; Harl. Chs. 56 B 25-31; C.F. Richmond, John Hopton, 118n.

On 2 July 1446, a few weeks after the dissolution of his Parliament of 1445-6, John had purchased a pardon as ‘of Clapham, esquire, son and heir of John Michelgrove, alias John Fauconer’. C67/39, m. 40. In the following year Robert Lisle* mortgaged his manor at Pulborough to Michelgrove and others headed by Sir Thomas Lewknor* for the sum of £200, repayable in instalments over a number of years. Of perhaps more importance, our MP was among those who were enfeoffed in 1450 of the extensive estates of Reynold West, Lord de la Warre, and remained in possession after de la Warre’s death, CCR, 1441-7, pp. 471-3, 477; 1447-54, pp. 217-19; CPR, 1446-52, p. 311; Add. 39376, f. 152v. and for much of the following decade he was also engaged as a feoffee of the Sussex manors of Crowhurst, Burwash and Bibleham in the rape of Hastings, which the younger Sir John Pelham (the bastard son of Sir John*) endeavoured to retain after the barony, honour and rape were granted by Henry VI to (Sir) Thomas Hoo I*, created Lord Hoo and Hastings. After Lord Hoo’s death in 1455 he was among those enfeoffed of the honour and rape themselves when they were confirmed in the possession of the lord’s half-brother Thomas II* and his associates. Add. Chs. 23801-2, 29973-4; CCR, 1461-8, p. 92; C67/42, m. 5. This, in turn, led to him being party in 1457 to the younger Thomas Hoo’s transactions, not only in his home county, but also in Northamptonshire, and that same year, in November, he joined Hoo and others headed by William, earl of Arundel, in procuring a royal licence to found a guild in the parish church of St. Mary in Horsham, and to endow a perpetual chantry there. Add. Ch. 713; CP25(1)/241/91/19; Add. 39376, f. 136; CPR, 1452-61, p. 414. It may well have been through this very busy lawyer that in the late 1450s Michelgrove came to be engaged in transactions regarding the Poynings estates held jure uxoris by Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, for Hoo was the earl’s chief agent in the south of England. C67/42, mm. 4, 5. Furthermore, throughout the decade Michelgrove was employed as receiver-general of the Sussex estates pertaining to Syon abbey, a post which earned him a handsome annual fee of £10 and required him to make several journeys on the abbot’s behalf. SC6/1037/6, 7, 9-11. Appointments to commissions of local government in Sussex had begun with his parliamentary service, but although he attested the elections held in the county court at Chichester for the Parliaments of 1447, 1449 and 1453, he himself was not apparently ever returned again. C219/15/4, 6, 7; 16/2.

Of the MP’s private affairs little is recorded. The identity of his wife Agnes, whom he married by 1447, remains obscure, although it was in association with her that he received from Edmund Turnaunt, son of Richard Turnaunt* of Winchester and grandson of the late Alice Taverner, a quitclaim of the manors of Binsted and Bilsham. His relationship to Edmund and Thomasina Nenge, also named in the quitclaim, is not explained. CCR, 1441-7, pp. 473-4; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 675-6; VCH Suss. v (1), 120. Within seven years Michelgrove had contracted another marriage, to Joan, widow of John Erneley, and together with her he took possession of the manor of Earnley in Sidlesham, by grant of her son, Erneley’s heir. Wilts. Hist. Centre, Money-Kyrle mss, 25/DA 196, dated 2 Oct. 1457. The date of this settlement is wrongly given in HMC Var. iv. 122, thus confusing the descent of the manor of Earnley assumed in VCH Suss. iv. 202. Michelgrove died on 27 Jan. 1459, and was buried at Clapham. He left as his heir his son John, aged 22, who received seisin of the Michelgrove lands and was present on 9 May following to witness the assignment of dower to his stepmother, to whose use were allotted specified rooms in the manor-house at Wootton. The widow took an oath not to marry again without the King’s licence. C139/171/9; CFR, xix. 242; CCR, 1454-61, p. 327. The inscription on his brass gives 20 Jan. 1459: Suss. Arch. Collns. lxxvii. 140-1.

John junior survived his father by no more than ten months, for he died on 21 Nov. the same year. CFR, xix. 282; C140/2/17. Once more the brass is incorrect, for it has 20 Aug. 1458, making him predecease his father: Suss. Arch. Collns. lxxvii. 140-1. This saw the end of the male line of the family: the Michelgrove heir was now the MP’s grand-daughter Elizabeth, born posthumously at Earnley on 28 Mar. 1460, and baptized in the presence of her godparents, Elizabeth, wife of Thomas Tauk*, Joan, her grandfather’s widow, and the latter’s son John Erneley. Another Sussex man, John Wood III*, was quick off the mark in obtaining from the Crown on 22 May the infant’s wardship and marriage, although the grant stipulated that he was to apply the profits to the expenses of the great wardrobe, of which Wood was then keeper. Following Edward IV’s accession a year later the wardship was transferred to Nicholas Gaynesford*, one of the ushers of the new King’s Chamber. By the time she came of age in 1475, the heiress was married to John Shelley†, and following her death in 1513 her inheritance remained in the Shelley family for three centuries. C140/54/66; CPR, 1452-61, p. 596; 1461-7, pp. 93, 96; CCR, 1468-76, no. 1393; Suss. IPM (Suss. Rec. Soc. xiv), 926.