More may be added to the earlier biography.
Mountfort was probably of age by February 1396, when he or a namesake witnessed a minor conveyance at Coleshill, and certainly so by June 1400, when he granted a shop there to Richard Haversham, who was later to be steward of his household. His minority can only have been brief, but it resulted in recurring problems. In 1402 his guardian, Sir William Bagot†, sued him for account, and later, as cited in the earlier biography, for marrying without his licence.
In any event, rival titles to these lands were later to lead Mountfort into more disorder. On 26 June 1415 he and another claimant to the Montfort lands, William Butler of Sudeley (Gloucestershire), were brought before the King at Westminster after the justices of assize and a j.p., John Weston†, had reported that their rivalry threatened the local peace. Both were required to find surety of the peace in £1,000, Mountfort producing as his guarantors Sir Thomas Clinton†, William Brokesby (whose widow he was later to marry), Brokesby’s brother, Bartholomew*, and his servant, Haversham.
Later Sir William was troubled by yet another claimant to his Montfort lands. On 22 Oct. 1425 a special assize of novel disseisin was granted at the suit of John Catesby* and his wife, Margaret Montfort, who claimed the manors of Kingshurst near Coleshill and Kingford near Solihull and other property against him. Like Sir William, Margaret was descended in an illegitimate line from Lord Montfort, and it is difficult to see her claim as anything more than opportunistic. Yet it met with some success. On 19 July 1426 a jury sitting before the justices of assize accepted Sir William’s claim as heir-in-tail to the two manors under a settlement made by Lord Montfort, but asserted that the entail did not include certain other property claimed by the plaintiffs, who were awarded damages of £40 for the disseisin committed against them by our MP. The other property was extensive, comprising 24 messuages, 15 tofts and over 2,000 acres of land, meadow, wood and pasture in Coleshill, Solihull and several other scattered vills. If three deeds dated between 1363 and 1365, which Catesby had copied under the seal of the mayor of Northampton three days before the jurors met, are accepted as genuine, then the verdict was a correct one in that it reflected the division Lord Montfort had made between his illegitimate sons. None the less, the division was rather an impractical one, and it is likely that a compromise was reached with Sir William buying out the claims of the Catesbys.
Mountfort’s first appointment as sheriff on 26 Nov. 1431 raises interesting questions, for there can be no doubt that absence abroad made him an unsuitable nominee. On 9 Dec. he was in Paris with his lord, the earl of Warwick, and he was no doubt still there a week later to witness the coronation of Henry VI. He was probably not back in England until the King himself returned at the end of January.
This is one of several episodes that cast an unflattering light on Mountfort’s character. A Chancery petition, from the period of his third shrievalty, adds to this impression: it claimed that no one, ‘for feir and drede’ of Sir William, dared to offer bail for one William Mariot, arrested and imprisoned for an alleged assault, although, in Mountfort’s defence, it may be that this statement was a fiction designed to secure a corpus cum causa to the imprisoning authorities, namely the mayor and bailiffs of Coventry.
Mountfort had important connexions and interests not cited in the earlier biography. The range of these connexions is most clearly evidenced by the surviving receiver-general’s account for his estates, dated 1433-4. This lists among the visitors to his household at Coleshill the abbess of Polesworth, his son-in-law, Sir Maurice Berkeley I*, Sir Richard Vernon*, who was the father of Joan, wife of his son and heir, Baldwin, Ralph Bracebridge, Robert Arderne* and Robert Whitgreve*.
Mountfort’s second wife, Joan, had an annuity of £20 from the queen-dowager, Joan of Navarre (d.1437), assigned on the Wiltshire manor of Stratton St. Mary, probably from a period in the queen’s household. After Joan’s marriage to our MP the queen assigned the manor to the couple in lieu of payment. If an inquiry of 1446 is to be taken literally, Mountfort responded by exploiting the manor, taking payments from tenants for repairs that were never made and for licences to waste their customary tenements.