NEEDHAM, Richard, of Greenwich and Dartford, Kent and London.

Like his more prominent kinsman, the royal judge John Needham*, Richard was probably a scion of a family that took its name from the village of High Needham in Derbyshire, but established itself in Cheshire late in the reign of Edward III. G. Ormerod, Palatine and City of Chester ed. Helsby, iii (1), 127-8; Vis. Salop (Harl. Soc. xxix), 371. In the late 14th cent. they bore the arms ‘a bend engrailed between two bucks’ heads’: Add. Ch. 12079. Evidence of Richard’s geographical origins is provided by the later choice of the gates of Coventry, Lichfield, Chester and Lancaster for the display of his severed limbs: KB27/745, rex rot. 22. Nothing is known of Richard’s early life, but by 1442 he had entered the household of Henry VI’s uncle, Humphrey duke of Gloucester, who rewarded him with the rangership of Clarendon forest in Wiltshire. It is unknown when the duke first appointed him to the office, but he was probably already in post when he was returned to the Commons by the Wiltshire borough of Cricklade in late 1441 (an election undoubtedly facilitated by the duke’s patronage). It is not clear what part, if any, Needham played in the deliberations of the Commons, but he evidently satisfied his master, for two months after the dissolution he was granted royal letters confirming his Clarendon appointment for his life after Gloucester’s death. CPR, 1441-6, p. 84. The duke now also employed him at the other end of the country, as clerk of Dover castle, where Gloucester held office as warden of the Cinque Ports and constable. The office was of considerable importance, and the Portsmen actively sought to curry his favour by gifts of money and other rewards. In September 1444 he was paid 20s. to labour to Duke Humphrey on behalf of the Ports concerning the maintainance of the King’s navy, White and Black Bks. 19. and in July 1446 he was sent a gift of ‘wild-fowl’ from the Port of Lydd to secure his friendship in an otherwise obscure matter concerning Richard Clitheroe*, a leading Portsman from New Romney. Ibid. 20-21; Add. 29810, f. 61; Lydd Recs. ed. Finn, 114.

His service to Duke Humphrey aside, it seems that Needham also enjoyed good personal relations with the Portsmen of Dover, who returned him to two successive Parliaments in 1445 and 1447. On the former occasion at least, his services were clearly valued, for in April 1446 a special Brodhull awarded the sum of £10 to him and Stephen Slegge*, the Member for Hythe, for their expenses in lobbying on behalf of the Ports, while the men of Dover granted a similar sum to Needham and his parliamentary colleague, Morgan Meredith*. Similarly, it may be that his past services were what recommended him to the men of Dover as their representative at a general Brodhull in July 1446.

In the interim, Needham had also put down roots in the city of London by his marriage at some point before the autumn of 1444 to the widow of a recently-deceased London tailor, John King. This match may have brought him a certain amount of property in the city, although it is unclear if Alice’s first husband was the same John King who in 1436 was said to be drawing some £30 p.a. from his holdings in London. S.L. Thrupp, Merchant Class Med. London, 382. In the 1450s Needham and his wife acquired other London property in Bread Street, which they would later transfer to the salter Richard Chauncey and his wife. Corp. London RO, hr 180/27-28; 181/3; 202/33-35. Although Alice’s first husband had been a tailor, it was the more prestigious Mercers’ Company to which Needham gained admission as a freeman in return for payment of a fine of 40s. He evidently already possessed close contacts in that Company and on 20 Nov. 1444 he came before the chamberlain with John Sturgeon* and other mercers and entered into bonds in 500 marks for the guardianship of King’s five children. The same year he enrolled his first apprentice, and by 1446 was exporting cloth through the port of London. Mercers’ Co., London, Biog. Index Cards; Cal. Letter Bks. London, K, 300, 307; E122/73/20, f. 25v. King enrolled two apprentices in the accounting year ending 24 Aug. 1443: Guildhall Lib. London, Merchant Taylors’ Co. accts., 34048/1, f. 355v. Nevertheless, his commercial activities were very much secondary to his service to Duke Humphrey, and he was a member of London’s commercial elite in name only. Indeed, when, in 1444-5, he was admitted as a member of the fraternity of St. John the Baptist founded by the tailors of London, rather than being styled a ‘citizen and mercer’, as one might expect, he was described as being ‘wt my lord of Glouceter’. Merchant Taylors’ accts., 34048/1, f. 388.

In January 1447 Needham was elected to his third Parliament, which, originally summoned to Cambridge on 14 Dec. 1446, had been hastily rearranged to meet at Bury St. Edmunds on 10 Feb. The duke of Gloucester arrived late, and when he reached Bury on 18 Feb. he was promptly placed under house arrest facing charges of treason. Over the course of the following two days many of his principal servants and retainers were also taken into custody. R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 496-7. Needham was said by some chroniclers to have been one of those arrested, but it is possible that his arrest was delayed until after Parliament had been dissolved on 3 Mar., even if the charge of treason was not covered by parliamentary privilege, since the Dover authorities would later pay him wages not only for the full 22 days of the session, but also for an additional eight days spent travelling to and from Bury. Add. 29810, f. 63v. Furthermore, in mid April he was nominated at Dover to attend a meeting of the representatives of the Cinque Ports, which may suggest that he was then still at large. White and Black Bks. 22. Certainly, though, he had been taken into custody by early July, when he was among a group of men, headed by Sir Roger Chamberlain*, who were indicted for treason at Deptford. All of them had been members of the duke’s household at Greenwich, and the indictment brought against them alleged that on 7 Feb. they had gathered there together with a large band of followers to plot the death and destruction of the King. Four days later, or so it was claimed, they met again and this time their ‘magna societate’ marched north to Bury where the King sat in Parliament, with the added intention of freeing Duke Humphrey’s duchess Eleanor from prison. English Chron. (Cam. Soc. lxiv), 117; KB9/255/2, mm. 19-21; CPR, 1446-52, p. 74; Griffifths, 496-9.

The political ramifications of the death in custody of the duke of Gloucester cannot have escaped the notice of William de la Pole, marquess of Suffolk, and the others who presided over the indictments of his servants on 8 July. The trial itself took place in King’s bench over two days on 12 and 13 July, and five men of Gloucester’s household, including Needham and Chamberlain, were sentenced to be executed as traitors, by hanging, drawing and quartering. Needham, whose sentence was the last to be passed, was to have his severed head displayed with those of his fellows on London bridge, while his quarters were to be placed on the north gate of Coventry, and the gates of Lichfield, Chester and Lancaster. Following the sentencing, the condemned were returned to the Tower before being transferred to the King’s bench prison in Southwark for their execution on the following day. KB27/745, rex rot. 22. According to one contemporary report:

And the seconday folowyng þe seid Sir Roger, Artoys, Middelton and oon Herberd Squyer and Richard Nedham mercer of London servauntes to the seide duke weren drawe from the kings bench in Suthwerk thurgh Chepe unto the Tyborne. And they lay everyman on þe hurdelles in doublettes of velvet. And þe seide Artoys held a crosse of gold between his manacles. And evermore they praied the peple to pray for them as þey wer giltless of any treson which sight was fully hevy to the comones and the seid enbassiatores [of Charles VII] present this tyme. And whan thise men were brought to the Galowes they wer hanged all v persons and þer with was their charters shewed þt the king hadde pardoned hem and sodenly the ropes smyten a sondre and they on lyve and cam a gen þurgh the citee þanking god and þe king of þt grace. Six Town Chrons. ed. Flenley, 122.

Several other chronicles, while describing a similar chain of events, place Suffolk at the centre of the drama and show him intervening at the crucial moment with the royal pardons to prevent the executions from proceeding. Chrons. London ed. Kingsford, 157; Gt. Chron. London ed. Thomas and Thornley, 180; Three 15th Cent. Chrons. (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xxviii), 65; Historical Collns. Citizen London (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xvii), 188. This carefully orchestrated piece of theatre was doubtless prompted by political expediency, and a weakening of the resolve that had led to Gloucester’s arrest in February. A softening of the government’s view of the ‘traitors’ was certainly already in evidence on 13 July, the day of Needham’s trial and condemnation, when a grant was made to Alice Needham and her eldest son, Alexander King, then a schoolboy at Eton, of all the goods and lands of her husband, thus sparing his family the ruin that would have resulted from their forfeiture to the Crown. CPR, 1446-52, pp. 61, 68. On 11 Oct. Needham procured a second pardon, and on the same day received restoration of the lands and goods that had been granted to his wife and stepson. CPR, 1446-52, pp. 112, 113. Some years later, Needham, Richard Middleton and Thomas Herbert formally petitioned Parliament to have their convictions overturned. SC8/85/4240; 92/4574.

Despite the duke of Gloucester’s death, Needham continued to be active in Dover for the next few months at least, for in July 1448 he was chosen once again to represent the Port at a Brodhull. It is unclear whether he did so as clerk of Dover castle, although this might be the implication of the expenses paid to him and the steward of Dover, John Greenford*, by the authorities in the town of Lydd during the period from July 1447 to October 1448. White and Black Bks. 24; Lydd Recs. 121, 127. Yet the events of 1447 swiftly heralded a change of direction in Needham’s career. While still active in Kent, as receiver of the royal lordships of Milton and Marden previously held by Duke Humphrey, his attention became more centred on London, where he was now able to draw upon the valuable links he had established as a member of the Mercers’ Company before the storm broke. In 1449-50 he began enrolling apprentices again, and by July 1451 had become sufficiently prominent within the Company to be chosen as one of its wardens, an office to which he was subsequently re-elected on two further occasions. Among his closer associates was Geoffrey Boleyn*, who appointed him as a feoffee of some of his property in London and later chose him as one of his executors. London hr 192/23; E403/830, mm. 1-2. Other contacts included the wealthy mercer Richard Rich, in association with whom and with John Fray†, the chief baron of the Exchequer, he had been one of the recipients of a gift of a horse-mill and brewing equipment made by a brewer from Winchelsea in Sussex. He maintained his links with Rich for many years and in May 1460 entered into a bond with him for the patrimony of the latter’s nephew and namesake. CCR, 1441-7, p. 353; Cal. Letter Bks. London, K, 400. Other business dealings were less successful: in the mid 1470s Needham was sued in Chancery by William Rooke, a minor canon of St. Paul’s, over debts totalling £82 7s. 10d. owing from another mercer, Henry Gryndell. Rooke claimed that Needham had forgiven Gryndell the remainder of the debt after the latter had agreed to marry his god-daughter and ward, Elizabeth Tego, but had reneged on a promise to return the bonds and not to proceed on them. C1/67/161. Elizabeth was possibly a yr. sis. of Roger Tego, a London tailor who was taken on as an apprentice by Alice Needham’s first husband, John King, in 1436, and Needham may have taken over responsibility for Elizabeth as well as the responsibility of presenting Tego to the freedom of the city after his master’s death: Merchant Taylors’ Co. Ct. Minutes ed. Davies, 302-3.

Needham’s fortuitious marriage and connexion with the Mercers meant that he was rapidly able to build a second career as a member of London’s civic elite. In January 1449 he attested the election of the city’s MPs, and he was to do so on a further two occasions in the following six years. By December 1452 he was sufficiently prominent among the members of the common council to be appointed to the first of a number of committees that discussed various issues relating to the governance of the city. Corp. London RO, jnl. 5, ff. 97v, 184v, 253, 264. In September 1455, shortly before being chosen to the latest of these, he was elected as one of the four auditors of the city, the usual first step on the civic cursus honorum. Needham made a first bid for election to the court of aldermen just over two years later, but on 12 Feb. 1458 the mayor and aldermen decided that he was not of sufficient means to be able to serve as such for Bread Street ward. Despite this, he was evidently respected in the city for in September that year he was given custody of a key to the chest containing the common seal, and on the 21st of that month was chosen as one of London’s two sheriffs. Jnl. 6, ff. 192v, 229v.

The deteriorating political situtation in the second half of 1459, and the apparent leanings of some of London’s prominent merchants towards Henry VI’s opponents, headed by the duke of York, led the city governors to try to assure the King of their loyalty to the Crown, and the delegation sent to see Henry at Coventry in early October included Needham among its members. Ibid. f. 145. In November, Parliament attainted York and his most prominent supporters of treason, and commissioners were appointed to take possession of their forfeited property. Needham was named a member of the commissions that were to inquire into the lands and goods of the duke’s trusted retainer, Sir William Oldhall in February and March 1460. This did not place Needham at the heart of the regime presided over by Queen Margaret; rather it was a reflection of his perceived abilities as a man of business. Thus, when the tables turned in the summer of 1460 and a Parliament was summoned to Westminster to reach a political settlement in the wake of the Yorkist victory at the battle of Northampton, Needham was one of the men chosen by the citizens of London to represent their interests. Relatively little is recorded about him after the dissolution of this, his fourth Parliament. He continued to serve on city committees in London during the 1460s, and made at least two more unsuccessful attempts to become an alderman. In November 1461 he sought to replace the mercer William Cantelowe* as alderman for Cripplegate, only to lose out to John Stokton. Ibid. ff. 74, 79v, 280v; jnl. 7, ff. 24v, 78v. He enrolled a final apprentice in 1463-4, and made his last bid for an aldermanry in the autumn of 1464, but before long left London completely to take up the life of a landed gentleman at Stoneham near Dartford in Kent. In February 1473 he and Alice sold their property in Bread Street, London hr 202/33-35. and his conflict with William Rooke about this time may also have arisen from his efforts to put his affairs in the city in order. C1/67/161. He continued to be sought out by his neighbours as a feoffee of their property, and died at an uncertain date after 1474. C1/58/299.