NEWPORT, Richard (d.1477), of Soberton, Hants.

During the early stages of his career Richard is difficult to distinguish from his father, especially as he too sometimes used the name Spicer, by which the latter had generally been known in his years as a privateer and which sometimes also served as an alias for his brother John. C67/39, m. 10. Nevertheless, it seems likely that it was the father who as Richard Spicer alias Newport, esquire, made general releases of legal actions to a London fishmonger and a merchant from Bordeaux in November 1424, and to John Estney esquire in February 1426, and he who attested the Hampshire elections to five of the Parliaments between 1426 and 1432. CCR, 1422-9, pp. 184, 262; C219/13/4, 5; 14/1-3. The older Richard, too, was probably the man who witnessed conveyances of property in Winchester by the recorder of Southampton, William Chamberlain*, in 1433, and another at his home at Soberton in the following year. Also in 1434 it was most likely the privateer turned respectable landowner rather than his son who was named among the Hampshire gentry required to take the oath against maintenance. CCR, 1429-35, pp. 288, 344; CPR, 1429-36, p. 396. What is certain is that Richard the father died before January 1436 when his widow, Elizabeth, was assessed for taxation on lands in the county worth £34 p.a. E179/173/92.

The widow lived on for at least 13 years longer, and how much of his patrimony came into the possession of the younger Richard during her lifetime is unclear. The estate at Soberton acquired by his father had become the family home, and Richard’s first public office was as a verderer in the nearby forest of Bere. As it had been at Soberton that John Philipot*, a descendant of the famous London merchant of the same name, had been born in 1431, and his godmother was Elizabeth Newport, we may speculate that the baby’s mother was our MP’s sister. The Newports’ continued interest in the child’s welfare lends credence to this suggestion. When Philipot’s father died in 1436 the boy’s wardship was taken into the King’s hands. Newport purchased his marriage from the Crown for 255 marks on 27 Feb. 1437, and a week later he also acquired at the Exchequer the farm of the Philipots’ Hertfordshire manor of Woodhall in Kelshall. Yet he seems not to have profited from the arrangement, and on 8 Dec. 1439, during the first session of the Parliament to which he was elected for Hampshire, he surrendered his interest in both marriage and farm so that his father’s widow might have them on the same terms. She afterwards sold the marriage, apparently at a loss, to (Sir) John Lisle II*. C139/155/46; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 39, 357; CFR, xvi. 310; xvii. 120; CCR, 1441-7, p. 375. At his death Newport possessed besides Soberton land and a number of messuages in the locality and at Bitterne, Fareham and Bishops Waltham, and also the manor of Borough Court in Odiham, although precisely when these were acquired by him is not known. C140/61/35.

Certain of the Newports’ landed holdings were held as tenants of the bishops of Winchester, and before Richard was elected to Parliament he entered the service of their lord, Cardinal Beaufort, as one of his esquires. Thomas Uvedale* and Richard Waller, who both came forward to provide mainprise for him at the Exchequer in 1437, were prominent members of Beaufort’s affinity, and Newport himself witnessed a lease granted by the cardinal at Bishops Waltham in March 1439, seven months before the Parliament assembled. He was accompanied to the Commons by a more senior figure, Sir John Popham*, who had only recently returned from an important embassy to France which the cardinal had headed. Clearly, both shire knights were acceptable to him, but there is no evidence to show how they participated in the business of the Parliament. Subsequently, Newport succeeded Nicholas Bernard* as bailiff of various of the episcopal estates in the east of the county, centred on Bishops Waltham and Twyford. After an appearance as a witness to another of Beaufort’s leases, in 1443, he received from him on 8 Jan. 1445 an award of the bailiffship for life, with an annual fee of 20 marks, as he was ‘well known for his faithfulness, industry and diligence’. Reg. Common Seal (Hants Rec. Ser. ii), nos. 258, 273, 283, p. 222. During this period of service to Beaufort, Newport attested the election returns for Hampshire to the Parliaments of 1442 and 1447, on the latter occasion supporting the election of his own brother, John. C219/15/2, 4. In April 1447, not long after the close of the Parliament at Bury St. Edmunds, Cardinal Beaufort died. William Waynflete, his successor as bishop of Winchester, retained Newport as a bailiff on the episcopal estates (honouring the grant for life made by Beaufort). During the summer he and other of the bishop’s officers faced serious opposition to their rule, in particular at East Meon, where the tenants challenged the customary rights of the bishop to certain services and duties. Newport was among a group of gentry who spent two days and nights there with the estates’ steward, attempting to restore order, and this matter also took him to the bishop’s palace at Farnham for a personal consultation with Waynflete. Bp. of Winchester’s pipe roll, 11M59/B1/184 (formerly 159438). The dispute with the tenants was not to be finally settled until the Parl. of 1461, when the bishop’s representatives produced copious records to prove his case: PROME, xiii. 40-41. Unfortunately, the names of the Hants MPs in that Parl. are not known.

Among Newport’s closest colleagues was John Wayte of Titchfield, Together, in Nov. 1446 the two esquires discovered a boat containing smuggled wool and fells in a creek. They answered for the value of the shipment at the Exchequer: E159/223, recorda Mich. rot. 35d. and it looks as if the trouble in which these two esquires and Newport’s brother John found themselves later that same year arose from their official duties as officers on the episcopal estates. In November 1447 the Newport brothers together with Wayte and his kinsman Robert were indicted before the j.p.s in Surrey for having on the previous 12 Mar. assaulted one John Bishop at Farnham, and then wrongfully imprisoned and maltreated him. A different version of this incident emerges from a petition Bishop himself sent to the chancellor. He said that at midnight on the date in question the Newports and their friend John Wayte with 13 armed followers had broken into his house at Hamble-le-Rice on Southampton Water, seized him ‘lyinge in his bedde’, stole his purse containing 25s., the sum of £28 from his coffers and plate and other household goods worth £70, and had kept him in a ‘horrible streyt prison’ for two days before taking him to ‘Spereshotis Place’ (Sparsholt) near Winchester where they left him in the stocks for five more. Wayte responded in Chancery that Bishop was his villein, which the latter strenuously denied. When the indictment was eventually heard by the justices of King’s bench in Easter term 1449, the defendants’ plea rested on the technicalities that Newport had never lived at ‘Stuwerton’ as stated in the original writ, nor Wayte at ‘Ichefeld’. C1/16/436-8; KB27/752, rex rot. 27d.

Newport does not appear to have played any significant part in his brother John’s escapades on the Isle of Wight as the steward appointed by the duke of York. John’s tyrannical behaviour and extortions earned him widespread opprobrium in 1449 and the next year, and prompted the inhabitants of the island to petition the Parliament summoned for November 1450 for help in organizing their defence. One Robert Spicer of Newport allegedly rose in rebellion in an attempt to take over the island, but there is nothing to associate him with the Newport brothers (despite their alias), and when commissioners of oyer and terminer heard Robert’s indictment for treason at Winchester in July 1451 Richard Newport was pricked as a juror to give evidence against him.. KB9/109/10. Richard lent his brother support by acting as a feoffee of his property in the years 1448 to 1453, before John undertook service for the king of Aragon. CCR, 1447-54, p. 405; CP25(1)/207/33/38.

Newport continued to be well regarded in the locality. He assisted Richard Dallingridge* in settlements of his Sussex manors, witnessed deeds for his former ward John Philipot, CCR, 1441-7, pp. 462-3; 1454-61, pp. 115-16. and was engaged from 1454 as steward of local courts for Lord Botreaux, who paid him an annual fee of £2. Winchester Coll. muns. 10156, 10188. Yet, after attesting the Hampshire elections to the Parliament of February 1449, he did not apparently do so again until 1467, C219/15/6; 17/1. and he was placed on remarkably few royal commissions in the meantime, and none at all when Edward IV was on the throne. Occasionally, however, he was listed as a juror at judicial inquiries conducted at Winchester and Southampton, and was pricked to indict more rebels from the Isle of Wight in August 1466. Quite likely because of his links with Bishop Waynflete, during the Readeption he was not only appointed to his first ad hoc commission in 13 years, but had no difficulty securing reappointment as a verderer at Bere in the name of the restored Henry VI. KB9/110/11; 299/20; 314/85, 87.

In 1470 Newport acquired properties known as ‘Crabeham’ and ‘Crabecroft’ near his home at Soberton, which he conveyed in the following year to trustees acting on behalf of Winchester College. There his son and heir, John (c.1454-1521), was currently being educated as one of the scholars. Winchester Coll. muns. 10150-2; Winchester Scholars ed. Kirby, 78. He died on 17 Apr. 1477. C140/61/35. John, who had taken over some of his aging father’s duties as bailiff of Marwell in 1473, went up to New College, entered the legal profession and rose to be a serjeant-at-law. Bp. of Winchester’s pipe roll, 11M59/B1/203; PCC 22 Maynwaryng (PROB11/20, f. 177); Biog. Reg. Univ. Oxf. ed. Emden, ii. 1357; J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii. 1156-7.