PASSHELE, John (c.1432-68), of Rye and Pashley, Suss. and Evegate in Smeeth, Kent.

This MP came from a distinguished knightly family, which had settled in the late twelfth century at Pashley in Ticehurst in east Sussex. VCH Suss. ix. 254-5. Sir Robert de Passhele†, knight of the shire for Sussex in 1295 and 1300, was succeeded by his son, Edmund (c.1270-1327), a baron of the Exchequer whose success in the legal profession and accumulation of wealth through advantageous marriages led to the acquisition of extensive estates in the south-east. His manor-house at La Mote, near Rye, was crenellated, Suss. Arch. Collns. xiii. 109-11; Suss. Feet of Fines (Suss. Rec. Soc. xxiii), 1589. while in Kent his most important manor was Evegate in Smeeth. Scandals resulted from the quarrelling of two women both claiming to be Edmund’s widow, and the serious allegations that one of them, Margaret de Normanville, had poisoned him and murdered two of his sons. But the family overcame the furore, and further enhanced its standing later in the century. Edmund’s grandson, Sir Robert†, who twice sat for Kent in the 1370s, married one of the Howards of Norfolk, Archaeologia Cantiana, lxxiv. 1-47. and the latter’s son, another Robert (d.1407), contracted an equally important marriage to a kinswoman of the earls of Arundel. The latter, Philippa, as one of the daughters and eventual heirs of Sir Richard Cergeaux† of Colquite in Cornwall, brought to the Passheles four manors and a third part of two more in her home county, as well as a third part of a valuable estate at Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire. Ibid. 32-34; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 506-7; iv. 550-1.

All these estates passed to John Passhele, the father of our MP, on the deaths of his mother Philippa Cergeaux in 1420 and stepfather William Swinburne† in 1422. His paternal inheritance included besides Evegate, Pashley and La Mote the manors of Rigge and Frenchcourt in Fairlight, along with many acres of land in the same area of east Sussex at Iden, Playden, Peasmarsh, Beckley, Northiam and Ewhurst. Harvard Univ. Law School Lib., English deeds, 270, 304. Their value is difficult to estimate, although the Sussex estates alone had provided Swinburne with an annual income exceeding £51 when he held them jure uxoris, and those in Kent were said to be worth some £21 p.a. when Passhele died. The Crown could ask for £40 a year for the estate at Chipping Norton after our MP’s death. Feudal Aids, vi. 527; C139/149/26; CFR, xxi. no. 248. The Cornish lands, which came to the older John in 1426, after some delay, increased his revenues yet further. CPR, 1422-9, p. 349; CFR, xv. 145-6. That John was destined for a military career, which began in France in his stepfather’s company, and continued in Henry V’s wider retinue in 1422. PCC 54 Marche (PROB11/2B, ff. 206-8); DKR, xliv. 638. In his will Swinburne left a bequest of 20 marks each towards the dowries of the two daughters of Richard Wydeville, his companion-in-arms, and it was one of these women that Passhele chose to marry. Arrangements for the match were completed in 1424, when the groom settled on his wife Elizabeth in jointure his manors of Evegate and Pashley, being bound in 1,000 marks to guarantee her possession for life of these properties, or else others worth 40 marks a year. Scott mss, T19/1, 2. After being knighted at Leicester with the young King Henry VI, in 1426, Sir John crossed to France with his own substantial force of 120 men, W.A. Shaw, Knights of Eng, i. 132; CPR, 1422-9, p. 362; E159/203, recorda Mich. rot. 5; DKR, xlviii. 243. and this military service was followed by further campaigns abroad: in 1428, 1431 (in the retinue of the duke of Bedford), and 1433 (in that of John, earl of Huntingdon). DKR, xlviii. 259, 282, 291-3. Sir John was one of the men to whom his cousin John Marney turned while seeking to raise the huge ransom demanded when he was taken prisoner by the French. CCR, 1422-9, pp. 397, 399, 400. Back home in 1442 he was among those made responsible for gathering ships for naval defence in the fleet sponsored by the Commons. CPR, 1441-6, p. 105.

In the course of these years various transactions were made concerning Sir John’s estates, the purpose of which is not always clear. In 1429 he conveyed those in Kent, Sussex and Oxfordshire to his father-in-law Wydeville, William Haute* (who had married his wife’s sister) and others including Thomas Bodulgate*, a Cornishman who had earlier acted as his attorney; and two years later he instructed these feoffees to effect an entail of certain of his holdings on him and his wife and their issue. Their son John, our MP, was later to assert that the plan was for Evegate, Pashley and Chipping Norton to be entailed in this way, and that La Mote, Rigge and Frenchcourt were let at farm for six years to persons nominated by Wydeville, before they were returned to Sir John’s possession. Perhaps the purpose of the latter arrangement was to raise money to pay a ransom, or else to fund Sir John’s campaigns overseas. Scott mss, T19/1, 2; C1/24/6-8. But in the event the feoffees never completed the entail as required, and Sir John took it upon himself to convey Evegate to the vicar of Tolleshunt Darcy and two others. Since this second group included Thomas Gower it may be conjectured that the new arrangement had something to do with the marriage of Sir John’s son and heir, our MP, to Gower’s daughter. Scott mss, T19/3. It is not known why Sir John made a quitclaim of Pashley to John Fray†, the chief baron of the Exchequer, and the lawyer Thomas Burgoyne* in December 1451, but at that time he was also indebted to a London mercer in £40. CCR, 1447-54, p. 332; C241/235/20. That the knight’s affairs in Cornwall were similarly confused would appear to have been a consequence of his own mismanagement and foolishness. A suit he brought in the Chancery against Bodulgate and another formerly trusted attorney, William Benalva, over possession of the manor and advowson of Lanreathow, reveals that Sir John had run up further debts in London to the tune of £95, which the defendants had undertaken to clear on condition that they would receive the revenues arising from this property. Sir John, who was illiterate, had naïvely set his seal to a deed Benalva read out to him, thus being defrauded of an annual rent of four marks. Sir John negotiated the sale of Lanreathow to John Chudleigh and Margaret his wife, but although part of the deal was agreed in July 1452 he failed to complete the transfer before his death. C1/15/143; 16/322-4; 155/63; Cornw. Feet of Fines, ii (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. 1950), 1111. Prob. during his absence in France he had permitted Bodulgate to present to the parish church at Lanreathow: Reg. Lacy, ii (Canterbury and York Soc. lxi), 236, 239. Certain of these later transactions may have related to Sir John’s second marriage. After the death of his first wife Elizabeth Wydeville, Who perhaps died before her father, since neither she nor Sir John were mentioned in Wydeville’s will of 1441: Reg. Chichele, ii. 608. he married Alice, the widow of John Beaufitz of Gillingham and William Ryman*, the prominent Sussex lawyer. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 268-70; Archaeologia Cantiana, lxi. 170-1, 178; PCC 17 Stokton (PROB11/4, f. 133). She lived for six years after Sir John’s death, which occurred on 8 June 1453. C139/149/26. The writ de diem clausit extremum is wrongly dated 20 June 1452 in CFR, xix. 3.

The heir, John Passhele, then said to be aged 21, was faced with the financial consequences of his father’s muddled affairs. He presented a petition to the chancellor against Sir John’s feoffees, saying that they had failed in their duty to complete the entail of Evegate, Pashley and Chipping Norton, and were now refusing to hand the properties over to him as promised. They responded in July 1454 by testifying that John had never asked them to do so; and at Evegate on 20 Oct. following they duly gave him seisin of all the properties concerned. C1/24/6; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 44-45. Passhele’s marriage to Lowys Gower had earlier entangled him in a crisis affecting his wife’s family. In the previous November he had been party to a series of recognizances to the Crown to guarantee the appearance in Chancery of his brother-in-law Richard Gower and the latter’s peaceable behaviour meanwhile. His recognizance was for 200 marks, while his father-in-law put up 500 marks, and Ralph Legh* and the brothers John and Richard Gower 100 marks each. These guarantees were repeated in August and December 1454 and again in February 1455, and Richard was eventually discharged a month after the following Easter. The nature of his evidently serious offence is not recorded, but appears to have been related to the Gowers’ misjudged support for the unstable Henry Holand, duke of Exeter. CCR, 1447-54, pp. 510-11; 1454-61, pp. 43-44, 54. There is no evidence that Passhele was drawn into the duke’s affairs, although it is not unlikely that he had been intended to follow his father and father-in-law in the career of a soldier, and may have served in Normandy with Thomas Gower, who had been captain of Cherbourg when it fell to the French in 1450.

Invariably styled ‘esquire’, Passhele had been so called when he purchased the freedom of Rye on 30 July 1452, a year before his father’s death. Thereafter he paid Rye 3s. 4d. a year as an ‘advocant’ (foreign freeman) of the Port. Rye mss, 60/2, ff. 28v, 35. Probably for much of the time he lived close by at his manor of La Mote. The Portsmen of Rye elected him to the Parliament summoned to assemble on 9 July 1455, after the Yorkist victory at St. Albans, but it was only during the parliamentary recess at the end of August that he was formally made a jurat (one of the governing body of 12). His parliamentary wages, at the rate of 1s. 8d. per day for a total of 58 days, were paid to him in instalments. However, the Parliament lasted about 114 days, so either Passhele failed to attend the Commons for nearly half its duration, or else the local authorities neglected to pay him his full dues. Ibid. ff. 44v, 48, 49v. During the second session, in the autumn, Passhele appeared in the court of common pleas to respond to the allegation of an esquire from Suffolk that he had failed to honour a debt of £8 incurred at Bury St. Edmunds two years earlier. He asked the court for licence to negotiate, and provided sureties for his appearance again in the Hilary term. CP40/779, rot. 521. After the Parliament ended, in March 1456, Passhele was appointed to a commission of sewers, but this was to be his only public service for the Crown. That summer he was summoned to answer a number of charges in the common pleas. It was alleged that he and six men of Rye, described as labourers, servants or fishermen, had on 1 Dec. 1455 wrongfully seized livestock and goods worth £36 from Thomas Foughill, who now demanded damages of £40. Passhele’s response was that Foughill was his bondman, so his chattels belonged to him. CP40/782, rot. 110. The suit remained unresolved until 1459. His participation in the affairs of Rye continued, to the extent that he acted as a feoffee of ‘Ypres Tower’, which formed an important part of the defences of the Port, and served as a jurat again in 1457-8. Cat. Rye Recs. ed. Dell, deed 124/6. Yet, although he was taxed for a half-scot in Rye in May 1459 (being among those paying the highest amount of 3s. 4d.), Rye mss, 60/2, f. 65. by that date he had ceased to be a jurat, and no longer took an active role in the town’s government.

Transactions concerning Passhele’s lands suggest that he was then in financial difficulties, although whether these were of his own making or the consequence of his father’s mismanagement is unclear. He was said in a Chancery suit brought after his death to have made an enfeoffment of his part of the manor of Chipping Norton in June 1455 (just before Parliament met), and on 12 Nov. that year, while up at Westminster, he purchased a licence to grant it to two esquires, William Aylton and Geoffrey Holford. Whether he ever carried out this intention is uncertain, for in February 1459 he was licensed to give seisin of this third of the manor to John Glyn, an Oxfordshire lawyer, instead. C44/32/14; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 282, 477. Another lawsuit, brought at an unknown date between 1456 and 1459, reveals something of the difficulties he encountered regarding his Cornish inheritance. John Chudleigh claimed that while selling him the manor of Trefreak for £100 Sir John Passhele had disregarded an earlier enfeoffment he had made, and that the feoffees (the Sussex lawyers William Sydney* and Bartholomew Bolney*, among others) had refused to hand it over. Our MP asserted that the purpose of the enfeoffment had been to make a settlement of jointure on Sir John’s wife Alice Ryman, after whose death the manor ought to descend to him; and the feoffees’ understanding was that they were required to pay Alice the profits of the manor for her lifetime. This they were unable to do as the Chudleighs had dispossessed them. The dispute was not to be settled for several years. Then, in 1465, the widowed Margaret Chudleigh successfully petitioned against the sole surviving feoffee, Bolney, and he conveyed the manor to her and the Chudleigh heirs. C1/26/305-8; 31/40-42; J. Maclean, Trigg Minor, iii. 427. For whatever reasons, Passhele also lost, or perhaps never secured possession of, the manors of Nether Helland and Treworder, which had also formed part of his Cergeaux inheritance. Maclean, i. 435-6; ii. 18. There appears to have been a major crisis in his personal affairs in 1460. In May that year he gave up any title he might have had to marshland in Appledore and Kenardington, Kent, brought to his family by the heiress Margaret de Normanville in the fourteenth century, CCR, 1454-61, p. 447. and in the autumn he conveyed to John Scott† one of his most important properties – the castle-manor of La Mote, together with the advowson of the local church and some 1,000 acres of land. CP25(1)/241/91/27; CP40/799, rot. 64; VCH Suss. ix. 154, 156-7. Scott later claimed in a petition to the Pope that the chapel was very ancient and ruinous, and it would be better to rebuild it elsewhere: CPL, xii. 608. It may be that the sale, if such this was, was finally forced on him by the Yorkist victory at Northampton, for Scott was on the winning side, although the transaction had been put in train two years earlier. Add. Ch. 16156. More disasters were to come, for by now our MP had lost possession of the manor of Pashley, which in 1463 was conveyed by John Lewknor* and his wife to trustees, and by them to the family of the London mercer Geoffrey Boleyn*; and within another six years Frenchcourt had come into the hands of the lawyer Thomas Hoo II* (Lewknor’s half-brother and uncle of Boleyn’s wife). VCH Suss. ix. 176, 254-5. It may be that the quitclaim made by Sir John Passhele in 1451 had been a prelude to these losses. It remains a mystery why Passhele relinquished these family estates, and whether his troubles were linked to the misfortunes of the house of Lancaster in the civil war. Nevertheless, he did keep Evegate, for his lands called ‘Thefgate Park’ and ‘Thefgate Mead’ there were mentioned in 1467. Scott mss, T27.

During Edward IV’s reign Passhele appears in the records only intermittently. As ‘of Rye, esquire’ he stood surety in December 1461 for the lessees of valuable Crown lands in the royal forests in Oxfordshire, and a little less than a year later he himself obtained with his kinsman Sir John Marney keeping of the ‘manor or lordship’ of Chipping Norton, at an annual farm of £12. This appears to have been the whole manor of Chipping Norton which had been divided between the Cergeaux heirs long before. He and Marney were descendants of two of those heirs, although, as we have seen, Passhele had been licensed to sell his part. It may be that he and Marney were now disputing possession with the Crown. CFR, xx. 52, 91. The King’s subsequent marriage to Passhele’s cousin Elizabeth Wydeville had no noticeable effect on his career. In August 1467, as ‘of London’, he provided sureties in the Exchequer for their mutual kinsman Richard Haute†, so that he might have custody of property in Southwark which had been forfeited by John Gower (Passhele’s former brother-in-law) by Act of Attainder in the Parliament of 1463-5. Gower, who had fought at Towton for Henry VI, remained a rebel, CFR, xx. 204; PROME, xv. 171-2. In the will of John’s father, Thomas Gower, the family lands had been left first to Richard Gower, the er. son, and then to John, with remainder, should they die without issue, to Passhele’s children, William and ‘Isabel’: PCC 14 Stokton. Richard Gower had sold his manor of Clapham in 1462: C140/38/41. but there is no sign that Passhele had sympathized with his stance.

Passhele died on 20 Nov. 1468, but four years elapsed before inquisitions post mortem were held. The first such inquisition, conducted in Cornwall on 27 Oct. 1472, C44/32/14. was the only one to acknowledge that his heir was his son William, by then aged 22. Perhaps there had been an earlier attempt to conceal William’s wardship from the Crown, and this is also suggested by the delayed inquisition regarding the lands of William’s late uncle Richard Gower, which had not been held until eight years after Gower’s death in 1463. William was probably Gower’s heir, although the jury professed ignorance as to who this might be. C140/38/41. Despite the lawsuits between Passhele and the Chudleighs over the Cornish manors of Lanreathow and Trefreak, the inquisition for our MP stated that he had died possessed of both manors, which was almost certainly not the case. What had happened to the Sussex and Kent estates after his death is also unclear. In 1455 he had apparently granted Evegate to certain feoffees to hold to the use of his second wife Alice, for her lifetime. At an assize of novel disseisin in Trinity term 1472 they, Nicholas Sharp and Richard Palmer, had formally recovered the manor and lands in Smeeth, Aldington, Mersham and elsewhere from the heir William, who now, in November 1472, relinquished to Sharp all his rights in the manor and lands for term of his stepmother’s life. She, our MP’s widow, had meanwhile married Richard Nanseglos, a member of a Cornish family with property in London. CP40/843, rot. 455; CCR, 1468-76, no. 1033; Scott mss, T19/4; Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, ser. 5, v. 38, 40. That same month William also confirmed John Devenish* and Thomas Bayen* in their possession of a messuage and 300 acres of land in Hastings of which they had been enfeoffed (with others now dead) by his grandfather Sir John Passhele. CCR, 1468-76, no. 1033; C54/324, m. 9d (calendared incorrectly in CCR, 1468-76, no. 1013).

Other inquisitions related to the Oxfordshire estate, which now became the subject of a number of claims. The first, held on 5 June 1473, simply stated that our MP had held a third part of the manor of Chipping Norton of the King in chief, but the jury did not know the name of his heir, E149/227/3. and further inquisitions, held later in the same month, repeated these findings. Yet claims to the estate were being put forward in Chancery. On 18 July Nicholas Sharp asserted his title as the sole surviving member of the body of feoffees named by Passhele in 1455, and two days later the treasurer granted it to him at farm, to hold until the following summer. But disregarding this on 11 Nov. a formidable group of men headed by the King’s brother Richard, duke of Gloucester, appeared to press their claim. They, Sir John Pilkington†, Sir Robert Chamberlain†, Sir John Huddleston†, John Sapcote† and Richard Croft†, are all, save Huddleston, known to have been Members of the Commons sitting in the Parliament then in session. Their contention was that Passhele had enfeoffed the lawyer John Glyn (this in accordance with the royal licence of 1459), who had died (in fact been murdered in Cornwall by Thomas Clemens*), leaving as his heir his son John Glyn† junior, and that the latter had passed the estate to them and the heirs of Croft. Nevertheless, a month later the younger Glyn appeared by attorney to claim the property for himself. In their turn Sharp’s daughter and heir Joan and her husband Thomas Cotton entered the fray in June 1474, asserting, like Gloucester and the rest, that Chipping Norton was not held of the King in chief, but rather of the duke of Clarence. The King’s attorney, William Hussey*, discounted the claims of Glyn and the Cottons, C44/32/14; CFR, xxi. no. 184. and it was Croft who triumphed shortly after. CFR, xxi. no. 248; CPR, 1476-85, p. 247.

In January 1475 our MP’s heir, William Passhele, granted Evegate to the former judge (Sir) Walter Moyle*, his son John and another Cornishman, Thomas Luccombe, so it may be that his stepmother Alice had died by then, or else that he had reached an understanding with her. Scott mss, T19/5. In 1485 Richard Nanseglos, gentleman, was living with Alice his wife, sis. and coh. of William Bonefey esquire, but whether this was the same Alice as had been our MP’s wife is uncertain: Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, ser. 5, v. 38, 40. The deed relates to property in London once held by John Olney, a feoffee for Passhele’s marriage settlement of 1455: Corp. London RO, hr 215/6. William is not mentioned thereafter, and he and any children he may have had died before September 1480. It was then that his sister Elizabeth petitioned the chancellor for help in recovering title deeds wrongly retained by her stepmother’s husband Richard Nanseglos, and which, since they concerned her inheritance, must have fallen to her on the death of her brother. C1/58/417. Elizabeth was married to Reynold Pympe, younger son of John Pympe of Nettlestead, by whom she had a daughter, Anne. After Henry VII came to the throne Anne successfully petitioned his first Parliament in 1485 for the reversal of the attainder of her great-uncle John Gower, and thereby succeeded to the Gower lands forfeited to Edward IV. Anne took the Passhele manor of Evegate to her husband John Scott, whose grandfather (Sir) John had acquired La Mote from her Passhele grandfather back in 1460. Archaeologia Cantiana, xxxvii. 120; lxxiv. 39-41; PROME, xv. 171-2. The Passhele line had been extinguished; its estates diminished and sold by Sir John Passhele and his son.