SHERARD, Henry

Sherard was the son of a namesake, who before 1407 held a burgage in Dorchester situated on the lane leading to Durnegate. Perhaps this was the same property that he himself was to occupy later.3 Dorchester Recs. ed. Mayo, 166, 285. The family possessed manors at Warmwell and Little Mayne, not far from the county town, and Henry Sherard senior presented their kinsman the chaplain William Sherard, to the chapel at Little Mayne early in 1414.4 Hutchins, i. 710; Reg. Hallum (Canterbury and York Soc. lxxii), 460. It is not known when he died, but it seems likely that it was the future MP rather than the older man who was appointed as a collector of parliamentary subsidies in the county at the end of that year. The MP’s lands in Warmwell were said to be worth £5 6s. 8d. for the purposes of taxation in 1431, and his description as ‘of Sutton, Somerset, gentleman’ shows that he then also had landed interests in that county.5 Feudal Aids, ii. 111.

The status of ‘gentleman’ implies that Sherard had received a legal training, so it may well have been he who was enfeoffed in 1412 by Robert Quarell of lands in Winterborne Strickland for the purposes of effecting an entail.6 Dorset Hist. Centre, Weld of Lulworth Castle mss, D/WLC/T242. As ‘of Dorset, gentleman’ he stood surety in £40 in Chancery on 27 Jan. 1418 for William Langbroke, the treasurer of Wells cathedral, who himself undertook under pain of £1,000 that he would not travel to the papal curia at Rome without the King’s licence.7 CCR, 1413-19, p. 456. Of greater importance for his career, Sherard became a close associate of the wealthy Sir Humphrey Stafford* of Hooke, with whom he served on an ad hoc commission of local government later that year. In February 1423, together with Sir Humphrey’s half-brother, Master John Stafford (later bishop of Bath and Wells), they entered recognizances to Cecily, widow of Sir William Cheyne† in 550 marks, payable in three instalments, as part of the agreement for the marriage of her son Edmund* to Sir Humphrey’s daughter Alice.8 CPR, 1416-22, p. 148; CCR, 1422-9, p. 57. Sherard’s connexion with the Staffords may well have counted for much at the elections to the consecutive Parliaments of 1426 and 1427, to which he was returned for Dorchester, for they were the most influential commoners living in the county. On both occasions Sir Humphrey sat with him in the Commons, as a knight of the shire, and by the time his second Parliament assembled he was acting as an executor of Sir Humphrey’s first-born son, Sir Richard Stafford*. As such, Sherard and his fellow executors (John Newburgh I* and the cleric Henry Blakemore) accounted at the Exchequer for the issues of Gussage Bohun in Dorset, formerly belonging to Edmund, earl of March, for which Sir Richard had assumed responsibility. During Michaelmas term 1427 (while the Parliament was in progress) they were also summoned to the Exchequer to answer regarding the deceased knight’s failure to pay an annuity while he had been sheriff, but as they defaulted the barons decided that the amount due, £12 3s. 6d., should be taken from their goods. Sherard was then called ‘esquire’.9 SC6/832/9; E364/69, m. G; E13/138, rot. 2d. In July 1429 he was among Sir Humphrey’s feoffees who purchased a pardon for acquiring property held in chief without royal licence,10 CPR, 1422-9, p. 541. and he again accompanied the knight to Parliament in 1432. Sir Humphrey’s half-brother Bishop Stafford had recently been appointed chancellor. That Sherard continued to be linked with both men is clear from their association in a final concord of the following year, relating to property in Somerset.11 Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xxii), 83. Sherard’s standing in the region is indicated both by his appearance in May 1431 as a witness to a grant to Althelney abbey, and his nomination on the Dorset list of those required to take the generally prescribed oath against maintenance three years later.12 CCR, 1435-41, p. 166; CPR, 1429-36, p. 382.

Sherard claimed to be the direct descendant and heir of one Alice Rosel, who had lived in the early fourteenth century, as such asserting his right to the Dorset manor of Colway in 1428. On this occasion he was defeated on a technicality after one of the defendants, William, Lord Botreaux, said that it rightly belonged to Thomas Carminowe*, but undeterred, he brought other suits in the court of common pleas as Alice’s heir in Hilary term 1435.13 CP40/670, rot. 493; 696, rot. 43. Not recorded thereafter, he died without surviving issue before the summer of 1437. His widow, Elizabeth, secured for life the manor of Little Mayne and the advowson of its chapel by an agreement made with Robert Morgan and his wife Joan, her late husband’s sister and heir.14 Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 350. Joan herself died childless before October 1453, whereupon her kinsman and heir Robert Cowley of Bincombe relinquished his title to Warmwell and Little Mayne to the highly acquisitive lawyer John Newburgh II*. The lawyer was prepared to pay Morgan an annual rent of as much as 60 marks for his lifetime, as well as an annuity of ten marks to Sherard’s widow in return for her interest in Little Mayne.15 C146/9342; Hutchins, i. 428-9, 710; Dorset Nat. Hist. and Arch. Soc. lxv. 105-6; CP40/771, cart. rot.