WARRE, William

The Warre family and its branches established in Somerset and Dorset are well documented. William’s contemporary, John Warre of Hestercombe in Somerset held lands in the two counties estimated in 1412 to be worth as much as £76 p.a.1 Feudal Aids, vi. 423, 513. Clearly eligible for knighthood, his status among the gentry is also reflected by his appointments as escheator in 1413, sheriff in 1414 and 1430, and a j.p. in Dorset in 1417. Furthermore, for a while he was joint custodian of estates formerly belonging to Edmund Mortimer, earl of March.2 CFR, xv. 98, 120. John, who married Joan Maubank (d.1439), of Pitton, Wiltshire, died in 1443.3 CFR, xvii. 52, 275; C139/90/7. The records provide many details about his descendants (notably his grandson Richard Warre*) and those of his brother Robert Warre of Chipley.4 See especially C140/84/37; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 616; ii. 320, 321, 368; CFR, xxii. no. 365.

By contrast, the MP for Lyme Regis is an obscure figure. The fact that John Warre was a member of the Dorset bench when William was returned to Parliament may reinforce the supposition that they were kinsmen, but precisely how they were related is not revealed. Nor is it known where William lived, although at one time he was a feoffee of land near Gillingham in the north of the county.5 Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 285. The key to his election to Parliament may be found in his employment by the prominent Dorset family of Arundel, the Lords Mautravers and heirs-male to the earldom of Arundel, with whom he was associated throughout his career. Initially, Warre entered the service of Eleanor, Lady Mautravers, who in 1404 named him among the feoffees of the manor of Witchampton, which passed on her death the following year to Sir Richard Arundel; and he was to be a witness in 1415 when Sir Richard relinquished his title to the same manor to the King’s grandmother the countess of Hereford.6 Harl. Chs. 45 C 51-54, 56; CCR, 1402-5, p. 431. Meanwhile, Warre had been present at the shire court at Dorchester for the elections to the Parliament of 1410, and on 1 Feb. 1414 he and another member of his family, a cleric named Thomas Warre, obtained at the Exchequer keeping of the fruits of the Dorset church of Sturminster Marshall, together with lands pertaining to the leper hospital of St. Gilles, Pont-Audemer, in Normandy, which they were to hold for the duration of the war with France.7 C219/10/5; CFR, xiv. 56. Perhaps their putative kinsman John Warre, currently escheator in the county, had drawn this perquisite to their attention.

William accompanied John Warre to the shire court held at Ilchester on 4 Oct. 1423, where both men attested the indentures recording the election of the knights of the shire for Somerset in the Parliament summoned to meet on 20 Oct. Contrary to the statutes which stipulated that those participating in the elections should be resident in the shire concerned, a week later William attested the parliamentary indentures sealed at Dorchester. This was the occasion of his own return to the Commons for Lyme Regis, an impoverished and deserted borough with which he had no known connexion.8 C219/13/2. The most likely explanation for his wish to be elected was his continuing involvement in the affairs of the Arundels. As a feoffee of the estates of John, Lord Mautravers and de jure earl of Arundel, he had presented an incumbent to a rectory in Sussex in 1418,9 Reg. Chichele, iii. 463. and a later lawsuit refers to him as administrator of the lord’s goods and chattels and one of his executors. Lord Mautravers had died in 1421, leaving his son and heir a minor, but Warre continued in the service of his widow, Eleanor, who shortly before the Parliament was summoned had married Sir Richard Poynings*. The latter stood for election in Sussex, apparently in the hope of speeding up the process of the long-delayed assignment to Lady Eleanor of her Arundel dower: just ten days after the Commons assembled fresh orders went out to local escheators to do their duty. It may be that Warre was expected to assist Poynings and Lady Eleanor in this regard. In 1425 she, together with her co-executors of Arundel’s will (identified only as William Ryman* and John Burnell), were sued for a debt of £96 13s. 4d. which the testator had run up with a London mercer, John Fauntleroy. In the court of common pleas three years later Ryman contended that the plea against them was invalid as the writ had failed to mention Warre, in his capacity as administrator and executor, although Fauntleroy denied that the MP had ever held that responsibility.10 CCR, 1422-9, p. 82; CP40/658, rot. 311; 670, rot. 415d.

Henry V’s war in France had ended in 1420 with the treaty of Troyes, and accordingly Warre’s farm of the alien priory estates should then have ended, yet he and his kinsman Thomas had continued to collect the revenues of Sturminster Marshall; in Easter term 1429 they were summoned to the Exchequer to answer for sums still due to the Crown. 11 E159/205, recorda Easter rot. 3d. It is likely that our MP was the William Warre ‘esquire’ who stood surety for John Paulet* at the Exchequer in December 1433 when Paulet was attending the Commons as a shire-knight for Somerset, and who acted similarly for the Sussex lawyers John Bolney and his son Bartholomew Bolney* in March and July 1436.12 CFR, xvi. 176, 273, 293. Significantly, the lordships in Dorset and elsewhere of which the Bolneys were then given custody pertained to the earl of Arundel’s heir; and on the last occasion Warre was called ‘of Old Shoreham, Sussex’, a place where the Arundels held a manor.13 VCH Suss. vi (1), 150-1. For how long he had been settled in Sussex is uncertain. The farm of the revenues of Sturminster Marshall was granted to someone else in May 1440 and Warre is last recorded in January 1443 when John Holcombe of that place was pardoned his outlawry for failing to answer a suit brought by him and Thomas Warre for a debt of £40, which had no doubt been incurred during their tenure.14 CFR, xvii. 153; CPR, 1441-6, p. 119.