WESTON, John II

This MP came from a moderately affluent branch of the prolific Weston family of Surrey. His father William, who had represented Sussex in the Parliament of 1415,3 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 818-19. had received from land in that county (at Buxted) and in Surrey (at Dedswell and elsewhere) an annual income of at least £40.4 Feudal Aids, vi. 518, 526. For the most part these landed holdings appear to have been retained by William’s widow Joan, and in 1421, following her marriage to William Catton† (d.1431) she and her fellow executors of her first husband’s will brought suits in the court of common pleas for debts amounting to over £45 owing to his estate.5 CP40/643, rot. 198. Besides his patrimony, John could also expect to inherit his mother’s portion of the estates of her brother Thomas Wintershall, which she had shared since 1420 with her sister Agnes Basset.6 C138/50/86; CFR, xiv. 369; CCR, 1419-22, p. 95. This portion, which duly came into the possession of our MP on his mother’s death in the early 1440s, included the manors of Bramley and Puttenham in Surrey, and Eastleigh in South Stoneham in Hampshire.7 VCH Surr. iii. 82; VCH Hants, iii. 486-7 (both accounts omit John Weston in the descent of the fam. lands between his mother Joan and his son William); O. Manning and W. Bray, Surr. 17. His mother and aunt also laid claim to the large manor of Polsted in Compton, Surrey, which had formerly been held by their family the Wintershalls, and in 1424 they had sued their kinsman John Loxley in an attempt to gain possession. Following his mother’s death, John Weston joined his aunt in Hilary term 1442 in a plea against John Jenyn* and Bernard Jenyn* (Loxley’s son-in-law) over the same property, but they were ultimately unsuccessful.8 VCH Surr. iii. 21; CP40/655, rot. 123; 724 rots. 428, 477. The proceedings of a later suit, brought long after our MP’s death, noted that a John Weston had been married to Loxley’s sister Alice, but that the marriage had not produced issue. This suggests that a marriage settlement between the Loxleys and the Wintershall coheir lay behind the long-running dispute.9 CP40/822, rot. 284. A John Weston and Alice his wife had a papal licence for a portable altar in 1427, but identification is uncertain: CPL, vii. 549. Another part of Weston’s inheritance comprised property situated in Middlesex at Willesden and Acton, which came into his possession before 1441.10 CCR, 1435-41, p. 451.

We can exclude the possibility that the MP was the John Weston who became a page of the King’s chamber before Michaelmas 1434, and subsequently served not only as groom of the robes but also in the entourage of the queen, for that John was still living in April 1456, whereas the Sussex landowner died at an earlier date.11 Add. 17721, ff. 34v, 38v, 23938, f. 15; CCR, 1454-61, p. 139. Details about his career are sparse. It was probably he who in 1435 witnessed a deed for his kinsman John Wintershall’s widow, and in association with other members of his family attested a transaction regarding the Carew estates a year later, and in May 1436 he was present when his aunt Agnes made a conveyance to feoffees of part of the former Wintershall estates12 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 38, 45, 62-63. By the time he was elected to Parliament Weston had become well known among the gentry of Sussex, for when he placed his Middlesex lands in the hands of feoffees in 1441, they included Edmund Mille* and John Michelgrove*, who represented the county not long afterwards. Private interests concerned him further in Hilary term 1446, when he brought a suit in the common pleas against a local husbandman for stealing his timber at Buxted,13 CP40/740, rot. 347. and he evidently encountered difficulties tidying up the affairs of his late father and uncle, for later that year he sued out a pardon in which he was described as ‘of Hindhall, esquire, tenant of the lands late of Joan, widow of Thomas Wintershall, and heir of the lands of William Weston’. He took the trouble of obtaining a writ of non molestetis directed to the Exchequer, to free him from any process relating to his father’s shrievalty of 1417-18.14 C67/39, m. 13; E159/223, brevia Mich. rot. 23. It may be that such concerns prompted him to seek election to the Parliament summoned to assemble at Bury St Edmunds in the following February. There is no evidence that he was well known in the borough of New Shoreham which returned him; indeed his home at Buxted was situated several miles away.

Weston died intestate at an unknown date before Michaelmas term 1455, when Thomas Welles*, a leading lawyer from Hampshire, appeared in the court of common pleas as administrator of his estate.15 CP40/779, rot. 621d. It seems likely that Welles had already taken the opportunity of marrying one of Weston’s daughters, Margaret, to his only son and heir.16 Margaret’s 2nd husband had been Robert Wodefold* (d.1483/4). Despite her three marriages, when she made her will in 1511 she asked to be interred near the tomb of her father in the parish church of Buxted, rather than next to any of her husbands: PCC 27 Fetiplace (PROB11/17 f. 211). Weston’s own heir was his son William, who served as sheriff of Surrey and Sussex in 1477-8. Probably after his father’s death he married a daughter of the Sussex landowner William Gunter, thereby acquiring an interest in Gunter’s manorial estates in Somerset and Wiltshire, and in his will of 20 Sept. 1485 he left the large sum of £100 to find a priest at Buxted to pray for his own and Gunter’s soul, provided the latter’s executors offered a similar amount.17 CCR, 1476-85, no. 1334; PCC 24 Logge. As William died childless, the lands of this branch of the Weston family were then divided between his nephew John Pope and his only surviving sister Margaret, by then married to her third husband, John Apsley†.18 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 162; C142/27/62.