APSLEY, John

Pedigrees of the Apsley family, which are inconsistent in their treatment of its early generations, suggest that John’s father was called William, but this cannot now be verified.3 Vis. Suss. 39, 85. A William Apsley presented to the rectory at Thakeham in 1407, and as ‘the elder’ was appointed a tax collector in Suss. in 1410: Reg Rede, ii (Suss. Rec. Soc. xi), 297; CFR, xiii. 181. The Apsleys possessed land at Thakeham in the Arun valley by the mid fourteenth century,4 Suss. Feet of Fines (Suss. Rec. Soc. xxiii), 2067. and a moiety of the manor of Thakeham came to them as a consequence of the marriage of Stephen Apsley to Margaret, daughter and coheir of Stephen Power, which was contracted before 1377. John was their descendant, perhaps grandson.5 VCH Suss. vi (2), 35. By his day the Apsleys had made their mark in local administration: a namesake of John’s had served as a coroner in west Sussex in the 1370s,6 Suss. Arch. Collns. xcviii. 60-61. and Stephen Apsley was several times a tax collector in the county in the late fourteenth century and at the beginning of the fifteenth. Precisely when John inherited his family’s holdings is unclear, for although Stephen presented to the rectory at Thakeham for the last time in 1408, John is not recorded doing so until March 1430.7 Reg. Rede, ii. 299; Reg. Chichele, iii. 487. In the following year, as lord of the Apsley moiety of the manor of Thakeham, he granted that the terms of the tenure by which Edmund Mille* held of him the manor of Mundham might be altered so that instead of a payment of 2s. 3d. every year henceforth Mille would provide two crossbows.8 CCR, 1429-35, p. 288. At Michaelmas term 1432 Apsley appeared in the court of common pleas to bring an action against John Veske* ‘gentleman’ for breaking into his closes at Thakeham and taking a pyx containing deeds, as well as crops worth £5. But in the following year Veske brought a counter-suit alleging that Apsley, similarly described as a gentleman, had unlawfully cut down his timber and stolen goods to the value of £7. It is not recorded how their dispute was resolved, although in later years Veske lived further east, at Lancing.9 CP40/687, rot. 536d; 691, rot. 543d. Apsley was listed among the landowners of Sussex who were required to take the generally-prescribed oath against maintenance in the spring of 1434, and in September 1435 he attended the shire court at Chichester for the county elections to Parliament.10 CPR, 1429-36, p. 372; C219/14/5.

Apsley is only recorded intermittently thereafter. In Hilary term 1450 he brought a plea in the central courts against a local tailor for assaulting a servant of his at Thakeham.11 CP40/756, rot. 40d. Given that there is no evidence of any involvement in royal administration on his part, it seems likely that it was not he but rather his eldest son John who served as clerk in the great wardrobe and wore Henry VI’s livery at least from 1458 until 31 Aug. 1460.12 E361/6, rot. 51d. The post was probably owed to the then keeper of the wardrobe, John Wood III*, who also came from west Sussex; and John Apsley the clerk, called ‘of London, gentleman’, stood surety at the Exchequer on Wood’s behalf in December 1458.13 CFR, xix. 218. Whether it was the father or the son who sat in the Parliament of 1459 for Arundel, during the clerk’s term of office, remains uncertain, for the return makes no distinction between them. In either case, the link between MP and borough is clear, for the Apsleys held property in Arundel as tenants of the earl of Arundel, and their home at Thakeham was not very far distant.14 SC11/645. One of the two Johns attested the Sussex elections on 30 Apr. 1467.15 C219/17/1. John senior is last recorded on 13 Dec. that year, when, at his request, the feoffees of his moiety of Thakeham, the advowsons of the church and chantry there, and other of his landed holdings in Sussex and Surrey, settled them on him for life, with remainders in tail to his son and heir John and then to his other five sons in succession.16 W. Suss. RO, Add. mss, 882. The second of these, Richard, subsequently entered royal service as a serjeant-at-arms to Edward IV.