ARNEBURGH, Reynold

A lawyer, Reynold was the son of a townsman from Godmanchester near Huntingdon. Technically a self-governing manor, Godmanchester did not gain corporate status until 1604. In practice, its exemptions and privileges meant it was very similar to an incorporated borough,4 VCH Hunts. ii. 288-9; R. Fox, Hist. Godmanchester, 120. and Reynold’s father served as one of its bailiffs in the late 1420s and mid 1430s.5 JUST3/219/5; Hunts. Archs., Godmanchester ct. roll, 1435-6, G/7/3. While a young man Reynold seems to have resided with his uncle Robert Arneburgh in London. Robert had married Joan, widow of Thomas Aspall of Suffolk and one of the two daughters and coheirs of Sir Geoffrey Brokholes. The match had greatly enhanced Robert’s status, since Joan had succeeded to half the extensive Brokholes inheritance in Essex, Hertfordshire and Warwickshire, and his household was an obvious place for William Arneburgh to place his son. It is likely that Robert and Joan arranged Reynold’s marriage to one of Joan’s relatives, Joan Palmer. The Palmers are very obscure but conceivably their surname was an alias used by the Kedingtons, the family of the elder Joan’s first husband Philip Kedington. Reynold first comes into view in the late 1420s when Robert was considering how best to secure his nephew’s advancement. The course adopted was a career in the law, and the young man entered Lincoln’s Inn. As he progressed in his legal education, he became useful to Robert, who employed him as his agent and legal adviser. William also relied on his son’s expertise, and he sent for Reynold, then in London, on one occasion because he needed his help with a suit in the local court at Godmanchester.6 Carpenter, 6-7, 30, 31-33, 50, 111-12, 186-7.

Of the two brothers, Robert was most in need of legal advice because for many years he and his wife were embroiled in a bitter dispute over the Brokholes inheritance. Joan’s sister and coheir Margery had never succeeded to her share of the inheritance, for she had died at a relatively young age. Her heir was John, her son by her husband John Sumpter* of Colchester, but he died, still a minor, in July 1420. Young John’s sisters Christine and Ellen survived him, but Joan asserted that they were illegitimate and laid claim to his moiety of the Brokholes lands. Eventually a much delayed inquisition post mortem held in Essex declared that Christine and Ellen were the boy’s rightful heirs but Joan never forsook her claim to the whole inheritance.7 Ibid. 5-6. In the autumn of 1443, shortly before she died without surviving issue, she made a settlement of her estate. She awarded Robert a life interest in the whole estate, which included properties in Suffolk as well as her share of the Brokholes lands, directing that after Robert’s death it should pass to her relative John Palmer, Reynold’s brother-in-law. One of the feoffees for this settlement, Reynold had a direct personal stake in it as well, since under its terms his wife was to succeed to the lands if Palmer died leaving no heirs.8 CP25(1)/293/70/277-8. In the event it appears that the younger Joan, who died without having borne Reynold any surviving children, predeceased her brother, who also died without direct heirs, probably in the late 1440s.9 Carpenter, 33.

By about 1450, Robert Arneburgh was asserting that his late wife had willed the sale of all her fee simple lands, and that she had directed that he might buy them at a discounted price. In doing so, he was contradicting the settlement of 1443, although it is possible that Joan had overturned this arrangement in her will, which has not survived. Whatever the case, Reynold was prepared to go along with his uncle’s claim, since he tried to bully Robert into surrendering the lands to him. He brought considerable pressure to bear on Robert, getting a ‘juge of this londe’ to speak to him on his behalf. Robert refused to give way and incurred the displeasure of both Reynold and the judge as a result. 10 Ibid. 173. Reynold and Robert also quarrelled over Joan Arneburgh’s share of the Brokholes lands at Mancetter, Warwickshire, and to others in Leicestershire which the Warwickshire abbey of Merevale had given in exchange for the Brokholes advowson of Mancetter parish church. Reynold claimed a right to these properties in his capacity as Joan Palmer’s widower, but Robert denied he had any such right. He ordered his estate officials, lessees and tenants not to pay his nephew any rent, although he suspected that one of the lessees, John Barbour, vicar of Mancetter, was all too ready to listen to ‘a fewe crakyng wordys’ from Reynold. In response, Barbour referred to the ‘greet thretes’ that the latter was making to both him and the tenants.11 CPR, 1446-52, p. 302; CPL, xi. 49-51; Carpenter, 181-2.

By the 1450s, Reynold was residing at Hemingford Grey, 12 CCR, 1447-54, p. 448; 1454-61, p. 33. a parish situated a few miles to the south-east of Huntingdon, the borough he represented in four consecutive Parliaments. There is little doubt that the burgesses of Huntingdon chose him for his legal expertise, and he may already have been recorder of the borough when he first entered the Commons. He also maintained his family’s links with nearby Godmanchester. Between Michaelmas 1445 and the following Easter, the townsmen paid him a fee of 13s. 4d., presumably for his legal counsel, as well as several small sums for riding to London to take out various writs on their behalf.13 Hunts. Archs., Godmanchester bor. acct. 1445-6, G/1/10. On more than one occasion, he was a plaintiff in the town’s court. In December 1445 he and others, including Henry Hatewrong, a legal clerk and attorney from Cambridgeshire of somewhat questionable probity,14 A.F. Bottomley, ‘Admin. Cambs.’ (London M.A. thesis, 1954), 85-86. sued William Powe for debt and for detaining a pyx containing various deeds and other muniments. Five years later, this time acting alone, he sought to recover another debt in the same court.15 Godmanchester ct. rolls, 1445-6, 1450-1, G/6/3, 8/3.

Possibly Reynold was never reconciled with Robert Arneburgh, who must have been dead when the wider dispute over the Brokholes inheritance finally ended. In spite of quarrelling with his uncle, Reynold had continued to uphold the Arneburghs’ cause against John Sumpter’s surviving daughter Ellen and her second husband Ralph Holt of Lancashire. Following a Chancery suit on the part of the Holts, the dispute went to arbitration. The four arbitrators, Robert Wyllenhale and Thomas Umfray*, acting for Reynold and another of Joan Arneburgh’s feoffees, Sir Philip Thornbury*, on the one hand, and Thomas Urswyk II* and Guy Fairfax, representing the Holts on the other, made their award on 21 July 1453. They assigned the complete inheritance to Ellen, by now the sole surviving representative of the Brokholes line. Reynold and Thornbury were to have only an interest in Joan Arneburgh’s Suffolk lands, which had never been part of the Brokholes estate.16 Carpenter, 38; C1/205/94; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 448, 473-4.

Soon after this setback, Reynold was caught up in a quarrel with Thomas Burgoyne* and his wife Alice. In early 1455, he was the leading defendant in two suits that the Burgoynes brought in the court of common pleas. In the first, he and his co-defendants, mainly husbandmen or labourers, stood accused of having broken into the Burgoynes’ close at Impington, Cambridgeshire, on the previous 24 Sept.; in the second, they stood charged with assaulting Alice there on the same day.17 CP40/777, rots. 57, 520d. Possibly the quarrel was connected with a long and bitter jurisdictional dispute between Burgoyne and his neighbours, the nuns of Denney abbey.18 C1/40/30-32. Both suits referred to Reynold as ‘of Denney’, suggesting that he had become involved as an estate official of the nuns. It is also worth noting that most of his co-defendants, 29 in all, were either from Denney or from Histon and Impington, the other townships caught up in the Burgoynes’ quarrel with the nuns, making it likely that at least some of them were tenants of the abbey. In October 1454, Arneburgh and several others had bound themselves in a recognizance to Burgoyne, probably in connexion with these suits. Its purpose was to guarantee that six Histon men (including one of those accused of assaulting Alice) would enter another bond as security that they would abide by any award which two arbitrators, John Ansty* and John Green III*, might make between them and Burgoyne.19 CCR, 1454-61, p. 33. Later, in July 1458, Edmund, Lord Grey of Ruthin, and others were commissioned to arrest Arneburgh and John Mynstrechaumbre† and bring them before the King in Chancery to answer for certain (unspecified) riots and offences, but there is no evidence to show that this commission was connected with the Burgoynes.20 CPR, 1452-61, p. 442. Reynold may have served the Greys of Ruthin in the 1450s (Carpenter, 29), so possibly the Crown was making Edmund responsible for apprehending his own unruly retainer.

There is little information about Reynold’s later years. He was appointed a j.p. in Huntingdonshire in June 1460 but was removed shortly after the accession of Edward IV. He disappears from view after December 1461, when he gained admission to repasts at Lincoln’s Inn for the next seven years,21 L. Inn Black Bks. i. 36. although he was still alive in 1475, when he was suing the abbot of Merevale over an unpaid legal retainer.22 Carpenter, 39.