AUBREY, Robert

Aubrey’s background is obscure, but in the early years of his career he may have mainly lived in Southwark, where he formed a close association with Robert Mucking, a wealthy London vintner who as the only son of John Mucking† (d.1417) owned a number of properties in the borough. In July 1428 Mucking made him a grant for life of an annual rent of £2 from lands and tenements in Southwark, and when in the following April Mucking set out his proposals for the foundation of a chantry in St. Olave’s church Aubrey was among the feoffees who were given the responsibility of selling property to raise 200 marks for the project. At the same time it was stipulated that Aubrey himself would inherit Le Bere with its adjacent inn.2 CP40/671, cart. rot. 1d; 673, cart. rot. 1d; Surr. Arch. Collns. l. 194; CP25(1)/232/70/32, 35. The relationship between the two men was evidently close for in his own will of 1486 Aubrey was to name Mucking as one of the beneficiaries of prayers at his chantry at Harlington.3 PCC 14 Milles (PROB11/8, ff.110v-11). His connexion with Southwark was a strong one, and in November 1431 he was the recipient of a grant of a robe and a yearly rent of as much as 20 marks made by the prior of St. Mary Overey.4 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 171-2. Perhaps the prior had retained him as counsel or in an important office. Details of his property south of the Thames are lacking, although in the assessment carried out for the income tax levied in 1436 he was said to hold lands in Surrey and elsewhere worth £15 p.a.,5 S.L. Thrupp, Merchant Class Med. London, 378; E179/238/90. and he was later referred to as a ‘gentleman’.

It may be that some of Aubrey’s holdings were situated closer to the Surrey borough of Bletchingley, which he represented in Parliament, but no evidence to establish this has been found. By that date, the mid 1430s, he had acquired landed interests at Harlington in Middlesex, to the west of London, and it was there that he established his family, although he was also sometimes known as ‘of Pinner, gentleman’.6 KB9/238/12; 256/6; C237/42, no. 111; KB27/762, rex rot. 28. Like a number of the men returned to Parliament for Bletchingley in this period, Aubrey was elected early in his career. He may by then have already joined the Exchequer, a move that might have brought him to the notice of the borough electors who, on several occasions, returned men employed by the Crown. The nature of his work at this time is unclear, but by February 1444 he was sufficiently well regarded as to be appointed to the post of summoner which he held for just under three years. The office, in the gift of the chancellor of the Exchequer, Master John Somerset*, was not especially lucrative, although provided him with an annual income of £4. However, it did lead to the securing in January 1445 along with Clement Luffyn, of a lease of property in Harrow for seven years.7 ‘Exchequer Offs.’, 99; CFR, xvii. 308-9. The same year, now described as ‘of Harrow-on-the-Hill’, Aubrey was among the recipients of a gift of goods and chattels made by a London armourer, and he also acted as a feoffee of property in the city parish of St. Sepulchre without Newgate, acquired by a brewer named Henry Payn.8 Corp. London RO, hr 174/26; CCR, 1441-7, p. 344.

While in office at the Exchequer in 1445 Aubrey acquired a lease or a grant for life of the manor of South Moreton in Berkshire from the financially-strapped Sir Henry Hussey*. Still holding this life-interest in 1452 he may have relinquished it two years later, before Hussey’s heir confirmed the bishop of St. David’s and other feoffees in possession.9 CCR, 1447-54, pp. 342, 354, 510; E210/5593. Meanwhile, Aubrey had begun the process of acquiring the manor of Dawley, in the parish of Harlington where he lived. In June 1447 Richard Broun quitclaimed his interest in the manor to him, and three years later a similar quitclaim was made by John, son of Thomas Lovell, whose family had owned the manor for many years.10 CCR, 1447-54, pp. 180-1; VCH Mdx. iii. 263-4. Not everything appears to have gone smoothly, however, for in November 1452 Lovell was forced to obtain a pardon for his outlawry in respect of a debt of £300 owed to Aubrey and Broun, which may indicate that they had foreclosed on a mortgage taken out by Lovell on the manor.11 CPR, 1452-61, p. 5. An early challenge to Aubrey’s ownership had come from a wealthy Salisbury merchant, Thomas Freeman*, who together with his son Walter and a servant broke his closes at Dawley on 1 July 1447. Bringing a suit against them in the King’s bench in 1450, he claimed damages of £100, apparently without success.12 KB27/756, rot. 24d.

A mark of Aubrey’s standing in Middlesex is his attendance at two shire elections. His reputation was sullied, however, by an indictment in 1456 for taking away oxen belonging to the Crown at Dawley.13 KB9/283/48. In March 1461, at the start of the new reign, he was appointed to a royal commission, and two years later he was chosen as a tax collector for the county.14 CPR, 1461-7, p. 32; CFR, xx. 107. Following the death of Henry Werkworth, the prior of St. Mary Overy in Southwark who had made him the generous grant of 20 marks p.a. some 30 years earlier, he fell out with Werkworth’s successor, alleging in the common pleas in Hilary term 1465 that the new prior had failed to pay the instalment of five marks due to him on the previous 1 Oct., to his damage of £40. The prior retaliated in the following term with a charge that Aubrey had stolen £40 from the church in the time of his predecessor.15 CP40/814, rot. 487; 815, rot. 444d.

Aubrey lived on in retirement for another 20 years. On 2 Jan. 1486 he made his will in which he asked to be buried in the church of St. Peter and St. Paul in Harlington, by the altar of St. Katherine. He made provision for an obit to be celebrated there during the lifetimes of his executors and requested that a chantry priest pray for the souls of his parents, his first wife, Denise, and a number of other individuals, including Robert Mucking. Aubrey was forthright about the disposition of his goods among his children, stating, in relation to his older sons (John, William and Robert) that because he had ‘borne costs and charges upon them and found them to scole and other wise ... so that they been profered to worship’ he proposed to assist ‘other of my childern that cannot helpe them self as they canne’. The same went for four of his daughters, whom he had ‘preferid ... to maryage wherfore they been contentyd of ther partes’. Aubrey instead required his second wife to make similar provision for their younger children, Humphrey, Walter and Joan, until they came of age. This was clearly not a matter that he was prepared to compromise over, and he required all his sons and daughters to abide by his wishes with the threat that ‘he or she or they that so will vary from my will and graunt shall have no peny worth of my goodes, and such goods as I have graunted to them that so varieth of any suche shalbe disposed for my soule’. Finally, he made clear that all existing enfeoffments concerning Dawley should be honoured by his executors, his wife Christine, and his sons William and Richard, the last eventually inheriting the manor. The will was proved on 16 May.16 PCC 14 Milles; VCH Mdx. iii. 264.