BARANTYN, Drew

Long established in Oxfordshire, the Barantyns had owned property at Chalgrove since Henry III’s reign, and their manor in that parish was worth at least 40 marks p.a. at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Elsewhere in the county, the MP’s grandfather, Thomas Barantyn, held land at Nettlebed and shared possession of the manor of Little Haseley with his younger brother, another Drew Barantyn. Thomas was a typical member of the Oxfordshire gentry, while his brother pursued a successful career in London as a wealthy and influential goldsmith. Thomas’s heir was his son Reynold, who also succeeded the childless goldsmith when the latter died in late 1415. At his death, the elder Drew was one of the richest property owners in London. Outside the City, he held land in at least eight counties at various stages in his career, although his estates were concentrated in Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Buckinghamshire. Reynold Barantyn succeeded to most of these properties, although not until after considerable administrative delays. The goldsmith’s widow Christine likewise encountered problems in securing her dower in the same estates, having by February 1419 married John Manning, one of the coroners in Wiltshire, without royal licence. The Crown responded by confiscating her dower lands, although she and Manning were able to recover them after paying a fine of £40. Following Manning’s death in the late 1420s, Christine took Reynold Barantyn for her third husband. Perhaps a mutually defensive arrangement to consolidate the couple’s rights in the goldsmith’s estates, the marriage was a short one since she died in March 1428.12 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 116-22; E159/202, brevia Mich. rot. 26d; CIPM, xxiii. 80.

The subject of this biography, Reynold’s son by his first wife, features in his great-uncle and namesake’s will of 1407, in which he received a bequest of 50 marks.13 PCC 31 Marche (PROB11/2B, f. 31). Drew was probably still a minor at that date and he next comes into view in the mid 1420s. In common with his father and Christine Barantyn, he was caught up in litigation over properties that the late goldsmith had held in London, and during the winter of 1424-5 the skinner Henry Barton† sued him for trespass. In the city’s mayoral court, Barton pleaded that the young man was illegally occupying a mansion and 22 cottages in the parish of St. John Zachary. Barton declared that he had bought the reversion of these holdings, to vest after Christine’s death, from the goldsmith’s executors in 1416. Drew countered by claiming a right to a share of the properties in question, but Barton won the suit and damages of 100s. This outcome would appear to have marked the end of the Barantyns’ status as owners as property in the City. Drew and his father made a release to the skinner in November 1425 of all their right to the goldsmith’s former residence in St. John Zachary, and to the other holdings that the elder Drew had held in that parish and those of St. Anne and St. Mary Staining. The two men also undertook to give Barton a formal undertaking to surrender to him any deeds and evidences in their possession that related to the properties in question.14 Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, pp. 191-2; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 137; Corp. London RO, hr 154/18, 19; London English ed. Chambers and Daunt, 136.

When Barton brought his suit Drew was already married to his first wife Joan, the elder of the two daughters and coheirs of the late Sir John Drayton, and he and his wife were obliged in May 1433 to safeguard Barton’s possession of the same London properties with another such release.15 Corp. London RO, hr 161/49. The match between him and Joan was largely the work of the influential Thomas Chaucer*, who had purchased her marriage from the Crown and was a close friend of Drew’s uncle Robert James.16 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 797; iii. 487-8. It was a valuable one for the Barantyns, since her moiety of Drayton’s estates included shares of manors at Churchill and Bridcote in Oxfordshire, at Burghfield Regis, Aston Tirrold and Long Wittenham in Berkshire and at Kempston in Bedfordshire.17 C139/151/40; VCH Berks. iii. 400, 454; iv. 387; VCH Beds. iii. 299. Joan and her younger sister Elizabeth, the wife of the obscure Christopher Preston of Northamptonshire,18 VCH Oxon. vii. 19. did not gain full possession of their inheritance while their mother Isabel, who had remarried Stephen Haytfeld*,19 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 797. was still alive, but they and their husbands were already active in defending their interests before her death in 1437. The Drayton estates included a house at Oxford, and the two couples went to law in the early 1430s against a pair of burgesses from the town. When the case came to pleadings in the court of King’s bench in Hilary term 1431, they alleged that the defendants, Michael Norton, the town clerk of Oxford, and Thomas Wilde* had made a forcible entry on to the property. Norton and Wilde responded to the plea through Hugh Holgot, an attorney employed by their borough. The plea roll reveals nothing about the circumstances of the dispute. Rather than answer the plaintiffs directly, Holgot claimed cognizance of the suit for the borough because both defendants were burgesses and the alleged offence had occurred within Oxford. The court adjourned after instructing the parties to reappear in the following Easter, but it is possible that they settled out of court since there is no trace of the case in the plea roll for that term.20 KB27/679, rot. 71d. In spite of co-operating in this suit, by the following year Barantyn and Preston were at variance with each other over the Drayton estates. In November 1432, they agreed to submit their differences to arbitration, each binding himself to the other in £1,000 as a guarantee that he would observe the arbitrators’ award.21 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 224-5. As it happened, Preston died not long afterwards, for by the autumn of 1435 Elizabeth was married to her second husband, the Bedfordshire esquire John Wenlock*.22 CP25(1)/191/27/71.

By the early 1430s, Drew had already begun his public career, a considerably more distinguished one than that of his strangely obscure father, with whom he was required to swear a widely administered oath to preserve the peace in 1434.23 CPR, 1429-36, p. 395. The only office in local government Reynold appears to have exercised was that of a tax collector in Oxfordshire, a role that appears scarcely to befit a man of his status.24 CFR, xiv. 88, 123, 221; xv. 292, 332. Strikingly, it was during his lifetime that his son was made a j.p. for the county, a position which he himself never attained. His brass in Chalgrove church, which records that he died on 4 Sept. 1441, depicts him in armour and it is conceivable that he was primarily of service to the Crown as a soldier in France.25 Parochial Collns. 81; CFR, xvii. 196. Whatever the case, there is no evidence that his son and heir played any part in the King’s wars. The assumption that Drew was a lawyer is far from unreasonable, given that he was a member of the quorum throughout his service as a j.p. for Oxfordshire and that he was appointed to several commissions of gaol delivery on a similar basis.26 It is also worth noting that Barantyn was associated with the lawyers William Tresham* and John Vampage* when (at some point before May 1447) William Dales conveyed various lands in north-east England to the three men and others to hold in security for his creditors: CCR, 1441-7, pp. 476-7. Furthermore, James Gresham, a servant of John Paston*, is known to have sought contact with the MP in the spring of 1450, when he (Gresham) was in London looking after his master’s interests in various lawsuits: Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 40.

The substantial estates comprising Barantyn’s inheritance included at least seven manors situated at Chalgrove, Little Haseley, Chinnor and Pyrton in Oxfordshire and Purley in Berkshire, and a lordship at Kingsey, Buckinghamshire. After his death, the Oxfordshire manors were officially valued at over £50 p.a., but this was almost certainly a considerable underestimate. It is not entirely clear whether two other holdings, a manor at Attington in Oxfordshire and the ‘Falcon’, a messuage in Oxford which had once belonged to John Gybbes†, a prominent late 14th-century burgess of that town, were properties he inherited or purchased.27 Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Chalgrove deeds, 24; VCH Oxon. viii. 62, 63, 151-2; VCH Berks. iii. 420; VCH Bucks. iv. 67; Bodl. Top. Oxon. c. 400, f. 196; Surv. Oxf. i (Oxf. Historical Soc. n.s. xiv), 31-32, 225; C139/151/40. It would appear that he did not succeed to the estates which his great-uncle and namesake had held in Cambs., Essex and Suff. These holdings included the valuable manor of Frostenden, Suff., acquired by Sir William Porter† in 1429-30. Porter’s executors sold it to William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, just over a decade later: CIPM, xx. 579; LR14/259; E210/5195, 5935, 10675. Near the end of his life he conveyed Purley to John Norris*, for the latter to hold as a security for an annual rent or annuity of ten marks charged upon one of the Barantyn manors at Chalgrove. It would appear that this transfer became a permanent one. The manor, which does not feature in Barantyn’s Buckinghamshire inquisition post mortem, was still held by Norris in 1462 and remained in the Norris family until Charles I’s reign.28 VCH Berks. iii. 420; Add. Ch. 2031.

Barantyn did not come fully into his own immediately after his father’s death because his stepmother Elizabeth held part of his inheritance, comprising lands worth £20 p.a., in dower.29 CIMisc. viii. 190. The younger daughter of Sir Thomas Sackville† of Sussex, she had married Reynold Barantyn near the end of his life, for her previous husband William St. John*, an esquire from that county, had died in November 1439. Following Reynold’s death, she went to reside with the widow of Sir John Cottesmore, c.j.cp., at Brightwell in south Oxfordshire, and a few weeks later she married John Upham, a member of the Cottesmore household. In all likelihood, it was a love match and the disparity in social status between the couple must have ensured that the marriage was highly controversial. It became all the more so because John Tycheborne, esquire, who previously had expected to win her hand and was confident that her contract with Upham was invalid, had afterwards married her in a second ceremony. The resulting dispute, which prompted investigations by the Church and Crown and involved a Chancery suit, lasted for several years. In due course Upham won his claim to Elizabeth’s hand. Tycheborne divorced her in July 1443 but kept her lands and goods for himself, so prolonging his quarrel with Upham. There is no evidence that Barantyn was in any way involved in the dispute but it must have caused him no little concern, given that the lands in question included that part of his inheritance held by Elizabeth in dower. Presumably, the Crown ordered Tycheborne to surrender the lands and goods to the Uphams in the wake of a commission of inquiry of April 1445, which had established that they were still in his hands.30 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 234-5; C1/15/175; CPR, 1441-6, p. 339. Assuming that Elizabeth did not outlive him, there is no record of when Drew regained the lands she had held in dower.

When he succeeded his father, Barantyn’s own first wife was dead but it is not clear if he had already remarried by that date. His obscure second wife Beatrice also predeceased him, dying in late 1446. According to the Tudor antiquary John Leland, she was a bastard daughter of Thomas Chaucer’s son-in-law William de la Pole, earl (later marquess, then duke) of Suffolk, by Jacqueline of Hainault, the divorced wife of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester.31 Leland, v. 233; CP, xii (1), 446n-447n. Leland’s claim is impossible to verify, although Barantyn was already connected with de la Pole, given that they were related, albeit distantly, through his mother Joan James. Yet there is no evidence that Suffolk, the King’s chief minister by the time of Barantyn’s only known Parliament, counted Drew as one of his retainers. It would likewise appear that Richard Harcourt*, Barantyn’s fellow knight of the shire, had no particular association with the de la Poles at this date. The two MPs were no doubt already well acquainted, for in the spring of 1437 Barantyn had acted as a surety for Harcourt in King’s bench, after the latter had committed a misdemeanour serious enough to earn him a brief period of detention in the Marshalsea prison.32 KB27/704, rex rot. 28d; 708, fines rot. 2d.

During the four-month recess which followed the second session of the Parliament of 1445, Barantyn was associated with the lawyer Ralph Astley* in his dealings with Sir William Peyto‡. On 20 June that year several sureties acting for Peyto entered a bond to Astley, to guarantee that the knight would release the manor of Wolfhampcote and other lands and rights in Warwickshire to the latter and others, Barantyn among them. A soldier, Peyto had fallen into serious financial difficulty following his capture in France in 1443. During his absence across the Channel, Astley had acted as his attorney and helped him to mortgage his estates to raise money for his ransom. At the same time, however, he had seized the opportunity to purchase some of the knight’s lands in Warwickshire for himself.33 Warws. RO, Peyto of Wolfhampcote mss, L4/36; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 68; C1/11/232; C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 121, 127; CPR, 1446-52, p. 257. Quite possibly Peyto had agreed to surrender possession of Wolfhampcote to him and his associates in return for a mortgage. Barantyn was evidently close to Astley, for whom he had acted as a feoffee since at least the mid 1430s, and who was to appoint him one of his executors.34 CP25(1)/91/113/81; VCH Herts. iii. 361; Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Stafford, ff. 135-6. His association with Peyto continued after Astley’s death in late 1445 or early 1446, and in March 1449 the knight, acting with John Wenlock and Edmund Brudenell, acquired a royal grant in reversion of the wardship of his eldest son John Barantyn. It seems likely that the three men were acting on behalf of Barantyn in acquiring this speculative grant, rather than trying to take advantage of him and his family; whatever the case, not long afterwards Peyto and his wife were obliged to seek help from Barantyn and others. In the autumn of 1451, the financially hard-pressed couple mortgaged the manors of Sowe and Chesterton in Warwickshire and Great Wyrley in Staffordshire to the MP and several associates. According to the terms of the mortgage, Peyto could re-enter Sowe and Great Wyrley if he repaid £300 within two years, but he would have to pay the remaining £190 before Midsummer 1454 to regain Chesterton. In the event, he was able to resume possession of the first two manors but Chesterton was still in the hands of his creditors when he died in 1464 and it took his son and heir another three years after that to recover it.35 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 244-5, 501; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 68.

It is likely that Barantyn had come to know Peyto in the first place through a common connexion with Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick. The earl, who had died at Rouen in April 1439, had counted Peyto as a member of his household, while Barantyn had also enjoyed links with that lord. The earl’s landed interests had included holdings in Oxfordshire and the home counties, and Barantyn featured (as ‘Drugon Barogh’) in a valor of the estates that Warwick held through his first marriage. Made in 1437 or earlier, the valor shows that Warwick had granted Barantyn an annuity of ten marks, charged upon the issues of the valuable Beauchamp manor of Kingston Lisle in Berkshire.36 Carpenter, 455n; SC12/18/46; C.D. Ross, Estates and Finances Richard Beauchamp (Dugdale Soc. occ. pprs. xii), 4 and n. Barantyn enjoyed a further connexion with the Beauchamps through his third marriage since his last wife was a daughter of the Warwickshire lawyer John Throckmorton, one of the most prominent members of Earl Richard’s council. So far as is known, Barantyn’s principal connexions among the aristocracy were the Beauchamps, although he was also linked to John Mowbray, 3rd duke of Norfolk, in so far as he paid the duke a rent of four marks p.a. for some of his holdings at Chinnor.37 Henton deeds, 30.

Evidence for Barantyn’s associations with his fellow gentry and others below the status of the lay peerage is plentiful. A particular friend was Richard Quatermayns*, a neighbouring landowner whom he knew as a ‘kinsman’. The two men served each other as feoffees, and Barantyn appointed Quatermayns one of his executors.38 Corp. London RO, hr 181/22; CPR, 1441-6, p. 243; 1446-52, pp. 180-1; CCR, 1441-7, p. 216; 1461-8, p. 143; C139/151/40; Early Lincoln Wills, 179. It is not clear in what sense Barantyn and Quatermayns were kinsmen. In December 1446 he and Quatermayns, acting in association with the royal financier William Beaufitz*, obtained the wardship of two of the daughters of Sir Stephen Popham*. The girls were the coheirs of the knight and his second wife, and in due course one of them, Elizabeth, was married to Barantyn’s eldest son John, who succeeded to estates in Hampshire and Wiltshire in her right.39 CFR, xviii. 60; VCH Hants. iii. 398; iv. 522; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 177-8. Quatermayns was far from the only gentleman whom Barantyn served as a feoffee, so lending further weight to the hypothesis that the MP was a lawyer. Among others for whom he acted in a like capacity were Sir Thomas Wykeham*, John Roger I*, the King’s great almoner John de la Bere, the Exchequer official Robert Aubrey*, Miles Windsor esquire, and the prominent Essex knight (Sir) Thomas Tyrell*.40 CPR, 1436-41, p. 347; 1441-6, pp. 279, 331, 344-5; 1446-52, p. 325; CP25(1)/91/28/9; CAD, i. B1093-4; PROME, xi. 447; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 301-4, 342, 354; Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 36. Tyrell’s wife Anne was one of the Marneys of Essex, whose landholdings in other counties included estates in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire.

Among the Marney holdings in the latter county was a manor at Kingsey,41 VCH Bucks. iv. 64. a parish where the Barantyns also exercised rights of lordship, and after Barantyn’s death his third wife, Joan Throckmorton, was to find a new husband in Anne’s brother Sir John Marney. A much less obscure lady than Beatrice Barantyn, Joan married Barantyn in 1447. From her previous and childless match with Robert Giffard, she held in jointure the Giffard manors at Weston Subedge in Gloucestershire, the reversion of another at Aston Subedge in the same county, a manor at Sherston Pinkney, Wiltshire, and holdings at Cove in Hampshire. Barantyn must have taken more than a passing interest in these properties and, late in life, he sued William Porter, an esquire from Weston Subedge, for a trespass on some of his wife’s lands in Gloucestershire.42 CPR, 1441-6, p. 344; 1452-61, p. 183; C1PM, xxvi. 501; CCR, 1441-7, p. 419; C140/67/44.

Of far greater significance than this dispute was Barantyn’s quarrel with Alice de la Pole, dowager duchess of Suffolk. In spite of his family connexions with the de la Poles, by the early 1450s he and the influential John Wenlock, now chamberlain of the queen’s household, had fallen into dispute with the duchess over the former Drayton manor at Nuneham Courtnay in Oxfordshire. Isabel, Sir John Drayton’s widow, had possessed a life tenancy in the manor, but she had relinquished this interest in 1425 when she and her then husband Stephen Haytfeld had sold the reversion to Alice’s father Thomas Chaucer. In the event, Isabel outlived Chaucer whose title to Nuneham passed to Alice. It was probably no coincidence that Wenlock and Barantyn challenged her claim following the political downfall and subsequent murder of her powerful husband in 1450. In June the following year the two men and Barantyn’s son John, at that date a youth several years short of his majority, made an entry on to the property, so provoking legal action on the part of Alice and her followers. A suit brought by a group of de la Pole councillors headed by Edmund Hampden* and Sir Thomas Tuddenham*, led to an assize of novel disseisin at Henley-on-Thames on 16 Sept. 1451, but these proceedings ended in disorder, prompting several of the j.p.s for Oxfordshire, acting in association with the county’s sheriff and under sheriff, to complain to the Crown. They informed the King that Wenlock, Barantyn and no fewer than 3,000 armed ‘malefactors’ had disrupted the assize and threatened their opponents and the presiding justices, who included none other than the two chief justices, with death. However exaggerated these claims, Wenlock and Barantyn had evidently caused a serious disturbance at Henley. It would appear that they paid for their temerity with a brief period of confinement in the Marshalsea prison, since in February 1452 the King sent (Sir) John Fortescue*, c.j.KB, an order for their release. On the following 15 Mar. Wenlock was among those who entered a recognizance for 500 marks, to guarantee that Barantyn would appear in the Chancery on 9 May, and he and his fellow sureties also undertook to deliver him to the Fleet prison if he failed to make such an appearance. Five days after putting his name to the recognizance, Wenlock entered another for 2,000 marks, to guarantee his good behaviour while the assize that he and Barantyn had disrupted was still pending. Barantyn was also obliged to provide a like security, although this bore a greater penalty of £2,000. The two men must have sought the help of Wenlock’s mistress the queen soon afterwards, because it was at her bidding that they each received a royal pardon, dated 21 Apr., for all the trespasses, riots and other offences they had committed. In June the same year, Fortescue and other eminent men of law investigated the dispute in Exchequer chamber. They must have found for the duchess, since at the beginning of the following December Wenlock and Barantyn formally quitclaimed Nuneham Courtnay to her and her heirs.43 VCH Oxon. v. 240; KB27/766, rot. 96; 767, rot. 13d; 772, rex rot. 7; KB145/6/30; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 338, 339, 346-7; CPR, 1446-52, p. 530; 1452-61, p. 98.

The dispute occurred right at the end of Barantyn’s life, for he died a few months after making the quitclaim. Shortly before his death, he drew up a last testament, dated 18 Apr. 1453, in which he requested burial beside his first wife in Chalgrove parish church where his father also lay.44 Early Lincoln Wills, 179; Chalgrove deeds, 41A. He bequeathed the contents of his household chapel to the same church, directing that it should receive them after the death of his then wife, Joan, with whom he had acquired a papal indult to keep a portable altar less than a year earlier. Amongst other religious bequests, he provided for the establishment of a chantry at Henton in Chinnor.45 CPL, x. 605; C1/39/247. Barantyn left Joan 100 marks in money and assigned the same amount to each of their three children, Thomas, Drew and Alice, as well as to the unborn child she was carrying. He made other bequests to his four daughters of his first marriage, respectively the wives of William Fettiplace, Walter Barow, Robert Kentwood and John Cottesmore (son of the late chief justice), and provided John Thamys, a theologian and principal of St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, with an annuity of eight marks to receive while he waited for a benefice. Thamys was one of those whom Barantyn appointed his executors, for which task he also chose Richard Quatermayns, Edmund Brudenell the elder and William Bosenho of Chalgrove. He died five days after making the will and was interred beneath a marble stone at Chalgrove. His successor was his son John, then some 16 years of age.46 Chalgrove deeds, 41A; Biog. Reg. Univ. Oxf. ed. Emden, iii. 1858-9; C139/151/40. John followed his father’s footsteps by sitting for Oxfordshire in the Parliament of 1467.

Following the MP’s death, there were several disputes over the Barantyn estates. At some stage before early October 1456, his sister Joan and her husband Henry Shirfeld sued Thamys and Bosenho in the Chancery. They stated that her father Reynold Barantyn had agreed to assign her a marriage portion of 80 marks, which had remained totally unpaid at Reynold’s death, although the MP had subsequently given them £25 in part payment of this sum. They claimed that while he was on his deathbed Drew had specifically asked that they should receive the money still owing to them but that ever since the two executors had failed to comply with his request.47 C1/16/197. Later in the same decade, Queen Margaret sued Thamys and Bosenho in the court of common pleas. When the case came to pleadings in Michaelmas term 1458, the queen’s attorney alleged that she yet to receive a sum of nearly £20 still outstanding from an account that Barantyn had presented to her auditors in February 1452. The plea roll fails to reveal what the account related to and it does not record a conclusion to the suit, but it would seem likely that Barantyn had served Margaret in some capacity, perhaps as an officer on her estates.48 CP40/791, rot. 99d. It is unclear why the other two executors, Quatermayns and Brudenell, were not also parties in either of these suits. Neither had rejected the role of Barantyn’s executor, since both men were associated with Thamys and Bosenho in suing various individuals who had fallen into debt to the late MP: CP40/792, rots. 81d, 200. There was also a series of disputes between Richard Quatermayns and John Barantyn. Possibly friction began to develop between the two men in 1459 when John appears to have mortgaged Chalgrove to Quatermayns for over £180. A decade later, John sued Quatermayns in the Chancery for breach of trust as a feoffee, alleging that he had failed to make a release of the Barantyn estates to him. The apparent mortgage is not the only intimation that the Barantyns ran into financial difficulties, for among the surviving records of this Chancery suit is a rejoinder in which Quatermayns claimed that the late MP had bought his first marriage to Joan Drayton for 200 marks, putting himself in debt for many years afterwards as a result. In the same rejoinder, Richard added that Drew had incurred further significant expenses in raising and marrying his daughters and in the dispute over Nuneham Courtnay. John Barantyn was still in dispute with Quatermayns in the first half of the 1470s, by which stage he had also fallen out with his stepmother and others. These quarrels centered on the manors of Little Haseley and Henton in Chinnor, both of which the MP had assigned to his last wife for her jointure. In the event, Joan had not retained immediate possession of these properties, for she and her third husband, Sir John Marney, had leased them out to John Barantyn.49 Add. Ch. 20320; C1/39/246-8; C47/37/22/94; C139/151/40; Henton deeds, 52b, 57a, 58d, 61. Joan survived until the spring of 1478, having outlived Marney, a former Lancastrian briefly arrested on suspicion of treason in 1468, as well as her stepson, who died in July 1474. Her heir by Marney was their son Henry†, later Lord Marney, and her heir by the late MP her son Thomas Barantyn.50 C140/50/36; 67/44; C. Ross, Edw. IV, 122-3; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 177-8; The Commons 1509-58, i. 378-9.