BARTELOT, John

Stopham, in the fork of the Arun and the Rother a few miles from Petworth, is notable for its long association with the Bartelots, who held the property they acquired about the close of the fourteenth century for over 500 years. The tale that their tenure extended back to the Conquest should be disregarded, for no member of the family is recorded in connexion with Stopham before our MP’s father married the coheiress of William Stopham. It is probable that before then the Bartelots lived at East Preston, and that their status was relatively humble.4 Suss. Arch. Collns. lv. 20-23, correcting ibid. xxiv. 14-15; xxvii. 37-68. Our John’s father and namesake paid homage to the bishop of Chichester for a moiety of the land formerly belonging to the late William Stopham in East Ferring in 1398. Stopham’s estate was shared with Robert Palmer, who had married Bartelot’s sister-in-law, but the Bartelots had the larger part, including the manor of Stopham and the advowson of the parish church. John Bartelot the elder was one of those who successfully petitoned the chancellor in 1399 for a grant of pontage to repair the bridge over the river between Pulborough and his home.5 Chichester Cart. (Suss. Rec. Soc. xlvi), 249; Reg. Chichele, iii. 485; SC8/299/14936; CPR, 1396-9, p. 577. In this he was joined by Robert Lewknor†, who lived at Pulborough and like him had formerly been a retainer of Richard Fitzalan, the earl of Arundel executed in 1397. Indeed, the Bartelots rose in the service of the earl and his successors, who were the principal lords of the district. The inscription on the elder John’s monumental brass of 1428 states that he went on to serve the next earl, Thomas, as treasurer of his household.6 Suss. Arch. Collns. xxiii. 181; Two Fitzalan Survs. (Suss. Rec. Soc. lxvii), 120. Earl Thomas was made treasurer of England on the accession of Henry V in 1413, and promptly installed a number of his retainers in posts at the Exchequer. John senior was one of them, and until the earl’s death in October 1415 he occupied the post of a teller. It was also to the earl that he owed his appointment as customer at Chichester in 1414.7 PRO List ‘Exchequer Officers’, 226; CFR, xiv. 69-71.

Our MP, described in the retinue roll as John Bartelot ‘the younger’, crossed to France as one of the esquires in the earl’s company when Henry V embarked on the invasion of August 1415, and he was given licence to return to England with his commander on 28 Sept. when the latter fell sick with dysentery at the siege of Harfleur. He too was listed among those taken ill, but unlike the earl he survived. Prior to embarkation Earl Thomas had named Bartelot’s father as a feoffee of his estates, and in the will he had made on 10 Aug. had entrusted him with his goods and arranged that he and William Ryman* should be responsible for receiving the money owed him by the Crown, and for paying his legacies. John senior was to receive as much as 100 marks as a reward for his long service. Furthermore, he was present when the earl declared his final testament at Arundel castle on 10 Oct., then being named among the executors. On that occasion, the earl left him an annual rent of 12 marks.8 E101/47/1; Reg. Chichele, ii. 71-78; Suss. Arch. Collns. xv. 127, 129; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 1-2. As a feoffee of the Fitzalan estates, he was party to settlements made for the lifetime of the widowed Countess Beatrice,9 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 317, 323-4, 327, 422; CPR, 1436-41, p. 446. and he served her as receiver of her Sussex estates.10 Arundel Castle mss, A230.

As our MP’s brass tells us, he himself was employed by three earls of Arundel as ‘consul prudens’: Earl Thomas, John Arundel (presumably the earl who died in 1435), and William (d.1487). The importance of his association with the first was probably exaggerated, but there is little doubt of his involvement in the affairs of Earl Thomas’s widowed countess. On 4 Dec. 1417 he joined his father and another former Fitzalan retainer, Richard Wakehurst†, in offering mainprise under pain of £100 that she would not molest a London skinner, and that securities for the peace made before the j.p.s in Sussex would be brought to Chancery. Two years later, on 24 Nov. 1419, the countess herself, in association with Bartelot’s father, stood surety for him at the Exchequer when he acquired a joint lease of the manor of Keevil and a moiety of that of Bulkington, Wiltshire, formerly belonging to her late husband. When Ryman was given keeping of certain former Fitzalan estates in Shropshire in February 1428, during the minority of Earl John, Bartelot appeared as his mainpernor.11 CCR, 1413-19, pp. 459-60; CFR, xiv. 308-9; xv. 210. He assisted his father in the administration of the estates held by Countess Beatrice, notably in transferring payments to him from the rent collectors and farmers, of whom he himself was one.12 Arundel Castle mss, A230. Which of the two audited the accts. of the steward of her household in 1425 is uncertain: CP40/665, rot. 335. In return for his services he was granted an annuity of £5 from the lordship of Arundel, which was held by the countess and her second husband, John, earl of Huntingdon.13 E163/7/31/1, no. 30. It was on behalf of the latter that, early in 1435, he received at the Exchequer an assignment replacing a bad tally.14 E403/717, m. 10.

Bartelot’s marriage probably came about through his link with the late Earl Thomas, for one of his fellow esquires in the earl’s retinue of 1415 had been his wife’s cousin, (Sir) Thomas Lewknor*. Lewknor had inherited the bulk of the estates of his grandmother, the heiress Joan d’Oyley (d.1393), but she had settled her manor of Denne in Warnham on her younger son, John Lewknor (Sir Thomas’s uncle). John had died on 27 Jan. 1409, followed less than three weeks later by the elder of his two daughters, leaving the younger, Joan, then aged five, as his sole heir. Owing to the minority of John Mowbray, Earl Marshal, the overlord of certain of her holdings in Warnham, Joan’s wardship came to the Crown, and her marriage together with nine marks rent from the free tenants of the manor was granted in November 1410 to John Burgh† the under treasurer. It remains uncertain how her match with Bartelot was arranged, although perhaps her mother, who had previously been married to William Stopham, Bartelot’s kinsman, had something to do with it.15 CIPM, xix. nos. 523-5; W.D. O’Bayley, House of D’Oyly, 94-95; CFR, xiii. 203; VCH Suss. vi (2), 208-9. The marriage had taken place by Michaelmas term 1420 when Sir Thomas Lewknor successfully recovered seisin of the manor of Denne against John and Joan Bartelot in the court of common pleas. This was undoubtedly a collusive action, for in January following he formally confirmed their title to the manor, which henceforth they were to hold in tail-male of him and his heirs. An inquisition held in December 1422 established that Joan was then aged 19, but it was not until the following July that the Crown finally relinquished hold of the rest of her inheritance.16 Add. 39375, f. 196; CP25(1)/240/84/24; C139/8/89; CCR, 1422-9, p. 34. Meanwhile, Bartelot had set about acquiring more property by purchase. In 1418 he had bought some land in North Stoke from Geoffrey Wepham, and this he placed in the hands of feoffees, including his father and William Sydney* the lawyer, seven years later.17 D.G. Elwes and C.J. Robinson, Castles W. Suss. 216. He apparently added more in Broadwater in 1426,18 CP25(1)/240/85/22. and he succeeded his father at Stopham two years after that.19 Feudal Aids, v. 153.

Bartelot’s father had attested the elections held at the county court at Chichester for the Parliament of May 1421, and John joined him in attesting those of 1422. His name appears as a witness to all of the indentures returned to Chancery for the five consecutive Parliaments from 1427 to 1433, and when the shire court next met for an election, in 1435, he himself was one of those chosen to represent the county.20 C219/12/5, 13/1, 5, 14/1-4. Bartelot had been among the leading men of Sussex required to take the oath not to maintain malefactors, as administered in 1434,21 CPR, 1429-36, p. 372. and by then he was evidently well known among the local gentry. He had witnessed the landed settlement made in 1433 on Maud, widow of Thomas Poynings, Lord St. John, and later in the same year had acted as a feoffee of land in West Grinstead on behalf of Sir Hugh Halsham and his wife.22 CCR, 1429-35, p. 61; Cat. Goodwood Estate Archs. ed. Steer and Venables, i. 36; Add. Ch. 8877. Halsham was an old acquaintance, for he too had sailed for France in 1415 as one of the earl of Arundel’s esquires. Similarly, Walter Urry*, Bartelot’s companion in Parliament, came from the same circle, being another retainer of the Countess Beatrice. The Parliament was the first to meet after the death of Earl John in France in June 1435, and there was doubtless much business to be dealt with at Westminster to do with the inheritance of his infant son Humphrey. Perhaps Bartelot and Urry were elected in order to facilitate it. Bartelot again attested the parliamentary indentures at Chichester on 20 Dec. 1436.23 C219/15/1. He had long been associated with yet another member of the retinue of 1415, William Okehurst*, and in January 1438 the two of them were granted at the Exchequer the keeping of the priory of Lyminster, Sussex, for ten years. In the following May Countess Beatrice joined them in a new lease at an annual rent of 25 marks, which however they lost four months later when someone else offered to pay a mark more.24 Suss. Arch. Collns. xl. 118-19; CFR, xvii. 19, 41-42. Bartelot was appointed escheator in February 1439 following the death of the incumbent, Thomas Wintershall*, who had sat in the same Parliament as he did, as a shire-knight for Surrey.25 CFR, xvii. 75.

In his later years Bartelot was often associated with his neighbours, the brothers Edmund* and Edward Mille*, most notably as their co-feoffee of the manor of Shelve in Kent for William St. John*. He was also party to transactions regarding the manor in Pulborough belonging to Robert Lisle*, and in 1447 he and his namesake John Bartelot of Cotes were both named as attorneys to transfer seisin of the manor to Sir Thomas Lewknor and others, who were to keep possession until Lisle repaid a loan of £200.26 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 265, 451; 1441-7, pp. 471, 477. Other transactions were more pertinent to his own family affairs. He had acquired an estate called West Wantley in Sullington, and in July 1448 this was settled by his feoffees on his son Thomas and the latter’s new wife Elizabeth, the heiress of the Okehurst lands.27 Cat. Wiston Archs. ed. Booker, i. 195.

In the late 1440s and 1450s our John Bartelot and his son of the same name may occasionally be confused. When he took out a pardon as former escheator on 4 Aug. 1446, our John was described as ‘of Stopham esquire, alias senior’,28 C67/39, m. 33. and it was likewise as ‘senior’ that he attested the shire elections at Chichester again in 1447, and as ‘esquire’ that he did so in January 1449. The John Bartelot who figured on the indentures of October 1449 and 1450 was not distinguished in these ways, so it is likely that this was the younger man. Two John Bartelots were enfeoffed by Maurice Pomery of lands in Westbourne and Pulborough: one of them, our MP, released his interest in December 1452, while the other John was later named in a suit in Chancery arising from the transaction.29 C219/15/4, 6, 7, 16/1; CAD, iii. A5979; C1/44/73-76. If the monumental brass in the church at Stopham (engraved in about 1460) is correct in stating that our MP died on 1 June 1453,30 Suss. Arch. Soc. xxiii. 181-2. he cannot have been the person to whom in the autumn of 1452 John Wood III* the under treasurer of the Exchequer delivered the sum of 200 marks for his costs in speeding the earl of Shrewsbury’s departure for Guyenne, for reassignment of the tallies issued was made both in November 1453 and May 1459. Nor can he have been the John who made loans to the Crown of £65 and £135 respectively in April and July 1453 or who served as controller of customs at Chichester from April 1453 until March 1455.31 E404/69/48; E403/796, 6 Nov.; 819, 5 May; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 25, 201-2; E401/831, mm. 1, 26. Our John and his wife had procured a papal licence for a portable altar in 1448. One of his last acts was to attest the shire election of February 1453, in company with John ‘junior’, and a month later as ‘of Stopham, senior’ he made a conveyance of land in East Preston of which he was a feoffee.32 CPL, x. 305; C219/16/2; Add. Ch. 5664.

The younger John, as John Bartelot alias Stake esquire of Stopham, obtained an indult for a portable altar on 12 Sept. 1454.33 CPL, x. 681. He seems to have otherwise lived at North Stoke. Although he served as under steward of the Sussex estates of Syon abbey for at least eight years from 1453, and was steward of the important almshouse at Arundel,34 SC6/1037/10-13; Reg. Story (Canterbury and York Soc. cvi), 304. he also carried on the tradition of service to the earls of Arundel begun by our MP’s father into the third generation of the family, for he acted as bailiff of the liberties pertaining to William, earl of Arundel, in the rape of Arundel from before December 1448 until after January 1456.35 CP40/759, rot. 10; 780, rot. 107; Petworth House mss, Petworth ct. rolls, 6770. His sister Joan married John Threle, the marshal of the earl’s household, and their brother Richard (d.1482) apparently succeeded Threle in his post.36 Suss. Arch. Collns. xxiii. 135, 182.