BEDSTON, William

Of obscure origins, Bedston is first recorded, in February 1442, as one of the recipients of a gift of goods and chattels made by the widow of a former MP for Southwark, William Horton†.3 CCR, 1441-7, p. 48. Among the other recipients were Walter Moyle*, the future judge, and the latter’s kinsman William Moyle II*, who had also trained to be a lawyer. Most likely Bedston was a member of the same profession, and it is interesting to note that the borough he first represented in Parliament, Bodmin, was Walter Moyle’s home town. But Cornish affairs were never the focus of Bedston’s career. Several years before that first election to the Commons he had entered the service of Alice de la Pole, dowager duchess of Suffolk, and it was in East Anglia, where his lady held substantial estates, that he endeavoured to become a landowner. It is likely that he was first employed by Alice’s husband, Duke William, who was murdered at sea when going into exile in May 1450, for it had been during the duke’s lifetime that he began his attempt to acquire lands at Brampton in Suffolk. Initially, he purchased from the executors of John Belley, esquire, one of the duke’s retainers, certain holdings there known as ‘Bengers’, but at the time of Cade’s rebellion, which followed hard upon the duke’s murder, Robert Alverich, a local priest who had been enfeoffed of the property by Belley, allowed John Strange* to occupy it and take the profits. Probably in the year 1455-6 (perhaps even while he and Strange were at Westminster attending Parliament) Bedston petitioned the chancellor for redress, whereupon Strange denied the charge of evicting our MP, and claimed to have no knowledge of the enfeoffment. In conciliatory vein, he stated that he would do everything possible to persuade Alverich to transfer seisin to Bedston according to his wish, though asked for costs and damages for his wrongful vexation.4 C1/16/453. In fact, this suit formed just a small part, probably not even the beginning, of a long confrontation between Bedston and Strange over territory at Brampton, a confrontation which was to continue unabated for more than 20 years. No doubt their rivalry was fuelled by Strange’s links with John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, who challenged the de la Poles’ domination in East Anglia, and both Strange and Bedston made full use of their respective patrons’ influence and the support offered by colleagues in the rival affinities.

Bedston’s alignment with the de la Pole camp had also been made clear from the records of sessions held by justices of oyer and terminer at Ipswich in February 1453. He was then associated with the dowager duchess Alice and several of her supporters in bringing about the indictment of a number of Mowbray’s retainers for offences committed during the previous three years. Indeed, when the most prominent of them, John Howard*, was required to offer security of the peace towards Alice, the earl of Oxford and others, Bedston was named among the latter.5 KB9/118/2 (pt. 1), no. 25. Thereafter, he busied himself about the dowager’s affairs. In February 1455 he was responsible for handing over the large sum of £10 to the escheator of Norfolk and Suffolk, evidently as a bribe for looking the other way when her officers recovered the manor of Stockton from the duke of Norfolk, and he made payments amounting to £3 19s. to attorneys holding a court at the manor and also authorized payment of 33s. 4d. to (Sir) Philip Wentworth* for his expenses for riding from London to Stockton to take possession on her behalf. Bedston assumed responsibility for this outlay when Andrew Grygges*, the receiver-general of the duchess’s estates, presented his accounts to the auditors, and although he is nowhere accorded an office, it is clear that he belonged to her estate staff.6 Egerton Roll 8779. For Stockton, see C.F. Richmond, Paston Fam.: First Phase, 144-8, esp. 148n.

At this stage of his career, the mid 1450s, Bedston was apparently living at Wingfield, the seat of the de la Poles, no doubt as a member of the Duchess Alice’s household. Proceedings in the King’s bench in the protracted litigation between him and John Strange included allegations that on 8 Apr. 1455 he as ‘late of Wingfield, yeoman’ and assisted by two of his servants had broken into Strange’s closes at Brampton and stolen his crops. When, in response to a writ of 1 May 1456, he presented himself in court to answer the charge, he claimed to be the owner of the property in dispute by virtue of a series of enfeoffments made in the years since the late duke of Suffolk, John Belley and John Waryn had occupied it in 1444, he having formally acquired it from Sir Thomas Tuddenham* and John Hampden II*. What was largely at stake was the manor of Brampton Hall, the advowson of the church and various appurtenances nearby.7 KB27/816, rot. 89.

Perhaps his troubles at Brampton caused Bedston to look elsewhere for a territorial stake, for about the same time, in the mid 1450s, he turned his attention to Oxfordshire, where Duchess Alice had her principal seat, at Ewelme. On 12 June 1456, by mainprise of John Heydon* and John Andrew III* (both members of the duchess’s circle), he secured at the Exchequer keeping of the Oxfordshire manors of Barton St. John and Staunton St. John, during the minority of William Chamberlain, who had recently recovered them at law. For this he paid £30 and agreed to support the charges and maintenance.8 CPR, 1452-61, p. 289. His move to Oxfordshire was further consolidated by his marriage to Margaret Ashfield, widowed in the previous year, although he encountered considerable difficulties taking possession of her inheritance and dower. According to instructions left by her father John Wilcotes (Henry V’s receiver-general of the duchy of Cornwall) shortly before his death in 1422, Margaret, then aged about two years old, was to inherit his manors of Dean and Chalford after her mother died. Yet even though a settlement was duly made to this effect in 1444 by her mother Elizabeth, then wife of Sir Richard Walkstead, about six years later these manors were formally conveyed to Margaret’s half-brother, Thomas Wilcotes*, in return for a rent of £20 p.a. payable to Elizabeth. In their stead, Margaret received the manor and advowson of Heythrop. These holdings had also been assigned to Elizabeth for life, but in order to pay John Wilcotes’s debts she had earlier on transferred them to Margaret’s husband John Ashfield. The latter was possessed of Heythrop at his death in 1455, when he left the manor along with his own lands in Shropshire and property in London to Margaret for her lifetime, and afterwards to his sons.9 Hist. Dean and Chalford, 58-61, 110-11, 114-17; VCH Oxon. xi. 134; Some Oxon. Wills (Oxon. Rec. Soc. xxxix), 19. At some point before July 1460, following her marriage to Bedston, the two of them petitioned the chancellor after Ashfield’s surviving feoffee had refused their requests to transfer seisin. They said that according to Ashfield’s will Heythrop should be held by Margaret during the nonage of his son John, and that she should retain a third part of it as dower thereafter. She was also to have his lands and tenements in Bradley and Wenlock, Shropshire, for life. They also alleged that William Lacon I*, the serjeant-at-law, had refused to perform Ashfield’s will with regard to a tenement in London.10 C1/26/213-14.

Heythrop was some distance away from Wallingford, the borough Bedston represented in the Parliament of 1460, and there can be little doubt that he owed his return to the influence of the dowager duchess of Suffolk and her son, Duke John, who were then joint constables of Wallingford castle, itself situated very close to their seat at Ewelme. During the first session of the Parliament, summoned to meet after the Yorkist victory at the battle of Northampton, the duke of York (Suffolk’s father-in-law), laid claim to the throne. It might be assumed from Bedston’s appointment as escheator of Oxfordshire and Berkshire just a few weeks after the Parliament opened that he was considered reliable by the current regime. Yet clearly there were doubts about his political alignment for he was replaced after the accession of Edward IV in the following March, and although two months later he was put on an ad hoc commission of arrest there is no indication that he was ever employed again by the Yorkist government.11 CPR, 1461-7, p. 35.

Subsequently, Bedston once more pursued his suit against John Strange, with pleadings in the King’s bench in Easter term 1465. Early the next year the dowager duchess of Suffolk saw fit to intervene in the quarrel, and persuaded the two men to submit to her arbitration; they entered bonds to abide by her ruling on 16 Jan. Although Alice referred the matter to her legal counsel, owing to the deviousness of both parties these learned men proved unable to reach a firm conclusion, so in the award she made on 21 Jan. they were ordered to have title tried between them at common law at her cost. Even so, Strange was told to pay Bedston the substantial sum of £50 for wrongfully entering certain lands in Brampton to which he definitely had no title.12 KB27/816, rot. 89; 826, rot. 105. Matters were still unsettled in January 1467, when Strange wrote in a letter to Sir John Paston†, ‘I am sore troblyd with Bedston, as wele be the wey of tachements owte of the Chauncer as oderwyse’. The attachment required Strange to answer Bedston’s plea in the King’s bench that he and his men had attacked him at Norwich some 18 months earlier, wounding him so badly that he could not carry on his business. Bedston had the support of the chancellor, Archbishop Neville, whose ‘servant’ he was stated to be (although in what capacity is not explained).13 Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 392-3; KB27/825, rot. 122d. Both he and Strange got themselves elected to the Parliament summoned to meet on 3 June that year (Bedston as a representative for Oxford and his opponent for Dunwich), and it may well be that both men did so in order to be able to exercise the privilege of freedom from arrest or imprisonment enjoyed by MPs. It was during this period, in the Trinity term, that Duchess Alice filed a bill in King’s bench against Strange for breaking the conditions of the bond he had entered into as a preliminary to the arbitration process, and it may well be the case that Bedston eventually triumphed in the Brampton affair. It was his rival’s opinion, stated in May 1470, that claimants to the manor would not be able to gain possession unless they paid Bedston 200 marks.14 Suff. RO (Ipswich), Iveagh (Phillipps) mss, HD 1538/146/1.

Bedston evidently retained the good will of the Duchess Alice, whom he continued to assist in her affairs. When, in March 1471, during the Readeption, Walter Blount*, Lord Mountjoy, made a quitclaim to her of the Oxfordshire manor of Swerford, he and his feoffees named Bedston as one of the attorneys who were to transfer seisin, and Bedston also attested the transaction. Then, in February 1472, he and Edward Grimston, a prominent retainer of the de la Poles, received to the duchess’s use an annual rent of £8 13s. 4d. from her cousin Sir John Arundell, in return for a flat payment of £140. It was Bedston who went to the Exchequer in the spring of the following year on behalf of the duchess to obtain recompense for the expenses she had incurred looking after the former queen, Margaret of Anjou, at Wallingford.15 CCR, 1468-76, nos. 666, 805-6; E405/56, rot. 3.

Meanwhile, Bedston had lost possession of Heythrop when his wife died. This may have happened shortly before 6 Feb. 1467 (when the administration of the will of Margaret’s former husband, Ashfield, was committed to her co-executor alone), and certainly did so before July 1469, when she was said to be dead without issue.16 Some Oxon. Wills, 19; Hist. Dean and Chalford, 122. Prayers were to be said for her in St. Mary’s church, Oxford, under an arrangement made in 1471 by her half-brother: Hist. Dean and Chalford, 63. Nevertheless, Bedston was party to transactions regarding her family manors of Dean and Chalford in 1472, and it was not until November 1478 that he made a general release of all claims to the property to the provost of Oriel College, Oxford (to which Chalford had recently been donated).17 Hist. Dean and Chalford, 125, 128. At an unknown date in the mid 1470s he petitioned the chancellor regarding a messuage and carucate of land in Kirtlington, Oxfordshire, which he held jointly with Richard Croft† to his own use, after Croft had refused to relinquish his title.18 C1/58/304. This dispute was the direct cause of a serious outbreak of violence in the county, for when the j.p.s were holding sessions at Bicester on 11 Sept. 1475 to inquire about attacks made on Bedston at Heythrop, Croft and his brother Thomas† with a body of armed men some 120 strong disrupted the proceedings, and were duly indicted for causing a riot.19 KB9/340/12. It may be significant that by this date Bedston’s lady and protector, Duchess Alice, was dead.

Thereafter, Bedston sank back into obscurity. He last appeared in the records while the Parliament of 1487 was in progress, then gaining the concession that none of the Acts of the Parliament were to be prejudicial to him in respect to any grants of rents, fees, annuities or offices he had received from the late duchess of Suffolk and her son Duke John.20 PROME, xv. 367.