BOURGCHIER, Humphrey

Humphrey Bourgchier’s great marriage, as a mere younger son, is a measure of the influence of his family in the early 1450s. His bride, Joan Stanhope, as one of the two nieces of the childless Ralph, Lord Cromwell, was coheiress-presumptive to one of the greatest landed fortunes in England.8 Humphrey is not to be confused with his cousin and namesake, the eldest son of John, Lord Berners (d.1474), who, like our MP, met his death fighting for Edward IV at Barnet and was buried in Westminster Abbey. When this marriage was made the young groom’s prospects were modest. Early in 1453 his paternal uncle, Thomas, bishop of Ely (later archbishop of Canterbury), had appointed him as steward of the episcopal estates at the generous annual fee of 40 marks, and his father had wealth enough to alienate some land to him, but, without a good marriage, any greater provision was contingent on the childless deaths of his elder brothers.9 According to the chronicler Warkworth, our MP was, at his death, heir-apparent to the earldom of Essex: J. Warkworth, Chron. Reign Edw. IV (Cam. Soc. x), p. 17. If so, he had enjoyed that status from the death of either his brother, Henry, in 1458, or his brother, Edward, in 1460. Yet it is almost certain that Warkworth is in error. Another contemporary source identifies another brother, Sir William, as the earl’s heir in 1465, a status consistent with his marriage to the queen’s sister: Coronation Elizabeth Wydevile ed. G. Smith, 19; CP, v. 138. No doubt, in contracting this match, it was this easy endowment of a younger son that was uppermost in his father, Henry, Viscount Bourgchier’s mind, yet he can hardly have been blind to the marriage’s potential political ramifications. In August 1453 Cromwell, alienated from the ruling clique at court and desperate for allies against Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, had married Joan’s elder sister, Maud, to Sir Thomas Neville, younger son of Richard, earl of Salisbury. It is not known precisely when the Bourgchier marriage took place, only that it had done so before the inquisition of 18 Apr. 1455 on the death of Joan’s mother, but it probably occurred at about the same time as the Neville marriage and was motivated, on Cromwell’s part, by the same need for political allies.10 S.J. Payling, ‘Ampthill Dispute’, EHR, civ. 894-5; C139/157/26.

Humphrey’s marriage did much to determine the course of his career, not least his future allegiance to the Yorkists in the civil war of 1459-61. This allegiance arose in part out of his struggle, in alliance with his Neville brother-in-law, to acquire what they considered their rightful share of Cromwell’s lands. Under the terms of a codicil Cromwell added to his 1451 will in Michaelmas 1454, the greater part of these estates were diverted from his heirs to charitable purposes, principally the foundation of a collegiate church at Tattershall. Only his entailed lands were to go to the heirs, and then only on condition that they found security to his feoffees and executors not to impede them in the will’s implementation.11 Payling, ‘Ralph, Lord Cromwell and the Heriz Inheritance’, Nottingham Med. Studies, xxx. 86. Cromwell was right to anticipate opposition; and, by the same token, the husbands of his nieces had grounds to feel aggrieved. Almost immediately there was a sign of the troubles to come. Soon after Archbishop Bourgchier’s promotion to the chancellorship in March 1455, our MP and Neville brought a petition before him, claiming that Cromwell, as feoffee of his nieces’ father, Sir Richard Stanhope, had failed to settle a promised jointure on his sister, Maud, and Sir Richard.12 C1/1489/90. Cromwell must have viewed this action with dismay as it made clear that his plans would be resisted.

After Cromwell’s death on 4 Jan. 1456 the husbands of his nieces duly gave full vent to their anger at the partial disinheritance of their wives. Despite a statute staple in the hefty sum of £1,000 entered into by Humphrey’s father and uncle, Archbishop Thomas, to be forfeit if he hindered the will’s execution, Humphrey, with Neville, led the wholesale plunder of Cromwell’s goods from Tattershall and elsewhere and refused to yield his lands into the hands of the feoffees. A later executors’ account gives some measure of the scale of their loss: between January 1456 and Michaelmas 1459 Humphrey and Neville took more than £3,000 in profits of land to which they were not entitled, a loss to be reckoned in addition to goods worth more than £2,000 taken by them and others from Tattershall at the time of Cromwell’s funeral.13 Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Cromwell pprs. 127/34; Misc. 357, m. 3. Of the two it was our MP who was the most intractable. His refusal to be content with what he had been left led him into conflict with one of the executors in particular, the committed Lancastrian, John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury. On 6 Dec. 1457, with what was described in the indictment as a large group of armed followers, Humphrey allegedly expelled Cromwell’s feoffees from four Derbyshire manors, the principal of which was South Wingfield, and, two days later, he did the same with respect to three Nottinghamshire manors. The problem here, from Humphrey’s point of view, was that Shrewsbury had already purchased South Wingfield, where Cromwell had built a fine manor house, and, as treasurer of the Exchequer, was too powerful a man for our MP to overcome. The earl acted quickly to have the recalcitrant Bourgchier expelled, securing indictments against him at the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire sessions of the peace. Although these indictments caused Humphrey little long-term inconvenience – he made fine of a paltry two marks on the Derbyshire indictment and went quit on a technicality from the Nottinghamshire one – they may have persuaded him of the wisdom of reaching a settlement with the executors.14 Payling, ‘Heriz Inheritance’, 87-89; KB9/288/22; 289/78; KB27/792, rex. rot. 37; 795, fines rot. At an unknown date in the late 1450s a division was made of the entailed lands: he was assigned a moiety of the manor of Tattershall together with other manors, mainly in Nottinghamshire and Norfolk, with a total value overestimated by the executors at about £385.15 Cromwell pprs. 185/11.

By the late 1450s Bourgchier’s strong Yorkist allegiance was becoming clear, a development no doubt aided by the fact that his mother was Richard, duke of York’s sister. He had already benefited from Yorkist patronage. On 14 Feb. 1456, towards the end of York’s second protectorate and while his father was treasurer and, more significantly, his uncle, Archbishop Thomas, chancellor, he and Neville had been granted the right to enter the Cromwell inheritance without the taking of inquisitions post mortem and the suing of livery. This grant allowed them tortiously to annex to themselves, albeit temporarily, a large part of these lands. Soon after, on 2 Mar., he was jointly appointed with his Neville brother-in-law to Cromwell’s former offices of constable of Nottingham castle, steward of Sherwood forest, and chamberlain of the Exchequer.16 CPR, 1452-61, p. 275. With land and office Bourgchier was now a man of independent influence, certainly in the estimation of his wife’s kinsman, John Knyvet. On 18 Nov. 1457 the two men entered into an interesting agreement. Knyvet was involved in a legal battle with the widow and son of Sir Andrew Ogard* over property formerly of his uncle, Sir John Clifton of Buckenham (Norfolk); and Bourgchier undertook to be his ‘good maister and frend’, aiding him, ‘as far as the lawe wille’, in the recovery of this property. Should they be successful he was to be rewarded with a grant of the Clifton manor in Wymondham, where he already held a manor in right of his wife.17 R. Virgoe, ‘Buckenham Disputes’, Jnl. Legal Hist. xv. 30; HMC Lothian, 65-66.

In the spring of 1458 Bourgchier’s closeness to York’s Neville allies was evidenced when he offered surety of the peace for a leading Neville adherent, (Sir) Thomas Haryngton I*, and acted as a mainpernor for Sir Thomas Neville’s brother, Sir John, in a dispute with Queen Margaret over the wardship of the daughter of (Sir) Edmund Ingoldisthorpe*. This Neville connexion serves to explain his appointment, in May 1458, to a commission, dominated by the Nevilles, to negotiate with the envoys of the duke of Burgundy.18 C244/84/71; CCR, 1454-61, p. 301; PROME, xii. 544; Foedera ed. Rymer (Orig. edn.), xi. 410-11. Further, it was probably through them that he found employment with the duke of York himself: by the autumn of 1459 he was acting as steward of the duke’s lordship of Grantham. In these circumstances, it was inevitable that Humphrey should suffer in late 1458 when the ruling clique adopted a more aggressive policy towards its opponents. He was removed from three of his five commissions of the peace and worse was soon to follow. In the wholesale redistribution of honours that followed the rout of the Yorkists at Ludford Bridge in October 1459, he lost his former Cromwell offices, including that of chamberlain of the Exchequer. He was probably only spared the attainder visited upon his brothers, John and Edward, and his Neville brother-in-law, because he had not yet taken up arms in support of York.19 Woodger, 90-101; SC6/1115/7; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 532, 533.

When the Nevilles returned to power in July 1460 Humphrey no longer had any reason to avoid open opposition to Lancaster, the more so because the senior Bourgchiers, his father and uncle, the archbishop of Canterbury, had finally abandoned any pretence at neutrality. He was present with his father at the Neville victory at Northampton on 10 July, a battle in which his erstwhile rival, the earl of Shrewsbury, met his death.20 C1/27/340; Payling, ‘Heriz Inheritance’, 89. Soon after he exercised an influence over elections to the Parliament summoned in the wake of this battle. On 25 Aug. he was himself returned for Lincolnshire, in company with another Yorkist, Thomas Blount*; on 17 Sept., in contravention of the 1413 statute regarding the residence of electors and elected, he attested the Surrey election; and it may also be that he found seats for two lawyers with whom he was (or, at least, was later to be) connected, namely William Hussey* and Richard Spert*. They were returned for the Sussex boroughs of Bramber and New Shoreham, both of which were under the lordship of John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, husband of our MP’s paternal aunt, Eleanor.21 C219/16/5. Hussey appears as one of our MP’s pledges for the payment of a fine in Hil. term 1460: KB27/795, fines rot. Spert was steward of his lordship of Tumby (Lincs.) in the 1460s: HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, i. 188.

Bourgchier’s service to the Yorkist cause on the battlefield and in Parliament was well rewarded. At about the time his father had been reappointed, on 28 July, to the treasurership of the Exchequer, he himself was appointed to the important Household office of treasurer of the chamber to the captive Henry VI, and, on 9 Nov., while sitting in Parliament, he was granted the wardship of the Lincolnshire estates once of the King’s half-brother Edmund, earl of Richmond, during the minority of his son Henry.22 E159/243, brevia Mich. rot. 1d; CFR, xix. 294. He was soon to make an even more important gain: on 28 Jan. 1461, on the opening day of the second session of Parliament, he was elevated to the peerage as Lord Cromwell, a promotion he owed not only to his family connexions and service to York but also to the childless death, four weeks earlier, of his Neville brother-in-law at the battle of Wakefield. Three weeks later, however, he and his family suffered a reversal of fortune for, on 17 Feb., he was with his father at the Yorkist defeat at St. Albans, where his uncle, Lord Berners, was captured.23 John Benet’s Chron. (Cam. Misc. xxiv), 229; Payling, ‘Heriz Inheritance’, 89.

It was fortunate for the Bourgchiers that this defeat was swiftly reversed. Only the Nevilles gained more than they from royal patronage in the aftermath of Edward IV’s accession, and Humphrey, whose father was treasurer from July 1460 to April 1462, did not go without his share. On the first day of the reign, 4 Mar. 1461, he was restored to the Cromwell offices he had lost in December 1459; and on the following 27 June he was one of those created a knight in honour of the new King’s impending coronation. Ten days later he was granted, for the generous term of 20 years, the keeping of both the royal manor of Eltham in Kent, and, more importantly from the point of view of his local influence, some of the Lincolnshire estates of the Crown, including the castle of Somerton and the manor of Burwell, once held by Ralph, Lord Cromwell.24 CPR, 1461-7, p. 460; Knights of Eng. ed. Shaw, i. 133; CFR, xx. 26-27; C81/1628/88, 90-91. These gains more than offset the loss of the treasurership of the chamber.

Humphrey also benefited from royal patronage in a less direct way. His high-standing place with the new King put him in a far better position than he had been in the late 1450s to drive a hard bargain with the late Lord Cromwell’s executors. Sir Thomas Neville’s death and his widow’s remarriage to the Lancastrian (Sir) Gervase Clifton* served as the pretext for a further division of the entailed lands. This was brought about through the mediation of the new chief justice of the King’s bench, Sir John Markham. In May 1462 Humphrey agreed to accept lands valued at 500 marks p.a. by independent auditors and ‘to be good lord’ to the beleaguered executors and feoffees. In the following September a new assignment was made to him with the apparent aim of consolidating his estates: he surrendered the outlying manors of Quinton (Gloucestershire) and Shalbourne (Berkshire), among those allotted to him in the late 1450s, in return for the remaining moiety of Tattershall. Even this, however, was not enough for Humphrey. Despite accepting Markham’s mediation, he demanded a further 100 marks p.a. of land beyond his share of 500 marks, and the executors reluctantly assigned to him the manors of Kirby Bellar (Leicestershire) and Stow Bedon (Norfolk). Later he was again to embarrass the executors by demanding 200 marks ‘for a brybe’ to quitclaim his rights to three manors sold to Sir Henry Pierrepont†.25 Cromwell pprs. 127/35; Misc. 357, m. 4; 365, mm. 2-3; Payling, ‘Heriz Inheritance’, 92.

Having bullied the executors into conceding more than they were empowered to give under the terms of the late Lord Cromwell’s will, Humphrey turned his attention to securing an interest in those lands assigned to Sir Gervase Clifton and Maud, the other coheiress. Clifton’s Lancastrian sympathies made him an easy target, and there are grounds for believing that it was Humphrey, acting in combination with the queen’s brother, Anthony Wydeville, Lord Scales, who instigated the accusations of treason brought against him in November 1465. If they were not the instigators, they were certainly the beneficiaries. Clifton, fearing indictment for treason and the consequent forfeiture of his interest in his wife’s estates, conveyed these lands, worth as much as 400 marks a year, to Scales for the lifetime of Maud; Scales then allowed Humphrey to take the profits in return for a life grant of the Norfolk manor of Stow Bedon and a grant in fee of the hundred of Freebridge.26 CPR, 1461-7, p. 490; CCR, 1461-8, p. 330; Cromwell pprs. 261/14. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Humphrey had conspired with one yet more influential at court than himself to deprive the other coheiress of what was rightfully hers. Such behaviour would certainly have been consistent with what is known of the character of both men.27 These facts invalidate the suggestion that Humphrey’s loyalty to the King may have wavered because of Scales’s designs on the Cromwell inheritance: M. Hicks, False, Fleeting, Perjur’d Clarence, 49.

While indulging in such private initiatives Humphrey was also adding to the rewards he already enjoyed from direct royal patronage. Throughout Edward IV’s first reign he was a valued royal servant, taking an active role in the campaign to reduce the Northumbrian castles in the winter of 1462-3, representing the King at the Canterbury convocation of July 1463 and occasionally appearing on the royal council.28 Three 15th Cent. Chrons. (Cam. Soc. n.s. xxviii), 157, 159; Excerpta Historica ed. Bentley, 365; Reg. Bourgchier (Canterbury and York Soc. liv), 98, 100. This service brought him further gains. On 17 July 1464 his grant of the late Lord Cromwell’s offices was extended from life to tail-male. And, although on 7 Sept. 1465 he lost his keepership of Eltham, he was far more than adequately compensated when on 6 Aug. 1467 he received the very generous grant, again in tail-male, of the Yorkshire manors of Hessle and Paddokthorpe, forfeited by (Sir) William Tailboys*, the Hertfordshire manor of Pendley, forfeited by (Sir) Robert Whittingham II*, and the reversion of the manors of Wragly (Lincolnshire) and Orston (Nottinghamshire) on the death of Philippa, widow of the attainted Thomas, Lord Roos.29 CPR, 1461-7, p. 460 (for correct date see CCR, 1461-8, p. 341; PROME, xiii. 272-3); CFR, xx. 26-27, 187; CPR, 1467-77, p. 47. However, on 7 Feb. 1469, Pendley was granted to George Neville, abp. of York: CPR, 1467-77, p. 135. All his grants were exempted from the effects of the 1465 and 1467 Acts of Resumption.30 PROME, xiii. 154, 272-3.

This heavy royal investment in Humphrey’s loyalty was more than repaid during the crisis of 1469-71. It was his steward of Tattershall, one John Morling, who warned the King of the serious Lincolnshire rising against him in March 1470. That Morling sent the warning for security via a child suggests that his master was known to have no sympathy with the rebels.31 Chron. of Rebellion in Lincs. (Cam. Soc. xxxix), 6. Not surprisingly this loyalty to Edward meant that the Readeption of the following October was a serious setback to Humphrey and his family. Curiously, he had a chance to flee but did not take it: when Edward sailed for the Low Countries from King’s Lynn on 2 Oct., Bourgchier, among the loyalist lords who had arrived at the port with him two days before, remained behind.32 Norf. RO, King’s Lynn recs., hall bk. KL/67/4, p. 284 (f.142). He was then briefly imprisoned by the new regime and removed from seven of his eight peace commissions. Yet the Readeption government could not afford wholly to alienate so powerful a family as the Bourgchiers.33 For the family’s role during the Readeption: Woodger, 115-17. Both Humphrey and his father were summoned to the Parliament of 26 Nov. and they were clearly not entirely out of favour. Two days later, on 28 Nov. Humphrey was reappointed to the Kesteven commission of the peace. Moreover, on 29 Jan. 1471 a London pewterer, William Pemberton, granted all his goods to Humphrey and others, which indicates either that the grantor was seeking insurance against the return of Edward IV or that Humphrey was not perceived as banished to the political wilderness.34 C. Ross, Edw. IV, 155; C66/491, m. 26d; CCR, 1468-76, no. 639. Nor, it should be noted, did Humphrey lose his offices of constable of Nottingham castle and steward of Sherwood forest. Yet, Bourgchier did not waver in his real loyalties. At Lent 1471, as the earl of Warwick felt himself threatened by an imminent Yorkist invasion, he was among a number of powerful men rearrested, no doubt to prevent them supporting that invasion. Immediately released on Edward IV’s entry into London on 11 April, he and other members of his family took up arms on the returning exile’s behalf. It was a decision that cost him his life. He and his cousin and namesake were two of the most notable casualties on the Yorkist side at the battle of Barnet three days later. Both were appropriately honoured with burial in Westminster Abbey.35 H. Kleineke, ‘Gerhard von Wesel’s Newsletter’, Ricardian, xx. 79; Paston Letters ed. Davis. i. no. 261; J. Stow, Surv. London ed. Kingsford, ii. 110. PCC 5 Wattys (PROB11/6, f.33) is not, pace CP, iii. 554, the will of our MP but that of his cousin and namesake.

There is unfortunately little evidence of Humphrey’s connexions in the county he represented in Parliament. His main residence was at Tattershall throughout Edward IV’s first reign, and after the attainder of the Beaumonts in 1461 and his own acquisition of the other moiety of Cromwell’s entailed lands in 1465 he became the principal baronial landholder in the county. Yet his level of activity there and in the east Midlands generally in no way reflected the extent of his estates in the area. In 1466-7 he served as alderman of the prestigious Boston guild of Corpus Christi and is known to have sat at least once as a j.p., at Boston in 1462. He was also active on the neighbouring Nottinghamshire bench, sitting at Nottingham in 1456 and 1464.36 KB/299, m. 84; 308, m. 82; E101/122/18. Yet this is scant enough recorded activity for a man of his eminence, and the impression of a lord not much interested in his locality is reinforced by what little we know of his connexions with the local gentry. The closest seems to have been with the experienced Exchequer official, John Leynton*, who was the most active of Ralph, Lord Cromwell’s executors. On 31 Aug. 1465 our MP granted him for life his office of chamberlain of the Exchequer, perhaps to reward him for help in matters arising from the will.37 CCR, 1461-8, p. 341. Although this grant was confirmed by the Crown, its legality was contested after Humphrey’s death: Yr. Bk. Trin. 11 Edw. IV (Reports del Cases en Ley, 1679), pl. 1, ff. 1-2. But the only one of the leading Lincolnshire gentry with whom a connexion can be established is Sir John Bussy of Hougham, who, on 12 Apr. 1469, he appointed as his steward of the Derbyshire manor of Dronfield.38 Add. Ch. 20504, dated at Tattershall and signed by Humphrey.

Plainly the evidence here is incomplete, both in respect of his activities and connexions, but it is equally clear that Humphrey’s role in central politics made a base nearer Westminster more appropriate. He was probably often at his uncle’s archiepiscopal palace at Lambeth for he is occasionally styled ‘of Lambeth’. This would explain his attestation of the Surrey election of 1460 and his appointment to the Surrey commission of the peace in August 1464. The fact that he sat as a Surrey j.p. on several occasions, usually at Southwark and in company with another uncle, Lord Berners, and that he may have attested a second Surrey election in 1467, suggests he spent most of the late 1460s in the environs of London rather than in Lincolnshire.39 E159/243, brevia Mich. rot. 1d; C219/16/6, 17/1; KB9/317/24, 30, 125 (described as ‘Sir Humfrey Bourgchier of Cromwell’). It is possible that the 1467 attestor was his Berners cousin. So often is he found in association with Berners as to suggest that a particularly close relationship existed between them, and it is probable that it was Humphrey who arranged the marriage of Berners’s daughter, Elizabeth, to Robert, son and heir-apparent of the Lincolnshire baron, Richard, Lord Willoughby and Welles, which took place probably in the early 1460s. Humphrey himself appears as a feoffee with Robert and his father in May 1468.40 CAD, iv. A8813. But, since it was Humphrey’s steward who betrayed the Welles rebellion to the King in March 1470, our MP probably had no more than a passing association with the Welles family despite this marriage tie.

Humphrey is generally said to have died without issue, but he left a son, Ralph, who, along with his mother, Joan, was admitted to the Boston guild of Corpus Christi in 1470. Ralph, however, survived his father by only a few months. He was dead by 27 June 1471 when the offices his father had held in tail-male were granted to William, Lord Hastings.41 Harl. 4795, f. 45v; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 310-11. Joan lived on to take a second husband, Robert Radcliffe†, an esquire of the body, and died in 1480. Her brass is extant in the collegiate church at Tattershall.42 C.F. Richmond, Paston Fam.: Endings, 20-21; Mon. Brasses: Portfolio Plates of Mon. Brass Soc. no. 233. The date of her death is given on the brass as 10 Mar. 1479 (lxxix) (old style) not, as in CP, iii. 554, 1490 (lxxxx) (old style): Cromwell pprs. 127/44.