CLERE, Edmund

Sometimes confused with his cousin, Edmund Clere of Stokesby, Clere was the younger son of John Clere of Ormesby, the head of a family long settled in east Norfolk.5 Edmund of Stokesby was the son of Robert Clere†, a yr. bro. of John of Ormesby: Vis. Norf. ii. 270. Evidently born only a few years before his father’s death, he was still a minor in the early 1420s when his mother (again a widow after the death of her second husband, Sir John Rothenale, in 1420) brought a Chancery suit against a feoffee for refusing to allow her to take possession of the Clere estates.6 Procs. Chancery Eliz. ed. Caley and Bayley, ii. pp. iii-iv; CIPM, xxi. 413. He is first heard of as an adult in April 1430 when, in accordance with the wills of both his grandfather, William Clere†, and his father, and with the agreement of his elder brother, Robert, the family’s manors of ‘Vausehalle’ and ‘Stalhamhalle’ in Burgh St. Margaret were settled on him and his heirs.7 CAD, iv. A7804. A year later, he conveyed these properties to several feoffees and drew up a will instructing them to allow his mother, Dame Elizabeth Rothenale, possession of the manors while he was abroad, probably on military service in France. He also granted her a life interest in them, to vest if he predeceased her and left no children, after which they were to go to his brother, Robert. Should this happen, Robert was to pay 100 marks to the feoffees, to spend the money on charitable works for the good of his soul and those of other members of the family.8 Ibid. A6885; v. A11649. In the event, Elizabeth predeceased both her sons, and following her death in 1440 Edmund came into possession of the Clere manor of Horninghall in Caister (which became his principal residence), as well as Cleydon (alone worth no less than £27 p.a.) and two other manors in Suffolk.9 F. Blomefield, Norf. vi. 392; Vis. Norf. ii. 315.

For a younger son, Clere was fortunate to succeed to such estates but he pursued the career of a courtier rather than that of a country gentleman. Family connexions perhaps helped him to secure the position of a household esquire, since his stepfather, Sir John Rothenale, had served as both controller and treasurer of Henry V’s household.10 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 582. He was certainly a feed esquire of Henry VI by the late 1430s,11 E101/408/25, f. 6. and in July 1438 the Crown rewarded him with a grant of a 20-year farm of the Norfolk manor of Lesingham, formerly the property of John, duke of Bedford.12 CFR, xvii. 47. Yet it is possible that he had already joined the King’s establishment when he acted as a mainpernor for Sir William Phelip†, chamberlain of the Household, in 1433.13 CFR, xvi. 153-4.

In 1444, Clere was one of the household men who crossed over to France to escort Henry VI’s new queen, Margaret of Anjou, to England. He received wages of £9 2s. as a member of the retinue of William de la Pole, marquess of Suffolk, the leader of the expedition, and presumably arrived back home in April 1445, when Margaret landed at Portsmouth.14 Add. 23938, ff. 5, 14v. At some stage after the queen’s arrival, he became a member of the separate household established for her.15 Certainly before Mich. 1452: A.R. Myers, Crown, Household and Parl. 185. If a household account for 1452-3 is typical, he would have spent much of his time at Court, since this shows that he attended the queen for 246 days during that year, when he received wages of £7 13s. 9d., as well as a gold ring which Margaret gave to him as a New Year’s gift.16 Ibid. 185, 226. As a royal esquire, Clere was in a good position to act for those seeking office or favour from the Crown. In a letter of uncertain date the queen wrote to Walter Lyhert, bishop of Norwich, informing him that ‘our squier’, Edmund Clere, desired to have a ‘cousin’ (identified only as ‘T.S.’) appointed serjeant of Norwich, and asking him to use his influence with the city’s mayor and aldermen to ensure that this candidate was admitted to the position.17 Letters Margaret of Anjou (Cam. Soc. lxxxvi), 119-20.

Perhaps because he was often absent at Court, Edmund never served as a j.p. in Norfolk (where, in any case, his elder brother represented the Clere family on the bench in the mid 1440s) nor as a member of other, ad hoc, commissions. He nevertheless served as a customs collector at Great Yarmouth and he became the duchy of Lancaster’s feodary in Norfolk, an appointment for life, at the end of 1442.18 The office of feodary appears to have encompassed the positions of bailiff of the duchy lands in Norf. and gaolkeeper of Thetford: Vis. Norf. ii. 291; Blomefield, ii. 56; KB27/782, rot. 6d; C67/41, m. 14. It appears that his position at Great Yarmouth was more than a sinecure, since in June 1441 the King granted a special reward to him and his fellow collector of customs, Ralph Lampet*, in return for their diligence and for the expenses they had incurred in exercising the office.19 E403/701, m. 5.

Even if never a j.p., Clere proved a useful servant of the Lancastrian crown in East Anglia. In 1443, for example, he was one of those to whom the King’s council sent a letter of thanks for helping to apprehend those who had taken part in recent civil unrest at Norwich.20 PPC, v. 235. Later that year he intervened in a fracas in Suffolk, perhaps thereby preventing a serious disturbance from getting out of hand. According to an indictment, in September William Brandon†, John Timperley I* and 18 other followers of John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, rode to Letheringham in east Suffolk, where the duke’s estranged servant, Sir Robert Wingfield*, resided. There they assaulted Wingfield’s wife and children while they were on the way to church, but Clere arrived on the scene in time to stop them from abducting the knight’s daughter, Elizabeth.21 KB27/735, rex. rot. 37. At the end of the same year Edmund (although apparently no longer a customs official at Great Yarmouth at that date) seized a Dutch vessel lying off the East Anglian coast, along with its cargo of wool, because its master had failed to pay customs due to the King.22 CPR, 1441-6, p. 229.

There seems little doubt that Clere’s connexion with the Court helped him to gain election for his native county to the Parliament of 1447, which the government used to deal with one of its leading opponents, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. In entering the Commons, Clere was maintaining a tradition of parliamentary service, since both his great-grandfather, Robert†, and his grandfather, William, had represented Norfolk as knights of the shire in the fourteenth century.23 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 582. He had two roles to play during the Parliament, for apart from sitting as a knight of the shire for Norfolk, together with another royal servant, John Blakeney*, he also acted as one of the proxies of the absentee abbot of St. Benet of Holme.

In spite of his duties at Court, Clere remained active in his native East Anglia in a private capacity. One of his closest associates in the region was his brother, Robert. During the early 1440s, he and Robert sued a man from the port of Lowestoft for debt, perhaps over commercial matters,24 CPR, 1441-6, p. 12. and he stood surety in February 1440, when Robert acquired a licence to ship a considerable quantity of grain from Great Yarmouth to London and other ports in eastern and southern England.25 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 375-6. Upon declaring his will a few days before his death in 1446, Robert directed that if his sons died without children Edmund should succeed to the manor of Ormesby.26 Norwich consist. ct. Reg. Wylbey, ff. 117-18.

The MP was also on close terms with the Paston family. He was a feoffee of Judge William Paston,27 CP25(1)/169/189/160, 176; PROME, xi. 372; Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, ii. 57. who, in turn, acted for him in the same capacity,28 CAD, iv. A6885, 7875, 11649. and in the mid 1430s he was a trustee of the settlement made when John Paston*, William’s eldest son, married Margaret Mauteby.29 Add. Ch. 17739. One of those whom the judge made a feoffee of his last will just under a decade later,30 Paston Letters ed. Davis, i. 22-23. he also acted as such at Elizabeth Paston’s marriage to Robert Poynings* at the end of the 1450s.31 Ibid. 206. Clere proved a useful contact at Court for the Pastons and, no doubt, other Norfolk gentry. In a well-known letter of January 1455 he wrote to his ‘cousin’, John Paston, to tell him the important news that the King had recovered from his recent bout of incapacitating illness. The letter also reveals that the MP was on good terms with other prominent East Anglians, since he asked Paston to pass on his regards to Isabel, widow of Thomas, Lord Morley, Katherine, widow of Sir Simon Felbrigg, and William Calthorpe*, an esquire for whom he acted as a trustee.32 Ibid. i. 22-23; ii. 108, 533; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 398, 533. He also possessed an associate from lower down the social scale in Edmund Norman of Filby, with whom both he and his brother would appear to have had a paternalistic relationship. In his will of December 1444, Norman referred to each of them as his ‘master’ and made Edmund one of his executors.33 Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, ii. 67-68. As such, Clere found himself caught up in Chancery litigation in the second half of the 1440s, when arguments about the will broke out and Norman’s cousin and self-proclaimed heir, Thomas Norman, sued the dead man’s feoffees for his lands.34 C1/15/277-82; 16/137-8.

Notwithstanding his links with the Lancastrian establishment, Clere also associated with those in East Anglia who were unconnected with or hostile to the Court. His good relationship with the Pastons is one obvious example; another is that of John Strange*, for whom he stood bail in October 1453. Charged with a riotous breach of the King’s peace,35 KB27/770, rex rot. 5d. Strange was a retainer of John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk. In turn, Mowbray had sought to challenge the influence that the King’s former chief minister, the late William de la Pole, had wielded in the region and had allied himself with Richard, duke of York, the leading opponent of the Court interest. Furthermore, it is even possible that Clere became a feoffee to the use of the will of York’s servant, Sir William Oldhall*, in the mid 1450s.36 CAD, i. B1244. Yet Oldhall’s trustee may have been the MP’s cousin, Edmund Clere of Stokesby, who held his lands at Stokesby of the dowager duchess of York when he died in 1488 (CIPM Hen. VII, i. 458). In Dec. 1452 Edmund Clere seized a flock of sheep that the Norfolk escheator had confiscated from Oldhall following his indictment the previous month (E207/16/5/K13), but it is impossible to prove that he was acting for Oldhall (as claimed by P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 119) or that he was the MP, rather than his cousin. Yet it is worth noting that Clere stood surety for Strange at a time when the duke of York and his allies were in government. Living as he did in a time of great instability (he felt obliged to secure a royal pardon in December 1455, during York’s second protectorate),37 C67/41, m. 14. he probably felt it politic to forge links with the anti-Court faction although he remained a member of the Court during the later 1450s.38 Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 533.

Clere died some time before 17 Apr. 1462, when the ecclesiastical authorities entrusted his goods at Caister to his cousin, Edmund Clere of Stokesby.39 Vis. Norf. ii. 490. Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, iii. 136n, mistakenly states that Clere died in 1463. Possibly he had eventually taken up arms for Henry VI since in January 1463 one of the Pastons’ correspondents reported that his name had recently been removed from a bill of attainder.40 Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 288. (Its inclusion in the bill suggests that he may have actively opposed the Yorkists, although whether he had met with a violent death is impossible to say.) Clere’s will is no longer extant although William Bondes of Henstead, Suffolk, formerly an attorney and feoffee for the MP, received a pardon in the late 1460s referring to him as one of its executors.41 CP40/738, rot. 506; C67/46, m. 37; CAD, iv. A7875; Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, iv. 105. There were evidently problems with the administration of the will, for in April 1468 Hugh atte Fenne* informed Sir John Paston† that ‘the sowle of Edmond Clere is evil do to, his dettes not paied nor his wil parfourmed’. Fenne, perhaps another of the executors, added that this sorry state of affairs was not his fault.42 Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 385. Clere did not leave any surviving children (indeed, there is no evidence that he had ever married) and his manors, except Horninghall, acquired by the Pastons, reverted to the main line of his family.43 Blomefield, xi. 154, 237; Norwich consist. ct. Reg. Wolman, f. 15; Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, iv. 105; C.F. Richmond, Paston Fam.: First Phase, 168n, 183n; PCC 5 Thower (PROB11/24, ff. 36-37); C142/60/4.