CLOPTON, Nicholas

A lawyer, Clopton was probably a relative of the Richard Clopton who attested the election of Buckinghamshire’s knights of the shire to the Parliaments of November 1414, May and December 1421 and 1423. Although never a significant landowner, he was described as a ‘donsel’ (young gentleman) in 1428 (in a papal indult licensing him to keep a portable altar) and he was accorded the style of ‘esquire’ in later years.5 CPL, viii. 28; Eton Coll. Archs., ET206. His profession and marriage were what gave him the status he would otherwise have lacked and brought him into contact with some of the leading men of his day. His wife, a grand-daughter of Sir Thomas Giffard (d.1394), was from a family long established in Buckinghamshire, but she was not an heiress. The Giffard estates in that county and elsewhere passed to her half-brother, Thomas Giffard, when he came of age in 1430.6 CIPM, xix. 518-21; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 15, 44, 107-8. Thomas was Roger Giffard’s son by his last wife, Isabel. Roger had at least two previous wives, but which wife was the mother of Elizabeth is unknown. Clopton was probably not a native of Wycombe, but he was by no means a complete outsider to the borough he represented in Parliament. By the mid 1420s, he was a tenant of Bassetsbury, the duchy of Lancaster manor encompassing most of Wycombe, although evidence for his holdings there is lacking.7 St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, recs. XV/15/1. Clopton is wrongly labelled an ‘outsider’ in The Commons 1386-1421, i. 279. It is nevertheless likely that his main interests lay outside the town, for by the summer of 1424 at the latest he was living at Langley Marish.8 C1/4/110. In this Chancery bill, of no later than 31 Aug. that year, John Southturkeys claimed that Clopton had wrongfully disseised him of a few acres in nearby Stoke Poges.

Clopton first appears in records of Henry V’s reign, holding office at Windsor and participating in conveyances of property in Buckinghamshire and elsewhere in the Thames valley. Among the others involved in these transactions were William Whaplode* and Richard Wyot*, almost certainly fellow lawyers.9 CP25(1)/22/116/10; CAD, vi. C4582, 54241; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 823, 931. He was to enjoy a long-standing association with both men, although his links with Wyot, who had family connexions with Langley Marish and was buried there, were of particular importance. Frequently associated with Wyot in conveyancing work, Clopton was one of his feoffees and an executor of his will.10 CP25(1)/22/116/10; 117/26; CAD, vi. C4582, 5424, 6945; CCR, 1422-9, pp. 208, 336-7, 334, 400; 1441-7, pp. 83-84; Reg. Chichele, ii. 448. In Henry V’s reign Wyot was steward of the manorial courts of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor and, by 1417, his young friend was serving as the clerk of the same courts. Clopton still had a connexion with Windsor in 1422, when he acted as an attorney for its dean and canons. Since Edward III’s reign, the college of Windsor had enjoyed the right to confine in the precincts of St. George’s chapel anyone who had committed a felony on its estates, and it was in accordance with this right that the dean and canons imprisoned one William Hicks of Leicestershire. Hicks subsequently escaped from their custody, only for Sir Robert Babthorpe, steward of the King’s household, to re-arrest him. Rather than return him to the dean and canons, Babthorpe imprisoned him in the county gaol for Buckinghamshire, located in the lower ward of the castle. Representing the college, Clopton appeared before Babthorpe on 6 Oct. 1422 and successfully appealed for Hicks’s return.11 Roberts, 147-8.

Clopton’s formal return to Parliament as a burgess for Wycombe occurred just a day earlier, so it is possible that he was not actually present at the drawing up of the election indenture. No doubt, the electors appreciated the advantages of having an able and well-connected lawyer to represent them in the Commons, whatever his property interests in the borough at this date. Clopton’s abilities and connexions must also have helped him to become bailiff of the estates that Henry IV’s widow held in Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, an office in which he was certainly serving just over two years after leaving Parliament. There is no evidence that he took part in any parliamentary election at Wycombe after sitting in the Commons, although he did attest the return of the knights of the shire for Buckinghamshire on at least two occasions, including the controversial election of 1429. At a county court held at Aylesbury on 31 Aug. that year, he was among those who witnessed the return of John Hampden II* and Andrew Sperlyng* to the Parliament called for the following 22 Sept. Yet the sheriff, Sir Thomas Waweton*, sent into Chancery a false indenture recording that Sir John Cheyne I* and Walter Strickland I* were the men elected. A judicial commission subsequently established that the election of Hampden and Sperlyng should have held good, although by then the Parliament was over.

By this period, Clopton had entered the service of Sir William Moleyns, presumably through the good offices of his friend Richard Wyot, a Moleyns feoffee. Sir William, an important landowner in the Thames valley, appointed Clopton the steward of his estates, an office previously held by William Wyot, probably Richard’s brother.12 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 139; iv. 392-3. In February 1427, Moleyns granted Clopton 100s. p.a. while his mother Margery Moleyns was alive, an annuity which was to increase to £10 after her death, as well as all the costs he had incurred as steward.13 CIPM, xxiii. 392. Moleyns died in May 1429 at the siege of Orleans,14 CP, ix. 41-42. but Clopton had several years to wait before he could receive a full £10 p.a. from the Moleyns estates, since Margery survived until the spring of 1439. Clopton’s familiarity with the Moleyns’s affairs must have helped him to acquire the keeping of their manor of Addington, Buckinghamshire, from the Crown in the summer of 1435. He was granted the property during the minority of Eleanor, Sir William’s young daughter and heir, in return for a rent of £5 18s. 4d. p.a. His sureties when he took possession of Addington included John Durem*, for whom he in turn was a mainpernor when the King granted Durem the farm of the manor of Great Kimble later in the same decade.15 CFR, xvi. 241, 337; xvii. 107-8.

A few years before Clopton acquired Addington, the King granted the marriage of the infant Eleanor Moleyns to the influential Thomas Chaucer*.16 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 131. Chaucer was a friend of Wyot, so it was perhaps inevitable that Clopton became a feoffee for his daughter and heir Alice Chaucer and her third husband, William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk.17 CCR, 1447-54, pp. 214-15. Clopton likewise acted in the same capacity for Sir Walter Sandys† of Hampshire, one of Thomas Chaucer’s associates,18 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 83-84; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 304. and he was party to the transactions by which his brother-in-law, Thomas Giffard, conveyed the manor of Somerton in Oxfordshire to John Aston in the late 1430s.19 CPR, 1436-41, p. 119; VCH Oxon. vi. 292. Like Wyot and Whaplode, Clopton was also one of the trustees of the Lovells, a family with holdings at Eton, and in 1440 he, Whaplode and another Lovell feoffee, John Faryngdon, conveyed the advowson of that parish and an acre of land there to the King’s foundation of Eton College.20 Eton Coll. Recs. liv. 4. In return, the Crown granted the three men the advowson of Great Billing in Northamptonshire,21 CPR, 1436-41, p. 454. which Clopton formally released to Richard Lovell some years later.22 Eton Coll. Recs. liv. 16. The conveyance of the advowson of Eton was just one of a series of transactions in favour of the college in which Clopton was involved as a witness or feoffee during the 1440s and 1450s.23 Ibid. xxxviii. 181, 184, 188, 193, 194; liv. 5; Eton Coll. Archs., ET206, 291, 318, 421; CPR, 1441-6, p. 32; CCR, 1441-7, p. 205; 1454-61, p. 431; 1461-8, pp. 150-1; PROME, xii. 108. It is likely that he spent much of his time on private conveyancing work, whether on behalf of institutions or individuals, since in October 1441 he secured an exemption for life from appointment to public office against his will.24 CPR, 1441-6, p. 34. As far as the evidence goes, he did not hold any such office after that date and, despite his professional qualifications, he never served as a j.p.

If ill health had prompted Clopton to obtain his exemption, it did not prevent him from living to an advanced age. Party to the settlement of the former Giffard manor of Somerton on William Aston and his wife and their heirs in August 1465,25 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 467-8. he put his own affairs in order in a short will that he drew up just over a year later. In the will, dated 15 Oct. 1466 and proved on the following 12 Nov., he asked to be buried in Langley Marish, either in the doorway of a chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, or beside his deceased children (‘puerorum’) in the parish church. Otherwise, should he die away from home (‘in partibus remotis’), his executors were to decide upon a suitable burial place for him. In spite of mentioning his dead children, the will does not refer to his long dead wife, Elizabeth, who lay buried in Langley church, or identify his heir. He named John and Thomas Clopton, presumably two of his relatives, as his executors and Edmund Wassenden as his overseer.26 PCC 15 Godyn; VCH Bucks. iii. 299.