FENNE, Hugh atte

A member of a prolific Great Yarmouth family with relatives among the gentry of east Norfolk,10 Virgoe, ‘Hugh atte Fenne and Bks.’, 92. atte Fenne acquired considerable land and wealth as an administrator in the King’s service. He was probably born in about 1418, since the authorities at Yarmouth fined him for not being in a tithing in 1431, suggesting that he had recently reached the age of 12.11 Virgoe, ‘Will of Hugh atte Fenne’, 32. Like his contemporary and associate, John Paston*, atte Fenne may have spent some time at Cambridge. If he did receive a university education, he must have augmented it with a legal training, since he retained chambers at Gray’s Inn until the end of his life.12 Virgoe, ‘Hugh atte Fenne and Bks.’, 92.

One of Hugh’s earliest responsibilities was that of an executor for his grandmother, Christine Savage, who died in early 1442.13 Norf. RO, Norwich consist. ct., Reg. Doke, f. 167. Following the death of his grandfather and namesake, Hugh atte Fenne†, she had married Peter Savage, another Yarmouth burgess, whom she had also outlived. Although atte Fenne spent most of his adult life outside Great Yarmouth, he maintained his links with the town, marrying a local woman and filing suits in its borough court there during the 1450s and 1460s.14 Norf. RO, Gt. Yarmouth recs., ct. rolls, 1453-4, 1457-8, 1462-3, 1464-5, Y/C 4/160, m. 3d; 163, mm. 3d, 5d; 167, m. 6; 169, m. 1. Those links were strong enough for the burgesses to return him to the Commons of 1450, along with his putative brother-in-law, Edmund Wydewell. In later years atte Fenne served as a j.p. at Yarmouth and in 1466 the Crown appointed him to help supervise repairs to the town’s fortifications and port.15 CPR, 1461-7, p. 421. In 1471, he was placed on a commission charged with inquiring into a petition from the borough, in which the burgesses, citing the decline of the local fishing industry, sought a remission of the greater part of their fee farm. By then, he had served in the administration of Norfolk and Suffolk for nearly 20 years.

Away from Yarmouth, atte Fenne appears to have begun his career as a bureaucrat in the early 1440s, for he was a clerk of John Somer, one of the auditors at the Exchequer, by March 1444. In the following November it was his duty to deliver £73 17s. 7d. from the Exchequer to (Sir) John Stourton II*, in part payment of the expenses the knight had incurred in the late 1430s guarding the duke of Orléans, a prisoner of the English since the battle of Agincourt.16 Issues of the Exchequer ed. Devon, 450. During the early 1450s atte Fenne supplemented his work as an Exchequer clerk with that of an attorney in the same department. Although identified simply as a clerk in a royal pardon of November 1452, he was by then also an attorney in the exchequer of pleas, in which capacity he won a retainer from Westminster abbey in 1453-4.17 C67/40, m. 4; Baker, i. 662. By the later date he had succeeded Somer in the office of auditor, a role he had already been performing for some years in a private capacity. In 1445 and again in 1448, for example, he received a fee of £6 13s. 4d., for auditing the accounts of the receiver-general of Walter Hungerford†, Lord Hungerford.18 SC6/1119/11, 12. In principle, the treasurer had the right to appoint the auditors, so it would appear that he owed his promotion to the then treasurer, John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester. Each of the auditors received an annual salary of £10, as well as an indeterminate income from fees and gifts, and the government itself was sometimes a source of ad hoc rewards. In 1450, for instance, atte Fenne received £10 for his labours in helping to prepare a report about the financial state of the realm. Following its completion, he carried it to the final session of the Parliament of 1449-50 at Leicester by order of the treasurer.19 E403/779, m. 4; B.P. Wolffe, R. Demesne in English Hist. 114n. Later, in 1455, he and William Welden were each assigned 20 marks for compiling another report (concerning the office of the treasurer of England) requested by the Parliament of 1455-6.20 Issues of the Exchequer, 479. Just days after the dissolution of that assembly in March 1456, the Crown commissioned atte Fenne and others to go to Calais. Their mission was to settle the unpaid wages of its garrison, the control of which was of particular significance during the later troubled years of Henry VI’s reign.21 G.L. Harriss, ‘The Struggle for Calais’, EHR, lxxv. 46; E159/232, communia Trin. rot. 3.

In spite of his appointment as a receiver of the lands of Richard, duke of York, and other attainted Yorkists in the spring of 1460, atte Fenne was no political partisan and the accession of Edward IV did not disrupt his career, although he took the precaution of obtaining a royal pardon early in the new reign.22 C67/48, m. 48. While Edward’s first Parliament was sitting, he helped to draw up another statement of the royal finances for the benefit of the King and the Lords.23 E403/827A, m. 11. During Edward’s reign he sometimes took responsibility for considerable sums of money, and he continued to receive ad hoc rewards for performing his duties diligently. In July 1469, for example, the treasurer ordered that he should have £10 in recognition of his ‘great searches and labours’ for the King’s profit.24 E403/842, m. 10. He retained his office as auditor until his death, despite attaining the positions of clerk of the treasurer’s remembrancer and clerk to the treasurer in 1463.

Known as the under treasurer by the end of the fifteenth century, the holder of the latter position was the treasurer’s deputy. In practice, atte Fenne may have exercised at least some of the duties of the office long before his official appointment, for he was described as ‘subthesaurarius Anglie’ in 1455-6. The clerk to the treasurer, who like the auditors was appointed by the treasurer, received daily payments constituting an annual salary of £40.25 ‘Exchequer Officers’, 189-91; Baker, i. 662. As clerk atte Fenne served under three treasurers: Edmund, Lord Grey of Ruthin, (Sir) Walter Blount* and William Grey, bishop of Ely. In August 1464, while Lord Grey was treasurer, he attended a meeting of the Council at Stamford, where the condition of the currency was on the agenda.26 C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, i. 354n. The reason for his dismissal as clerk in Easter 1465, during Blount’s term as treasurer, and subsequent reappointment in 1469 is unknown but there is no evidence that it was political. In this period, clerks of the treasurer entered office without oaths or other formalities, so it is unwise to attach great significance to changes in personnel. Whatever the reasons for the dismissal, atte Fenne remained associated with Blount, who became Lord Mountjoy in June that year and served as treasurer until March 1466. During his time as treasurer, Mountjoy incurred heavy personal losses. In December 1465 he and five associates, Master Thomas Kent (clerk of the Council), atte Fenne, John Croke (an officer of the Exchequer), the lawyer Humphrey Starky and Richard Stoke were offered repayment by assignment of over £3,400 they had put up for the Crown in the form of seven tallies issued by the Exchequer. They had yet to recover this sum over two years later. In recompense, in February 1468 the King granted Mountjoy and his associates the right to ship 234 sacks of wool abroad over the next four years (paying only four marks per woolsack for all customs and other charges) and to import or export merchandise worth up to £234 (quit of any customs or subsidies) in the same period.27 CPR, 1467-77, p. 53; CCR, 1468-76, no. 30. Later, when the Parliament of 1472 passed an Act of Resumption, the six secured an exemption to protect their grant.28 PROME, xiv. 158.

There is other evidence that atte Fenne made substantial loans to the Crown. While he advanced relatively small sums to Henry VI in the 1450s (for example, £2 in January 1453 and £10 in November 1459),29 E401/830, m. 26; 867, m. 8; E403/791, m. 10. his advances to the royal coffers during the 1460s and 1470s are startling testimony to the wealth he had accumulated. Exchequer records suggest that he lent the Yorkist Crown well over £3,000 on his own account, and a further £1,290 in association with (Sir) John Say II* and Richard Fowler†, during those decades.30 E405/48, rots. 1d, 2; 50, rot. 3; 53, rot. 1; 54, rots. 1, 2, 3, 8d; 55, rot. 3; 57, rots. 1d, 3, 7d; 58, rot. 1; 59, rot. 1; E403/830, mm. 3, 4; 832, mm. 1, 2, 3, 6, 7; 840, m. 6; 842, mm. 2, 5, 6, 9. In 1468 he was a member of a consortium of Exchequer officials and Londoners that lent Edward a total £10,000, part of the dowry which the King had agreed to settle on his sister Margaret for her marriage to the duke of Burgundy. He put up £400, a larger sum than that contributed by any other member of the group.31 E404/74/1/45; C.D. Ross, Edw. IV, 111-12. As these loans indicate, atte Fenne was a very wealthy man by Edward’s reign, allowing him, by 1470, to secure an extraordinary match for his daughter and only surviving child, Margaret, with George Neville, later Lord Abergavenny. In his will he would refer to his son-in-law as ‘my maister’, but this was in recognition of the latter’s social status and does not mean that he had entered Neville’s service.32 Virgoe, ‘Will of Hugh atte Fenne’, 36, 40.

Given his family’s mercantile background, it is likely that atte Fenne owed some of his wealth to trade. While there is no direct evidence of this, it was perhaps over business dealings that he and one Thomas Towker sued the west-country merchant and shipowner, John Clerk* in the late 1440s. In pleadings heard in the common pleas in 1450, they alleged that Clerk had failed to pay them £40 in accordance with a bond he had entered into with them in London in April 1448. In response, he claimed that he had been their prisoner at Dartmouth on the date in question and that he had entered the security under duress.33 CP40/755, rot. 651d; 757, rot. 106. Atte Fenne also had dealings with the Yarmouth merchant, Hamon Pulham*, whom he sued for £6 in another common pleas action of 1450. As with the case against Clerk, however, it is impossible to prove that the debt arose from commercial matters.34 CP40/799, rot. 75d.

Atte Fenne invested a good deal of his income in London, where he necessarily spent much of his time and acquired substantial property interests.35 Virgoe, ‘Hugh atte Fenne and Bks.’, 93. Although he never held office there, he did play some part in the City’s affairs. In the autumn of 1463, for example, he helped to resolve a contretemps over precedence, after the seat of honour at a feast given by the serjeants-at-law was allotted to the treasurer of England instead of the mayor of London.36 Cal. Letter Bk. London, L, 7. The exact date is uncertain: according to the Letter Bk. the feast occurred on 7 Oct. 1463 although the mayor in question, Matthew Philip, did not formally take up office until the following 13 Oct. Atte Fenne was also frequently a trustee and feoffee for those with interests in the City. Among those whom he served as a feoffee there was the chief baron of the Exchequer, (Sir) Richard Illingworth*, who in 1471 transferred several messuages in London to him and others to hold to the use of his last will.37 Corp. London RO, hr 174/23, 186/15, 192/23, 194/3, 201/120; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 170, 499; 1454-61, p. 256; 1461-8, p. 240; 1468-76, nos. 105, 955. Some six years earlier, atte Fenne had acted in a like capacity for Illingworth in Oxfordshire, as a feoffee of the settlement drawn up for the marriage of the chief baron’s daughter to the nephew and namesake of William Babington*.38 CPR, 1461-8, pp. 378-9.

Others whom atte Fenne served as a feoffee outside the City included Sir John Fray†, one of Illingworth’s predecessors as chief baron,39 C1/71/40. Geoffrey Boleyn*, a prominent London mercer of Norfolk origin,40 CAD, i. C137; ii. C1784; vi. C5972; CPR, 1461-7, p. 141; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 206-7. and Henry Heydon, an esquire from the same county.41 CCR, 1461-8, p. 369; 1468-76, no. 324; CP25(1)/170/192/28. Atte Fenne was also an executor for Boleyn,42 PCC 1 Godyn (PROB11/5, ff. 3v-6). whom he numbered among his own feoffees.43 C140/55/22; E41/168. Two others who named atte Fenne as an executor were the Yorkist Household knight, (Sir) John Clay*, who died in 1464, and William, Lord Mountjoy, who died ten years later. It would appear that he declined the responsibility as far as Clay’s will was concerned, since it fell to others to fulfil it. As for the will made by Mountjoy, the implementation of its detailed instructions was potentially very burdensome for his executors, in acknowledgement of which the testator bequeathed atte Fenne £40.44 PCC 6 Godyn, 18 Wattys (PROB11/5, f. 41; 6, ff. 131v-34); CPR, 1461-7, p. 436; 1467-77, pp. 227, 253. In the event, the task cannot have put Hugh to too much trouble given that he did not long survive Mountjoy.

The MP also often stood surety for those to whom the Crown granted wardships or farms. In some cases, this was probably because he was a conveniently available bureaucrat when the grantees or their agents came to Westminster to obtain their royal letters. In others, his personal contacts with his native county must have played a part, since he was on various occasions a mainpernor for the likes of Sir John Fastolf and Thomas Sharneburne*, both residents of Norfolk, and of Geoffrey Boleyn.45 e.g. CFR, xvii. 335; xviii. 116-17, 150, 156, 206, 228, 257; xix. 19, 36, 66, 114-15, 251. He was also to help those seeking favours from the Crown or representation in the lawcourts and elsewhere at Westminster, and he was especially active in this regard on behalf of Fastolf and the Paston family. In the later 1450s, for example, he helped the knight to secure the wardship of his relative, Thomas Fastolf†, shrugging off offers of reward made to him in return. Yet in a letter of October 1456 the Pastons’ correspondent, John Bocking, was dismissive of this apparent altruism, even though atte Fenne had represented him in the Exchequer. Bocking commented that the MP ‘farith as a man wole sey he wole noo siluere, lokith awaywardes and takith a noble’.46 Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 135, 137, 148, 161-2, 181, 260, 281-2, 384-5; Baker, i. 662. It is unlikely that atte Fenne was the Hugh atte Fenne who was Sir John Fastolf’s steward at Caister in 1455. The steward was amerced by a Yarmouth court that year for leaving heaps of grain and dung lying in a lane within the borough, suggesting that he was the MP’s contemporary namesake, Hugh atte Fenne of Great Yarmouth, merchant: Gt. Yarmouth recs., ct. rolls, 1453-5, Y/C 4/160, m. 3d; 161 m. 16d. Bocking was not alone in distrusting atte Fenne. About a decade later, John Paston† wrote to his elder brother, Sir John Paston†, to stress the need for repairs at Caister castle (which had come to the Pastons after Sir John Fastolf’s death). He advised him to raise the money needed for the work however he could, and

to goo thorow wyth Hwghe of Fen, for by my trowthe ye wyll ellys repent yow or owght longe, for bothe ye shall loose hys good wyll and lett par auenture that auantage that he myght do yow in your lond recoueryng, wheras he may do yow harme and he wyll, and then to late wyse.

It is possible that atte Fenne had lent money to Sir John, who had pawned 500 marks’ worth of plate with him.47 Paston Letters, i. 476, 537. In spite of Bocking’s cynicism, the Pastons, embroiled in a long struggle to maintain their hold on Caister and other properties from the Fastolf estate, continued to depend on the MP for help and advice, probably because Fastolf had made atte Fenne an overseer of his will,48 Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, iii. 166. and because they felt it better to have him as a friend rather than an enemy. In the early 1460s Margaret Paston advised her husband that

it is right necessary for you to haue Hew of Fen to be yowr frende in yowr materes, for he is callid right feythfull and trosty to his frendes that trost hym. And as it is reported here he may do myche with the Kyng and the lordes, and it is seid that he may do myche wyth hem that be yowr aduersaryes. And therfore, for Goddes sake, if ye may haue his gode wille, forsake it not.

Margaret in particular was ready to put her faith in atte Fenne. In a letter of August 1465 she informed John Paston that she would give the MP, then in Norfolk, a hearty welcome if she saw him, having heard many reports about his expressions of goodwill towards John. Later, in the following October she advised Paston that, according to James Arblaster, atte Fenne would act faithfully for him, should he seek his help.49 Paston Letters ed. Davis, i. 275, 316, 331.

On occasion the MP looked to the Pastons for favours in return. In about 1456, having bought the manor of Ickburgh in Norfolk, he wrote to John Paston for his advice. He informed Paston that he had paid a fine for the manor to the then feodary of Richard, duke of York, Nicholas Waterman. Yet, in spite of meeting this obligation, he had suffered a distraint of his livestock at the hands of Waterman’s successor, John Osbern, formerly a servant of the Pastons. Declaring that he deserved York’s good lordship, he asked Paston what he should do and inquired whether Osbern was still in his family’s service. Over a decade, later atte Fenne wrote to Paston’s son, Sir John, to intercede for John Hardynet of Herringby, from whom Thomas Pekok, a Paston estate official, had taken an illegal distress.50 Ibid. ii. 139-40, 384-5.

Even if Margaret Paston put her faith in atte Fenne, his interests were not always compatible with those of the Pastons. His associates included the previously mentioned Henry Heydon, son of their enemy, John Heydon*,51 CP25(1)/170/192/28. and William Jenney*, a determined opponent of theirs in the matter of Sir John Fastolf’s will,52 E41/168; C140/55/22; C.F. Richmond, John Hopton, 226. and in January 1464 he sued John Paston and other of Fastolf’s executors in the Exchequer. He claimed 200 marks from the knight’s estate, a debt arising from a bond that Fastolf had entered into over nine years earlier. The court found in his favour, ruling that he should recover his debt and damages of two marks from Fastolf’s estate. It ordered William Calthorpe*, sheriff of Norfolk, to recover the 202 marks from Paston, who had taken possession of the knight’s goods and chattels. Calthorpe’s successor, Alexander Cressener, had detained £40-worth of Paston’s goods by early 1465, when the court stayed the process while it sought further advice about the case. In November 1468, however, atte Fenne appeared in the Exchequer to acknowledge that he had recovered the full debt and damages from the executors.53 Paston Letters, ed. Davis, ii. 346; E13/149, rot. 75. Notwithstanding the dispute, atte Fenne had written a cordial letter to Sir John Paston in the previous April. Its main concern was an illegal distress taken by one of the Pastons’ servants at Caister, although it also referred to their late friend, Edmund Clere*, who had died several years earlier. Atte Fenne declared that ‘the sowle of Edmond Clere is evil do to, his dettes not paied nor his wil parfourmed’. He added that this sorry state of affairs was not his fault, perhaps suggesting that he was an executor of Clere, a former member of the Lancastrian Household.54 Paston Letters, ed. Davis, ii. 385.

With regard to his own interests, atte Fenne undoubtedly found his position at the Exchequer advantageous, since it made it much easier for him than most to bid for grants from the Crown. In mid 1450, for example, he and the Household servant, (Sir) Thomas Stanley II*, obtained a 12-year farm of two thirds of the lordship of Swaffham, for a rent of just over 50 marks p.a. A year later, he and Stanley surrendered the farm, so that the King could re-grant of the property to the MP and the clerk, John Boteright, on similar terms.55 CFR, xviii. 155, 174-5, 225-6. Again in 1450, atte Fenne, this time acting alone, obtained a 24-year farm of lands in Great Wratting, Suffolk, which had once belonged to Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. As it happened, he lost it almost immediately – ironically, by virtue of the Act of Resumption passed by the Parliament of which he himself was a Member. The Crown afterwards re-granted the Great Wratting holdings to a minor servant of the Household, William Laweshull*.56 CFR, xviii. 156; xix. 31. A decade later atte Fenne sued Laweshull at Westminster for detaining £10 from him, although whether the suit had any connexion with Great Wratting is unknown: CP40/799, rot. 75d. More profitable for atte Fenne was the commission that he and Robert Gegh received in November 1452. This directed them to inquire into all the debts owed to the late Richard Gegh of Saham Toney, Norfolk, a suicide whose goods had forfeited to the Crown. Upon receiving the commission, they paid the King no less than £100 for the right to collect the debts, evidently substantial, for themselves. The manor at Ickburgh which atte Fenne acquired in the same decade had also belonged to Gegh. Family connexions may have prompted his interest in the dead man’s estate, since it is possible that Richard was his uncle.57 CPR, 1452-61, p. 29; Virgoe, ‘Will of Hugh atte Fenne’, 32. Atte Fenne also obtained two valuable wardships from the Crown, in association with William Jenney and William Essex* respectively. In August 1465, he and Jenney paid 500 marks for that of Robert, son and heir of Sir Robert Willoughby; in the following year, he and Essex, a fellow Exchequer official, obtained the keeping of Nicholas Carew’s son and successor for 400 marks. He was well placed to bid for the Willoughby wardship, having acted as one of Sir Robert’s feoffees.58 C.F. Richmond, Paston Fam.: First Phase, 190n. In the event, the younger Robert Willoughby died in 1467 while still a minor but it appears that atte Fenne and Jenney were able to secure the wardship of his younger brother and successor, Christopher.59 CFR, xx. 159-60, 187-9; xxi. no. 121; CPR, 1467-77, p. 98; Richmond, John Hopton, 226. Virgoe, ‘Will of Hugh atte Fenne’, 33, states that Jenney and Essex were the MP’s kinsmen but in neither case is the relationship readily apparent.

Given that atte Fenne remained an officer of the Exchequer until his death, it is odd that the Chancery appeared unsure whether he was still alive at the end of 1472. In December that year, it ordered the abbey of St. Benet of Hulme to allow Thomas Aylewarde to succeed to his corrody there, unless he had already surrendered it to Thomas or had died in the meantime.60 CCR, 1468-76, no. 1008. The MP was to refer in his will to a sum of £50 that the abbot owed him, as well as to a composition he had made with that cleric: Virgoe, ‘Will of Hugh atte Fenne’, 51, 52. In fact, atte Fenne was still alive three years later, when he and others received a commission to survey the royal castle of Windsor and other parts of the royal demesne. Exactly when he died is unknown although he was almost certainly on his deathbed when the Crown renewed the commission on 24 Feb. 1476.61 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 573-4. The surviving copy of his will, registered with the see of Canterbury, bears the very same date, although no date of probate; while the inquisitions post mortem held in Norfolk and Suffolk more than a year after his death state that he had died a day earlier, on the 23rd.62 PCC 32 Wattys (PROB11/6, ff. 245-8); C140/55/22.

Impressive and elaborate though it is, the will is also somewhat rough and ready. It changes abruptly from Latin into English about a third of the way through and is rather unsystematic in its later stages, suggesting that atte Fenne completed or redrafted it on his deathbed.63 Unless otherwise indicated, this and the following paragraphs are based on Virgoe, ‘Will of Hugh atte Fenne’, 31-57. Seeking burial beside his mother’s tomb in the chancel of Herringby church, he made elaborate arrangements for his funeral, left many bequests to churches and other religious institutions in London and East Anglia and to the ‘deserving poor’ and provided for the foundation of an almshouse or college at Herringby. The directions for his funeral procession to Herringby indicate that he died in London. They included the instruction to his executors to spend up to £50 on black woollen cloth for those family members (including his son-in-law, George Neville), servants and friends who accompanied his body home to wear as mourning apparel.

Atte Fenne provided substantially for his widow from his personal estate, leaving her money, plate, jewels, household ‘stuff’, including a mass book and a book of saints’ lives, and livestock. The will mentions three other books: a primer, a copy of De Regimine Principium, both in atte Fenne’s own hand, and a psalter, all of which he set aside for his grandson, George (Margaret’s eldest son), to receive when he attained the age of 14. It does not, however, refer to ‘the Neville Hours’, an illuminated manuscript which the MP’s daughter and her husband certainly possessed at a later date and which he himself might once have owned, or to any law books. One of the most interesting aspects of the will is atte Fenne’s foundation of loan chests at Oxford and Cambridge with generous gifts of £200 to each university. He directed that the theologian, Master Hugh Damlett, a fellow of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and the rector of St. Peter’s Cornhill, London, should supervise the setting up of the chests and receive ten marks for his pains. He also instructed his executors to spend 100 marks on putting land into mortmain, to provide an income for the repair of books at Cambridge, his apparent alma mater: it seems that this bequest was never implemented, probably because it proved too expensive and cumbersome to carry out. As for the loan chests, Damlett can have had no part in establishing them, since he died a few weeks after atte Fenne. Cambridge seems to have received at least some of its legacy by 1481. Its chest, amalgamated with the Neel chest in the 1540s, was operating by the early sixteenth century and survived into George II’s reign. Oxford had far greater trouble in securing its bequest. As late as 1502, it was seeking the bishop of Rochester’s help in retrieving money it had yet to receive from the MP’s surviving executors.64 Virgoe, ‘Hugh atte Fenne and Bks.’, 94-95; G. Pollard, ‘Med. Loan Chests at Cambridge’, Bull. IHR, xvii. 124-5.

Atte Fenne’s bequests are yet further evidence that he was an extremely wealthy man when he died, for his specific religious and charitable bequests came to more than £1,750 and his other, cash bequests totalled over £750. The section of his will relating to his lands reveals that he invested much of his wealth in real property. Presumably he entered the property market at a relatively early date, since he was employing Edmund Blake* as his receiver in Norfolk by the early 1450s.65 E13/146, rot. 7d. Atte Fenne can have inherited comparatively little from his father, most of whose property was probably situated in Great Yarmouth. Thomas atte Fenne had also owned lands at Herringby which he had granted away to Sir John Fastolf in 1438, although in the late 1450s the knight agreed that Hugh should succeed to his manor in that parish. It duly passed to him after Fastolf’s death, but it is not clear whether this was because he had bought the reversion of the property.66 Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 137-8; C.F. Richmond, Paston Fam.: Fastolf’s Will, 145n. It was not his only acquisition in Herringby, since he bought another manor there from the Pastons in the first half of the 1470s. In the will atte Fenne set aside both his manors in that parish, along with all his properties in Tunstall, Stalham, Barton, Edingthorpe and Worstead, Norfolk, and in Mutford hundred, Suffolk, to provide an income for his college at Herringby. As for his wife, he arranged that Eleanor should enjoy a life interest in his manors and lands in Nutbourne and Chiltington, Sussex, and Ickburgh, Hilborough, Scoulton, Little Ryburgh and Stibbard, Norfolk (worth nearly £70 p.a.), along with the advowsons of Chiltington, Ickburgh and Stibbard and the hermitage in Ickburgh. In return for such handsome provision, she was to surrender her dower rights over his real and personal estate. He also left her his ‘place’ called the ‘White Bull’ in West Smithfield, two closes in Kentish Town and his lands and tenements in Hackney, to hold for as long as she remained unmarried after his death. After her own death, his executors were to sell them. As for his daughter and her husband, atte Fenne awarded them the reversion of the manors and lands in Sussex and Norfolk which he had left to his wife, but only if Neville fulfilled a promise to give Margaret a jointure in 300 marks’ worth of land. The couple were also to have the advowsons and hermitage in lieu of the lands worth 100 marks p.a. he had agreed to give them when they married. Atte Fenne’s stipulation about his daughter’s jointure was in fact a very limited one, since he also laid down that his son-in-law might enjoy an interest in all these properties should Margaret predecease him, even if he had not provided her with a jointure settlement. It is surprising that Margaret still had no jointure when her father made his will, given that she had married Neville at least six years previously. Possibly the match was an unhappy one, since in the will atte Fenne requested his son-in-law to behave lovingly towards his wife. To support his bequests to Oxford and Cambridge, atte Fenne directed his executors to sell his manors and lands in Deopham, Morley, Wicklewood and Hackford in Norfolk, along with the advowsons of the two churches at Morley. He calculated that the sale would raise no less than £800, of which £466 13s. 4d. was to go to Oxford and Cambridge for their loan chests and book repairs, and the remainder towards the construction of the steeple at Norwich cathedral. As for his manors and lands in Great Walsingham, Sco Ruston, Wymondham and Swaffham in Norfolk, his tenements in Holborn and chambers in Gray’s Inn, he directed his executors to spend the income from those properties on charitable purposes for a term of 12 years and then to sell them. In due course they found a purchaser for the manor of ‘Aspalles’ in Swaffham in the person of Simon Blake†.67 Norf. RO, Swaffham parish recs., PD 52/258. Atte Fenne further instructed his executors to use some of the proceeds from land sales to provide for his grandchildren, George, John, William and Elizabeth Neville. When they reached the age of 21, George and John were each to have 200 marks and William £100; Elizabeth was to have £100 when she came to marry. He made these gifts upon condition that their father ‘lett nott the due execucion of this my testament and last wille’, although he added that he had ‘no mystrust in his disposision’. It is nevertheless evident that he did not entirely trust Neville, given that elsewhere in the will he made similar requests to him not to hamper it.

Atte Fenne appointed four executors, William Essex, Henry Heydon, Edmund Jenney† (William Jenney’s son) and Edmund Wydewell, and he assigned the task of overseeing their work to his widow and William Jenney. As a reward for their trouble, he assigned 40 marks each to Essex and Heydon, £20 to Edmund Jenney and 20 marks to each of Wydewell and William Jenney. In the October following atte Fenne’s death, the executors and the overseers drew up an indenture for the founding of his college at Herringby, an institution which survived until the Reformation of Edward VI’s reign. The work of administering the will soon fell to Henry Heydon and Edmund Jenney alone, since Wydewell died in 1479 and Essex in the following year. The will’s complexities appear to have placed too great a burden on the surviving executors, whose work remained unfinished when Heydon died in 1504. Six years later, the Crown granted Jenney a general pardon referring to his status as an executor of atte Fenne but the will was still unfulfilled when he himself died in 1522. His own will shows that his obligations to the MP’s soul were clearly on his mind in the last few months of his life.68 E41/168; VCH Norf. ii. 440; Virgoe, ‘Hugh atte Fenne and Bks.’, 95-96; Norwich consist. ct., Reg. Briggs, ff. 108-16.