FENNE, Robert

Like William Heton*, another of Rutland’s MPs, Robert Fenne was a man of obscure origins who enjoyed a long and successful career in service. The difference was that, while Heton served a series of baronial masters, Fenne began his career as a minor official of the Crown. It is probable that he was a Buckinghamshire man by birth, for in a bond of 1444 he was styled as ‘of Hanslope’, just on the Buckinghamshire side of the county’s border with Northamptonshire.4 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 219-20. In 1450 he had a plea of trespass pending against a gentleman of Hanslope: KB27/758, rot. 17. He is to be distinguished from a namesake of Harlaxton near Grantham, Lincs.: Feudal Aids, vi. 480. No evidence survives to indicate an early patron, but by the autumn of 1441 he was acting as a lay clerk in Chancery.5 He is noted as examining an inq. post mortem returned into Chancery soon after 10 Oct. 1441: CIPM, xxv. 620. Early in his career Fenne, no doubt anxious to establish a place in local society, acquired the office of parker of Edmund, Lord Grey of Ruthin’s lordship of Yardley Hastings, only a few miles from Hanslope. On 23 May 1444 the former holder of the office, Peter Beauchamp, entered into a £200 bond to our MP and others with the condition that Fenne should enjoy the office (with its annual fee of ten marks) from the following Michaelmas for ten years without let of either Peter or Lord Edmund. This implies that our MP had not been chosen for the office by the latter but had rather purchased it from Beauchamp. If this was so the purchase price appears to have been 40 marks payable over two years, for, on the same date, Fenne bound himself to Beauchamp in £200 to make such a payment.6 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 219-20.

Fenne’s local position was further enhanced by royal patronage. On 8 Apr. 1446, described as a royal servant, he was appointed as the King’s ranger in Salcey forest, an office that complemented his parkership of Lord Grey’s nearby chase.7 CPR, 1441-6, p. 426. Much more important to him, however, was the profitable marriage he made soon after. In the first half of 1448 he took as his wife a widow who enjoyed dower in the estates of the families of Culpepper and Brauncepath. The value of her two dowers is difficult to assess, but, for a man Fenne’s modest origins, they marked a very major augmentation of resources. Through her first marriage to Sir John Culpepper, she brought Fenne an interest in the valuable manor of Exton in Rutland, where the couple took up residence, together with other lands in Northamptonshire; and through her second to John Brauncepath she brought him a share of the Leicestershire manor of Glooston.8 E163/7/31, pt. 1; Warws. Feet of Fines (Dugdale Soc. xviii), 2596; CP25(1)/179/94/82; E149/197/4; CCR, 1447-54, p. 62.

Less positively, the marriage also brought Fenne a contested claim to the Northamptonshire manor of Woodcroft in Etton. Once the property of the Preston family, in the summer of 1428 this manor had been settled on the last of that family, Wymer Preston, for term of his life, with remainder to Juliana, then Culpepper’s wife, in fee. But, despite this settlement, in June 1434, Wymer, who appears to have been heavily in debt, sold the manor to his neighbour, Thomas Sutton of Paston.9 CP40/673, cart. rot.; Northants. RO, Fitzwilliam (Milton) Chs. 652(b), 653. For Preston’s financial difficulties: C1/16/366; C131/63/18; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 28-29, 32, 47. Given these uncertainties, it is not surprising that Fenne should, soon after his marriage, have sought to strengthen his wife’s title. On St. Valentine’s day 1449 Nicholas Bukstede, one of the Wymer’s two nephews and common-law heirs, quitclaimed the manor with warranty to our MP and Juliana; and Fenne used his place in the Chancery to have this important deed enrolled on the close roll.10 Fitzwilliam (Milton) Ch. 661; CCR, 1447-54, p. 134. Now lord of the Culpepper manor of Exton, Fenne quickly established himself in Rutland, a county with few gentry and in which a man of his stamp could reasonably hope to find a place in local society. In November 1448 he was added to the county bench, and on the following 27 Feb., with several leading gentry of the county, he witnessed the important charter by which Richard, duke of York, granted his manor of Great Hambleton to Ralph, Lord Cromwell. Appointed to his first ad hoc commission of local government soon afterwards, Fenne’s establishment among the principal gentry of Rutland was confirmed by his election to Parliament on 30 Oct. 1449 at a county court held at Uppingham rather than the usual venue of Oakham. On the following 20 Dec., three days after the parliamentary prorogation, he was pricked for the first of his three terms as sheriff.11 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 299, 593; KB27/752, rot. 32; C219/15/7; CFR, xviii. 145.

This local administrative activity is likely to have been the product not of his place in the royal service, but of his connexion with Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, whose lordship of Oakham dominated the county. The first evidence of this association dates from August 1448, when the duke and Fenne were among joint feoffees in property at Sherington near Hanslope. More significantly, on 23 Apr. 1452, the duke and his son, Humphrey, earl of Stafford, headed the feoffees to whom Fenne and his wife conveyed their disputed manor of Woodcroft.12 Centre for Bucks. Studies, Sherington mss, D-X731/2/1; CCR, 1447-54, p. 110; Fitzwilliam (Milton) Ch. 668. By the mid 1450s, he was acting as the duke’s steward in Rutland. It is impossible to say whether he had come into Buckingham’s service through his initial appointment to office or whether his entry into that service came first. What is clear, however, is that his appointment as Buckingham’s steward coincided with his surrender of office in the Chancery: the last reference to him acting as a clerk dates from July 1454, and in October 1455 he was pardoned as ‘late of the King’s Chancery’.13 C. Rawcliffe, Staffords, 205; C67/41, m. 31. Fenne’s only other known baronial connexion was with Robert, Lord Hungerford, who, in the mid 1450s, was paying him an annuity of one mark, no doubt retaining him because he was a Chancery official: SC6/971/12.

By the late 1450s Fenne had added to his local responsibilities the clerkship of the statute merchant in the borough of Northampton.14 C241/243/6. He thus came to have an unusual combination of officers: such clerkships were held by men below the rank of those who could aspire to the shrievalty of a county or the stewardship of the estates of a great lord, and yet, in 1458-9, Fenne held those offices simultaneously. It was in this period that Fenne’s wife’s title to the manor of Woodcroft was challenged. There were two rival claims. One was represented by the common-law heirs of Wymer Preston, namely Robert Brudenell and Nicholas Bukstede’s son John; the other by Thomas Sutton, the son of the defrauded purchaser. In actions sued in 1457 the heirs brought a writ of formedon against the Fennes, claiming that the manor had been entailed on the issue of Wymer’s parents in the reign of Richard II; more optimistically, Sutton’s feoffees alleged that the deed of 1428, by which the manor had been settled on Juliana in remainder, was a forgery.15 CP40/786, rot. 135d; 788, rot. 239; 790, rots. 441, 443, 446d; 791, rot. 145. Sutton gained nothing. Indeed, on 21 Sept. 1458 he was outlawed on a counter-action for a debt of 400 marks brought by the Fennes.16 KB27/793, rot. 68 (modern no.). The heirs were more successful. In Easter term 1458 they recovered the manor against the Fennes in a collusive action designed to serve as a prelude to the resettlement of the manor. The recoverers conveyed it to a powerful body of feoffees, headed by Lionel, Lord Welles, and Richard Wydeville, Lord Rivers, and on 16 Feb. 1463 the surviving feoffees settled the manor on our MP and his wife for their lives with remainder of one moiety to Brudenell and of the other to Bukstede, both in tail.17 J. Bridges, Northants. ii. 512; Fitzwilliam (Milton) Chs. 672-3, 679, 2240.

Buckingham’s death at the battle of Northampton in July 1460 and the subsequent fall of Henry VI diminished Fenne’s standing. Even so, like other administrators who found themselves on the wrong side he proved able to adapt to the changed political circumstances. He maintained his place on the Rutland bench and, in March 1463, he was restored to the office of ranger of Salcey forest.18 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 261, 570. More potentially damaging to him than the change of regime was the death of his wealthy wife and the consequent loss of her dower lands. She died between Easter term 1463 and August 1468 when Fenne was pardoned in company with his second wife.19 CP40/808, rot. 294; C67/46, m. 16. This wife brought him some compensatory property. Her first husband, John Umfray, a yeoman of the Crown in the late 1450s, had been one of those who had his property confiscated on Edward IV’s accession, but by the time of his widow’s remarriage she seems to have had a life interest in all the Umfray lands. A Chancery petition relating to the marriage of her son and heir, William Umfray, claimed that she had lands in Northamptonshire and Gloucestershire worth as much as £50 p.a. However this may be, her marriage to our MP explains why, in his later years, he was occasionally described as resident at her manor of Barton Seagrave near Kettering.20 CPR, 1452-61, p. 548; 1461-7, p. 35; C1/110/113; C67/46, m. 16.

Little evidence survives to throw light on the last part of Fenne’s career. He was removed from the commission of the peace at the Readeption, but it is difficult to read any political significance into this. In April 1472, with his second wife, he acquired a tenement and garden in Bearward Street in Northampton from John Watford, and in October 1473, described as ‘of Barton Seagrave’, he acted as an attorney to deliver seisin in an enfeoffment made by John’s sister, Alice. His advancing age makes it unlikely that he welcomed his belated appointment as escheator in 1474. On 31 Jan. 1477 he joined with his wife in conveying two crofts of pasture in Watford, similarly once of John Watford, to a powerful group of feoffees, headed by William, Lord Hastings, and (Sir) William Catesby*.21 CAD, iv. A8359-60, 9787, 9810, 10268. In November 1478, if not before, he lost the manor of Woodcroft in which he had a life interest under the terms of a settlement of 1463, for it was then settled on the grandson of Robert Brudenell and the daughter of John Bukstede.22 Fitzwilliam (Milton) Chs. 684-5. Not long after he was dead. There are no further references to him after 19 May 1479, when he was pardoned of all issues due from him as escheator.23 CPR, 1476-85, p. 152. He is to be distinguished from his namesake who, in the mid 1460s, was clerk of the under treasurer, Hugh atte Fenne*, and was later a servant of George Neville, Lord Abergavenny: E403/832, m. 8; 845, m. 4; Add. Ch. 28905. As his relationship with atte Fenne implies, this Robert’s local connexions lay in E. Anglia: Add. Chs. 14643, 28906. Just as nothing is known of his parentage, nothing is known of his descendants.