FERIBY, John

It is possible that this MP, a man who rose from obscurity to be controller of Henry VI’s household, came from one of the families named Feriby living at Winterton and Barton upon Humber in Lincolnshire in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. He may even have been the John, son of Hugh de Feriby of Barton, who as a ‘King’s esquire’ to Henry IV was committed keeping of property in South Ferriby in 1408, pending the outcome of a suit in Chancery.8 CIMisc. vii. 373; CFR, xiii. 112; CCR, 1405-9, p. 499. John Feriby of Barton upon Humber esquire took out a pardon in Apr. 1416, and was later associated with Robert Feriby* in a conveyance dated 1419: C67/37, m. 8; CP25(1)/144/155/20. Yet there is no firm evidence that this was the case; and indeed at this stage of his career our John Feriby was nearly always described as a clerk rather than an esquire. Possibly retained by Henry of Bolingbroke before he took the throne, Feriby had joined Henry’s service by the very beginning of the reign, as a member of the clerical staff of his household. As such he was engaged in organizing supplies for the royal entourage as it journeyed north on the King’s expedition to Scotland, notably by purveying provisions in Holderness and the Wold, and he was commissioned to requisition ships for the transport of victuals. This was a highly responsible role; he was called one of the ‘gouvernours’ of the exercise.9 E101/41/22, 42/33; CPR, 1399-1401, p. 355; E404/22/201. Following the battle of Shrewsbury in July 1403, Feriby was given the task of moving the royal pavilions, armour and artillery from the field to Worcester, and on 5 Oct. that year he was rewarded for his efforts with a grant of forfeited lands in Wales to the value of £10 p.a.10 CPR, 1401-5, pp. 285, 327. It was as one of the clerks of the Household that he briefly held the post of warden of a hospital in Northamptonshire, and in 1408 he obtained that of another in Wales. At that time he was evidently intended for a career in the Church: the corrody at Barnwell priory, granted to him in 1409, was to be held until he might be provided by the prior to a suitable benefice, and a similar arrangement was made with the Augustinian canons at Wellow abbey near Grimsby a year later.11 CPR, 1405-8, pp. 223, 291, 395; CCR, 1405-9, p. 487; 1409-13, p. 170. Feriby was under a cloud in 1411, following allegations that he and William Pound† of Hull, like him commissioned to victual the King’s army in the north of England at the beginning of the reign, had not only requisitioned grain in Yorkshire without making proper payment, but had then sold it, keeping the proceeds for themselves. A commission was set up to investigate.12 C1/16/70; CPR, 1408-13, p. 318. Although the commission’s findings are not recorded, Feriby was probably exonerated, for he continued to be employed in royal service, and gained promotion under Henry V.

Feriby is next recorded, as a ‘King’s clerk’, on 5 Jan. 1415, receiving a grant for life of 1s. a day from the fee farm of London.13 CPR, 1413-16, p. 272. As a member of the staff of the wardrobe and ‘clerk of the green cloth’ he was contracted to serve in the army assembled for the invasion of France later that year, taking his own contingent of three archers. He duly crossed over the Channel to Harfleur, only to fall ‘sike at the castell of Meremont’,14 E101/47/21, 69/5/412; E404/31/415; N.H. Nicolas, Agincourt, 349. and rendered unfit to fight at Agincourt. He is glimpsed back home ten months later, in August 1416, transferring £200 from the parliamentary subsidies to the keeper of the wardrobe for the expenses of the entourage of the Emperor Sigismund during his stay at Eltham.15 Issues of the Exchequer, 348. Feriby may have sailed to France again with the invasion force of 1417, and in October 1418 he took out letters of protection as a member of the King’s retinue there.16 DKR, xliv. 607. By the time Rouen came under siege by the English his ability as an administrator had won him promotion to the office of cofferer of the Household, and as such he assumed responsibility for safeguarding the huge sum of 50,000 marks sent from London to Normandy to the treasurer at war in August 1419. He continued to fill this office, at home and abroad, until Henry V died three years later.17 PPC, iii. 83; Issues of the Exchequer, 360; E101/50/8; E159/212, brevia Hil. rot. 6d. It was during this period that Feriby finally decided to give up any plans for the priesthood, instead grasping the opportunities presented by Henry V’s patronage to set himself up as a landed esquire. At an unknown date the King awarded him for life the manor of Witley in Surrey, worth as much as £40 p.a. This caused some difficulties when Feriby discovered that Richard II had given Witley to Walter Rauf and Mundina his wife to hold in survivorship, and that Mundina was still alive. However, after he petitioned the King the matter was resolved to his satisfaction; Henry gave it his personal attention, and a patent was issued on 16 Oct. 1421 guaranteeing Feriby’s reversionary interest.18 PPC, ii. 304-5; CPR, 1416-22, p. 397.

Another opportunity for advancement for Feriby had already presented itself in the form of a lucrative marriage to an heiress. Margery, the only child of the landowner Richard Berners, and grand-daughter of Richard II’s friend Sir James Berners† (executed by judgement of the Merciless Parliament), had been a mere infant when her father died in 1412, and since then had probably lived with her mother Philippa, now the wife of the Sussex landowner Sir Thomas Lewknor*. Philippa continued to hold for life the Berners manor of West Horsley in Surrey, and a dowager’s portion of those of Barnsbury in Middlesex and Icklingham in Suffolk; while from 1418 the other two-thirds of Barnsbury and Icklingham pertained by royal grant to John Wilcotes†, the receiver-general of the duchy of Cornwall. Yet it is uncertain from whom Feriby purchased Margery’s marriage, for her wardship was disputed between the bishop of London and the Crown.19 CIPM, xx. 693-4; CFR, xiv. 224; CCR, 1419-22, pp. 2-3. The match had been arranged by January 1420, when he procured a licence from Archbishop Chichele to marry the 11-year-old, notwithstanding that the banns had not been published thrice.20 Reg. Chichele, iv. 200. Margery’s mother died in October following, and a few weeks afterwards Feriby obtained custody of West Horsley during his wife’s minority.21 C138/56/24; CFR, xiv. 360. However, it was not until May 1422 that escheators were instructed to relinquish Philippa’s dower lands, and the Feribys did not receive formal possession of West Horsley until December 1423, after Margery had made proof of age. According to post mortem valuations, the estates thus acquired were worth some £50 p.a., but this was almost certainly an underestimate.22 CCR, 1419-22, p. 240; 1422-9, p. 88; C139/13/58; E159/200, brevia Hil. rot. 21. The couple obtained a papal licence to have their own portable altar in 1425, shortly before Feriby entered the Commons for the first time.23 CPL, vii. 420.

It may be assumed that meanwhile Feriby had returned to England with Henry V’s body in September 1422. Five months later the Council of the minority, taking note of his experience in helping to run the royal establishment, raised him to be controller of the Household of the young King Henry VI. It was a post he was to fill for as long as 16 years. Initially, there was much to do to sort out the tangled financial affairs of the late King. In May 1423 Feriby and the treasurer of England were instructed to hand over to Henry’s executors goods, jewels and chattels to the value of 40,000 marks, and shortly afterwards he transferred to the treasurer silver bullion weighing 1,000lb. Later that year he moved a quantity of plate belonging to the Crown to the keeping of the treasurer of the Household.24 PPC, iii. 25, 89-90, 103; PROME, x. 128-9. At the beginning of his term of office as controller he was granted the offices of parker and keeper of the warren at Witley, thus consolidating his life-tenancy there,25 CPR, 1422-9, p. 80. and this, taken together with the estate he had acquired by marriage, gave him status as a landowner in Surrey, where he served on the bench from 1424. Election to Parliament as a knight of the shire followed a year later.

The Parliament of 1425 continued the business of its predecessors in attempting to deal with the outstanding debts arising from the testamentary depositions of the King’s father and grandfather, a matter in which Feriby as controller of the Household was deeply involved. A more private affair also engaged his attention while the Parliament was in progress: he and an associate from Surrey, Ralph Wimbledon†, agreed to assist Sir John Gra* in transactions concerning his wife’s inheritance in Norfolk.26 SC8/256/12776; CPR, 1422-9, p. 291. A term as sheriff of the joint bailiwick of Surrey and Sussex,27 As sheriff he conducted the elections of 1427: C219/13/5. preceded Feriby’s second election to the Commons in 1429. During this period his closest associates were such officials at the centre of government as John Hotoft*, the treasurer of the Household, and John Wodehouse*, the chamberlain of the Exchequer, but he also became friendly with James Fiennes*, soon to become one of the young King’s favourites, for whom he acted as a feoffee of land in Oxfordshire as well as a witness to his transactions, and he also became involved in the affairs of Sir Thomas Wykeham*.28 CAD, iii. C3388; CCR, 1422-9, p. 345; 1435-41, pp. 176, 377. Feriby could call on Thomas Haseley†, the influential Chancery official and clerk of the Commons, to be a pledge for him in a lawsuit.29 C1/7/65. In June 1429 (shortly before his second Parliament met) Feriby was one of ten men who each stood surety in £100 for John de Vere, earl of Oxford, a minor in the King’s wardship, to guarantee that the earl would pay the heavy fine imposed on him for marrying without royal licence.30 CPR, 1422-9, p. 543.

The key to Feriby’s standing in such circles was his influential position as controller of the royal household. Naturally, he accompanied Henry VI to France on the coronation expedition, contracting to do so in February 1430,31 E101/70/4/663; DKR, xlviii. 270; E403/693, m. 18; 695, m. 5. and at the same time he was assigned the post of captain of Touques. Yet although in the following December he received armour and munitions for the garrison from John Hampton II*, the master of the ordnance, it is unlikely that he ever served in a military capacity, for he immediately handed over the materials to his lieutenant, Henry Wilton.32 E101/50/8, 52/32; E159/212, brevia Hil. rot. 6d. While in Normandy he was paid wages for riding on the King’s business from Rouen to Dieppe and elsewhere, and at the rate of 3s. 4d. a day when he travelled back and forth to England.33 E101/408/9. While in France he made a loan to the King of £40, presumably to help cover pressing expenses.34 E404/47/158; E403/700, m. 1. Feriby returned home with the King early in 1432, and despite sweeping changes of personnel made in various important government offices, he was kept on as controller of the Household. The electors of Surrey returned him to the Parliament called for July 1433, and he was one of the commoners summoned to attend the great council of the spring of 1434, when the conduct of the war in France was hotly debated. Feriby made a second loan to the Crown, again of £40, in July 1435, and was asked for another of as much as 100 marks for the army to be sent to France under the duke of York early the next year.35 PPC, iv. 213, 324; CPR, 1429-36, p. 467.

During his second term as sheriff of Surrey and Sussex Feriby was made steward, constable and master forester of Knaresborough, in Yorkshire, posts which, given his duties at court, can only have been sinecures. These he initially held jointly with William Ingleby, whose death in 1438 he also turned to his profit, by obtaining the wardship and marriage of Ingleby’s son and heir, for which he paid £120, and securing custody of other parts of the Ingleby inheritance, in Yorkshire and Essex.36 CFR, xvii. 47-48, 61, 72-73, 125-7. To these were added grants for life of the parkership of Witley and of a tun of Gascon wine every year in the port of London.37 E101/408/24; E403/727, m. 8; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 195, 232. Another indication of Feriby’s place in the Household was his appearance as a surety for Richard Praty, the dean of the King’s chapel, when he received the temporalities of the bishopric of Chichester.38 CFR, xvii. 19. Yet as Henry VI assumed more control over government, his father’s servants were made to stand aside; accordingly, in the spring of 1439 Feriby was replaced as controller by Thomas Stanley II*, a man of much higher standing.39 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 302. He had been in royal service nearly 40 years, and may have been thought ready for retirement owing to age and ill health. Although allowed to keep his fee of 1s. a day until December 1440, thereafter he had to split it with Richard Restwold*; and a further diminution of both status and income at Witley came in March 1441 when fresh grants of the manor and parkership required him to share them with Sir Brian Stapleton.40 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 486, 511; E159/219, recorda Mich. rot. 5. Nevertheless, he had continued to support the government by making another loan, this time of 100 marks, on the previous 16 Jan.41 E403/740, m. 11.

During the 1430s Feriby had been paying some attention to his own affairs. He and his wife, perhaps in performance of a testamentary request, made plans to grant a spring and a meadow in Islington to the London Charterhouse, so that lead pipes might be constructed underground to bring fresh water down to the priory buildings. Although the initial gift was made early in 1430, the royal licence was not issued until December that year, and then an inquisition ad quod damnum found that the land was only worth 3d. p.a., rather than the 1s. that the prior had agreed to pay the Feribys for herbage. The prior therefore petitioned the Commons in the Parliament of 1432 for support in enabling the grantors’ intentions to be fulfilled. The petition was successful.42 CAD, i. B1507; E326/11914; E329/449; CPR, 1429-36, p. 105; PROME, xi. 22-23. In 1433 Margery’s manor of West Horsley had been settled on the couple and their issue, and two years later they made similar entails of other parts of her inheritance in Suffolk, Essex and Middlesex, calling upon John Corve*, Thomas Haydock* and Ralph Wimbledon to assist them in these transactions.43 CPR, 1429-36, p. 265; CP25(1)/232/71/18; Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 23. Other properties, which Feriby had apparently purchased in the course of his career, were dealt with in July 1441, as he neared his end. These, consisting of the manors of Sandhurst and Little Sheepbridge, on the border of Berkshire and Wiltshire, Hokefeld in Hampshire, and Beaumounde in Essex, as well as land in Surrey, were placed in the hands of a different body of feoffees, headed by Richard Combe*.44 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 31-32; VCH Berks. iii. 208-9, 271. These various acquisitions are not well documented, but see: Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 393; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 156-7. After Feriby’s death Sandhurst passed to Chertsey abbey, probably at his request: VCH Berks, iii. 209.

Yet it was in Oxfordshire that Feriby had hoped to become a major landowner, as his dealings with the gentry of that county suggest.45 CCR, 1429-35, p. 258. John Wilcotes, the former custodian of part of the Berners inheritance, had died in 1422 owing our MP as much as £400. As a pledge for payment of this sum, Feriby was put in possession of Wilcotes’s manors of Dean and Chalford, which in 1438 he leased out until such time as £389 of the debt had been recovered. Furthermore, in Wilcotes’s will preference had been given to Feriby, as one of his creditors, to buy the manor of Heythrop after the expiry of the life-interest of Wilcotes’s widow, Elizabeth. Notwithstanding the testator’s stipulation, in 1434 Elizabeth and her third husband Sir Richard Walkstead set in motion arrangements for her daughter Margaret to have the manor. Feriby protested that the terms of Wilcotes’s will had been ignored and demanded his right to purchase. Thus, by the time of his death he was in possession of a reversionary interest in Heythrop and its advowson.46 Hist. Dean and Chalford (Oxon. Rec. Soc. xvii), 58-59, 111-14; VCH Oxon. xi. 134; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 863; C1/7/60, 65, 11/148, 70/29; CCR, 1441-7, p. 412. For his attempts to recover the £400, see also C131/62/4, 229/36; C241/219/18.

Besides these widespread property interests, Feriby also held a house in Thames Street, London, and farms in Gloucestershire, to which he referred in his will, dated 1 Oct. 1441. A wealthy man with no children, he could afford to make handsome bequests. He had already instructed his wife, his sole executor, to spend the enormous sum of £400 on prayers and good works for the sake of his soul, and now asked her to provide a funeral for him at St. Peter’s abbey at Chertsey costing 20 marks. Gifts to his kinsfolk included 100 marks to Margaret Prodhomme, £10 to a namesake of his who was a Carthusian monk at Sheen, £10 to his brother Robert and the same amount to the latter’s son Richard. Smaller bequests amounting to £16 were set aside for specified churches and clergymen, and £15 for his servants. John Kemp, archbishop of York and former chancellor, was left two large silver-gilt bowls and two silver basins. The MP’s widow was already well provided for with jointure in his landed acquisitions to add to her own inheritance. Feriby now stipulated that she should also keep for life the farms in Gloucestershire, the London house, and the reversionary interest in Heythrop.47 Reg. Chichele, ii. 577-8.

Feriby died nine days later, on 10 Oct., leaving as his heir his brother Robert, aged over 40. Within a few months the widowed Margery took her inheritance to a new husband, John Bourgchier,48 C139/108/16; CP25(1)/293/70/264; C140/53/35. a great-grandson of Edward III and younger brother of Henry, Viscount Bourgchier, and Thomas, bishop of Ely. John’s summons to Parliament from 1455 as Lord Berners reflected the wealth and standing brought to him by the marriage.49 CP, ii. 153 contains errors with regard to Margery’s maternal gdfa.; nor was her father ever knighted. The couple encountered considerable difficulties in gaining possession of Heythrop, forcing them to bring a suit in Chancery against Feriby’s feoffees for legal title to the reversion, and to sue Sir Richard Walkstead for a debt of £40, but even though they obtained seisin of the manor in 1448 they lost it again shortly afterwards.50 C1/16/500; CPR, 1441-6, p. 380; VCH Oxon. xi. 134. Lady Margery outlived her second husband and eldest son, so that when she died in 1475 her heir was her grandson, John. The boy became the second Lord Berners, and achieved distinction as a soldier, courtier and author.51 C140/53/35; CP, ii. 153-4.