FETTIPLACE, Thomas

A member of a well established if not especially distinguished Berkshire family, Fettiplace was the brother of John Fettiplace of Woolley in that county but his parentage is unknown. It is possible that he, John and the Southampton merchant Walter Fettiplace were the younger sons of Henry Fettiplace (d.1411) of North Denchworth, although it is also conceivable that he was a son of Richard Fettiplace of the same parish and, therefore, the brother of Peter Fettiplace.5 Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, ser. 5, ii. 95; CIPM, xx. 502; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 69. Whatever his place in the Fettiplace pedigree, he was evidently a cadet member of the family, meaning that he was required to make his own way in the world. He did so by entering the service of the Talbots, who possessed extensive estates in southern England, the Midlands and the Welsh borders. It was through the Talbots that he met his Portuguese wife, a more exotic match than a man of his background might usually expect to achieve.

At the beginning of the fifteenth century a Thomas Fettiplace witnessed the will of Dame Anne Latimer (d.1402) of Braybrooke, Northamptonshire, in which she bequeathed him 26s. 8d. She was the widow of the ‘lollard knight’, Sir Thomas Latimer†, whose religious sympathies she shared, and the will’s overseers and executors included another such knight, Sir Lewis Clifford, the academic and former Wycliffite, Philip Repingdon, and a notorious heretic, Robert Hoke, rector of Braybrooke.6 Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, ser. 5, ii. 291; CIPM, xviii. 609-13; Oxf. DNB, ‘Latimer, Sir Thomas’. It is not clear, however, whether the Thomas in question was the subject of this biography, for whom there is no definite reference predating 1413. It was in September that year that Gilbert, Lord Talbot, made the future MP steward of his Oxfordshire manor of Bampton and of his estates in Wiltshire, comprising a manor at Swindon and other holdings. Fettiplace received an annual fee of 50s. as steward of Bampton, an office to which he was appointed for life, and a further 30s. p.a. as steward of the Wiltshire properties.7 CIPM, xxi. 317, 787. Among his associates at Bampton was another Talbot retainer Nicholas Laundels, and it was as a feoffee of the Laundels estate in that parish and its vicinity that he became involved in the affairs of Nicholas’s widow and her second husband in the early 1430s.8 C1/7/54, 56; VCH Oxon. xiii. 30; Add. Ch. 56459. Laundels campaigned with Talbot, who died at the siege of Rouen in October 1418, and Fettiplace also saw service across the Channel. A muster roll reveals that he was a member of the retinue of Lord Gilbert’s younger brother, Sir William Talbot, on the Agincourt campaign, but the extent of his participation in that enterprise is open to question since the roll lists him among the ‘sick’ of Sir William’s and other retinues.9 E101/44/30, m. 17. He was certainly in Normandy in the spring of 1420 when he and others received a grant of houses in Caen from Henry V.10 CIPM, xxi. 312-13; DKR, xlii. 367.

In the summer of the same year, Henry granted letters of protection to Talbot’s widow, his second wife Beatrice, at that time a member of the royal entourage in France.11 DKR, xliv. 619 (6 July 1420). Portuguese by birth, Beatrice is sometimes confused with her fellow countrywoman and namesake, an illegitimate daughter of King João I of Portugal who married John Holand, earl of Huntingdon, following the death of her first husband Thomas Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, in 1415. It is unlikely that Talbot’s widow was quite so high-born, although it is possible that she was descended from a bastard son of an earlier King of Portugal, Alfonso III (d.1279). She may have met Gilbert in Lisbon, where some of the foremost knights of Spain, France and England assembled in 1415 to attend a tournament and to participate in an expedition against the Moors. Whatever the case, it seems that the match had come about in the interests of diplomacy; after Gilbert’s death, she was to declare that she had married him ‘by ordinance’ of Henry V.12 CP, xii (1), 619; Planché, 146, 154; Oxf. DNB, ‘Fitzalan, Thomas’; ‘Holland, John’; SC8/277/13823. Upon becoming a widow, Beatrice found herself without rights at English law because she was an alien. It was not until after a protracted struggle to win the status of a native-born subject of the Crown that she obtained an assignment of dower from her late husband’s estates during late 1419 and early 1420. These lands comprised a third part of the manor and hundred of Bampton, the manor of Swindon and the manors of Shrivenham in Berkshire, Cheswardine and Wrockwardine in Shropshire and Ross-on-Wye in Herefordshire, as well as a share of other holdings in those counties and elsewhere.13 CCR, 1419-22, pp. 24-25; Accts. of the Talbot Household, 1392-1425 (Salop Rec. Ser. vii), 136; CIPM, xxi. 156, 686-7, 778-87. In March 1421, however, she was to grant all her dower lands to Gilbert’s younger brother, John Talbot, Lord Furnival, who allowed her to remain on them as his tenant-at-will.14 C139/130/7; Pollard, ‘Talbots’, 28-29.

The arrangement was perhaps the price that Beatrice’s brother-in-law forced her to pay for falling for her late husband’s steward, since it would appear that she was already planning to marry Fettiplace at that date. Probably it was a love match – on her part at least – given the disparity in social status between them. The couple were in London together in the following summer. Married not long afterwards, they were probably already man and wife when her only child by Gilbert, her infant daughter Ankaret, died in December 1421. Ankaret’s heir was her uncle John Talbot, and following her death Beatrice surrendered the manor of Blackmere, a property she had held jointly with Gilbert, to him as well.15 Pollard, ‘Talbots’, 28-29; C1/5/60; CCR, 1419-22, pp. 24-25; 1447-54, pp. 11-12. There were certainly tensions between Beatrice and her brother-in-law at around the time of her second marriage. In 1423 Talbot sued her, Fettiplace and John Abrahall* at Westminster, to seek redress against them for close-breaking and the theft of charters at Whitchurch, Shropshire, perhaps as part of Beatrice’s efforts to secure her jointure.16 CP40/651, rot. 566; CIPM, xxi. 318. At the same time, Beatrice sued Talbot for the advowson of the church at Whitchurch, and it is clear that Talbot was intent on wresting the manor from her: CP40/651, rot. 566. Furthermore, in a petition to Parliament, probably drawn up in 1422 or 1423, she complained that Lord Talbot’s brother, Sir William, had forcibly entered the Talbot lands in her possession in Shropshire and obliged the tenants there to transfer their services to John Talbot, who then had requisitioned many of her goods and chattels on those properties.17 SC8/277/13823. The petition bears no endorsement and does not feature in the Parl. Rolls, suggesting that it was either unsuccessful or never actually submitted. Very probably, this quarrel was interwoven with a much more serious dispute between John Talbot and John Abrahall. Previously one of Talbot’s servants, Abrahall had reacted badly when his former master dismissed him from the office of receiver-general of the Talbot estates, a position he had held under Beatrice in 1420-1. He took up arms against Talbot, and the ensuing private war between the two men drove the inhabitants of south Herefordshire to appeal to the Parliament of 1423 for help.18 A.J. Pollard, John Talbot, 10-11; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 3.

Following his marriage, Fettiplace must have relinquished his office as the Talbot steward at Bampton, where he now took up residence. It was ‘of Bampton’ that Fettiplace was appointed a j.p. in November 1432. He was one of the residents of Oxfordshire expected to swear the peace-keeping oath of 1434, and for most of his public career he was associated with that county, for which he sat in both of his Parliaments. In spite of his wife’s dispute with John Talbot in the early 1420s, Fettiplace was an associate, and probably a follower, of that lord a decade later.19 CPR, 1429-36, p. 372; CCR, 1429-35, p. 258. It is nevertheless unlikely that Lord Talbot, who spent nearly all of the 1430s in France, was an active patron. On both the occasions when Fettiplace was elected to Parliament, it was probably on the basis of his wife’s holdings in Oxfordshire rather than to any direct support from Talbot, even if the Talbot connexion played a part in his appointment as sheriff of that county and Berkshire in 1435.20 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 102. Shortly after completing his term as sheriff, Fettiplace lost a suit in the Exchequer against one William Smyth, who had accused him of wrongfully releasing a debtor from his custody, but there is no evidence that he was guilty of any more serious shortcomings while exercising the shrievalty.21 E13/140, rot. 24d. The royal pardon granted to him and Beatrice on 5 July 1437 contains no reference to his time as sheriff: C67/38, m. 16. In spite of his family connexion with Berkshire, it was only while sheriff that Fettiplace played a significant part in its administration. He did, nevertheless, associate with other landowners with interests in the county, among them the influential John Golafre*, for whom he appears to have acted as a feoffee. As far as the evidence goes, he was the first Fettiplace to hold the manor of East Shefford, a property which he might not have acquired until relatively late in life.22 CPR, 1436-41, p. 73; E210/4992; VCH Berks. iv. 235, 288.

It was at East Shefford that Fettiplace ended his days, probably in the early 1440s. He was not reappointed a j.p. when a new commission of the peace for Oxfordshire was issued in May 1442 and he was certainly dead by mid 1446 when the Crown granted a pardon to Beatrice, by then his widow and executrix.23 C67/39, m. 40. He was buried in the parish church at East Shefford, where she was laid alongside him after she herself died on Christmas Day 1447.24 C139/130/7. A fine alabaster altar tomb, the work of Derbyshire craftsmen, was constructed for the couple after her death. Situated on the south side of the chancel, it shows their recumbent effigies, he in full armour. It bears no inscription, but the will of their third son John identifies it as theirs.25 Collectanea Topographia et Geneaologica ed. Nichols, i. 80-89; Planché, 145; PCC 5 Godyn (PROB11/5, ff. 36v-38v). The couple’s heir was John’s eldest brother William, who was aged 24 at Beatrice’s death.26 C139/130/7. Of Stokenchurch, Oxfordshire, William married a daughter of Drew Barantyn*, by whom he had a daughter and heir Anne, and died in 1454.27 Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, ser. 5, ii. 131-2; CFR, xix. 56. In due course East Shefford passed to William’s younger brother John, who appears to have enjoyed the most prominent and varied career of all the MP’s sons. A draper in the City of London, John did not devote himself solely to mercantile affairs since he also became an esquire of Henry VI’s Household. It was as such that in the autumn of 1455 the King commissioned him to deliver an ornamental garter and robes to the foreign Garter knight, King Alfonso V of Portugal. He appears an obvious choice for such a mission, given that he was half-Portuguese and probably spoke the language, literally his mother tongue. Initially assigned £40 to cover his costs, he must have incurred considerably more expense on this expedition since in November 1457 he was rewarded £100 for his ‘great costs and charges’ in delivering the garter and accompanying robes. During the early 1460s, he was a customs collector in London, where he died in the late summer of 1464. He was buried in his local parish church of St. Margaret Lothbury in the City, having made a will in which he left £40 for various building works at East Shefford church, including the making of ‘a closur’ about his parents’ tomb.28 Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, ser. 5, ii. 184; CFR, xx. 5; PCC 5 Godyn; E404/70/3/2; 71/2/24; Foedera ed. Rymer (Hague edn.), v (2), 64; Issues of the Exchequer ed. Devon, 480; E403/829, m. 1. John’s widow Joan, previously the wife of the London fishmonger, Robert Horne, took a third husband, the Berkshire esquire John Eastbury. It is unclear whether Eastbury was already her husband when he and a band of armed men broke into the house of the MP’s by then elderly brother, John Fettiplace of Wolley, in September 1464. According to a bill that John Fettiplace submitted to the chancellor, Eastbury and 40 armed followers had arrived at his house at midnight and assaulted both him and his sons. He also alleged that they had shot numerous arrows at the building, some of which passed straight through its plaster walls, to the great terror of his wife, family and servants. This colourful (and no doubt one-sided) account does not, however, reveal a reason for the incident, and it is not clear whether the fact that the bill emphasized Fettiplace’s loyal service to the Yorkists is of particular significance.29 C1/27/408; 31/156.