BEAUMONT, Henry II

Henry’s elder brother was born in August 1409, and, since their father died in 1413, Henry can at most have been no more than a few years his junior. By the mid 1430s John had won a distinguished reputation through service in the French war and at the royal court, and it was his influence at court that secured for his younger brother a place in the Household. In the autumn of 1435, when a small expeditionary force composed of Household men was assembled for the defence of Calais, Henry contracted to serve for two months with a modest retinue of three archers.1. H.L. Ratcliffe, ‘Military Expenditure of the English Crown’ (Oxf. Univ. M. Litt. thesis, 1979), 103-4; E101/71/3/886; E404/52/15. His Household service brought with it such modest benefits of royal patronage as might be expected to come the way of a younger brother of a prominent courtier. On 8 Nov. 1436, a few months after the title of count of Boulogne had been conferred on John, Henry, as a King’s esquire, was appointed during pleasure to the constableship of the castle of Horsley in Derbyshire.2. CP, ii. 62; CPR, 1436-41, p. 30. On 21 Aug. 1438 he was granted ‘for the joint duration of his life and of the war with France’ an annuity of £20 charged on the rent the Nottinghamshire abbey of Rufford was accustomed to pay to its mother house of Clairvaux. This grant was to lead to confusion. On the following 24 Oct. further letters patent demonstrate that the Crown had been misinformed, and Henry’s annuity was charged instead on the rent the abbey paid for the keeping of a moiety of Clairvaux’s Yorkshire church of Rotherham. Later, on 7 May 1440, the wardship of the moiety of the church itself, which was now said not to be the property of the abbey, was granted for life to Henry and his clerical nominees. Three years to the day later he was granted a tun of red wine to be taken each year from the port of Ipswich.3. CPR, 1436-41, pp. 185, 230, 397-8; 1441-6, pp. 167, 196; CCR, 1435-41, pp. 197-8; 1441-7, p. 94.

These rewards of royal service were substantially augmented by marriage. Like many younger sons of the baronage, Beaumont married a gentry heiress. His wife was the eldest of the three daughters and coheiresses of Henry Heronville of Wednesbury. By 1415 these girls were in the wardship of John Leventhorpe I*, who contracted Joan in marriage to his son, William, and was probably responsible for committing her two sisters to a nunnery. In 1419 Joan became possessed of the Heronville inheritance in its entirety.4. CPR, 1413-16, p. 385; CFR, xiv. 330. By the time she took our MP as her second husband she theoretically had the additional recommendation of a dower interest in the lands of William Leventhorpe, who died, heavily in debt, in the summer of 1438, although there is no evidence that Beaumont ever held any part of these estates. Nevertheless, his wife’s own inheritance, worth about £60 p.a. and consisting principally of the Staffordshire manors of Wednesbury and Timmore and a share of the Derbyshire manor of Egginton, was enough to give him a reasonable competence.5. In June 1439 the couple received seisin of the manor of Tinmore from Thomas Stokkes*, the son of the last survivor of her father’s trustees: Leics. RO, Rothley Temple mss, 44’28/385. In an inq. of 1502 the manor of Wednesbury alone was valued at 50 marks p.a. and the total value of the Heronville lands of which Joan’s gds. died seised was put at £57 p.a.: CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 582-3. Soon after, in Michaelmas term 1441, the couple attempted to add to her inheritance by claiming a moiety of the manor of Spernall, once of her maternal grandfather William Spernore. In this they failed, but Beaumont was not entirely dependent on her lands for his landed income. Later evidence shows that he also held the manor of Thorpe in Balne in south Yorkshire, presumably as a gift from his brother made as part of his marriage settlement.6. CP40/723, rot. 133d; J. Hunter, S. Yorks. i. 218-19.

Soon after his marriage our MP began to take a small part in local affairs. In April 1441, with his brother, now Viscount Beaumont, he was named among the feoffees of Sir Robert Moton*, one of the leading gentry landholders in Leicestershire. In the following month, along with William Tailboys* and Thomas Curson, the younger brother of John Curson*, he entered into an obligation in £200 to John Throckmorton I*, for a reason that cannot now be ascertained. In April 1442, described as ‘of the diocese of Lichfield’, he and his wife received a papal indult of plenary indulgence and licence to have a portable altar, and, in the following February, he was involved with his brother in the purchase of the Leicestershire manor of Thorpe Langton.7. CCR, 1435-41, pp. 469, 475, 478; 1441-7, p. 135; CPL, ix. 311. His family’s influence in the locality explains his return to represent that county in the Parliament of 1445. Although there is no evidence that he held lands there in his own right, not only did Viscount Beaumont have very significant landholdings in the west of the county, but their uncle, Sir Thomas Beaumont (d.1457), had married a wealthy Leicestershire heiress, the daughter of Sir Thomas Maureward†, and was one of the wealthiest of the county’s gentry. It may be that Henry was about to take the place in local affairs that his uncle, who spent most of his career engaged in the French war, had failed to do, but any such plans the family may have had were cut short by his premature death.

Beaumont was knighted only shortly before his death, and there can be little doubt that he was dubbed at the coronation of Queen Margaret, which took place on 30 May 1445 during the second session of the Parliament to which he had been elected. His elder brother’s close association with the queen must have served to recommend him as a candidate for the honour, and he was definitely a knight by the conclusion of that session on 3 June. During the third session, along with his wife, he levied a fine conveying her property to Sir Thomas Erdington*, who was sitting as his fellow Leicestershire MP, (Sir) John Gresley*, Bartholomew Brokesby*, Hugh Wrottesley, a former feoffee of William Leventhorpe and Gresley’s son-in-law, and Nicholas Fynderne of Findern in Derbyshire. This conveyance may have been made in anticipation of his demise. Alive on 14 July 1446, when, by virtue of his service in the Parliament dissolved in the preceding April, he was appointed to a commission, he was dead by the following 15 Nov., when described as deceased in the Chancery rolls. His will does not survive, but a suit in the court of common pleas shows that he appointed his wife as his executrix.8. Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xi. 234; n.s. iii. 172. His son, Henry, can have been no more than about six years old at his death.

Beaumont’s widow was to enjoy an eventful later career. By a fine levied in Trinity term 1452 she conveyed her lands to a group of feoffees, including Erdington and Wrottesley, two of the feoffees of 1445, the influential Household man, John Hampton II*, and, most significantly in the context of later events, Charles Nowell. The latter is not to be identified with his notorious namesake – servant of John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, and leader of a gang responsible for a series of crimes in East Anglia between 1450 and 1452 – but was probably from a family of minor Yorkshire gentry. Subsequent events make it a reasonable speculation that he was a former servant of our MP who had won a place in his widow’s affections.9. Wedgwood conflates this Charles with the servant of Norfolk, despite citing evidence to demonstrate his error: HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 634n. There is thus reason to view with scepticism the following ex parte account of events. On 8 Feb. 1453 a special commission of oyer and terminer, headed by Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, and Viscount Beaumont, was appointed, for the payment of one mark into the hanaper, to investigate offences committed against her and her tenants in Yorkshire. A petition presented by Nowell and the young Henry to the Commons in the Parliament which met on the following 6 Mar. tells the story of these alleged offences. On 27 Oct. 1452 Joan had been in the chapel of Thorpe in Balne hearing high mass when Edward Lancaster of Shipton with an armed band of 40 men forcibly abducted her, setting her ‘on an hors behynde a man of his’ to whom she was firmly bound ‘with a Towell’. This was the first of a series of indignities allegedly inflicted upon her. Edward’s intention was to make her his wife despite the fact that she had already entered into a contract of marriage with Nowell, and to this end he took her to an unspecified church, where a priest was waiting to marry them. Joan at first refused to say the words of matrimony, but Edward’s threats, one of which was to take her to Scotland, persuaded her to enter into the marriage. The felons also abducted her daughter, Agnes, who, as a result of their ‘misrule and kepyng ... is benomen and lame as it is seid’. The petitioners asked for the kind of summary judicial process against the felons that was the common request of such petitions. They also asked for the removal of a particular legal disability imposed them by Joan’s forced marriage. If she was to be accounted as Lancaster’s lawful wife, no action lay against him for the ravishment. The petitioners therefore asked that, if the supposed espousals be pleaded in bar to any appeals or other actions they might sue at common law, then it should ‘be had for nought, voide, and for no plee’. More significantly, they asked that Lancaster be ordered to deliver Joan, clearly still in his company, to the ordinary of the archbishop of York, Viscount Beaumont, or other royal nominee on pain of being held convict of the offences alleged against him. It is difficult to know what to make of this petition. Perhaps it is to be accepted at face value, but it is not impossible that Joan had gone off with Lancaster willingly and that the petition represents Nowell’s attempt to get her back. Whatever the truth, later evidence demonstrates that she was, either before or after her abduction, Nowell’s lawful wife.10. Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xi. 247; CPR, 1452-61, p. 60; PROME, xii. 316-20. The petition resulted in the statute of 31 Hen. VI, c. 9, which provided a general remedy for abducted widows and heiresses.

Late in her life Joan was faced with a rival claim to her Heronville property. According to a petition presented to the chancellor in the first reign of Edward IV by John Hodelston, the son and heir of Elizabeth, her daughter by her first marriage, in March 1435 William Leventhorpe had made a conditional feoffment of a substantial part of her property. His feoffees were to hold the lands to his use, and, after his death, to that of his widow for her life on condition that she remain unmarried. Hodelston claimed that, although this condition had been breached by Joan’s successive marriages to Beaumont and Nowell, the surviving feoffees, headed by John Sutton, Lord Dudley, had refused to make estate to him as William’s heir. There can be little doubt that this account is false, for it details a type of feoffment that was rare, if not unknown, in the 1430s, but which was becoming common at the date Hodelston made his claim. In reply, John Leventhorpe, William’s brother, gave a more plausible account: he claimed that William had owed him £296 and that the feoffment was designed to secure him repayment of this sum. Only when the debt had been discharged were the feoffees to convey the lands to William’s right heirs. Hodelston conceded the justice of this claim by offering to repay the debt in return for seisin of the disputed lands.11. C1/33/285. When his father compiled his will in Jan. 1435, William owed him 204 marks to be repaid from the issues of Joan’s manors of Timmore and Egginton: Reg. Chichele, ii. 527-8; CP25(1)/292/67/145. It is thus not difficult to believe that William entered into a similar arrangement with his brother two months later.

During his mother’s tribulations the young Henry was laying the basis of a promising career through marriage to Eleanor, daughter of Lord Dudley. He was, however, greatly disadvantaged by the survival of his mother for he inherited little or nothing from his father, and, as a consequence, he appears to have taken up residence in his father-in-law’s castle at Dudley in Staffordshire. It was probably his frustration at this unsatisfactory state of affairs that led him into conflict with his stepfather, Nowell. On 4 July 1467 the two men entered into mutual bonds in the large sum of £500 each to abide by the terms of two indentures dated 28 and 29 June; indentures which perhaps allowed Beaumont some provision from his mother’s lands or else limited Nowell’s claim to courtesy on her death. Beaumont’s frustrations were, however, soon relieved for she died in the following November. Soon after this he began to play a part in local politics, serving first as escheator in Worcestershire and then as sheriff of Staffordshire. While holding the latter office he appeared in support of Edward IV at the battle of Tewkesbury and was rewarded with knighthood on the field of battle.12. CCR, 1461-8, p. 451; C140/27/12; Knights of Eng. ed. Shaw, ii. 14. His career bears a striking similarity to that of his father in that he died very soon after becoming a knight. By the time of his death in November 1471 he had, at last, inherited his mother’s lands, which were settled in their entirety on his widow Eleanor by John Hampton, presumably acting as a feoffee under the terms of the fine of 1452. This kept the property out of wardship during the minority of his son John, who also died young. On John’s death in 1502 the Beaumonts of Wednesbury failed in the main male line since his heirs were his three infant daughters.13. C140/41/32; VCH Staffs. xiv. 245; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 582-3.