BILLING, Thomas

Billing has attained an undeserved posthumous notoriety as a result of the vitriolic attack on his probity by one of his successors as chief justice, John, Lord Campbell† (1779-1861). Campbell’s account has little or no basis in the contemporary record and reads as deliberate distortion.9 J. Campbell, Lives of the Chief Justices (2nd edn.), i. 145-54. His account is refuted in E. Foss, Judges, iv. 410-19. To cite only one of many errors, Billing’s origins are not as obscure as Campbell claimed. He was the son of another Thomas Billing, who enjoyed a modest legal career which culminated in appointment to the quorum of the Northamptonshire bench and ended in premature death while serving as escheator of the county in 1421.10 E. Powell, Kingship, Law and Society, 264; CFR, xiv. 391. The judge’s more remote antecedents are unknown, but it may be that he was descended from a namesake, who, in 1337, was among a group of Northamptonshire men in royal service abroad. It is also possible that he was related to the Billings active in Buckinghamshire and south Lincolnshire from the late fourteenth century.11 CPR, 1334-8, p. 521. The Lincs. Billings lived at Thurlby near the Northants. border. In short, he was, in common with several other judges of the fifteenth century, born into a family on the borders of gentility. This is not, of course, to say that he had much to look forward to by way of inheritance. Indeed, even the location of his father’s property is unclear. In a final concord levied in 1398 the elder Thomas is described as ‘of Wollaston’ in the south-east corner of Northamptonshire, but in the second decade of the fifteenth century he was resident at Stoke Albany in the north of the county. To add to the difficulty, early in his career our MP is himself described as resident at Great Houghton near the county town, and thereafter there is nothing to show that he held property at any of these three places.12 CP25(1)/178/89/180; KB27/616, rot. 15; 720, rex rot. 3d; C67/37, m. 16; Add. Ch. 22260; CCR, 1435-41, pp. 180-1; CFR, xvii. 117-18.

If, however, Billing had little to look forward to by way of parental inheritance, he was able, very early in his career, to make a remunerative marriage. By 1415 he had married Katherine Giffard. Although she was not an heiress at common law, she was heir-in-tail to the manor of Astwell in south-west Northamptonshire. This had been settled in jointure on the marriage of her parents, and thus, while the bulk of her father’s lands had fallen to her infant half-brother, Thomas (b.c.1408), on their father’s death in 1409, Astwell came to her.13 CIPM, xix. 518-21. She was then a girl of ten, and Henry IV granted her wardship and marriage to William, Lord Roos.14 J. Bridges, Northants. i. 71. Roos died in 1414, but it may have been from him that our MP’s father acquired the marriage. It may be relevant here that the elder Thomas is generally described as ‘of Stoke Albany’, a Roos manor, and that our MP was later to be associated with Lord Roos’s son, Sir Robert.

Soon after the marriage Billing attempted to prove that his new wife’s inheritance comprised not only the manor of Astwell but also those of Hellidon (Northamptonshire) and Twyford (Buckinghamshire). In Michaelmas term 1416 he claimed that in 1395 these two manors had been entailed on his wife’s parents and should thus pass to her rather than her younger half-brother, Thomas Giffard. The claim was not without merit in that his wife’s father seems to have settled the two manors on both his wives in jointure. Giffard, however, could also claim on the basis of an earlier entail upon his paternal grandparents, and there is no evidence that Billing ever acquired possession. Indeed, albeit not until 1458, he and his wife conceded, by common recovery, Giffard’s superior title.15 CP40/623, rot. 101; 791, rots. 658, 658d.

The evidence of Billing’s early marriage stands in contradiction to the known chronology of his legal career. Not until the mid 1430s did he begin to be active as a lawyer in his native Northamptonshire, and it has been speculated that he gave his first reading at Gray’s Inn between 1435 and 1437.16 Readings and Moots, i (Selden Soc. lxxi), p. xxxii. This suggests that he was born in about 1410, but the action he brought for his wife’s inheritance implies that he was of age by 1416. Yet, if he was born so early, he was nearly 70 when promoted to the judicial bench. The probability is that he was a minor when this action was brought. Although he is not described as such in the enrolled plea, he is said to have been within age when an attorney was appointed to act for him in Michaelmas term 1415.17 CP40/619, att. rot. 1d.

Leaving this mystery aside, Billing began to appear regularly in the records from the mid 1430s. In 1435, described as ‘of Great Houghton’, he offered surety in King’s bench for a husbandman of Norfolk and three minor gentry of Kent; and in 1437 he was named as a remainderman in the manor of Ashton near Northampton, probably in the interest of John Brauncepath* and his wife, Juliana, widow of (Sir) John Culpepper*.18 KB27/698, fines rots. 1, 2; CP25(1)/179/94/82. More interestingly, on 15 Feb. 1438 he was one of those to whom the Northamptonshire magnate, William, Lord Lovell, entered into a bond in £1,000, probably to indemnify them for undertakings they had entered into on his behalf in his great dispute over the Burnell inheritance. This is the first evidence of what was to prove a long association between our MP and the Lovells.19 Harl Ch. 80 G 32; CCR, 1435-41, p.173. In the following year, in the London parish of St. Magnus, Bridge Ward, the lawyer took delivery of mutual bonds entered into by a Leicestershire esquire, Everard Digby*, and a London stockfishmonger, Robert Horne, pending an arbitration, and, on 8 Dec. 1439, he offered mainprise in Chancery for Sir Robert Roos.20 CP40/728, rot. 526d; CFR, xvii. 117-18.

Billing’s career advanced rapidly in the mid 1440s. In the early years of the decade he played a modest part in the public affairs of his native county. On 28 Dec. 1441 he attested the county election, in company with John Billing, who was probably his brother, and on 20 Nov. 1443 he was added to the quorum of the county bench. By the latter date he was already in the employment of the duchy of Lancaster. This, at least, is the conclusion to be drawn from his nomination, on the following day, to inquire into wastes in the duchy manor of Daventry. By the following 14 Apr., when he held an inquiry at Syresham near Astwell, he was acting as lieutenant of Viscount Beaumont, steward of part of the duchy lands in the county. Such employment would probably have been sufficient for one of lesser ambition, but his talents demanded a wider stage, and, with his election as common serjeant of London in the autumn of 1444, he secured an office that was almost bound to lead to further progress in the legal profession. Since the common serjeantcy was then the almost exclusive preserve of fellows of Gray’s Inn, it was an obvious way for him to further his career.21 C219/15/2; N.L. Ramsay, ‘The English Legal Profession’ (Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), 143. He still, however, found time for the affairs of his native county, and was returned to represent it in the Parliament of February 1445. If his first reading is to be dated to 1437, then his second probably took place in the Lent term during the course of this assembly.

With his readings complete, Billing was retained as an apprentice-at-law by the duchy and appointed to the deputy-stewardship of its northern part. It was also probably at about this time that he was retained as an apprentice by Queen Margaret.22 He was named among her apprentices in her accts. for Mich. 1452-3, but there is no reason to suppose that this was the first year he was retained: A.R. Myers, Crown, Household and Parl. 194. No doubt this rapid advance in the profession owed much to his own ability, but his friendship with his fellow Northamptonshire MP of 1445, the well-connected lawyer, William Tresham*, may have been of assistance to him. The two lawyers had a tie of kinship, albeit a remote one, through their wives: Tresham’s sister-in-law, Eleanor, sister of another of the county’s MPs, William Vaux*, was the wife of Thomas Giffard, Billing’s brother-in-law. During the third session of the Parliament, they were named together in a final concord as feoffees of property in their home county, and later Billing was to act in the interest of the older man’s widow on her marriage to Sir William Pecche*.23 CP25(1)/179/95/114; CAD, vi. C4128.

With professional advancement came a growing involvement in the affairs of the gentry of the Midlands. In June 1443 the wealthy Leicestershire esquire, John Bellers*, about to depart for France on the ill-fated expedition of John Beaufort, duke of Somerset, nominated Billing among an impressive group of feoffees in the manor of Sawtry in Huntingdonshire. Soon after, the rising lawyer was named as feoffee and executor of the noted soldier, Sir John Cressy*, who died in 1445. In the following year another local knight, Sir Robert Moton*, as part of a plan to disinherit his common-law heiresses in favour of his son by his second marriage, granted all his lands to our MP and three others, and, in 1452, Billing again aided him in this scheme by taking a reversionary interest in two of his manors.24 CCR, 1447-54, pp. 23-24; CP25(1)/293/72/367. In 1450 our MP acted for his influential neighbour, Sir William Lucy*, in a final concord which gave Lucy a life interest in his childless wife’s considerable estates, and was later one of the feoffees for the implementation of Lucy’s will.25 CP25(1)/293/72/351; C140/1/16, 20/29. The Midlands, however, were only one area of his interest. Much of his time must have been consumed by his duties as common serjeant in London, and it was to this position that he owed his election on 27 Jan. 1449 as one of the capital’s MPs. On the conclusion of this assembly in the following July he took office as one of the city’s under sheriffs, and in the following year he was promoted to the recordership with its generous annual fee of 100 marks. To these heavy responsibilities he added active service to the administration of the duchy of Lancaster. In 1449 or early in 1450, for example, as deputy-steward of its north parts, he travelled to Yorkshire to supervise works at Knottingley mill, and it may be that such journeys meant that he was happy to surrender the office soon afterwards in favour of Richard Illingworth*.26 DL28/5/6, m. 9; R. Somerville, Duchy, i. 425.

It is a testimony to Billing’s prominence in the legal profession that John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, who had no local connexions with him, should have named him as one of his executors in his will of 1 Sept. 1452. He was an obvious candidate for elevation to the coif, and on 1 Feb. 1453 he was among those ordered on pain of £1,000 to take the degree of serjeant on the following 2 July.27 E13/146, rot. 23; CCR, 1461-8, p. 381. One of the first cases he pleaded in his new dignity was a very important one: in Michaelmas term 1453 he represented Ralph, Lord Cromwell, in that lord’s great dispute with Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, over the lordship of Ampthill. Their connexion was close enough for Cromwell to name him, in November 1454, as one of the feoffees for the execution of his will.28 S.J. Payling, ‘Ampthill Dispute’, EHR, civ. 893; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 199-200. More revealingly, an insight into our MP’s personality is provided by two letters written from London earlier in the same year by William Paston† to John Paston*. William reported to his brother that he ‘had gret cher of Byllyng’, who told him of the advice he had given to an opponent of the Pastons, Robert Ledham. The serjeant clearly had a low opinion of the financial shrewdness of the men of Norfolk (the Pastons apart) and a keen appreciation of the intimate kinship between money and successful litigation:

That is the gyse of yowr contre men, to spend alle the good they have on men and lewery gownys, and hors and harnes, and so beryt owth for j wylle, and at the last they arn but beggars: and so wyll ye do. I wylde ye schull do wyll, be cause ye ar a felaw in Grays In, wer I was a felaw. As for Paston, he ys a swyre of wurchyp, and of gret lyvelode, and I wothe he wyll not spend alle hys good at onys, but he sparyt yerly c mark or jc li. He may do his ennemy a scherewd turne and never far the warse in hys howsholde, ner the lesse men a-bowthe hym. Ye may not do so, but if it be for j. sesun.

The second letter, dated 6 Sept., shows that false rumours of Billing’s death had been circulating in London shortly before, and reports a discussion William had had with him over the marriage of a sister of the two brothers. She had been spoken of as a possible match for a ward of the Northamptonshire magnate, Edmund, Lord Grey of Ruthin, and our MP gently warned his friend that Grey ‘laboryd for his owne a vayle’ in the matter and that their sister should therefore ‘be wyse’.29 Paston Letters ed. Davis, i. 154-5; ii. 96.

It was soon after this letter was written that Billing resigned as recorder of London. His other responsibilities made such a move inevitable but he continued his involvement in the city’s affairs. On 31 Oct. 1454 he acted with (Sir) Thomas Tyrell* in returning an award in the city’s dispute with the merchants of Genoa; two months later, the city authorities, in recognition of his earlier service as recorder, granted him an annual fee of 20s. with five yards of woollen cloth; and in 1456 he was named among the feoffees of the wealthy London draper, John Norman*, with whom he had sat for the capital in the first Parliament of 1449.30 P. Tucker, Law Courts and Lawyers in London, 259; Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 366; Corp. London RO, hr 185/1. His career in the late 1450s was typical of that of the busy and successful serjeant. He was extensively involved in the affairs of his prominent Northamptonshire neighbours. Lord Lovell named him as an executor of his will of March 1455, and two years later he appeared among the feoffees of Lovell’s widow, Alice Deincourt, for whom he also acted as a councillor.31 Lincoln Diocese Docs. (EETS, cxlix), 75; C1/31/254; Magdalen Coll. Oxf. Misc. 423. In 1458 his services were called upon by the wealthy esquire, Henry Green*, in the arrangements arising out of the marriage of Green’s daughter to John, a younger son of Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham; and it was probably at about the same time that he was named as a feoffee of Henry’s cousin, Sir Thomas Green*.32 CP25(1)/293/73/431; C67/45, m. 8; C1/53/257. He was also concerned in money-lending, another routine activity of the lawyer. His appearance in 1458, along with several wealthy London citizens, among those to whom the troubled Sir William Oldhall* conveyed property in the capital, was probably a mortgage, and in the following year he was among a syndicate which loaned 700 marks to the impoverished peer, Reynold, Lord Grey of Wilton.33 Corp. London RO, hr 187/3; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 391-2.

On a more personal level, in the late 1450s Billing entered into an agreement with an Oxfordshire esquire, Robert Fitzellis of Waterperry for the marriage of his eldest son, Thomas, to Fitzellis’s daughter and heiress-presumptive, Margery. The younger Thomas may already have been a widower: later evidence implies that only one of his three daughters was by Margery, and many pedigrees identify his wife as one of the Brocases of Hampshire.34 Harl. 4028, f. 101v. There is no obvious candidate as his wife in the detailed ped. of the Brocas fam.: M. Burrows, Fam. Brocas of Beaurepaire, facing p. 470. It may thus be that the death of his first wife, leaving only daughters, presented the serjeant with the opportunity to contract him to an heiress. If a later Chancery petition is to be credited, our MP agreed to pay 175 marks for the marriage; to array the bride on the day of the wedding, a charge which would in normal circumstances have fallen on her father (and is said in the petition to have amounted to a handsome 40 marks); and settle a jointure worth 20 marks p.a. on the couple. In return Fitzellis undertook to make estate of lands worth ten marks p.a. to them jointly with the legal remainder of lands worth twice that sum expectant on the deaths of himself and his wife.35 C1/33/144. The marriage took place about 11 years before the petition, which is to be dated c.1468. Such an investment on our MP’s part was more than justified by the bride’s expectations. Her aging father had clearly abandoned hope of male issue, and his only daughter thus stood to inherit the Fitzellis manors in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire together with property at Woolhampton in Berkshire, which had been settled on her parents by her maternal grandfather, William Fauconer of Kingsclere.36 C140/32/22.

At about the time this marriage was made Billing secured further promotion. In April 1458 he was appointed a King’s serjeant-at-law, and it was thus natural that he should have played a part in the attainder of the Yorkist lords in the Coventry Parliament of 1459. In company with two other royal serjeants, Richard Chokke and Thomas Lyttleton, and the King’s attorney, William Nottingham II*, he spent 36 days riding from London to Coventry and there giving ‘diligent attendaunce aboute [the King’s] matiers’. On 16 Dec., four days before the prorogation, he was rewarded with a writ of privy seal ordering the Exchequer to pay him as much as 13s. 4d. per diem for this period.37 CPR, 1452-61, p. 425; E404/71/4/20. Early in the following year he was nominated to several commissions of oyer and terminer designed to bring Yorkists to Lancastrian justice. Such service, however, says little or nothing about his political loyalties, and he seems to have adapted to the changed political circumstances of the new reign with the habitual ease of the lawyer. This, at least, is the implication to be drawn from his reappointment as King’s serjeant a month after Edward IV’s accession. There may, however, have been a brief hiatus for, in the summer 1461, he was temporarily removed from three of his peace commissions, although he continued to be appointed as a commissioner of gaol delivery, and on 9 Aug. 1464, by letters patent dated at Stamford, he became the first man to be elevated to the bench of the court of King’s bench since 1453.38 CPR, 1461-7, p. 336; KB27/814, rot. 20d.

Billing’s appearances in the records as one of the puisne justices are largely routine. He became an automatic appointee to royal commissions of oyer and terminer, being named far more frequently than he can have acted; and at the next Parliament after his promotion he acted as a trier of petitions and was one of those the Commons wished to try accusations made against one of the governors of the royal mint.39 PROME, xiii. 256, 386-9. Far from routine, however, was elevation in 1469 to the highest office of the common law. It came in controversial circumstances. According to the ‘Great Chronicle of London’, his predecessor as chief justice, Sir John Markham, was removed because his scrupulous conduct of the treason trial of (Sir) Thomas Cook II* had displeased the King. Further, Billing was not the natural choice to replace him since two of his three fellow puisne justices, Richard Bingham and William Yelverton*, were of significantly greater seniority.40 Gt. Chron. London ed. Thomas and Thornley, 207; Judges of Eng. comp. Sainty (Selden Soc. supp. ser. x), 9, 27. This invites the conclusion that he was chosen as the most likely to be compliant to the King’s wishes, but, if this was so, it brought him no reward beyond this unexpected promotion. In marked contrast to his own successor in the office, William Hussey*, he did not benefit from significant grants of royal patronage. Nor was he so closely identified with Edward IV that his career suffered during the violent vicissitudes of his first two years as chief justice.41 In June 1469 he accompanied Edw. IV to E. Anglia and was granted £20 ‘by waye of Rewarde’ as a commr. of oyer and terminer investigating treasons there, but it would be wrong to attribute any political significance to this payment: E404/74/2/32. Henry VI’s restoration in the autumn of 1470 had no discernible impact on his standing. He, like his judicial colleagues, was reappointed to the bench on 9 Oct., and during the course of the brief new reign he was named to several commissions of oyer and terminer. Similarly, this professional collaboration did not lead to dismissal on Edward IV’s victorious return, even though this was the occasion of several dismissals, including that of the other chief justice. He received new letters patent of appointment on 17 June 1471.42 E.W. Ives, Common Lawyers: Thomas Kebell, 233; CPR, 1467-77, p. 258.

Thereafter there is little exceptional to remark of his public career. Curiously, it was not until the mid 1470s that he took up the rank of knight, which was generally assumed much more quickly by those appointed to the judicial bench.43 He is mistakenly designated a knight when named as a trier of petitions in the Parliament of 1467: PROME, xiii. 256. He may have taken up the rank by 18 May 1473, when described as such in a royal writ, but not until 1475 does he appear as a knight in the numerous references to him in the patent rolls: CPR, 1467-77, p. 531. He was certainly a knight by 20 Mar. 1475: KB27/863, rot. 25. As befitting the senior officer of the common law, he figured in numerous private transactions. In 1473, for example, he acted in a conveyance designed to secure the repayment of the massive debt of £1,000 owed by Isabel, widow of John Neville, Marquess Montagu, to the London tailor, William Parker.44 Several manors of Isabel’s inheritance in East Anglia and Surrey were placed in the feoffment of Billing and others, who were first to lease the property to Isabel’s mother, Joan, widow of (Sir) Edmund Ingoldisthorp*, for the term of her life, and then to stand seised to the repayment of the debt. Since this arrangement was made during a parliamentary session and the Speaker, William Allington†, was among the feoffees, it is likely that it was a compromise negotiated in Parliament. The feoffees, who also included the chief baron of the Exchequer and the master of the rolls, were probably named as honest brokers rather than as representatives of the parties: CCR, 1468-76, no. 1204. In January 1475 he acted for an old associate, Sir Thomas Tyrell, in arrangements for the marriage of Tyrell’s grandson and heir to Anne, daughter of Walter Devereux II*, Lord Ferrers, and later in the same year both William, Lord Hastings, and George, duke of Clarence, as they made preparations to accompany the King on his great expedition to France, named him among their feoffees.45 C147/114; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 516-17, 529-30. Indicative of a more personal relationship was his nomination by Henry Green’s daughter, Constance, countess of Wiltshire, as supervisor of her will of December 1474. The royal grant made to him and others on 1 Mar. 1477 of the keeping of the lands of the earldom during the minority of her son, Edward (b.1470), suggests that she chose well.46 Northants. RO, Northampton Archdeaconry, Prob. Reg. I, f. 19; Hardwick mss, 14; CPR, 1476-85, p. 19. He was also, equally predictably, active as an arbiter, generally in disputes from the Midlands. In October 1475 he and his fellow chief justice, Thomas Bryan of the common pleas, undertook to conclude a dispute between Sir John Culpepper, on the one part, and Brian Talbot† and his wife, Katherine Culpepper, on the other, over property in which our MP had himself been a feoffee nearly 40 years before. In the following August, again with Bryan, he was arbiter in a quarrel between Thomas West, Lord de la Warre, on the one part, and West’s mother, Katherine, and her new husband, Nicholas Leventhorpe. More interestingly, in the autumn of 1477, he and Bryan were called upon to employ their expertise in a dispute between the King and Francis, Lord Lovell, over land purchased from Richard, duke of York, by William, Lord Lovell. Here Billing was particularly well qualified to return an award since he had been closely involved in William’s affairs.47 CCR, 1476-85, nos. 75, 255, 284.

While the chief justice’s public career in the 1470s was unremarkable, his private affairs were not so predictable. Very soon after his promotion to the office he had suffered a serious personal blow. His son and heir died on 23 Mar. 1469 (by a strange coincidence, he was in office as escheator at his death just as our MP’s father had been at his), leaving three young daughters as the judge’s coheiresses-apparent.48 Margery Fitzellis predeceased him. If her mother’s inq. post mortem is reliable, only Sibyl, the youngest daughter of our MP’s son, born in about 1463, was by her: C140/32/22. This was a fatal blow to any dynastic ambitions our MP may have had, and, as a partial solution, in the early 1470s he adopted his grandson, Thomas Lovet, the eldest of the four sons of his daughter, Margaret, as his heir. He seems to have had a special interest in Lovet’s welfare even before the death of his own son and heir. This, at least, is the conclusion to be drawn from the young man’s marriage in about 1464 to Anne, daughter and heiress-presumptive of John Greyby of Whitfield near Astwell. Our MP was one of the feoffees of the bride’s father, and, in his will of 24 Nov. 1470, Greyby entrusted him with the task of settling the manor of Whitfield on Lovet.49 R.E. Chester Waters, Chesters of Chicheley, i. 44; G. Baker, Northants. i. 751. Soon after, there is much clearer evidence of the judge’s fondness for his grandson. In 1471 he sponsored a major exchange of property designed to secure the eventual unification of the two manorial estates in Astwell in the hands of Lovet and his issue. William Broke, lord of the other manor there and husband of a niece of our MP, exchanged this manor for Lovet’s manors of Rushton and Great Oakley, at the same time agreeing to the marriage of his son and heir, John, to Lovet’s infant daughter, Margaret. By final concords levied in Michaelmas term 1471 the Lovet lands and the Broke manor of Astwell were conveyed to the nominees of our MP.50 CP25(1)/179/96/29, 30. On 6 Oct. 1476 the manors of Rushton and Great Oakley were settled on John Broke and Margaret: Harl. 4028, f. 108. Later conveyances leave no doubt as to the ultimate purpose of these arrangements, but, in 1471, they can only have been provisional. The judge clearly saw Lovet as his heir, but at this date Lovet himself was without a son. His first marriage to Anne Greyby had produced only two daughters, and his second marriage to Anne, sister and heiress-presumptive of Richard Drayton of Dorsington in Gloucestershire, had probably yet to take place. However, late in 1473 a son, to whom our MP stood as godfather, was born to the new couple, and the Lovets’ greater dynastic security led to the completion of the settlements envisaged two years earlier. In March 1475 the judge’s nominees settled the Broke manor in Astwell upon him, his wife, Lovet and Lovet’s issue; if Lovet’s issue failed the manor was to pass successively in tail-male to Lovet’s three maternal half-brothers, Roger, Thomas and John Dorne; only on the failure of their issue was it to pass to Billing’s three grand-daughters, again successively in tail-male, with the youngest, Sibyl, the only daughter of Margery Fitzellis, having preference over her half-sisters, Rose and Katherine. The final remainder was to the right heirs of Lovet. In October 1476 a similar settlement was made of ‘Billyngesmaner’ in Astwell: it was granted to Billing and his wife for term of their lives, with the first remainder to Lovet and his issue and successive remainders over in tail general to his half-brothers and the grand-daughters (the final remainder in this case being reserved for the heirs of Roger Giffard). Both these deeds were enrolled in the court of King’s bench in May 1477, and our MP’s arrangements for the future were complete.51 KB27/863, rots. 24, 25.

There was one further change in the chief justice’s private life before his death. His wife of some 65 years died in the spring of 1480, and he quickly took Mary Folville as a second wife. She had considerable landed interests: not only did she enjoy dower from previous husbands but she had inherited property at Rearsby in Leicestershire and Conington in Huntingdonshire.52 Ives, 26, 33. He did, however, not long live to enjoy her lands, dying on 4 May 1481. He was buried with his first wife in the Cistercian abbey of Biddlesden, which lay just over the Northamptonshire border in Buckinghamshire. The brass on his tomb, representing him in his judicial robes, was moved to Wappenham church, the parish church of Astwell, after the Dissolution. It was formerly adorned with nine small figures at the feet of the parents, presumably for the children born to them (few of whom can have survived to adulthood).53 Mon. Brasses: Portfolio Plates of the Mon. Brass Soc. no. 216; Bridges, i. 213. On 20 Nov. 1484 Billing’s widow sued a pardon as his executrix. On her death in 1500 she was buried in the church of St. Margaret, the parish church of the city of Westminster, of which both she and our MP were significant benefactors.54 C67/52, m. 7; J. Weever, Funeral Mons. 269.