BONVILLE, Thomas

By the time of Thomas’s birth, the Bonvilles were already one of the pre-eminent families in the south-west of England, even though their elevation to a barony as yet lay in the distant future. Thomas’s father, John, was heir apparent to Sir William Bonville, one of the leading parliamentarians of the last quarter of the fourteenth century, but died in 1396, predeceasing his father by some eight years. Thomas’s elder brother William, aged four, was now heir to the family lands, but in an age of high infant mortality this still left Thomas with reasonable expectations of an eventual inheritance, not least since his grandfather had entailed a large proportion of his estates, including the valuable manors of Shute, Wiscombe and Uppehay, in the male line.8 Petre (Bonville) mss, 123M/TB489, 498. While it could not be foreseen with certainty that the younger William Bonville would live to adulthood and produce a son, it was only prudent to provide for his younger brother by an advantageous marriage, which was found in the person of Joan Poynings, the eldest daughter of the heir to the barony of St. John of Basing. The marriage was undeniably a political one, connecting the Bonvilles with the Poynings family, for although when the marriage was contracted Joan’s father, Sir Hugh Poynings, had no sons, he had himself recently remarried and it was not impossible that he might still produce a male heir.9 CP, xi. 330; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 88.

Thomas and Joan Bonville for their part did soon produce a male heir, named John like his paternal grandfather, but soon after Joan died, predeceasing both her father and grandfather. Within the next four years, however, both Sir Hugh Poynings and his father, Lord St. John, also died, leaving Bonville’s young son as coheir to the Poynings estates. Bonville was granted custody of his son’s purparty of the Poynings lands during John’s minority, but this lasted for just another five years until 1434, when he proved his age.10 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 8, 275-6; E159/212, brevia Mich. rot. 16. Thomas nevertheless contrived to retain control of some of the lands that should rightfully have descended to his son: at his death it was found that ‘by intrusion’ he had retained holdings in Bere Ferrers (in Devon), as well as the Cornish manors of ‘Shylyngham’ and Hornecote, and over 800 acres of land and other property in the latter county, that had formed part of Joan Poynings’ inheritance from her grandfather, Sir Martin Ferrers.11 CCR, 1461-8, p. 427; C140/22/46; E401/729, m. 12; W. Suss. RO, Goodwood Estate archs. Goodwood/E274-5, 676.

Bonville scarcely needed to defraud his son, for in the spring of 1425 he had married a second time, and his new wife, Lena, the wealthy widow of the Cornish landowner John Wybbury, brought to him her first husband’s extensive estates, all the more extensive since Wybbury had settled on her the greater part of his lands in addition to her legal dower, on condition that she should remain unmarried. In the event that Lena should fail to keep these terms, the lands were to fall to Wybbury’s legitimate issue, represented at the time of her marriage to Bonville by Wybbury’s sole posthumous infant daughter, Joan. Although Lena forfeited her own claim to her first husband’s lands by her marriage to Bonville, the latter lost little time in acquiring the wardship of his stepdaughter and the custody of her lands from the Crown, in return for the sum of 300 marks. Before long, he ensured that the Wybbury inheritance would remain in his family’s possession on a permanent basis by marrying the young heiress to her stepbrother, his own young son, John. In a series of settlements the bulk of John Wybbury’s lands was now handed to panels of feoffees who re-granted them to Bonville and Lena for their lives in survivorship, guaranteeing only their reversion and half the manor of Aveton Giffard to Joan and her descendants.12 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 911; Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 321-2; C140/2/24; E401/713, m. 10. Thomas and Lena now controlled a substantial estate which included the Cornish manors of Northleigh in Morwenstow, Otterham, ‘Penrosbordon’, Cranesworthy, Croke Major and ‘Portyllegres’, as well as over 500 acres of land and other holdings in the county, the Devon manors of Warleigh, Tamerton Foliot, Chagford and Cullaton besides other properties there, and the Dorset manor of Shapton.In 1436 Bonville’s estates were believed to provide him with an income of some £120 p.a., and 15 years later, in 1450, his lands in Cornwall alone were thought to be worth £66 p.a.13 C140/22/46; E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14 (ii); E179/87/92; CCR, 1435-41, p. 303.

Bonville’s landholdings placed him in the first rank of the Cornish gentry: he was repeatedly included among those distrained to take up knighthood, in 1434 he was among the men of the county required to take the general oath against maintenance, and in 1450 only Sir John Colshull* and John Arundell of Lanherne were thought to hold more lands in the county than he did. He maintained an impressive household: in October 1439 he ordered from a London embroiderer 22 gowns of his livery, seven of them for gentlemen and 15 for yeomen.14 E179/87/92; CPR, 1429-36, p. 399; CP40/754, rot. 111. At the same time, the increasing political prominence of his elder brother placed Thomas in line for official employment in his native region. During the drawn-out minority of Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, in the 1420s and 1430s Sir William Bonville and his patron, Walter, Lord Hungerford†, had come to dominate political society in the south-west. In Cornwall, their influence was exercised by another associate, Hungerford’s son-in-law, (Sir) Philip Courtenay* of Powderham, in whose favour Sir John Arundell I* surrendered the stewardship of the duchy of Cornwall in 1430.15 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 58-60. Alongside Courtenay, Thomas Bonville now also began to play his part in the rule of the far south-west. From the spring of 1431 he was appointed to a string of ad hoc commissions, and in November 1434 he assumed the shrievalty of Cornwall. His tenure of this office coincided with some of the lengthy legal proceedings against the unruly Richard Tregoose*. Bonville was too influential a man to be cowed by Tregoose’s normal bullying tactics, but he and his under sheriff, Thomas Giffard* were nevertheless accused by the King’s attorney, Thomas Greswold, of having packed the trial jury in Tregoose’s favour. Bonville was subsequently exonerated from this accusation, although Giffard was found guilty.16 KB27/696, rex rot. 5d.

While Bonville was still serving as sheriff, the young earl of Devon formally proved his age, and began the long process of clawing back some of the regional influence that had traditionally pertained to his family. The Hungerford circle, however, proved tenacious, and it was probably as much as a result of his brother’s connexions as of his own standing in Cornwall that Thomas was returned to Parliament alongside the leading lawyer Nicholas Aysshton* in 1439. At the centre, his brother and his friends were still dominant, and just over two weeks into the first session Bonville was appointed to the Cornish bench. It is possible that this appointment remained little more than a mark of status, for there is no evidence that he ever exercised his official powers, and simultaneously his administrative activities also dwindled. Bonville now settled down to the normal life of an country landowner, periodically serving on local juries and acting as an arbiter in his neighbours’ disputes,17 C47/37/22/90; CP40/718, rot. 319d; 782, rot. 444. while at other times pursuing others of the south-west for the common range of minor offences in the royal law courts.18 CP40/652, rot. 90; 683, rot. 329d; 697, rot. 422; 745, rot. 166; KB27/670, rots. 27d, 50; 686, rot. 53d; 729, rot. 25d; 751, rot. 19d; 752, rot. 48; 768, rot. 16; 794, rot. 10; 799, rot. 14; 801, rot. 6; 818, rots. 85, 86; CPR, 1429-36, p. 308; 1452-61, pp. 447, 474; 1461-7, p. 172. Many of his opponents were individuals of lesser status, but from time to time he clashed with men of more substance. Thus, in 1450 he was in dispute with Richard Secheville* of Holbeton over an unspecified trespass;19 KB27/758, rot. 15. four years later he was pursuing Joan, wife of Thomas Luccombe* and executrix of her first husband Otto Nicoll* for a debt of £40 owing from Otto’s father John*;20 CP40/773, rot. 453. and about the same time he and Roger Champernowne* of Bere Ferrers (who like him had an interest in the former Ferrers estates) were suing William Mohun of Puslinch for the sum of £20.21 CP40/771, rot. 171.

By the early 1450s the local rivalry in the south-west between Thomas’s brother, now Lord Bonville, and Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, had developed into open warfare, and like many other members of Lord Bonville’s circle, he found himself singled out for attack by local partisans of the earl. On 28 Sept. 1455 his houses at Warleigh and Tamerton Foliot were ransacked and household goods and clothing worth 100 marks carried off.22 KB27/781, rot. 94d; CP40/780, rot. 220. It is small wonder that in the open civil war of Henry VI’s final years he should have followed his brother’s lead and sided with the Yorkist earls. Yet, the battles of 1460-1 spelled disaster for the Bonvilles. On 30 Dec. 1460 Lord William’s son and grandson were killed alongside the duke of York at Wakefield, and while he himself escaped it was only to be executed on the orders of Queen Margaret of Anjou on 18 Feb. 1461 after the second battle of St. Albans. Thus within two months, three of the four lives that separated Thomas from the family estates had been extinguished: the last living representative of the senior line was Lord Bonville’s great grand-daughter Cecily. Yet part of the family estate was entailed in the main line, and these holdings now fell to Thomas. He was thus able to take possession of the family mansion by the south gate of the city of Exeter, but otherwise found his acquisitions somewhat diminished by the substantial dower claimed by Lord Bonville’s widow, which included the family seat at Shute, two further Devon manors and valuable holdings in Dorset.23 C140/22/46, m. 6; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 2-3.

In recognition of his family’s services to the new Yorkist dynasty Bonville was added to the Devon bench in June 1461, but his Devon property remained too limited to establish him permanently in political society in that county, and he was tacitly dropped again a few months later. The focus of his life in any event remained in Cornwall, where, following Lena Gorges’ death in 1462 he rounded off his possessions by a third marriage to Thomasina, the widow of John Cokeworthy, a Devon gentleman with extensive landholdings in that neighbouring county.24 C67/46, m. 7; CP40/826, rots. 255, 349.

Bonville died on 7 Feb. 1467. He was survived by Thomasina who went on to marry as her third husband Sir Thomas Seymour of Beckington, Somerset. Bonville’s lands were now dispersed among a number of heirs in accordance with their complicated descents and entails. The former Ferrers lands and the reversion of the entailed Bonville estates after the death of Lady Bonville fell to Thomas’s 50-year-old son John. The Wybbury inheritance had some years earlier, in March 1459, been settled on Anne (b.c.1439), John’s daughter from his first marriage to Joan Wybbury, who had married Philip, son and heir of Thomas Bonville’s fellow MP John Copplestone*.25 C67/46, m. 7; C140/2/24; 22/46; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1142; CP, xi. 330; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 424-7. John Bonville had to wait for the death of his great-aunt, Elizabeth, Lady Bonville, in 1471 before finally being able to reunite her dower lands with the rest of his holdings.26 C140/39/64. He died in 1494 and was buried in the church of St. Michael at Shute, where according to his will a chantry was set up for him and his wife, as well as for his parents, Thomas and Joan Bonville. He was survived until 1497 by his second wife Katherine, daughter of Sir Robert Wingfield*, who in her will decreed that his remains should be removed from Shute and reburied alongside her in Boxgrove priory, Sussex. With John Bonville’s death the legitimate male line of the family came to an end, for he left only daughters: Anne, the eldest from his first marriage, and Florence and Elizabeth from the second.27 Petre (Bonville) mss, 123M/TB538B; PCC 21 Vox (PROB11/10, f. 163v), 20 Horne (PROB11/11, f. 162). Florence (1472-1524) initially married Sir Humphrey Fulford and after his death John Bourgchier, earl of Bath and Lord Fitzwaryn (d.1539), while Elizabeth became the wife of Thomas West, Lord de la Warre (d.1554) but neither left any offspring.28 Petre (Bonville) mss, 123M/TB502, 514; CP, ii. 16-17, iv. 156-7. Lord Bonville’s great-grand-daughter, Cecily, survived until 1530. She married Edward IV’s stepson, Thomas Grey, marquess of Dorset (d.1501), and, after his death, Henry Stafford, earl of Wiltshire (d.1523).29 C1/48/431; CP, ii. 219. The complex entails of the family lands caused friction between the two branches of the family and in 1505 the parties submitted their quarrel to the arbitration of the chief justice of common pleas, Thomas Frowyk.30 Petre (Bonville) mss, 123M/TB521-23.