GUNTER, Giles

The Gunters, reputedly of Welsh origin, had come to Racton in west Sussex by the early fourteenth century, holding land there as tenants-in-chief of the Crown by the service of rendering two white capons for the King’s table whenever the monarch visited that part of the country. Overlordship of other estates at Racton pertained to the Fitzalan earls of Arundel and their successors, so it is not surprising that Roger Gunter, the MP’s father, joined the retinue of Thomas, earl of Arundel, for Henry V’s invasion of France in 1415. Perhaps, like his lord, he was stricken with dysentery at the siege of Harfleur, for he was given leave to return to England on 4 Oct.,5 Suss. Arch. Collns. xv. 129; xxiii. 2-3; E101/44/30 (1). but unlike the earl, who died at home a few days later, he survived the illness. Roger’s mother, Elizabeth, a grand-daughter of John, Lord Lorty (d.1340), had inherited the manor of Pitney Lorty in Somerset,6 CP, x. 185-6; CIPM, xx. 762; VCH Som. iii. 52. and this passed to Roger on her death in 1423.7 CFR, xv. 30; CCR, 1422-9, p. 101. It was through Elizabeth, too, that the Gunters acquired the manors of Knowle, also in Somerset, and Fenny Sutton in Wiltshire.8 C140/47/61; VCH Wilts. viii. 64. In Sussex, Roger held besides the Racton property land in the parishes of Westbourne, Harting and Pagham (which last he appears to have settled on his second son, William),9 Feudal Aids, v. 157, 164, 274; CAD, v. A10478, 10508; VCH Suss. iv. 231. and he also numbered among the tenants of the Percy earls of Northumberland on their estate at Petworth.10 Petworth House, Suss. Petworth ct. rolls, 6761-5. Having emerged as a prominent member of the local gentry, he attested the shire election indentures for as many as 11 Parliaments between 1416 and his death 20 years later, and appeared as a witness to the will made by the Sussex peer Thomas Poynings, Lord St. John, in 1428.11 C219/11/8; 12/4-6; 13/1-3; 14/1-4; Reg. Chichele, ii. 390; CPR, 1429-36, p. 372. After he died, in 1436, his holdings in Sussex and Somerset passed to John Gunter as his eldest son and heir.12 C139/80/16; CFR, xvi. 298, 313. John established useful links both with the dowager countess of Arundel, Beatrice, now countess of Huntingdon, for whom he stood surety at the Exchequer in 1438,13 CFR, xvii. 41. and with his lord at Petworth, Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, who rewarded him with a grant in tail of a messuage and eight acres of land there.14 Petworth ct. rolls, 6768.

It is therefore curious that it was not John Gunter, possessed of land worth in excess of £40 p.a. and deemed eligible for knighthood,15 E159/243, rot. 14d. but rather his younger brother Giles who was elected to Parliament. Arundel, the borough Giles represented, belonged in 1442 to William, earl of Arundel, and it may be the case that he had continued a family tradition of service to the earls seated there. Perhaps he was a member of Earl William’s household or involved in his estate-administration, but the absence of surviving documentation means that this is impossible to prove. Giles had been recorded earlier, on 1 Jan. 1439, when the three Gunter brothers had placed their manor of Knowle in the hands of feoffees, and three months later he witnessed an exchange of property at Racton and Petworth made between his brother John and their neighbours the Dawtrys. Not long afterwards he appeared in the King’s bench in person to bring suits for trespass against men from Compton and North Marden in west Sussex. Clearly, he had continued to live in this part of the county.16 Harl. Ch. 51 A 25; W. Suss. RO, Add mss, 12317; KB27/715, rots. 53, 67d. Giles was recorded as an attorney in the same court for litigants from Hampshire in 1441, but never made much of a mark as a lawyer, and if, like his brother William, he ever became a member of Clifford’s Inn, then record of his membership has not been discovered.17 CP40/721, att. rot. 2; J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), i. 794.

After his election to Parliament, nothing further is heard of Giles for more than 30 years. Then, in the Michaelmas term of 1472, Sir Thomas Etchingham, a former sheriff of Sussex (of 1463-4), sued him and a yeoman from Wisborough for the sum of 20 marks. He was then described as a ‘gentleman’ living at Ewhurst – probably the place in the north of the county near Crawley.18 CP40/844, rot. 37. When his brother John died on 3 Oct. 1473 the heir to the family lands in Somerset and Wiltshire was said to be his next eldest brother, William, who also succeeded to John’s widow’s portion following her death a year later. Giles, mentioned in the inquisition post mortem following John’s death,19 C140/47/61, 48/7; CFR, xxi. nos. 212-13, 228, 276. was still alive in February 1476. Then, he and his wife Elizabeth were party to a fine regarding two messuages, some 380 acres of land and rents (including that of the two white capons owed to the King) in Racton, Westbourne and Aldsworth, which they formally quitclaimed to another John Gunter, who had been the husband of Giles’s niece Margery (the daughter of John senior). It would appear that the childless Margery had pre-deceased her father, and that her husband (whose relationship to the Gunter brothers is not explained), had agreed to pay her uncle William Gunter the sum of 100 marks for the chief place of his late father-in-law in Racton and his land at Aldsworth and elsewhere.20 CP25(1)/241/93/10; Harl. Chs. 51 A 28, 29; CCR, 1476-85, no. 151; VCH Suss. iv. 114-15. This John Gunter, of Chilworth, Surr., already an important servant and auditor-general of the dukes of Buckingham, died possessed of Racton in 1511: C. Rawcliffe, Staffords, 59, 199, 226; VCH Suss. iv. 114-15. It remains uncertain whether Giles, having relinquished his title to his patrimony in Sussex, was still living in 1480 when his brother William completed conveyances of family property in Hampshire.21 CCR, 1476-85, no. 659. He was undoubtedly dead by July 1484 when his sons Edmund and Thomas, both called ‘gentlemen of Sussex’, released to William Weston of Buxsted all their interest in Knowle, Pitney Lorty and Fenny Sutton. Weston had recently recovered these manors by suit in the court of common pleas against William Gunter.22 CCR, 1476-85, no. 1334; 1485-1500, no. 49; Harl. Roll K 26; Harl. Chs. 51 A 24, 30. No doubt the suit was collusive, for Weston was married to William’s daughter, yet by the time William died, on 20 Sept. following, he had no surviving issue: his nephew Edmund, elder son of our MP fell heir to a seriously depleted estate.23 PCC 24 Logge (PROB11/7, f. 189); C141/5/6. On Weston’s death just a year later in 1485, a substantial part of the former Gunter estates was claimed by John Morton, bishop of Ely, and although Edmund valiantly strove in the law-courts to reclaim from Morton that part of his inheritance in Somerset and Wiltshire, claiming by entail and descent from his great-grandmother,24 CP40/898, rots. 527-9, 537. he proved unsuccessful: these manors descended henceforth in Morton’s family.25 VCH Som. iii. 52; VCH Wilts. viii. 64.