HACCHE, John

The Hacches were a middling gentry family from north-eastern Devon, who took their name from the family seat in the parish of South Molton. John’s father, Robert, died in 1405 holding estates valued at more than £29 p.a., including the manors of Hacche, Romansleigh and Leigh Barton. At the time, John was just 11 years old. 6 CIPM, xix. 426; C137/67/32. The boy’s immediate fate is unclear. The inquiry held after Robert’s death found that the family held no lands in chief, and it is uncertain which of their various feudal overlords succeeded in staking his claim to the custody of the heir and his lands, but it seems probable that it was the earl of Devon, Edward Courtenay, who did so. Certainly, at least in the short term, Hacche maintained close ties with the Courtenays: he went to fight in France in the retinue of Earl Hugh in 1420,7 E101/49/34. and he headed the jury summoned two years later to take the earl’s inquisition post mortem.

The earl’s unexpected death may have deprived Hacche of a patron, and may at least in part explain why over the course of a lifetime of over 70 years he failed entirely to attract any form of Crown office. He was nevertheless of some standing in his locality, for he was frequently empanelled on local juries, often heading the lists of names. In particular, he was called upon as a juror in inquiries post mortem into the landed estates of the greatest men in the shire. That of the earl of Devon aside, juries he thus headed included those summoned after the deaths of Isabel, countess of Warwick (d.1439), Henry Beauchamp, duke of Warwick (d.1446), and Thomas Carminowe*,8 KB9/15/2/176, 193; C139/17/30, 88/55, 96/3, 110/46, 116/41, 123/43, 147/30; C260/150/43, mm. 3, 4, 6; C47/37/22/90. and he also served as a juror during the drawn-out quarrel between Richard Fortescue* and Thomas Stonor II*. On two recorded occasions, in 1447 and 1453, he was present in the county court for the election of the knights of the shire, and set his seal to the sheriff’s indenture.9 C219/15/4, 16/2. Certainly, Hacche, who added property around Crediton to his landholdings by his marriage to the heiress of the Derwyn family of Little Fulford, was well connected among his neighbours.10 C140/56/44, 63/57. In 1441 he acted as attorney for Anne, daughter of John Basset, in the transfer of certain estates to John Holand, earl of Huntingdon.11 CCR, 1435-41, p. 455. Feudal tenure provided other important links. Some of Hacche’s lands were held of the Carews of Antony and the bond was strengthened when his daughter Isabel was married to Alexander Carew (d.1492).12 Vivian, Vis. Devon, 134. Carew became closely associated with the Hacches and acted as feoffee for the MP, his son and daughter-in-law, while John on occasion witnessed charters for Alexander’s elder brother Thomas Carew.13 C140/56/44, 63/57, 67/42; CCR, 1447-54, p. 45.

Such connexions may go some way to explain John’s sole return to Parliament as a knight of the shire for Devon in the autumn of 1449, but it is probable that his candidature was also agreeable to Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, son of Hacche’s old patron. Following his protracted minority, in the 1440s Courtenay had asserted his family’s traditional dominance in the south-west, and as a result of his local rivalry with William, Lord Bonville*, and the latter’s principal supporter, Sir James Butler, promoted earl of Wiltshire in July 1449, had increasingly placed himself in opposition to the court party around William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk. In preparation for a concerted parliamentary attack on the court, Devon and other lords critical of the conduct of the French wars sought to have their retainers returned to the Commons, and Courtenay in particular was successful in securing a string of west-country seats.14 M. Cherry, ‘Crown and Political Community, Devon’ (Univ. of Wales, Swansea, Ph.D. thesis, 1981), 273; Patronage, Crown and Provinces ed. Griffiths, 130.

If Hacche indeed owed his election to the earl of Devon, he does not appear to have allowed himself to be drawn into the campaign of open violence that Courtenay unleashed across the south-west from 1451 to 1455. Indeed, following his return from Parliament he appears once again to have withdrawn into private life, which in his case was punctuated only by minor disputes with individuals of generally low standing. Thus, in 1439 he had sued two artisans from Plympton Erle for breaking into his property at Tavistock, while there were repeated quarrels with his tenants at South Molton over trespasses they were said to have committed.15 CP40/715, rot. 496; KB27/766, rot. 55d; 769, rot. 61d; 776, rot. 3d; 778, rot. 70; 780, rot. 10; 783, rot. 2d.; 786, rot. 5. Perhaps more significant was a later dispute with the Barnstaple merchant Walter Hayne*, whom he accused of having assaulted his servant Robert Parys at Pilton.16 CP40/748, rot. 263; 749, rot. 229; 755, rot. 326. Little is known of Hacche’s later years, and it is probable that the pardon he sued out in early 1472 following Edward IV’s restoration after the end of the Lancastrian readeption represented a general precaution, rather than any indication of a close association with the earl of Warwick’s regime.17 C67/49, m. 34.

When Hacche died on 4 Sept. 1477, his eldest son and heir, John, had been dead for nine months, leaving a six-year-old son, Thomas, as heir.18 Although the inqs. taken after the deaths of John Hacche sen. and jun. suggest that Thomas was born in c.1469, the boy’s proof of age conclusively dates his birth and baptism at Little Fulford to 6 Oct. 1470. Thomas Gille II* and Thomas Dowrich II* acted as godfathers: CIPM Hen. VII, i. 598; C1/787/39-43; C140/56/44, 63/57. Following a fresh inquiry three years later, the boy was taken into the King’s wardship and custody of his person and lands granted to John Denys* of Orlegh. Both before and after Thomas proved his age in April 1491 the younger John’s executors, who included his widow and younger sons, and subsequently the heir himself, became embroiled in a series of legal battles, first with Denys and the elder John Hacche’s old servant and feoffee Robert Parys, and subsequently with several distant cousins, including Elizabeth Hacche’s cousin and purported heir, William Rowe, and the children of the former MP’s younger son, William.19 CPR, 1476-85, pp. 214, 225; C1/34/128, 53/235, 59/99, 787/39; C254/154/144; DL5/1, f. 28; CP40/866, rot. 81; C140/67/42.