HAMPTON, John I

The knight of the shire for Hampshire in 1432 belonged to the fourth successive generation of Hamptons to represent their county in Parliament, but proved to be the last to do so. Although it is not known precisely when this John Hampton inherited the family properties, they provided him with a relatively modest income estimated in 1436 at £15 a year (not sizeable enough to warrant elevation to knighthood), and included the manors of Stoke Charity (which had belonged to the Hamptons since the early fourteenth century), Lasham and possibly also Burcot’s in East Stratton.4 E179/173/92; VCH Hants, iii. 400, 448 (where he is confused with his distant kinsman, John Hampton II); iv. 83. His early career is difficult to disentangle from that of his father, and it might be unwise to assume that it was the same John Hampton who attested the county’s parliamentary indentures at Winchester on a remarkable 17 occasions between 1414 and 1450, especially as John junior’s participation in public affairs is not otherwise known to have begun before the 1420s.5 C219/11/5, 7; 12/3-6; 13/3-5; 14/1, 2, 5; 15/1, 2, 4, 6; 16/1. Yet it is probable that it was he, rather than his father, who married one of three sisters of Gilbert Hallum, a canon of Salisbury cathedral and kinsman and heir of Bishop Robert Hallum of Salisbury, who died at the Council of Constance in 1417. The other sisters were married to John Kirkby† (d.1424) of Romsey, and a member of the Leweston family from Dorset (probably the heir William Leweston, whose wardship had pertained to the bishop),6 Tropenell Cart. ii. 236, 252; Reg. Hallum (Canterbury and York Soc. lxxii), app. E1. thus linking the Hamptons with other families from the lesser gentry of the region.

Stoke Charity was held of the bishop of Winchester, and it was in the bishop’s service that Hampton, like his father before him, made his career. He succeeded Edward Cowdray* as bailiff of certain of the episcopal estates (those situated within a few miles to the east and north of Winchester), and remained in the employment of first Cardinal Henry Beaufort and then Bishop William Waynflete for some 30 years from about 1428. Also like his father he became involved in the affairs of Winchester College. For instance, he was a feoffee in 1424 of land in Hawkley which came into the possession of the warden and fellows, and he witnessed conveyances by the executors of Thomas Lavington, the rector of Meon Stoke (a colleague of his father) of property in Headbourne Worthy, which also added to the college’s endowment. Hampton was described as being among the ‘nearest friends’ of young William Ringbourne* of Barton Stacey in the summer of 1427, when the latter’s widowed mother (a daughter and coheir of Sir William Sturmy*) was assigned dower from his inheritance, and a transaction which he witnessed in 1431 brought him into contact with Sir Maurice Berkeley II*, with whom he was to be elected to Parliament in the following year.7 Winchester Coll. muns. 9601-2, 11539, 16256, 19859-60; C139/5/39; bp. of Winchester’s pipe roll 11M59/B1/184 (formerly 159438). Yet he himself never numbered among the leading gentry of the shire; clearly, his election was owed principally to his position as an official on Cardinal Beaufort’s estates.

In 1434 Hampton was among the men of Hampshire required to take the generally-administered oath against maintenance, and he served on his first royal commission six years later. Although in April 1447 he was said to be ‘too sick and aged’ to continue to exercise his duties as a verderer in the New Forest (which he had performed for some ten years), three months later the reason given for his removal was his preoccupation with other business, and a similar reason was given for his discharge from the verderership of Woolmer and Alice Holt that autumn. Evidently, Beaufort’s death earlier that year and the transfer of the temporalities of the bishopric of Winchester to the new diocesan, Waynflete, gave Hampton and his fellows additional concerns. One such was an uprising against their lord by the tenants of East Meon: at some point in the summer he accompanied the steward of the episcopal estates to the manor to restore order.8 CPR, 1429-36, p. 396; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 425, 430; 1447-54, p. 3. In a bill presented to the chancellor in the following year it was alleged that Hampton, Robert Dingley† and their co-feoffees of the manor of Stratfeld Turgeys had failed in their duty to release their title to the new owner. Dingley came to court in answer to a writ of summons in November 1448, but there is no sign that Hampton accompanied him.9 C1/13/180.

So far, there had been nothing in the records to indicate that John Hampton of Hampshire was related to his namesake, John Hampton II*, the prominent courtier and long-term esquire for the body of Henry VI, or known to him personally, yet when, on 20 Nov. 1448, the latter, having obtained a royal licence to do so, made an entail of his manors of Kinver and Stourton and his offices of keeper of Kinver forest and ranger of Chasepool, Iverley and Ashwood ( all in his native county of Staffordshire), he named our MP as heir in tail should it transpire that he and his brother Boyce both died without direct descendants. Their kinship was a very distant one, for the Hamptons of Stoke Charity had not apparently been involved in Staffordshire affairs for well over 100 years. Even so, although the entail promised much (for John II was already in his late fifties, and his only child had entered a nunnery), no tangible benefits from the wealthy courtier’s success were to pass to the Hampshire line during our MP’s lifetime.10 CCR, 1447-54, p. 179; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xi. 32, 98.

Hampton served as a juror at Winchester at trials conducted by commissioners of oyer and terminer in July 1451. His son, Thomas, who had attested the parliamentary elections with him in 1447, did so again in 1455 when he himself was not noted as present.11 KB9/109/10; C219/15/4, 16/3. Father and son were both appointed commissioners of array in September 1457, but John is not recorded alive again, and may have died not long afterwards. His posts in the bishop’s employment at Bishops Sutton and elsewhere were apparently vacant in the official year Michaelmas 1460-1.12 Bp. of Winchester’s pipe roll 11M59/B1/194 (formerly 155829). By February 1469 Thomas had been recognized as the next heir to property in Wolverhampton belonging to the childless John Hampton II.13 Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xi. 239. This proved to be the limit of Thomas’s expectations in Staffordshire, for by that date the former courtier had been deprived by the Yorkist regime of his important ancestral holdings at Kinver and Stourton. Our MP was probably buried near other members of his family in ‘Old’ Stoke Charity parish church, where his son’s tomb remains.14 Thomas died in 1483: Procs. Hants Field Club, iii. 10. The descent of the Hampton lands in both Hants and Staffs. was to be complicated by the deaths of his two sons, v.p., for he left six daughters to succeed him: C1/34/92-96.