HARCOURT, Richard

A younger son, Richard could expect to inherit little if anything of the Harcourt family estates, yet through contracting two advantageous marriages and offering timely support for the house of York he came to occupy a position of considerable wealth and standing in his final decades.12 He has been distinguished from his uncle and namesake, another Richard Harcourt, who held the former Shareshull manors of Shareshull and Great and Little Saredon, Staffs., until his childless death in the autumn of 1453. That Richard m. (1) c.1390, Margaret (d. bef. 1400), da. of John Knightley of Knightley and niece and coh. of Sir William Shareshull† (d.1400); (2) bef. Nov. 1443, Eleanor Lewknor (d.c.1455). His heir was our MP’s er. bro., Sir Robert: Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. 1914, pp. 186, 198-9; xi. 234; VCH Staffs. v. 175-7; B.H. Putnam, Sir Wm. Shareshull, 12-13, app. 1; Peds. Plea Rolls ed. Wrottesley, 391; CCR, 1399-1402, pp. 175-6. His early years were apparently spent in the service of William, Lord Lovell (d.1455), for whom in April 1430, before he attained his majority, he witnessed a deed whereby Lovell’s manorial holdings were placed in the hands of feoffees. The properties concerned included the manor of Minster Lovell, not far from the Harcourts’ home at Stanton Harcourt,13 CCR, 1429-35, p. 58. and it was there that the MP sporadically resided in the 1430s and 1440s. His close association with the Lovells was long to continue.14 He acted as an executor for the next Lord Lovell, John, in the 1460s: E368/240, rot. 42; CP40/827, rot. 366. In the spring of 1437 Harcourt fell into trouble, and although the details of his alleged offences have not been discovered they were serious enough to warrant his imprisonment in the Marshalsea until he provided securities of 40 marks to keep the peace, in particular towards one John Ledered. His two mainpernors, one of whom was Drew Barantyn*, later each forfeited 20 marks when the miscreant failed to appear in the King’s bench as required, but after being rearrested and forfieting his bond Harcourt eventually secured his discharge in the Hilary term following.15 KB27/704, rex rot. 28d; 708, fines rot. 2d. Together with his elder brother, Sir Robert, in October 1438 Richard entered recognizances in 100 marks to William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, at the latter’s seat at Ewelme.16 CCR, 1435-41, p. 233. Whether this had something to do with his earlier misdemeanors is unclear. Its significance lies in its being the first record of his personal connexion with the de la Poles, which was to play a significant part in his later career, leading to a marked attachment to Suffolk’s wife, Alice Chaucer, and their son.

At some point in the late 1430s Harcourt improved his material prospects through marriage to the youngest of the three daughters and coheirs of the deceased Thomas St. Cler, whose father, Sir Philip (d.1408), had through his own marriage to the Lovein heiress become one of the leading landowners of southern England, with estates spread over 12 counties. Thomas’s comparatively short life had been fraught with lawsuits over his inheritance and conflict with one of his feoffees, the Sussex lawyer John Halle†, which had even resulted at one stage in a period of imprisonment.17 For further details about St. Cler, see the biographies of his uncle Thomas† and of John Halle: The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 272; iv. 277-8. He died overseas in 1435, leaving his three daughters still under age,18 C139/73/4; CIMisc. vii. 114-17. and having fraudulently made enfeoffments of his estates to safeguard them from the effects of royal wardship. In December 1438 it was discovered that none of the revenues from the St. Cler lands had ever been received by the Crown, and the King first sold the wardship and marriages of the girls to (Sir) Thomas Stanley II* and Thomas Pycot esquire, for 200 marks, and then, two months later, committed them instead to the keeping of his uncle Humphrey, duke of Gloucester.19 CPR, 1436-41, p. 241; CFR, xvii. 69, 79-80. A detailed investigation into the concealment of wards undertaken in March 1439 revealed that the issues of St. Cler’s estates in eight counties, said to amount to £211 a year, had been taken since his death by one of his feoffees, John Aston of Oxfordshire, who had married the youngest of the three heiresses, Edith, to his own son, John. By this time, however, young Aston had died and Edith had been contracted to Harcourt. The financial arrangements made between him and Aston to secure the marriage, which official inquiries now valued at as much as £500, have not come to light.20 CIMisc. vii. 114-17. Nor is it recorded whether Gloucester was ever compensated.

The St. Cler heiresses had attracted considerable attention, not least among the Oxfordshire gentry. Robert Danvers*, the future judge, took a close interest in their affairs, perhaps hoping to acquire the marriage of another of the sisters for himself or one of his brothers. If so, his plans went awry, for the middle sister married John Gage, and the eldest girl, Elizabeth, was contracted to William Lovell (a younger brother and namesake of Lord Lovell). The latter match adds a further dimension to the comment that Harcourt was ‘staying with Lord Lovell’, when, in 1439, he delivered to the chancellor an inquisition regarding the St. Cler estates.21 CIPM, xxv. 152. William may have been the man returned for Oxon. to the Parl. of 1459. Perhaps he brokered his sister-in-law’s marriage. Even so, it is difficult to discover quite how much he himself profited from the affair, for he and his wife faced a number of challenges to her title to the St. Cler lands. In the early 1440s, when the couple were living at Bosworth in Leicestershire, one of the Harcourt manors, they were accused in King’s bench by certain inhabitants of the manor of Ashby Magna, in the same county, of unlawfully seizing their possessions on the basis that they were bondmen.22 CP40/728, rot. 486. Long delays occurred before Richard and Edith managed to obtain full possession of her share in the St. Cler inheritance. In 1443, together with her sisters and their husbands they brought a collusive action in the court of common pleas against St. Cler’s surviving feoffees to secure their title to the manor of Chalgrove in Oxfordshire,23 Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iii. 162. Harcourt subsequently sold some of ‘Seyntcleres lond’ in Chalgrove to his neighbour, John Barantyn†: Stonor Letters, ii (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, xxx), 128-9; and Barantyn’s widow and son re-settled ‘Sentcleres’ manor on Harcourt and his 2nd wife in July 1482: Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. vi (1), 146. but it was not until satisfaction had been made to the Crown for its losses that, on 16 Dec. 1445, the women were formally given licence to enter their patrimony.24 CPR, 1441-6, p. 443. This was the day after the close of the third session of the Parliament in which Harcourt was currently representing Oxfordshire, and it seems likely that he had sought election in order to pursue his personal interests at Westminster more effectively. He and his wife took out royal pardons in July 1446 (after the dissolution), probably to escape censure for offences committed during Edith’s minority.25 C67/39, m. 39. The full extent of her portion of the St. Cler inheritance cannot now be established. As many as 14 St. Cler manors were situated in Sussex and Surrey, but Harcourt initially expended his energies in trying to secure those nearer his home in Oxfordshire. The coheirs embarked in a long triangular struggle for the manor of Stanton St. John against other claimants, including members of the Chamberlain family who were descendants of Edith’s paternal grandmother, Margaret Lovein (d.1408) by her first husband, only to ultimately prove unsuccessful, despite obtaining in 1457 a pardon of all debts and accounts due to the Crown for the issues of this manor and that of Barton St. John, which they had been required to pay into the Exchequer.26 VCH Oxon. v. 285; E159/232, recorda Trin. rot. 15; CPR, 1452-61, p. 350; E. Suss. RO, Firle Place mss, 259, 261. For suits over the manor of Hardwick, Oxon., see CP40/758, rot. 213. In the event, the Harcourts had more success regarding St. Cler properties in Sussex, for they were able to pass the manor of Jevington and lands near Pevensey and Brighton on to their descendants,27 VCH Suss. vii. 256; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 202. and in 1459 they recovered seisin of the manors of Lagham and Walkhampstead in Surrey against the Chamberlains, who made a formal quitclaim of their title three years later.28 CP40/793, rot. 341; CCR, 1461-8, p. 92; VCH Surr. iv. 285-6. The value of £27 15s. p.a. placed on these holdings after Harcourt’s death was undoubtedly an underestimate of their true worth.29 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 202; iii. 1130. Jevington alone had been leased out for £18 p.a. in the 1420s: Bodl. D.D. Harcourt mss, c.39/17.

Harcourt added further to his landed estate through settlements made on him by members of his family. In about 1435 he had been enfeoffed of the estates of his cousin Sir Thomas Erdington*, situated in Leicestershire, Warwickshire and Dorset,30 HMC Hastings, i. 72, 155. and in 1448, for reasons as yet unexplained, Erdington transferred to him sole possession of his Dorset manor of Corfe Mullen. To this Harcourt subsequently added that of Corfe Hubard, thus increasing his income by at least £20 p.a.31 CAD, iii. D1175; J. Hutchins, Dorset, iii. 355; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 1106. More property came to him through purchase. He extended his possessions in Oxfordshire, notably at Chalgrove, through dealings with the Barantyns, and by purchasing property in Asthall Leigh from the estate of the late John Golafre*. From his brother-in-law William Browning I* he acquired in 1459 a reversionary interest in the manor and advowson of Wytham, just a short distance from Stanton Harcourt, and these together with lands nearby were worth at least £14 p.a. at his death. In his final years he made Wytham his home.32 CP25(1)/13/86/23; VCH Berks. iv. 428-9; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 167-8; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 171-2. He acquired ‘Argentynes’ in Chalgrove from the Barantyns in 1483, but instructed his executors to sell it to Thomas Danvers*, the Barantyns’ creditor: PCC 27 Logge (PROB11/7, ff. 205-7); Magdalen Coll. Oxf. Chalgrove deeds, 7b, 198, 223. During the late 1460s he engaged in a deliberate policy of buying up the estates in Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Gloucestershire which, formerly held by William Wilcotes† and his wife the heiress Elizabeth Trillow, had been split up between several coheirs after the latter’s death in 1445. However, not all of these particular acquisitions were to remain permanently in his family’s possession.33 CP25(1)/294/75/71; VCH Berks. iv. 422; VCH Oxon. xi. 198; xii. 124.

There is no firm evidence to point to Harcourt’s membership of the affinity of William de la Pole, marquess of Suffolk, at the time of his first election to Parliament and during the period of de la Pole’s political supremacy in the later 1440s. Even though during that period Harcourt was in receipt of fees as an esquire in the King’s household,34 E101/410/1, 3, 6, 9. this did not lead to any noticeable advancement, aided by Suffolk’s patronage. Yet his membership of the Household may have served a purpose in helping his brother, Sir Robert, to evade justice following the killing of Richard Stafford in the infamous affray at Coventry in May 1448, for in this regard a link between the Harcourts and de la Pole (now elevated to the dukedom of Suffolk) is thought to have played a significant part. Richard himself avoided overt involvement in the family feud with the Staffords, save for his appearances in the King’s bench in February 1451 and the following Easter term to stand bail for his brother.35 Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iii. 198. That he acted likewise in the autumn of that year for the de la Pole retainer Edward Grimston, provides a firm indication that by this date, at least, he was firmly attached to the circle now offering support to the widowed Duchess Alice. Grimston had been indicted at the height of Cade’s rebellion in July 1450 for having plotted in 1447 with the late duke and Master Thomas Kent, the clerk of the King’s council, to put the duke’s son and heir, John de la Pole, on the throne after marrying him to Margaret Beaufort. The charge now ended in his acquittal.36 KB27/762, rex rots. 8, 15; R.L. Storey, End of the House of Lancaster, 74.

In the years since he had served as knight of the shire for Oxfordshire Harcourt had been appointed to no more than four ad hoc commissions in the county, two of them directly arising from his part in the granting of taxes as a Member of the Commons, and it was not until after the defeat of the court party at St. Albans in 1455 that he was placed on the local bench. In turn, his role as a j.p. led to his nomination in the following spring as a mediator in the dispute between Eynsham abbey and John Langley II* over title to property in Lemhill.37 CCR, 1454-61, pp. 133-4. It may be that he had received some training in the law, for he had earlier acted as an arbiter in a dispute over land at Glympton (Oxon. RO, M2/D/41, 42), and later expressed an opinion that ‘Oxenforde lawe’ [presumably as applied at Oxford university] was ‘no lawe of grete autoryte ne worshipe’ (Magdalen Coll., Shipton-upon-Cherwell deeds, 4a). He and his wife were pardoned again, this time as residing at Combe in Oxfordshire, in March 1458.38 C67/42, m. 10. It is evident from his removal from the bench in May 1459 that he had lost the confidence of the Lancastrian regime, and this view of his political allegiance is confirmed by his rise to prominence in the autumn of 1460 after the defeat of the King’s forces at Northampton. All four Harcourt brothers then displayed a unanimous and wholehearted commitment to the Yorkists, taking their lead from Sir Robert. Richard himself was returned to the Parliament summoned to assemble on 7 Oct. as a representative for Oxfordshire, at the same time as Sir Robert won election for Berkshire. While sitting in the Commons six weeks later Richard was not only appointed sheriff of the same two counties, but was also granted for life, as a ‘King’s esquire’, the prestigious office of parker of Cornbury (previously held by Lord Sudeley, and before him by the duke and duchess of Suffolk). Another brother, William, was made escheator in Warwickshire and Leicestershire. These appointments were confirmed after Edward of York seized the throne.39 CPR, 1452-61, p. 636; 1461-7, pp. 7, 13. Harcourt took out a pardon as former sheriff on 5 Feb. 1462: C67/45, m. 43. Furthermore, it was expressly to reward Richard for his loyal service to the new King’s father and himself that in September 1462 Edward IV granted him and his wife Edith in tail-male the manor of Shotteswell, Warwickshire, worth £18 p.a. The manor, recently forfeited by James Butler, earl of Wiltshire, had once belonged to Edith’s father, so support for the new regime also served to further Harcourt’s territorial ambitions. He attempted to consolidate his position in the same area of Warwickshire by purchasing from William Verney land at Ratley, Upton and Kites Hardwick. In fact, ownership of this property had for long been the cause of dissension with Richard Dalby II*, and to establish his dubious title Harcourt impleaded Dalby on a charge of forging documents. He may have been successful in the short term, and the royal grant of Shotteswell was exempted from the Acts of Resumption passed in the Parliaments of 1467 and 1472 (on the latter occasion when Harcourt was again an MP). Nevertheless, the Harcourts were inevitably to lose the manor when the Butlers were restored in blood under Henry VII.40 CPR, 1461-7, p. 198; VCH Warws. v. 149; PROME, xiii. 284; xiv. 170; CCR, 1468-76, no. 111; C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 509.

Together with his elder brother, Sir Robert, their cousin Sir Thomas Erdington and brother-in-law William Browning, in June 1462 Richard was bound to the King in the sum of £133 11s. 9d. to be paid at Easter following, and the same amount payable at Christmas 1463, but the reason for these bonds is not explained. The legal action which Erdington took against him and Browning in the court of common pleas in the Michaelmas term of 1462 was perhaps related to their payment, or else to the transfer of Erdington’s Dorset estate into our MP’s possession.41 CPR, 1461-7, p. 300; CP40/806, rot. 196d; 808, rots. 200d, 204d, 218d. By 1466 Richard had been replaced as party to the bonds by his brother William: CPR, 1461-7, p. 478. In 1464 the parkership of Cornbury was confirmed to Richard for life, with a daily wage of 3d.42 CPR, 1461-7, p. 359. His elder brother had recently been promoted to the rank of Knight of the Garter, and he himself received knighthood at the coronation of Elizabeth Wydeville in the following year. When he was appointed sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire again, in 1466, the King, mindful of the great costs and losses he was likely to sustain in the office, ordered an assignment of 100 marks to be levied on the issues of his bailiwick as compensation.43 E404/73/2/39; E403/837, m. 3. Harcourt’s diligence in resisting rebels against the Crown in Oxfordshire, probably during this term as sheriff, was to earn him in May 1468 a life-annuity of £20 from the same source.44 CPR, 1467-77, p. 85.

Naturally enough, the Harcourts’ position of influence at the royal court and in the localities led to desirable marriage contracts for their children and themselves. In July 1463 Richard had arranged the marriage of Christopher, his eldest son and heir apparent, to Joan, the younger of the daughters and coheirs of the wealthy Norfolk landowner Sir Miles Stapleton;45 For the date of the marriage agreement, see the codicil of Stapleton’s will: PCC 16 Godyn (PROB11/5, ff. 123v-125). See also Bodl. D.D. Harcourt mss, c.39/11. and when Stapleton died in 1466 he himself took as his second wife Sir Miles’s widow, Katherine de la Pole. He persuaded Christopher, now heir to his late mother’s St. Cler estates, to confirm a settlement of two of the St. Cler manors in Surrey on his new wife as part of her jointure, which he duly did in January 1468,46 CP, v. 397; CCR, 1461-8, p. 465. Christopher collaborated with the other St. Cler coheirs in attempting to take possession of two manors in Kent during the Readeption, but failed to substantiate his claim in the law courts: C140/42/46; Peds. Plea Rolls, 434-5; CCR, 1476-85, no. 50. and at the same time (Sir) William Calthorpe*, the husband of Katherine’s daughter, the elder Stapleton heiress, handed over to him and Katherine the profits accrued from the Norfolk manor of Ingham over the past two years, which amounted to £80.47 F. Blomefield, Norf. ix. 321. Harcourt had been a feoffee for a settlement on Calthorpe and his wife in Mar. 1464: CIPM Hen. VII, i. 976. Indeed, Katherine brought Harcourt a considerable income from her Stapleton jointure and dower. A settlement made on her by Sir Miles in 1456 had promised her tenancy for life of nine manors and the moieties of seven more in Norfolk, Suffolk, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Berkshire and Yorkshire,48 CP25(1)/293/73/412. and although subsequent transactions, probably made at the time of the marriages of their daughters, diminished these expectations,49 CFR, xx. 192-4. she nevertheless kept possession until her death of Ingham, Waxham, Lammas and Sterston in Norfolk, Weybread in Suffolk, and North Moreton and Hemseys in Berkshire, which provided revenues well in excess of £50 p.a.50 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 518, 1096-7. A similar valuation had been put on them at Stapleton’s death: C140/19/19. It is possible, too, that Katherine also retained her jointure in Yorkshire, worth some £30 p.a. more, although as had happened with regard to his first wife’s estates, Harcourt had to defend her interests in the law courts. He and his wife were sued in the court of common pleas in the 1470s by Brian Stapleton, a distant kinsman of Sir Miles, for possession of the Yorkshire manor of Cotherstone and moieties of Bedale and Askham, as well as for North Moreton, under the terms of an ancient entail made in 1354, since the male issue of the grantor had failed at Sir Miles’s death. The Harcourts produced in evidence a deed of February 1464 whereby Askham had been settled on Sir Miles and Katherine and the issue of the former, and although the outcome regarding the Yorkshire properties is unclear, at least with regard to the Berkshire manor they successfully rebutted Stapleton’s claim.51 Peds. Plea Rolls, 429-30; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. vi (1), 107-8; C66/532, m. 10d. Katherine was herself an heiress, although much of the property held by her late father, Sir Thomas de la Pole, descended in tail-male, and when her brother had died a minor and unmarried in 1430, little of the family property passed to her, the bulk going instead to her cousin William (the ill-fated duke of Suffolk).52 Baker, ii. 161; C138/47/56; C139/50/45.

The kinship of Harcourt’s wife with the de la Poles affected his subsequent career by bringing him even closer to the attention of the duke’s widow, Alice, the dowager duchess, to whom he and Katherine sold her manor of Norton under Hamden in Somerset for £200.53 C54/328, m. 10d (the calendared version in CCR, 1476-85, no. 102 is incorrect in some details). The descent of Norton was said in 1430 to be governed by tail-male (C139/50/45), but perhaps Katherine had recovered it following the murder of her cousin Duke William in 1450. In a letter written to Thomas Stonor II* Sir Richard asked for him and his wife to be recommended ‘to owr owne good lady, my lady of Suffolk’, and expressed pleasure at the news that she was in good health. Further evidence of their amicable relations comes from another letter, sent in October 1468 to Sir John Paston† by an unknown correspondent, who wrote that ‘Thai entende to have a man of my Lady of Suthfolks sheryve and specially Harcort’. Whoever ‘thai’ may have been, they were not so influential as was thought, for Sir Richard was not appointed sheriff again. Yet he seems to have remained loyal to Edward IV throughout the years of crisis which ensued. He referred in a note, probably written in early 1470, to his lack of leisure owing to ‘the besynesse that I have aboute the Kynges maters atte this tyme’.54 Stonor Letters, i (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, xxix), 112-14; Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 388. Following the murder of his elder brother by the Staffords, on 14 Nov. that year, the government of the Readeption removed Sir Richard from the Norfolk bench, but Edward IV, on his return to England in the next spring, showed every confidence in having the Harcourts’ full support. Two days after his victory at Barnet on 14 Apr. 1471, the King wrote to Sir Richard’s son, Christopher, and nephew, John (now head of the main line of the family seated at Stanton Harcourt), asking them to give thanks to God for the outcome of the battle, and commanding them to raise the able-bodied men of Oxfordshire to make good his triumph.55 Stonor Letters, iii (Cam. Misc. xiii), 10. That he did not write to Sir Richard himself (who was appointed to the official commission of array for the county issued just a few days later), may suggest that our MP was already with the royal forces, and had fought at Edward’s side.

Harcourt had witnessed transactions on behalf of the dowager duchess of Suffolk in March 1471, and evidently remained attached to her for the rest of her life.56 CCR, 1468-76, no. 666. In 1474 when he instructed William Stonor to raise £50 in part payment of a debt owing from his late father’s estate, he told him to deliver it to the ‘tresorer of my lady’s howse’: Stonor Letters, i. 150-1. In turn this led to a close relationship with Alice’s son, Duke John, and perhaps in some part to Harcourt’s election to Parliament as a knight of the shire for Norfolk. On 21 Sept. 1472 John Paston† wrote to his brother Sir John to report that his hopes of being elected for this county could not now be fulfilled, ‘for my lord of Norffolk [John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk] and my lord of Suffolk wer agreid more then a fortnyght go to haue Syr Robert Wyngfeld and Syr Rychard Harcort’.57 Paston Letters, i. 577. The latter’s tenure jure uxoris of the Stapleton manors in Norfolk gave Harcourt the necessary property qualification to conform to the electoral statutes, and he was a member of the local bench, so to what extent the duke of Suffolk’s backing influenced the decision of the shire gentry at the election remains open to debate. But he was duly returned, and Sir John Paston had to seek a seat elsewhere. While they were in the ‘Parlement Howse’ during the second session, in March 1473, Paston received another letter from his brother, referring to the nomination of their kinsman John Blennerhasset as one of the tax collectors in Norfolk, and asking him and Harcourt to sue for Blennerhasset’s release from ‘that thanklesse offyce’. Sir John was to ask Harcourt who had been responsible for the nomination (which normally fell to the shire knights).58 Ibid. i. 589. Harcourt became a feoffee of the duke of Suffolk’s widespread estates at some point before August 1476, and he subsequently witnessed important transactions made for the benefit of his duchess, Elizabeth, who was the King’s sister.59 CAD, ii. A3355; v. A10950-2; CCR, 1476-85, no. 283. He also had a part to play in the fulfillment of the covenants entered for the marriage of the duke’s son and heir apparent, the earl of Lincoln, to the queen’s niece, the grand-daughter of William, earl of Arundel. At the request of the duke he made a transfer of his estates to a new body of feoffees on 17 Apr. 1483.60 CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 980; Harl. Ch. 43 I 51.

Yet, however important Harcourt’s links with the de la Poles and through them with the Yorkist royal family, his contacts with other lords both spiritual and temporal should not be overlooked. One of his daughters married a member of the lesser nobility: by the terms of a contract made on 25 Mar. 1465 it was agreed that she, Anne, should marry Henry Fiennes, the young son and heir apparent of William, Lord Saye and Sele. Harcourt paid Lord Saye 300 marks for the match, while in return Anne was promised a valuable jointure. Lord Saye died fighting on Edward IV’s side at Barnet,61 His gds. Richard, s. of Henry and Anne, was said to have been born two days earlier, on 12 Apr.: CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1079. leaving Henry still a minor, but the terms of the agreement were fulfilled in 1474 with a settlement providing Anne with a life-interest in a large part of the estates belonging to his mother, the heiress of the Wykehams of Oxfordshire and Hampshire.62 CP25(1)/294/76/99. Unfortunately, when Henry died on 1 Aug. 1476 Harcourt proved unable to secure the wardship and marriage of the next heir, his grandson Richard Fiennes, which were granted on 17 Mar. following to the duke of Gloucester, although he did secure the stewardship of the Wykeham manors of Broughton and Bloxham, with an annual fee of £5.63 VCH Hants, iv. 199; VCH Oxon. ix. 88; CP, xi. 483; CPR, 1476-85, p. 44. Anne then married John Mountfort, s. and h. app. of Sir Simon Mountfort†: Genealogist, n.s. xxv. 90. For many years Harcourt had served the Talbot earls of Shrewsbury as steward of certain of their estates, and during the third session of the Parliament of 1472, in October 1473, he was confirmed in that post for the duration of the minority of the heir to the earldom.64 CPR, 1467-77, p. 400. Similarly, for at least 22 years he held office by appointment of William Waynflete, bishop of Winchester, as bailiff of his liberties in Oxfordshire and Berkshire, and it was while he was so engaged that he was returned to Parliament for the former county in 1478.

Meanwhile, in March 1475, while sitting in the Commons in the previous Parliament, Harcourt had obtained a royal grant extending his parkership of Cornbury for the lifetime of his only surviving son, William.65 CPR, 1467-77, p. 510. His eldest son, Christopher, had died in the previous year, and another, Edward, some four years earlier. Sir Richard had arranged a lucrative marriage for Edward (as he did for his other children), in January 1470, by agreeing that the young man would marry a lady called Isabel, who had ‘great possessions and goods’. He promised to settle on the couple property worth £40 p.a. for their lives, but although Edward spent 200 marks of his wife’s dower before he died Sir Richard never fulfilled his part of the contract, forcing Isabel and her second husband, William Paulet esquire, to petition the chancellor for redress.66 C1/40/115. Similarly, the marriage of another of Harcourt’s children, Alice, had also led to a summons to appear before the chancellor. Alice had been married to the 14-year-old William Bessels, who stood to inherit the substantial landed holdings of his grandmother, Margery, widow of Sir Peter Bessels* and now wife to William Warbleton*. However, in the early 1460s his father’s widow, Clemence, and her new husband, John Nowers, claimed that although the marriage was Clemence’s to sell, to the advantage of William’s unmarried sisters, any financial gain had gone to Warbleton when he arranged the match with our MP.67 C1/28/384-5; Vis. Berks. (Harl. Soc. lvii), 70.

Harcourt’s relations with other members of the local gentry are less well documented, or else raise questions which cannot now be satisfactorily answered. He was particularly close to Thomas Stonor II, whom he addressed in a letter as ‘my ryght worshepfull fadyr’, referring to Stonor’s wife as ‘my modyr’ and to his son, William Stonor†, as ‘my brothyr’. It might be thought that Harcourt had married a daughter of Thomas Stonor at some point between the death of Edith St. Cler and his marriage to Katherine de la Pole, but there is no evidence to support this. Even more curiously, he referred to one of Stonor’s daughters, who was about to marry John Cottesmore, as ‘my dowter and yours’. This is difficult to explain, unless Harcourt was the girl’s god-father, or unless she had been married as a child to another of his sons, since deceased. Harcourt was much concerned with preparations for the wedding, and his wife sent a ring to be used at the ceremony.68 Stonor Letters, i. 112-14. Together with Stonor in the 1460s he had become deeply involved in the affairs of the dowager duchess of Suffolk’s kinsman, Sir John Arundell of Lanherne, an involvement which caused them both considerable embarrassment after Arundell supported the Lancastrians at Tewkesbury in 1471 and was fined 6,000 marks by the victorious Edward IV as a consequence. After he had received 2,000 marks, the King assigned the residue of the fine to an Italian creditor, and at Arundell’s request Harcourt, Stonor and Edward Grimston were bound to pay what still remained due on Arundell’s behalf, after being assigned certain of his and his wife Katherine Chideok’s estates as security for repayment. In February 1473 Arundell undertook in the staple of Westminster to pay the three men £400 before the following June, but his failure to do so before his death that same year caused them further difficulties, which were compounded for Harcourt when Stonor also died, in April 1474. Harcourt wrote to William Stonor on 25 Nov. asking for speedy payment of a sum of £100 owed him by the deceased, as he was suffering ‘grete costes and charges’ and as yet could get no payment from Arundell’s widow, and ‘now most yeve grete good to the Kyng’. In her turn, the widowed Katherine filed a petition in Chancery alleging that Harcourt had refused to transfer certain properties to her. He and Grimston eventually relinquished her Cornish estates in March 1475, but this was not the end of the matter for in 1481 Katherine’s stepdaughter, Anne, and her husband Sir James Tyrell† brought an action against him in the court of common pleas regarding her inheritance.69 Bodl. Chs. Oxon. a. 13/248, 251-2, 264; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 181; Stonor Letters, i. 129, 150-1, 155; C1/66/140; CP40/876, m. 458; CCR, 1468-76, nos. 1384-5; C241/254/182; Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR19/23, 24.

At this late stage in Harcourt’s career he enjoyed a prominent place in royal government. He was recorded in attendance in the ‘sterre chambre’ at Westminster as one of the ‘lordes of the Kyng’s counsaill’ on 21 Nov. 1481; he made the King a loan of 100 marks shortly afterwards, and a later pardon referred to him as formerly Edward IV’s ‘lieutenant’ in Oxfordshire.70 Sel. Cases bef. King’s Council (Selden Soc. xxxv), 118; E405/70, rot. 6; C67/53, m. 13. In these final years of the reign he clearly occupied a dominant position in the locality. Not prepared to risk his status and landed possessions by opposing Richard of Gloucester’s seizure of the crown in the spring of 1483, he dutifully took part in the coronation ceremonies.71 Coronation of Ric. III ed. Sutton and Hammond, 272. Perhaps an association with the new King’s friend, Francis, Viscount Lovell (the grandson of his earliest patron),72 CCR, 1476-85, no. 945. eased the transition, and on 24 Sept. he proved able to persuade King Richard to sell him the wardship and marriage of his grandson, Lord Saye, for ‘a certain sum’. What is more surprising is that when his nephew John and kinsman Sir William Stonor rose in rebellion just a few weeks later, Harcourt remained so staunchly loyal to Richard III as to be placed on the commissions sent to Oxfordshire to arrest the traitors and confiscate their lands. Furthermore, on 25 Feb. following he was granted a wardship in Surrey previously held by another of the rebels.73 CPR, 1476-85, pp. 373, 384. Even so, he saw fit to take out a pardon that same month, and when at an unknown date the King asked him for a loan of £200 he probably complied.74 C67/51, m. 5; BL Harl. MS. 433 ed. Horrox and Hammond, iii. 128. Future relations with the King were perhaps smoothed by Harcourt’s personal connexion with the chancellor, John Russell, bishop of Lincoln, who since 1480 had been a feoffee of his Dorset properties, and whom he was to ask to supervise his will.75 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 163. It is unlikely, in view of his advanced age, that Harcourt fought at the battle of Bosworth in August 1485, although the proximity of the battlefield to the Harcourts’ manor must have made it difficult for his tenants to stand aloof. The victorious Henry VII removed him from both the parkership of Cornbury and the Oxfordshire bench,76 CPR, 1485-94, p. 137. but reinstated him as a j.p. just three months later, and granted him a pardon in the following spring.77 C67/53, m. 13.

On 27 Sept. 1486, when he was close to death, Harcourt set out his testamentary wishes regarding his estates, arranging that after the death of his widow his two Dorset manors along with property he had purchased in Surrey and certain Berkshire holdings should pass in tail-male to his only surviving son, William (whom he named as an executor). This entail also favoured Richard and Simon Harcourt, the younger sons of his dead son Christopher, in preference to his heir, their elder brother Miles, who was then aged 18; and these two boys were also given preference with regard to Harcourt’s lands in Asthall Leigh. During his minority Miles was to be kept under the governance of the Sussex esquire Richard Lewknor* (the husband of his great-aunt Elizabeth St. Cler), and be supported with the income from two former St. Cler manors in Oxfordshire and Sussex, which he was to have when he came of age if he behaved well, otherwise Harcourt’s feoffees were to retain the manors, holding them to the use of Miles’s issue. Clearly, Miles had failed to win his grandfather’s approval. In the will Sir Richard had made at Wytham two days earlier, he had left his daughter Isabel 100 marks for her marriage, together with an annuity of ten marks for life. His widow was to have the guardianship not only of three of his grandsons (Lord Saye and Simon and Richard Harcourt), but also of his grand-daughter Margaret, the daughter of Edward Harcourt, who was left 100 marks for her marriage, too. Harcourt asked his executors to set aside £300 to pay his debts. Although he left £20 to the parish church at Wytham and 20 marks to Evesham abbey for prayers for his soul, it was in Abingdon abbey that he requested burial and stipulated that 1,000 masses were to be sung there immediately after he died. The abbey was to receive valuable chapel ornaments and hangings, along with certain lands and tenements, in return for daily services for his soul and those of his former and present wife. He died on 1 Oct.78 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 163, 167-8, 201; iii. 1130; PCC 27 Logge. William had earlier benefited from a settlement made by Sir Richard on him and his wife of the manor of ‘Lee Hylle’, Oxon., and lands in Glos. and Berks.: Bodl. D.D. Harcourt mss, c. 1/5. It is of interest that when Harcourt’s widow made her will less than two years later, on 7 July 1488, she elected to be buried in a different conventual church, that of Rewley abbey near Oxford, and although she made provision for prayers for her first husband, Sir Miles Stapleton, she made no mention of our MP. Her executors were her two daughters, Elizabeth Calthorpe and Joan, Christopher Harcourt’s widow, who was by then married to John Huddleston†, later a knight for the body of Henry VII.79 PCC 17 Milles (PROB11/8, ff. 141v-142). Katherine was commemorated in Ingham church by a monumental brass placed on Stapleton’s tomb.80 Blomefield, ix. 324.