BROWE, John

The family of Browe hailed originally from Cheshire, but acquired the Rutland manor of Teigh on the marriage of our MP’s grandfather, Sir Hugh, to the heiress of Sir Christopher Folville. Sir Hugh’s remunerative military career funded the purchase of another manor in the same county, at Woodhead in Bridge Casterton. His ill-advised support for the Percys at the battle of Shrewsbury led to the permanent loss of much of the family’s Cheshire estates and so further concentrated their interests on Rutland. Nevertheless, they maintained important links with the county of their origin, where a junior branch of the family remained settled.2 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 384-6; Admin. Co. Palatine of Chester (Chetham Soc. ser. 3, xxxv), 198, 232; Cheshire and Chester Archs., Cholmondeley of Cholmondeley mss, DCHC/885. On 11 May 1424 John’s father contracted him in marriage to a Cheshire bride, Anne Huls, and undertook to settle on the couple lands worth ten marks p.a. in Cheshire with lands to the same value if the couple were still living after four years. No marriage portion is specified, and the bride, although not an heiress, brought land rather than money with her. She held the manor of Bucknall and various rents in Staffordshire as the jointure settled on her in 1413 on her marriage to Thomas, son and heir-apparent of John Delves*. Under the terms of the 1424 contract, these lands were to be held by our MP’s father for a period of four years. Since he was also to have the keeping of the couple in that period, it is a fair surmise that the four years represented the last years of our MP’s minority and that he came of a age in 1428.3 T. Madox, Formulare Anglicanum, no. clxxix; CIPM, xxiii. 243; xxiv. 704; CCR, 1422-9, p. 5; CFR, xvi. 348-50.

Browe soon began to play a part in public affairs, sustained no doubt by the property he held under the terms of this contract. In company with his father, he may have attested the Rutland elections of 1432 and 1433 (although the attestor was perhaps his uncle), and in 1434, described as resident at Teigh, he was one of the gentry of the county sworn not to maintain peace-breakers. It is a measure of his family’s importance and the difficulty of finding suitably-qualified MPs in so small a shire that he himself was returned at the election of 22 Sept. 1435, an election his father attested.4 C219/14/3-5; CPR, 1429-36, p. 370. On his wife’s death in 1436 the property he held in her right reverted to the Delves family, and this loss may have encouraged him to embark on a career of service.5 CFR, xvi. 300, 348-50; CIPM, xxiv. 704. Given with his father’s connexions with the house of York, it was natural that he should look to Richard, duke of York, for patronage. In 1439 (when sued for detinue of charters by Thomas Seymark, a neighbour whose widow he was later to marry) he was described as living at Fotheringhay, where the duke had one of his main residences, and on 26 Mar. 1441 he was among those who mustered at Portsdown in the army that the duke, as lieutenant-general, took to Normandy.6 CP40/713, rot. 381d; E101/53/33, m. 1. It is possible, but unlikely, that the soldier of 1441 was an older John then at the end of a long military career. This John served under Edward, duke of York, in the Agincourt campaign and under Sir William Porter† in that of 1417: E101/45/19, m. 4; 51/2, m. 31. He was in the garrison at Coutances in 1426-8 and is last recorded in the garrison at Fresnay-le-Vicomte in 1431: Add. Ch. 11748; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, nouv. acq. fr. 8637/35, 8602/10; fr. 25767/139, 25768/296. The soldier is probably to be distinguished from the namesake who served as a tax collector in Rutland in 1414 and 1415, attested three parliamentary elections there between 1419 and 1423, and was a Rutland coroner in the 1420s: CFR, xiv. 86, 121; C219/12/3, 6, 13/2; CCR, 1422-9, p. 371. The latter was our MP’s uncle who was still alive in Nov. 1433: CCR, 1429-35, p. 291. The possibility that the uncle was the Rutland MP of 1435 is to be discounted. The return describes the MP as ‘of Teigh’ whereas the uncle was ‘of Bridge Casterton’ and ‘of Stamford’: C219/14/5; CAD, i. B716; People and Property in Med. Stamford ed. Rogers, 661, 708, 722; CP40/670, rot. 276. The uncle rather than our MP may, however, have been the attestor of 1432 and 1433. This connexion with the duke is probably the explanation for his entry into the royal household. By Michaelmas 1438 he was in receipt of robes as an esquire of the hall and chamber, as he continued to be down to the failure of the surviving household accounts in 1452.7 E101/408/25, f. 7; 409/9; 409/11, f. 38v; 409/16; 410/1, f. 30; 410/3; 410/6, f. 40v; 410/9, f. 42v. It is not known when his Household service ended, but it is likely that it was a namesake who was yeoman of the catery in 1458: CPR, 1452-61, p. 387. His responsibilities there took him to France once more, as part of the expedition to bring Margaret of Anjou to England between July 1444 and October 1445.8 Add. 23938, f. 14v.

Browe’s connections at Court may have assisted him in the making of a potentially very lucrative second marriage. Before his second journey to France he had married Elizabeth Tame, who was both an heiress in her own right and held dower from two previous husbands.9 CP40/738, rot. 76d; C67/39, m. 22. Regrettably for him, however, she was to have some difficulty in making good her title. At its full extent, her inheritance consisted of a moiety of the manors of Abbotsley in Huntingdonshire and Floore in Northamptonshire with other lands in those counties, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire, together worth in excess of £50 p.a., and the reversion of the Northamptonshire manor of Hill in Milton Malzor. By a fine levied on the morrow of St. Martin 1448 only part of this inheritance was settled on Browe and Elizabeth and her heirs, while her lands in Northamptonshire and Leicestershire seem to have remained in the hands of Thomas Tame*, her father’s half-brother and heir male.10 CP25(1)/293/71/340; CP26(1)/27, 31-32 Hen. VI. In 1412 the bulk of the estate was assessed for taxation at just over £50 p.a.: Feudal Aids, vi. 463, 482, 497, 499. None the less, even the lands she brought him were enough to increase his status and help explain his second election to represent Rutland at hustings held on 16 Jan. 1449.11 C219/15/6.

Less happily, Browe was soon after involved in a major episode of local disorder. On 29 Apr. 1450 he was indicted before Thomas Herryson, coroner of Holland, for receiving the murderers of one John Ankys at Deeping St. James, that is, in the immediate neighbourhood of the Lincolnshire estates (at Greatford, Barholm and Braceborough) he held in right of his wife and near his father’s manor of Woodhead. To this indictment had been added, in the following Michaelmas term, the appeal of Ankys’s widow. This murder was an episode in the dispute between Leo, Lord Welles, and the tenants of the duchy of Lancacter lordships of Spalding and Pinchbeck, and our MP was clearly involved as a supporter of Welles. In the indictment, he is styled, as he is on other occasions, as ‘of Maxey’ in the soke of Peterborough, very near Deeping St. James; and the manor of Maxey, the property of the Beauforts, had been in Welles’s hands since his marriage to the widow of John Beaufort, duke of Somerset, in 1447. Later, on 20 Sept. 1451, Browe witnessed a deed for Welles at Maxey, and it may be that, as he waited to inherit his patrimony, he briefly resided in that lord’s household.12 KB9/268/104; C140/3/32; J. Mackman, ‘Lord Welles’s attacks on Spalding and Pinchbeck’, in Foundations of Med. Scholarship ed. Brand and Cunningham, 183-96. The appeal terminated in the acquittal of the principals in Apr. 1454, and on 9 Feb. 1456 our MP appeared in person in the ct. of KB to plead a pardon, dated in the previous Nov., against the Crown suit: KB27/767, rot. 54.

That wait ended at about the same time as Browe witnessed this deed for Welles, but, from our MP’s financial point of view, it did not end entirely satisfactorily. At his father’s death, shortly before 18 Oct. 1451, his main estates may have been bound by a yet-undischarged mortgage. At Michaelmas 1448 Robert had taken a ten-year lease of his own estates from these feoffees, headed by the Northamptonshire lawyer, William Aldewyncle*, and two wealthy merchants of Stamford, William and John Brown, at an annual rent of £200, a considerable premium of their real value. The purpose of this arrangement is uncertain, but the discharge of debt is an obvious possibility.13 E326/5553. Further, and in the long term more significantly, our MP also had to admit the defeat of his family’s claim to five Norfolk manors that their kinsman, the renowned soldier Sir Robert Knolles, had alienated to the college of the Holy Trinity in Pontefract. In May 1453 he made a final acknowledgment of the college’s title, and thus all that was left to him of the Knolles lands were some minor holdings in the parish of Camberwell (Surrey).14 PROME, xii. 12-13; CPR, 1446-52, p. 425; CCR, 1447-54, p. 434; 1454-61, p. 376; CAD, i. C380, 599.

These deductions from his patrimony may have given added urgency to Browe’s efforts to realize in full the expectations of his second wife. This led him to enter into an agreement he soon had cause to regret. On 5 Aug. 1452 he contracted the marriage of his stepdaughter, Elizabeth Seymark, to Thomas Pygge of Boston (Lincolnshire), a royal auditor and receiver, with the purpose of harnessing Pygge’s aid to the recovery of these lands.15 For Pygge’s offices: CPR, 1446-52, pp. 70, 469-70, 513, 560; 1452-61, p. 19. Instead of paying a cash portion, he and the elder Elizabeth undertook to maintain all legal actions that the groom should take in their names for their part of the manors of Floore and Abbotsley, and agreed that whatever could be recovered would be settled on Pygge and the younger Elizabeth and the latter’s issue. Alternatively, if the groom had to resort to purchase to obtain this property, they agreed to release their right and warrant the title of the groom’s heirs. For his part Pygge promised to settle a jointure on his bride to the same value as the landed property that came to him under the terms of the contract.16 It is not certain the younger Elizabeth was her mother’s heiress. Indeed, according to G. Baker, Northants. i. 152, her mother had a son and three daughters by Thomas Seymark, but, while it is certain that the latter was succeeded by his son and namesake, it may be that the son was the issue of an earlier wife: C139/175/13; CP25(1)/179/95/129. It is not known whether her mother had any issue by her first husband. Unfortunately, however, like much else that Browe turned his hand to, things did not go to plan. Rather than removing legal difficulties, the arrangement simply created new ones. Pygge soon sued his father-in-law in Chancery for failure to make the contracted settlements, and in 1455 he asked for a writ of subpoena requiring our MP not only to appear to explain this failure but also to keep the peace towards him. The result was another defeat for Browe. By a series of common recoveries and a final concord of 1458 the greater part of the Tame inheritance – a moiety of the manor of Floore and other lands – was settled on Pygge, his wife and her heirs. Browe and the elder Elizabeth retained only a moiety of the manor of Abbotsley, not included in the fine, and lands at Benefield in Northamptonshire.17 C1/22/104; 25/209-12 (212 is a copy of the marriage contract); CP40/789, rots. 431, 431d, 434; 790, rot. 121; CP25(1)/293/73/433. This arrangement appears to have temporarily repaired relations between the two men for, in the same term, Pygge was among those who offered surety on his father-in-law’s behalf. Yet some rancour remained: in Michaelmas term 1460, Browe sued his son-in-law for trespass, and litigation was pending between them as late as February 1468 when Pygge had an assize of novel disseisin pending against our MP for the Tame lands in Lincolnshire.18 CCR, 1454-61, pp. 301-2; KB27/798, rot. 56; CP40/820, rot. 460; 822, rot. 90; 823, rot. 326; JUST1/1547, rot. 10.

By this time Browe had unwisely entered into a transaction which was to result in a more damaging defeat. Under the terms of the will of the Norfolk knight, Sir Henry Inglose*, made in June 1451, the manor of Pickworth, very near our MP’s manor at Woodhead, was to be sold to the disinheritance of his son, Henry. The son sought to subvert the loss by himself selling the manor to our MP. On 13 Feb. 1457 the two men entered into an indenture: Browe agreed to pay 300 marks for the manor, £40 to be paid on feoffment or release to be made before Easter, and thereafter £50 a year. Considering that the manor had been purchased by Sir Henry for as much as 1,000 marks some 30 years before, this was a bargain price. The sharp reduction was partly due to some unspecified calamity in the intervening period – a deed of 1436 says that the vill ‘per subitaneam adventuram ad vastum et destructionem devenitur’, which suggests something other than enclosure – but equally important was the fact that it was not the vendor’s to sell.19 E326/8848, 10471. That right lay in the hands of Henry’s younger brother, Robert, and Edmund Wychingham, as Sir Henry’s executors and feoffees, and they had already, in a case heard before the Rutland justices of assize on 22 May 1456, won damages and costs of 40 marks against Henry for an unlawful entry into the manor. Moreover, they had also found another buyer in the royal justice, Robert Danvers*. By a fine levied in Michaelmas term 1456 they had conveyed the manor to his feoffees, headed by (Sir) John Fortescue*, c.j.KB.20 KB27/779, rot. 74d; CP25(1)/192/9/17.

A confrontation between the two buyers was inevitable. Indeed, if later litigation is to be taken literally, it had already begun. Browe, Henry Inglose and others allegedly forcibly entered the manor in August 1456. There can be no doubt that our MP was well aware of the risks he was undertaking in agreeing to buy it. Under the terms of the agreement of 13 Feb., in addition to the sale price, he undertook to compensate the vendor for as much of the costs and damages of 40 marks as seemed reasonable to two lawyers, Richard Welby* and John Fincham. He soon found himself having to defend his position in court. According to a petition presented by Danvers in late 1456 or early 1457, Browe, ‘imagynyng as well by gret mayntenaunce and champertie as by grete routes and riottes’ to so intimidate him that he dare not approach the disputed manor, had assembled in the previous August upwards of 300 men to ambush and threaten him at Pickworth. Almost certainly it is this petition which explains why, on 10 June 1458, our MP was obliged to enter into recognizance for £100 to the King and find four sureties in £40 for his appearance in Chancery on the following morrow of St. Martin and for his good behaviour to Danvers.21 C1/26/618; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 301-2.

In the meantime the judge had supplemented his suit in Chancery by suing his rival in the court of common pleas for forcible entry into the disputed manor. Browe and his three co-defendants, including Henry Inglose, were convicted and condemned in damages of £210 when, in Hilary term 1460, a Rutland jury, most unusually, took the trouble to appear at Westminster. On 28 Jan. 1461 the defendants were summoned to appear in King’s bench on the following quindene of Easter to show why execution of these damages should not be awarded against them.22 CP40/794, rot. 309; KB27/799, rot. 1. Process was also continuing against him in the Chancery case: by recognizances dated 10 Oct. 1460, the same day as the duke of York laid claim to the throne in a Parliament in which Browe was sitting, four sureties, headed by the Cheshire knight, Sir William Brereton, mainperned for our MP’s good behaviour and his appearance in Chancery at one month from Easter. Although he and his mainpernors were able, in December 1461, to secure a pardon for the forfeiture of £600 incurred by his failure to appear, the defeat of his claim was imminent. He had both to satisfy his opponent of damages and to answer the King for the forcible entry into Pickworth. Against this, the writs of embracery he had pending against two Rutland juries, which presumably had been responsible for finding in his rival’s favour, can have offered him little hope.23 CPR, 1461-7, p. 90; KB27/801, rot. 3; 802, rot. 24; 804, rex. rot. 28; 806, rot. 37d; 807, rot. 22.

Desperation led Browe into a dishonest ruse. He and Henry Inglose circulated the story that Sir John Fastolf, a feoffee of Sir Henry Inglose, had, before making release of his right to the disputed manor to the executors who had made the sale to Danvers, made a feoffment of Pickworth to John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, Henry Inglose and others, and delivered seisin through his attorneys, James Gloys, clerk, and William Barker. As John Paston* wrote in a letter dated 9 Feb. 1462, almost certainly to Gloys, such a feoffment was ‘contrarie to the wille’ of Sir Henry, and, if it had indeed been made, was ‘to the gret disclaundre’ of Sir John and to the imperilment of his immortal soul. More importantly for our purposes, it would have rendered invalid the executors’ conveyance to Danvers. Thus, on 17 Mar. 1462, Gloys and Barker, probably at the instigation of Paston, came before the mayor and sheriffs of Norwich to deny any knowledge of such a feoffment and assert that they had not delivered seisin of Pickworth. On 16 May 1463 our MP admitted defeat by granting his lands in Pickworth to Danvers, and the deed was enrolled in Chancery nine days later.24 Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, iv. 30-31; E326/10048; CCR, 1461-8, p. 182. In 1465 Henry Inglose also surrendered his claim to Danvers: CP40/814, rot. 476.

The difficulties these disputes occasioned may have prevented Browe from benefiting from Edward IV’s accession in the way that his association with the house of York may have led him to expect. That association appears to have strengthened with his own troubles in the late 1450s. In February 1458, along with such high-ranking Yorkists as William Hastings and Walter Devereux II*, he was among those who entered into bonds to Alice, dowager-duchess of Suffolk, for the payment of the portion of Duke Richard’s daughter on her marriage to Alice’s son John, duke of Suffolk. His own associates reflect his Yorkist background: in May 1457 Hastings and Walter Blount* mainperned for him in Chancery, as did two other committed Yorkists, George Darell and Roger Eyton*, in October 1460.25 CAD, iv. A6338, 6341; CCR, 1454-61, p. 208; CPR, 1461-7, p. 90. According to F.M. Wright, ‘House of York’ (Johns Hopkins Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1959), p. 263, ‘John Browe of Woodhead’ was York’s receiver of the honours of Clare and Rayleigh until replaced by John Smyth in July 1461, but I have found nothing to support this assertion. Moreover, his son, Thomas, was one of the select band who followed York into exile in Ireland after the defeat at Ludford Bridge and, as a reward, was exempted from the Act of Resumption passed by the Irish Parliament in February 1460. It is possible that Thomas met his death in the campaign of 1460-1.26 Statute Rolls Ire. ed. Berry, ii. 729. His father’s support for York may have been less forthright, but his election to represent Rutland in the Yorkist Parliament of October 1460 implies that he was recognized as a Yorkist partisan.27 C219/16/6. Given his clear Yorkist sympathies, it is surprising that he should have been named as an attestor to the Rutland election to the Lancastrian assembly of 1459: C219/16/5.

In the new reign, however, Browe found not prosperity but a new dispute to add to his quarrels with Pygge and Danvers. In the late 1450s he had contracted his ill-fated son Thomas to Isabel, the daughter of one of the leading gentry of Nottinghamshire, Robert Clifton*. As part of the settlement he instructed his feoffees to convey the manor of Woodhead to Clifton and others to the entent that they settle the manor on the couple in tail-general with remainder to Browe and his heirs.28 E326/5408, 5444. Even before the groom’s death, however, the two families had fallen out. In Easter term 1462 our MP, through the intermediary of his servant, John Sowell, appealed Robert’s illegitimate half-brother, (Sir) Gervase Clifton*, and others for robbery in the time of Henry VI. At the same time, Sir Robert, who had been knighted at Edward IV’s coronation, sued Browe in the court of common pleas for a debt of £400, presumably the sum in which the latter had bound himself to execute his side of the marriage contract. The result of the appeal has not been traced, but Clifton’s suit resulted in the promulgation of outlawry against Browe in the Nottinghamshire county court of 15 Apr. 1465.29 KB27/806, rot. 37; 821, rot. 40; CP40/810, rot. 54.

Meanwhile, the real points at issue in the dispute were being aired in the court of Chancery. According to a petition submitted by Browe between 1461 and 1465, Clifton and his fellow feoffees, following the groom’s death without issue, had refused to fulfill the condition of the feoffment, that is to settle Woodhead on Isabel with remainder to our MP. This petition did not achieve the desired result for, between 1465 and 1467, Browe presented another, on this occasion alleging, in contradiction of his first petition, that the feoffees held the manor on condition that they re-enfeoff him when required. It took yet another petition before what appear to be the full facts emerged. In late 1467 Browe returned to his original claim: Clifton replied that, after Thomas’s death, Isabel had married Thomas Blount*; that Blount had negotiated with our MP for the purchase of the manor; and that, after the sale had been agreed, Browe caused a release he had formerly made to Clifton and others to be enrolled on the dorse of the close roll with the intention that the feoffees, after Isabel’s death, should stand seised to the use of Thomas Blount and his heirs.30 C1/28/367, 33/223, 39/24, 42/100-1. There is no reason to doubt the truth of this story: the release, made at Woodhead on 25 Aug. 1457, is to be found on the close roll under the date 6 July 1467, that is a few days after the end of the first session of a Parliament in which both Browe and Blount sat.31 C54/319, m. 28d (the calendar wrongly gives the date of the release as 1465: CCR, 1461-8, p. 439); E326/9241. Nor, perhaps, is it surprising that Browe should have needed to sell property: his failed attempts to acquire Pickworth must have further burdened an already encumbered inheritance.

Aside from this dispute and his final appearance in Parliament, very little is known about the later years of Browe’s career. It would be interesting to know why, in January 1467, he conveyed all his lands to his neighbour, Henry Makworth of Empingham: the fact that there was only a single feoffee is suggestive of a mortgage and thus provides further evidence of his indebtedness. Later, on 20 Mar. 1469, he took the precaution of suing out a royal pardon, necessary insurance for one so frequently a defendant in the royal courts. Already relatively elderly he does not seem to have played an active role on either side during the crisis of 1470-1, although he did sue out a further pardon during the Readeption. The last years of his life were disturbed by the revival of a claim by the Woodford family of Leicestershire to the manor of Teigh, for, if a later plea is to be credited, on 12 Nov. 1470 Ralph Woodford took from there crops worth 40 marks.32 KB27/845, rot. 46d. For the claim of the Woodfords, also descended from the Folvilles, to the manor of Teigh: VCH Rutland, ii. 153; Cott. Claudius A XIII, f. 252; C1/339/55. It may have been to protect his possession that, at an unknown date, he conveyed the manor to feoffees headed by William, Lord Hastings, Sir Thomas Berkeley† of Wymondham (Leicestershire) and William Hussey*.33 Leics. RO, Sherard mss, DE1431/275.

Browe died between March and Trinity term 1472 (when his heir-male sued Ralph Woodford), and with him the senior male line of the Browes came to an end.34 Vis. Rutland (Harl. Soc. lxxiii), 15; C66/44, m. 3; KB27/844, rot. 5; 845, rot. 46d. His heirs-general were the three daughters of his sister Agnes by his neighbour, John Helwell (alias Heliwell) of Whissendine, and his heir male was William Browe, a kinsman whose precise relationship to him is unclear.35 For Agnes’s will, proved on 1 May 1453, in which she makes no mention of her brother: Lincs. AO, Reg. Chedworth, ff. 7v-8. Initially the manor of Teigh, the principal property remaining to the Browes, came to the latter, but on his death it was disputed between his widow, Eve, and her second husband, William Lacy, on the one hand, and one of the coheiresses, Margaret, wife of Thomas Sherard† of Stapleford (Leicestershire), on the other. Probably it was the latter who sued out of Chancery in July 1476 an inspeximus of a deed of 1415 by which the manor had been settled in tail general on the issue of Robert Browe, and it was she who won the dispute. On 5 Mar. 1477 Hastings, acting as arbiter, awarded the manor to the Sherards on condition that they paid 200 marks to William Browe’s widow.36 CPR, 1476-85, p. 8; Sherard mss, DE1431/282; E.B. Redlich, Hist. Teigh, 44-46. The Sherards appear to have bought out the rights of the other coheiresses: J. Nichols, Leics. ii (1), 345. The other significant holding of the Browes, the manor of Woodhead, had been sold by our MP on the death of his son and heir, as mentioned earlier, but title remained a bone of contention until nearly the end of the century. This was because not only had Sir Hugh Browe purchased the manor despite the fact that it had, in 1359, been entailed on Roger, Lord de la Warre, and his wife, Eleanor, and their issue, but the Browes themselves settled it in tail male in 1394 and 1415. On the death of Richard Blount, the son of the purchaser, it was bought by Hussey, then c.j. KB, who found himself obliged to compensate the other claimants, including John Browe of Nassington in Northamptonshire, who presumably had a claim under the entail of 1415.37 VCH Rutland, ii. 232-3; CIPM, xiii, 57; E326/5409, 5446, 5664-5, 5667, 6033, 10403, 10482, 11666, 11780; J. Biancalana, Fee Tail and Common Recovery, 395-6.

Browe’s career is a singular one. Although he sat as many as four times in Parliament in a period spanning over 30 years, he never held any of the major offices of shire administration and was infrequently appointed to local government commissions. Most remarkable is his exclusion from the county bench on which both his father and grandfather had served. While he may have deliberately eschewed office, it is at least equally likely that his near-continuous involvement in disputes with men of rank, albeit disputes that appear to have involved little in the way of open violence, meant that successive regimes considered him unsuitable for office. It is difficult to judge whether this affected his standing with his neighbours. His returns to Parliament suggest that it did not, and this impression is confirmed in part by his occasional employment in land transactions. In 1439 he was one of the feoffees for the implementation of the will of the Rutland knight, Sir John Basings; in 1443 he was among those to whom his fellow Household servant, John Bellers*, entrusted the Huntingdonshire manor of Sawtry; in 1444 he was a joint lessee in a Northamptonshire manor on behalf of Juliana, widow of (Sir) John Culpepper*; and in 1446, along with his father, he was among the witnesses to a formal instrument declaring that Robert Sherard was entitled to courtesy in his late wife’s estates.38 CIPM, xxvi. 427-9; HMC Hastings, i. 211-12; Northants. RO, Fitzwilliam mss, 662; E. Acheson, Leics. 91 (the instrument is printed in Nichols, ii (1), 348). Nevertheless, it may be something more than a trick of the evidence that these examples of involvement in the affairs of his neighbours date from the period before he found himself drawn into any serious disputes. Moreover, on the several occasions on which he was called upon to find sureties in large sums, it was on members of the affinity of the duke of York rather than his neighbours that he largely relied. In short, his career would seem to provide a further illustration that a landholder involved in a series of protracted disputes could find himself marginalised in county society, particularly, as in the case of Browe, if he was generally the loser.