BRAUNCEPATH, William

William Brauncepath’s father, who probably hailed from a family settled in the Neville lordship of Brancepeth in county Durham, enjoyed a highly successful career at the court of Richard II. After serving as cursor of the Chamber, he was appointed as one of the royal messengers in 1387. He accompanied the King to Ireland in 1394 and was appointed constable of the castle of Limerick. By the end of the reign, when he took part on the King’s ill-judged second expedition to Ireland, he was an esquire of the Chamber in receipt of life annuities of as much as 65 marks.2 CPR, 1385-9, p. 290; 1388-92, p. 319; 1391-6, pp. 258, 493, 502, 506; 1396-9, pp. 38, 152, 495, 549. After his master’s deposition, he was one of the many servants of the ill-fated monarch who benefited from Henry IV’s policy of conciliation: on 9 Nov. 1399 the new King generously confirmed him in all his annuities, and in December 1403, styled as a royal esquire, he was granted the Northamptonshire manor of Radstone forfeited by Thomas Percy, earl of Worcester (although this grant was soon lost).3 CPR, 1399-1401, p. 66; 1401-5, pp. 320, 395. In 1400 he was arrested by the borough authorities of Northampton for ‘malevolent speech’ against the new King, but he was quickly acquitted before a royal comm. of inquiry: CIMisc. vii. 12. He also secured another benefit. The success of his early career had been reflected in his marriage, before September 1392, to the daughter of a Midlands knight. On the childless death of her brother in about 1410 she brought him manors at Glaston and Glooston.4 CPR, 1391-6, p. 157; VCH Rutland, ii. 184; Leics. Village Notes ed. Farnham, ii. 323-4; Feudal Aids, iii. 122; iv. 212.

Despite his advancing age, the elder William undertook to serve in Henry V’s invasion of France. On 26 May 1415, in company with Robert Brut of Thorney (Nottinghamshire), he indented for service with two archers, and it may be that he died on campaign. He was certainly dead by the following 15 Oct., ten days before the battle of Agincourt, when his annuity from the fee farm of Northampton was re-granted.5 E404/31/309; Sloane 4600, f. 254; CPR, 1413-16, p. 365. As his heiress wife outlived him, his death brought our MP a modest inheritance confined to the elder William’s purchases, namely a small manor at Boughton Ho in Weekley, where he appears to have made his home, with lands at Thrapston, Denford and Weldon in Northamptonshire 6 In the absence of an inq. post mortem, these acquisitions have been inferred from CIPM, xvii. 556, 1282, where he appears as a tenant of the earldom of Stafford in Thrapston and Denford; E149/197/4, the inq. post mortem of his younger brother, Thomas, which refers to the manor of Boughton Ho; and Add. Chs. 783-4, deeds of 1414 by which, described as ‘of Boughton’, he acquired property in Great and Little Weldon and then conveyed it to feoffees headed by Thomas Mulsho.

Our MP was, however, able to supplement his modest patrimony by marriage. It has been assumed that his wife was the daughter and sole heiress of Nicholas Pyel, son and heir of John Pyel, the wealthy London merchant who had purchased several manors in Northamptonshire.7 VCH Northants. iii. 258; Cal. Carts. Pyel and Fraunceys, 36. Given that the Pyel estates descended to her issue by Sir William Huddlestone, to whom she was married before Brauncepath, this is an understandable assumption, but it is an incorrect one. A case in the court of common pleas in 1425 demonstrates beyond doubt that she was the widow, not the daughter, of Nicholas Pyel and that, on Nicholas’s death, she married first Huddlestone and then our MP.8 CP40/658, rot. 121. It is not known precisely when this third marriage took place, only that it did so between Hilary term 1422, when Huddlestone was plaintiff in an action of depasturing at her property at Irthlingborough, and Easter term 1424, when our MP was plaintiff in respect of her property at Woodford.9 CP40/644, rot. 403; 653, rot. 257. A more significant uncertainly lies in the means by which she came to have an interest in the entire Pyel estate, seemingly as an heiress rather than as a widow. It can only be assumed that she owed it to a settlement made at the time of her marriage to Pyel, giving her an interest in fee should the couple’s own issue fail. With regard to Brauncepath’s career, however, the important point is that his wife brought him a compact and considerable Northamptonshire estate, consisting of the manors of Irthlingborough, Wellingborough, Cranford and Woodford with the advowson of the church of Woodford.10 Feudal Aids, iv. 45, 49; CP25(1)/179/93/35. In 1406 the largest of the manors, ‘Pyellesmanere’ in Irthlingborough, had been valued at as much as 50 marks p.a.: CIMisc. vii. 334. They provided him handsome compensation for the loss of his maternal inheritance. His mother survived not only his father but also her second husband, Sir John Beaufo† (d.1424) of Seaton (Rutland), and was alive as late as 1433, when she appeared by attorney in the Exchequer to deny that she was bound to account for the wages paid to our MP’s father.11 E159/210, recorda Mich. rot. 37d.

Despite the wealth Brauncepath enjoyed in right of his wife, however, his career is very poorly reflected in the surviving records. Save for the fact of his marriage and a pardon granted to him as ‘junior’ in January 1415, nothing is known of him until the mid 1420s.12 C67/37, m. 56. On 28 Aug. 1425 he was among several prominent Northamptonshire gentry who witnessed letters patent of Henry Chichele, archbishop of Canterbury, concerning the foundation of Chichele’s college at Higham Ferrers. By a final concord of Trinity term 1426 he and his wife conveyed her lands to a distinguished body of local feoffees, headed by two peers, William, Lord Zouche, and William, Lord Lovell, and including five former Northamptonshire MPs, Sir Thomas Green*, Thomas Wydeville*, Thomas Chamber I*, William Tresham* and Simon Kynnesman†, and one Rutland MP, John Oudeby*. There may be significance in the fact that three of them – Green, Wydeville and Oudeby – had been MPs in the Parliament that had just concluded.13 CPR, 1422-9, p. 474; CP25(1)/179/93/35. To the next Parliament Brauncepath was himself elected, and in 1430 he was named as the sheriff of Northamptonshire. The date of his election as one of the verderers in the county’s Rockingham forest is unknown, but it may have come after Thomas Mulsho† was removed from office in December 1436. If so, it came at about the same time as he was again elected to Parliament on 3 Jan. 1437.14 C219/13/5, 15/1; CCR, 1435-41, pp. 75, 147.

All this shows that Brauncepath was an important man; so too does the fact that shortly before his second election to Parliament he was knighted. There is no record that he served in France, but his knighthood is strong indirect evidence that he did and the Calais campaign of 1436 may have been its occasion. He did not live long to enjoy his new status. On 26 June 1437, three months after the close of his second Parliament, he and his wife took out a general pardon, and on the following 7 Dec. he acted as a feoffee in an arrangement by which Katherine, daughter or stepdaughter of his sister-in-law, Juliana (the wife of his brother John) was guaranteed a life interest in the manor of Ashton by Northampton. This is the last reference to him in an active role. He was dead by 24 Feb. 1438, when the Crown issued an order for the election of a new Rockingham verderer.15 C67/38, m. 20; Harl. Ch. 80 G 32; CCR, 1435-41, p. 147. He was succeeded in his maternal estates by his brother John, who had already established himself as an independent influence in local affairs through marriage to a wealthy widow and had served with his elder brother in the Parliament of 1437. The Pyel inheritance, from which our MP had derived the bulk of his income, remained in the hands of his widow before passing to Henry Huddlestone.16 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 297. Our MP’s wid. was alive in 1444: CP40/732, rot. 238.