DALLINGRIDGE, Richard

Richard never achieved the stature of his father’s elder brother the celebrated Sir Edward Dallingridge† (c.1346-1393), who came to national prominence as a councillor first to Richard Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, and then to Richard II, and is now chiefly remembered as the builder of Bodiam castle. Nor could he match the achievements of his cousin Sir John, a man several years his senior, who was favoured as a household knight of Henry IV.5 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 738-44. Of his father Walter Dallingridge little is recorded, although he clearly made a good marriage, for his wife, Margaret, had inherited from her grandfather Sir John Chaumont the manors of Spridlington in Lincolnshire and Colton Chaumont in Yorkshire, together with substantial properties in York, Hessay and Appleton. Furthermore, as the widow of William Mowbray, son of Sir John Mowbray, she possessed as her dower and jointure notable holdings in York and the North Riding.6 CIPM, xiii. 172; VCH Yorks. N. Riding, ii. 191. Despite Margaret’s northern background and interests, she and Walter probably lived in Sussex, where the latter held the manor of Old Shoreham during the minority of John Arundel, the son and heir of John, Lord Arundel (d.1390).7 CPR, 1396-9, p. 198. It is not certain when Walter died, but it was probably at the close of the century, and his widow may have married twice more before her death in 1419.8 Her last husband was William Cheyne, but the fact that she was interred at Hever in Kent (Belcher, Kentish Brasses, i. 71) strongly suggests that she was the Margaret who was briefly (in 1398-9) married to John Cobham† of Hever, who d. 12 Nov. 1399: The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 607-8. Unfortunately for our MP, most of his mother’s lands were entailed on her issue by her first husband Mowbray, and so fell to her young grandson William Ingilby (the son of her daughter Eleanor Mowbray), rather than to him.9 CIPM, xvi. 96-97; Yorks. Feet of Fines (Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. lii), 124; Test. Ebor. i. 158-61; C138/42/73; Vis. Yorks. ed. Foster, 282.

Richard and his younger brother, William, were, however, acknowledged to be the heirs of their wealthy cousin the childless Sir John Dallingridge, who arranged in 1404 that after his death and that of his widow, Alice Beauchamp, all his estates should pass to them. Alice, who was to keep all of Sir John’s landed holdings for the rest of her life, was instructed to support the boys in the meantime, or alternatively to provide them with £20 a year for their sustenance. When Sir John died in 1408, Richard, then still a minor, was duly found to be his heir. Because of his minority their feudal overlord, Thomas Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, acted as patron of the rectory of Chailey (Sussex) in January following, and it may be that he was brought up in the comital household rather than by the widowed Alice. Yet even after he came of age many years were to pass before he was able to take possession of his Dallingridge inheritance, for Alice outlived her husband by some 34 years, not dying until 1443.10 Reg. Rede (Suss. Rec. Soc. xi), 305; C139/111/52.

Dallingridge was not left entirely without landed resources in all that time, for on the death on 14 Apr. 1411 of his father’s sister Katherine, widow of John Butler (d.1377) and of John Stevenes, he inherited her manor of Lockerley in Hampshire. He was granted seisin in June 1422 after attaining his majority, yet for a long time he had to resist the claims of the Wayte family, descendants of Butler’s sister, to other properties Katherine had held. It was not to be until November 1440 that he was licenced to enter the disputed manor of Wymering, and he relinquished it to the Waytes just four months later. In return, and as part of a compromise agreement, he finally acquired from the Waytes Lymbourne in Havant together with rents of £12 p.a. from land at Stoke and ‘Westheye’ on Hayling island.11 CIPM, xix. 803; CFR, xiv. 438; VCH Hants, iii. 124, 167; iv. 501 (although these accounts are confused); CPR, 1436-41, p. 498; CP25(1)/207/33/1; CP40/722, cart. rot. 1; C139/130/9.

Before his return to Parliament for Hampshire, therefore, Dallingridge was a person of relatively small means; he was not among the county’s esquires deemed to have incomes over £40 p.a. and required to take up knighthood in the 1430s. His cousin’s widow, the redoubtable Lady Alice, daughter of Sir John Beauchamp† of Powick and mother of Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley, does not appear to have promoted his interests as her late husband Sir John Dallingridge had wished, even though she was well placed to do so, for she had been called upon by Henry V to attend on his French queen and subsequently employed to look after the infant Henry VI. There is no sign that Dallingridge proved able to take advantage of her influential contacts at the royal court, or ever became a member of the King’s household. Rather, he chose to build on the connexions forged by his uncle and father by looking for patronage to the earls of Arundel, seated at Arundel castle in west Sussex. There is no evidence that he crossed the Channel with Earl Thomas on Henry V’s first military expedition in 1415 (following which the earl died of illness contracted at Harfleur), but he did sail to Normandy in the summer of 1417, as a member of the retinue of the earl’s male heir John Arundel, Lord Mautravers, with whom he served at the siege of Rouen in the following year. After a brief stay in England, where his lord died in the spring of 1421, he returned to France that summer with the royal army, perhaps not returning home until after Henry V’s death in August 1422. During the minority of Arundel’s son and heir, another John, Dallingridge became quite closely attached to Sir John Pelham*, probably then the wealthiest landowner in Sussex, on whose behalf he witnessed a number of important transactions in 1428, shortly before Pelham’s death. However, after the Arundel heir proved his age, Dallingridge received from him in March 1432 appointment as constable of Arundel castle for life, with an annual fee of £10. He was confirmed in this office by the Crown during the minority of the earl’s infant heir, on 28 June 1435.12 E101/51/2; J. Foster, Some Feudal Coats of Arms, 69 (but Dallingridge was not a knight as there stated); DKR, xliv. 626; CCR, 1422-9, p. 388; Add. Chs. 30047, 30375; CPR, 1429-36, p. 464.

It seems likely that Dallingridge sought election to the Parliament which met just a few months later so that he might assist members of the comital family and his fellow retainers of the late earl to sort out their affairs at Westminster, especially in dealing with the administration of the earl’s will and matters relating to the wardship of the heir. Both the shire knights elected for Sussex on 1 Sept. were engaged in this business, and although up until then Dallingridge’s interests had centred on that county, he had to look elsewhere for a seat. Four days later he was returned for the neighbouring county, Hampshire,13 C219/14/5. where he held property and had taken the oath against maintenance in the previous year. He could number among his associates in the shire community John Uvedale*, one of the leading landowners, who had enfeoffed him with Reynold West, Lord de la Warre, of various of his properties, in particular to carry out a proposed grant to Southwick priory (for which they were to obtain the necessary royal licence in 1439).14 CPR, 1429-36, p. 372; 1436-41, p. 343; Add. Ch. 40277; Hants RO, Daly mss, 29-34. A few months before his election, Dallingridge had begun to be employed on ad hoc royal commissions in both Hampshire and Sussex, and while the Parliament was in progress he was appointed sheriff of the joint bailiwick of Sussex and Surrey. He was not an unqualified success in the role. Two years later Ralph Veske, a clerk from Nyetimber, alleged in a petition to the chancellor that ‘of malice and evyll will’ Dallingridge had made out a warrant for his arrest without having the necessary writ. Veske was imprisoned until bail in £20 was offered, and although he was subsequently discharged Dallingridge refused to accept the writ of corpus cum causa, instead starting an action to enforce the bond. It may have been for this reason and to cover other misdemeanors that Dallingridge took out a pardon as ‘former sheriff’ in the summer of 1446. Meanwhile, in June 1440 he had been demised, during royal pleasure, the office of master forester of Worth and Clares in the lordship of Lewes, which he had occupied by order of the treasurer of England since the death in the previous October of Beatrice, dowager countess of Arundel (Earl Thomas’s widow).15 CPR, 1436-41, p. 417; C1/9/86; C67/39, m. 30.

Dallingridge was kept very busy in the next two decades as a royal commissioner and j.p. He was shortlisted, but not pricked, to be sheriff of Hampshire in November 1448, and actually took up office a year later. As sheriff, he conducted the parliamentary elections of 1450, then returning as one of the shire knights a personal friend, the Exchequer official Thomas Pound*, who, already a feoffee of his estates, was destined to benefit from his landed settlements. During his term he seized 300 ewes from the estates of Southwick priory for payment of taxes granted by Convocation, but proved unable to sell them. The King pardoned him the sum due in April 1451. Another pardon he obtained, in August 1455, referred to his two shrievalties.16 C47/34/2 no. 5; C219/16/1; CPR, 1446-52, p. 417; C67/41, m. 32.

Dallingridge’s appointment to many commissions of array in the course of Henry VI’s reign are a sign that his attributes as a military leader were recognized, yet there is no evidence that he took up arms for either Lancaster or York in the civil war years, and he always declined to take up knighthood. The change of regime in 1460-1 made little immediate difference to his continuing involvement in public service, but after July 1463 his participation in local government, save for membership of the Sussex bench, came to an end. He must then have been nearing 70 years old. He had connexions of note among the Yorkists: in the following year, as a feoffee of the manor of Laughton and hundred of Shiplake, Sussex, formerly belonging to Sir John Pelham, he conveyed them to three of the Bourgchier brothers (Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury, Henry, earl of Essex, and John, Lord Berners, the husband of his niece), apparently to hold to the use of Pelham’s descendants. In March 1465 he was named among a distinguished group of feoffees of the former Fitzalan and Arundel estates in Wales and ten English counties, with Archbishop Bourgchier again heading their list and the then earl of Arundel, William, included in their number.17 Add. Chs. 30418-19; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 443-4; E159/242; CP, ii. 153 (where Margery Berners’s mother Philippa is incorrectly stated to be the da. of Sir Edward Dallingridge instead of Walter Dallingridge). Whether all this while since his appointment in 1432 Dallingridge had kept the constableship of Arundel castle, has not been discovered, but the fact that his tomb was to be placed in the college of the Holy Trinity at Arundel, the earls’ family mausoleum, strongly suggests that he kept the post until he died.

Nothing is known about our MP’s wife, save that her name was Sibyl and that in 1441 he settled on her in jointure the manor of Lymbourne and the lands near Havant and on Hayling island which had once belonged to the Butlers.18 CP25(1)/207/33/1; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 462-3. Transactions regarding the valuable Dallingridge inheritance, which finally passed to him in 1443 on the death of Sir John Dallingridge’s widow, proved much more complicated, mainly because he failed to produce legitimate issue. The estate comprised the castle and manor of Bodiam, together with 11 more manors in Sussex and properties in Kent, which had been valued in 1412 at £100 a year and were probably worth much more. When Alice Dallingridge died they reverted to her feoffees, who transferred them to our MP on 10 May. He placed them in the hands of his own feoffees, notably the brothers Thomas Uvedale* and William Uvedale II* (sons of his deceased friend John), Richard Newport* and Thomas Pound. The descent of Bodiam itself was governed by an entail made in the 1370s which stipulated that if the male line of the Dallingridges failed it should revert to the right heirs of Elizabeth Wardieu, the then wife of Sir Edward Dallingridge. Accordingly, the next heir in law after our MP’s death would be one Henry Harmer of Canterbury, who was descended from Elizabeth’s father. Dallingridge, intending to break the entail, promptly secured from Harmer a quitclaim of his title, so that after his death Bodiam might pass to his own appointees, the Sussex lawyers William Sydney* and Edmund Mille* (the latter being later described as his ‘feidman’ and ‘oon of his counsell’). He also obtained a quitclaim and release from Harmer’s daughter and her husband.19 Feudal Aids, vi. 526; C139/111/52; CCR, 1441-7, p. 95; Add. 39376, ff. 28v-29, 167-9 (transcribed from CP40/731, cart. rot. 2d; 842, rot. 403); Suss. Feet of Fines (Suss. Rec. Soc. xxiii), 2480, 2580. His true intentions regarding the descent of his estates, particularly Bodiam castle, have been rendered obscure by the loss of his will and by counter-claims put forward in the lawsuits which followed after his death. Yet it is clear that our MP did not intend that all of his substantial holdings should be earmarked for his heir at common law, his nephew (Sir) Roger Lewknor*, the son of his sister Philippa; for only Lockerley in Hampshire and seven of the manors in Sussex (valued altogether at £63 p.a. at his death) were to pass directly to him. Dallingridge wished his executors to use the issues of the manor of Iford to found two chantries in the parish church of Havant for the provision of religious services for 20 years for his soul and that of his wife, and the manor of Iden was to go to John a Chambre for his lifetime, before passing to Lewknor. Two other manors, Wilting and Hollington (worth £16 9s. 5d. p.a.), were settled on Thomas Pound and his wife Mercy and their issue, and, similarly, the former Butler properties (worth £20 p.a.) were placed in the hands of feoffees (this time a group headed by the bishops of Winchester and Chichester and the Bourgchier brothers, the earl of Essex and Lord Berners), for settlement on the Pounds after Dallingridge’s life-interest expired. It seems quite likely that Mercy, singularly favoured in this way, and named with her husband among our MP’s executors, was his illegitimate daughter. Dallingridge died on 7 Jan. 1471.20 C140/33/48.

Almost immediately, in July 1471, an assize of novel disseisin looked into the claims of John Wood III* that Sir Roger Lewknor had unjustly ousted him from the castle and manor of Bodiam. Wood had purchased the reversionary interest in the estate for a large sum of money from the son and heir of Dallingridge’s appointee, Edmund Mille, on the understanding that Dallingridge had meant Mille to have Bodiam after his death and had agreed to its sale. The jury found in Wood’s favour, but Lewknor adamantly refused to let the matter drop, and after hearings before the King’s bench and in Chancery Wood was persuaded to give up his title in June 1473.21 CFR, xxi. no. 120; Add. 39376, ff. 167-69, 179 (transcribed from CP40/842, rot. 403; 847, cart. rot. 1); C1/41/35-38. Lewknor also tried, but with less success, to oust the Pounds from their legacies. He claimed in petitions to Chancery that Dallingridge had been in debt to Pound in the sum of 200 marks and had only given him the manor of Lymbourne, worth 45 marks a year, as security for repayment, intending that it should revert to him and his heirs after his creditor had been satisfied. Lewknor also asserted that Pound, his co-executor of Dallingridge’s will, had retained and converted to his own use at least half of the deceased’s jewels, goods and chattels, which were worth over 1,000 marks, and had also kept 200 marks in cash. However, Pound was absolved and acquitted of the charges in the Trinity term of 1476. Yet another suit in Chancery arose from Lewknor’s refusal not only to release the profits of the manor of Iford first to the Pounds and then to Mercy Pound’s executor, Edward Tauk, for the maintenance of chantries at Havant in accordance with Dallingridge’s will, but also to sell the manor after a 20-year period.22 C1/66/44, 45, 168/37. .

Curiously, ‘a tombe of marbyll’ made for Dallingridge and placed in the ‘Vicaryyschauncell’ in the college of the Holy Trinity at Arundel, was given in March 1476 by Edward Poynings, the master of the college, to John Dudley†, a retainer of the earl of Arundel who had replaced Dallingridge on the Sussex bench. No longer in its original position, the tomb chest now has a smaller, richer chest placed on top of it, containing the remains of the earl and his countess. What is difficult to explain is why Dallingridge’s tomb was never put to its intended use. Perhaps our MP had changed his mind about his preferred place of burial, and was interred elsewhere, possibly near his relatives at Robertsbridge abbey.23 Cat. Arundel Castle Archs. ed. Steer, ii. 6; N. Saul, ‘The Cuckoo in the Nest’, Suss. Arch. Collns. cxlvii. 125-33.