BUCKLAND, Richard

Of obscure parentage, Buckland was probably born in the early 1380s in Devon. Evidence for his geographical origins is cumulative rather than compelling. In his will he left money for prayers in the collegiate church of Ottery St. Mary, where another Buckland, John, was a canon in the 1420s; and Philip Buckland was a commissioner in Devon and Cornwall in 1427. Further, our MP was, at various times, a feoffee in the Devon property near Buckland, from whence the Bucklands presumably originated; in 1423, he employed the prominent Devon lawyer, Nicholas Radford*, as one of his own feoffees; and, in 1432, he purchased from the Crown the marriages of two Devon coheiresses.4 Fifty Earliest English Wills (EETS, lxxviii), 104; J.T. Driver, ‘Richard Buckland’, Northants. Past and Present, ix. 309n.; CPR, 1422-9, pp. 423-4; CCR, 1435-41, p. 484; CP40/693, rot. 134; DL41/117; CFR, xvi. 97. Against this is to be set the evidence of the London antiquary, John Stow, who claimed that, in 1377, ‘one Buckland Esquier and his wife, daughter to Beaupere’ rebuilt part of the parish church of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey, their responsibility proclaimed by armorial decoration upon the stonework and in the windows.5 J. Stow, Surv. London ed. Kingsford, ii. 2-3. This was the Fishmongers’ church, and, if Stow is correct, then it is easy to see why our MP should have made his early career as a fishmonger. Perhaps his family was from Devon but established itself in London in the previous generation.

Buckland first appeared in the records in 1405 when, as ‘of London’, he stood as a mainpernor and brought an action for a modest debt of 40s. in the court of common pleas.6 CCR, 1402-5, p. 501; CP40/579, rot. 508d. Through the connexions of the fishmongers’ trade he made a reasonable match. By 1407 he had taken as his wife the daughter of a former fishmonger, Richard Gifford. She was not an heiress, but her father had bequeathed her, beyond a cash bequest of £20, a tenement in Distaff Lane in the parish of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey, to hold after her mother’s death, and later she had, under the terms of her mother’s will, a life interest in further property in the same parish (although by 1427, when these properties came to her, Buckland was wealthy enough to have little need of them).7 J. Stratford, ‘Joan Buckland’, in Med. London Widows ed. Barron and Sutton, 117-18. The match also brought him useful connexions in the city. A confusing entry in the London journal suggests that, in January 1417, John Hill, an executor of his long-dead father-in-law, sponsored his election as a freeman of the city. More significant was his friendship with Richard Marlow†, a fishmonger and ironmonger, who named him as one of his executors in 1420.8 Corp. London RO, jnl. 1, f. 7v; PCC 50 Marche (PROB11/2B, ff. 394-5). Marlow was one of the leading citizens, and, in the context of our MP’s career, it is noteworthy that he held office as treasurer and victualler of Calais between 1407 and 1409. Very probably he helped introduce Buckland into the administration of that outpost. Most important, however, to our MP’s future was his friendship with Lewis John*, a Welshman who had established himself in London in the first years of the century. Later evidence of their close association gives significance to the fact that it was in John’s company that Buckland was appointed to the first office to come his way: in January 1413 the Crown nominated the two men as collectors of tunnage and poundage in London.9 CFR, xiii. 250. For his later connexion with John: CCR, 1422-9, p. 339; CP25(1)/292/66/53.

Buckland was, like John, a natural entrepreneur, and the quickening of the pace of government, occasioned by Henry V’s military ambitions, provided openings for such men. Our MP took advantage of the new demand for shipping, providing two ships and 44 mariners towards the transport of the expedition of 1415, and he was rewarded by the Crown with a grant for life of the Le Pecok in Harfleur, ‘ad intentionem ponendi victualia’ there for the sustenance of the town. Five months later, in June 1417, he succeeded the obscure Richard Threll as victualler of Calais, an office with wages of 2s. a day and considerable responsibilities.10 C76/98, m. 6; J.L. Kirby, ‘Financing of Calais’, BIHR, xxiii. 176-7. His friendship with Marlow and John, who was master worker of the mint in the town, were probably factors in his appointment, but by this date he had found other and greater patrons, perhaps through the introduction of the well-connected John. By April 1416, when he took delivery of a spectacularly valuable piece of arras on his behalf, Buckland was active in the service of the King’s brother, John, duke of Bedford, who was later to employ him among his councillors.11 C1/26/522a. For Buckland as one of Bedford’s councillors in 1426: C115/K2/6682, ff. 189-90. His appointment at this date to various diplomatic missions and his further promotion at the end of the reign implies that the King himself shared this faith in his abilities. In the autumn of September 1418 he was among those deputed to communicate with the captain of Calais, Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, regarding the truce with the duke of Burgundy; and between February 1419 and April 1420 he was named to two embassies to treat with the duke and a further two to negotiate with the Genoese.12 E403/637, m. 14; E28/39, no. 12; PPC, ii. 363. Soon afterwards, on 9 June 1421, he was appointed to the treasurership of Calais with its handsome annual remuneration of £100; a month later he was entrusted with the keeping of Balinghem castle, serving with a personal retinue of 38 men and taking 1s. a day for his own wages; and, on 17 Nov., he was named as master or keeper of the King’s money and coinage in Calais with a further fee of £20 p.a.13 E101/87/10, no. 7; C76/104, m. 8; E159/204, brevia Trin. rot. 14.

During this period of rapid advancement Buckland greatly expanded his commercial activities. He ceased to be only a fishmonger, becoming instead a shipowner, privateer and merchant with wide-ranging interests. By 1417 he was providing the Crown with naval equipment and, more divertingly, the King with exotic animals, including two monkeys, a parrot and three salamanders.14 Navy of Lancastrian Kings (Navy Recs. Soc. cxxiii), 212, 216; Stratford, 118. Some of his activities were illegitimate, or at least seen as so by others. According to an indictment taken before commissioners of concealments at Plymouth, in February 1418 he took wine, pepper and other goods worth 278 marks, part of a cargo from a Genoese carrack captured by his mariners and others, to the loss of the Crown and the other captors of the vessel. On 2 Aug. 1420 he was one of a group, including Lewis John, who, forcibly and allegedly illegitimately, seized goods worth more than £600 from houses belonging to John Boteler I* at Calais, and then, when Boteler had the temerity to complain to the royal council, they conspired to have him imprisoned in London.15 CIMisc. vii. 570; SC8/96/4767.

Another way in which Buckland diversified his interests was by the acquisition of the lands with which birth had not provided him. His first purchase may have been as early as 1409 – when he was enfeoffed of a tenement in Old Fish Street in the parish of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey – but his first certain acquisition came in 1417, namely, a tenement with a quay in ‘Wynges Lane’ in the parish of All Hallows the Great, immediately to the east of the Steelyard, purchased from Thomas Ferrers and his wife, Aldmicia Portael. Later, in 1424, he added to his wife’s property in Distaff Lane, completing the purchase of a tenement with two shops there, formerly owned by another fishmonger, John Seman alias Ragenhill.16 Corp. of London RO, hr 137/4, 149/2, 152/82. By this date, however, he had already successfully undertaken the more difficult task of acquiring the country estate upon which the further social advance of himself and his family depended. It is a significant illustration of the workings of the fifteenth-century land market that the seller of this estate, the manor of Edgcote in Northamptonshire, was Aldmicia Portael. Our MP thus appears to have arrived in that county more by accident than design, identifying a seller rather than an area in which he wanted to buy. However this may be, the purchase appears to have taken some time to conclude. On 20 May 1421 Aldmicia, recently-widowed, conveyed the manor to an impressive body of feoffees, headed by Beatrice, countess of Arundel, and John Colmorde, master of the college of Arundel, and others, none of whom had any known connexion with our MP. The intention here may have been the sale of the manor to the countess, but, if so, the sale was not completed. On 1 Feb. 1423 Aldmicia, now the wife of a Londoner, Peter Vincent, acknowledged the receipt of £60, part of the purchase price of 700 marks they had agreed with Buckland for the manor and advowson. Six days later they conveyed the property to Buckland’s feoffees, headed, impressively, by John, duke of Bedford, and Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, a measure of how far he had risen. They, in turn, on 15 Feb. 1424, settled the property on him and his wife, in what was, from Joan’s point of view, a handsome, if delayed, jointure settlement.17 DL41/117; C140/5/45. A tantalizing later reference suggests that there may have been some lingering problem with the sale. In 1441 Joan sued Vincent, by then a knight, for close-breaking and personal assault in London: CP40/723, rot. 419. If later valuations of the manor at £20 p.a. are to be trusted, then Buckland had negotiated something of a bargain, paying some 200 marks below the market value.

The acquisition of the manor was the prelude to Buckland’s election to Parliament. On 12 Apr. 1425 he was returned in company with John Catesby* by attestors headed by Sir Thomas Green*, and while Parliament was in session he was appointed to a commission of inquiry in his adopted county, a recognition by the Crown of his arrival there. He was again elected for Northamptonshire on 14 Dec. 1430 at hustings well attended by the county’s leading gentry.18 C219/13/3, 14/2; CPR, 1422-9, p. 300. Yet, despite this promising start, it is doubtful whether Buckland put down deep roots in the county. On the one hand, he is known to have invested in his new property: he was later accused of having, in 1432, taken from royal supplies at Calais timber worth £20 and employed two carpenters for six months at royal wages of over £12 for the construction of a water mill at Edgcote and ‘to make pewes’.19 E101/193/5, m. 6. He may also have been responsible for the addition of a two-storey chapel to the north-east of the chancel of the church.20 In his will of 1478 his adopted heir, Richard Clarell, requested burial, if he should die at Edgcote, by the north wall of the church ‘aboue my mastres closytt’, a possible reference to this addition: PCC 37 Wattys (PROB11/6, f. 282v); Stratford, 126. On the other hand, his connexions with the gentry of Northamptonshire appear to have arisen not from any new ties of neighbourhood, but through mutual service at Calais. Thomas Chamber I*, for whom he acted as a feoffee and with whom he represented Northamptonshire in the Parliament of 1431, had served with him at Calais since 1421, as had Bedford’s chamberlain, Richard Wydeville*, another Northamptonshire man with whom he was frequently associated both before and after his purchase of Edgcote.21 DKR, xlviii. 241, 257; CP25(1)/292/66/84; Driver, 316. Chamber was later a feoffee of our MP’s widow: C140/5/45. In any event, Buckland, even after his acquisition of this manor, cannot be confused with a typical country gentleman. Calais remained the centre of his interests until the last months of his life, even though his service there sometimes brought him difficulties. One such episode arose in 1428, when his lord, the duke of Bedford, replaced the earl of Warwick as captain of Calais. The earl reacted angrily, blaming his removal upon a triumvirate of Bedford’s men, our MP and his friends, Wydeville and Lewis John. Indeed, news reached the concerned Buckland that the displaced captain saw him as, ‘first fynder, chief sterer, and grettest causer’, a belief in which, according to another rumour that reached him, he was encouraged by Wydeville. The latter had supposedly shown the earl a letter he had received from John and Buckland ‘against his lordship’ in the matter of the captaincy. ‘I can not remembre me, that ever I wrote to yow any thing that shulde cause my saide lorde of Warrewyk to be thus displesed towardes my personne’, Buckland reproached his friend. He looked to the duke to defend him against a charge that he energetically denied, but he seems to have had reason for disappointment on that score as well. He complained, somewhat plaintively, to a fellow servant of the duke, ‘onless that my lorde shewe me the better and more singular lordeship, men sayen hit hadde be muche better for me to have surcesed of my service longe or this’.22 Letters Margaret of Anjou (Cam. Soc. lxxxvi), 34-43. None the less, the earl’s enmity surmounted, Buckland resumed both his service to the duke and his friendship with Wydeville.

Buckland, as treasurer of Calais, was also faced with the recurring problem of maintaining Exchequer payments to the town’s garrison. These payments often fell into serious arrears, and it fell to him to represent the garrison’s interests to the government. On 4 Feb. 1427, for example, he appeared in the chapter house of St. Paul’s to make representations to the royal council on the matter.23 PPC, iii. 242-3; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 182. Later, however, he was placed in a difficult position when his responsibility to the garrison clashed with his service to Bedford and his position as a merchant of the staple. Shortly before Easter 1433 the garrison, despairing at the continually mounting arrears, seized the staplers’ wool. Bedford, responding to what amounted to a mutiny, came from Rouen to Balinghem castle, where he held a conference with Buckland. A settlement was agreed with the mutineers, but Bedford later repudiated it and ordered the execution of the revolt’s leaders.24 Griffiths, 195-6. By the end of 1433 the garrison’s arrears totalled £45,100, of which £25,464 was incurred under Buckland: G.L. Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort, 223. This is likely to have compromised our MP’s relationship with the hard-pressed garrison, whose arrears continued to mount, and he may also have found himself compromised by Bedford’s debts. A later action suggests that, at his death, Bedford owed him at least £1,073 16s., presumably as a result of advances Buckland had made to the duke as captain. This debt probably explains why, at Balinghem castle on 15 Aug. 1433, the duke’s cofferer delivered to our MP a gold reliquary cross of sumptuous richness, studded with many precious stones and later valued at £340.25 Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, pp. 155-6; Stratford, 42, 51, 64; M. Mercer, Hen. V, no. 17.

To the perennial problem of financing the garrison of Calais was the added one of maintaining the town’s defences with inadequate finance. Buckland seems to have inherited a difficult situation: in his first year as treasurer ‘Southestoure’ in the castle collapsed for want of repair.26 E101/193/5, m. 1. A petition he presented to the King and Lords in Parliament, probably when he was an MP in 1431, reveals a frustration at this lack of investment and a fear that the blame for any failures of maintenance would fall upon him. The latter was clearly paramount in his mind: he complained that he had often demonstrated, for his discharge, ‘in parlementz counsaillez and in other wyse’ the urgent need for repairs to Newenham Bridge and other parts of the defences of the town and its marches, and that the town’s salvation depended upon the urgent funding of these renovations. He asked that it, ‘be wel noted and enacted of Recorde that atte alle tymes he has truli and plainely’ discharged his responsibilities in this regard.27 SC8/96/4768. This rings rather hollow in the context of accusations of negligence and corruption made against him. In 1442, after his death, an inquiry, provoked by a breach of the sea-wall near Newenham Bridge, charged Buckland not only with taking timber and some 20,000 bricks, but also with laying off 14 masons and 20 carpenters and failing to maintain the west jetty, the cost of repair of which was put at £1,200. None the less, aside from the charge of misappropriation, it is probable that his failings here were the product of lack of royal funding rather than personal negligence, and it may even be that his alleged employment of royal resources on his own works was no more than a routine perquisite of royal service, seen as indictable only in the context of Calais’s decayed state.28 E101/193/5; Hist King’s Works ed. Brown, Colvin and Taylor, i. 431. Indeed, Buckland’s petition implies that he had made efforts to reverse the decline in Calais’s defensive fabric. If it is to be dated to the Parliament of 1431, it may have produced a short-lived effort on the Crown’s part. On 17 July, four months after the end of the assembly, Buckland was commissioned to make a sluice at Oye, taking £100 p.a. out of the revenues of Oye and Marck for the work; on the same day the Exchequer was ordered to allow him in his accounts a substantial prize cargo of timber, and other later prizes, ‘pur la sauve garde’ of Calais; and, on the following day, he had payment at the Exchequer for the expenses of three bricklayers sent to Calais for the reconstruction of Newenham Bridge.29 DKR, xlviii. 283; E159/208, brevia Mich. rot. 1; E403/698, m. 10.

Buckland’s responsibilities extended beyond Calais, not least in the early months of 1430 when preparations were in hand for the young King’s coronation expedition to France. As a vital preliminary to the King’s departure, Philip, duke of Burgundy, undertook to put 1,500 men into the field at English expense, and our MP and Wydeville were entrusted with delivering the cost of these soldiers, 12,500 marks, to the duke at Lille. They were rewarded for their success with a handsome gift of 100 marks.30 PPC, iv. 31-33; E403/693, mm. 12, 20; E404/46/345; Harriss, 195. By the mid 1430s, however, the difficulties of his post at Calais may have left Buckland contemplating retirement, or, at least, determined him to establish himself more firmly in landed society at home. In February 1434 his addition to the Northamptonshire bench was perhaps intended as a prelude to a future in England, and it is interesting that it should have come when he was at home, for, in the same month, he was commissioned to take muster of the forces of John, Lord Talbot, at Dover.31 CPR, 1429-36, pp. 353, 622. In the same year he made a further purchase of manorial property, turning to Essex rather than adding to his stake in Northamptonshire, probably because it lay nearer London. By a final concord levied in Trinity term Sir Roger Chamberlain* surrendered to him his interest in the manor of Copthall in Little Wigborough and the advowson of the church there, property valued at as much as 40 marks p.a. in an inquisition valuation of 1459. On 19 Feb. 1435, just as he had done after his acquisition of Edgcote, he had the property settled on himself and his wife. He also added to his property in London: in July 1434 the executors of a London barber’s widow sold him, ‘for a competent sum of money’, all her property in Elden Lane in the parish of St. Faith.32 Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 20, 21; C139/172/20; Corp. London RO, hr 162/76. These purchases made Buckland a man of considerable landed means. In the subsidy return of 1435-6 he was assessed in London on an income of £100 p.a., to which is to be added his Calais property, valued, in a later Chancery petition, at as much as 40 marks p.a. (and exempt from taxation in 1436).33 E179/238/90; C1/17/106.

Negotiations for these purchases may have detained him in England through the first half of 1434 and beyond. But he had other reasons to remain. He was among those who attended the great council which met between 24 Apr. and about 8 May, and during which the duke of Gloucester had attacked Bedford’s conduct of the war, and in July he was busy taking musters at Dover.34 PPC, iv. 213; Harriss, 236; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 424-5. But he probably returned to Calais soon after, adding to his responsibilities that of mayor of the staple there. This new role was reason for remaining at his post, but so too was the mounting crisis in English affairs in France, occasioned by the threatened disintegration of the Anglo-Burgundian alliance. It was probably from Calais that he travelled to Bruges in February 1435 as part of an embassy to the grand master of the Hanseatic League, for which he had a reward of £20 from the Crown. In July he was at Calais to take the musters of Robert, Lord Willoughby, and other captains, part of an expeditionary force intended to shore up the declining military position in advance of the peace conference at Arras.35 E403/717, m. 13; CPR, 1429-36, p. 476. When his master, the duke of Bedford, drew up his will at Rouen in the following September he named him among his executors, and it may be that he was at the deathbed. He was probably still in France in December when he was again nominated to negotiate with the Hanse at Bruges, but in England once more a month later when named as a commissioner to assess subsidy contributions in Northamptonshire.36 A.J. Stratford, Bedford Inventories, 39; J. Ferguson, English Diplomacy, 93, 206; CFR, xvi. 269.

This appointment was Buckland’s last. On 10 Feb. 1436 he was succeeded as treasurer of Calais by his son-in-law, Robert Whittingham I*, and, eight days later, as master of the Calais mint. There are several possible, and by no means mutually exclusive, explanations for his removal. First, the allegations of corruption made against him, although they post-date his death, raise the possibility that he was dismissed for that cause. Second, his removal may have been a function of Bedford’s death and the general change of personnel that followed Gloucester’s appointment as the new captain of Calais.37 Griffiths, 202. Third, and most probably, it was a retirement from an onerous posting, a possibility supported by his successor’s kinship with him (although there is no evidence that he was on close personal terms with Whittingham, who is not mentioned in his will). Indeed, there is some evidence, beyond simply his death later in the year, that retirement was hastened by ill health. On 21 May 1436 he conveyed the lesser of his two Northamptonshire manors, that of Seawell in Blakesley (acquired at an unknown date), to feoffees, headed by William Alnwick, bishop of Norwich, and Thomas Chamber, perhaps preparatory to some envisaged post mortem settlement.38 C140/8/19.

None the less, if Buckland was ill, this did not prevent him maintaining his shipping and mercantile interests. Here an opportunity was provided by a new royal policy of issuing licences to shipowner s to keep the sea at their own expense, taking as their payment any prizes that should fall into their hands. On 24 Feb. 1436 our MP, in company with his long-time associate, John Melbourne, sued out such a licence in respect of their ship, Le Antony of London. With other associates, John Throckmorton I*, William Venour and Richard Quatermayns*, he provisioned another ship and a balinger with 220 mariners and soldiers for the safeguard of the sea from July to September, either in that year or in 1435.39 C.F. Richmond, ‘Keeping of Seas’, History, xlix. 292-3; CPR, 1429-36, p. 509; Overseas Trade (Bristol Rec. Soc. vii), no. 76; E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 12d; E403/721, m. 14. In this short period he also benefited from one of the few direct grants of royal patronage that came his way. On 28 Apr. 1436 he was granted the keeping of a valuable fishery in the waters of the river Tweed, once held by Bedford, at an annual rent of £20.40 CFR, xvi. 275-6; SC6/1116/11, m. 10.

Buckland’s retirement from Calais was, however, to be short. On 5 Aug. 1436 he made his will, optimistically describing himself as ‘beyng yn Resonable helth of body’. He died five days later.41 C139/172/20. The will itself is a lengthy document, its terms detailed and well considered, illustrating his significant wealth and his readiness to put that wealth to the service of his soul. A large sum was set aside for prayers: £200 was to provide two ‘gode honnest and vertuous’ priests in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge for 20 years at £10 p.a.; £20 was to go to the college of St. Mary Ottery for masses over the same period; and a further 50 marks was to be expended on 2,000 masses immediately after his death. Adding lesser bequests, the total sum allocated to prayers was £287 13s. 4d., exclusive of the 6s. 8d. to be paid to each of the nuns of Cheshunt, where his wife’s sister, Cecily, was prioress, and 3s. 4d. to each of the canons of Waltham, where his wife’s brother, John, was a canon, ‘for a dirige and a messe of Requyem by note’. In addition there were other charitable bequests amounting to 70 marks, exclusive of the small sums bequeathed to each of the prisoners in various London prisons. Although, however, he spent generously on his soul’s health, he balanced that expenditure against the duty he owed to family and servants. Indeed, the mathematical precision of that balance, unlikely to have arisen by accident, is one of the most striking features of the will. Of the quantifiable sums in the will, £334 6s. 8d. was to be spent on charity and his soul, and £309 6s. 8d. on bequests to family and others. Making allowance for unquantifiable legacies, the two were yet more nearly balanced, for the latter excludes £20 to each of the children of his daughter and she is known to have had at least four. Aside from this provision for her children, she was to have £100, by far the largest sum bequeathed to any member of his family, but he also remembered his brother, Christopher, with £20, and other kin with lesser sums, including 40s. each to the two surviving siblings of his wife, Cecily and John. Above this, further legacies to friends, servants and executors added up to £158 13s. 4d., mostly accounted for by the £10 left to each of his eight executors, including his wife, (Sir) John Tyrell*, treasurer of the royal household, and his business associates, Quatermayns and Melbourne.42 Fifty Earliest English Wills, 104-8; Stratford, ‘Joan Buckland’, 121-2.

The will leaves no doubt that, despite the country estate he had acquired, Buckland saw himself as a Londoner. Although he remembered his adopted home at Edgcote, bequeathing 2s. to every married couple and 1s. to every single man and child, it was in Pardon Churchyard, St. Paul’s, under ‘a stone of Marble’ decorated with the crest of his arms and the words, ‘Mercy and Grace’, that he wanted to be buried.43 Pardon Churchyard was the burial place of his wife’s parents and brother, Thomas: Stratford, ‘Joan Buckland’, 114, 117. For his widow, however, his country estate meant prosperity. She had jointure in all his purchases, and her rights were confirmed, if an inquisition of 1459 is to be taken at face value, by a separate will of lands made by our MP and certified ‘sub magno sigillo Regis’.44 C139/172/20. These instructions simply followed the intent of the settlements already made: she was to have all his lands in Northants. for her life, with remainder to their daughter in fee. Jurors in Essex attributed her title not to the will but to the settlement of Feb. 1435. Other parts of her husband’s legacy must, however, have been less welcome to her. Not only were she and her fellow executors assailed by complications arising out of Buckland’s extensive shipping and trade interests, but they also faced the difficult task of rendering final account at the Exchequer for his Calais service and securing the payment of the money owed him. The first part of the task was satisfactorily resolved in July 1439, when they secured a general discharge of all pertaining to the Crown for the period of Buckland’s service for which he himself had not accounted; unsurprisingly, however, the second part proved much harder to resolve. According to their petition, there was due to him from the Crown, for the period February 1431 to February 1434, the massive sum of £3,434, much of which was owed to Buckland’s own creditors. To secure swift payment they offered to release to the Crown 1,000 marks of this sum, and, in February 1441, the offer was accepted. Yet, in July 1445, the executors were still owed £1,130.45 Stratford ‘Joan Buckland’, 123-4; CPR, 1436-41, p. 290; E404/57/170, 61/250, 282.

When Joan herself made the will of her lands on 9 May 1462, she was faced with a difficulty of a very different sort. Her and Buckland’s grandson and heir, (Sir) Robert Whittingham II*, a militant Lancastrian, had been attainted in the Parliament of 1461, and had fled to France, showing no signs of any desire to reconcile himself with the new government. She, therefore, instructed her feoffees to allow Richard Clarell, a former apprentice of Buckland and perhaps already the husband of her great-grand-daughter, Margaret, to enjoy the manor of Edgcote for two years after her death. If Sir Robert should return from France within three years of her death, the feoffees were then to make estate to him and his male issue. There was, however, to be a condition, suggesting that she was ambivalent about Sir Robert’s succession. He was to pay 11 marks p.a. to a chantry priest in the church of Edgcote or Blakesley for the keeping of her anniversary and other prayers; if he should fail to do so or vex her feoffees or executors in any way, then the manor was to be sold for charitable purposes to ‘a marchaunt that is well famed and wele disposed in conscience for the welefare of the contree that this maner standeth in though he yeve lasse therfor than an astate woll’.46 For her will concerning the manor of Edgcote: PCC 12 Godyn (PROB11/5, ff. 94v-95). She made a testament relating to her goods in 1450: Lincoln Diocese Docs. (EETS, clix), 38-44; Stratford, ‘Joan Buckland’, 126-7. Unfortunately, she specifies no place of burial. This is a striking provision in that she too, although she spent much more time at Edgcote than her husband, still thought of herself as the daughter and widow of a merchant, rather than the widow of an ‘astate’. As it transpired, Whittingham’s failure to reconcile himself with the Yorkists meant that Clarell established title to the manor. In February 1466 Joan’s feoffees settled it upon him and his wife and their male issue.47 C140/68/48. In the reign of Henry VII, Sir John Verney† and his wife Margaret Whittingham, Joan’s great-grand-daughter and heir, successfully sued Clarell’s widow for the manor: C1/110/138; CP25(1)/179/97/23.