HENSTEAD, William

A leading figure in the troubled politics of mid fifteenth-century Norwich, Henstead was a mercer who traded also as a general merchant. In common with other citizens, he used the port of Great Yarmouth for his mercantile activities, in his case exporting woollen cloth and importing a variety of commodities, including hats, vinegar, fish and paper.7 E122/151/70, m. 6d; 71A, mm. 1d, 2d; 73, m. 1d; 152/2, mm. 1d, 4; 152/3, m. 1. On one occasion in the later 1440s he suffered the confiscation of a consignment of goods at Yarmouth, for failing to pay the customs due for them.8 E159/223, recorda, Hil. rot. 6d. Early in his career, he operated in the Low Countries, and he was involved in a dispute of the early 1420s over the election of John Wareyn as one of the governors of the English merchants there. Soon after Wareyn took up office in September 1421, Henstead and other provincial merchants protested that a clique of Londoners had manipulated the election and refused to contribute to his salary. Wareyn’s immediate response was to seize his opponents’ merchandise in Zeeland, although he also appealed to the ruler of Holland and Zeeland, John, duke of Bavaria. The duke’s council gave a verdict in Wareyn’s favour in October 1422, fining Henstead and his associates 1,000 nobles and ordering them to pay him 200 nobles and costs. Yet it is doubtful that Wareyn ever received his money, since they refused to pay and would appear subsequently to have avoided Holland and Zeeland.9 Bronnen tot de Geschiedenis van den Handel Met Engeland, Schotland en Ierland ed. Smit, i. no. 981; N.J.M. Kerling, Commercial Relations of Holland and Zeeland with Eng. 148-51.

In Norwich itself, Henstead was active in civic affairs by 1433, when he attested his first parliamentary election and became sheriff. While sheriff, he and his associate in that office, Robert Londesdale, arrested a Norwich chandler, Geoffrey Quyncy, for employing incorrect weights and measures. Shortly after he and Londesdale had completed their term in the shrievalty, Quyncy sued them in the Chancery, claiming that the weights and measures he used met Exchequer standards and accusing them of unlawful arrest.10 Procs. Chancery Eliz. ed. Caley and Bayley, i. pp. xxxii-xxxiii. By 1437 Henstead was an alderman, in which capacity he participated in Norwich’s disputed mayoral election of that year, an episode that prompted the King to take the city’s liberties into his hands for several months. Shortly after election day, Thomas Wetherby* and his allies drew up a certificate in which they complained that Henstead and eight other aldermen had conspired to exclude them from the election. They also claimed to have suffered assaults at the hands of a large mob assembled by their enemies and to have seen Henstead and another alderman, John Sipatre, ‘lokyng out of hyr chaumbres to the seyd riotous puple and beholdyng ther gouvernauce’.11 KB9/229/1/106. Six weeks after the election, the royal council summoned Henstead, Sipatre and other of Wetherby’s opponents to appear before it, under pain of no less than £1,000 each, no doubt to explain their conduct.12 PPC, v. 33. Henstead had other matters to worry about as well, for when the election took place he was defending a lawsuit in the court of the outgoing mayor, Robert Chaplain*. In January 1438, after he and two co-defendants had lost the suit, brought by Thomas Ingham* and others for unlawfully disseising them of a tenement in Norwich, he was committed to the Fleet prison in London. In the same month, however, he was able to obtain a writ of error and the justices of King’s bench overturned the proceedings in the lower court.13 Norwich city recs., ‘Bk. of Pleas’, NCR 17b, ff. 85v-86v; KB27/707, rot. 21. It is likely that Ingham’s lawsuit was connected with the animosities then current in the city’s politics, given that both Chaplain and Ingham were supporters of Wetherby.

At the end of the same decade, another of Wetherby’s allies, the former recorder of Norwich, John Heydon*, sued Henstead and other aldermen in the court of common pleas, claiming that they had assaulted and threatened him at the mayoral election of 1437. In July 1439 a jury, which included Chaplain and Heydon’s associate Sir Thomas Tuddenham*, found the defendants guilty of making threats although not of assault, and awarded Heydon no less than 400 marks in damages and costs. Henstead and his co-defendants afterwards sued the jurors for awarding Heydon an excessive sum, although they failed to pursue this suit to a conclusion.14 CP40/712, rot. 124; KB27/715, rot. 62; P. Maddern, Violence and Social Order, 190.

The Crown did not restore Norwich’s liberties until late 1439, although in May the previous year Henstead and other citizens had journeyed to London to seek the good grace of the King and certain lords of his council. William was also one of those who met the duke of Norfolk in early 1441, to inform him that the city was ‘so desolate of everything’ that it was unable to make the King a significant loan.15 Norwich assembly bk. NCR 16d, ff. 9, 14v. In the summer of the same year, the corporation of Norwich decided to seek an end to its ongoing jurisdictional disputes with various ecclesiastical figures, particularly the prior of Norwich, who had recently sued Henstead and other citizens for encroaching on his rights.16 KB9/240/27d. Yet a settlement proved elusive, and on 9 Oct. 1441 a city jury indicted John Wetherby (one of Thomas Wetherby’s servants) and several of the prior’s men for assaulting and imprisoning the mayor, sheriffs and others, including Henstead, five days earlier.17 Norwich city recs., presentments taken by Norwich’s j.p.s, 1440-1, NCR 8a/10, m. 1. Despite these tensions, on 12 Oct. the corporation (no doubt under pressure from outside authority) agreed to submit its disputes with the prior of Norwich and abbot of St. Benet of Hulme to the arbitration of William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk. On the following 10 Apr., Henstead and six other aldermen bound themselves in £40 each to the prior, as a guarantee that the city would abide by whatever decision was made. The earl’s award, published on 23 June 1442, early in Henstead’s mayoralty, proved extremely unpalatable. De la Pole ordered the city to demolish certain newly-constructed mills, since these were prejudicial to the freehold interests of both the abbot and the prior, and laid down that the prior should enjoy reasonable jurisdictional rights in Norwich. The controversy over those parts of the city that were disputed areas of jurisdiction was referred to King’s bench, where a jury subsequently found against the corporation.18 Maddern, ‘Legitimation of Power: Riot and Authority in 15th-Cent. Norwich’, Parergon, n.s. viA, 71. Rather than accept Suffolk’s award the city temporized. In Michaelmas term 1442, however, the prior began legal proceedings in the common pleas over the bond he had received from Henstead and the other aldermen.19 CP40/727, rots. 372, 517d.

At the end of the same year, Henstead wrote to an unnamed lord (probably the treasurer, Ralph, Lord Cromwell), to inform him of the citizens’ fear that Suffolk’s award might prove prejudicial to the King’s interests.20 Maddern, ‘Legitimation of Power’, 71. On 25 Jan. 1443, the corporation met to discuss whether finally to put its seal to it, but the assembly ended in chaos after a group of citizens seized the common seal. There followed a week of disturbances, subsequently known as ‘Gladman’s Insurrection’, directed against Norwich priory.21 Ibid. 196-7. In the wake of this disorder, Henstead received a summons to appear before the royal council. Upon arriving in London, he rode to Greenwich to seek the good lordship of the duke of Gloucester and then went to the King’s Head in Cheapside for supper. During the meal, he learnt of the arrest of one of his party as ‘a traitor and riser against the King’, and the authorities likewise took him into custody when he came before the council on 13 Feb. Henstead was committed to the Fleet, where he remained until the following 26 Mar., and fined £50. In the meantime, he and other prominent citizens were indicted for plotting an insurrection, the city again lost its liberties and he was stripped of the office of mayor.22 Recs. Norwich, i. pp. xci, 351; Norwich city recs., ‘Liber Albus’, NCR 17a, ff. 72v-73; KB9/84/1/10; KB27/730, rex rot. 30. The prior of Norwich’s lawsuit over a bond of £40 added to his woes, reaching pleadings in Trinity term 1443. Through his attorney, Henstead claimed that he had entered into the bond under duress, while a prisoner of the plaintiff and his ‘coven’, but the prior denied any coercion. The parties agreed to refer the matter to a jury although it seems not to have come to trial.23 CP40/730, rots. 134, 324d; 731.

There is no evidence that Henstead played any official part in civic affairs for some four and a half years after his dismissal as mayor.24 For lack of evidence to the contrary, it is assumed that he retained his status as an alderman in this period. Except for an incomplete entry for 22 June 1441, there is no record of proceedings in the city’s assemblies between 15 Feb. 1441 and the summer of 1452 in Norwich’s assembly bk. (NCR 16d, ff. 14v-16v). On 12 Nov. 1447, however, an attorney acting on his behalf appeared in King’s bench with a writ of the privy seal. Dated four days earlier, this informed the judges that the King had taken a fine of 1,000 marks from the city and intended to restore the liberties.25 ‘Liber Albus’, NCR 17a, ff. 71-72. When the citizens finally recovered their privileges at the beginning of December, Henstead resumed his suspended mayoralty. No doubt wishing to display his gratitude and loyalty to the Crown, he arranged for the city to present the provost of Eton College, a royal foundation, with a gallon each of malmsey, red and white wine.26 Recs. Norwich, ii. 71. Henstead gained election to the Commons five months after finally completing his mayoralty. There was strong criticism of the government and Household in the Parliament of 1449-50, and the Commons impeached the King’s chief minister, William de la Pole, by then duke of Suffolk. It is very likely that Henstead supported the duke’s impeachment. When a commission of oyer and terminer arrived at Norwich in the autumn of 1450, several city juries laid presentments against both him and his affinity. According to one charge, Suffolk’s men had extorted large sums of money from the MP and his fellow aldermen in the early 1440s; according to another, they had maintained the suit which the prior of Norwich had brought against Henstead and others in 1441. Rather less credible was the claim that the indictments brought against the city following ‘Gladman’s Insurrection’ were false and the work of Suffolk and his men, and that de la Pole and his followers had instigated the 1,000 mark fine the city had paid the King.27 Ibid. i. 346-7; KB9/267/24; 272/3, 4.

After 1450 the troubles that had afflicted Norwich in previous decades subsided and Henstead’s later years were quieter as a result. One personal concern in the early 1450s was securing the sum of £17 the city owed him for his time as an MP. He must have petitioned the Crown about his unpaid wages, since in June 1451 the King commanded the sheriffs of Norwich to ensure that he received the money due to him. The most likely reason for the non-payment of these wages is corporate insolvency, which probably also explains why the corporation asked him and other aldermen for loans (in his case six marks) towards the cost of receiving Queen Margaret when she visited Norwich in April 1453. By the end of 1456 the city, which now owed several aldermen significant amounts of money, was in debt to Henstead to the sum of £55 6s. 8d. He forswore £42 of this sum, although the corporation did not begin to repay the remaining 20 marks until over five years later.28 KB27/760, rot. 29d; ‘Old Free Bk.’, NCR 17c, f. 18d; assembly bk. NCR 16d, f. 30.

It was also during the mid 1450s that Henstead became involved in a quarrel between the men of Yarmouth and the Cinque Ports. The Ports enjoyed certain jurisdictional rights at Yarmouth’s annual herring fair, and the dispute began at the fair of 1456, when William Stamer of Hastings took goods from a ship’s boat while fishing off the Norfolk coast. Henstead and other merchants from Norwich and Bishop’s Lynn claimed that the stolen merchandise belonged to them and was worth 2,000 marks. The provost of Yarmouth reacted by arresting the Cinque Ports’ bailiffs attending the fair, prompting the Ports to bring the matter before the chancellor. Henstead took action of his own in Easter term 1457, when he lodged an appeal for robbery and breach of the King’s peace against Stamer and other men from the Ports, including Robert Onewyn I*, one of the bailiffs whom the provost had arrested. He came to the court of King’s bench in person in the following November and successive return days, although the defendants failed to appear and proceedings for their outlawry were initiated.29 White and Black Bks. of Cinque Ports (Kent Rec. Ser. xix), pp. xi-xii, 36-37; KB27/784, rot. 2; 786, rot. 54d.

Henstead remained active in the following decade, although by then he had ceased to hold any office at Norwich apart from that of j.p. The corporation still owed him money in the early 1460s, and in March 1461 the corporation agreed that he, Robert Toppe* and Gregory Draper* should receive the profits of the common quay for a year, so that they could recover the sums in which the city was indebted to them. Henstead attested the return of Norwich’s MPs to the Parliament of 1467 and he took part in discussions with the bishop of Norwich about cleaning the river Wensum in the spring of 1468. In July the following year, he helped to arrange ‘stations’ (presumably tableaux) at Norwich’s Westwick and Friars Preachers’ gates, in preparation for a visit by Edward IV’s queen.30 Assembly bk. NCR 16d, ff. 48, 74v, 78.

Presumably well advanced in years when he made his will on 5 Feb. 1472, Henstead was dead by the spring of the following year.31 He was no longer an alderman, an office customarily held for life, in the spring of 1473: ibid. f. 94. The will has not survived, although one of the city’s court rolls records an extract from it. This shows that he left his son and executor, Edward, four tenements in Wymer, the ward he had represented as an alderman. It also shows that his daughter, Anne, had married the mercer, Henry Reynold, and that he directed that the couple should succeed to the messuage where he lived after his wife’s death. The bequest to the Reynolds was conditional, for he expected his son-in-law and another mercer, John Alburgh of London, to pay his executors a sum of £40 they owed him. The holdings featured in the extract can have comprised only a part of Henstead’s real property, valued at £6 p.a. for the purposes of a royal income tax in 1451.32 Ct. rolls, NCR 1/19; R. Virgoe, ‘Norwich taxation list of 1451’, Norf. Archaeology, xl. 150. It would appear that he and his wife sold a messuage in the parish of St. John Maddermarket to Geoffrey Carter and others for £36 in 1471, and it is possible that he held property outside the city as well.33 Ct. rolls, NCR 1/19. As early as 1435 Henstead was party to a conveyance of a manor at Tuddenham, Suff., although almost certainly in the capacity of a feoffee. The circumstances of this transaction are unknown: CP25(1)/224/115/23; W.A. Copinger, Suff. Manors, iii. 112. Apart from Edward, Henstead had at least one other surviving son, Thomas. Almost certainly considerably older than his brother, Thomas may have become a freeman of Norwich in the early 1450s, some 20 years before Edward attained that status. Like their father, Thomas and Edward were mercers, as was a third son, William, who had begun to play an active role in civic affairs in Henstead’s lifetime but predeceased the MP by about two years.34 ‘Old Free Bk.’, NCR 17c, ff. 56, 57; CPR, 1467-77, p. 579; assembly bk. NCR 16d, ff. 76v, 82, 83; CP40/841, rot. 171.