BUTLER, Philip

The manor of Wood Hall in Watton-at-Stone came into the hands of the Butler family late in Edward III’s reign, when Ralph Butler married an heiress from Hertfordshire. Ralph was a younger son, so his elder brother John succeeded to the Butlers’ extensive estates in the Midlands, Yorkshire and the east of England. In due course, these lands descended to John’s son and heir, Sir Edward Butler, but Sir Edward failed to produce any children, and they passed to Ralph’s grandson, Philip of Wood Hall, at his death in 1412. Philip, who received a knighthood after succeeding Sir Edward, died eight years later. He left two sons, Edward, who survived him by less than a month, and his namesake and eventual heir, the subject of this biography. Only six years old when he succeeded to the Butler estates, the younger Philip was initially the ward of his maternal grandfather, the distinguished lawyer John Cockayne, and Henry Langley, although the Crown would re-grant the wardship to Cockayne alone in December 1425. He was still a minor when Cockayne died in May 1429, and in the following December he was committed to the care of a new guardian, Sir Hugh Willoughby of Nottinghamshire, who in due course married him to his daughter, Isabel. Willoughby undertook to settle goods worth 50 marks on the couple for their common use but, in the event, he provided for them partly in cash, to ensure that his son-in-law would have the ready means to sue livery of his inheritance out of the King’s hands. The couple were man and wife by 6 Jan. 1436, when Butler, having recently reached his majority, received from Willoughby plate worth £13 3s. 6d., along with the sum of £20 3s. 2d. In return, he promised to provide Isabel with a share in further plate or jewels to the same value as the cash payment and to pay the knight all arrears of revenue due to him from the Butler estates for the period of his wardship. The marriage did not augment those estates, for Isabel held no lands in her own right.2 CIPM, xix. 1036-43; xxi. 532-40; CFR, xiii. 257; xiv. 360; xv. 115-16, 281-2; J.E. Cussans, Herts. (Broadwater), 168-9; R. Clutterbuck, Herts. ii. 473; CCR, 1419-22, pp. 100-1; 1435-41, p. 41; E159/212, brevia Hil. rot. 21d; Middleton mss, Mi D 4791-2.

Butler never enjoyed full possession of the Butler lands because he was outlived by his mother, who had married Laurence Cheyne* soon after Sir Philip Butler’s death. She had a jointure interest in the Butler manors of Wood Hall and Sele in Hertfordshire and Bromham in Bedfordshire, and held Higham Gobion, another of the family’s manors in Bedfordshire by right of dower. Although these were valuable properties (at the very least, Wood Hall and Bromham alone produced a combined annual income of over £22), her son was able to take possession of estates worth well over £100 p.a. and consisting of manors and other lands in Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire and Yorkshire. The Lincolnshire estate alone was valued at £70 p.a. by the inquisition post mortem held for Sir Philip Butler in that county.3 CIPM, xxi. 535. The bulk of it comprised manors and holdings in Coningsby and other parishes lying north-west of Boston, which Butler sold to the lord of nearby Tattershall castle, Ralph, Lord Cromwell. Cromwell used them to endow the college and almshouse he founded at Tattershall in 1439. Near the end of his life Butler temporarily alienated his manor of Salterton in Wiltshire to William Ludlow II* of the King’s household. He regained possession of the property after paying Ludlow 100 marks but it is not clear whether these arrangements represent a mortgage, or some other business transaction between the two men. He also entered a bond to guarantee that he would pay Ludlow £20, although in the event he died several months before Christmas 1453, the date at which this sum was due.4 C139/149/27; CPR, 1416-22, pp. 408, 437; CCR, 1422-9, p. 31; Feudal Aids, i. 46; VCH Lincs. ii. 237; E210/2822.

Although his mother retained the Butler estates in Hertfordshire, Butler remained a resident of his native county. He was known as ‘of Watton-at-Stone’,5 CFR, xvii. 325, 330; xviii. 32, 39. so it is likely that the Cheynes had permitted him to live at Wood Hall. It was in Hertfordshire that he held the offices of j.p., ad hoc commissioner and sheriff, and it was for that county that he was returned to two Parliaments. He was pricked for his term as sheriff while a sitting Member of the Commons of 1450, but there is no way of knowing whether political considerations had played a part at this time of crisis for the King and his court. Butler was also primarily one of the Hertfordshire gentry in his capacity as a witness and feoffee. He performed these roles on behalf of several other landowners in the county, among them the influential courtier John Say II* (who had married his half-sister, Elizabeth Cheyne) and Thomas Ferrers, the son and heir of Walter, Lord Ferrers of Groby.6 CCR, 1441-7, p. 479; 1447-54, p. 497; 1454-61, p. 324; 1476-85, no. 344; CAD, i. B241, 555; iii. D465; CPR, 1446-52, p. 253; 1476-85, p. 116. A relatively early death perhaps explains why Butler never gained the knighthood awarded to his father. One of his last public acts was to attest the return of Hertfordshire’s knights of the shire to the Parliament of 1453, for he died on 28 July that year. Exchequer records reveal that the executors of his no longer extant will were the chief justice, John Prysote*, John Humberstone, John Say II, William Cecely and Henry Bardolf. Soon after his death, the Exchequer was making financial demands on his estate, in relation to his activities as a subsidy commissioner and as sheriff.7 E159/230, recorda Mich. rot. 88, Hil. rot. 61.

Butler’s heir was his son John. He was just short of his 18th birthday when his father died, and on 18 Oct. 1453 the Crown granted custody of his estates to John Say II, John Cheyne II* (Butler’s half-brother) and Ralph Gray I*. John Butler attained his majority in 1456 but it was a long time before he came fully into his own. It is not clear if Elizabeth Cheyne was still alive when he reached his majority, but his mother Isabel, who also had a dower interest in the Butler estates, survived the MP by many years. She had taken a second husband, the minor royal servant John Besyngby*, whom she had married shortly after April 1454.8 C139/149/27; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 155, 157, 295. In the late 1470s she and Besyngby took action in Chancery against her formidable mother (another long-lived woman), for denying them her rightful share of her father’s goods. They claimed that when she and the MP had visited Sir Hugh Willoughby a few days before his death in November 1448, the knight had promised that she should have as much of his goods as each of her unmarried sisters, in recognition of the kindness she had shown him. Besyngby also brought a Chancery bill against John Butler, claiming that his stepson intended to sue him on an obligation that was no longer valid.9 C1/54/285; 66/454. John Butler, who survived until 1504, disposed of part of his inheritance in 1495, when he sold the Butler moiety of a manor at Middleton, Warwickshire, to his cousin Sir Henry Willoughby.10 CFR, xxii, no. 804; CCR, 1485-1500, nos. 823, 938; VCH Warws. iv. 157.