HILL, John II

Returned to his only known Parliament alongside Bartholomew Halley*, a yeoman of the Crown, Hill was probably another Household man. He was certainly a figure of some consequence since he bore the style of ‘esquire’,2 C219/14/4. but there is no evidence that he owed this status to his landholdings, or to a profession like the law. If a member of the Household, he may have enjoyed a long career in the service of the Lancastrian dynasty, although it is quite possible that the royal establishment included more than one John Hill among its ranks.3 A John Hill was among the yeomen of the chamber who accompanied that King on the Agincourt campaign, one of the esquires of the Household who crossed to France as a member of Henry VI’s coronation expedition 15 years later and among the household men who escorted the new queen, Margaret of Anjou, to England in 1445: E404/31/322; 62/143; E101/70/5/692. In the autumn of 1408, Henry IV appointed John Hill his personal armourer at the Tower of London, a grant for life that Henry V renewed at his accession. Henry V also made grants (again for life) of the ferry at Sandford-on-Thames in Oxfordshire and an annuity of 100s. from the honour of Wallingford to his yeoman of the larder of the same name.4 CPR, 1413-16, p. 169; 1416-22, p. 50. In the spring of 1416, the King awarded John Hull, possibly the yeoman of the larder, and Eleanor his wife an annual tun or two pipes of Gascon wine from his wine cellar in London during her lifetime: CPR, 1416-22, p. 41. The yeoman of the larder served in that household department for several decades, although he was known as a serjeant of the larder or groom of the saucery by the late 1430s and early 1440s. It was as a groom of the saucery that he received a corrody from the Augustine priory at Daventry in November 1438.5 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 22, 530; CCR, 1435-41, p. 243.

Whether or not a household man, the MP was by no means an outsider to the borough he represented in the Commons. A resident of Wycombe, he held a messuage and lands there of the master of the local hospital of St. Giles. These holdings were the subject of some controversy until the later 1430s, when a ruling established that they were part of the master’s fee and not held of Bassetsbury, the duchy of Lancaster manor encompassing most of the borough.6 St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, recs., XV/15/1, m. 21. It is not known if he was related to the Hills of Burnham, or to the Hill family of Great Brickhill, another Bucks. parish: XV/45/125, 128, 133; C1/26/98; 57/360; CCR, 1454-61, p. 354. The record of an inquisition held at Wycombe in June 1452 by William Scotte, the duchy’s feodary in Buckinghamshire, shows that Hill was no longer alive by that date. The inquisition concerned the patronage of the town’s chantry chapel and charnel house of the Holy Trinity, a right exercised by his widow but claimed by the Crown. The chantry owed its existence to John Talworth, who had founded or re-founded it in Edward III’s reign. According to the jurors, Talworth had reserved the right of presentation to the chantry for his heirs, while providing for the Crown to take it over should those heirs become extinct. They found that the last of Talworth’s descendants had died 20 years previously and that Margaret Hill had defrauded the Crown since then by wrongfully assuming the patronage, although by what claim the inquisition does not record. In spite of this finding, Margaret had not forsworn her right to present to the chantry when she died.7 DL41/446; VCH Bucks. iii. 131; C1/27/301.

Margaret died on 7 September 1459. In her will, she asked Laurence Hill, her son by the MP, to bind himself to her feoffees in an obligation for £40, as a security that he would find a priest to sing for her, her father and her husbands in Wycombe parish church,8 VCH Bucks. iii. 133 mistakenly states that she asked for the priest to perform this service in the chantry of the Holy Trinity. and see that her debts and bequests were paid. If he complied with this request, he was to succeed to her three messuages and lands in the town and the patronage of the Holy Trinity chantry in fee simple, and become one of her executors; if not, John Welsbourne II* was to see to the disposal of this property and to act as her sole executor. Thirteen days after his mother’s death, Laurence viewed the will at Wycombe, but he refused to accept the conditions it imposed on him and Welsbourne took sole responsibility for its administration. There was further controversy early in Edward IV’s reign, when Welsbourne sued Margaret’s feoffees, Walter Colard* and the priest Thomas Skaryngton, in the court of Chancery, alleging that they were obstructing the performance of the will by refusing to release their title to the property which Laurence had forsaken. In due course the Chancery commissioned the abbot of Thame and the judge Robert Danvers* to examine local witnesses, and the examinations were held in Danvers’ presence at Wycombe on 5 Sept. 1461. The mayor and six other burgesses, all among ‘the saddyst and wurshypfullest men’ of the borough, gave testimony. They supported Welsbourne’s claims and a few weeks later the court decreed that Colard and Skaryngton should make the desired release, under pain of £100 for non-compliance.9 C1/27/300-1; 29/23-24.

It appears that Colard and Skaryngton were quite content to obey the decree, since in their answer to the bill they had expressed themselves ready to do as the court directed. The answer also explained that they had not co-operated with Welsbourne because they had not known if Laurence Hill was still alive (so implying that they were not convinced that Laurence had really rejected the terms of his mother’s will).10 C1/27/300. Any such uncertainty is understandable, since Laurence was on the run as a Lancastrian rebel when Welsbourne began his suit. Ironically, the latter had also served in Henry VI’s Household. He can have only just made his peace with Edward IV when he went to the Chancery, since the authorities had issued a commission for his arrest at the beginning of 1461, when Henry was still on the throne but the Yorkists controlled the government in London. Laurence had received a pardon from the same Yorkist-dominated administration in September 1460, but he proved much more of a Lancastrian diehard. He fought for Henry VI at Towton and Edward IV’s first Parliament attainted him for treason, as ‘late of Moch Wycombe in the Counte of Buk’ Yoman’. In January 1462, Henry Filongley, a yeoman of the Yorkist King’s cellar, received a grant of lands worth, some £12 p.a., which Laurence had held in Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and elsewhere in the realm. Filongley’s grant was for life, but he had surrendered it by November 1479 when the lands were re-granted, again for life, to Richard Bampton, a gentleman of the queen’s pantry. Laurence Hill did not secure a reversal of his attainder until after Henry VII came to the throne.11 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 625, 658; 1461-7, p. 75; 1476-85, pp. 172-3; PROME, xiii. 42-44, 51; RP, vi. 312-13.