HODY, Alexander

Alexander Hody was born in the early years of Henry IV’s reign, to a father of unfree status, or so a family history of the late fifteenth century would have it. According to this tradition, he and his elder brother, as well as their father, Thomas, owed their freedom to the good offices of Thomas’s brother John, who, having received his basic education from a chantry priest at Woolavington, went to Oxford and rose to become chancellor of Wells cathedral. This advancement in the Church allowed John to strike a bargain with his relatives’ master, Lord Audley, and buy their freedom.10 H. Maxwell Lyte, ‘Hody Fam.’, Som. and Dorset N. and Q. xviii. 127; Patronage, Crown and Provinces ed. Griffiths, 173, 179; C.F. Richmond, Paston Fam.: First Phase, 21. Whatever the truth of this matter, it seems not implausible that it was Master John Hody who provided for the education of his two young nephews, both of whom trained in the law. In Alexander’s case at least some of this training may have taken place at one of the prestigious Inns of court, the Middle Temple, of which he was a member later in life.11 KB9/941/4d, 6d.

As a younger son, Alexander had only limited hopes of succeeding to any of the modest family lands, so he had to seek to acquire property by other means. An advantageous marriage to Margaret, the daughter and heir of John Coker, brought him the Somerset manors of West Bower (in the parish of Bridgwater), Everley (in Durleigh), Wembdon, Moorland and Tuxwell, as well as a number of burgages in Bridgwater, holdings which at the time of his death were said to be worth more than £35 p.a.12 C140/4/34, m. 3; VCH Som. vi. 117-18, 210, 295; CP40/781, rot. 430; 786, rot. 42. At Margaret’s own death in 1489, her holdings were valued at £14 2s. 8d.: CIPM Hen. VII, i. 652. The profits of his legal practice enabled him to purchase further lands from his neighbours, in this way acquiring the manor of Otterhampton from the Trevet family, and those of Gothelney (in Chardlinch) and Newnham probably in the same way.13 Regs. King and Hadrian (Som. Rec. Soc. liv), no. 41; VCH Som. vi. 93, 106, 143; CCR, 1435-41, p. 265. It would later be alleged that he had appropriated Otterhampton by unlawful means, and although no documentary evidence of any wrongdoing on his part has been discovered, this may have been the context of a dispute which in 1439 pitted him against John of Ile (alias Avyle), the notoriously corrupt bailiff of the hundred of Cannington, employed by Robert, Lord Poynings, and had to be settled by the arbitration of his brother (Sir) John Hody and Sir William Bonville*.14 Maxwell-Lyte, ‘Hody Fam.’, 129; CCR, 1435-41, pp. 281, 337-9. When he died Hody was thought to command a landed income of over £64 p.a. altogether – in all probability a conservative estimate.15 C140/4/34.

Even so, Hody’s income from land was probably far inferior to the revenues of his professional practice. Unlike his elder brother he seems not to have sought a career in the judiciary, and although there can be little doubt that he could have followed in John’s footsteps had he so desired, he chose not to take the coif. Instead he found extensive and lucrative employment as legal counsel to a range of gentry, clergy and urban communities in the south-west. Among them were magnates of national standing, such as Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, and Richard, Lord Strange of Knockin, whom he served as a feoffee,16 C140/22/48; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 350-1; C145/322/16. Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, who employed him as steward on his Somerset estates, and Bishop Stafford of Bath and Wells,17 Reg. Stafford, i (Som. Rec. Soc. xxxi), 33; ii (ibid. xxxii), 899; CPR, 1436-41, p. 255. but also many knights, gentlemen and ladies such as Sir Theobald Gorges*, Sir Humphrey* and William Stafford*, John Cheddar, John Roger†, Thomas Tremayne I*, Sir Edward Hull*’s mother and Sir Thomas Stawell†’s widow.18 C1/32/222; C139/137/14, m. 13; 176/37; C140/35/59; 71/47, m. 4; C254/143/30; KB27/746, rex rot. 24d; 774, rot. 79; 782, rot. 23d; CP40/786, rot. 42; Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xxii), 83, 85, 86, 88, 90, 93, 95, 99, 103, 108, 192, 202; CCR, 1429-35, p. 309; 1435-41, pp. 47, 99, 250, 450, 456, 481, 483-4, 487; 1441-7, pp. 124, 155, 194, 272; 1454-61, pp. 62, 69; CFR, xvi. 338; xxii. 638; CPR, 1441-6, pp. 87, 401; 1446-52, p. 411; Reg. Bekynton, i (Som. Rec. Soc. xlix), 336; Bridgwater Bor. Archs. 1400-45 (Som. Rec. Soc. lviii), 725; CP25(1)/46/82/94; 115/319/647; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 162; iii. 524; Som. Archs., Luttrell mss, 1/21; Bristol RO, Ashton Court mss, AC/D/1/74; Harvard Law School Lib., English deeds, BBN9378; Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR1/941-2. In 1436-7 he was appointed executor of both William and (Sir) John Paulet*, of whose estates he already stood enfeoffed,19 PCC 21 Luffenham (PROB11/3, f. 182v); C139/88/49; KB146/6/36/1. and by 1443 he was a member of the council of Sir Thomas Kyriel* and his wife Cecily, the widow of John Hill I* of Spaxton (like Paulet a former parliamentary colleague of his).20 SC6/1119/17, rot. 11.

The citizens of Exeter regularly called upon Hody’s services, rewarding him with gifts of food and wine, and from 1434 paying him an annual fee of 13s. 4d. Yet, in the long run they found him rather a disappointment, as his busy practice left him only limited time to devote to their interests. Thus, the mayor John Shillingford*, in London to pursue his city’s quarrel with its cathedral chapter, reported in some dismay that ‘[t]he cause of so longe taryng yn makyng of the answers hath be for right grete bysynes þt Alisaunder Hody hath aboute his awne maters’. Nevertheless, when Hody could be found and persuaded to make time for Exeter’s affairs, he was a useful advocate, as Shillingford reported on another occasion: ‘Hody hadde the wordis of power as above; and as touchyng the menys with this condicion that oure articulis were answered’.21 Devon RO, Exeter city recs., receivers’ accts. 8-26 Hen. VI; Letters and Pprs. Shillingford (Cam. Soc. n.s. ii), 3, 12, 14, 46, 145, 149. Closer to home, the men of Bridgwater also retained Hody as their counsel at an annual fee of one mark, like the citizens of Exeter keeping him amenable with regular gifts of wine. As Hody normally resided at West Bower within the parish of Bridgwater, he must have been a familiar figure in the town. In 1443-4 he presented the burgesses with a freshly hunted deer, which the town authorities appear to have turned into a communal feast, probably in the donor’s honour, and at some point before 1447 he gave a set of vestments of blue velvet decorated with gold leopards’ heads to the parish church.22 Bridgwater Bor. Archs. 1400-45, nos. 653, 686, 703, 711, 718; 1445-68 (Som. Rec. Soc. lx), nos. 728, 750, 757, 768, 774, 785, 793, 797, 816. The affairs of the community apart, Hody also found time to serve a succession of individual townsmen as a feoffee or witness to their deeds.23 Bridgwater Bor. Archs. 1400-45, nos. 681-2, 701, 709, 723, 725; 1445-68, nos. 731, 744-5, 755, 766, 772, 776-7, 779, 780, 782-3, 789, 795, 802, 907-8.

As the men of Bridgwater were already drawing extensively upon Hody’s services, it must have seemed only natural that he (a local man who fully complied with the statutory requirements for residency) should also represent them in Parliament. Thus, having gained early experience in 1429 as Member for Shaftesbury (a town which in five previous Parliaments of the decade had been represented by his brother John), Alexander went on to sit for Bridgwater in both 1431 and 1433. He evidently discharged his duties to the burgesses’ satisfaction, for in 1431 he was rewarded with a gift of a hood in addition to a payment of 13s. 4d. in lieu of his parliamentary wages.24 Ibid. 1400-45, no. 653.

From the early 1430s, the Crown also increasingly drew upon Hody’s talents. He was a frequent member of ad hoc commissions appointed in his locality, served as escheator of the double bailiwick of Somerset and Dorset in 1436-7, and in 1439 was added to the quorum of the Somerset bench, the sessions of which he subsequently attended with some regularity.25 E101/586/25, mm. 3, 4; CPR, 1452-61, p. 283. Not unusually for a lawyer of Hody’s standing, judicial appointments, such as commissions of oyer and terminer and of gaol delivery, formed an important part of his service to the Crown. In his case, however, they were balanced out by commissions indicative of his personal standing in his county, not least appointments to raise loans from the more affluent members of the shire community. It was this status, as much as – if not more than – his reputation as a lawyer which allowed for his repeated returns as knight of the shire for Somerset in eight out of the 11 Parliaments of Henry VI’s majority.

In spite of all this, it is perhaps not surprising that Hody made enemies. Thus, in April 1436, while he was transacting various legal matters at Bridgwater before William, Lord Botreaux, he and his servants were savagely attacked by the local gentlemen Robert and Thomas Dillington, Guy Bittlesgate, and their associates John Dillington and John Slaughtyrladde. The assailants failed to kill Hody as they were said to have intended, and Slaughtyrladde was captured and committed to prison by Botreaux, yet they soon rallied their armed supporters and freed the prisoner, threatening the town constable and bailiffs. On Hody’s complaint, in June special commissioners were appointed to investigate, and Robert Dillington paid a fine, while Slaughtyrladde was placed in the Marshalsea to await trial.26 KB9/229/1/46, 47; KB27/706, rot. 52d, rex rot. 24d; CPR, 1429-36, p. 609. The background to the attack is now obscure, but it has been suggested that it owed something to hostilities between Hody’s brother, John, and Bittlesgate’s patron, Sir William Bonville.27 Cherry, 244-5.

Questions over Hody’s own character are raised by the part he played in the murder of Edward Cullyford*, the Somerset county coroner and under sheriff, in 1446, this in despite of their long acquaintance. In 1431 the two men had together represented Bridgwater in the Commons, and Cullyford leased some of Hody’s property in Bridgwater and Wembdon.28 Som. Feet of Fines, 87. Yet accounts of the events on 4 Aug. 1446 point to less than amicable relations between them. On that day Hody and Sir Edward Hull rode to Cannington to mediate between Cullyford and John Brut in their dispute over landholdings at Whitestaunton. The parties duly assembled, but before long tempers flared and Brut and his friends began to berate Cullyford. At the bidding of one of those present Hull asked Hody to bind the disputants over to keep the peace, but Hody refused to do so, advising Hull that this would only exacerbate the quarrel. Nevertheless, he promised Hull that he would not allow Brut’s men to do Cullyford any harm. An amicable settlement between the parties now being clearly impossible, the arbiters withdrew, but that same evening Cullyford was brutally murdered by two of Brut’s associates, Hugh and John Michell. On hearing of the killing, Hody apparently took no steps to apprehend the murderers, but, encountering Hugh’s brother, Walter Michell, warned him that if the culprits came within his reach, he would arrest them, a message which seems to have been duly conveyed to the offenders. Cullyford’s wife appealed Hody as an accessory to the crime, but although a Somerset jury indicted him of the offence, he was summarily acquitted at Easter 1448 by a trial jury in the King’s bench at Westminster.29 KB9/254/66-68; KB27/745, rot. 28. It is highly likely that Hody was in fact guilty of protecting the Michells from the arm of the law, for not only was Walter in his service by the beginning of 1447, but by early 1451 he himself was a feoffee of the Michell family estates.30 CCR, 1447-54, p. 259; Luttrell mss, 40/3. Around the same time as Cullyford’s widow presented her appeal in King’s bench, Hody also appeared there and accused three men from Cannington, William Dodesham*, Philip Pym and William Plush*, of assaulting and robbing Walter Michell, apparently a counter-suit in retribution for similar charges brought against Michell by the defendants.31 KB27/745, rot. 41. If the lawyer ever suffered any consequences for his part in this affair, it may have been his failure to secure election to the Parliament of 1447, although it is equally possible that he had little inclination to spend early February in the provincial backwater of Bury St. Edmunds.

By then events on a wider stage were growing increasingly turbulent, as military disaster in France generated a full-blown political crisis in England. Hody was returned to all three Parliaments that met between the spring of 1449 and the summer of 1451, and although it is not known what part he played in the fractious proceedings of the three assemblies, it is likely that in the first half of 1449 he championed a petition on behalf of the community of Somerset seeking the enforcement of an act passed in 1442 (concerning the taking of goods by Welshmen).32 PROME, xii. 61-62. The autumn of 1451 saw Somerset in upheaval, as the earl of Devon sought to settle old scores with his rival Bonville and the latter’s patron, the earl of Wiltshire. In late September, his forces laid siege to Taunton castle, and although on this occasion he was persuaded to abandon his quest for revenge by the duke of York, early in the following year his army was once more on the move, as he joined York in his march to confront the King’s ministers at Dartford. Hody is not known to have taken an active part in these events, although his failure to secure election to the Parliament summoned to assemble at Reading in March 1453 may suggest that he was not perceived to be completely neutral. In the event, the tensions between the lords continued to simmer until they found an outlet in a pitched battle in the streets of St. Albans in May 1455. In the aftermath of the battle, a Parliament was summoned, and Hody was once again returned by the men of Somerset, taking as his colleague William Courtenay*, Bonville’s son-in-law, and son and heir of (Sir) Philip Courtenay* of Powderham, who represented the neighbouring county of Devon. If the electors of Somerset, like those of Devon, were anxious to strike a balance between the supporters of the court and those of York, it is possible that Hody was deemed to belong to the latter camp (he had, after all, served for some years as steward at Somerton of the earl of Salisbury, one of York’s leading allies). While at Westminster at the start of the second parliamentary session he secured a royal pardon.33 C67/41, m. 17. Yet he received no official appointments during York’s second protectorate of 1455-6, and before long the political alliances began to shift dramatically, as Bonville sought an accommodation with York’s partisans while the earl of Devon worked to regain favour at court. Hody himself apparently chose to follow the earl’s path. He was taken up in November 1456 by the newly-appointed chancellor, Bishop Waynflete of Winchester, who named him deputy constable of his castle at Taunton at an annual fee of £10,34 V.G. Davis, ‘Bp. Waynflete of Winchester’ (Trin. Coll. Dublin Ph.D. thesis, 1985), 277-8; eadem, ‘Wm. Waynflete and the Wars of the Roses’, Southern Hist. xi. 8, 19. so it is likely that by this date Hody, like Waynflete, was already seen as a supporter of the court faction increasingly dominated by Queen Margaret.

The two years following Hody’s appointment at Taunton saw him embroiled in an acrimonious dispute with James Luttrell, the head of an ancient and wealthy Somerset family, with whom he had long-established ties. In 1432 he had stood surety at the Exchequer for Bishop Stafford and Robert Coker when they were entrusted with the custody of the Luttrell estates, during James’s minority, and 15 years later, after James came of age, he had served him as a feoffee. But since then relations had soured drastically.35 CFR, xvi. 85; CPR, 1446-52, p. 284; 1467-77, pp. 193-4, 522. The cause of the quarrel appears to have been the estate of one of Luttrell’s illegitimate kinsmen, Richard Luttrell, whom both James and Hody had served as executors, although what precisely Hody did to incur James’s wrath is not explained. According to a later account, Lutrell sent a servant to Hody’s wife to ascertain his whereabouts, which she, suspecting no evil, readily disclosed; he imprisoned one of Hody’s men at Dunster for three days to prevent him from warning his master, and having unsuccessfully sought Hody at the house of Thomas Bratton, proceeded to Taunton, where Hody normally resided as deputy constable. Luttrell and his men entered the bishop’s castle ‘and all the dorys ther brake and entrid, serching after the seyd Alisaunder […], and apon the wyfe of the seyd Alisaunder asaute made, bete, and with here daggers manassyd to slee, and so would have do ner, by grace of God, one of ther felishipp lette hit, and Water Peyntore, servaunt to the seyd Alisaunder, cowardly nye to the dethe smote, and apon Sir Robert, preste to the seyd Alisaunder, asaute made and hym by the here to the grounde pluckyd, betyng hym with the pomellis of ther swerdis’. Finally, the rioters departed, having ransacked Hody’s quarters, carrying off silver spoons, ivory combs and other valuables. On Hody’s complaint to Bishop Waynflete the parties were bound in the princely sum of £1,000 in November 1457 to abide by the bishop’s verdict in settlement of their quarrel.36 Maxwell-Lyte, Hist. Dunster, 120-1; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 261-2. There were also numerous other, less dramatic disputes involving Hody during the troubled later 1450s,37 CP40/754, rot. 312; 773, rot. 111; 779, rots. 49, 320, 450, 455. among the more important of these being his disagreement with the Wiltshire esquire William Bessels of Bradfield, probably over title to property at North Bower, which gained poignancy through the involvement (on Bessels’ part) of the acquisitive lawyer Thomas Tropenell*.38 CP40/779, rot. 505; 787, rot. 414.

While Hody was engaged in his private squabbles, the country at large had drifted into open civil war. By the autumn of 1459 attempts to reach an accommodation between the court party, increasingly dominated by Henry VI’s formidable queen and the administration’s leading critic, the duke of York, and his Neville allies, had come to nothing and the two sides were squaring up with armed might. This show of strength ended in disaster for York and his adherents at Ludford Bridge that October and after they fled overseas the queen and her supporters lost no time in summoning a Parliament to meet at Coventry on 20 Nov. Care was taken to secure the return of the regime’s staunch supporters throughout the realm, and although no returns survive from Somerset, it is highly likely that Hody, who had represented the shire regularly since the late 1430s, was one of those elected on this occasion. He was certainly present at Coventry, for he was among the group of prominent lawyers charged with drafting a bill of attainder against York and his allies. This was clearly a task for the regime’s most skilled as well as least scrupulous minds, for one of their number was later said to have admitted that ‘the parlyows writing and the myschevous inditing was ymaginid, contrivid, and utterly concludid by her most vengeable labour, &c., and her most malicyows conspiracye ayens the innocent lords, knytis, gentilis, and comonys, and alle her issu perpetuel’.39 Paston Letters, i. 522, 535; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 824.

This was stated less than a year later, after the tables had turned and the Yorkist lords had returned to England and, in July 1460, roundly defeated the Lancastrian forces at Northampton. A fresh Parliament was summoned, and it was thought that the legal draftsmen of 1459 would answer for their activities. Bishop Waynflete, replaced as chancellor by the new rulers in July, lost little time in dismissing Hody as his deputy constable at Taunton, and in his place appointed a staunch supporter of the new regime, Humphrey Stafford IV* of Southwick. Having incurred the enmity of the Yorkist authorities, it is hardly surprising that Hody threw in his lot with the most intractable opponents of the settlement in the Parliament of 1460, which disinherited the prince of Wales. Perhaps in the retinue of the earl of Devon he rode north that winter, and was thus with the Lancastrian army that challenged the duke of York’s desperate sortie from Sandal castle at Wakefield on 30 Dec., and took his life. Hody distinguished himself in the fighting and was knighted on the battle field.40 C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, i. 117. Before long, the victorious forces were joined by Queen Margaret, who led them southwards towards London. On 16 Feb. they overran a Yorkist outpost at Dunstable, and then turned east to meet the earl of Warwick’s main army at St. Albans. Once more the Lancastrians emerged victorious, and the road to the capital lay open. The city, particularly its lesser inhabitants, had shown strong Yorkist sympathies, so the queen dispatched Hody and another west-country knight, Sir Baldwin Fulford*, to Barnet with a following of 400 armed men to demand London’s surrender. There, the emissaries were met by a delegation of aldermen, who cautiously promised to send money and supplies to the queen, but, aware of the destruction which had accompanied her progress south, were less forthcoming over the issue of opening the city’s gates. Five days later Fulford and Hody’s small force advanced to Aldgate and demanded admission. The mayor, Richard Lee*, refused, and the Londoners’ worst fears appeared to be confirmed when some of Hody’s men began to pillage the suburb. Enraged, the commons of London set upon the aggressors and drove them to flight.41 Ibid. i. 145-6; Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, ii (2), [777]; Griffiths, 872-3.

Within days, a Yorkist army led by York’s heir, Edward, earl of March, and the earl of Warwick arrived from the west and gained admittance to the capital, while the queen’s forces withdrew northward. On 4 Mar. Edward was proclaimed King, and lost no time in avenging his father’s death. On 6 Mar., as one of the leaders present at the scene of the duke of York’s execution, Hody was expressly exempted from the offer of a general pardon; on the 10th the sheriff of Somerset, Humphrey Stafford IV, was instructed to seize his property; and a fortnight later royal commissioners were appointed to track him down and place him in the Tower of London.42 CCR, 1461-8, p. 55; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 31-32. He would never reach that prison. He probably remained with the Lancastrian army until its crushing defeat in the battle of Towton on 29 Mar., but his subsequent fate is uncertain. An inquisition into his landholdings dated his death to 16 May, and it was later believed that he had been beheaded, perhaps after a summary trial by his captors. It is, however, equally possible that he met his end fighting his pursuers.43 C140/4/34; Maxwell Lyte, ‘Hody Fam.’, 128. When Edward IV’s first Parliament met in November, Hody was posthumously attainted for his part in York’s death at Wakefield.44 PROME, xiii. 42-44, 46-48; Letters and Pprs. ii (2), [778]. His manors of Gothelney, Wembdon, Kington and Otterhampton were seized into the King’s hands and in July 1462 were granted to Roger Vaughan.45 CPR, 1461-7, p. 192.

Meanwhile, in January 1462 Hody’s widow, Margaret, had been granted licence to marry Sir Reynold Stourton (a younger son of John Stourton II*, Lord Stourton) in the chapel of her manor house at West Bower, on the somewhat spurious grounds that the parish church was nearly two miles distant.46 Reg. Bekynton, i. 1412. She took her paternal inheritance as well as her jointure in Hody’s estates to her second husband. A few days before the battle of Northampton Hody had settled the remainder of his lands after his wife’s death on his nephew William Hody†, but it was not until 1483, when himself an MP, that William succeeded in having his uncle’s attainder reversed and recovered his inheritance.47 C140/4/34; SC8/30/1461; PROME, xiv. 455-7. In view of Hody’s unquestionable eminence as a lawyer in his own day, it is ironic that, no more than a generation after his death, he was chiefly remembered for his exploits in the last few months of his life, when it was merely recorded that ‘Elysawnder was actyfe yn batell, and ther he was made a knyzt’.48 Maxwell-Lyte, ‘Hody Fam.’, 128.