DRURY, Henry

First heard of in October 1426, when he and his father were among those pardoned by the King for acquiring properties in Sapiston without licence,5 CPR, 1422-9, p. 378. Henry was a member of a cadet branch of the Drurys of Rougham. Tradition has it that his family had served John of Gaunt,6 Campling, 37; J. Gage, Hist. Thingoe Hundred, 128, 428, 430. Thomas Hethe (Henry’s maternal grandfather) and Nicholas Drury (presumably the MP’s gdfa. rather than his father) are said to have accompanied Gaunt on his expedition to Castile in 1386. but he himself became a follower of the house of Stafford rather than that of Lancaster. As Nicholas had a long life and comfortably outlived his son, Henry inherited nothing from him and serving the Staffords was a means of making his own way in the world. He was among the feoffees to whom Humphrey, earl of Stafford, conveyed his estates at the end of 1427,7 CCR, 1422-9, pp. 318-19, 321-3, 344. but he had almost certainly entered the earl’s service before that date. His duties as one of Stafford’s men sometimes took him away from his home county. In 1429-30, for example, Drury’s groom spent 17 days with the earl’s household at Tonbridge, Kent, as presumably did Drury himself.8 Campling, 38. A decade later, Stafford appointed Drury one of his itinerant justices in Brecon, some considerable distance from Suffolk. Besides serving the earl, Drury also found time to look to his own interests, for by the early 1430s he had obtained manors at Wordwell and Sapiston, both held of the abbot of Bury St. Edmunds. It is possible that he had bought them, since there is no evidence that they came to him through marriage.9 Hervey, iii. 318; W.A. Copinger, Suff. Manors, i. 358. Later that decade, Drury acquired the manor of Ickworth (formerly the property of the family of that name) from his cousin, Sir William Drury of Rougham, although whether by purchase is not clear. Sir William had won possession of the manor in 1432, following the failure of the Ickworth line a year earlier and a series of disputes over its ownership.10 Hervey, iii. 319; Copinger, vii. 70-71; Gage, 280-3; C1/9/316-17; 12/165-6; 68/14.

Drury began his career as a local administrator in November 1427, when he commenced the first of his three terms as escheator in Norfolk and Suffolk. The following year the government appointed him sheriff of those shires, in which capacity he officiated at the Norfolk county election to the Parliament of 1429, as presumably he did for that in Suffolk as well.11 C219/14/1. The Suff. return for that year has not survived. Some years later, in the mid 1430s, he was sued in the court of the Exchequer (although with what outcome is unknown) for his actions as sheriff. The plaintiffs, Henry Sturmer and Henry Lesyngham, alleged that he had given a false return to a writ of capias, stating that a defendant whom they were suing for trespass was too ill to appear in court when, in fact, he was in good health.12 E13/140, rot. 7d. Drury did not join his first ad hoc commission until August 1433, while his first Parliament was in recess. The Suffolk county election to this assembly had taken place the previous June, when Roger Drury (either Drury’s brother or cousin), and Thomas Hethe† (his mother’s cousin) had acted as Henry’s mainpernors. It was a well attended election, as was that to the succeeding Parliament when Drury was re-elected, but there is no evidence of any controversy on either occasion. Several of his relatives attested his return in 1435, when Thomas Hethe again stood as one of his mainpernors.

Five months before the election of 1435 Drury joined William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, in a quitclaim on behalf of the earl’s retainer, Sir Thomas Tuddenham*, and he was one of the feoffees of John Heydon*, another de la Pole follower, seven years later.13 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 361-2; CP25(1)/169/189/175. He must therefore have had more than a passing association with Suffolk and his affinity, but his primary loyalties remained with the earl of Stafford, for whom he was clearly a valued retainer and councillor. In February 1438 he appeared in the Exchequer as a mainpernor for his patron when the Crown granted the earl the keeping of the late duke of Bedford’s manor at Atherstone, Warwickshire,14 CFR, xvii. 19. and by 1438-9 Stafford had granted both him and his wife, Elizabeth, annuities for life. Amounting to £13 6s. 8d. and £6 13s.4d. respectively, the annuities were charged upon the earl’s manor at Barningham in Norfolk, which was in effect farmed out to the couple.15 Campling, 38; Rawcliffe, 222. Drury was steward of Stafford’s manors at Gazeley and Haverhill, Suffolk, and Helions Bumpstead, Essex, by 1440, in which year he and Elizabeth were admitted to the confraternity of the abbey of Bury St. Edmunds on the same day as the earl, who provided a feast at the abbey to mark the occasion.16 Gage, 283. In February 1441 Drury and another Stafford councillor, John Harper*, acted as feoffees of the earl’s castle and lordship of Kimbolton in Huntingdonshire and Bedfordshire,17 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 527-8. and Drury was associated with Sir Edward Grey and his brother, Robert, both Stafford retainers, in a conveyance of property in Warwickshire.18 CAD, vi. C4070; Rawcliffe, 74, 232, 234. During the same period Drury was a feoffee of the reversion of the manor of Hengrave, Suffolk, on Stafford’s behalf.

The manor had formerly belonged to Drury’s relative and former mainpernor, Thomas Hethe, who had died without male heirs in 1439 and Stafford had bought the reversion following the death of William Bardwell, Hethe’s son-in-law, in 1440. In the meantime, the estate remained in the hands of Hethe’s widow and daughter, both of whom, as it happened, were to outlive the earl.19 Copinger, vii. 49; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 366-7. The Stafford nexus and family connexions also explain how Drury came to act as a feoffee of Thomas Gedding, a landowner from the same part of west Suffolk. Another of Gedding’s feoffees was the Suffolk lawyer, Robert Cavendish, for whom Drury apparently acted in the same capacity. Gedding was Drury’s uncle by marriage, having married his mother’s sister, Anne Hethe. Nicholas Gedding, evidently a relative, would serve as an officer on the Stafford estates in the later fifteenth century.20 CP25(1)/169/188/127; 224/116/10; Suff. RO (Bury St. Edmunds), Hengrave mss, 449/2/151-2; Copinger, 21, 80; Rawcliffe, 201.

By then Drury was long dead. Certainly no longer alive on 20 July 1443, he probably died earlier that year. His will is no longer extant, although records of the court of common pleas reveal that he appointed his wife his executor. In 1445 Sir Thomas Lewknor* began suits against her and another Stafford follower, Richard Bruyn*, each for 130 marks. The circumstances of these alleged debts, both contracted in Lewkenor’s home county of Sussex, are unknown, although it seems very likely that they in some way arose from the defendants’ connexion with Stafford.21 CP40/738, rot. 38d. The plea roll refers to Elizabeth as ‘Elizabeth who was the wife of Henry Drury late of London widow’. It is unclear how to interpret this phrase: either she had moved to the City after her husband’s death, or the MP had had some otherwise unknown connexion with London. Following Drury’s death, his feudal overlord, the abbot of Bury, granted the custody of his estates to Anne, countess of Stafford, to hold until his son and namesake came of age. In the event, the younger Henry died while still a minor and was succeeded by his infant sister, Jane, who in due course inherited her father’s estate. Following Drury’s death, the earl granted his widow, Elizabeth, the manor of Barningham during pleasure, to hold unless or until she remarried, and awarded her an annual pension of 20 marks for life. He also provided for Jane, who was living in the nursery of the Stafford household when her father died. The account of Stafford’s receiver-general for 1444-5 records the purchase of black cloth for 3s. to make a tunic (‘tunica tabard’) for the girl, who also received two new chemises costing a further 2s. 6d. Some 13 years later, Stafford, by then duke of Buckingham, provided her with a marriage portion of £20, although she was not to marry her first husband, Thomas Hervey, until the early 1460s.22 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 226-7; Hervey, iii. 318; Campling, 38-39; Rawcliffe, 236.

Jane never took possession of Drury’s manors of Ickworth and Wordwell, since her mother, who enjoyed a life interest in them, outlived her. As for the estates of her paternal grandfather, Nicholas Drury, these passed to the MP’s younger brother, Roger Drury of Hawstead.23 Hervey, i. 154; Gage, 283. Elizabeth’s possession of Ickworth was, however, troubled by the refusal of Roger Drury, who was one of its feoffees, to release his title to it: C1/42/47. Through Jane’s first marriage, Ickworth passed to the Herveys, ancestors of the marquesses of Bristol, while her second husband, Sir William Carewe†, was to acquire Sapiston, apparently through purchase. Her mother, Elizabeth Drury, made her will in March 1476 and was dead by the end of that year. She sought burial in St. Mary’s church, Bury St. Edmunds, near the tombs of her children. Her request indicates that the MP’s infant son was buried in St. Mary’s, and that Elizabeth had borne him other children who had died at an early age. The burial place of Drury himself is unrecorded.24 Hervey, iii. 320; Campling, 39-40, photograph between pp. 44-45.