HOUGHTON, Richard

Houghton entered royal service before February 1443, when he was granted for life the office of swanherd along the full length of the Thames, with wages of 4d. a day, and even though he gave up the post just 17 months later he continued to be a member of Henry VI’s household. From the autumn of 1446 he was numbered among the yeomen of the Crown, and such he remained almost until the end of the reign. A yeoman’s customary wages of 6d. a day, payable from the fee farm of Nottingham, were granted to him for life on 2 Feb. 1447, along with arrears from the previous Michaelmas.4 E101/409/16; 410/1, 3, 6, 9; E361/6, rots. 50, 51d; CCR, 1441-7, p. 418. Together with Robert Cokes, another of the King’s yeomen, he received in April following a ‘gift’ of goods and chattels from Robert Coteler, a London skinner, but the background to this transaction is obscure.5 CCR, 1441-7, p. 461. Houghton secured exemption from the Act of Resumption of 1450 with regard to his daily wage, and when, on 13 Nov. 1454, the Council drew up ordinances for the regulation of the Household during Henry VI’s prolonged illness, he was named among the 23 yeomen of the Crown who were to be kept on in service in close attendance on the King’s person.6 PROME, xii. 128; PPC, vi. 224. Earlier that year, on 28 May, he had obtained a pardon of his outlawry for failing to appear in the court of common pleas to answer the suit of two London mercers for a debt of 46s. 5d.7 CPR, 1452-61, p. 135. Although then described as ‘formerly of New Windsor’, he is not known to have held any property in the town. More likely, he was resident in Windsor castle attending on the King during his regular and increasingly lengthy stays there. Houghton was exempted from the workings of the Act of Resumption granted in the Parliament of 1455.8 PROME, xii. 417. It may have been he who at about this time was awarded an annuity of five marks by Humphrey, duke of Buckingham, payable from Tonbridge, Kent: C. Rawcliffe, Staffords, 239 (citing SC6/1117/11, m. 6).

In the meantime he had been appointed for life as bailiff of the royal honour of Wallingford and St. Valery, an office which earned him a fee of £10 p.a. The honour had been assigned to the young prince of Wales, and when arrears of Houghton’s fee were ordered to be paid him in June 1458 the instruction came nominally from the prince, but in reality from the queen’s council.9 CPR, 1452-61, p. 226; SC6/1097/3, 4. There can be little doubt that he owed his election for Wallingford to the next Parliament, summoned to meet at Coventry in November 1459, to his position as a loyal retainer of Henry VI, although his role as bailiff of the honour must have made him familiar to the burgesses. The Parliament met in the wake of the rout of the Yorkists at Ludford Bridge, and Houghton, as one of many courtiers in the Commons, witnessed the proscription of the enemies of the house of Lancaster. He kept his post and stipend as a yeoman of the Crown until August 1460, when, following their victory at Northampton, the Yorkist lords instigated a purge of the Household, and in November he was also removed from his office at Wallingford.10 E361/6, rot. 51d; CPR, 1452-61, p. 633. After the Lancastrian defeat at Towton he may have gone into exile with Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou, initially to Scotland and then to France. If so, it is possible that he was the Richard Houghton appointed controller of customs at Plymouth and Fowey during the Readeption, but on these points we cannot be certain.