CROMER, William

William was the only son of the London alderman of the same name. When his father died in 1434, he was still a minor and was entrusted to the care of his father’s friend and executor, Henry Barton†. It is not clear what happened to him when Barton died the following year.3 PCC 22 Luffenham (PROB11/3, ff. 175v-77v). William must have been born in 1421 or very early in 1422 as on 31 Jan. 1443 he appeared before the mayor and aldermen and acknowledged receipt of 500 marks from the city chest, which his father had deposited there for his son’s coming of age.4 Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 279.

Instead of following in his father’s trade as a draper, Cromer established himself at the family’s recently-acquired estate in and near Sittingbourne in Kent. These lands provided him with a substantial income and in the parliamentary subsidy assessed a year after his father’s death they were valued at over £30 p.a.5 E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14d. His position within Kentish society was strengthened by his marriage to Elizabeth, daughter of James Fiennes, a highly-favoured esquire for the King’s body. The Cromer and Fiennes families had probably been introduced during the lifetime of William’s father, whose wife was from Westerham, close to Fiennes’s own manor of Kemsing and Sele. It is probable that the marriage was contracted soon after William’s coming of age (perhaps at the same time as another of Fiennes’s daughters was married to the Sussex esquire Robert Rademylde*), and may also have been marked by his entry into the King’s household, where his wife’s uncle Sir Roger Fiennes* was treasurer. Certainly, by Michaelmas 1443 Cromer, like Rademylde, was receiving livery as one of the esquires of the hall or chamber, a position he continued to enjoy until his premature death.6 E101/409/11, f. 38v; 410/1, f. 30v; 410/3, f. 31.

Cromer’s rise to prominence, by virtue of his marriage to Fiennes’s daughter, was rapid and extraordinary. On 6 Nov. 1444, probably aged only 22, he was pricked sheriff of Kent. In January the following year he presided over the parliamentary elections which saw his father-in-law returned as one of the knights of the shire. No indenture survives, but the return was part of a pattern that saw the parliamentary elections dominated by a small circle of men connected with Fiennes. Further evidence of how Cromer was able to use his courtly connexions during his first shrievalty came in September 1445 when he was pardoned for the escape of 11 prisoners from Canterbury gaol the previous month. The King’s writ ordering the letters of pardon, sealed with his signet at Windsor, recalled how ‘the said Crowmer is a persoune whome we have in tendrenesse and chierte and is also as ye knowe wel towardes oure right trusty and welbeloved knight Sir James ffenys Chamberlain unto oure moost dere and bestbeloved wif the Quene’.7 C81/1370/26; CPR, 1441-6, p. 372. This incident may also be evidence that Cromer was not a particularly able administrator, a suspicion given further weight by two fines levied against him in Hilary term 1445. The first was by the barons of the Exchequer for his failure to produce in court a Kentish couple who had been sued by Robert Cawode, one of the officers of the Exchequer; while the second related to his failure to bring an individual into Chancery to answer Stephen Slegge*.8 E13/143, rot. 21; CFR, xvii. 309.

On 2 Jan. 1447 at Rochester Cromer was himself elected as one of the knights of the shire for the Parliament at Bury St. Edmunds alongside his father-in-law. The election was presided over by another of Fiennes’s associates, William Isle*, but the list of attestors included erstwhile rivals of Cromer and Fiennes, such as Humphrey Eveas, as well as their associates, Stephen Slegge and Robert Est. Cromer’s activities at the Parliament, which saw the arrest and death of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and the elevation of Fiennes to the dignity of Lord Saye and Sele, are not recorded. But whether or not Cromer was personally involved in Gloucester’s demise, he certainly benefited from it. Shortly after Duke Humphrey’s death, Queen Margaret made him bailiff of the Kentish hundreds formerly held by the duke.9 E368/219, rot. 9d. It appears that he had been granted the office of steward of Milton and Marden in reversion on 23 Jan. 1445, to fall in after Gloucester’s death, but in the event this post was granted in Feb. 1447 to Thomas Brown II*: SC6/893/16; DL29/75/1495, m. 1. On 29 Jan. 1449 Cromer was elected to his second Parliament, due to assemble at Westminster the following month to deal with the government’s desperate need for money given the worsening situation in France. His fellow knight of the shire was Sir John Cheyne II*, another kinsman of Fiennes. The election was overseen by Slegge as sheriff and among the attestors were Isle and his brother-in-law, John Warner*, and Robert Est. Parliament closed in July. In September Cromer’s father-in-law Lord Saye was promoted treasurer and on the following 20 Dec. he himself was pricked as sheriff of Kent for a second time.

The second Parliament of 1449, which had assembled at Westminster in November, had seen the Commons attack William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, held responsible for the state of the realm and the disastrous conduct of the war in France. Impeached by the Commons, Suffolk was judged by the King on 17 Mar. 1450 and sentenced to banishment from all his dominions for five years from the following 1 May. On 2 May, on his way to Calais, he was murdered aboard a small ship in Dover Road and his body was thrown onto Dover sands. According to one contemporary source, news of the duke’s murder reached the sheriff, Cromer, who took the corpse into his custody (even though Dover was, of course, outside his jurisdiction), and sent his under sheriff to inform the judges and the King at Leicester and to ask for further instructions. Cromer then accompanied Suffolk’s body on its journey, through Canterbury on 22 May, and via Rochester to London. It was probably during this time that the sheriff made the infamous threat that the King would turn the county into a ‘wylde fforest’ to avenge the duke’s death. This rumour, which featured at the beginning of the first manifesto issued by the rebels amassing in Kent, may have been decisive in raising the commons in rebellion as Cromer and Suffolk’s body passed through the county.10 I.M.W. Harvey, Jack Cade, 73-77, 186; B.P. Wolffe, Hen. VI, 232; Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, ii. 146-7.

As Kent rose in what has become known as Cade’s rebellion, Cromer may have travelled up to Leicester to join his father-in-law, who was with the King at Parliament. If so, they quickly returned to London and on 13 June King Henry established himself at St. John’s hospital, Clerkenwell, while the rebels camped at Blackheath. Both Saye and Cromer were almost certainly with the King at this time. On 19 June, when some members of the royal household threatened to go over to Cade unless justice was done on the ‘traitors’, Henry committed Saye to the Tower and it seems likely that Cromer was sent to the Fleet prison at the same time. This may have been for their own safety, but more likely it represented the turning of the tide against those perceived by some of those close to the King, as well as the rebels themselves, as the men principally responsible for the uprising.11 Wolffe, 236; Harvey, 85-86. By now Cromer’s days, as one of the ‘grete extorcioners’ in Kent and ‘traytours’ about the King, were numbered. On 4 July, with Cade in control of London, Lord Saye was denied a trial and beheaded at the Standard in Cheapside. According to the chroniclers, later in the afternoon Cade rode to the Fleet, seized Cromer and took him to Mile End (where the rebels from Essex had gathered). He was beheaded without Aldgate in Whitechapel (beside the mansion of the recently-deceased London alderman, Robert Clopton*), and his head was then carried back through London where it was set next to his father-in-law’s on London Bridge.12 Six Town Chrons. ed. Flenley, 105, 133, 155; Three 15th Cent. Chrons. (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xxviii), 67-68; English Chron. (Cam. Soc. lxiv), 66; Chrons. London ed. Kingsford, 160-1, 276; Historical Collns. Citizen London (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xvii), 192. An inquisition held at the London Guildhall on 8 Feb. the following year, however, stated that Cromer had in fact died the previous day, on the 3rd, but gave no further details as to the circumstances of his demise.13 E199/20/16.

Most historians have followed the rhetoric of Cade’s manifestos and have dismissed Cromer as a ‘corrupt and malevolent administrator’ who exploited his position as Lord Saye’s son-in-law to enable himself and his officials to oppress the people of Kent during his two shrievalties.14 Harvey, 39; Wolffe, 124-5; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 632-5. In August and September 1450 royal commissioners sat in Kent to hear charges relating to the misgovernment of the shire during the previous decade. The indictments made, however, barely justify Cromer’s reputation. First, Richard Snelgare of Boxley, supposedly later one of his bailiffs, was accused of extortion in May 1442 (while Cromer may still have been a minor). Second, John Alphewe, who alledgedly served at some point as his under sheriff, was accused of extortion in May 1442 and December 1448, both occasions when Cromer was not sheriff. Finally, John Watte, one of Cromer’s bailiffs, was accused of failing to carry out properly a writ directed to him in April 1450, having already received 20s. from the plaintiff in the debt case to which it related. Unlike his fellow ‘grete extorcioners’, Slegge and Est, Cromer was not named personally in any of the indictments made.15 R. Virgoe, ‘Ancient Indictments in K.B.’, in Med. Kentish Soc. (Kent Rec. Ser. xviii), 223, 224, 239-40.

Nevertheless, as the administrators of his goods discovered, Cromer appears to have been a genuinely unpopular figure. From 1452 Thomas Winslow II* and Cromer’s brother-in-law, William Fiennes, the new Lord Saye, brought a number of suits in both the common pleas and King’s bench regarding close-breaking at his properties in Kent and London and theft of his possessions during the summer of 1450. Typical of these was the plea against Richard Cosington of Rainham, gentleman, and a group of local husbandmen who were alleged to have stolen 600 cattle from his manors of Tunstall and Murson.16 CP40/765, rot. 496d; 768, rots. 287, 367-9d, 435d, 436; 770, rots. 68, 175, 396d, 525, 527d, 546; 782, rot. 462d; 790, rots. 208, 449d. At least one of the suits, however, related to events that had occurred before Cade’s rebellion: a group of men from Sussex were accused of breaking into his manor of Tunstall in July 1449 and carrying off livestock and various household goods.17 CP40/792, rot. 328d. Most importantly, however, Cromer had been in dispute with his stepbrother, Robert Poynings*, who appears to have joined the rebels in 1450 as Cade’s sword-bearer, perhaps motivated by his hatred of his kinsman. In Trinity term 1452 Saye and Winslow brought a bill against one of Poynings’s servants, John Gregg, then a prisoner in the Marshalsea. They alleged that on 30 June 1450 he had broken into Cromer’s house at St Martin Orgar, London, and stolen a variety of goods. They admitted that the goods had formerly belonged to Robert Poynings’s father, but, they claimed, Lord Poynings had given them to his second wife, Cromer’s mother. Robert had taken them back when Lord Poynings died, but Cromer, Gregg claimed, had stolen them from his master, while he had merely taken advantage of Cade’s rebellion to recover the goods.18 KB27/765, rot. 78; R.M. Jeffs, ‘Poynings-Percy Dispute’, Bull. IHR, xxxiv. 152-3. The matter dragged on into Easter term 1454 when Winslow claimed that Poynings himself had broken into his house in St. Martin Orgar almost immediately after Cromer’s death while Cade’s rebellion was still in full flight, and stolen these same goods. In bringing this suit the administrators were probably taking advantage of the charges of treason which Poynings then found himself facing.19 CP40/773, rot. 124. Other litigation in which the administrators were involved was more mundane. William Thomas, the late sheriff’s nephew, claimed that Cromer had bought land from the feoffees of John Symkyn in Sittingbourne, a sale not completed at the time of his death, with only £20 of the purchase price of £60 paid. He and Winslow had required the feoffees to complete the sale according to the agreement made with Cromer but they had refused.20 C1/19/246. Winslow acted as one of Thomas’s sureties in this suit.

The exact reasons for Cromer’s unpopularity are now difficult to distinguish. His association with James, Lord Saye, seems to have been the principal cause. His rapid rise to office within Kent was clearly due to his father-in-law’s influence and he and Saye may have seemed to the commons of the county exemplars of the ‘persones of lower nature exaltyd & made cheyff of the privy counsell’ who had prevented the true lords of the royal blood from counselling the King and who were responsible for the parlous state of the realm. The chroniclers made clear this association by having Saye and Cromer appear to have been executed on the same day; indeed the author of one London chronicle makes the relative importance of the various reasons for Cromer’s murder explicit, describing him as ‘oon Crowmere a Squyer that hadde wedded the lorde Sayes dowghter and had been shireff of Kent and doon grete extorcion there as they seid’.21 Six Town Chrons. 155; Harvey, 187. The family’s reputation as parvenus probably dated from at least the early 1420s when our MP’s father was consolidating his estate in the county. Several court cases testify both to his ruthlessness in defending his own title to land and his rapacity in acquiring more.22 CP40/657, rot. 133; 670, rot. 124; 686, rot. 82d; KB27/652, rot. 40; 655, rot. 23; 660, rot. 45d While Cromer’s threat to punish the men of Kent for the murder of Suffolk may stemmed from the impetuosity of youth, it was a costly mistake merely confirming his reputation among a hostile community.

Shortly after her husband’s death, Elizabeth Cromer married Alexander Iden, the man who had replaced Cromer as sheriff and on 12 July 1450 at Heathfield in Sussex had captured Cade, mortally wounding him in the process.23 Harvey, 99-100. Iden was dead by Michaelmas term 1464, when William and Elizabeth’s son, James Cromer, was embroiled in litigation over his stepfather’s estate. The date of Elizabeth’s death is not known. Despite its inauspicious beginnings, the Cromer family became established as one of the leading gentry families of Kent during the second half of the fifteenth century. Our MP’s younger son, Nicholas, joined the household of Edward IV in the early 1460s, while his heir was knighted by the victors at the battle of Tewkesbury in 1471 and served as knight of the shire for Kent in 1491.24 Paston Letters, iv. 61; E101/412/1. Sir James’s son, William, married into the Haute family, served as sheriff in 1503 and 1509 and was knighted at Henry VIII’s coronation.25 M. Mercer, ‘Kent and National Politics’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1995), 134, 138, 151.