LEWKNOR, Sir Thomas

The Lewknors had been prominent among the gentry of Sussex since the late thirteenth century, when Roger Lewknor married the heiress of the Keynes family. He died in 1295 in possession of the manors of Selmeston, Itford and Horsted Keynes in the east of the county, which, together with Broadhurst (close to Horsted Keynes), and Gretworth, far away in Northamptonshire, all eventually passed to our MP as a direct descendant. While Horsted Keynes was the Lewknors’ principal home in Sussex, they also frequently resided at their manor-house at South Mimms in Middlesex, which had also been in the family’s possession since the late thirteenth century, and Sir Thomas’s great-grandfather, Sir Roger Lewknor† (d.1362), represented both counties in Parliaments summoned by Edward III.8 Peds. Plea Rolls ed. Wrottesley, 432; VCH Mdx. v. 282-4; CIPM, xi. 359; Suss. Arch. Collns. iii. 89-102 (although this acct. is unreliable). His grandfather, another Sir Thomas (d.1375), added to the family interests through his marriage to Joan d’Oyley, heiress of the manor of ‘La Denne’ in Warnham, situated in west Sussex, and in the Midlands those of Stoke Doyle (Northamptonshire), Whatton (Leicestershire), and Ronton (Staffordshire). In 1391 Joan and her second husband, John Cobham† (d.1399) of Hever, Kent, demised Ronton to her kinsman John Knightley for his lifetime, thereby delaying its descent to the Lewknors.9 O’Bayley, 90-95; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xi. 191, 198-9; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 607-8. She had settled her manor in Warnham on her younger son, John Lewknor, but the rest of the d’Oyley inheritance, together with the estates of the Lewknors, passed to the elder son, Roger (the father of our MP). The value of all these landed holdings is difficult to ascertain, but those in Sussex and Northamptonshire were worth at least £83 p.a.,10 Corp. London RO, hr 124/46, 87; VCH Northants. iii. 132-3; Feudal Aids, vi. 500, 526. Add. 39375, f. 149; CP40/667, rot. 121. and according to the inquisition post mortem for our MP his property in London and the estates in Leicestershire and Middlesex had a clear annual value of more than £79, bringing the total up to at least £162.11 C139/150/35. In the 1430s he leased or granted Ronton to a kinsman, Edward Doyley, for life, and gave an annual rent of £5 from his London inn, The Christopher, to John Hatherley* and others: Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iv. 191-4; London hr 167/29.

Roger Lewknor died on 10 Nov. 1400, while his son and heir was still a minor,12 Writs de diem clausit extremum were sent to seven counties and London, but no inqs. post mortem were held until 1412: CFR, xii. 82; CIPM, xix. 955. Roger’s will does not survive, only an acquittance of c. July 1401: PCC 2 Marche (PROB11/2A, f. 9). and it was believed that the latter’s wardship was then deliberately concealed from the Crown. In a plea brought on behalf of Henry IV it was stated that as Horsted Keynes, Selmeston and Itford were held by knight service of the honour of Leicester the feoffees holding these and other Lewknor lands were defrauding the King of his feudal rights, to his damage of £1,000. In their defence the feoffees said that they held the manors in fee simple, by virtue of a settlement Roger had made in 1396, and a jury called to an assize at East Grinstead on 5 Dec. 1401 found in their favour.13 CP40/563, rot. 209d. Accordingly, the guardianship of the ward remained with his father’s feoffees, and he may have lived for a while with one of them, Nicholas Mymmes, at South Mimms, for since Nicholas left him land there in his will of 1407.14 F.C. Cass, South Mimms, 37. The heir’s widowed stepmother, Eleanor, who married Robert Knyvet, successfully sued the feoffees for her dower in the Sussex manors and Lewknor property elsewhere, and also appears to have retained the manor of South Mimms until her death in 1436.15 Add. 39375, f. 149; CP40/667, rot. 121; Feudal Aids, vi. 500, 526; Guildhall Lib. 9171/3, f. 452v. In 1444 Sir Thomas brought a suit against the Knyvets’ son John, acting as Eleanor’s executor: CP40/732, rot. 73.

Well before he attained his majority, Thomas also fell heir not only to the combined Lewknor and d’Oyley estates but also to the substantial properties once belonging to Henry, 3rd Lord Tregoz (d.1361), for although the latter left eight children his legitimate line ended in 1404 on the death of his last surviving son John, whose five offspring were all bastards. Lewknor (whose grandmother Joan d’Oyley was Lord Henry’s niece) was thus his lawful heir. The valuable Tregoz estates, consisting of nine manors in Sussex, another in Kent, and Le Hertshead, an inn in Southwark, were then in the possession of feoffees, or else assigned in dower to a Tregoz widow. An attempt to eject the feoffees from these and other manors in 1408 resulted in their successful recovery of 300 marks in damages; on the other hand they were amerced for wrongly accusing young Lewknor and others of being party to the alleged disseisin.16 CIPM, xviii. 933-4; VCH Suss. iv. 123; CP, xii (2), 22-29; Suss. Arch. Collns. xciii. 50-56; JUST 1/1521, rot. 30. An acct. of the receiver-general of the duchy of Cornwall estates from 1407-8 notes that the prince of Wales had granted the Tregoz manors of Goring and Datesham, Suss. to the feoffees named by Lewknor’s father, together with Lewknor’s wardship and marriage: SC6/813/23. Among the feoffees was the prominent Surrey landowner Nicholas Carew, who seized the opportunity to marry one of his daughters, Elizabeth, to the eligible heir of the families of Lewknor and Tregoz. Yet any hopes that his grandchildren would come into this large inheritance were dashed on Elizabeth’s childless death in 1410.17 Manning and Bray, ii. 529. In the tax assessments made in 1412 the Tregoz estates were estimated to be worth at least £80 p.a., but Lewknor’s inheritance of them was neither straightforward nor without its price, as is revealed in a petition sent to the chancellor by Thomas Tregoz, the only survivor of the illegitimate sons of John Tregoz. Thomas claimed that in his will his father had left land worth £20 p.a. to each of his two bastard sons, and instructed the trustees of his estates to proclaim throughout the country that if any collateral male heir wished to claim the manors after his death such an heir should pay them 500 marks, out of which they should apply at least 300 marks to the foundation of a chantry in the chapel next to the church at Goring, Sussex, where two priests would pray for his soul in perpetuity. John’s executors had duly received 500 marks from Thomas Lewknor as the next lawful heir, but had failed to do anything about the chantry.18 Feudal Aids, vi. 523; C1/75/92. A chantry was later established, but with only one priest. In July 1441 its patronage was in the hands of Lewknor’s feoffees. He had been in full possession of the Tregoz lands since 1428 or earlier: Feudal Aids, v. 154, 172-3.

In 1415, the year after he came of age, Lewknor embarked for Normandy with Henry V’s army, as an esquire in the retinue of Thomas Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, the leading magnate in his home county. It would appear that he was knighted on the campaign, perhaps even on the field at Agincourt, for although many of his fellows, including their commander, were repatriated after falling sick at the siege of Harfleur, there is no record that he himself returned home until after the victory.19 DKR, xliv. 569, 571; E101/47/1. Subsequently, he may have been responsible for arranging the marriage of his cousin Joan, the heiress of ‘La Denne’ in Warnham, to another member of Arundel’s retinue, John Bartelot*. In a collusive action, in 1420 he successfully sued Bartelot in the court of common pleas for possession of the manor, only to relinquish it a few months later to him and his wife in tail-male, with contingent remainders to himself and his heirs.20 CIPM, xix. 523-5; VCH Suss. vi (2), 208; CP25(1)/240/84/24. By then Sir Thomas himself had both married again and been widowed for a second time. At the time of the marriage it had not been foreseeable that this second wife, Philippa, a niece of the prominent landowner Sir Edward Dallingridge† (the builder of Bodiam castle), and cousin of Sir John† (d.1408), would bring the Lewknors yet more manorial holdings in Sussex; indeed, 50 years would elapse before Philippa’s brother Richard died without issue, leaving her son Roger Lewknor to inherit the valuable Dallingridge estates. Initially, what made the match particularly attractive to Sir Thomas was that as the widow of Richard Berners Philippa held as her jointure and dower the manor of West Horsley, Surrey, with its park and warren, a third part of Barnsbury in Middlesex (together worth at least £30 p.a.), as well as a dowager’s interest in the Berners manor of Icklingham in Suffolk. Yet these were lost to him when she died in October 1420.21 CIPM, xx. 693-4; VCH Surr. iii. 354; VCH Mdx. viii. 53; CFR, xiv. 334, 360; CCR, 1419-22, pp. 2, 240. Sir Thomas compensated for the loss by taking as his third wife another widow, Elizabeth Etchingham, who retained for life various of the holdings in Sussex of her former husband Sir Thomas Hoo, including the manor of Wartling, which was confirmed in her possession by a settlement made by her stepson Thomas Hoo I, afterwards Lord Hoo and Hastings.22 Feudal Aids, v. 149; VCH Suss. ix. 138. Furthermore, Elizabeth was extremely well connected among the leading gentry of the south-east, for besides her kinship with the Etchinghams and Hoos she was related to the families of Fiennes, Cheyne, Brenchesle and Rickhill, with whom her new husband came to have close dealings.

In view of his wealth and standing it is not surprising that Lewknor was frequently appointed to ad hoc commissions of local government, and as a member of the Sussex bench for over 30 years. There is no evidence that he again took part in Henry V’s wars in France, although he was listed among the men of Surrey considered best suited for military service in defence of the realm early in 1420. He was present at the coronation of Katherine de Valois on 24 Feb. 1421, wearing the scarlet livery issued by the royal wardrobe for the ceremony.23 E101/407/4, f. 34v. Shortly afterwards, at Guildford on 23 Apr., he headed the list of attestors to the indenture recording the election of Surrey’s knights of the shire in the forthcoming Parliament, as it happened the last one that Henry V attended. In the following year he was elected to represent Sussex in the first Parliament summoned in the name of Henry VI. He was joined in the Commons by Thomas Frowyk I*, his near neighbour at South Mimms, representing Middlesex, and their friendship was to be later cemented with the marriage of Frowyk’s son Henry II* to Lewknor’s daughter Joan; while among those sitting in the Upper House was Lewknor’s cousin John Kemp, the bishop of London, a member of the newly-appointed council of regency. It is now impossible to know quite how close the two men were, although a few years later, after Kemp’s elevation to the archbishopric of York, Lewknor felt able to call upon him to head the feoffees of his Tregoz inheritance.24 C219/12/5; CP40/775, rot. 607; KB27/768, rot. 68d. Sir Thomas was elected to Parliament once more, in 1425, and in the following year he was appointed sheriff of Surrey and Sussex. The Exchequer made him an allowance of £40 on his account both on this occasion and after his second shrievalty five years later.25 E159/203, brevia Trin. rot. 6d; 209, brevia Hil. rot. 5d. The pardon he took out in July 1437 was evidently intended to protect him from suits arising from his office: C67/38, m. 4. Although Lewknor never sat in the Commons again, he headed the list of Sussex electors at Chichester on 8 Sept. 1429, and during his second term as sheriff, in 1432, he conducted the elections both there and at Guildford.26 C219/14/1, 3. Two of his sons, Roger and John, represented Sussex in his lifetime. Naturally, he was among the local gentry required to take the oath against maintenance in 1434. When asked to make a contribution towards equipping the duke of York’s expedition to France in 1436, he was expected to provide 100 marks, a sum commensurate with his status.27 CPR, 1429-36, p. 372; PPC, iv. 329.

Lewknor’s closest associates continued to be drawn from the leading families of Sussex and Kent to whom he was linked by ties of kinship. Shortly before his second Parliament, he had been asked by his wife’s cousins the brothers Sir Roger*and James Fiennes* to be a feoffee of their family estate in Oxfordshire, and in the winter of 1427-8 he witnessed their acquisition of Hever. By that date, too, he had established friendly relations with the wealthy and influential Sir John Pelham*, who called upon him in 1428 to witness the safe transfer of his moveable goods to his wife, his bastard son Sir John the younger (Queen Katherine’s chamberlain) and the bishop of Durham, and his grant to the same son of the rape of Hastings and specified manors there.28 CCR, 1422-9, pp. 345, 388; 1435-41, pp. 266, 268-9; Add. Ch. 30047. Other transactions of that year concerned Lewknor’s sister-in-law Joan, who had married John Rickhill*, and a commitment to Sir Richard Poynings* (the eldest son of Robert, 4th Lord Poynings) to be a trustee of estates in Sussex and Dorset which Sir Richard left in his will to support his widow, the dowager countess of Arundel, and their children.29 CIMisc. vii. 503; CCR, 1422-9, p. 390; Collectanea Topographia et Genealogica ed. Nichols, iii. 259-60.

It may be that Lewknor’s links with Lord Poynings played a part in the negotiations to secure a potentially lucrative and highly prestigious marriage for his first son, Roger, still a mere boy, for the bride, Eleanor Camoys, was Poynings’ niece. She, a grand-daughter of Thomas, Lord Camoys, who had commanded the left wing at Agincourt, became a coheiress of his estates following the death of her brother Lord Hugh in 1426. In February 1428 Lewknor entered a formal agreement with Ralph Rademylde†, the husband of Eleanor’s sister and coheiress, for an equitable division of the profits and costs arising since Hugh’s death, but £30 remained outstanding when Lewknor died many years later, and his widow had to sue Rademylde’s executor to recover it. In 1433 Lewknor witnessed the quitclaim of various Sussex manors made to Roger and Eleanor by her uncle, Roger, Lord Camoys, and it seems very likely that he had been party to the settlement of their differences.30 CP40/669, rots. 12, 121, 373; Add. 39376, f. 84; Add. Ch. 20055. In an attempt to cover all eventualities in the future descent of the Camoys estates, he later arranged the marriage of one of his younger sons, Nicholas, to the Rademyldes’ daughter, Isabel.31 CP, ii. 510-11. Sir Thomas also made careful plans for the rest of his large brood, notably by securing for another of his sons, John, marriage to the niece and heiress of Sir Hugh Halsham (another of his companions in the earl of Arundel’s retinue in 1415), with the intention of acquiring for John the Halsham estates in Norfolk, Kent and Wiltshire.32 Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), no. 587; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 206-7. The marriage of his daughter, Alice, reinforced a connexion already formed with Sir John Pelham the younger, who in 1444 enfeoffed Sir Thomas of four Sussex manors as part of the settlement for the match between her and Pelham’s son and heir. Following the King’s grant in 1445 of the lordship, barony and honour of Hastings to Sir Thomas Hoo (the stepson of Lewknor’s wife), Pelham’s title to certain manors pertaining to the rape was under threat; he asked Lewknor to be party to transactions completed in the following year whereby his interests might be safeguarded.33 Add. Chs. 23801, 23808, 30046, 30393; A. Collins, Peerage, ed. Brydges, 505. Relations between the Pelhams and Lewknors remained close for many years more, for Sir Thomas’s gds. and namesake was later married to Pelham’s da. Katherine (d.1480): Suss. Arch. Collns. lxix. 52, 67, 68; Add. Chs. 29736, 30433.

Lewknor was frequently named in the wills of his contemporaries. In the 1430s he had supervised that of his former father-in-law Nicholas Carew, as well as acting as a feoffee on behalf of Carew’s widow; 34 PCC 16 Luffenham (PROB11/3, f. 124); CCR, 1435-41, pp. 129, 260, 269-70. and in 1446 (Sir) William Estfield*, the London mercer and merchant stapler, bequeathed to him a silver-gilt goblet. That November Lewknor was among those licensed to found a chantry in Canterbury cathedral in memory of the late judge Sir William Brenchesle, whose widow Joan was his wife’s aunt. Subsequently, in fulfilment of Joan Brenchesle’s will, he joined his stepson Thomas Hoo II in planning the foundation of the ‘Battisford chantry’ in the parish church at Bexhill, where prayers were to be said for his wife during her lifetime and for her soul after death, although he died before this particular foundation had been completed.35 Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Stafford, ff. 139-141v; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 21-22; Suss. Arch. Collns. liii. 81-86; Canterbury Cathedral Archs. CCA-DCc-ChAnt/B/357. On behalf of his wife’s niece, Anne Etchingham, he was a feoffee of estates in Dorset belonging to her husband John Roger, the elder brother of John Roger I*.36 CPR, 1446-52, p. 411. All this serves to demonstrate that Lewknor was generally well regarded, and when it came to the affairs of his widespread network of relations he often proved indispensable.

Lewknor died on 22 June 1452, leaving as his heir Roger, the eldest of his six surviving sons, born of his marriage to Philippa Dallingridge.37 C139/150/35. One inq. gives his date of death as 20 May. His widow Elizabeth faced serious challenges to her tenure of jointure and dower in his estates, in particular those pertaining to the former Tregoz inheritance. Sir Thomas had intended that she should use the profits of his London inn, The Christopher, to sustain the Tregoz chantry at Goring, but all those whom he had enfeoffed in this particular property had died, their estate having passed to John Cheyne, son and heir of the last survivor, who refused to comply with her request. Furthermore, although Lewknor had enfeoffed Archbishop Kemp, Ralph, Lord Sudeley, Sir Thomas Kyriel* and others in the rest of the Tregoz estates to the intent that they should perform his will, which was that she should have these estates for life, in November her stepson Roger, claiming that the will had been forged, amassed a great number of people ‘in manner of war’, entered the manors of Goring and Preston, ‘toke up’ many of the tenants (forcing them to pay their rents only to him), and caused her servants to leave her service. In Easter term 1453, Roger, who had recently been knighted in the exalted company of the King’s half-brothers, sued her and her fellow executors of Sir Thomas’s will for withholding a chest and pyx containing muniments, and in Michaelmas term 1454 she and her sons John, Walter and Richard, were attached with another of the executors to respond to him and the King over an alleged illegal entry into the former Tregoz property in Southwark in September 1452. A jury found in Sir Roger’s favour in the spring of 1455, but this was not the end of the matter, for the feoffees of the Tregoz estates promptly brought an action against him in King’s bench for his illegal entry into those manors. On 13 Nov. the principal parties (Sir Roger on the one side and Elizabeth and her five Lewknor sons on the other), entered mutual recognizances in £1,000 to abide by the arbitration of the chancellor, Archbishop Bourgchier. Eight days later Sir Roger came to court and declared himself satisfied regarding the damages and costs awarded him in the Southwark suit, but the later devolution of at least part of the Tregoz inheritance on his half-brothers and their descendants indicates that in other respects he failed in his claims.38 CP40/768, rots. 68d, 459; 769, rot. 396; 775 rot. 607; 779, rots. 429, 431; C1/41/239-44, 71/42-43; KB27/768, rot. 68d. Elizabeth also brought an action in the court of common pleas in 1453 against Edward Doyley for her dowager’s portion of Ronton in Staffordshire, alleging that the defendant, who only held a life-tenancy, had conveyed the manor to persons unknown with a view to defrauding her. She still retained the Hoo manors of Wartling, Bucksteep and Brooksmarle in Sussex, as settled on her by her first husband, and took out a royal pardon on 1 Nov. 1458, which referred to her role as executrix of both her husbands.39 Suss. Arch. Collns. viii. 119-21; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iii. 213-15; C67/42, m. 4. The widow had also been troubled by lawsuits arising from the will of her brother Sir Thomas Etchingham, and regarding property which had belonged to her maternal grandfather. This last should have been partitioned, with her kinsman Sir Richard Fiennes (son of Sir Roger) receiving a moiety and she and her sister Joan Rickhill a quarter-part each, but Fiennes contested her claim. Joan died in 1455 while the case was still proceeding, leaving her daughter and the latter’s husband the lawyer Richard Bruyn* to fight on as Elizabeth’s co-plaintiffs.40 Add. 39376, ff. 73, 76, 77; CP40/778, rot. 338; 779, rot. 658d. Ten years earlier, in 1445, Lewknor had sued Bruyn for a debt of 130 marks, and also brought a suit against Elizabeth, widow of Henry Drury* for a like sum (CP40/738, rot. 38d), but the background to these pleas is obscure. An inventory of Elizabeth’s goods compiled at this time gave them a value of over £212. Nevertheless, she eschewed extravagance, and may have devoted her final years to spiritual matters.41 PROB2/3; M.E. Mate, Daughters, Wives and Widows, 117. In her will she asked to be buried in St. Giles church at Horsted Keynes (presumably next to her late husband Lewknor), and named among her executors her daughter Joan Frowyk. She died shortly before 14 Jan. 1465. The will was proved on 23 Feb.42 PCC 8 Godyn (PROB11/5, f. 59); CFR, xx. 127. No inq. post mortem survives.