COURTENAY, Philip

Philip’s birth at Ashton near Chudleigh in the early hours of the morning of 18 Jan. 1404 caused a flurry of excitement in both his grandfathers’ households. In his delight, Sir Philip Courtenay† forgave a trespass done by one of his tenants, who was furtively waiting to approach him outside the parish church, and together with his son John, the boy’s father, he donated 100s. for much-needed repairs to the church, where the birth of the infant, baptized that same day, was recorded in a Bible. At Modbury, the household of Philip’s other grandfather, Sir Richard Champernowne, had been roused during the night with the good news. Sir Richard immediately despatched a servant with a silver cup as a gift for his daughter, and even 21 years later the messenger remembered reproachfully how he had been forced to set out ‘very early in the morning’, riding ‘in first daylight’.14 C139/20/50. The boy was born to noble blood, for his father, Sir John, was a grandson of Hugh Courtenay, earl of Devon. Sir John’s elder brother, Richard, had embarked on an ecclesiastical career and in 1413 was preferred to the see of Norwich by King Henry V. Almost equally important were the connexions of Philip’s mother, Joan, which linked him to several of the leading gentry families in Devon. She was a daughter of the long established Champernowne family of Modbury, and was already a widow at the time of her marriage to Sir John Courtenay. From her first marriage to Sir James Chudleigh of Ashton she had several sons, including James*, who was to represent Devon in Parliament three times,15 C67/37, m. 17; C4/49/31; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 573-4. while two of her Champernowne nephews, Philip’s first cousins Roger* and Hugh*, also went on to sit in the Commons.

Philip’s father died before he was ten years old, and at the death of his uncle, the bishop, he was still only 11. Heir to a substantial estate, he was taken into Henry V’s wardship.16 CCR, 1413-19, p. 481; 1419-22, p. 165; 1422-9, p. 38. Some of his lands were placed in the keeping of another uncle, Sir William Courtenay, but the boy’s own custody and marriage were sold to the steward of the Household, Sir Walter Hungerford, for the princely sum of 800 marks, allowing him £40 p.a. from the Courtenay estates for the heir’s maintenance.17 CFR, xiv. 115, xv. 76; E159/201, brevia Mich. rot. 2; 202, brevia Mich. rot. 17; 203, brevia Mich. rot. 25d. Hungerford had invested his money with intent, and within a short period of time married the young man to his own daughter, Elizabeth. Relations between Courtenay and his father-in-law were close. During Hungerford’s lifetime Philip was regularly associated with his activities, he was a feoffee of some of the Hungerford estates and at Lord Walter’s death he was named supervisor of the complex provisions of his will. Under the terms of this document, Courtenay was left a legacy of £40, while his wife was to have 40 marks of her own, as well as a standing cup and a book called ‘Le Sege de Troye’, which she already had in her keeping.18 CCR, 1454-61, p. 440; M. Cherry, ‘Crown and Political Community, Devon’ (Univ. of Wales, Swansea, Ph.D. thesis, 1981), 203, 221; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 452; Wilts. Hist. Centre, Radnor mss, 490/1480; Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Stafford, ff. 114-18.

In February 1425 Philip proved his age and had livery of his lands.19 CCR, 1422-9, p. 168; E159/201, brevia Easter rot. 4. The estates which Bishop Courtenay had inherited from his father Sir Philip consisted of 17 manors and five advowsons in Devon, including the family seat of Powderham, a manor and a hamlet in Dorset, three and a half manors and three advowsons in Somerset. It was a valuable inheritance, the lands in Devon and Somerset alone being assessed at over £250 p.a. at the bishop’s death. In the first instance, however, Philip’s income was diminished, for his uncle had made a number of grants for life, which would ultimately revert to him, but which precluded him from his full inheritance in the short term. Perhaps the most frustrating of these grants was the tenure of the manor of Powderham, attached to the family seat, which the bishop had granted for life to his brother-in-law Robert Cary* (who survived until 1431), reserving to his nephew only the mansion overlooking the Exe estuary.20 CIPM, xx. nos. 460-1; CCR, 1413-19, p. 233; CFR, xv. 177; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 496; CP40/673, rot. 336C1/56/221; C4/14/56; E199/9/11; Devon RO, Courtenay (Moger) mss, D1508M/Moger/83.

Philip’s early career owed much to his father-in-law’s patronage. Less than three months after his coming of age he was granted the farm of the royal forest of Dartmoor and the borough of Lydford jointly with Hungerford (ennobled in 1426),21 CFR, xv. 101, xvi. 79; CPR, 1441-6, p. 456, 1446-52, p. 23; 1452-61, p. 37; E207/17/2/10. and in May 1427 he was for the first time appointed to Crown office as a member of a commission of array in the south-west. That autumn saw him elected to the Commons for the first time, as one of the two knights of the shire for Devon. His colleague on this occasion was an older and more experienced member of the circle around Lord Hungerford, Sir William Bonville* of Shute. Their mutual connexion with Hungerford aside, the two men were already linked by ties of marriage, for Bonville’s sister was the wife of Courtenay’s maternal uncle Richard Champernowne. Joint membership of the Commons may have strengthened these bonds, and the two men were to form a life-long association, and perhaps even friendship.

Courtenay now joined Bonville at the heart of a grouping of West Country gentry who during the protracted minority of Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, increasingly came to dominate the political scene in the region.22 Patronage, Crown and Provinces ed. Griffiths, 125. In the first instance, Courtenay was very much a junior partner, appointed to a commission of inquiry while in the Commons, but otherwise not selected for official duties. At the end of 1429 his career began to gather pace. He was present at the parliamentary elections in the county court in September, before travelling to Westminster for the young Henry VI’s coronation, where he was among a number of Lord Hungerford’s associates to be knighted on the eve of the crowning.23 C219/14/1; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 53, 55. Not surprisingly, the following year he accompanied the King to Paris for his second coronation as king of France, with a personal retinue of 19 men-at-arms and 60 archers.24 E404/46/231; E403/693, m. 14; 695, m. 4A. This entourage included men of some prominence, such as Baldwin Fulford*, who was to represent Cornwall in the Parliament of 1432, and John Fitzpayn, scion of an ancient and well-connected West Country family.25 DKR, xlviii. 273, 283.

Two days before sealing his indenture of service, Courtenay had been named steward of the duchy of Cornwall in Cornwall in succession to Sir John Arundell I* of Lanherne, who had held the office since the days of Henry IV.26 E159/207, brevia Mich. rots. 10, 10d; SC6/814/22; 1291/1/6, nos. 42-47; 1291/1/8, nos. 14-15; 1291/1/9, nos. 21, 23, 25; CPR, 1429-36, p. 47. In the absence of a duke of Cornwall (other than the King), this made him effectively the chief officer in the county. His subsequent appointment to the county benches of both Devon and Cornwall, and to the sole keepership of Dartmoor and Lydford were logical consequences of his tenure of this important office. While Thomas Courtenay’s minority endured, Sir William Bonville and increasingly also Courtenay filled the place in society that would otherwise have been the earl’s: they were present at Exeter on 24 July 1434 to witness the settlement of the lengthy quarrel between the city and the cathedral authorities,27 Devon RO, Exeter city recs., receivers’ accts. 12-13 Hen. VI, m. 2. and were able to secure shrievalties for their closer associates, such as John Cheyne of Pinhoe (1433-4, 1443-4, 1453-4) and Sir Thomas Stawell† (1434-5).28 Cherry, 222, 225, 230; Patronage, Crown and Provinces, 129. Even in 1437, two years after the earl had formally been declared of age, it was probably their influence that accounted for the return of Courtenay’s Champernowne cousins to Parliament. Philip himself, who that year was replaced by Bonville as duchy steward, had in the interim secured appointments as assessor of the duchy lands in Cornwall, and master of the King’s venison in the same county.

Such public activity aside, Courtenay also had to maintain good relations with his more important neighbours. Thus, in 1428 he acted as a witness to the agreement which was intended to bring to a close the long-lasting quarrel between Sir John Dynham and his family foundation of Hartland abbey over Dynham’s rights as patron, and at other times he witnessed the property transactions of the Dynhams, Pomeroys, Carewes and other important families.29 C47/9/14, m. 2; Devon RO, Shelley of Shobrooke mss, Z1/16/24; Seymour of Berry Pomeroy mss, 3799M-0/ET/7/6, 19/10, 11; Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR1/570, 572. In 1456 he and Sir John Colshull* were named as umpires in a dispute between John Arundell of Lanherne and Henry Bodrugan†, should the arbitration of Michael Hals and Thomas Sage fail,30 Arundell mss, AR3/315. while a few years earlier he himself was one of the arbiters in a dispute between William Denys* and Reynold Tretherf and Elizabeth, widow of John Chalons, over the manor of Buckerell.31 C1/988/18. In 1459 he was party to the establishment at Croscombe in Somerset of a chantry for the soul of Sir William Palton*, a kinsman by marriage.32 C147/155. Another member of Lord Hungerford’s circle, John Cheyne of Pinhoe, named Sir Philip among the feoffees of his lands, and stipulated that their profits after the payments of his debts and bequests and the debts of his mother be used to fulfil an agreement he had concluded with Courtenay. The nature of this agreement is unknown, but it is possible that it concerned a marital bond between the two families, which was duly forged some years later when Sir Philip’s grandson, Sir William, married Cheyne’s daughter Cecily.33 CAD, vi. 114, 341; C146/273; Patronage, Crown and Provinces, 129; The Commons 1509-1558, i. 717. Not surprisingly, many local men sought to curry Courtenay’s favour. Thus, the urban communities of the region, like Launceston and Exeter, sent him gifts of wine, and the citizens of Exeter at least reaped their reward when he and Bonville were again present in 1447-8 to mediate between the city and Bishop Lacy in their drawn-out dispute over the episcopal liberty.34 Exeter receivers’ accts. 3-4 Hen. VI, m. 2; 7-8 Hen. VI, m. 1d; 11-12 Hen. VI, m. 2; 26-27 Hen. VI, m. 3; Cornw. RO, Launceston bor. recs. B/Laus/137, m. 1d.

One central preoccupation of Courtenay’s life in these years was the provision of suitable marriages for his numerous children. Particularly in the provision of dowries for his daughters, this was an expensive task, and Sir Philip was probably telling the truth when in 1439 he claimed to be unable to lend money to the Crown on account of the great costs he had incurred for the marriages of his two eldest daughters.35 SC1/58/48. Some of these costs arose from the purchase of the wardship of the young heir of the Luttrells of Dunster, one of the wealthiest landholding families of Somerset with an annual income of about £300.36 J. Randall, ‘Sir Hugh Luttrell of Dunster’ (Cambridge Univ. M.Phil. thesis, 1995), 27. The successive deaths of Sir Hugh Luttrell† and his son John in 1428 and 1430 had left a boy of four, James, as the heir to the family’s extensive estates. In February 1431 the King farmed some of these lands to Courtenay, Bishop Stafford of Bath and Wells, and Humphrey, earl of Stafford, but the farm asked was probably more than Courtenay was prepared to pay, for he surrendered his letters patent little over a year later in June 1432.37 CFR, xvi. 19, 85; E159/223, brevia Mich. rots. 2d, 22d. The following year, the bishop purchased the young heir’s marriage for the sum of 400 marks, only to sell it on to Courtenay at an uncertain point thereafter. It was certainly in Sir Philip’s possession by January 1441, when Bishop Lacy of Exeter granted a licence for Luttrell’s marriage to his daughter Elizabeth.38 Reg. Lacy, ii (Canterbury and York Soc. lxi), 225. In the meantime, Courtenay had tightened his grip on the Luttrell estates: after the death of Katherine, widow of Sir Hugh Luttrell, in 1435, he secured joint custody of her lands, and in subsequent years he acquired further similar grants of parcels of the inheritance piecemeal. By 1444 at the latest Courtenay was virtually in control of the entire Luttrell holdings, a large proportion of which was settled in jointure on his daughter in 1450, when she was finally married to James Luttrell, who for his part complained bitterly of the neglect by which his new father-in-law had allowed much of his property to fall in to decay.39 Cherry, 236; CFR, xvii. 79, 99-100, 119, 133; CPR, 1436-41, p. 241; 1441-6, p. 336; 1446-52, p. 65; CCR, 1441-7, p. 249; E159/216, brevia Easter rot. 14; 217, brevia Mich. rot. 7d; 219, brevia Hil. rots. 5d, 8d, 11d; 221, brevia Mich. rot. 19d, recorda Hil. rot. 4, brevia Hil. rot. 9.

In spite of protracted litigation in the court of common pleas, Courtenay proved unable to profit from the wardship of the coheirs of John Mules, which he claimed as feudal overlord of a tenement in Milton Damarel, for this was seized by the Crown in late 1443 and granted to Otis Gilbert of Compton Pole, who lost little time in physically securing the two girls.40 CP40/749, rot. 323; 752, rot. 331. He did, however, manage to marry his daughter Anne to the Cornish landowner Thomas Grenville,41 Reg. Lacy, ii. 394. while later in life his two younger daughters became the respective wives of Sir Thomas Fulford and Sir Sinclair Pomeroy.42 J. Vivian, Vis. Devon, 246, 607. Sir Philip’s daughter Katherine who had originally married Pomeroy, survived him and two more husbands: Thomas Rogers† (d.1478), the serjeant-at-law of Bradford, Wilts., and Edw. IV’s attorney-gen. (Sir) William Huddesfield†. She died in 1515: C142/30/14, 57.

In the late summer of 1436 Courtenay sailed for France a second time, on this occasion in the duke of Gloucester’s retinue on the expedition for the relief of Calais, with a substantial contingent of 12 men-at-arms and 90 archers.43 E403/723, m. 13. This was to be his last campaign on the French mainland. However, as was appropriate for one whose home lay on an important and navigable estuary, he was frequently called upon to investigate acts of piracy and to go to sea to combat both pirates and potential invaders. The latter activity provided him with a further excuse when he was appointed to raise a royal loan in 1439, for he professed himself unable to contribute because of the costs he had incurred building ships for the defence of the realm.44 SC1/58/48. This complaint clearly struck a chord with the government, and in the following year commissioners were appointed to arrest merchant ships to serve under him and Bonville, presumably in addition to his own vessels.45 CPR, 1436-41, p. 411; PROME, xi. 373-4. Yet, the success of this enterprise was limited, for while active in the Channel, one of Bonville’s ships, Le Mary de Fowey, was captured by the Portugese and taken to Lisbon.46 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 286. Later expeditions were more lucrative: in November 1446 the Crown ordered some of the goods taken by Courtenay from Spanish ships to be sold to make restitution for cargoes worth £4,000 taken by Spaniards from English vessels.47 CPR, 1446-52, p. 40. Sir Philip continued to serve the King at sea and his reputation gradually grew. In April 1449 he was among the prominent west-country men approached to assist Robert Wenyngton alias Cane*, newly-appointed as commander of a fleet to rid the seas of pirates, and the following year the Crown sought his assistance in the preservation of Lower Normandy.48 Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, i. 410-12, 489. Even in the autumn of 1461, towards the end of his life, Courtenay was suing out safe conducts for the factors of prisoners taken at sea so that they might pay for their ransoms by trade.49 C76/145, m. 31; 146, m. 5.

Courtenay’s career in the first half of the 1450s was, like that of his friend Bonville, overshadowed by the latter’s increasingly violent dispute with the earl of Devon. While his own relations with his kinsman, the earl, had never been close, the two men had on occasion been associated in land transactions. The escalation after 1450 of Thomas Courtenay’s feud with the now ennobled Lord Bonville into open violence also had implications for his relationship with Sir Philip. The earl’s first armed manoeuvres in the autumn and winter of 1451-2 were directed at Bonville and his patron, the earl of Wiltshire, and left Courtenay unscathed. However, his inclusion in February 1452 with Bonville and his neighbour Sir John Dynham in a commission to quell the rising placed him in direct confrontation with Earl Thomas.50 CPR, 1446-52, p. 537. The earl’s arrest at Blackheath in March temporarily saw his freedom of movement curbed, but his retainers were very much at large, and it is probable that small infractions such as the theft of money from Sir Philip’s house at Pennicott (in Shobrooke) by a Tiverton yeoman represented reprisals for the part he had played in bringing the earl to heel.51 KB9/15/1/18.

Certainly, along with other members of Lord Bonville’s circle he was marked out as a target when in 1454-5 the earl of Devon embarked on a more extensive campaign of violence, intended to settle his score with his opponent once and for all. The opening salvos in the renewed conflict in the spring and summer of 1454 twice saw Exeter occupied by the earl’s forces, and while there were ostensibly no open attacks on Sir Philip, his principal seat at Powderham lay in uncomfortable proximity to the beleaguered city. In the early months of 1455 events in the south-west were to some extent overtaken by developments on the national stage, when the increasingly acrimonious antagonism of Richard, duke of York, and his allies, the Neville earls of Salisbury and Warwick, to the court party headed by Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, found its outlet in a pitched battle in the streets of St. Albans on 22 May. Somerset was killed, and Bonville’s friend and patron, the earl of Wiltshire, fled the battlefield, while the earl of Devon had taken the side of the winners.

With remarkable dexterity, Bonville now sought to realign himself with the victors, and in this he was inadvertently aided by the earl of Devon’s ill-judged attempt to use his friends’ political ascendancy to settle his private scores. It seems that Thomas Courtenay absented himself from the council almost immediately after St. Albans, although the wounds he had incurred in the battle provide at least one explanation why he temporarily lay low.52 R.L. Storey, End of House of Lancaster, 166. When Parliament was summoned to meet on 9 July, the situation in Devon still hung in the balance, resulting in an ambiguous choice of knights for the shire. Whereas Sir Robert de Vere*, a younger brother of the earl of Oxford, possessed close ties of marriage to the earl of Devon and his immediate family, it was Sir Philip who was chosen as his parliamentary colleague, some 28 years after he had first sat in Parliament. In Somerset, where Bonville’s influence was more pronounced, Sir Philip’s eldest son William, Bonville’s son-in-law, was returned.

Parliament assembled at Westminster on 9 July and sat for three weeks, before being prorogued until the autumn. While Lord Bonville, anxious to ingratiate himself with the new rulers, attended and took the oath to the King, the earl of Devon appeared to have remained absent. Over the summer, he plotted his next move. On 23 Oct. the prominent lawyer Nicholas Radford*, one of Bonville’s closest advisers, was murdered at Upcott by a mob led by the earl’s sons. Less than a fortnight later, on 3 Nov., a week before Parliament was due to reassemble, a large gathering of the earl’s retainers rode from Exeter to Sir Philip’s residence at Powderham. Alerted to the earl’s machinations, Bonville hastily set out from his manor of Shute to assist his friend and intercepted the earl’s force at Lympstone. However, the diversion was only temporary. On 15 Nov., three days after Parliament had resumed its session, the comital army reached Powderham, laid siege to it, and for some eight hours subjected it to a continuous bombardment by serpentines. Courtenay had made his preparations, and had for his part assembled a large number of men for the defence of his residence. Nevertheless, the need to protect his property meant that he was absent from much, if not all, of the final parliamentary session, during which the duke of York was appointed Protector, ostensibly so that order might be restored in the West Country.53 KB9/16/65; KB27/781, rot. 33. Having failed to take Powderham, the earl of Devon turned his attention to other manors belonging to Bonville and his friends, and on 19 Dec. his men (led by, among others, John Hobbes*) ransacked Sir Philip’s house at Cadlegh, took goods to the value of £200 and flattened the pale of his park.54 KB9/16/89; KB27/780, rot. 65; 782, rot. 52d; CP40/800, rot. 83. It was at this point that York moved westwards, arrested the earl at Shaftesbury and sent him to the Tower. Nevertheless, the respite was temporary, for the earl soon regained his freedom, and after the end of York’s protectorate in late February 1456 he once more began to gather his armed retainers. In response, the government dispatched Sir Philip and Lord Fitzwaryn to make a proclamation ordering the disbanding of any such unlawful assemblies, but their attempt to carry out the commission was disrupted by the earl’s men, and on 1 Apr. a gathering of about 50 of his retainers made its way to Exeland to prevent the local people from attending the sessions of the peace at Exeter. Five days later, the rioters themselves entered the city and openly threatened the two j.p.s, who thought it wise to abandon the sessions altogether.55 Storey, 172-3; KB9/16/64; KB27/787, rex rot. 4. Only in August did a commission of oyer and terminer headed by the earl of Wiltshire succeed in restoring some form of order.

Sir Philip’s role in the events of the following three years is difficult to gauge. Following the events of 1455-6 Bonville had strengthened his ties to the duke of York and his supporters by the marriage of his grandson William, Lord Harington, to a daughter of the earl of Salisbury, while the death of the earl of Devon in early 1458 and the marriage of his son and heir to the queen’s cousin Marie of Maine had placed the Courtenays of Tiverton firmly in the sphere of the court. In January 1458 Sir Philip sued out a general pardon for any offences committed prior to the previous month,56 C67/42, m. 33. and although he was dismissed from the Devon bench in November that year, he was evidently considered reliable enough by the court party to be named as a commissioner of array not only in September 1458 and February 1459, but also in December 1459 after the Yorkist rout at Ludford Bridge, at which point he was also reinstated to the county bench. It is probable that Courtenay, like Bonville, had avoided siding openly with York and his Neville allies, now disgraced, attainted and in exile. This changed the following summer, when the earls of Salisbury, Warwick and March invaded England, defeated a royal army at the battle of Northampton, and took control of the King and the government. It is not certain whether Courtenay took any part in the battle, but Bonville’s presence on the winning side may have been sufficient to recommend him to the Yorkist magnates now in the ascendant. He thus continued to serve on the Devon county bench, and through the autumn of 1460 was included in a series of ad hoc commissions, mostly concerned with rounding up the new regime’s opponents. He was rewarded both in late 1460 and in the following year with a series of grants of safe conducts which allowed prisoners in his custody to raise their ransoms more speedily.57 C76/143, m. 17; 145, m. 31; 146, m. 5; DKR, xlviii. 444.

The bloodletting that accompanied the final Yorkist triumph in the early months of 1461 left Courtenay one of the most prominent men in Devon. The bloody aftermath of the battles of St. Albans and Towton, which respectively claimed the lives of Lord Bonville and the earl of Devon, once more created a vacuum of power in south-western England. While Edward IV’s council was casting around for a magnate to fill the gap they had left (and in the event had to take recourse to endowing the King’s uncle, William Neville, earl of Kent, with some of the forfeited lands of the earldom of Devon), leadership in local society at least temporarily devolved on Sir Philip and another prominent Yorkist supporter, John Dynham of Nutwell.58 Cherry, 330. While Dynham, who had been appointed sheriff of Devon in November 1460, took charge of royal administration in the shire, Courtenay himself was primarily occupied raising ships and men in support of Edward IV in the early months of the new reign. Nevertheless, his proximity to the new regime was widely recognized and after only brief discussion the city fathers of Exeter made him a substantial gift of £6 13s. 4d. ‘to have his friendship’.59 Exeter receiver’s acct. 39 Hen. VI-1 Edw. IV, m. 2.

Yet, Courtenay was not to enjoy his renewed ascendancy for long, for he died before the end of 1463, and was succeeded by his eldest son, William.60 C1/56/221; C4/14/56. He was survived by his wife Elizabeth, whom he had appointed his executrix. Her dower was ordered to be assigned in February 1464.61 CCR, 1461-8, p. 177; C67/48, m. 7; Reg. Bourgchier (Canterbury and York Soc. liv), 204. The couple left four daughters and seven sons, several of whom followed their father into the Commons. Sir Philip’s second son, another Philip, married Elizabeth, widow of William Hyndeston* of Wonwell,62 C140/84/33; PCC 12 Stokton (PROB11/4, f. 93); Reg. Lacy, ii. 222. and represented Devon in the Parliament of 1472, while another, Sir Walter, who had married the widow of Thomas Talbot,63 C1/27/231; CFR, xxii. 189. sat in the 1495 Parliament for the same shire. A fourth, Peter, served as Henry VI’s secretary during the Readeption, but came to terms with the restored Edward IV and received preferment to the bishopric of Exeter in 1478, before being translated to the wealthy see of Winchester by Henry VII in 1487. Successive generations of Sir Philip Courtenay’s descendants sat in the Commons, and the family were ultimately summoned to the Lords as Viscounts Courtenay of Powderham in the eighteenth century, before being recognized as earls of Devon in 1831.64 CP, iv. 334, 336.