DRAYTON, Richard

From the same family as the prominent Oxfordshire knight, Sir John Drayton, it is possible that Richard was a son of Sir John’s younger brother, Sir William Drayton. Sir William served Richard II as governor of Rhuddlan castle in North Wales and was killed during a quarrel with Sir Roger de Claryndon in the late 1390s.4 Times Literary Supplement, no. 1754, p. 565; SC8/93/4616; CPR, 1399-1401, p. 98. To confuse matters, Sir John also had a brother named Richard, whom he appointed one of his executors.5 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 796. This other Richard Drayton was still alive in the early 1430s,6 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 224-5; C1/38/39. meaning that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between him and the MP. It is not clear, for example, which Richard Drayton was associated with Stephen Haytfeld* (who had married Sir John’s widow) in land transactions of 1427 and 1435,7 CCR, 1422-9, pp. 376-7, 400; CP25(1)/292/68/195. although probably it was the MP who stood surety in the Chancery for Peter Idle in 1439.8 CFR, xvii. 84. A bureaucrat best known for the didactic poem he wrote to his eldest son, Idle had married Elizabeth, a daughter of yet another of Sir John’s brothers, Nicholas Drayton of Drayton St. Leonard, Oxfordshire.9 Peter Idley’s Instructions to His Son ed. D’Evelyn, introduction; Hist. King’s Works ed. Brown, Colvin and Taylor, ii. 1046; VCH Oxon. vii. 74.

It is possible that Drayton spent the earlier part of his career in France, for in February 1418 a Richard Drayton esquire received a grant of the fortalice and lordship of Colombières in Normandy.10 Rot. Normanniae ed. Hardy, 247-8. Two years later and again in May 1421 he obtained letters of protection as a member of Henry V’s retinue in France. The Crown issued like letters to Richard Drayton before he crossed the Channel in October 1424, June 1429 and January 1435, as a retainer of John, duke of Bedford; in the summer of 1428, as a member of the company of Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury; and in the spring of 1433, as a retainer of John Holand, earl of Huntingdon.11 DKR, xliv. 616, 625; xlviii. 232, 260, 261, 293; Foedera ed. Rymer (Hague edn.), v (1), 14. While it is not possible to confirm that this soldier was certainly the MP rather than his uncle, it is likely that the younger man was the recipient of at least some of these letters, given that the elder Richard Drayton must have been of an advanced age by the 1430s.

The evidence for the MP’s real property, apart from those estates which he held in the right of his wife, is patchy. By 1428 he possessed a knight’s fee at Harpsden in south Oxfordshire, and by his later years his estate in that part of the county included two manors at Rotherfield Peppard, one of which Sir John Drayton had once held. Although never a prominent landowner in his own right, the Exchequer saw him as eligible for knighthood even before his marriage greatly extended his landed interests, beginning proceedings against him in 1430 for refusing the honour.12 Feudal Aids, iv. 200; Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, ser. 5, vii. 320-1; E159/207, recorda Mich. rot. 19d. The marriage between Drayton and Alice, widow of Thomas Stonor, was probably facilitated by the powerful Thames valley nexus headed by the influential Thomas Chaucer* (an associate of the late Sir John Drayton and Stonor’s former guardian),13 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 796; iv. 484. since the couple were married in the Stonor chapel in Pyrton parish church. The ceremony took place in late 1432: the bishop of Lincoln issued a licence for them to wed at the chapel on 25 Nov., and they were certainly man and wife when they set aside an annual rent from the Stonor estates for the upbringing of Isabel, one of Alice’s daughters by Thomas, on the following 1 Dec.14 Early Lincoln Wills ed. Gibbons, 119; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 485; CAD, i. C1229. During the early years of their marriage, the couple appear to have lived at Stonor. Subsequently, perhaps as soon as her son Thomas Stonor II* came of age, they took up residence at Horton Kirby in Kent, where she had inherited a manor from her father. Apart from her inheritance, Alice enjoyed a substantial interest in the Stonor estate. Her dower comprised the manors of Ermington in Devon, Harnhill in Gloucestershire, Bierton in Buckinghamshire and La Mote at Westminster, and she also held for life her late husband’s manor at Penton Mewsey, Hampshire, along with all the lands he had purchased in Kent for the maintenance of their daughters. As a result, Thomas Stonor II was unable to enter a sizeable part of his inheritance until very late in life, but he remained on affectionate terms with his mother and stepfather.15 Stonor Letters, i. pp. xxi-xxii, 48; C140/29/48; Oxf. DNB, ‘Stonor fam.’.

If the MP did serve in France, prolonged absences across the Channel might explain why he did not begin to serve as an office-holder until after his marriage. At the same time, his match with Alice Stonor must greatly have enhanced his status and, therefore, his chances of playing a role in local administration and gaining election to the Commons. Military matters loomed large in his first Parliament, for much of its business was concerned with the war in France and the need to raise money to finance it.16 PROME, xi. 194-200. Whatever Drayton’s previous military experience, he had agreed to serve Richard, duke of York, the King’s lieutenant-governor of France, by May 1441 when he received letters of protection as a member of the duke’s army.17 DKR, xlviii. 345. Presumably Drayton took ship when York crossed the Channel the following month, although he failed to honour a subsequent commitment to serve in Gascony with Sir William Bonville*, appointed seneschal of that duchy in December 1442. When Bonville embarked from Plymouth in the following March, Drayton delayed in Cambridge and failed to sail with him, leading to the revoking of his letters of protection in May 1443. He received further letters on the 26th of that month; these were also cancelled, this time because he had remained in Hertfordshire rather than depart for south-west France.18 CPR, 1441-6, pp. 171, 179.

Conceivably, royal patronage had enabled Drayton to renege on his agreement to serve with Bonville, for he had joined the King’s household by the late 1430s, featuring as one of Henry VI’s esquires of the hall and chamber in a wardrobe account of 1438-9.19 E101/408/25, f. 7. No doubt, his association with the Stonors and the Thames valley affinity formerly headed by Thomas Chaucer but now led by Chaucer’s son-in-law William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk and steward of the Household, had proved useful in securing a place in the King’s personal service. His fellow Household esquires included Thomas Stonor I’s half-brother, Edmund Hampden*, who appointed him a feoffee.20 E101/409/9, 11; CP25(1)/22/122/5; CPR, 1441-6, p. 138. Like Hampden, Drayton subsequently joined the queen’s household. In the accounting year 1452-3, he attended the queen for a total of 102 days, during which he received a standard daily wage of 7½ d., amounting in total to £3 3s. 9d., as well as a gift of jewels at New Year.21 A.R. Myers, Crown, Household and Parl. 184, 226. He must have spent a considerable amount of time in London while in her service and on at least two occasions during the late 1440s and the first half of the 1450s he was a trustee in transactions involving both personal and real property there.22 CCR, 1447-54, pp. 160, 495. He was already familiar with the City, with which he appears to have had a longstanding connexion. As far back as 1433-4, the Merchant Tailors had admitted him into their Company,23 Guildhall Lib. London, Merchant Taylors’ Co. accts., 34048/1, f. 246. and the Middlesex commissioners for the subsidy of 1436 had expected him to appear before them, suggesting that he had acquired property interests in the vicinity of London.24 E179/240/269, rot. 4. It was perhaps in London that he first encountered Robert Aubrey*, an officer of the Exchequer in the mid 1440s. In the early 1450s he appears to have acted as a feoffee for Aubrey of the manor of North Moreton, Berkshire, a lordship that Robert had received as a lease or grant for life from the financially hard-pressed Sir Henry Hussey*.25 C66/472, m. 9d; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 342, 354, 510; E210/5593.

In the same period Drayton was returned to the Parliament of 1453, an assembly in which (Sir) Edmund Hampden was his fellow knight of the shire and in which many of their fellow Household men also sat. Another of Drayton’s Household associates in this period was Queen Margaret’s chamberlain, (Sir) John Wenlock*. Wenlock was a family connexion, for he was the husband of Elizabeth, one of the daughters and coheirs of Sir John Drayton. By the early 1450s Wenlock and Drew Barantyn*, who had married Joan, Sir John’s other daughter, had fallen out with William de la Pole’s widow Alice, dowager duchess of Suffolk. The quarrel was over the manor of Nuneham Courteney a few miles south of Oxford, a property acquired by her father Thomas Chaucer but which formerly had belonged to the late Sir John. There is no evidence that Drayton took any part in the quarrel, although it was in relation to it that he stood surety for Barantyn in March 1452. Barantyn died in the following year leaving a son and heir John†. Having succeeded his father, John Barantyn undertook to pay the MP an annuity for life from his manor of Churchill in north Oxfordshire, a property that had once belonged to Sir John Drayton but which Barantyn had inherited as the knight’s grandson.26 CCR, 1447-54, pp. 338, 339; C1/45/98.

A few weeks after acting as a surety for the elder Barantyn, Drayton obtained letters patent exempting him for life from serving on juries or as an officer of the Crown.27 CPR, 1446-52, p. 545. As it happened, the grant did not mark the end of his career as an office-holder although it included a pardon for all fines and other charges he had incurred before that date and excused him from having other royal servants billeted upon him. He received similar letters in November 1457,28 CPR, 1452-61, p. 395. but the Crown appointed him to a commission in Oxfordshire in the following month, and again in December 1459. The second of these appointments was to an anti-Yorkist commission of array but he was no Lancastrian diehard and in May 1463 the government of Edward IV placed him on a commission of inquiry in Kent, where he was residing on his wife’s estates. By now, however, family matters were the ageing Drayton’s principal preoccupation. Among these concerns was a dispute between his stepson Thomas Stonor and Richard Fortescue*, who claimed title to the manor of Ermington, one of the properties assigned to Alice Drayton in dower three decades earlier. The matter went to arbitration that same May, when Stonor and the Draytons entered a bond for £100 as a security that they would accept whatever the arbiters should decide between them and Fortescue. In the event, this attempt to reach an out of court settlement failed and a group of men afterwards assaulted Drayton at Ermington, probably at Fortescue’s behest. The quarrel rumbled on until Michaelmas term 1468 when Stonor achieved a complete victory against Fortescue at law. While it was still taking place, Drayton sold his estate in Rotherfield Peppard and its vicinity to Stonor for 500 marks. The parties concluded the sale in July 1465 but Stonor did not take immediate possession of these lands, for it was agreed that his stepfather and mother should retain them for the rest of their lives.29 E13/152, rots. 63d, 71d, 79, 79d; Stonor Letters, i. pp. xxi, xli, xlii; C47/37/22/32, 41; CAD, ii. C2391; vi. C6944; E210/9712.

By the time of the sale Drayton had drawn up his will, dated 27 Apr. 1464. Strictly speaking, it was his last testament, since it did not include a will for his lands. Possibly this was because he had already agreed, at least in principle, that Stonor should have his real estate. Although it was made at Horton Kirby, he chose the Oxfordshire abbey of Dorchester for his burial place, so maintaining a family connexion with the village and its abbey, where Sir John and Sir William Drayton and Peter Idle already lay.30 Some Oxon. Wills (Oxon. Rec. Soc. xxxix), 25; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 796; Times Literary Supplement, no. 1754, p. 565; Peter Idley’s Instructions to his Son, 27. According to H. Addington, Dorchester, 133, the MP provided money for repairs to the bridge at Dorchester during his lifetime, but this account, which erroneously refers to him as ‘Sir’ Richard Drayton, may have confused him with Sir John, who certainly left money for such repairs in his will. He asked to be interred in the south aisle of the abbey church, before the image of ‘Our Lady of Gravenyng’ and next to the tomb of Sir William Drayton. He also directed that on his burial day, and again at his trental, the abbot should receive 6s. 8d., each of the ordained canons at Dorchester 20d. and each of the house’s non-ordained brethren 8d. Furthermore, the abbey was to receive all the debts Thomas Stonor or others owed him, to spend on repairs to its fabric. The remainder of the will was made up of other religious bequests and directions for the welfare of his soul, including the request that ‘divers’ priests at New College and the college of All Souls, Oxford, should hold requiem masses for him after his death. He appointed four executors, his wife Alice, Thomas Mull (Thomas Stonor’s factotum) and the chaplains John Fythyon and Andrew Brown. Drayton had failed to father any surviving sons and the will does not mention any children, but it would appear that Mull, who referred to him as his ‘father’, was his son-in-law.31 Stonor Letters, i. p. xxii. The MP died on 3 Oct. 1468, just two days after his wife, who was buried in her ancestral parish church of Horton Kirby rather than with either of her husbands.32 Ibid. 97; Archaeologia Cantiana, xcvi. 386-7. An inq. post mortem held for Alice in Devon incorrectly found that she had died on 8 Oct.: C140/29/48. Her heir was her son Thomas Stonor, who died in 1474. In his will, Stonor settled a debt he owed to Drayton’s surviving executors, by assigning them some £78 from the issues of the manors in Rotherfield Peppard which he had bought from his stepfather in 1465.33 Stonor Letters, i. 142.