ERNELEY, William

William’s putative father and namesake, a prominent figure in west Sussex, attended the shire elections to Parliament at least nine times in the period 1417-47.3 C219/12/2, 5, 6, 13/1, 5, 14/1, 2, 4, 15/4. An associate of Thomas Poynings, Lord St. John (d.1429) and his widow,4 Reg. Chichele, ii. 390; Cat. Goodwood Estate Archs. ed. Steer and Venables, i. 36. he was among the gentry of Sussex required in 1434 to take the general oath not to maintain those who broke the peace.5 CPR, 1429-36, p. 372. Among his closest acquaintances was William Whaplode* (d.1447), the steward of the estates pertaining to Cardinal Beaufort as bishop of Winchester, and executor of the latter’s will. Thus, while he acted for his friend as a feoffee of the manor of Bury in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, Whaplode provided a reciprocal service with regard to the Erneleys’ principal manor in Sidlesham.6 CPR, 1441-6, p. 392; HMC Var. iv. 123. William senior is last recorded alive on 2 Feb. 1447 when he and his younger namesake both attested the Sussex electoral indenture for the Parliament due to assemble at Bury St. Edmunds just eight days later.7 C219/15/4. It was the younger man who was returned for Arundel to that same Parliament – indeed, had probably already been elected. His name appeared on the schedule listing the MPs for the Sussex boroughs which was returned to Chancery along with the shire indenture. Later described as a resident of Arundel, he would appear to have already entered the service of William Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, whose seat, Arundel castle, dominated the town and its surrounding countryside. In a final concord made in the following year, Erneley figured in the body of feoffees, headed by the archbishop of Canterbury and the marquess of Suffolk, who, entrusted with estates in 11 counties pertaining to the earl, arranged a settlement in favour of the latter’s mother, the dowager countess Eleanor; and as one of the surviving feoffees he was to be engaged in further transactions relating to the same estates in 1455, following the countess’s death.8 CP25(1)/293/71/330; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 87-90. Meanwhile, his putative father, the older William Erneley, had died before Easter 1449, having named his son and heir John and John’s wife Joan as his executors.9 CP40/753, rots. 45d, 46d.

The heir, John Erneley, chose to concentrate more on his interests in Wiltshire than those near the south coast, but his putative brother William, our MP, continued to live in Sussex. He attested the shire elections again, on 30 Jan. and 9 Oct. 1449.10 C219/15/4, 6, 7. That year too he was associated with John Wood III* of Midhurst as a defendant in a suit brought in the court of common pleas by the lawyer William Sydney*, for a debt of £29. He was described in the plea as ‘of Arundel, esquire’, the same description as was to be accorded to him in a royal pardon dated 20 Mar. 1453.11 CP40/753, rot. 46; 754, rot. 38d; 757, rot. 48; C67/40, m. 2. Erneley appeared in the same court at Westminster in Hilary term 1456 to stand bail in £40 for Thomas Bellingham*, a northerner who, now residing at Arundel, probably also belonged to the affinity of Earl William.12 CP40/779, rot. 125. It is difficult to explain Erneley’s brief term of office as collector of customs at Bristol in 1456-7, especially as he had no previously recorded connexion with the West Country, save as a feoffee of the earl’s estates there. At an unknown date, however, he was sued by a lawyer from Somerset, John Sydenham*, for a debt of £20. When he repeatedly failed to appear in court to make answer he was outlawed, but obtained a royal pardon of outlawry on 17 Oct. 1457.13 CPR, 1452-61, p. 375.

Erneley was returned to Parliament again in 1460, this time for a different Sussex borough, Bramber. Whether his continuing role as a feoffee of the earl of Arundel’s estates had anything to do with this election is now impossible to say, although the earl is known to have sympathized with the duke of York’s allies, then in control of government following their victory at Northampton. Five years later Erneley was licensed to transfer several of the earl’s properties to a new group of trustees headed by Archbishop Bourgchier and including Earl William himself, and he remained active on the earl’s behalf at least until 1468 and probably until he died.14 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 443-4; Reg. Stillington (Som. Rec. Soc. lii), no. 94.

In his later years Erneley was often called upon by other Sussex men to assist them in their transactions. In 1473 Richard Mille (son of the Sussex lawyer Edmund*), enfeoffed him and others of his property at Pulborough to ensure that payments amounting to £160 might be made from the issues in accordance with his instructions; and he also became Mille’s feoffee of the manor of Mundham, to hold to the use of his wife.15 CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 743. Early in 1475 he was involved in transactions regarding the manor and advowson of Twineham Benfield. Margery Austyn made a sworn declaration before him and others at Arundel regarding her title to the manor, and there also still exists an unexecuted and mutilated grant whereby Erneley was entrusted with this property, in company with the earl of Arundel.16 Cat. Wiston Archs. ed. Booker, 204. The MP’s last recorded act occurred later that same year, on 9 Apr., when he was listed among a distinguished group of men who, as counsel to John Arundel, bishop of Chichester, arbitrated in the bishop’s dispute with John Goring†.17 Chichester Cart. (Suss. Rec. Soc. xlvi), 867.

On the following 23 June Erneley was commissioned to help muster the army which Lord Audley had undertaken to command in Brittany (the intention perhaps being that he would assist his lord the earl of Arundel, who was also sent to the West Country for this purpose).18 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 551-2. Whether he set out for Weymouth before his death three weeks later is not known. Very little is recorded about our MP’s landed possessions or income, and nothing at all relating to his holdings in Sussex. Yet his family had long had territorial interests in Wiltshire, so it is not surprising to find him in 1474 obtaining confirmation of his ownership of ten messuages and other property in Salisbury.19 Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 683. Following his death, on 12 July 1475, the escheator of that county and Hampshire was ordered to hold an inquisition post mortem, but it was not until after a considerable delay of more than two years that hearings were conducted in October 1477. These revealed that he had died in possession of property at Overton, Hampshire, that his heir was his son Edmund, now aged 18, and that on her death in 1473 his wife, Margaret, had been seised of two messuages and 400 acres of land in Shelveley in Eling together with the Wiltshire manor of Fosbury and land in Kennet. Evidently, Margaret had been an heiress, but her family name is not recorded.20 CFR, xxi. nos. 281, 328, 416; C140/60/2, 3; VCH Hants, iv. 555.. The heir Edmund Erneley died on 18 Oct. 1485 in possession of lands in these same two counties, which, including properties inherited from his parents, were valued at about £29 p.a.21 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 96, 193. Fosbury passed by marriage in the 16th cent. to the Skilling fam.: VCH Wilts. xvi. [222-6].