ESTFIELD, William

A Yorkshireman by birth, Estfield was to become one of the wealthiest merchants of London and a leading financier of the Crown, who was accorded the special distinction of a ceremonial knighting by Henry VI. He grew up as a younger son at Tickhill, where a namesake, probably his father, held property abutting ‘Eastfield’ in 1381. His elder brother, who also shared his name, obtained a royal pardon in April 1417, and after inheriting the family lands was active in the property market in and around Tickhill in the 1420s, but evidently died childless, for in October 1435 his widow, Joan, quitclaimed to the MP her right in real estate in three counties in the north and Midlands. Further family holdings were to remain in her possession for her lifetime, before passing to him.10 Stowe 860, f. 50; Feudal Aids vi. 279; C67/37, m. 5; CCR, 1435-41, p. 31; Yorks. Deeds, vii (Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. lxxxiii), 170-1, 175; x (ibid. cxx), 164-8, 170. Like many younger sons of gentry families, Estfield made his career in London, where early in Henry IV’s reign he was apprenticed to a member of the Mercers’ Company, Robert Trees. His career within the craft progressed rapidly and in classic fashion: he had obtained the freedom of the city by 1412 and in that year he was admitted to the first of the three stages which led to membership of the livery of his company. His rise proved rapid: in 1417 he was chosen for the first time as one of the wardens, and elected master in the autumn of 1424. In the following February he and the wardens were granted, at the request of the executors of Richard Whittington†, a new royal charter which incorporated the right of presentation to the church of St. Michael Paternoster. As his business interests expanded, he enrolled numerous apprentices, including John Middleton*, whom he later chose as one of his executors.11 Mercers’ Co. Biog. Index Cards; Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 78; CPR, 1422-9, p. 274.

Estfield’s rise to prominence was founded initially on his dealings in mercery and other high-status wares, and from the early 1420s onwards he was regularly importing such goods from the continent. Most of these shipments appear to have come through the port of London where in 1425-6, for example, he imported alum and 108 pieces of broad-cloth. Later in his career his imports included goods that were more normally associated with grocers: thus, in 1445 he and a business partner, Richard Quatermayns*, imported pepper, cloves and sugar, as well as quantities of silk, in a Venetian galley.12 E122/76/11, 13; 203/3, f. 15. Estfield’s customers initially included the royal wardrobe, to which he sold mercery ware in 1423-4, but thereafter he appears not to have been among the wardrobe’s principal suppliers. Rather, he seems to have been content to provide goods to his fellow mercers in the capital, a fact indicated by the frequency with which he was a recipient of so-called ‘gifts’ of goods and chattels which were increasingly made as security in transactions involving credit. As well as mercers, Estfield had dealings with London’s haberdashers, many of whom were beginning to trade in some of the products traditionally associated with their more illustrious fellow citizens. His principal business associates in the capital were, unsurprisingly, prominent members of his Company, such as Henry Frowyk I*, William Cantelowe*, William Melreth* and Robert Large*, with whom he was also engaged in transactions involving property.13 E101/407/13; CCR, 1419-22, p. 128; 1429-35, pp. 30, 117, 294, 309, 342; Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, p. 250; 1437-57, pp. 5, 161.

There are some indications of the extent of his trading links outside the capital. Not surprisingly, he had retained ties with Yorkshire, notably with merchants from Kingston-upon-Hull. His business dealings appear to have been carried out through intermediaries, particularly chapmen who travelled to and from London buying and selling mercery and grocery wares. In 1420 a chapman from Gloucestershire was pardoned his outlawry, which had been imposed after Estfield had tried to recover a debt of £21 11s. 6d. through the courts; and ten years later another from Bodmin in Cornwall was bound in Chancery in the sum of £14 during the course of a dispute with him.14 CPR, 1416-22, pp. 232, 285; 1429-36, p. 437; CCR, 1429-35, p. 59. Dealings with foreign merchants were naturally a significant dimension of his business activities. In May 1428 he was one of two arbiters appointed to settle a dispute between certain Genoese merchants and a group of London mercers. His own links with the Italians appear to have been significant: in September 1431 Francisco Spinola of Genoa assigned to Estfield a debt of £217 10s. 9d. which he was owed by John Gedney*, and on the same day another Genoese, Battista de Negroni, assigned to him a debt of £223 4s. 2d. which had been incurred by the Southampton merchant Peter James* and by John Wryther* of Winchester. The reassignment of debts to satisfy creditors was increasingly common in the capital at that time, but was not always viewed sympathetically by the city government.15 Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, pp. 221, 260-1.

Estfield’s rise to prominence was helped enormously by his activities as a merchant of the Calais staple. This brought him into close contact with the Crown for which he became a valuable source of finance, and from which he benefited from a number of important grants. His career as a stapler had begun by 1424 when he took several shipments of wool across the Channel to Calais.16 E122/76/2. It was not long before he and his fellow staplers were the subject of requests from the Crown for financial backing, and by the autumn of 1430 he was among a group of merchants who had advanced the sum of 3,500 marks (£2,333 6s. 8d.) out of a total of £9,875 which the staplers supplied. Early in the following year Estfield, Nicholas Wotton I* and Nicholas James* made a further, even larger loan of £3,018.17 G.L. Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort, 206-7; CPR, 1429-36, p. 111. Demands for finance increased in the mid 1430s, as a consequence of the difficulties affecting the English forces in Normandy. This led the Crown to adopt a highly controversial tactic in order to secure funds from prominent staplers by granting licences enabling men such as Estfield to evade the ‘partition’ rules that had been introduced in 1429. These rules meant that staplers, instead of trading at a price which was dictated by the market and keeping all the profits, now had to trade at a price fixed by the staple. Moreover, each member had to pool the money he received with that of other staplers dealing in wool of the same growth as himself, before the total sum was divided among all members of each group according to an assessment based on wool each had brought to the staple, whether they had actually sold all of it or not. This led to a breach between the richer staplers and their poorer counterparts who relied upon quick sales and early payment. In 1435 a petition was presented in Parliament which complained about the granting of licences to avoid the partition ordinance, but despite this a further breach of the rules was authorized by the treasurer with the support of Cardinal Beaufort and others of the King’s council in order to repay a loan of 8,000 marks which had been secured from Estfield, Hamon Sutton I* and Hugh Dyke. At first it appeared that the loan would be repaid by more conventional means, for on 2 Dec., while Parliament was still in session, the 8,000 marks was ordered to be repaid out of the issues of the escheated estates of the late duke of Bedford and earl of Arundel, and the issues of the duchy of Cornwall, with 2,000 marks allocated out of the treasury. On the same day, however, a licence was issued to Estfield and the others authorizing them to be preferred before all others in selling wool to the value of 8,000 marks at Calais ‘without any restriction and partition’.18 E401/744, m. 16; DKR, xlviii. 307; PROME, xi. 171-4; CPR, 1429-36, p. 498; English Trade in 15th Cent. ed. Power and Postan, 83, 86-87; Harriss, 266. In parallel with his prominent role in the affairs of the staple at Calais, Estfield became pre-eminent in those of the staple of Westminster, where he officiated as mayor for a 16-year period from 1430, in the course of which he sat in three Parliaments. His Membership provided him with the opportunity to promote the interests of his fellow merchants.

By the time he first entered the Commons, Estfield had established close personal ties with leading members of the government, some of them clearly born of friendship, not simply of mutual administrative and financial interests. These connexions can be traced to the last years of Henry V’s reign. His association with the sometime treasurer of England, William Kinwolmarsh (d.1422), dated back to at least 1419 when the two men were party to transactions concerning land in Kent, and their amicable relations were to be reflected in Estfield’s inclusion of Kinwolmarsh among those who should benefit from prayers offered in the chantry which he established 25 years later. Estfield was also well known to the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, John Wodehouse* (d.1431), one of Kinwolmarsh’s executors. Wodehouse, long a retainer of Henry of Monmouth, had also taken on the executorship of that King’s will, and in 1423 was required to draw up an inventory of the late monarch’s moveable goods for submission to the scrutiny of the second Parliament of Henry VI’s reign. It appears from this that Estfield, perhaps at Wodehouse’s instigation, had been entrusted with some of the many items pending the formal conclusion of the administration process. In the years that followed he was appointed by Wodehouse as one of his feoffees, and then as his executor.19 C67/38, m. 29; CCR, 1435-41, p. 452; CPR, 1416-22, p. 180; 1436-41, p. 61; 1441-6, p. 226; 1447-54, p. 313; C. Allmand, Hen. V, 355-7. ‘Estfeld’ is written in the margin of a list of a group of items: PROME, x. 134-5. His work as Wodehouse’s executor continued to late 1443, and when he made his own will he left £40 to be distributed for the good of Wodehouse’s soul. As Estfield’s career progressed, he came into contact with other important figures, such as Robert, Lord Poynings (who was party to a substantial recognizance to him in 1424),20 CCR, 1422-9, p. 119. yet of much more significance was his long-term friendship with William Alnwick, the keeper of the privy seal for ten years from 1422, bishop of Norwich from 1426 to 1436, and thereafter bishop of Lincoln. The connexion, perhaps stemming from a mutual association with the Scropes of Masham, grew so close that the bishop named Estfield first among his executors (in a will he made in 1445), and the MP did likewise with Alnwick.21 R. Hayes, ‘Wm. Estfield and Wm. Alnwick’, Ricardian, xiii. 249-59.

Connexions such as these had led to a series of Crown appointments, the earliest of which Estfield received in September 1420 when he was made collector of tunnage and poundage in the port of London, a post which he occupied for as long as nine years. For much of this period his fellow collector was the vintner Thomas Walsingham†, a colleague whom he was to name among his executors. Walsingham belonged to the circle of Cardinal Beaufort, the chief financier of Henry VI’s government, and it may well have been with his encouragement that Estfield started to make loans to the Crown. Besides the large sums, already mentioned, that he advanced as a member of the Calais staple, he proffered a number of loans in a personal capacity. In July 1426 the Exchequer recorded the receipt from him of 50 marks, perhaps in response to the general appeal for loans made at that time, and in April 1431 along with others, including Sir John Radcliffe*, Thomas Haseley† and William Flete*, he forwarded 4,000 marks. Another loan, of 1,000 marks in February 1434, came from Estfield alone, while in 1437 and 1439 respectively he lent further sums of £323 and £200.22 CPR, 1429-36, p. 115; E401/713, m. 13; 735, m. 15; 754, m. 13; 763, m. 15. Estfield continued to advance loans to the Crown in the 1440s: in January 1441 the sum of £1,000, and between then and the spring of 1445 there were five further loans, the largest of which amounted to sums of 3,200 marks and 3,800 marks, both given in April 1445.23 E401/771, m. 21; 778, m. 23; 781, m. 17; 788, m. 5; 790, mm. 1, 2; CPR, 1436-41, p. 514. That same month he recouped some of his money by selling to the Crown for 2,000 marks ‘a certain jewel called the George’.24 Issues of the Exchequer ed. Devon, 451; PPC, vi. 39.

Many of Estfield’s royal appointments during the 1430s were related to his mercantile activities, such as his commissions to hear appeals from the court of the Calais staple and the admiralty court, and in March 1433 he was chosen as a member of a delegation which was sent to negotiate a settlement to commercial disputes with envoys from the duchy of Brittany. Shortly afterwards he acted as an intermediary for the payment of 500 marks from the Exchequer to Richard Buckland*, treasurer of Calais, for men-at-arms and archers for the defence of the town.25 J. Ferguson, English Diplomacy, 196; Issues of the Exchequer, 421-2.

While Estfield was shoring up the government’s finances by loans of money, he had been forging for himself a hugely successful career as an alderman in London. Early indication of his abilities was his appointment in July 1420, along with a fellow mercer John Abbot II*, to intervene in a dispute between the masters and wardens of the Cutlers’ Company and the freemen of their craft. In September 1422 he was elected as one of the sheriffs and would thus have officiated at the funeral procession of the late Henry V through London. On this occasion he was the choice of the commonalty of the city, but less than a month after relinquishing the office, on 6 Oct. 1423, he was sworn as the alderman for the ward of Cripplegate. A few days later, on 18 Oct., he attested the election of the city’s MPs for the first of six occasions. His skills as an arbiter in disputes brought before the court of the mayor were greatly appreciated, so that between 1424 and 1429 he was asked to arbitrate in at least 11 such cases.26 Cal. Letter Bk. London, I, 249; jnl. 2, ff. 21, 40v, 84, 92, 100v, 119, 129v, 134v; Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, pp. 179, 207, 216. In the meantime he was also called upon to serve as one of the city’s four auditors, a post he held for the usual period of two years. Shortly before the end of his second year in office in 1429 Estfield benefited from a grant made by the mayor and aldermen enabling him to build a ‘halpace’ [high step] for a chapel outside his house in the parish of St. Lawrence Jewry, for which he was to pay a nominal rent of a rod ornamented with a red rose which was to be carried before the mayor during the Whit Monday procession.27 Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 108; Corp. London RO, hr 158/6. This was a clear indication of Estfield’s standing in the city, and it was perhaps little wonder that on 13 Oct. that year, despite having served only six years as an alderman, he was chosen as mayor. In celebration, the gratified Mercers commissioned a mumming (written by John Lydgate) for Twelfth Night.28 Add. 29729, ff. 27-28; Sutton, 181-2. During this mayoral year Estfield gave the first indication of his keen interest in the state of the city’s fabric, particularly with regard to the vital water supply from the surrounding countryside. In response to a petition from the commonalty he agreed that the city should fund the repair of the new conduit in West Cheap and that those living near the conduit should not be forced to contribute. Estfield’s mayoralty also coincided with the coronation of Henry VI on 6 Nov. 1429, at which he claimed the right by virtue of his office to serve the King with wine in a gold cup, both at the coronation feast and afterwards in the royal chamber. Estfield, prizing the cup ever after, bequeathed it to his grandson.29 A sketch of the cup was drawn in the margin of the City’s Letter Bk.: Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, pp. xii, 103-4, 110; Cal. Wills ct. Husting ed. Sharpe, ii. 509. In December 1430, a few weeks after the end of his mayoralty, Estfield was chosen as one of the city’s four MPs to attend the Parliament summoned to meet early the next year. He may well have been instrumental in obtaining, on the opening day (12 Jan.) a satisfactory response to a petition presented by the city’s common clerk, John Carpenter II*.30 PROME, x. 451-2; CPR, 1429-36, p. 110. Estfield’s good service to the city was rewarded in October 1434 when he and William Trymmell, a former warden of London Bridge, were granted an annual rent of £50 from property belonging to the Bridge. By the late 1430s Estfield occupied a pre-eminent position in London as one of its wealthiest and most respected citizens, and his election as mayor for a second time, in October 1437, was testimony to this. During his term of office a letter from the King praised his ‘goode diligence and trewe acquitaille’ in the case of two ships belonging to a French nobleman which had been seized by the court of admiralty.31 Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 180, 216.

An indisputable measure of the esteem in which Estfield was held by the King and his advisors was his knighting at Kennington on Whit Sunday 1439, in the illustrious company of sons of the earls of Huntingdon and Arundel and along with Lewis John*, the son-in-law of another earl. Like Estfield’s colleague Thomas Walsingham, Lewis John belonged to the circle of Cardinal Beaufort, who at this very same assembly at Kennington was sold substantial estates of the King’s inheritance, a matter which later provoked controversy.32 Historical Collns. Citizen London, 182; Harris, 288. It is unlikely that Estfield’s advancement was merely coincidental. In October he was elected once again as an MP for London, in the Parliament summoned to meet at Westminster the following month. This time, as he was now a knight, the city granted him double the usual allowance of cloth for his livery, as his higher status entailed additional expense. The likely proceedings of the Parliament were evidently viewed with some concern in the city, for shortly before it assembled Estfield and his fellow MPs, Robert Clopton*, Geoffrey Feldyng* and John Carpenter, were formally briefed by the mayor and aldermen. During the second session, which began at Reading on 14 Jan. the following year, a letter of instruction was sent to Estfield after the civic authorities had considered sending the recorder to assist with the prosecution of its interests, yet the specific source of the Londoners’ concern is unclear. The only measure under consideration of direct relevance to London was the limited extension of the powers of the aldermen as justices to control stretches of the Thames. Perhaps the city’s merchants had come together in an effort to put pressure on the government to introduce stricter controls over the activities of alien traders. As well as making avoidance of the Calais staple a felony, the measures enacted by Parliament included the revival of the ‘hosting’ regulations which required foreign merchants to operate under the scrutiny of ‘hosts’, who would have access to all their transactions, and to use their profits to buy English merchandise. Other bills were less successful, including one which tried to limit the trade of foreigners from beyond the straits of Gibraltar to imports only.33 Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 232n; jnl. 3, ff. 25v-26; C.M. Barron, ‘London and Parlt.’, Parlty. Hist. ix. 357; PROME, xi. 291-3, 303-9.

After Parliament was dissolved Estfield wasted no time in returning to civic duties in the capital. He served on several committees during 1440 and even returned briefly to the mayoral chair on 14 and 18 July as deputy to Robert Large, who had fallen ill.34 Jnl. 3, ff. 11, 40-40v, 46, 60-60v, 81. His continued importance in the eyes of the Crown was demonstrated in July 1441 when he was chosen as a member of another diplomatic mission, on this occasion to negotiate a commercial treaty with Flanders and Zeeland.35 Ferguson, 189; DKR, xlviii. 349. Back in London, in January the following year Estfield was elected as an MP for a third time. Once again his fellow Londoners viewed him as the most important of their representatives, for on 2 Mar., while Parliament was in sesssion, he returned to attend a meeting of the court of aldermen, presumably to brief them on what had occurred.36 Barron, 367. His opinions were clearly valued on all sides. A year later, in March 1443, a letter was sent from the King’s council to Estfield in which he was asked ‘in alle haste… to commune wt he[m] upon c[er]tain matier’. He may well have provided useful counsel, for later that month he was granted a handsome annuity of £40 for life, charged on the issues of London and Middlesex,37 PPC, v. 231, 232; CPR, 1441-6, p. 162; CCR, 1441-7, p. 97. and in July, as a further mark of the esteem in which he was held by the Crown, he received a royal licence enabling him to hunt in any royal park in Essex and Middlesex and to keep any of the bucks or does killed. In May 1444, following the death of William Flete, Estfield and one of the King’s serjeants were granted £10 p.a. from the issues of the county of Lincolnshire.38 CPR, 1441-6, p. 194; CCR, 1441-7, p. 175.

By the end of 1443 Estfield may have been feeling the strain of almost continuous service to city and Crown, for on 9 Oct. he asked the aldermen in writing to be exonerated from his place on the bench. Three of his fellow aldermen took on the task of trying to persuade him to continue, a mission which seems to have been successful. The aldermen were not alone in seeking his continuing service. On the day of the mayoral election in the autumn of 1444, the King himself wrote to the outgoing mayor, explicitly asking for Estfield’s election to a third term, ‘consideryng thordre and worshippe that he standeth in and thapproved sadd wisdome and discrecion that he is of, the whiche shulde mowe do us the more worshippe and gretter pleasure in suche thinges as oure lord shall lust gide this yeere’. The royal request no doubt reflected Estfield’s long service to the Crown, but may also have been an implied reference to his first mayoralty, when he had served at the King’s coronation. Henry may have seen him as the perfect choice to be mayor at the coronation of his consort, Margaret of Anjou, which was due to take place the following spring. In the event, however, the aldermen respectfully declined to be told whom to elect as mayor, citing an ordinance of 1424 which specified that no one should serve again within seven years of being elected and another of 1435 which forbade anyone from serving more than twice in the office.39 Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 301-2.

Estfield’s successes as a merchant enabled him to acquire a substantial amount of property, both in London and elsewhere, so that in 1436 his landed wealth could be assessed at £90 p.a., derived from holdings in the capital, Middlesex, Hertfordshire and Yorkshire.40 E179/238/90; H.L. Gray, ‘Incomes from Land in Eng. in 1436’, EHR, xlix. 637. The precise extent and location of his London properties is not easy to determine, for although Estfield was involved in a very large number of transactions, in perhaps a large proportion of these he was acting as a trustee for others. Thus, he was a feoffee of property acquired by Stephen Brown* , Thomas Catworth* and his fellow mercer William Cantelowe, as well as for many less prominent individuals who perceived the advantages of drawing upon the assistance of a man of his stature.41 London hr 159/38, 40, 41, 43; 162/40. Nevertheless, it is clear that Estfield himself accumulated property in several city parishes. His main interests, going back to 1410, were in that of St. Mary Aldermanbury, and by 1439 comprised an inn, a shop and a garden which Estfield had previously held together with others, including John Fray†, the chief baron of the Exchequer. In May that year tenements and a wharf called ‘Drynwaterswarf’ in the parish of St. Magnus were settled on him and his second wife, Alice. These too he had held for a number of years, along with his trusted feoffees Henry Frowyk and John Carpenter. Other holdings settled on the couple were located in the parish of All Hallows Bread Street and included an inn called variously Le Three Coupes Super Le Hoop, or more simply Le Coupe on the Hoop, which may well have previously belonged to Alice’s family.42 Ibid. 162/55; 167/24, 44, 56, 58. In July 1440 Estfield acquired a more substantial residence, the Pope’s Head in Lombard Street, a building which had once belonged to Michael de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, but had since come into the possession of a group of feoffees headed by the chancellor, Bishop Stafford. These feoffees now conveyed it to Estfield and his associates, to whom William de la Pole, the current earl of Suffolk, and his countess quitclaimed their right.43 Ibid. 169/17, 28-29. Among Estfield’s other holdings in the city were tenements in the parish of St. Giles Cripplegate, and perhaps more in St. Peter’s parish in Thames Street,44 Ibid. 149/9; 155/25, 32. shops in that of St. Michael Wood Street, and properties yielding a rent of at least £10 p.a. in the parish of All Hallows at the Hay.45 Ibid. 162/36, 38; 165/27; Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, p. 18. It was in the parish church of St. Mary Aldermanbury that he wished to be buried and where, by licence granted in July 1444, he was to found a perpetual chantry, funded out of the income of ten marks a year from a messuage and two shops in the parish of St. Peter Westcheap. These had been conveyed to Estfield two months earlier by the prior of St. Mary Elsyng Spital.46 CPR, 1441-6, p. 285; London hr 172/53.

Beyond London, over the years Estfield had acquired landed interests in nine counties all told, although not all of them were mentioned in the 1436 assessments. In the previous year, as already noted, he inherited the possessions in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire that had belonged to his putative elder brother, while the manor of Stansall and land at Wadworth and Wolsyke fell to him later after the death of the widowed Joan Estfield.47 CCR, 1435-41, p. 31. Yet their descent after his own death remains unclear. Yet his more important acquisitions were in southern England, beginning in Kent, where in 1419 he held the manor of Easthall and other holdings at Elmley.48 CPR, 1416-22, p. 180. In Middlesex he bought the manor of Little Greenford, and may also have held an estate in Hackney known by the sixteenth century as the King’s Place, for in 1439 he conveyed property there to the rector of the parish church, William Booth, the later archbishop of York.49 VCH Mdx. iv. 123-4; x. 78. In 1432 Estfield and Richard Wydeville* were granted at the Exchequer the farm of lands at Chesham in Buckinghamshire, which they held for three years.50 CFR, xvi. 100, 153, 202. In Essex he established interests in the manors of Horham and Wanstead, while of more significance was an annual rent of 50 marks granted to him and his first wife in 1437 by the abbot of Waltham, which was to be cancelled if the abbey paid the sum of 500 marks to Estfield’s parish church of St. Mary Aldermanbury.51 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 124, 186-7, 351; Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, pp. 291, 298-9. In addition, by 1444 he held the manor of Wotton in Surrey, his involvement in the affairs of that county and neighbouring Sussex emerging from his connexion with the Cobhams of Sterborough, whom he served as a feoffee.52 VCH Surr. iv. 156; CCR, 1441-7, p. 380.

It was in southern England, too, that the astute mercer found a worthy husband for his only child, Margaret, and by doing so promoted his own social standing. He, Humphrey Bohun (1418-68), was the son and heir of Sir John Bohun, the head of a distinguished Sussex family possessed of sizeable estates in that county and Essex. The match may have been planned as early as the 1420s, for Estfield was one of Sir John’s feoffees from 1426. Furthermore, just a few days before Sir John’s death in January 1433 he was named among those entrusted with one of the Bohun manors in Buckinghamshire, and in all probability Sir John’s young heir was brought up in the Estfield household in London. To the MP’s daughter the marriage brought enhanced status; to the Bohuns the mercer’s considerable wealth.53 CP, ii. 201; CIPM, xxiv. 51-54. Finally, at some point in the 1430s or early 1440s, Estfield decided to build up his landed holdings in Hertfordshire, there acquiring the manor of Netherhall near Gilston, and, of greater importance, that of Hunsdon, a much more impressive estate nearby. Both manors had once belonged to the Goldingtons, and would seem to have passed to Estfield after being held for a while by the Speaker in his first Parliament, (Sir) John Tyrell* (d.1437), of whose will he may have been an executor. It was at Hunsdon that Estfield chose to live in his final years.54 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 204-5; VCH Herts. iii. 320, 327; Hayes, 254. Estfield was enfeoffed by Tyrell’s widow of property in the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn (London hr 166/5) and left £40 to benefit the souls of her and her late husband. In that period he received Crown appointments in the counties where he had acquired property. The most notable of these was his appointment to the Hertfordshire bench in 1435, a position which he occupied for more than a decade.

In July 1444 Estfield and Bishop Alnwick were enfeoffed by Ralph, Lord Cromwell, the former treasurer of England, to facilitate his purchase of the valuable lordship of Ampthill in Bedfordshire,55 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 218-19, 229; CPR, 1441-6, p. 267; S.J. Payling, ‘The Ampthill Dispute’, EHR, civ. 885n. and at the same time, on 6 July, a royal charter was granted to Cromwell, Alnwick, Bishop Lyndwood of St. Davids (with whom Estfield had been an envoy in 1441), John Fray and Estfield himself, to have view of frankpledge in ‘their’ manor of Hunsdon. In fact, Cromwell and the rest were acting on behalf of the mercer, whose petition had secured the grant.56 E28/73/12, 13; CChR, vi. 50; VCH Herts. iii. 327. After Estfield’s death Hunsdon passed to Richard, duke of York, and then to Sir William Oldhall*, but by what means is unclear. Perhaps his excutors sold the manor. It also coincided with the licence for Estfield to found his chantry in his parish church in London. Clearly, his thoughts were turning towards death and the welfare of his soul. In the spring of the following year he obtained an indult from Pope Eugenius IV to have a personal confessor and dispensation from fasting, on the grounds that he was old and his physicians advised him not to abstain from meat. In the indult he was described as ‘lord of Hunsdon and a counsellor of Henry, king of England’.57 CPR, 1441-6, p. 285; CPL, ix. 494. In London Estfield, though still a member of the court of aldermen, concentrated his efforts upon a favourite cause, the repair and expansion of the city’s water supply. To this end, he appeared before the court on several occasions in the summer of 1445 to negotiate funding for the extension of the city’s conduits and aqueducts, much of which was to be lent by Estfield himself, although he donated the sum of 250 marks outright. Once work had commenced, he was appointed to supervise the project.58 Jnl. 4, ff. 81, 86, 91, 106, 110v, 113.

On 15 Mar. 1446 Estfield made his will in which he asked to be buried in the western part of the church of St. Mary Aldermanbury. Among his charitable bequests were donations to the poor of the parish of Tickhill, and he also left a sum of money to the chaplain of the castle in that town. Legacies to religious houses and hospitals reflected the scope of his activities outside London, and among them were houses of nuns at Burnham near Windsor, Huntingdon and Faversham in Kent. Casks of Gascon red wine were assigned to each of the prestigious establishments (St. Albans abbey, the Charterhouse, and Christ Church priory, Canterbury) that had admitted the testator to their confraternities. The large sum of £100 was set aside for improving the highway between Hunsdon and London, while the Mercers’ Company was left £20 for its almsmen, with an additional amount to provide a breakfast every year for the apprentices. Among the personal items which he bequeathed was the gold cup which he received when he attended the King’s coronation. This he left to his grandson, John Bohun, son of his late daughter Margaret and her husband Humphrey Bohun, who himself was to have a gold collar, also given to Estfield by the King, and silver plate worth 100 marks. Another collar of gold set with precious stones and pearls was to be offered at the shrine of St. Mary at Walsingham, and an ‘ouche’ of gold similarly adorned was to be presented to that of St. Thomas at Canterbury. Estfield drew up two codicils. In the first, dated 16 Mar., he instructed his executors, Bishop Alnwick, John Middleton, John Fray, Richard Rich, Thomas Walsingham and three others, one of whom was the lawyer Roger Byrkes, to complete the water conduit in Aldermanbury, enlarge the belfry of the church of St. Mary and hang five new bells there. He also left Middleton a large ‘legend’ of the saints, a porteous [breviary], and a vestment of gold decorated with popinjays. In the second, undated, he left his inn Le Three Coupes on the Hoop, as well as other property in the parish of St. Giles Cripplegate to the Mercers’ Company, in order to fund a second chantry in the church of St. Mary Aldermanbury.59 Lambeth Palace Lib. Reg. Stafford, ff. 139-42; Cal. Wills ct. Husting, ii. 509-11; London hr 175/19-20.

Estfield’s death on 10 May was recorded in the staple court at Westminster, where he had served as mayor to the end. Three days later a writ of diem clausit extremum was sent to the escheator of Hertfordshire, and the will itself was proved on 21 June.60 C241/232/22; CFR, xviii. 2. The heir to his landed estate was his grandson John Bohun, although it took some years for Bohun to enter into his inheritance, a fact that was only partly a consequence of his youth. It was not until November 1464 and after taking legal action against John Middleton, who seems to have been Estfield’s principal executor and feoffee, that Bohun finally took possession of the Pope’s Head and other of his grandfather’s properties in London and manors elsewhere. By the time of Middleton’s death in 1477 most of the etates had been handed over, although by that date Bohun himself was dead and had been succeeded by his younger brother, Humphrey. On the other hand, Middleton clearly failed to pass on the manor of Wotton in Surrey which was still held by his own son Stephen in 1479. It took another five years before it was finally in the hands of Humphrey Bohun.61 CCR, 1461-8, p. 257; C1/27/37; VCH Mdx. iv. 124; VCH Surr. iv. 156.

In other respects, Middleton appears to have adhered more closely to his former master’s wishes. In October 1453, after protracted negotiations, an indenture was drawn up between the executors and the civic authorities in which it was agreed that the existing conduit from Paddington to Tyburn should be extended into the city itself. Another pipe from Marylebone to Charing Cross was also to run further into London. This was in fact a far more ambitious project than that originally set out in Estfield’s will, and was doubtless undertaken on the understanding that there was still plenty of money available from Estfield’s estate with which to finish the task. The project proceeded slowly and was still not completed in 1478, by which time Middleton himself was dead. Nevertheless, progress continued to be made and by the late sixteenth century had become Estfield’s most enduring legacy to the city.62 Jnl. 4, f. 187; 5, f. 30v, 40; Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 355-7; L, 158, 207. It was, nevertheless, in Mercers’ Hall that Estfield was to be commemorated among other company benefactors by a statue.63 Sutton, 507.