FILOLL, John

Filoll belonged to an old Dorset family. His great-grandfather William† had been duchy of Lancaster steward in the county in the second half of the fourteenth century, and his father a j.p. there and knight of the shire in 1414.6 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 73-74. To his own considerable landed holdings the father had brought to the family the inheritance of his wife Joan Frome, which included the manor of Woodlands and the hundred of Knowlton, and on his death in 1416 his estates in Dorset, assessed in 1412 as worth £124 6s. 8d. p.a., included 14 manors and several smaller properties, many of them concentrated to the south of Blandford Forum.7 CIPM, xx. 464. Besides these there were ancestral lands in Essex and a reversionary interest in the manors of Wambrook in Dorset and Woodmancote, Morley and Southwick in Sussex, together with lands on the Sussex coast, under the terms of an entail made in 1354. This reversionary interest was to fall in on the death of John’s great-aunt Mary, widow of Sir William Percy†, in 1420.8 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 52-53; VCH Suss. vi (3), 161; vii. 147.

John was aged only seven when his father died. His mother, who had livery of the combined Filoll and Frome estates in May 1416, married Sir Richard Arches† of Oving, Buckinghamshire, and after his death in the following year she took as her third husband Sir William Cheyne, who officiated as chief justice of the King’s bench from 1424 to 1439.9 CCR, 1413-19, pp. 305-6; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 48. In a will she made in 1420 Joan instructed feoffees of her estates to use their revenues for the maintenance and marriage of her three daughters, before transferring possession to John when he came of age,10 HMC Middleton, 104-6. but by the time she did die – 14 years later on 1 July 1434 – John had already reached his majority.11 C139/65/39; CFR, xv. 167, 212. His landed holdings were to be valued at some £96 p.a. at his death, but there is no reason to believe that in his lifetime they raised a smaller income than in his father’s day; inquisitions post mortem tended to under-value the possessions of the deceased.12 C140/25/38.

During his minority Filoll may have fallen under the guardianship of his stepfather Cheyne, and his introduction to the legal profession was probably made under Cheyne’s aegis.13 In his will of 1458, the lawyer John Langley II* asked his executors to return a certain year book to Filoll or the executors of the latter’s ‘father’ (probably his stepfather Cheyne): PCC 18 Stokton (PROB11/4, ff. 36-37). The fact that at the end of his life he asked to be buried in the Temple church points to him having been a member of one of the inns of court, and this is confirmed by his description as ‘de interiori Templo’.14 KB9/292/65. He is to be distinguished from John Fililode or Fylylowe, another lawyer, who was executor of (Sir) John Prysote* (d.1461), c.j.c.p.: Reg. Bourgchier (Canterbury and York Soc. liv), 197; CCR, 1461-8, p. 135. That John, described as ‘of London, gentleman’, also married a Margaret, the wid. of John Dunstaple of Steeple Morden, Cambs.: KB27/818, just. rot. 115; VCH Cambs. viii. 114; Baker, i. 669. After Cheyne’s death in 1443, Filoll petitioned the chancellor regarding his exclusion from part of his inheritance. In this petition he quoted his mother’s will of 1420 (a copy of which was delivered to the chancellor in July 1443), but said that Cheyne had kept the profits of the manor of Winterbourne ‘Belet’ and other lands in Dorset, accruing to £90 10s. in the five years between his mother’s death and Michaelmas 1439, and that the feoffees refused to hand the property over to him. He wanted them and Cheyne’s executors to be summoned to account for their behaviour.15 C1/11/347. HMC Middleton, 104-6 states that Joan’s will was enrolled in Chancery on 1 June 1443, and attested by two of the feoffees on 4 July. By then Filoll had already sat in Parliament twice as a shire knight, and had begun his career in local administration as a commissioner and j.p. of the quorum in his home county. He was to represent Dorset in at least seven Parliaments all told. There is every indication that he was a dependable royal servant during Henry VI’s reign; only his unexplained removal from the bench in the period 1447-51 broke the continuity of his public service.

Curiously, as late as the age of 36, Filoll appears to have still been unmarried, but then, on 23 Nov. 1445, he came to an agreement with Sir Thomas Dacre that he would marry Dacre’s elder daughter Joan, ‘if upon sight and speche hadde by twene hem they can therto agree’. Dacre promised the couple lands worth £10 p.a. in Sussex, and a further £10 p.a. on the death of his father Lord Dacre; furthermore, Joan was assured of the inheritance of part of her mother’s Bowet estates. Filoll in turn promised to provide her with a jointure from his Sussex lands worth 40 marks p.a. and to pay Dacre the sum of £200.16 T. Barrett-Lennard, Acct. of Fams. Lennard and Barrett, 58-60. However, the match was not to be: by a settlement made the following June, Joan married Richard Fiennes, and her younger sister wedded his brother Robert*, the two being sons of the treasurer of the King’s household, Sir Roger Fiennes*. Clearly, Dacre had considered this double match a much better bargain, or else Joan, on meeting our MP, had decided she did not like him. When Filoll did eventually marry, his choice fell on Margaret, niece of the prominent Somerset lawyer William Carent*, who was himself the brother-in-law of John Stourton II*, Lord Stourton. The terms of the contract are not known, although the chief baron of the Exchequer, Peter Arderne, was among the feoffees who settled on the couple in jointure five of Filoll’s manors, worth some £46 p.a., and Margaret’s father John Carent gave them the manor of Kingston by Bere, worth £8. Margaret was coheir-apparent with her sister to their father’s holdings, but it was not to be until after her husband’s death that she inherited her patrimony of Todbere and Knightstreet in Marnhull.17 Hutchins, iv. 112-13, 314-15; C140/25/38, 65/5. Filoll’s marriage may have taken place by November 1449, when he acted for William Carent in the acquisition of land at Henstridge in Somerset, and had certainly done so by late 1451, for his eldest son was born in July 1452. William Carent was one of the baby’s godparents, as too was the child’s maternal grandmother.18 Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xxii), 112; C140/42/56.

In the year before his third Parliament, which met at Bury St. Edmunds early in 1447, Filoll had obtained a royal pardon, on 1 July 1446, and on 23 Nov. following he secured an Exchequer lease for ten years of a number of small properties in Dorset which had been leased in the past by his parents.19 C67/39, m. 41; CFR, xiv. 138-9; xviii. 59. One of his mainpernors was a fellow lawyer, Thomas Bate* of Warws. Yet the fact that he was removed from the Dorset bench a few days after the end of the Parliament indicates that he was not one of the supporters of the court faction which had profited from the death at Bury of the duke of Gloucester. However, he obtained another lease from the Crown in April 1448, jointly with John Wyke II*, this being of lands pertaining to the young heir of William Horsey.20 CFR, xviii. 86. It is difficult to explain his two appointments as a commissioner of sewers in the Thames estuary, in July 1448 and October 1455, both of which were headed by Chief Justice Fortescue*, although his family lands in Essex may have led to a personal concern with the state of the waterways in the locality.21 CPR, 1446-52, p. 190; 1452-61, p. 299. To the Parliaments of 1450 and 1455 Filoll was returned for Dorset in the company of William Browning I*, the duke of York’s receiver in the region, with whom he must have been well acquainted, as he had farmed York’s estate at Gussage Bohun since 1447 or earlier and continued to do so until at least 1453.22 P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 87, 105; SC6/1113/9, 11; Egerton roll 8784. This may have led him to sympathize with the duke’s opposition to the Lancastrian court at that time. Yet he was also associated with James Butler, earl of Wiltshire, who in the late 1450s chose to form an alliance with Margaret of Anjou; in 1457 he assisted the earl in his acquisition from the Russells of the manor of Bradpole and hundreds of Redhove and Beaminster.23 Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 384; CCR, 1454-61, p. 213. He also witnessed a deed for the earl, in 1458: E326/5414. Then again, it is likely that Filoll was an official on the earl of Salisbury’s estate at Ringwood in Hampshire before his appointment as such by the Crown in December 1459, for he had witnessed a deed at Ringwood on 31 Aug. that year for Thomas Tame, who was constable of Christchurch castle by Salisbury’s appointment. Following Salisbury’s attainder in the Coventry Parliament the two men were appointed joint stewards of his forfeited estates in these two places; the appointment may simply have confirmed their existing roles. Tame died shortly afterwards, and on the following 3 Apr. Filoll was granted the stewardship alone, and for life.24 CCR, 1454-61, p. 452; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 532, 569. This suggests that he had assured the Lancastrian regime of his loyalty, and a commitment to the house of Lancaster is also indicated by his removal from the Dorset bench when Edward IV took the throne.

Rehabilitation then took four years: Filoll resumed his place as a j.p. in 1465, but was not again named as a member of the quorum until the following year. A person of his wealth and standing in the locality would be expected to act as a trustee for his gentry neighbours, and Filoll served as such in July 1466 in association with Humphrey Stafford IV*, Lord Stafford of Southwick, and in February 1467 on behalf of John Newburgh II*, in finalizing arrangements for the marriage of one of Newburgh’s daughters.25 CCR, 1461-8, pp. 369, 441-2; Add. Ch. 18240. He and Newburgh had sat together in the Commons several years earlier and were fellow j.p.s. Filoll was returned to Parliament for the last time at Dorchester on 25 May that year, but shortly after the Commons assembled on 3 June he fell ill: he made his will on 29 June, and died the same day. The will, which began simply ‘In the name of the Holy Trinity, father, son and holy ghost, Amen’, contained no provisions of a specifically religious nature, save for a bequest of £2 to the Temple church, where he asked to be interred. However, he did stipulate that a third part of his moveable possessions should be set aside for disposal for the good of his soul. A second third was to pass to his widow, and the remainder divided up between their children. Two of their younger sons, Maurice and Nicholas, were to be sent to school until aged 18 or 19, and ‘if they be disposed’ Maurice was then to become a knight of Rhodes and Nicholas a priest. Certain lands our MP had purchased were to remain in the hands of his feoffees until 200 marks had been raised for the marriages of his two daughters, although if either became a nun she would receive only £20. After that, these lands were to be divided equally between his five younger sons (six if his pregnant wife produced another boy), and if Maurice and Nicholas took up their designated professions their shares were to go to the others. If his widow remained sole she could keep lands worth 50 marks a year in addition to her jointure and dower, otherwise she would receive lands worth only 40 marks p.a. Filoll named her and her father John Carent as his executors.26 CFR, xx. 196; PCC 21 Godyn (PROB11/5, f. 163). After his death Margaret did indeed give birth to another son. The wardship and marriage of Filoll’s heir, William, the eldest of the seven boys, were sold by the Crown for £200 to his grandfather John Carent, his great-uncle William Carent and the latter’s son John Carent* the younger just three weeks later, on 19 July.27 CFR, xx. 206; CPR, 1467-77, p. 39. Although John Filoll had died within a month of the start of the Parliament, at its dissolution on 7 June 1468 his name appeared on the list of knights of the shire appointed to distribute tax allowances in their respective counties,28 CFR, xx. 232, 239. so it looks as if no-one had been sent from Dorset to take his place in the Commons.

A few years later, a suit was brought in Chancery by William Hussey*, the King’s attorney, alleging that the Filoll heir William had illegally entered the manors of Southcombe and Woodlands on 21 June 1472. This was just 11 days before he attained his majority. Formal livery of his inheritance was authorized after he made proof of age that October. An indication of his wealth and status may be derived from his marriage a year later to Elizabeth, second daughter of John Audley*, Lord Audley, one of the leading councillors of the King.29 C1/40/249; C140/42/56; CCR, 1468-76, no. 868; HMC Middleton, 115. Our MP’s widow married John Wroughton*, a Wiltshire esquire, and inherited her father’s manors of Todber and Knightstreet in 1478, subject to the life-interest of her stepmother.30 CPR, 1476-85, p. 83. Margaret’s dealings with her many children were often fractious. She and Wroughton brought an action in Chancery against her son William Filoll for deeds, evidences, goods and jewels awarded to them by mediation of the chancellor and their friends, after they had eventually reached an agreement over landed settlements,31 C1/178/1. and when the younger children came of age there was a flurry of lawsuits over the lands left to them in our MP’s will. Filoll’s daughter Katherine sued her stepfather, perhaps over John’s bequests for her marriage, and a few years after Wroughton’s death in 1496 her brother Reynold took their mother to court for refusing to hand over his rightful share of the land in Dorset, Hampshire and Essex, worth £50 p.a., referred to in John’s will, and his portion of the latter’s moveable goods, which he said were worth as much as £2,100. Reynold alleged that his mother had wrongly kept all the goods and all the issues of the lands for 24 years and more.32 C1/80/30, 248/57. It would seem that Katherine married William Browning II*, for in his will of 1493 Browning named her brothers Maurice and John as her co-executors: PCC 3 Vox (PROB11/10, f. 17). The date of Margaret’s death is not known,33 She was not the Margaret Wroughton who died on 28 July 1520, for the latter’s son and heir was Richard Pole: E150/909/11. but two of her sons, Maurice and Reynold, went to law in 1510 over deeds relating to the two Dorset manors she had inherited from her father, which Reynold claimed had been settled on him. Maurice demanded the share of their brother John, since by then John had become a celibate anchorite.34 C1/307/5, 311/60. Suits continued into the next generation, with William, s. and h. of Maurice, making a claim for the manors in 1526 against Reynold’s wid.: C1/505/60-67. Another of our MP’s sons, Jasper Filoll†, was to sit for Dorchester in the Reformation Parliament of 1529-36.35 The Commons 1509-58, ii. 178.