LEWKNOR, John

Sir Thomas Lewknor’s position as a landowner of considerable substance enabled him to negotiate advantageous marriages for his many children, and in particular for his heir, John’s half-brother Roger, and for John himself. Both were married to heiresses, in John’s case to Joan Halsham, with whose family the Lewknors had long been associated as members of the leading gentry of Sussex. The Halshams, who had been lords of the manor of West Grinstead since the mid fourteenth century, established prestigious connexions, and Joan’s paternal grandmother Philippa (d.1395) was the daughter and coheiress of David Strathbogie, last earl of Atholl. The bulk of the Halsham estates in Sussex, Norfolk and elsewhere came to Hugh, the eldest of three sons, who served alongside John Lewknor’s father in the earl of Arundel’s retinue on Henry V’s expedition to France in 1415. Hugh’s next brother, Richard, took part in the same military campaign, although the story goes that he had once been a monk in Paris but quitted his monastery in order to marry. This seems far-fetched, although rumours persisted as late as 1468, when depositions stressed that Richard ‘nunquam fuit vir religious’. Richard’s daughter Joan was not mentioned in the will made by her uncle Sir Hugh on 7 Feb. 1442, even though he made many monetary bequests, amounting to at least £300. Sir Hugh left instructions for the sale of some of his lands in West Grinstead and elsewhere to provide good works for his soul and that of his brother Richard among others; and the feoffees of his manor of Brabourne in Kent, after allowing his executors to have the profits for three years to maintain two chantry priests, were told to then make estate to his ‘next heirs’ provided they did not ‘lette’ his will.3 Scott mss, U1115/T13/7; CP, i. 308-9; Suss. Arch. Collns. xxii. 10; xxiii. 161-2; Reg. Chichele, ii. 608-11, 656; F. Blomefield, Norf. vii. 249-50; CIPM, xvii. 662-4. Inquisitions held after his death on 28 Feb. established that Joan, by then the wife of John Lewknor, was the heir not only of Brabourne but to six manors in Norfolk. Evidently, the valuations then given, which stated that these properties to be worth £85 13s. 4d. p.a., were underestimated, for Brabourne was later said later to raise £50 a year (rather than the £41 stated at the inquisition), and two of the Norfolk manors were later valued at £30 p.a., nearly three times the amount given earlier. Furthermore, when they became the subject of litigation in Chancery, just four of the Norfolk manors were given an annual value of 100 marks. Besides these, Joan also stood to inherit in due course the manor of Collingbourne ‘Valence’ in Wiltshire, which was held for life by her mother, Anne, who had married John Thornbury*.4 C139/107/27; C131/72/2; C145/317/1; C1/40/47-52. Anne lived on until 1460. At first all went smoothly for the young couple. A month after Sir Hugh’s death his feoffees obtained a royal pardon for their trespasses in entering the Norfolk manors without licence, together with permission to grant the same to the Lewknors, and in November 1445 Cardinal Beaufort, Archbishop Stafford and others confirmed Joan in possession of Brabourne and other lands of which they had been enfeoffed. Yet it seems that John’s kinsmen had other plans for Joan’s inheritance. In the summer of 1448 this was the subject of a final concord whereby John and Joan transferred seisin to a very large and distinguished body of feoffees including Sir Ralph Butler, afterwards Lord Sudeley, John’s father, three of his brothers, and their prominent kinsmen James Fiennes*, Lord Saye and Sele, Sir Roger Fiennes* and (Sir) Thomas Hoo I*, Lord Hoo. One of the purposes of the transaction was that the profits of the former Halsham estates in Norfolk should be paid to Geoffrey Boleyn*, the London mercer who had married Lord Hoo’s eldest daughter, in order to compensate him for the apparent loss to his issue of the principal Hoo estates, which had been entailed in tail-male. Evidently, the person who master-minded this arrangement was the lawyer Thomas Hoo II, half-brother to both Lord Hoo and our MP. By giving priority to solving Lord Hoo’s serious financial difficulties, to the detriment of the interests of John and Joan Lewknor, he was storing up problems for a later date and blighting the prospects of the young couple. Vague promises to recompense the Lewknors with lands of equal value elsewhere were never to be kept.5 Scott mss, T13/3; CPR, 1441-6, p. 65; Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 587; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 206-7; Blomefield, ii. 333; vii. 249-50; ix. 232, 252; x. 2; C145/317/1.

Although the Lewknors had successfully established Joan’s title to the Halsham estates in Norfolk, they had more difficulty proving her claim to those in Sussex, notably the manors of West Grinstead and Coombes in Applesham. Entails made in 1403 had laid down that if neither Hugh or Richard Halsham had male issue, these properties were to remain to the heirs of the body of their father. Joan’s claim to them was therefore challenged by her paternal uncle John (her father’s half-brother). Beginning in Trinity term 1443, the Lewknors had brought suits in the court of common pleas against Sir Hugh Halsham’s feoffees of these properties (including the lawyers Edmund Mille* and William Sydney*), and then against Joan’s uncle. These continued unresolved for several years.6 Add. 39376, ff. 27, 28d, 31-33, 41v, 42; CP40/730, rot. 325; 741, rots. 127d, 133d. In 1447 one of the defendants made a quitclaim to John Halsham and his wife of the manor of West Grinstead,7 Add. Ch. 8883. possibly in response to the process of arbitration which Halsham described in a petition sent to the chancellor some three years later. Halsham stated that following ‘diverse variaunce and debate’ between him and the Lewknors over title to this manor, they had agreed by the mediation of friends to abide by the judgement of Mille, who awarded that the Halshams should have West Grinstead in tail-male. Halsham had agreed to pay John Lewknor £80 for relinquishing his interest, but John nevertheless had ‘interruppeth, vexeth and troubleth’ him regarding his possession of the manor. Yet it would seem that a subsequent agreement between the parties gave the Lewknors West Grinstead in exchange for Applesham and appurtenant lands: in November 1453 the Lewknors relinquished these last to the Halshams, providing that if John Halsham died without male issue the property should revert to them and Joan’s children, with remainder to the issue of her aunt Anne, the widow of Sir Robert Roos. Accordingly, Applesham was to fall to Joan late in life, and on her death passed to the Roos family. After 1453 John, who had previously lived at the Lewknor family manor of Horsted Keynes, took up residence at West Grinstead,8 CCR, 1435-41, p. 363; C1/19/36; CP25(1)/241/90/29; Add. 39376, f. 77; VCH Suss. vi (1), 215 (which mistakenly dates the settlement of 1403 to 1440); vi (2), 90. although it was as an esquire of Norfolk that he was fined for failing to take up knighthood in 1458.

In his youth John had been placed in the royal household, at least for the two years from Michaelmas 1441,9 E101/409/9, 11. and he was among the ten esquires assigned to the hall and chamber of the queen, Margaret of Anjou, for her journey from France, as such being paid at the rate of 18d. per day for the period July 1444 to October 1445.10 Add. 23938, f. 14v. He was called ‘King’s esquire’ in February 1446 when granted for life the office of forester in Windsor forest, with wages of 1d. a day and various revenues pertaining to the post, but he only kept it for 17 months.11 CPR, 1441-6, p. 399; 1446-52, p. 64. It is perhaps surprising that given Lewknor’s kinship to the influential Fiennes brothers, both of them prominent figures in the Household, there is no further sign of royal patronage accorded to him personally. Nor did Lewknor play any part in local government before he made his first appearance at the parliamentary elections for Sussex, at Chichester on 30 Jan. 1449, there attesting the indenture recording the return of his half-brother Thomas Hoo II. He himself was elected to the November Parliament of that year, at a time when the King’s ministers, in particular the duke of Suffolk and Lewknor’s kinsman the treasurer Lord Saye, were in much need of support in the Commons.12 C219/15/6. The troubled events of that Parliament (in the course of which Suffolk was impeached and exiled), reached their culmination in the spring and summer of 1450 with the murders of Suffolk and Saye and the cataclysm of Cade’s rebellion which left south-east England in turmoil. In December, ‘whanne every other personne it refused’, John was persuaded to take on the shrievalty of Surrey and Sussex, and was thus occupying this dangerous post ‘in the troublous tyme’, when many men of the locality rose in insurrection. He was charged with arresting the rebels, ‘aswel in gadering a greet feleship with hym for to take them as in witholding the same feliship for the keping of 36 of the same rebelles’ from May Day 1451 until Henry VI came to Sussex himself, that is for 12 or 13 weeks. Even so, a year went by before the King, in response to his petition complaining about the costs of the exercise, issued a warrant on 11 June 1452 ordering that he should be recompensed with £50, assigned on the revenues of the shrievalty from his term. Four days earlier Lewknor had been among a group of seven men to whom were committed guardianship of the temporalities of the archbishopric of Canterbury, then in the King’s hands following the death of Archbishop Stafford. His father’s cousin, Cardinal Kemp, was to be translated to the see shortly afterwards.13 E404/68/137; CFR, xviii. 264. The pardon he obtained on the following 27 Sept. described him as former sheriff and ‘lately of Brambeltye, Sussex esquire’, but how he had come to live at Brambeltye is unclear.14 C67/40, m. 18. It is possible that Bramblelty had been the home of his mother’s sister-in-law, Margaret Hoo, wid. of Thomas St. Cler (d.1435).

John again attended the Sussex elections on 22 Feb. 1453, this time attesting the return of his half-brother Roger, who had recently been knighted in the illustrious company of the King’s kinsmen Edmund and Jasper Tudor. His full brother, Richard, was elected for Bramber.15 C219/16/2. During the Parliament the attention of the Lords and Commons was drawn to the criminal behaviour of Robert Poynings, alleged to have been Cade’s sword-bearer, and following acts passed against him in the final session in the spring of 1454 a commission was set up for his arrest on charges of treason. The appointment of John and two of his brothers to this commission in association with their kinsman Sir Richard Fiennes is a strong indication that in the major dispute between Poynings and his niece, Eleanor, over the estates of the late Lord Poynings (Robert’s father), they sided firmly with the latter, the wife of Henry Percy, soon to be earl of Northumberland. Significantly, John was later made a feoffee of the disputed Poynings manors in Dorset, Somerset and Sussex on behalf of Eleanor and her husband the earl, whose financial affairs in the south of England were largely handled by his councillor, John’s half-brother Thomas Hoo.16 CPR, 1452-61, p. 173; C141/2/26; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 468, 548, 552; C67/42, m. 4; Suff. RO (Bury St. Edmunds), Hengrave mss, 449/2/651. There is no doubt of John’s own close dealings with Hoo and involvement in the lawyer’s tortuous affairs. On 11 July 1454 the two of them joined in bonds to guarantee payment of 1,500 marks to Robert Tanfeld*, the queen’s attorney-general, before Michaelmas 1457.17 CCR, 1454-61, p. 31.

During the 1450s John was also engaged in transactions on behalf of other members of his family. Alongside his father he was a feoffee of the estates in Dorset held in jointure by their kinswoman Anne Etchingham, widow of John Roger of Bryanstone, and they may have played a part in arranging her subsequent marriage to Lord Audley’s heir, John Audley*, who sat with (Sir) Roger Lewknor in the Parliament of 1453.18 CPR, 1446-52, p. 411. His sister Alice was married to the son and heir of Sir John Pelham, and for 11 years from 1450 John was a trustee of Pelham’s manors of Crowhurst, Burwash and Bibleham in the rape of Hastings, eventually relinquishing them in 1461 to Archbishop Bourgchier and his brothers the earl of Essex and Lord Berners; and three years later he joined the Bourgchiers in transactions relating to the Pelhams’ manor of Laughton and hundred of Shiplake, in which he retained an interest until 1468.19 Add. Chs. 29687, 29973-5, 30419, 30424-9.

There is little to indicate how John’s personal affairs were affected by the civil war of 1459-61, although clearly this was a period of financial difficulty for him. An official inquiry was held in August 1459 about the Halsham manors of Stiffkey and Holkham in Norfolk, which he and his wife had conveyed to Geoffrey Boleyn and others in 1448 without first obtaining a royal licence. Lewknor was returned to the Parliament which met at Coventry three months later, albeit this time as a representative of the Sussex borough of Horsham, rather than as a shire knight. His brother Richard was his fellow MP. Neither were burgesses of the town (indeed, both were described as esquires), and it seems very likely that their election had been promoted by their half-brother Hoo, an influential landowner in the locality. After the dissolution, John’s whereabouts are not recorded until the immediate aftermath of the Yorkist victory at Northampton in the following summer. On 28 Aug. 1460 he joined with his kinsman Thomas Etchingham and with Ralph St. Leger of Ulcombe, Kent, in acknowledging a debt of £220 to Richard Lee* and John Crosby†, the London grocers, payable by Michaelmas. When they failed to pay up a writ was sent to the sheriff of Kent on 8 June 1463 to arrest them and confiscate their property to pay their creditors. The return stated that they could not be found in Kent, and had no moveable goods there, although Lewknor’s manor of Brabourne was worth £50 p.a.20 C145/317/1; C131/72/2; C241/246/53; 248/60. A few months later, on 27 Oct., Lewknor was outlawed in the court of common pleas for failing to answer a suit for a debt of over £75 brought by Thomas Staunton* of Nottinghamshire. Having been imprisoned in the Fleet, he was brought before the court in Hilary term 1464, but challenged the legality of the writs of outlawry on the basis that they referred to him as ‘of Grinstead’, whereas there was no such place in Sussex – only East Grinstead and West Grinstead. Bail was provided for him to appear in court again in the Easter term. Meanwhile, the previous year Lewknor and his wife had been challenged in the same court by a clerk named Thomas Randolf, for possession of the manor of Pashley in Ticehurst, which they then conveyed to trustees apparently to the use of Geoffrey Boleyn. It is unclear how they had come to have an interest in this manor, which had previously belonged to John Passhele*, although when in 1464 Randolf recovered seisin of it, he was henceforth to hold it of the Lewknors as chief lords.21 VCH Suss. ix. 255; Add. 39376, ff. 119v, 121, 125, 125v; CP25(1)/241/92/4; CP40/786, rot. 377; 811 rot. 229.

In the 1460s John became entangled in further complicated dealings dreamt up by his half-brother Thomas Hoo, this time concerning the estates held by the childless Sir John Burcester and his wife Elizabeth: the manors of Burghersh and Peasmarsh in Sussex, ‘The Maze’ in Southwark, Surrey, and Ewell and its appurtenances in Middlesex, as well as property in London. The plan was for Hoo to purchase a reversionary interest in the estates and settle it on John and his wife to compensate them for their loss of the Halsham manors in Norfolk. Certain of the necessary transactions took place in 1462 and 1463.22 CCR, 1461-8, pp. 206-7, 382-5. But this promise of prosperity in the indefinite future could not help the Lewknors in their parlous state of indebtedness.23 CP40/810, rot. 159; 818, rot. 329d. Resolving to sell Joan’s manor of Brabourne, they asked the surviving feoffees from the body named in 1448 to help facilitate its transfer to Sir John Scott†, and in March 1465 the feoffees obtained a royal licence to convey Brabourne to Archbishop Bourgchier and others, as the first step. Lewknor’s intention was that Scott would provide him and Joan with lands elsewhere in Kent and Sussex to a like value, which would revert to Scott in the event of Joan’s death without issue. He also promised that after he and his wife died their heirs would pay Scott 800 marks, spread over a period of eight years. Nevertheless, the feoffees were not convinced that Joan wished to part with her inheritance as her husband required, and in June the Lewknors had to ask the chancellor for writs of subpoena compelling them to act on their instructions. Hoo explained that he had originally been asked to deal with the matter because Joan placed great trust in him, and if the chancellor was satisfied that the sale was taking place in accordance with her wishes, he would not oppose it. Judgement was given in Chancery that Hoo should transfer seisin as requested. At the same time Scott also gained possession of the former Halsham manor in Applesham.24 C1/28/85-89; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 429, 493-4. Depositions were made before a notary in May 1468 regarding the pedigree of the Halshams and the descent of their manors: Scott mss, U1115/T13/7. Even so, Lewknor’s financial difficulties continued, and he was outlawed in London for failing to answer the grocer John Nicholl for a longstanding debt of £197 2s. However, having given himself up at the Fleet prison and satisfied his creditor in 1465, he was able to obtain a pardon of outlawry in May 1466.25 CP40/793, rot. 518d; CPR, 1461-7, p. 519. By 1469 the former Halsham manor of Collingbourne Valance had come into the Lewknors’ possession, only for them to sell the reversion to Thomas Rogers† the serjeant-at-law.26 CPR, 1467-77, p. 177; 1476-85, p. 169; CCR, 1476-85, no. 574.

It is now impossible to guess why Lewknor welcomed the return of Henry VI to the throne in the autumn of 1470, although one cause may have been resentment at the rise of Scott, a leading Yorkist. He was appointed to the Sussex bench by the restored regime. During the Parliament summoned to assemble in King Henry’s name on 26 Nov., John and his brothers Thomas and Richard lent their support to Thomas Hoo in entering bonds for over £800 due to his creditors, and promised that their half-brother would give himself up to the Fleet prison at the end of six months after the dissolution of the Parliament, to pay his debts.27 CCR, 1468-76, no. 650. John had earlier been a feoffee for Hoo in properties in Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, so there can be little doubt that they remained on good terms until the end.28 Add. Chs. 713, 7575; CCR, 1468-76, no. 1199. Yet while the lawyer successfully avoided commitment to either Yorkists or Lancastrians, Lewknor threw in his lot with the latter. He was among the followers of Margaret of Anjou whom Edward IV declared traitors on 27 Apr. 1471, after his victory at Barnet, and Margaret or her son, Prince Edward, dubbed him knight, probably on the eve of the battle of Tewkesbury. Sir John died in the field on 4 May, and was buried in Tewkesbury abbey.29 CCR, 1468-76, no. 703; J. Leland, Itin. ed. Toulmin Smith, iv. 162; John Benet’s Chron. (Cam. Misc. xxiv), 233. Writs de diem clausit extremum were issued on 18 Aug., but no inq. post mortem survives: CFR, xxi. no. 4.

Lewknor failed to leave a will and administration of his goods and chattels was assigned to his widow’s kinsman, Hugh Shuldham.30 Add. 39376, f. 164. On 16 Oct. the widow confirmed Archbishop Bourgchier, the earl of Essex and others in possession of her inheritance at Brabourne, and subsequently sued out a general pardon for any offences committed before 27 Feb. 1472. Thanks to Hoo’s complicated and perhaps fraudulent dealings over the former Burcester estates, she had still not received adequate compensation for the loss of the Halsham manors in Norfolk. With scant concern for her rights, Hoo now sold his reversionary interest in Maze and Ewell to William Lemyng, a London grocer, and that in Burwash and Peasmarsh to Roger Copley, the mercer who had married one of the daughters and coheirs of his late brother, Lord Hoo. Accordingly, following the deaths of Sir John Burcester and his wife the feoffees refused to make estate of the property to Joan Lewknor as had previously been promised, and in May 1472 she compliantly relinquished all her claim in the manors to Copley.31 Scott mss, T13/10; CPR, 1467-77, p. 312; C1/39/284-7; 40/47-52; VCH Suss. ix. 158, 196; CCR, 1468-76, no. 883. Not surprisingly, Joan long bore a grievance against Hoo, and as late as 1491 she was suing his widow and one of his nieces (Anne, wife of William Graystock of Southwark) for payment of £230.32 CP40/918, rot. 458. Even though she lived on for 24 years after Sir John Lewknor’s death, she apparently never remarried. Before 1489 she took up residence at Barking in Essex, and although her will, made on 27 Feb. 1495, did not specify a preferred place of burial, her request for prayers to be said in St. Paul’s cathedral and Westminster abbey suggests that she was then living in London. She set aside ten marks for a priest of ‘good and honest conversation’ to sing for her soul for a year; and left the residue of her goods to her ‘welbelovyd cousen’ Hugh Shuldham and his wife Elizabeth, to dispose however they wished.33 PCC 23 Vox (PROB11/10, f. 184v). She died on 12 May, leaving as heir to the much depleted Halsham lands her elderly cousin Sir Henry Roos†.34 Scott mss, T13/11; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1078.