HULL, Henry

Hull came from a long-established and prominent Exeter family. His father John had served the city as mayor on several occasions in the first half of the fifteenth century and represented it in Parliament in 1435. In addition to the family’s property in the city, the Hulls possessed a seat at Larkbeare in the parish of St. Leonard just outside Exeter, as well as lands in Silverton and Topsham, which were at Henry’s death assessed at £16 7s. 10d. p.a.6 CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 263; SC6/827/1; KB27/793, rot. 13; CP40/835, rot. 153. On 19 Oct. 1439 Hull was admitted to the freedom of Exeter, undoubtedly to qualify him for election as one of the city’s MPs in the Parliament summoned to meet at Westminster three weeks later, for which writs had been issued on 26 Sept.7 Exeter Freemen ed. Rowe and Jackson, 49; CCR, 1435-41, p. 338. Whatever motivated him personally to seek election, his candidature was undoubtedly rendered agreeable to the ever parsimonious citizens by his agreement to serve in the Commons for a lump payment of 53s. 4d. for his wages – not much more than a third of the sum he might have claimed, had he been paid at the prescribed rate of 2s. per day.8 Devon RO, Exeter city recs., receiver’s acct. 18-19 Hen. VI, m. 2d.

A fellow Member of the Commons of 1439 was Sir John Speke* of Haywood, one of the knights of the shire for Devon, and as the nephew of the recorder, William Wynard, a familiar figure in the city of Exeter. Speke’s synonymous son and heir had married into the Somerset gentry, and following the younger man’s untimely death in 1444 Hull married his widow. Alice Speke was the grand-daughter and heiress of Sir Thomas Beauchamp, a man at one time notorious for his lollard associations, but by the 1440s long rehabilitated, who had died just a few months earlier. It soon transpired that Alice’s expectations were destined to cause more trouble than they were worth. Not only did Sir Thomas’s widow, Eleanor Silveyn, survive her husband until 1465, and retain a portion of his estates in dower,9 C254/145/151; Reg. Lacy, ii (Canterbury and York Soc. lxii), 321; Reg. Bekynton, i (Som. Rec. Soc. xlix), 368; CFR, xx. 144. but Sir Thomas himself had quarreled with Alice’s first husband and had openly pledged to prevent him from ever taking possession of his manor of Whitelackington, which he instead settled on Thomas Thornbury and his male heirs. The complex series of enfeoffments which Beauchamp made to this end ensured that for years to come the Hulls were forced to defend their property against the Thornburys and their feoffees, who included prominent men-of-law like John Newburgh II*.10 CIPM, xxvi. 218; CP40/810, rot. 312. Nevertheless, by the end of 1446 Hull and his wife had taken control of the valuable Somerset manors of Ashill, Sampford Arundell and Alston Sutton, which had descended to Alice from her grandmother, Elizabeth Stretch.11 CP25(1)/293/71/313. Hull now made his home at Ashill and from this date onwards part of his interests shifted to Somerset, where the bulk of his wife’s estates were located. It was there that he attested the parliamentary elections of 1447 and 1455, although he did not otherwise become active in local government, and perhaps even took steps to avoid such involvement.12 C219/15/4; 16/3.

Certainly, he maintained his contacts in Exeter, and played his part in the government of the city. Although it was clearly impractical for him to hold office as mayor, receiver or steward, or even to serve on the city council, he took enough of an interest in the city’s affairs to be present at the autumn elections of these officers in the mayor’s court on at least six occasions between 1453 and 1468.13 Exeter mayors’ ct. rolls 32-34 Hen VI, 3-4, 5-6, 7-9 Edw. IV. Like his father and grandfather before him, he apparently maintained some mercantile interests. Thus in the spring of 1454 he was in dispute with two Plymouth merchants, Robert Fuller and Matthew Heys, who, he claimed, had forcibly taken ten tuns of Gascon wine which he had brought to Plymouth the previous April.14 CP40/773, rot. 314; 774, rot. 320d. Throughout these years he also had to devote some degree of attention to the defence of his property in the vicinity of Exeter. Thus, in August 1456 he clashed with the local goldsmith John Rydon over property rights in St. Sidwell’s fee, while in June 1467, probably shortly after his father’s death, his title to lands at Topsham was challenged by the wealthy and influential former mayor Richard Orenge.15 KB27/793, rot. 13; CP40/835, rot. 153.

Conversely, Hull successfully avoided being drawn directly into the troubles that beset the south-west in the first half of the 1450s. In the autumn of 1451 and again in the early months of 1452 Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, rallied his retainers in Devon and Somerset in a bid to settle his old score with his local rival William, Lord Bonville*. The enterprise collapsed with the arrest of Devon at Dartford, following the submission of his ally the duke of York. Commissioners were appointed throughout the south-west to try the lesser insurgents. When they sat at Ilchester and Wells later in the year, Hull was among the men empanelled on the juries to try the rebels, and failed to appear on every occasion.16 KB9/105/2/111, 223. Nevertheless, his relations with the earl of Devon were not always cordial. Thus, at the very time in the autumn of 1455 when Earl Thomas unleashed a fresh campaign of violence in Exeter and its hinterland, he was also in dispute with Hull and the minor Devon landowner John Secheville over some 200 acres of land at Otterton, and it may have been in the context of this dispute that Hull took the precaution of suing out a royal pardon that November.17 CP40/779, rot. 534; 788, rot. 256; C67/41, m. 20.

If Alice Hull’s Beauchamp inheritance continued to be disputed, the death of her step-grandmother Eleanor in 1465 removed at least one contender and made the Hulls’ title to Whitelackington and four other manors, as well as to more lands in Somerset, Devon and Dorset, somewhat more secure than it had previously been.18 Som. Feet of Fines, 198-9, 207; CP25(1)294/74/32. Hull’s enhanced standing among the landed gentry of Somerset found its reflection in his return to his second Parliament in 1467 as a knight for that shire.19 C219/17/1. He evidently made good use of his time at Westminster, for on 13 July, within days of the end of the first session, he secured a grant of some of the earl of Devon’s forfeited property in his native parish of St. Leonard near Exeter, which rounded off the family lands to which he had recently succeeded. With this went a licence to impark 100 acres at Larkebeare and a grant of free warren, commensurate with Hull’s status as a leading landowner and an increasingly trusted servant of the Yorkist Crown.20 CChR, vi. 215-16. Like the other knights of the shire in the Parliament of 1467 he was made responsible for the distribution of the allowance on the tax granted by the Commons, and in October 1468 he was added to the county benches of both Somerset and Dorset. In a minor setback for a man of his wealth, Hull failed to secure more than half of his parliamentary wages from the sheriff, Sir Reynold Stourton, and litigation over this was still pending ten years later.21 E13/158, rots. 74d, 83d, 85d, 86. Otherwise, he evidently maintained cordial relations with the greater gentry of the region and occasionally witnessed his property deeds for members of the important Hungerford and Stourton families.22 CCR, 1461-7, p. 272; 1468-76, no. 1046.

It is uncertain what prompted the issue to the escheator of Somerset and Dorset in June 1469 of a writ of diem clausit extremum in Hull’s name, since he was still very much alive. Indeed, throughout the crisis years of 1469-70 he was regularly appointed to the crucial commissions of array and served on the county bench. In addition, he was drawn upon as a juror in important inquiries, such as that into the landholdings of the attainted Courtenays of Tiverton, and of the executed earl of Devon, Humphrey Stafford IV*.23 C145/325/38; C140/32/30. It is not surprising that he was summarily dismissed by the Readeption regime in the autumn of 1470.

Nothing is known of Hull’s activities during the period of renewed Lancastrian ascendancy, but he was restored to office not long after Edward IV’s return. Crucially, he was a member in Somerset of the general commission of array issued on 26 Apr. 1471 in the aftermath of the battle of Barnet, and may thus have been with the King’s army at Tewkesbury.24 CPR, 1467-77, p. 284. He was rewarded with swift restoration to the county benches of Somerset and Dorset, on which he continued to serve for the next three years. The reasons for his dismissal from both benches in the summer of 1474 are unclear, but it is probable that like many landowners in the region he had formed an attachment to Edward IV’s volatile brother, George, duke of Clarence, and lost his offices in the course of the King’s gradual retrenchment of his brother’s influence.

The death of Hull’s wife by the early months of 1487 left him a childless widower, and, more importantly in the immediate term, saw him stripped of her property which now descended to her grand-daughters by her first husband. It was thus imperative that he should seek to restore his fortunes by a rapid remarriage. He found a suitable bride in Christine, a daughter of the Somerset landowner Sir William Paulet. While Paulet had an adult son and Christine had thus no expectations of a paternal inheritance, she was the widow of Nicholas, son and heir of the important Devon landowner Richard Chichester, who had settled on his heir and daughter-in-law the valuable manor of Widworthy.25 CIPM Hen VII, ii. 118.

In the first instance, Hull’s hopes appeared to be fulfilled, since Christine bore him a daughter, Elizabeth, whom he left as his sole heir when he died on 30 May 1490. Four weeks earlier, he had made a will, in which he made detailed arrangements for his burial in the Lady chapel of Widworthy church. Twelve paupers, given gowns and hoods of white, black or grey cloth, as well as 4d. each, were to accompany the funeral procession and be present throughout the ceremonies bearing burning torches or tapers, while a further bequest for the benefit of Hull’s soul went to Newenham abbey. Hull’s daughter Elizabeth and half-brother John were left money and plate, in John’s case with the declared objective of preventing him from interfering with the provisions of the will and Elizabeth’s inheritance. Hull’s second wife, Christine, was appointed executrix and custodian of the young heiress and her lands.26 PCC 13 Milles (PROB11/8, ff. 350v-51); CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 263. Yet, his careful arrangements proved in vain, as Elizabeth died the following April. The Hull family property in and around Exeter now fell, after all, to her uncle John who was admitted to the freedom of the city in April 1492. His descendants revived the family’s tradition of parliamentary service as MPs for Exeter in the sixteenth century.27 Exeter Freemen, 61; The Commons 1509-1558, ii. 407-8. Christine Hull survived her husband and went on to marry twice more, first the Dorset landowner Sir William Martin, and after his death the Devon esquire James Chudleigh (d. 1514) of Ashton. She was still alive in the later 1520s.28 C142/31/10; E210/10775.