MOMPESON, John

Mompeson’s mother Alice was grand-daughter to Thomas Bonham† (d.1420) of Great Wishford, Wiltshire, and his first wife, Katherine Knottingley. Although she was not Bonham’s heir (for he produced sons by his second wife), she inherited from Katherine the manors of Hanging Langford, Deptford and, most important, Bathampton ‘Wylye’, on the river Wylye some five miles upstream from Wilton. These were all in the possession of John’s father Robert Mompeson in the 1420s.7 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 280-1; Feudal Aids, v. 244, 257. It is not known when John’s parents died, but they did so before the Hilary term of 1433, when his un-named guardian brought a suit in the court of common pleas against Sir John Fastolf for wasting the part of his inheritance at Bathampton which Fastolf had in his keeping. The royal letters of protection issued to Fastolf for the duration of his absence in France in the retinue of the Regent exonerated him from responding to the charge.8 CP40/688, rots. 95d, 334. Mompeson came of age in the late 1440s, but it is not clear whether his marriage to one of the daughters and coheiresses of the lawyer and landowner Thomas Drew of Seagry took place before her father’s death. In a will made on 28 Aug. 1453 Drew made provision for his daughters, dividing his lands between them. His Berkshire estate, including the valuable manor of Southcote, was to pass to the eldest, Margaret (d.1495), already married to Walter Sambourne,9 Lambeth Palace Lib. Reg. Kempe, ff. 315-17; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1120; Ancestor, xi. 61. but his manors in Wiltshire, notably Seagry, Somerford and Littleton Drew, were to go to Isabel, who became our MP’s wife.10 CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 505. Both Margaret and Isabel honoured their father by calling their first-born sons Drew.

Whether or not Mompeson was already Thomas Drew’s son-in-law by the time of his return to Parliament for Wilton in February 1453, he had emulated him by becoming a member of the legal profession, although no information has been found about his training. He was probably a familiar figure in Wilton and well acquainted with the burgesses who elected him, given that he lived not far away and he had earlier attested two parliamentary elections held at the county court there. It seems likely that he was admitted to the freedom of Wilton before his election to the Commons; certainly, he figures in the earliest surviving lists of burgesses, dating from 1467, and so he remained until the end of his life. The men of Wilton were to choose Mompeson as an MP again, in 1469, although on that occasion the Parliament, summoned to assemble at York, did not meet in the event.11 Wilton gen. entry bk. G25/1/21, ff. 581-9, 591-8.

Probably an important factor in Wilton’s choice of Mompeson as a parliamentary representative was his association with the influential Wiltshire baronial family of Hungerford, to which he remained attached for many years. This attachment had begun while the MP was still a young man, and before the death in 1449 of Sir Walter Hungerford†, Lord Hungerford. The peer thought well enough of Mompeson as to leave him a bequest of a worsted bed complete with a silk tester and curtains, and a silver covered cup,12 Lambeth Palace Lib. Reg. Stafford, f. 117v. and it may be conjectured that he, then described as ‘esquire’, was a member of Hungerford’s household. He was nearly always accorded this status; and he declined to take up the honour of knighthood for which his landed income qualified him. The Hungerfords long placed their trust in our MP, who was frequently called upon to witness important landed transactions on their behalf.13 e.g. Hungerford Cart. i (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xlix), 661, 663; ii. (ibid. lx), 1470, 1473; CCR, 1454-61, p. 402; 1468-76, no. 248. Robert, 2nd Lord Hungerford, named him a feoffee of various of his Wiltshire manors in 1458, which were in due course held to the use of the lord’s widow Lady Margaret, confirmed in the feoffees’ possession by Robert, Lord Hungerford and Moleyns, in March 1460, and then settled on Moleyns’ eldest son and heir Thomas Hungerford* on his marriage the following autumn.14 Hungerford Cart. i. 361; ii. 1476, 1478, 1479; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 439, 441. Mompeson numbered among a small group of advisors upon whom Lady Margaret came to depend during a succession of financial crises that beset her: following the capture and ransom of Lord Moleyns in France, his attainder and execution for treason against Edward IV, and the rebellion and execution of her grandson, the heir to the barony, in 1469. Thus, he served as a feoffee of estates she inherited after the death of her father Lord Botreaux, as well as of those she held in jointure, and assisted her in making settlements to the benefit of her widowed stepmother.15 CCR, 1461-8, pp. 271-2; 1461-8, pp. 225-6; 1468-76, nos. 236-8, 250, 429; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 462, 1198. Other transactions concerned the Wiltshire manor of Little Cheverell which the Hungerfords conveyed to Gregory Westeby in 1468.16 Hungerford Cart. i. 926, 930-3; Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 665.

Named among the witnesses to the foundation deeds for the Hungerford almshouse at Heytesbury on 4 Apr. 1472, Mompeson was also present in the chapter house of Salisbury cathedral on 1 May when Lady Margaret formally completed the establishment of the Hungerford chantry,17 Hungerford Cart. ii. 1426-8, 1435-6. and he was always ready to do her bidding throughout that decade.18 Ibid. 1452-5; Tropenell Cart. ed. Davies, ii. 205, 207-11, 221-2. When she composed her last will on 8 Aug. 1476 she left strict instructions to the feoffees of her estates, requiring them to retain possession for ten years after her death. A select group of seven of the feoffees, headed by Sir Roger Tocotes† and including our MP, were made responsible for receiving the revenues, having the ‘hoole rule thereof’, and were given the task of paying off anyone still charged or bound for Lord Moleyns’s ransom, settling her late husband’s debts, and making specific payments to her grandsons and her great-grand-daughter Mary, the Hungerford heiress.19 R.C. Hoare, Modern Wilts. (Heytesbury), 95-99. In November 1478 Mompeson was among those to whom the Crown granted custody of certain properties in Devon, during Mary’s minority.20 CPR, 1476-85, p. 129. Together with his co-feoffees he took out a royal pardon in December 1487 for any unlicensed alienations or grants they had made from the Hungerford properties in Wiltshire. This did not, however, protect him from being sued by Sir Thomas Burgh†, now Lord Burgh (the widower of Lady Margaret’s stepmother) over patronage of the church at North Cadbury, Somerset, four years later.21 CPR, 1485-94, p. 210; Genealogist, n.s. xxiv. 105. All in all, Hungerford affairs preoccupied him for well over 40 years.22 One of his daughters married into the fam. of John Mervyn esquire, another Hungerford retainer.

Of course, Mompeson’s services as a lawyer were also engaged by other landowners in Wiltshire and Dorset, such as Thomas Beke*, Thomas Manston, and later on Sir Thomas Milborne and Katherine, Lady de la Warre.23 C1/32/126; C140/60/17; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 829, 1063. Association with the Hungerfords may have adversely affected his career when Edward IV came to the throne, especially in the light of Lord Moleyns’s treason, but he and Thomas Tropenell*, another lawyer intimately connected with the Hungerfords, both obtained general pardons on 24 Aug. 1464,24 CPR, 1461-7, p. 339. and a month later Mompeson was appointed to the first of several ad hoc royal commissions. In addition to the tasks set him in local administration, he was sometimes called upon to be a juror at sessions of oyer and terminer held at Salisbury,25 KB9/135/28; 136/9, 31, 43, 78. and to provide information to inquisitions post mortem conducted at Wilton, for example that held in 1465 following the death of (Sir) John Seymour I*.26 C140/14/32; 20/34.

Despite being colleagues in the service of Lady Margaret Hungerford, Mompeson and the highly acquisitive Thomas Tropenell had an ambivalent relationship, no doubt due to Tropenell’s vaunting ambitions to acquire ever more land. The two men clashed over ownership of ‘Uptonsfield’ in Laverstock, of which they had been enfeoffed in 1458, along with Robert, Lord Hungerford, by Mompeson’s brother-in-law John Osborne. Tropenell laid claim to the estate, alleging that the true heirs had been kept out ‘by the menis and concell’ of Mompeson.27 Tropenell Cart. i. 59-63, 66-77. Later on he drew Mompeson into his machinations over properties in Stitchcombe which he was attempting to secure for his stepson Richard Erle* by means of lawsuits brought against Richard Seymour*. The story was a complicated one, but involved Tropenell showing Mompeson a bill setting out the verdict he required at an assize of novel disseisin at Salisbury in 1466, even before Mompeson had been sworn in as a juror. The jury duly found against Seymour, assessing damages and costs in Erle’s favour, and this verdict was upheld. In Michaelmas term 1469 a fresh jury of 24 was called to King’s bench to convict the first jurors for perjury, but failed to turn up, while Mompeson himself neglected to make an appearance in court both then and at Easter 1470.28 C1/31/197-201; KB27/834, rot. 43; 836, rot. 72. Tropenell also drew Mompeson into his schemes to obtain the manor of Little Durnford, made him a feoffee of other estates in 1479, and involved him in litigation over lands in Somerset in 1484.29 Tropenell Cart. ii. 221-2, 257-9, 296-7, 299-300.

Mompeson’s links with the staunchly Lancastrian Hungerfords made him acceptable to the government of the Readeption in 1470, and he was then not only appointed controller of customs and subsidies at Poole but also placed on the Wiltshire bench.30 CPR, 1467-77, p. 230. Furthermore, on 1 Feb. 1471 he was granted for a payment of £20 keeping of all estates in Gloucestershire in the King’s hand during the minority of Robert Poyntz, with the marriage and wardship of the heir.31 CFR, xx. 291. Robert, the gds. of Nicholas Poyntz*, was later married to a bastard da. of Anthony Wydeville, Earl Rivers, although it seems unlikely that Mompeson was instrumental in arranging the match. Although he was removed from the bench and from the customs’ office following Edward IV’s triumphant return to the throne, rehabilitation and further service as a j.p. came later in the 1470s, and from 1478 he was a member of the Wiltshire bench continuously for over 20 years until his death. Edward IV’s government also twice appointed him sheriff of Wiltshire. Following the upheavals of rebellion against Richard III and the attainder of that King’s enemies, he purchased a royal pardon in March 1484, but whether he had himself actively opposed Richard’s rule does not transpire.32 C67/51, mm. 18, 20.

Mompeson’s eldest son, Drew, who followed him into the legal profession by becoming a fellow of Lincoln’s Inn in 1477,33 J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii. 1107. joined him on the bench in 1486, but fell seriously ill while away from home in August 1488. Taken in by strangers, he made a will in which he left the ‘goode man of this house’ 3s. 4d. for the expense of having him ‘liying here’. Drew asked his parents for their prayers for his soul and their counsel for his widow regarding the ‘rewle’ of his younger children; while the eldest son, John, now heir presumptive to the Mompeson estates of his grandfather, was to come under the latter’s direct governance. One of Drew’s three brothers, Master Henry Mompeson, was given his Polychronicon, but his law books were to be loaned out ‘by bill indented’ until one of his sons was ready to ‘go to it’.34 PCC 16 Milles (PROB11/8, f. 184) – probate 10 Oct. Drew’s son and heir John was duly admitted to L. Inn on 16 Dec. 1489, and a yr. s. Richard to M. Temple in 1502: Baker, ii. 1107-8. Drew’s father and feoffees made settlements on his widow Agnes (d.1499) and their five children.35 CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 300.

Drew had asked to be buried in the chapel of St. Nicholas at Bathampton. His father John, our MP, composing his own will on 18 Sept. 1500, ‘as a meke child considering the foule condicion of this unstable life’, specified burial in ‘my newe chapell’ in the same place. Mompeson’s bequests of sets of vestments to seven religious houses, including the abbeys of Wilton and Shaftesbury, and to eight parish churches, at a cost of up to £18 15s., are not only suggestive of his piety and wealth, but also of the pride he took in his lineage, for these vestments were all to have a ‘scotchun of my armes and my wifes in the crosse on the back’. Sums of money were to go to bell-ringers and the poor men at the almshouse at Heytesbury (the Hungerford foundation), and a devout priest was left 20s. to pray daily for the testator’s soul, saying the prayers associated with Christ’s passion 150 times, as stipulated in Mompeson’s ‘litill boke’. Profits from his lands were to be spent on funding the same priest to provide divine services for him for 20 years (the details being set out in a ‘note in papir’ written by his son Henry). Different aspects of his character are revealed in bequests of ale and cheese and of silk doublets and gowns trimmed with fur. One of his daughters, Mary, was left £40 for her marriage, of which 40 marks had already been handed over to the mother of her husband Thomas Ludlow, and the rest was to be paid to Ludlow as soon as he made her sure of 20 marks’ worth of land in jointure. His grandson and heir, John (son of Drew), was left a gown, a gold cross, and three of the testator’s best goblets for his wife, on condition that he provided three of Mompeson’s servants with meat, drink, clothes and lodging for the rest of their days. The heir was to maintain his household for a whole year after his death (although the executors were to cover the expenses for six months), before he would receive goods worth £100. Mompeson’s widow Anne was to have a standing cup of silver, his second best gold ‘hoope’ to wear in remembrance of his soul, and the sum of £20, unless she meddled in the administration of the estate. If she relinquished her dower rights she was to have 20 marks a year for life, and she could keep her chamber in the mansion at Bathampton, but only for a year after his death. By contrast, his son Dr. Henry was to have his ‘fair litill bible’, his best gown, furred with martens, his best ‘hoope’ of gold, and goods worth 100 marks. Another son, William, was allotted the manor of Newton Toney and lands elsewhere to hold in in tail-male, and the issues of other of the testator’s purchased lands were to be used for the education of his grandsons Christopher and Thomas Mompeson, and to provide them with an inheritance worth 20 marks. Their brother Richard was to be maintained at Bathampton with an income of £2 p.a. until he was provided with land worth that sum. Three months earlier Mompeson had entrusted goods worth 200 marks to Henry, John Kyngsmyll†, serjeant-at-law, and others, to do with them according to his instructions. Henry was also named as an executor, along with John Bonham and John Burley, esquires.36 PCC 15 Blamyr (PROB11/13, ff. 134v-136). He had purchased Newton Toney from Thomas Norris* in about 1489: CIPM Hen. VII, i. 479. For the career of his son Henry (d.1508/9), which he had forwarded by presenting him to livings at ‘Wylye’ and North Cadbury, see Biog. Reg. Univ. Oxf. ed. Emden, ii. 1292-3. The MP died on 30 Nov. 1500, but for unexplained reasons probate was not granted until 5 Oct. 1502. His grandson and heir duly inherited lands in Wiltshire valued at about £64 p.a. (almost certainly an underestimate), and more, of undocumented worth, in Gloucestershire and Somerset.37 CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 505; iii. 406. The grandson, who was one of those chosen to escort Catherine of Aragon through Wiltshire on her journey from Exeter to London in 1501, took on our MP’s role as a j.p. and commissioner in the county.38 LP Ric. III and Hen. VII ed. Gairdner, i. 407. John died on 3 Mar. 1511; his will, made on the previous 18 Feb. was proved on 24 Nov. 1516: PCC 25 Holder (PROB11/18, ff. 192-3); C142/26/117.