MILLE, Edmund

This MP’s father, probably the John atte Mille who attested the Sussex shire elections in the early 1420s, lived in the west of the county, at Petworth.6 C219/12/5; 13/2, 4. They were related in an undefined way to Robert atte Mille† of Guildford, twice a Member of the Commons for his home town, whose landed holdings, estimated to be worth £44 p.a., were spread equally between Surrey and the same part of Sussex (at Greatham, Pulborough, Mundham and Kirdford),7 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 737-8; Feudal Aids, vi. 518, 524. and although Edmund was not the heir to the latter’s estate, he chose to concentrate his own landed interests in the neighbourhood. He too acquired property in Kirdford, and in 1426 he appeared in person in the court of common pleas to sue Thomas Mille, presumably a relation, for removing from there goods worth £20.8 CP40/661, rot. 48d. By 1434 Robert atte Mille’s estate had been inherited by his great-nephew, another Robert, and in January that year he and Edmund settled some differences over title to the family holdings: on the same day Edmund attested a deed relating to Robert’s property at Greatham and Pulborough, and Robert made a formal quitclaim to the MP of the manor of Mundham in Findon and land in Washington and Clayton. Precisely when and how Edmund had acquired Mundham is unclear, but he had done so at least three years earlier for in 1431 John Apsley*, the lord of the manor, had altered the terms of his tenure from an annual payment in cash of 2s. 3d. to that of rendering two crossbows.9 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 288, 303; VCH Suss. vi (1), 26. Besides Mundham, Edmund held a messuage and several acres of land in Petworth (perhaps inherited from his father), the advowson of the rectory at Up Waltham, to which he presented in 1440, and, by purchase towards the end of his life, the manors of Hunston in Hunston and Walderton in Stoughton.10 Reg. Praty (Suss. Rec. Soc. iv), 121; CP25(1)/241/87/17, 32; 88/20; 90/4; CCR, 1435-41, p. 368; VCH Suss. iv. 123, 157; Add. 39376, f. 52. His most important acquisition, that of the manor in Pulborough which for many generations had belonged to the Husseys, was not to be finalized until shortly before his death, although he had already bought a house and land close by.11 CP25(1)/241/87/15. According to the tax assessments of 1436, his lands gave him an income of £16 p.a., and although this must have been supplemented by his later purchases, he ranked in wealth well below most of his fellow knights of the shire.12 E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14 (vii).

Mille was enabled to make purchases of land through the profits of a successful legal practice. In his will he referred to belongings which he kept in Gray’s Inn, so there can be little doubt where he was trained in the law, although the date of his admission to the Inn is not recorded. He was described as a ‘clerk’ in a lawsuit of the early 1420s,13 KB27/652, rot. 26d. but his training was completed before the end of the decade, when he began to be regularly employed as steward of estates in his home county, notably for Arundel College and the bishop of London. His first appointment to an ad hoc commission of local administration came in 1431, and after the dissolution of his first Parliament in 1437 he was placed on the county bench, where he remained until his death. That period of the 1430s and 1440s saw him active in the affairs of several persons of consequence. Together with Gilbert Haltoft, a well known Gray’s Inn lawyer who rose to be second baron of the Exchequer, he was party in 1432 to transactions regarding property in the London parish of St. Giles without Cripplegate,14 Readings and Moots, i (Selden Soc. lxxi), p. liv; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 177-8, 189-90. although it was in his native county that he attracted most of his business. Mille began a close association with another rising Sussex lawyer, William Sydney*, with whom he acted as a co-feoffee of land in Norfolk on behalf of John Nelond*, and he attested the Sussex elections of June 1433, when Sydney was one of those returned.15 CCR, 1429-35, p. 188; C219/14/4. The other shire knight was William St. John*, with whom he was also on amicable terms. In May 1439 he and his brother Edward were enfeoffed of St. John’s manor of Shelve in Kent, and following St. John’s death later that year the two of them took the profits of the manor, presumably to safeguard them for their friend’s young daughter and heiress.16 CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 959. Edmund quickly established other connexions of note. In 1435 the prominent landowner Sir Henry Hussey* had named him among the feoffees of his estates in Sussex and three other counties, and he was to be involved in Hussey’s affairs until the knight died, then making settlements on his widow, Constance.17 CCR, 1435-41, p. 448; 1447-54, pp. 260-2, 342; Add. Chs. 8879, 18748. Another prominent Sussex knight, the latter’s brother-in-law Sir Hugh Halsham, also made use of Mille’s services, not only as a trustee but also as an executor of the will he made in February 1442. This was while Mille’s second Parliament was in progress, and on 27 Mar., the final day of the assembly, he and his co-feoffees of Halsham’s estates in Norfolk secured a pardon for entering the properties without royal licence. Mille tried to carry out Halsham’s instructions diligently, despite the obstacles thrown in his path by the testator’s niece and heiress, Joan, whose marriage to John Lewknor* provided her with formidable supporters. Although Mille and his fellow trustees conveyed the Norfolk manors to the Lewknors, they were disinclined to transfer to them the Sussex manors of West Grinstead and Applesham, since they believed that entails completed several years earlier gave Joan’s uncle, John Halsham, a superior title. As a consequence Mille was cited as a defendant in suits brought in the court of common pleas in the years 1443 to 1446.18 Reg. Chichele, ii. 609-11; CPR, 1441-6, p. 65; Add. Ch. 8880; Add. 39376, ff. 27, 28v, 31-33, 41v, 42; CP40/741, rots. 127d, 133d. Eventually, the ‘variaunce and debate’ between the Lewknors and John Halsham came to arbitration through the mediation of their friends, and it is interesting to note that even though Mille had been a party to the lawsuits he was selected as an arbiter. He made an award that Halsham should have West Grinstead in tail-male, compensating John Lewknor with a payment of £80. Yet although Halsham paid the money, Lewknor continued to cause him trouble, and the matter became the subject of a Chancery petition in the early 1450s.19 C1/19/36.

Meanwhile, Mille’s professional services had continued to be sought by many other landowners of the south-east. He was one of those to whom John Welles I* of Southwark granted his goods and chattels, and a feoffee of property in Chichester acquired by Andrew Maffey* and of land in Middlesex belonging to John Weston II*. In association with the chancellor, Bishop Stafford of Bath and Wells, he was entrusted with three Sussex manors by Sir Godfrey Hilton†.20 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 95, 378, 451; 1441-7, pp. 46-47. The influential brothers Sir Roger* and James Fiennes* briefly employed him when acquiring land in Surrey, and he was also linked with Sir Roger as a co-recipient of property in east Sussex in which they were apparently acting for the Surrey lawyer Adam Levelord*.21 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 378, 460; 1441-7, p. 462. Of greater significance was the reliance placed on Mille by Richard Dallingridge*, who asked him to put into effect complex transactions concerning the valuable castle and manor of Bodiam, which Dallingridge belatedly inherited in 1443. That year William Styfday entered a bond to Mille in £500 as guarantee that he and his wife would make estate to him of any title they might have in the property, and Henry Harmer, the heir by tail, formally gave up his rights to Mille and William Sydney. Dallingridge’s intentions are unclear, but it was later the contention of John Wood III* that he had meant Mille and his son Richard to have the castle and manor after his death, and had agreed that they might sell Bodiam in reversion. (Wood allegedly paid a large sum of money for this reversion and obtained a release from Richard Mille just three days after Dallingridge’s death in 1471.) Another part of Dallingridge’s inheritance was the manor of Lymbourne, and this Mille quitclaimed to Dallingridge and his wife in 1447, at the same time as he transferred to co-feoffees two other manors belonging to him. Dallingridge referred to the MP as his ‘feidman’ and ‘oon of his counsell’.22 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 462-3; 1447-54, p. 34; C1/41/35-38; Add. 39376, f. 163v; CP40/842, rot. 403; Add. Ch. 20050. Mille’s assistance was also required by Sir John Pelham, for drafting his daughter’s marriage contract, and the settlement of manorial holdings remaining to him after his loss of the rape of Hastings.23 CP25(1)/293/70/291; C1/140/81/54; Add. Chs. 29973-4.

In December 1444 Mille was one of the three laymen admitted into the chapterhouse of Sele priory to witness the election of a new prior.24 Reg. Praty, 182. This probably post-dated his initial connexion with the patron of the priory, John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, who four years later named him among the feoffees of his widespread estates in 11 counties.25 CPR, 1446-52, p. 145; C140/5/46; L.E. Moye, ‘Estates and Finances of the Mowbray Fam.’ (Duke Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), 449. Next to the duke the most distinguished of Mille’s clients were Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, to whom he provided legal counsel from at least 1445 until his death, in return for a retainder of 20s. a year,26 Petworth House Suss. mss, receivers’ accts. 7214-15 (MAC/6, 7). He witnessed a grant of land at Petworth made by the earl and his sons to Eton College in May 1445: Eton Coll. recs. 45/13. and the bishop of Chichester, Richard Praty (d.1445), who named him as an executor.27 Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Stafford, f. 128v. In the late 1440s he was not only a feoffee for Reynold West, Lord de la Warre, but also for Sir Reynold Cobham of Sterborough, the father of the disgraced duchess of Gloucester.28 CPR, 1446-52, p. 311; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 380-1; 1447-54, pp. 217-19; 1452-61, pp. 214-15; Add. 39376, f. 152v. After serving for several years as steward of the substantial estates Lord Fanhope held in Sussex, Mille continued to occupy the same post after they passed to Syon abbey. The substantial increase in his annual fee, from £3 6s. 8d. to £13 6s. 8d., perhaps reflects new responsibilities as a member of the abbess’s council.29 SC6/1036/15; 1037/5, 9.

Despite his continuous involvement in the affairs of others, Mille did not neglect his own interests, especially when his neighbours at Pulborough fell on hard times. The large estate there had been partitioned in the thirteenth century, with one moiety, known as ‘Old Place’, descending in the Lisle family to Robert Lisle*, who had to mortgage it in 1447, and the other, called ‘New Place’ or ‘Le Mote’, descending in the Hussey family. While Lisle’s manor escaped his grasp, Mille was well placed to acquire that of the Husseys, whose business he knew only too well. When Sir Henry Hussey died in 1450, leaving his finances in disarray, our MP stepped in to purchase the manor and the advowson of the church. The terms of the agreement are now unclear, save for Mille’s promise to pay an annual rent of £8 to the heir from Christmas Day 1456, and a further eight marks a year after the death of Sir Henry’s widow.30 CCR, 1435-41, p. 448; 1441-7, pp. 471, 477; 1447-54, p. 366; Suss. Arch. Collns. lxxii. 262-3.

In fact, Mille predeceased her. In a will made on 7 Feb. 1450, before he acquired the Pulborough estate, he left his wife Maud the profits from all his manors while she remained sole, though if she remarried she could keep just half of the profits for her lifetime, with the rest being used for the maintenance of his sons. His goods were to be divided in two halves, one destined for Maud, the other intended for his two daughters. Excepted from them were his possessions left at Gray’s Inn and elsewhere in London, which along with the sum of £10 were bequeathed to his brother Edward, named as one of his executors. The executors, who included John Michelgrove*, were each to have £5 for their labour. Further bequests went to another brother, to Chichester cathedral and the churches of Pulborough, Petworth and Hunston. While the bulk of the testator’s landed holdings were destined for his elder son, Richard, the younger son, William, was to have the manor of Hunston.31 Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Kempe, ff. 306v-7; VCH Suss. iv. 157. Mille also provided for his sister Alice. Five days after making the will, he joined his brother Edward in completing a settlement on Alice and her husband Andrew Dawtry, of lands in Petworth, Kirdford and elsewhere, stipulating that if the Dawtrys died childless the property would revert to the Mille family.32 W. Suss. RO, Add. mss, 12318-19. Mille lived on until 27 Oct. 1452. The monumental brass depicting him and his wife in Pulborough church shows him clean-shaven with his hair cut short above the ears, wearing a fur-lined gown girded at the waist, and standing on a grassy mound.33 CFR, xix. 1; Suss. Arch. Collns. lxxix. 100.

Two years before his death Mille’s successful career and rising status had been given tangible recognition. In August 1450 Garter King of Arms, ‘being apprised by the report of noble men and common renown’, that he had long pursued feats of arms and carried himself valiantly, ruled that henceforth he and his posterity should be acknowledged among ‘the company of gentle and noble men’, and devised for him an appropriate blazon, helm and crest.34 Misc. Grants of Arms, ii (Harl. Soc. lxxvii), 149-50. The significance of the bears which figured prominently on his sheild and crest has not been ascertained. As his executrix, Mille’s widow Maud brought several lawsuits in the court of common pleas against his creditors, who included one of the duke of Norfolk’s retainers, Edmund Fitzwilliam of Framlingham. In her turn she was a defendant in a suit in Chancery begun by John Newdigate, who alleged that she refused to return to him the title deeds to the manor of Harefield in Middlesex which his father, owing to the ‘verrey grete trust and confidence’ he had in Mille, had left in his safekeeping. Another petition to Chancery concerned land in Westbourne, Sussex, which had been held to the use of the widow and John Bartelot*, who sold it to John Gunter.35 Add. 39376, ff. 80, 91; CP40/787, rot. 97; C1/33/338; 44/73-76; VCH Mdx. iii. 241. How Mille’s daughter, Elizabeth, came to marry William Essex*, the King’s remembrancer at the Exchequer, is not known, although her husband’s expertise no doubt proved helpful when in about 1472 her mother named her as her executrix. In January 1473 her brother Richard arranged that the trustees of the Mille lands would pay £140 from their issues to help Elizabeth to complete this task, £20 to their neighbour Thomas Combe*, and 100 marks to his own daughter Anne for her marriage.36 CFR, xxi. no. 98; C140/72/58. These financial commitments were not the sum of Richard’s troubles. His son and heir, born shortly afterwards on St. George’s Day, was named William instead of George at the request of William, earl of Arundel, and a bright future seemed to be in store for the child. Yet William was soon found to be an ‘idiot and a natural fool’. Prudently, before he died in April 1476, Richard named Combe and John Apsley† (his feudal lord at Mundham) as his executors so that the boy’s affairs might be satisfactorily managed. Accordingly, these two received the income from the Mille estates for the following 21 years. The feeble-minded William was still living in 1501, but his inheritance, largely created by our MP’s endeavours, eventually passed to his sister Anne, who had been married to her guardian’s brother William Apsley.37 CPR, 1476-85, p. 173; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1250; ii. 483; iii. 743; Suss. Arch. Collns. lxxix. 102.