OGARD, Sir Andrew

Danish by birth, Ogard found fame and fortune fighting for the English in France. So clearly did he come to identify with their cause, he took the step of becoming a naturalized Englishman and adopting an anglicized form of his native Aagaard as his surname. A combination of the considerable wealth he won in the Hundred Years’ War and advantageous marriages enabled him to acquire substantial estates in his adopted country, where he served in local administration and gained a seat in Parliament in the final 11 years of his life. Yet suspicions about the source of some of the riches he amassed across the Channel were sufficient to prompt investigations on the part of the Crown and to ensure that he died somewhat under a cloud.

Ogard was no adventurer of obscure or lowly origin forced to emigrate from his native land to better himself. His father was a knight of some standing, and his maternal uncle, Jakob Gertsen Ulfstand, was archbishop of Lund.19 Enemark, 151. Andrew may first have come to England in the embassy sent in 1405 to conduct Princess Philippa, Henry IV’s younger daughter, to her husband, King Erik of Denmark, perhaps joining the expedition as a page.20 Ibid. 152. Exactly when Ogard joined the English cause in France is unknown although he had become captain of the garrisons of Touques and Vire in Normandy by the early 1420s. In August 1424 he led a detachment from Vire to the battle of Verneuil, receiving a knighthood in the field for his part in this great English victory.21 Stratford, 418; William of Worcestre, Itins. ed. Harvey, 5; Blomefield, xi. 206. In the following month he participated in a successful expedition that Sir John Fastolf, Thomas, Lord Scales, and Sir John Montgomery* led into Maine, and he campaigned in Anjou in 1425 and the marches of Brittany in 1426. Before the end of the decade, he entered the service of the duke of Bedford, the King’s uncle and Regent of France. In the later 1420s he and others of the duke’s servants lent Bedford cash towards his purchase of the manor of West Thurrock in Essex,22 VCH Essex, viii. 60. and during the winter of 1428-9 he and troops from Vire were in the duke’s personal service at Chartres. In 1429 Ogard escorted supplies to the siege of Orléans, operated with a small mounted force between Paris, Lagny and Senlis and took part in the siege of Étrépagny, north of Gisors.23 Stratford, 418; Wars of English, ii. 412. Later that year, he took up the duties of an escort, between Michaelmas 1429 and February 1430 accompanying Bedford’s first wife Anne to the wedding of her brother, Duke Philip of Burgundy, in Bruges.24 Stratford, 15. By November 1430 Ogard was Bedford’s councillor and one of his chamberlains.25 Stratford, 418, suggests that he replaced Sir Thomas Rempston† (whom the French had captured at Patay the previous year) as chamberlain, but elsewhere it is recorded that Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley, was the Regent’s chief chamberlain, Ogard his second and Rempston his third: Wars of English, ii. 434. In 1432 he took part in the siege of Lagny, and it is also possible that he and detachments from Vire fought in engagements at St-Céneri, St-Evroult and Falaise during the early 1430s.26 R. Holinshed, Chrons. (1807-8 edn.), iii. 177; Stratford, 418. By October 1434 his garrison at Vire consisted of ten mounted men-at-arms, ten foot soldiers and 60 archers and he was receiving daily wages of 4s., indicating that he had become a knight banneret.27 Wars of English, ii. [542]; Stratford, 418. In the following spring Bedford appointed him constable of Prudhoe, his castle in Northumberland, with a fee of 20 marks p.a. The appointment was for life, ensuring that after the duke died he continued to receive the fee from Bedford’s widowed second wife, Jacquetta.28 CPR, 1436-41, p. 80; Stratford, 419. William Bedford was living at the castle, possibly as Ogard’s deputy, in June 1438: ibid. 406. A few weeks after receiving the Prudhoe sinecure, Ogard indented with Bedford to replace the earl of Arundel (who had died in the field) as captain of Sainte-Suzanne and he joined a new offensive led by Sir John Fastolf into Maine.29 Stratford, 418.

Owing to his participation in the Maine campaign, Sir Andrew was absent when the duke of Bedford died at Rouen in September 1435 but he was recalled soon afterwards to take up his duties as an executor of his late master. The responsibility for administering the will in France fell to three of the executors: Louis of Luxembourg, bishop of Therouanne and chancellor of France, Sir John Fastolf and Ogard. To begin with they worked in Normandy, Paris and the rest of English France, but their activities were restricted to Normandy and Maine after the loss of Paris in April 1436. In March the following year they handed over 1,000 livres tournois from Bedford’s estate to the college of Clementins in Rouen cathedral, to pay for lights and to ensure that a perpetual daily mass was said for him, but not long afterwards, having discovered the full extent of the duke’s debts and the scale of their task, they declined to proceed any further in their duties. In due course an ecclesiastical court took over the jurisdiction of Bedford’s moveable goods and by the autumn of 1448 the execution of the will in Normandy was largely completed. Despite having earlier renounced their responsibilities, the three men were associated with the court’s work. All of them took a part in distributing (and on occasion enjoying for themselves) the dead man’s goods, some of which Ogard promised to Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. Dealing with Bedford’s estate in England was a far more drawn out process. In May 1447 the duke’s surviving executors, John Kemp, archbishop of York, Ralph, Lord Cromwell, Sir John Fastolf, (Sir) Robert Whittingham I* and Ogard, were obliged to accept the burden of administering his remaining goods there, but Bedford’s will still remained unfulfilled in England when Ogard himself died seven years later.30 Ibid. 30, 32-34, 36, 48, 49, 418.

A military career could bring large rewards, although Ogard’s success in the French land market must also have owed much to his intimate role in Bedford’s household. Having acquired the lordship of Blangy-le-Chateau in 1422, he subsequently built up considerable estates to the south and east of Caen by obtaining the lands of Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury, and William Glasdale, both of whom had died at the siege of Orléans.31 Ibid. 418; Massey, 88; Actes de la Chancellerie d’Henri VI ed. le Cacheux, ii. 365. In August 1430 he paid William Bruges, Garter King of Arms, and Jean Benart 124 gold saluts for lands formerly belonging to Jean de Silly, and he also acquired houses in Paris and Rouen. He augmented his French properties still further in the mid 1430s, when he received grants of the barony of Esneval in tail-male with Pavilly, along with other holdings in the bailliages of Rouen and Caux.32 Stratford, 419; Massey, 104-5. Ogard managed to retain estates across the Channel until the final years of the English occupation, deriving an income from them until very late in life.33 Stratford, 54; B.P. Wolffe, Hen. VI, 212. Lands were not his only source of income in France, for he held office under Edmund Beaufort in the county of Mortain and was granted goods confiscated in the bailliage of Caen and elsewhere in Normandy in early 1435.34 Stratford, 419; Actes de la Chancellerie, ii. 388. Fastolf’s secretary, William Worcestre, believed that his lands and offices in France were worth some £1,000 p.a. and that he stored 7,000 marks’ worth of French gold in a chest kept at the house of Robert Whittingham.35 Worcestre, 49. It is unclear if the Robert Whittingham in question was Robert I or his son, Robert II. Whatever the accuracy of Worcestre’s claims, Ogard’s career in France made him an extremely wealthy man, although one wise enough not to commit himself wholly to a future on that side of the Channel. It is not known when he first visited England, although he is likely to have accompanied Bedford there in 1433, as this was the year that Parliament granted him letters of denization.36 CPR, 1429-36, p. 288; PROME, xi. 114-15. Having become a naturalized Englishman, he was able to hold lands in the kingdom and to sue all types of actions in its law courts, and it is possible that he acquired these letters as a preliminary to his first marriage. According to William Worcestre, Ogard spent 200 marks on jewelry and robes for his bride,37 Worcestre, 49. the daughter of one of his comrades-in-arms, Sir John Clifton. The marriage was relatively short-lived, and Margaret died childless.

In spite of his denization, Ogard’s main interests lay in France in the years immediately following Bedford’s death. By 1436 and in the following decade he was a member of the great council of France and Normandy, in receipt of an annual salary of 1,000 livres tournois. Like Sir John Clifton, Sir John Fastolf, Sir William Oldhall* and others associated with the former Regent, he entered the service of Richard, duke of York, who succeeded Bedford in the lieutenancy of France and Normandy in the spring of 1436.38 Stratford, 419. Ogard was based at Caen – where he succeeded the earl of Warwick as captain in 1438 – during the late 1430s, by which period of English rule commanders faced constant threats from the enemy. In April 1438, for example, he received a warning from the bailli of Caen, Sir Richard Haryngton*, that partisans of Charles VII had landed at Lion-sur-Mer.39 Fr. mss, 26064/3447. In November the following year, Charles VII’s constable, Arthur de Richemont, laid siege to Avranches and Ogard participated in the operations that culminated in the dramatic defeat of the French army on 23 Dec.40 Fr. mss, 26066/3894 ; Archives Nationales, Paris, Dom Lenoir 26, f. 347. At this stage of his career Ogard was also busy as an ambassador, for the Crown twice commissioned him to treat for peace with the French in 1438. There followed a visit to England where at some stage in 1439-40 he gained membership of the prestigious fraternity of the tailors of London, perhaps suggesting a lengthy stay in the City.41 Guildhall Lib., London, Merchant Taylors’ Co., wardens’ accts. i. f. 317.

Ogard re-embarked for the continent in early 1441 but presumably he was again in England when appointed to another embassy in the autumn of the following year, not least because he obtained letters of attorney prior to crossing from England to France in February 1443.42 DKR, xli. 345, 357. He returned to England a few months later, as a member of a powerful delegation which made representations on York’s behalf, in response to the government’s decision to send John Beaufort, the newly created duke of Somerset, with an army to Normandy. Beaufort had managed to acquire a commission as a special lieutenant of the King, meaning that he held his command independently of York, who feared that the new duke’s expedition would derogate from his own authority and sources of financial support. In response, the King’s Council decided on 21 June to send a signet letter to York, to assure him that Beaufort’s commission would not prejudice his own position as lieutenant-general. Ogard attended this Council meeting, at which Somerset’s promise that he would do nothing to York’s ‘disworship’ was heard, and he was also present at another on the following 13 July, when the Council discussed Somerset’s expedition, arrangements for the supply of Dieppe (then under siege) and the problem of piracy.43 Stratford, 419-20; PPC, v. 288-90, 306-8.

During the mid 1440s the duke of York’s political influence declined. As lieutenant of Normandy he incurred great costs, which he had trouble in recouping from the Exchequer, and in about 1445 he faced accusations of financial malpractice which also implicated Ogard and two others of his followers, Thomas, Lord Scales, and Sir William Oldhall. The duke’s accuser, Adam Moleyns, keeper of the privy seal, alleged that York had shown favouritism towards close subordinates like Ogard in the paying of wages while failing to pay other soldiers under his command. York denied this and other charges and Ogard spoke in his defence in the Norman Chambre de Comptes, but Moleyn’s charges probably contained a kernel of truth.44 Marshall, 55, 155; P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 53. According to Johnson, Moleyns made his allegations c.1446. First, the duke and Sir Andrew were not above money-making schemes of dubious propriety. It was on behalf of them, along with Scales and Oldhall, that Antoine Huet, a merchant of Rouen and controller of the receipt in Normandy, circumvented certain trade restrictions by organizing the distribution in London of grain and wine from the duchy in 1448. Secondly, in the same year the garrison of Caen protested that Ogard, their former captain, had withheld their wages, and in 1452 (by which time the town was in French hands) a commission was appointed to investigate their grievances as well as similar complaints which other soldiers had made against their commanders. Presumably the commissioners questioned Ogard soon afterwards, but he still faced claims from the soldiers when he drew up his will and he was undergoing further examination about the matter when he died. 45 Marshall, 412; CPR, 1446-52, p. 537; 1452-61, p. 439; PCC 2 Stokton.

Apart from serving York, Ogard was also busy with his own affairs during the 1440s. In 1443 he obtained a royal charter licensing him and his feoffees to empark and fortify his manor of The Rye in Hertfordshire, a property he had probably only recently acquired.46 CChR, vi. 38. Nothing is known of the history of the manor before 1443: VCH Herts. iii. 370. Given the insecure position of the English in France at this date, The Rye was a sensible investment. It was also an extremely substantial one. William Worcestre states that he bought the manor for £1,100 and spent another 4,000 marks or so on the house and outbuildings which he built there.47 Worcestre, 49. Ogard’s house lay within sight of the house which his comrade-in-arms, Sir William Oldhall was building at Hunsdon. The scene of the 17th-century Rye House plot, part of The Rye still survives: K.B. McFarlane, Eng. in the 15th Cent. 184. Within two years of acquiring his charter for The Rye, Ogard inherited an estate in the country of his birth and it is possible that he spent some time in Denmark in 1445, since in March that year the King granted him permission to take possession of these properties, either in person or through attorneys. If so, he was back in England by December, when the mayor of Southampton and others were commissioned to provide five ships to convey him and several leading members of the English administration in France, including the chancellor, (Sir) Thomas Hoo I*, from Portsmouth to Harfleur, along with 120 horses and their goods, baggage and servants.48 PPC, vi. 38; DKR, xlviii. 365; CPR, 1441-6, p. 422. It would appear that Ogard returned from France in early 1447, after which he took up permanent residence in England.49 Stratford, 420; Worcestre, 47. By this date he was forging new connexions which eventually drew him away from York. The duke was superseded as lieutenant of Normandy in 1447, when he was replaced by Edmund Beaufort, marquess of Dorset, brother and heir of the duke of Somerset. In the following year he was appointed the King’s viceroy in Ireland, a posting which, to all intents and purposes, amounted to political exile. Ogard did not accompany York to Ireland. He was still one of the duke’s councillors in the late 1440s, but by then he was also associated with the King’s chief minister, William de la Pole, marquess and afterwards duke of Suffolk. Although Suffolk, for whom he became a feoffee, was York’s political opponent, Ogard was drawn into the de la Pole circle as a consequence of his first marriage, rather than because he had fallen out with the duke. (It is worth noting that both York and Suffolk were among those who nominated him for election to the Order of the Garter in April 1447.)50 Marshall, 51; Johnson, 236; CCR, 1447-54, p. 38; Reg. Order of the Garter ed. Anstis, ii. 132-3. Ogard had also been nominated in the previous two years, and was to be so again in 1453 (ibid. 127-8, 130, 150), but he never became a Garter kt. Ogard’s father-in-law, Sir John Clifton, was on particularly good terms with de la Pole despite his own past links with York, and in his will of August 1447 he included Suffolk and Ogard among its overseers.51 Reg. Wylbey, ff. 103-4. In the following November Ogard, supported by his old comrade-in-arms Sir William Oldhall, entered into a bond for £400 with de la Pole as a security for performance of certain agreements, probably in connexion with the same will.52 C1/26/142; C131/236/24. After Ogard’s death, Oldhall pursued a Chancery suit against his executors, claiming that he had suffered at law as a consequence of this bond.

The will proved a highly controversial one, since Clifton, who had no son, set aside only a relatively small part of his estate, a few manors in west Norfolk, for John Knyvet, his nephew and heir at law. He gave his wife, Joan, a life interest in his castle at Buckenham and other lands in the south-east of the county, all of which he instructed his executors to sell after her death. As for his properties at Wymondham, they were to sell them immediately. Four days before his death, however, he added a codicil in which he declared that he had sold the Wymondham lands, along with the reversion of the properties he had allotted to Joan, to his ‘beloved son’, Ogard, for 3,000 marks, and instructed his feoffees to make the appropriate conveyances to Sir Andrew. Not surprisingly, the Knyvets challenged the will. It was claimed that Clifton’s widow and Ogard had forged the document and it was later argued (although not apparently by the Knyvet family) that the will breached an earlier entail of the Clifton estates. The will’s main beneficiaries, Lady Clifton and Ogard, moved swiftly to secure their position after Sir John’s death on 28 Aug. An inquisition post mortem held in Norfolk at the beginning of the following November found that the disputed lands were held by feoffees, so precluding John Knyvet’s claims as the common law heir. In the meantime the Knyvets applied for a special commission of inquiry into the Clifton estate. Ogard, who enjoyed the powerful backing of the marquess of Suffolk, forestalled them with a writ of supersedeas, and on 1 Dec. de la Pole and other Clifton feoffees were licensed to alienate the reversion and lands in question to him and his trustees, who included Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, and Sir William Oldhall. Circumstances turned in the Knyvets’ favour when Suffolk fell from power in 1450: Joan Clifton died in the same year, meaning that Buckenham and other lands which she had held as a widow should have reverted to Ogard, but his opponents were able to reactivate the commission of 1447. In November two of the commissioners, Sir Geoffrey Radcliffe‡ and John Intwood, presided over a hearing at Intwood’s house in Diss, a venue deliberately chosen to hinder Ogard’s attempts to serve his supersedeas on them. Inevitably the jury found for Knyvet, who then entered the disputed lands, but this was not the end of the matter. By now York had returned from Ireland to become the leading political force in the kingdom. There is no evidence that he directly supported Ogard’s cause, but Oldhall, one of York’s leading retainers and Speaker of the Parliament of 1450, and other trustees helped Ogard to complain in Chancery about the conduct of the commission of inquiry. As a result the commission’s findings were set aside, and in mid 1451, following further legal proceedings in the court of King’s bench, the properties were assigned to the trustees, who were licensed to convey them to Ogard. He retained them for the rest of his life, although the Knyvets would renew their claims a few years after his death.53 Virgoe, 25-30.

It is possible that the queen, Margaret of Anjou, helped Ogard to win his battle for the Clifton lands, since he joined her household some time in the early 1450s. Upon becoming her retainer he probably severed his ties with his former master, since the queen, formerly an ally of William de la Pole, was the duke of York’s implacable opponent. His motives for becoming one of the queen’s servants are impossible to know for certain, although the prospect of royal patronage was no doubt attractive. Perhaps he disapproved of York’s armed demonstration against the government in February 1452 (even though the duke enjoyed the support of many war veterans disgruntled by the collapse of English France), or saw no future in serving him after it had failed. Even if Ogard had yet to join the queen’s household at that date, it is unlikely that he took part in this demonstration, despite the fact that he received a royal pardon in the following May.54 C67/40, m. 27. By then he had made loans totalling well over £200 to the King,55 CPR, 1446-52, p. 452; E403/777, m. 14; 796, m. 1; E159/229, brevia Hil. rot. 9; 230, brevia Hil. rot. 24d; E101/813, m. 30; 821, m. 31. and he is unlikely to have viewed loyalty to the Crown lightly. He was certainly highly regarded by Henry VI, since it was as a ‘King’s knight’ that he and Sir Simon Felbrigg had received a joint grant from the issues of Norfolk and Suffolk of 100 marks p.a. in 1441, an annuity which he enjoyed completely to himself after Felbrigg’s death the following year.56 CPR, 1441-6, p. 105. But the annuity fell into arrears: CCR, 1447-54, p. 84; E13/145A, rot. 34d. Ogard was equally well regarded by the queen after he had joined her household, and he seems to have become one of the principal members of her council. By Michaelmas 1452 he was one of her knight carvers, and after the birth of her son Edward, prince of Wales, in October 1453 he helped to oversee payments to Westminster abbey for the child’s baptism. In the accounting year 1452-3 Margaret paid him a fee of 40 marks and gave him a ‘year’s gift’ of a gilded cup worth £6 13s. 4d.57 E404/70/2/24; Myers, 152, 181-2, 223. There is no doubt that Ogard owed his place in the Parliament of 1453 to his connexion with the queen, since the Court interest was well represented in this assembly, the most compliant of Henry VI’s reign. During the Parliament Ogard and a fellow Household man, Robert Whittingham II*, son of Robert I and one of the knights of the shire for Buckinghamshire, engaged in litigation at Westminster with another member of the royal establishment, (Sir) Edmund Hampden*, then sitting for Oxfordshire. In pleadings of Easter term 1453, they sought 750 marks from Hampden, alleging that he was indebted to them in that sum by virtue of bonds he had entered into with them five years earlier. The circumstances in which the debt arose are not recorded, although it may have related to the dowry the King had awarded Whittingham’s wife, and it would appear that the dispute was settled out of court.58 CP40/769, rot. 313. Ogard’s seat in the Commons was not his first public position in England. He had served as a Hertfordshire j.p. during the mid 1440s and, despite having in July 1447 acquired an official exemption from holding any office,59 CPR, 1446-52, p. 77. he was subsequently appointed to several ad hoc commissions in Hertfordshire and in Norfolk, and he was a j.p. in both those counties in the last few months of his life. He also held office in the bishop of Ely’s franchise of the Isle of Ely, most notably as constable of Wisbech castle, which lay close to his manor at Emneth in the Norfolk fens.

Ogard had purchased Emneth from Gilbert Haltoft, baron of the Exchequer, an executor of the previous owner, Sir Roger Hakebeche†, in the mid 1440s. Like The Rye, it was a substantial investment. It appears that he paid Haltoft £100 for the manor, where he spent further considerable sums on constructing a new manor-house, a project for which he shipped in bricks and timber from elsewhere.60 Worcestre, 49. Worcestre says Ogard paid some £1,000 for Emneth, but £100, the figure which Blomefield, viii. 405, gives for the purchase price, is more credible. Apart from Emneth and the former Clifton lands, Ogard acquired other properties in Norfolk, namely a manor at Little Bittering in the centre of the county and two others at Burston in the south-east.61 C139/157/25. The Rye was not his only purchase in Hertfordshire, since he also bought three other manors there, at Stanstead Abbots, Stanstead St. Margarets and Great Amwell.62 VCH Herts. iii. 368, 417, 473-4. Ogard also enjoyed extensive estates in the right of his second wife, Alice, the daughter of William, Lord Lovell (another veteran of the French wars).63 CP, viii. 221-2. Her father’s status made her an extremely respectable match, and this probably explains why her previous husband, Sir Hugh Cokesey (yet another soldier), had awarded her a life interest in some 20 manors in the Midlands, Cheshire, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the south-east.64 C139/178/49; DKR, xxxvii. (2), 569; CFR, xix. 278-81. The link it gave him with Cheshire gave Ogard a sufficient stake in the county palatine to join a protest in defence of its liberties. Following the granting of a subsidy by the Parliament of 1449-50, the government issued commissions for its levying in Cheshire, in contravention of the county’s ancient exemption from parliamentary taxation. The ‘commonalty’ of the shire, headed by Edmund, Lord Grey of Ruthin, John Sutton, Lord Dudley, and Ogard, therefore petitioned the King for confirmation of this exemption.65 D.J. Clayton, Admin. County Palatine of Chester, 45-48, 64. It is now impossible exactly to calculate Ogard’s landed income in England. The inquisitions post mortem taken after his death valued his estates in Norfolk and Hertfordshire at only £45 p.a., but this is undoubtedly a gross underestimate. Emneth, for example, was reckoned to bring in £10 p.a., but an inquisition held less than ten years earlier had valued it at four times that amount.66 C139/157/25; C143/450/10.

Having settled in England in the later 1440s, Ogard probably divided his time between The Rye and Buckenham castle. He must have lived in some state, since his household chapel was served by no fewer than four priests, along with 16 clerks and choristers, and is said to have cost him £100 a year to maintain.67 Worcestre, 47. When he acquired Buckenham and the other Clifton lands he also took over the patronage of the Benedictine priory at Wymondham. The priory was a cell of the abbey at St. Albans, and in the late 1440s, after the abbot had tried unconstitutionally to force the prior to resign, Ogard and the prior sought permission to apply to Rome to have the priory converted into an abbey in its own right. The Crown granted their petition and in September 1448 Pope Nicholas V issued the desired bull.68 VCH Norf. ii. 340; CPL, x. 19-20; Reg. Whethamstede ed. Riley, i. 150; C143/450/10; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 154, 260. In the following year the prior was solemnly raised to the dignity of an abbot at a special service held at Wymondham. The new abbey was not the only religious institution in which Ogard took an interest, since he founded a chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas at nearby Tibenham. Not long before his death he obtained another papal bull, this time granting special privileges to those who visited the chapel on the feast of St. Nicholas and contributed money for its upkeep.69 CPL, x. 716.

Ogard died at Buckenham castle on 13 or 14 Oct. 1454 and was buried in Wymondham abbey.70 C139/157/25; KB27/789, rot. 104; Blomefield, ii. 525. In his will he appointed his wife, Alice, as his principal executor and, as her co-executors, John Bourgchier, Lord Berners, Robert Whittingham II, Edward Ellesmere (an important household official of Queen Margaret) and his servant, John Randulf.71 PCC 2 Stokton. This registered copy of Ogard’s will is both undated (although it was certainly made after Midsummer 1453) and unfinished and bears no notice of probate, but a comm. to prove it was granted by the archdiocese of Canterbury on 13 Nov. 1454: R. Virgoe, ‘The Earlier Knyvetts’, Norf. Archaeology, xli. 13-14. For Ellesmere: R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 258, 261. He asked to be buried in a tomb on the north side of the high altar at the abbey, and ordered new black mourning gowns for his wife’s gentlewomen, as well as the priests, clerks and choristers of his chapel and the gentlemen and other officers and servants of his household. He made magnificent bequests to the abbey of liturgical plate, altar cloths, vestments and a cross inscribed with the name of himself and his wife. The cross was decorated with precious stones and contained fragments of the True Cross, the Crown of Thorns and the arm of St. Andrew. With regard to his lands, he awarded them to Alice for life, with remainder to his son and heir, Henry. The will also shows that he had continued to remain in touch with his relatives in his native land, since he requested that they should ensure a match between one of his daughters and Axel Pedersen Thott, an important councillor of the realm of Denmark. A considerable part of the will comprised a defence of his conduct as one of Bedford’s executors and as a commander at Caen, evidently matters troubling his conscience. With regard to his role as executor, he stated that he, Louis of Luxembourg and Sir John Fastolf had received a full and lawful discharge from administering the duke of Bedford’s estate in France after they had relinquished their duties there. He also protested that he no longer bore any responsibility for the execution of Bedford’s will in England, claiming that he had never played any role in its administration in that country. As for Caen, he was anxious to rebut the demands of former members of its garrison who were claiming that he still owed them wages. He stated that he had managed to obtain an assignment of over £5,400 towards those wages from the Crown, and that he had paid his soldiers any money which the King or his officers had sent to him for that purpose, although they had refused the tallies he had offered them. He added that he had assisted destitute veterans returning from Normandy, not least by providing some of them with food and drink and paying their arrears out of his own pocket. Furthermore, he declared that those who could prove that he still owed them money should receive it from any remaining cash and tallies which the Crown had delivered to him. Finally, with reference to a particular ten-month period, he swore that he had never received any money with which to pay his men. While it is now impossible to prove that he had been guilty of peculation, the soldiers were persistent in their claims, which troubled his executors after his death. 72 Marshall, 412; CPR, 1446-52, p. 537; 1452-61, p. 439; PCC 2 Stokton; Stratford, 420. As already noted, in 1452 the government appointed commissioners to examine the grievances of disgruntled veterans, and Ogard was undergoing further questioning by two expert civil lawyers, Masters Richard Weltdon and Andrew Hales – at home in Buckenham castle – when he died.73 CPR, 1452-61, p. 439. Such circumstances prompted one modern authority, hinting at torture, to speculate that he was being examined under duress.74 J.G. Bellamy, ‘Justice under the Yorkist Kings’, American Jnl. of Legal Hist. ix. 145. A more likely scenario is that the aged and probably infirm knight was sufficiently agitated by the questioning to suffer a stroke, heart attack or other medical episode which brought about his end.

Two bills that Ogard’s executors sued in King’s bench in Trinity term 1458 suggest that a chaotic state of affairs prevailed at both Buckenham castle and The Rye immediately after his death. The bills were directed against two of his former servants, John Fadyr and John Clyf, by then prisoners in the Marshalsea, and were drawn up in accordance with a statute of 1455 concerning servants who plundered their deceased masters’ goods. The executors alleged that within a week of Ogard’s death the two men and 20 unknown accomplices had stolen a large number of his possessions. It would be unwise to accept their claims at face value, since the looting of both properties, a good few miles apart, was said to have occurred on the same day, 22 Oct. Yet, while the suits smack of a considerable amount of legal fiction, the goods listed bear startling testimony to the wealth that Ogard had won in the Hundred Years’ War. In one bill the defendants were said to have carried off goods worth just over £100 from The Rye, including beds, bedding, altar cloths, plate and musical instruments (a recorder and a pair of ‘clavyssymballes’); in the other they were accused of plundering Buckenham. The alleged haul from the castle included a large silver cross, precious images of St. George, the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Michael, a golden cup encrusted with a sapphire and many pearls, a collar in the King’s livery decorated with nine rubies, a clasp garnished with a diamond and five large pearls, 12 loose diamonds, a book called ‘Boccas’ (perhaps a work by Boccaccio) with a cover of red velvet and silver clasps and 22 other books of romances in English and French. The executors claimed that the possessions taken from Buckenham were worth £3,000 and that the malefactors had also made off with £1,833 6s. 8d. in cash they had found there.75 KB27/789, rots. 76, 104, 107.

Henry Ogard was only four years old when he succeeded his father. He was raised in the household of Queen Margaret, to whom the King formally granted his wardship on 24 Apr. 1460, six days after the death of his mother, Alice. Henry’s sister, Anne, who also lived in Margaret’s household and was retained in the queen’s service, received a bequest from her father of 1,000 marks from his lands for her marriage.76 CPR, 1452-61, p. 583; C139/178/49. Anne would marry Sir Renfrew Arundell† of Tremodret, Cornw. In November 1460 John Knyvet and his son, William†, took advantage of the state of civil war which then existed in the country to seize Buckenham castle and the other Clifton lands. They were removed a few months later, but had recovered possession by the summer of the following year.77 CPR, 1461-7, p. 135. In June 1461 Edward IV re-granted the wardship of the young Henry Ogard to Laurence Booth, bishop of Durham,78 CPR, 1461-7, p. 12. although by then the boy was in Scotland, to where Queen Margaret had fled after the overthrow of Henry VI. Later that year Lord Berners, in his capacity as Ogard’s executor, submitted a petition to the Crown. In it he stated that Henry had not gone to Scotland willingly and would gladly return as a loyal subject of the new King, who was asked to send Clarenceux King of Arms to collect him. Berners’s petition was granted and in December that year the herald was commissioned to travel to Scotland.79 Cal. Scots. Docs. iv. 268. It is likely that the peer had arranged a settlement by which Henry was pardoned and permitted to enter upon his father’s property at Emneth and Hertfordshire. The Knyvets would retain the Clifton inheritance, although neither Henry nor his descendants conceded their claim to it. The Ogards’ battle to recover these lands lasted for nearly 100 years and proved ruinously expensive. In the late 1550s George Ogard was obliged to sell Emneth and The Rye, after which the family sank into obscurity.80 Virgoe, ‘Earlier Knyvetts’, 9; VCH Herts. iii. 370-1.