OKEDEN, William

Okeden, a lawyer and administrator of obscure background, occupied as his first known official post that of coroner of Eton College, newly-founded by the King. There, in August 1449 he viewed the body of a servant found drowned in the Thames. He continued in the employment of the college for some time, and at an eyre in Windsor forest, held on 15 Sept. 1451, appeared as an attorney in defence of the college’s liberties as granted under its royal charters.5 Eton ct. rolls, 2, m. 13; Eton Coll. Archs., Windsor deeds, 802. At Eton in the 1440s Okeden had probably come to the attention of Henry VI’s chief minister William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, who had been engaged in the King’s plans for the college from their earliest inception; and after the duke’s murder his widow Duchess Alice, at Ewelme in June 1450, appointed him keeper of the bailiwick of Fritham in the New Forest for term of his life. On 16 Oct. 1452 the King confirmed him in this office, as a reward for his good service to Eton College, while also awarding him wages of 4d. a day. Around the same time he served the dowager duchess as bailiff on the former Grovebury priory estates in Bedfordshire, which she held as jointure from her first marriage.6 CPR, 1452-61, p. 69; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 68-70.

Okeden’s appointment as clerk of Windsor castle in the spring of 1455 coincided with the death of the constable of the castle, Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, at the battle of St. Albans, and the duke’s replacement by the Lords Berners and Fauconberg. His duties required him to supervise works on the castle and its manors and lodges, for which he was paid a daily wage of 6d. (£9 2s. 6d. a year), and the accounts of the two constables for 1455-6 noted Okeden’s reimbursement for his expenses at London on business relating to a bill regarding the possessions and liberties of the castle, which were reassigned by authority of Parliament.7 SC6/755/19, f. 20. This almost certainly relates to the Act of Resumption passed in the Parliament assembled on 9 July 1455 and lasting to 12 Mar. 1456 in which Okeden sat as an MP and no doubt saw that the interests of his employers were well served.8 The Act was not to be prejudicial to Eton College: PROME, xii. 393. He had no known connexion with Dorchester, the borough he ostensibly represented, and it seems likely that his election had been engineered so that he could look after the concerns of the authorities at Windsor. Their accounts for Michaelmas 1456-7 show him spending eight days in London on official business, riding to Kenilworth castle, and then returning to the capital for a more prolonged stay of 22 days.9 SC6/755/20, f. 17v. To his private advantage, Okeden rented Crown property near Windsor castle in association with Roger Fasnam*, a former groom of the saucery.10 Ibid. f. 8v.

On 2 June 1456, not long after the dissolution of his Parliament, Okeden was given an Exchequer lease of lands in Chilsworthy and Ipplepen in Devon, which had reverted to the Crown in accordance with the Act of Resumption; yet although the lease was supposed to last for ten years, after Okeden ceased to be clerk of Windsor castle the premises were granted in November 1458 to King’s College, Cambridge.11 CFR, xix. 160; CPR, 1452-61, p. 476. Meanwhile, on 18 May 1457 he and Nicholas Walton had been assigned the keeping of the alien priory of Upavon in Wiltshire, to hold for 20 years at a farm of 20 marks p.a. One of their sureties was Ralph Legh*, a Household esquire and retainer of William Waynflete, bishop of Winchester, who had played an important role in the foundation of Eton. It was to Eton that on 9 Feb. 1459 this farm was granted, together with the reversion of the premises at the end of the term of the lease.12 CFR, xix. 186-7; CPR, 1452-61, p. 477; E159/236, brevia Mich. rot. 1.

Okeden’s movements after he lost his offices at Eton and Windsor are difficult to track. He is last recorded in testimony enrolled in the records of the court of common pleas in May 1460, in which he was described as ‘late clerk of Windsor castle’, and as living at Langley, a few miles away. The matter related concerned a strange and complicated case of a disputed inheritance of the Sely family lands at Chisleden in Wiltshire and property in London. Edward Sely declared on 26 Apr. before the chief justice, John Prysote*, that Okeden and William Taverner, a ‘gentleman’ of London, ‘entendyng and ymagenyng [his] disheriteson and destruccion’ had conspired with other claimants to the lands to spread false information about ‘mony thynges contrarie to equitee right and trouth’, even before the recorder of London. About the beginning of March Okeden had allegedly approached Sely, an unlearned man, while he was ploughing ‘Dyttonfelde’ in Stoke Poges, and required him to accompany him to the inn at ‘the signe of the Kateryn Whele’ in Colbrooke, Middlesex, ‘whether j wolde or wolde not’. There, intimidated by Okeden and Taverner (who had bribed other members of the Sely family to assert that Edward’s father had been illegitimate), he capitulated, only to be shut up by them in a baker’s house in the Strand outside Temple bar to prevent him from talking to anyone. Taverner rewarded Okeden with ‘an ambelyng hakeney’. Okeden is not mentioned in further documentation relating to the same case in October 1460.13 CP40/797, cart. rots. 1d, 2; 799, cart rots. 1-2.

The MP may have been the grandfather of another William Okeden (probably born in the 1460s), whose maternal grandfather was Richard Punchardon (d.1466). The younger William’s grandmother and mother (Maud Punchardon) both died in 1499, leaving him as coheir with two aunts to the manors of Ellingham and Faccombe in Hampshire. He died in 1517.14 CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 529, 530; C142/32/22; VCH Hants, iv. 315-16, 563, 605.