OKEHURST, William

Okehurst’s family had probably held land at Oakhurst in the parish of Billingshurst in west Sussex for several generations before 1397, when John, father of our MP, did homage to the bishop of Chichester for lands at Ham in Sidlesham, to the south of the city. A lawyer, John built up the family’s landed holdings in the Arun valley, and he associated William with him in transactions relating to them in 1400. William would appear to have inherited his father’s lands by 1414, and three years later his brother John formally quitclaimed to him certain properties in Rudgwick. In April 1419 he received from his mother Cecily, who by then had married William Walton, her life-interest in the manor of Ham, in return for an annual payment of £4.3 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 862-3; Cat. Wiston Archs. ed. Booker, i. nos. 653, 2208; VCH Suss. iv. 212; Add. Ch. 8866. With a view to consolidating his holdings at Ham, in 1422 he obtained from the bishop a lease on a tenement and ten acres of land there, to run for 100 years.4 Add. Ch. 18706. By this time he had also extended his landed interests beyond the borders of Sussex, by marrying Roberta, the widow of a Surrey landowner, John Leccheford. In February 1418 Leccheford’s coheirs made a formal quitclaim to the couple of their interest in the manor of Down in Kent and other lands in the same county.5 CCR, 1413-19, pp. 453-4.

From an early point in his career Okehurst was closely attached to Thomas Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, in whose retinue he served on Henry V’s first campaign in France in 1415. The previous year, Earl Thomas had granted him for life the Sussex manor of Nutbourne, and in his will (made after his voyage home from the siege of Harfleur), he left him an annuity of £5. Clearly, Okehurst had been regarded warmly by his lord.6 E101/47/1; VCH Suss. iv. 129; Reg. Chichele, ii. 77; Feudal Aids, v. 158. A similarly close connexion was maintained with Arundel’s widow, Countess Beatrice, who at some point in the early 1420s made him a feoffee of the late earl’s London residence, ‘Poultney’s Inn’ in the parish of St. Laurence Poultney, and began to employ him in the administration of her estates.7 Corp. London RO, hr 154/50. To this link with the countess he undoubtedly owed his election to Parliament in 1425 for the borough of Reigate, which she held as part of her dower. In December that year he was among the auditors who examined the accounts of the steward of her household, and found that he was owed £72, a sum which the disgruntled steward later claimed he never received.8 CP40/665, rot. 335. Another factor in Okehurst’s election may have been his association with his fellow MP, Walter Urry*, the steward of the castle and lordship of Reigate, with whom he had acted as a feoffee of rents in Warnham a few years earlier. After the countess’s marriage to John Holand, earl of Huntingdon, in 1433, the two men were among those who henceforth received their annuities from the earl: in Okehurst’s case his fee of £5 p.a. was taken out of the issues of the lordship of Reigate.9 Suss. Feet of Fines (Suss. Rec. Soc. xxiii), 235; E163/7/31/1. While the Parl. was in progress Okehurst was the defendant in a suit in the c.p. regarding property in Petworth: CP40/657, rot. 406d.

Meanwhile, in 1428 Okehurst had been asked to execute the will of Sir John Wiltshire, who had himself been named as an executor of the late earl of Arundel,10 Norf. RO, Norwich consist. ct., Reg. Surflete, f. 27. and two years later he took on a similar task on behalf of Thomas Salman, yet another Fitzalan retainer who had crossed the Channel with him in 1415. He had established a particularly amicable relationship with Salman, who left him a reversionary interest in certain of his lands in Sussex, to vest after the death of the testator’s sister, and by 1445 he was holding property and land at Ovingdean as Salman’s heir.11 PCC 12 Luffenham (PROB11/3, ff. 97v-98v); VCH Suss. vii, 231; Lewes Cart. (Suss Rec. Soc. xl), ii. 13. Four years before, in February 1441, perhaps as part of the arrangements made for the disposition of Salman’s estate, Okehurst, Urry, William Ryman* and Richard Wakehurst† were granted a royal licence to found a chantry in the church of Holy Trinity in Arundel in remembrance of Salman and his wife, which was to be funded out of lands in Arundel and Rudgwick.12 C143/448/31; CPR, 1436-41, p. 525. Yet another retainer of the earls of Arundel with whom Okehurst had forged links was John Bartelot*, again a comrade-in-arms on the expedition of 1415, whose father had also been one of the earl’s executors.13 Suss. Arch. Collns. xv. 129. On 19 Jan. 1438 the keeping of the alien priory of Lyminster in Sussex was committed to the two men and in May this grant was replaced by one in which they were named with Countess Beatrice as joint custodians, on condition that they paid the sum of 25 marks p.a. to the Crown and agreed to match any higher offers. In September the same year, however, Walter Strickland I* was granted the lease as his offer of 26 marks had not been matched by the countess and the rest.14 CFR, xvii. 19, 41-42; CPR, 1436-41, p. 203. Okehurst’s final service to his lady was to act as a juror at the inquisition post mortem held at Chichester on 23 May 1440, when he no doubt provided the escheator with much of the very detailed information supplied about her estates.15 CIPM, xv. 378.

Okehurst acquired other landed interests in his native county during the course of his career, including property in the Pallant and East Street in Chichester.16 W. Suss. RO, Chichester city archs., deed CHICTY/AY/75; Diocesan recs. Cap/1/17/64. This connexion with the city and his feudal tenancy of land at Ham led to an association with Richard Praty, bishop of Chichester. Together with the bishop he was a feoffee of a moiety of the manor of Glynde for Nicholas Morley* in 1442, and on 20 Apr. 1445, shortly before the bishop’s death, he acted as his co-feoffee for the manor of Shalden in Hampshire.17 E. Suss. RO, Glynde Place archs. GLY/11; Suss. Feet of Fines, 236, 249; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 225, 306. Praty clearly put his trust in Okehurst, for in the will he made on 11 July following he named him among his executors.18 Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Stafford, f. 128v. From quite early on Okehurst had been styled ‘esquire’ and his place among the gentry of Sussex is further indicated by his appearance as an attestor of the shire elections held in the county court in Chichester on 2 Feb. 1447 and 22 Feb. 1453.19 C219/15/4; 16/2. These years (from about 1445 to 1451) also saw him tenaciously engaged in suits in the court of common pleas to recover a debt of £13 13s. 4d. owing on a bond entered into by William Yevan, a gentleman from East Wittering. His co-plaintiff was Agatha, widow of William Hormere of Halnaker, but the basis of their connexion is not stated.20 CP40/738, rot. 356d; 753, rot. 194d; 754, rot. 38d; 757, rot. 47d; 759, rot. 311.

It would appear that Okehurst had a son named William, who predeceased him before July 1448. It was then that the MP arranged the marriage of his grand-daughter and heiress, Elizabeth, to Thomas Bartelot, the son of his friend John, and was party to the settlement on the couple of lands in Sullington and Storrington. Accordingly, it was to the Bartelots that his manor of Ham passed after his death.21 Cat. Wiston Archs. i. no. 2907; VCH Suss. iv. 212. Okehurst was still active as a litigant and as a feoffee for his neighbours the Erneleys in lands in Sussex and Wiltshire in the late 1450s, and is last recorded in the Michaelmas term of 1459, when cited as a defendant in a suit in the common pleas.22 CP40/780, rots. 11, 130d; 795, rot. 385; Wilts. Hist. Centre, Money-Kyrle mss, 1720/278, 287. He died before 1467. In April that year the lawyers John Goring†, Humphrey Heuster* and Thomas Best*, probably serving in the capacity of his executors or feoffees, obtained a royal licence to found ‘Okehurst’s chantry’ in St. George’s chapel in Chichester cathedral. The chantry priest was to pray for the souls of William and his parents, and was to be funded out of family lands at Iford, Ditchling and Withdean.23 CPR, 1467-77, p. 14; Suss. Chantry Recs. (Suss. Rec. Soc. xxxvi), 84.