PAGE, Richard

Page’s parentage has not been established, but it seems likely that he was a native of Plymouth, the borough that he represented in at least four Parliaments, and where he owned property. He was probably a kinsman of John Page, who served as mayor of the town in 1449-50, 1462-3 and 1468-9 and of William Page who held the same office in 1471-2 and 1474-5.13 Plymouth Municipal Recs. ed. Worth, 15; KB27/889, fines rot. 1. Page’s activities are at times difficult to distinguish from those of a number of namesakes active in various parts of England during his lifetime. One of these, who about the time of the MP’s first return to Parliament was embroiled in a property dispute with the prominent lawyer Thomas Tropenell*, was probably the Richard Page (brother-in-law of Thomas Lyte*) who four years later purchased a number of properties in Warminster, Wilts. from Thomas Laffull: C1/24/128-33; VCH Wilts. viii.104; Tropenell Cart. ed. Davies, ii. 40. Another, who served as bailiff of the abbot of Ramsey in Norf. in the years around 1470 was probably a native of that county: CP40/827, rot. 10; E13/160, rot. 11d; Norf. RO, Hare mss, 3987/10-15. No definite evidence of his early education has been discovered, but by the end of his life he was a member of the Middle Temple.14 PCC 12 Vox; Baker, ii. 1184.

There is little evidence of Page’s professional career before the accession of Edward IV, nor is it clear what prompted him to seek election to the Parliament of 1455, or, indeed, whether at this date he still fulfilled the statutory requirement for residency in his constituency, beyond the ownership of property there. As no returns for the south-western boroughs of England survive, it is not possible to tell whether Page secured re-election to either of Henry VI’s two remaining Parliaments, or to the first two of Edward IV’s reign. In the intervening years, he made a highly profitable marriage, probably contracted during the months of the court party’s ascendancy from late 1459 to mid 1460. This was to Beatrice, the daughter of the duke of Somerset’s partisan Thomas Thorpe, a former Speaker of the Commons (and like Page a Middle Temple lawyer). Beatrice was recently widowed, and (although she was not her father’s heir) stood to receive a substantial dower from her first husband, the courtier Richard Strickland. In the first instance, however, the couple may have been overtaken by events, which saw the duke of York and his partisans, the Neville earls of Warwick and Salisbury, assume control of the government, and saw the arrest and execution of Beatrice’s father. It was thus not until September 1462 that Page and his wife were able to sue out a royal pardon for their failure to procure a licence for their marriage, and only thereafter that instructions were issued to the escheators of Buckinghamshire, Leicestershire and Wiltshire to assign Beatrice her dower.15 C67/45, m. 33; CPR, 1461-7, p. 200; CCR, 1461-8, p. 111. Even then, the acquisition of the property seems to have been fraught with difficulty. Particularly controversial was Page’s attempt to take over in his wife’s right to certain buildings in the London parish of St. Mary at Hill beside Billingsgate. The reversion of this property had been alienated to the parish church by Richard Strickland’s maternal grandfather more than half a century earlier, and although the family had conspicuously failed to honour his wishes, the rector and churchwardens of St. Mary’s now staked their claim. Litigation continued into the 1470s, and occupied the full range of London and Westminster courts available to the parties, among whom prominent feoffees like Sir William Parr† soon also made an appearance.16 Corp. London RO, husting bk. 1, ff. 85, 98v, 99; KB27/827, rots. 69, 95; C253/44/212; C1/31/39; 38/269; 41/60-62. The extent of the lands which Page acquired as his wife’s dower is not certain, for many of the Strickland holdings were subject to entails and ultimately fell to Richard Strickland’s cousin. Over the years, Page did, nevertheless, succeed in building up a sizeable estate, probably by purchase. Apart from property in Plymouth and Plympton (which presumably represented his paternal inheritance), at his death he owned the manor of Filston and land in Shoreham, Dartford, Horton, Eltham, St. Mary Cray and Mottingham in north-western Kent.17 C1/106/34; Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, Barrett-Lennard mss, U1450/T7/109.

By the time of his election to the Parliament of 1467 Page may already have been serving as solicitor to Queen Elizabeth. He was certainly in her employ by the following year, when he appeared on her behalf to stake a dubious claim to 800 marks in ‘queen’s gold’ from the fine imposed on the disgraced London alderman (Sir) Thomas Cook II* in the course of his notorious clash with the Wydevilles in the crisis year 1468.18 Gt. Chron. London ed. Thomas and Thornley, 208. However dishonourable Cook’s fleecing by the queen and her family may appear with hindsight, for Page, who had clearly performed his duties to Elizabeth Wydeville’s satisfaction, it brought further advancement. The summer of 1469 saw Edward IV imprisoned at Warwick castle by Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, and his queen left behind in London keeping ‘very scant state’, but by the end of the year the King had regained his liberty and the political initiative, and in January 1470 he appointed Page to the post of solicitor-general in succession to another Temple lawyer, Richard Fowler†. His services to the queen aside, it is possible that Page owed his succession to the office to a private arrangement with his predecessor: on 29 Jan. Fowler sued out a fresh exemplification of his patent, but within two days he had surrendered these letters, allowing for Page’s appointment in his stead.19 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 180, 182.

In the light of Page’s proximity not only to Edward IV, but to his queen, it seems improbable that he served in the Parliament held during Henry VI’s Readeption in 1470-1, as Wedgwood supposed. In his will, drawn up on 15 July 1472, the Derbyshire lawyer Nicholas Statham† recorded that he had ‘resceived xs. of [ ] Bemont, a worshipful squier of the west Countre by the handes of Page in the last parleament. I did nothing therfore and if I did yet it is agenst my conscience for somoche as I was one of the parleament and shuld be indifferent in euery mater in the parleament.’20 Bull. IHR, iii. 49. Even assuming that the Page in question had been a fellow Member of the Commons, it is by no means clear that the former solicitor general was the man concerned.

Certainly, Richard went on to become one of the most trusted servants of the restored Edward IV. In the aftermath of Fauconberg’s uprising in the late spring of 1471 he was one of three lawyers sent into Kent to inquire as to the circumstances of the insurgency.21 E403/844, m. 9; E405/53, rot. 4d. That autumn he was receiving money for the King’s chamber; the following year he was charged with an inquiry into the landholdings of Philip Copplestone (a task normally within the purview of the county escheators, for which he was paid a reward of £15 12s. 6d.), and in August 1474 he was made the King’s receiver of the revenues of the Copplestone lands while they remained in the King’s hands during the heir’s minority.22 E405/54, rot. 2; 57, rot. 4; CPR, 1467-77, p. 465. Some months earlier he had been named one of the feoffees of the Hertfordshire lands of the disgraced archbishop of York, George Neville, including his principal residence of The Moor, which the King had seized following Neville’s arrest and imprisonment.23 CCR, 1468-76, no. 1442.

Although the burgesses of Plymouth once again returned Page to the Parliament summoned in early 1478, in 1472 he had failed to secure a seat for the Devon borough. He was nevertheless present at the Parliament, which continued with several prorogations until the spring of 1475, and took some part in its proceedings, for in the autumn of 1473 he received a substantial reward of £32 ‘for his labours touching the King’s profit in the present parliament’.24 E405/57, rot. 4d. It is not clear whether Page attended Parliament in an official capacity, or whether he was assigned one of the Cornish borough seats, which were by this date being freely parcelled out by the Crown.25 If this was so, and if Wedgwood was right in asserting a family tie between the Pages of Plymouth and those of Launceston, it is possible that it was in the latter constituency that Richard found his seat: HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 655-6. He was, however, appointed to receive the taxes granted by the Commons in the south-western counties, and was in subsequent months kept busy administering the sums collected, and periodically making disbursements to those charged with the keeping of the sea and the assembly of the fleet for the King’s projected invasion of France, a task for which he was once again assigned a substantial reward, this time of £60.26 E405/59, rot. 7; 60, rot. 2; 61, rots. 2, 5; C81/1524, no. 7.

Page continued in the post of solicitor-general until the end of Edward IV’s reign, and was periodically included in ad hoc commissions both in the south-west and in Kent, where he had by now evidently settled. There were also other offices and rewards. In June 1475 he was granted an annuity of £20 from the Plymouth customs, and a month later he was appointed to the stewardship of the royal manor of Eltham.27 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 536, 544; CCR, 1468-76, no. 1426.

By contrast with, and perhaps at least partly as a result of, Page’s public career, his private legal practice appears to have remained limited. He was nevertheless in considerable demand as a feoffee, with clients including prominent Kentish gentry such as Sir William Pecche* and Sir Richard Guildford†, courtiers such as Sir Thomas Burgh†, Edward IV’s master of the horse, and others, notably Margaret Beaufort, the dowager countess of Richmond.28 CCR, 1468-76, no. 353; 1476-85, nos. 42, 545, 606, 664, 1118, 1188; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 339, 523; 1476-85, p. 224; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 482; Corp. London RO, hr 210/20, 21; Centre for Kentish Studies, Stanhope of Chevening mss, U1590/T7/35. Principally, however, his private activities appear to have been restricted to providing legal advice to a range of neighbours. Thus, in 1498 the octogenarian Kentish widow Agnes Kene (a grand-daughter of the two wealthy London grocers William Chichele† and Thomas Knolles†) recalled how many years previously Page and Roger Appleton† had advised her to sell her manor of Woolwich to Sir Ralph Hastings†, on the grounds that ‘Sir Ralph and his friends were so great with King Edward that he might “do for her and all her children”’.29 CPR, 1494-1509, p. 163. Perhaps rather better known is the advice that Page regularly provided to (Sir) William Stonor†, who may have been the feudal overlord of his principal residence at Horton and who retained him at an annual fee of £3 6s. 8d. as legal counsel.30 Stonor Letters, ii (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, xxx), 228, 249, 277, 326; KB27/868, rot. 42; 869, rot. 75. Exemplary of the services and sound advice that Page provided to the irascible Stonor is a letter written from London, probably in July 1478, in which Page instructed his employer:

Syr, wher ye write on to me y shold take an accion in the kynges name ayenst on of Wycomb for cuttyng down and fellyng of certen treys, y have taken an accion redy, and y shall send you the writte. Syr, ye wrote to me in your letter that ye hadde seasid certen corne, whiche was regratyd and forstallid from the comen marketes to the grete hurt of the Comen people. Syr, me semys by my lernyng ye may not sease not none maner cornes in suche case and put thaym under arest: and if ye have don, yt wold be well don to se thaym delyveryd ayen in manerly forme: it is inquerable at the Cessons of pees and in every lete and fraunchise of regrators and forstallers of all maner of vitaill, and, if it be presentid, to make a fyne therfor: but it is not the maner ne the care of the law to sease none forstallid ne regratyd vitaill. I remit the delyng with the delyveraunce hereof to your discreson: but y wold not ye confessid your self to thaym that ye have my don in that case: but honestly take a promys of thaym [that] thay shall not dele so herafter, and for this thay have don thay may be indited, and let thaym have deliveraunce of thaire cornys.31 Stonor Letters, ii. 220.

Other services Page performed for Stonor were, ostensibly, of a more whimsical nature. After the death of one of Sir William’s wives he drew upon Page’s knowledge of the likely candidates for a replacement. Having heard that one of them, although wealthy, was ‘so fowle that Parker wuld none of her’, he sought the opinion of Page who informed him that she was ‘but lytyll and sumwhat rownde agoode woman and well disposid, save only that she is sumtyme vexyd with the moder’. Certainly, Page prided himself in knowing Stonor’s tastes: in early 1482 he wrote to him: ‘Wold God it wold plese you to com to your Horton when terme is don: y will geve yow attendance: ther is ther an puncheon or tweyn of wyne abydyng your mastership: y hope suche as woll plese yow.’ Page’s correspondence with Stonor speaks of a cautious man, reluctant to commit his thoughts to paper, but equally concerned that they might not be misrepresented. In a postscript to a letter of early 1482 he told Stonor: ‘As for news y have told this berrer to enforme yow, I fere me he cannot well shew them to your mastership.’32 Ibid. 209, 309.

Edward IV’s premature death and Richard III’s usurpation of the crown saw Page replaced as solicitor general by Thomas Lynom. Even so, there is no direct evidence that he, like many others of Edward IV’s former servants, took part in the uprisings in the south of England in the summer of 1483. Indeed, within days of Richard III’s usurpation he had been added to the Kentish bench, and he continued to receive potentially sensitive appointments in the county, including the task of arraying armed men.33 CPR, 1476-85, p. 477. He was, however, at least indirectly connected with the rebels through Sir William Stonor, and he appears to have maintained contacts among King Richard’s opponents in Breton exile until Henry VII’s victory at Bosworth. While he was removed from the county bench shortly afterwards, he was once more included in a royal commission as early as December 1485. If this remained an isolated appointment, it may have been out of Page’s own choice, for not only was his earlier patron Stonor high in the new King’s favour, but he himself also possessed valuable connexions with Henry VII’s mother, the countess of Richmond, probably dating back to the early 1470s, which now saw him appointed steward of one of her Kentish estates.34 KB9/1060/9.

In the late summer of 1493 Page may have fallen ill, for on 1 Aug. he drew up a will concerning his lands, and three weeks later he made further, full, testamentary provisions.35 The misdating of this second will to 22 Aug. 1483 noted by Wedgwood was evidently the result of an error by the clerk who enrolled it in the register of the prerogative court of Canterbury, since it explicitly styles Reynold Bray a knight, whereas he was dubbed only after the battle of Stoke. His lands, which he had placed in the hands of (Sir) Reynold Bray†, Sir Henry Heydon, and his surviving younger son Edmund, were to descend to Edmund and his male heirs, with remainder in default of such issue to Page’s grandson Richard, son of his elder son, Henry, who had predeceased him. He expressed no preference for a particular place of burial, but left bequests to the Temple church and the parish churches of Shoreham and Horton. Provisions showing any concern for the welfare of his soul in the afterlife were limited, consisting chiefly of a chantry at Horton for a period of five years, although he also instructed his executor to dispose of any goods that might be left after his will had been fulfilled for the benefit of his soul. He nevertheless clearly took some interest in such matters, for several years earlier, in 1479, he had sought Sir William Stonor’s preferment as priest of the Stonor chantry at Horton for Hugh Fabri, a friar of Dartford abbey, and had told Stonor that his protégé was ‘a good prest, and a clene, ther is non better to my understandyng unfaynyd ... and over that ye shall have the adyly praier of a good prest, there was never non suche ther syns I knew Kent’, and on Fabri’s resignation in 1482 he once again made it his business to propose to Stonor the appointment of a suitable candidate, one Robert Tybe, ‘an honest prest and good, and a clene levyng man: y ensure yow he wolbe a sure bedeman to yowr mastership, and do yow as good service as woll any prest in Kent to his power’.36 Stonor Letters, ii. 247, 321. Furthermore, he had in his lifetime built three almshouses at Shoreham, according to one version of events in fulfillment of the will of one John Rose and as a precondition of his purchase of the manor of Fileton and certain properties in Shoreham, but according to another ‘of his devocion and mere charitie’.37 C1/328/77-80.

Rather more extensive was the list of Page’s individual bequests. Sir Reynold Bray was left a salt, while the overseers of the will, who included the coroner of King’s bench, Henry Harman, each received a ‘stonding cuppe’. Bequests of money, corn and livestock went to the household servants and Page’s godchildren. Most intriguingly, Page bequeathed a selection of household goods, including a featherbed, sheets, blankets and coverlets, as well as six silver spoons, to a damsel called Alice, who was also to have an estate worth 26s. 8d. from his lands at Horton. The witnesses of the will were headed by the Master of the Temple, and also included Henry Harman.38 PCC 12 Vox. A ms abridgement of statutes owned by Page, and now in Cambridge University Library, is not otherwise mentioned in the will: Baker, ii. 1184.

No inquisition into Page’s landholdings survives, although such an inquiry was ordered by royal writ of diem clausit extremum on 18 Oct. 1493, two days before probate of his will was granted.39 CFR, xxii. 471. The arrangements Page had made for the descent of his lands proved problematic within months of his death, when litigation broke out between his executor, his son Edmund, and the guardians of his four-year-old grandson and common-law heir male, Richard.40 C1/106/34; C4/144/50.