PAUNCEFOOT, Thomas

A relatively obscure figure for a gentleman of his lineage and rank, Thomas was very much less active in local government than his father, although he was to equal Sir John Pauncefoot’s record of sitting as a knight of the shire for Gloucestershire in two Parliaments. No doubt his inactivity was partly due to the longevity of Sir John, who enjoyed a vigorous old age and did not relinquish all office in the county until November 1438. Sir John survived for several years after this date, dying some time after 1446. His eldest son William had predeceased him – possibly many years earlier – meaning that it was Thomas who succeeded to the knight’s substantial estates.5 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 25-27. According to Sir John’s biography, Thomas was the knight’s eldest surviving son, but elsewhere (Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. lxxi. 135) it is stated that the immediate heir was another son, Hugh Pauncefoot, who died childless soon afterwards and was succeeded by the subject of this biography. Apart from Hasfield, acquired by the Pauncefoots before the end of the twelfth century, these holdings included other manors at Cowarne in Herefordshire and Bentley Pauncefoot in Worcestershire and the lordship of Crickhowell on the border of England and Wales.6 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 26; VCH Glos. viii. 283; VCH Worcs. iii. 226.

As arrangements for his marriage indicate, Thomas had yet to attain his majority when he and his father attested the election of the knights of the shire for Gloucestershire to the Parliament of 1429. Earlier that year, on 27 June, Sir John Pauncefoot conveyed Cowarne to Guy Whittington* and other feoffees, with the intent that they should convey the manor to Thomas and his intended bride, Margaret Wogan, a year after their marriage, although with the stipulation that the couple should allow him to occupy it and use its income for their support until the bridegroom came of age. Thomas and Margaret married just days later, for they were man and wife on the following 4 July when the feoffees conveyed Cowarne to them and their future issue.7 Kyre Park Chs. 90. In confirmation of this arrangement, Thomas’s parents made a formal settlement of Cowarne on the couple by means of a foot of fine at Westminster.8 CP25(1)/83/55/32. According to the visitation evidence, it was Margaret Wogan who bore Pauncefoot’s eldest son and heir, Henry, who in turn married Elizabeth Greville.9 Vis. Glos. 257. Elizabeth is of uncertain identity but in all probability she was a close relative of the Gloucestershire landowner John Greville*, for whom Pauncefoot acted as a feoffee in the late 1430s.10 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 289, 429; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 242.

During the 1440s Pauncefoot’s elderly father fell into dispute with Richard, duke of York, who as earl of March was the feudal overlord of Crickhowell, the Pauncefoots’ castle, manor and lordship in Brecon. In the autumn of 1444 the knight had Crickhowell settled on himself and Thomas in survivorship, with remainder to the descendants of his own father, Hugh Pauncefoot.11 CPR, 1441-6, pp. 320-1. As it stood, this entail should have caused York little concern but a few weeks later the Pauncefoots’ feoffees made a contingent grant to the King, by which the Crown would take possession of Crickhowell in default of any surviving Pauncefoot heirs.12 CCR, 1441-7, p. 272. York reacted furiously. Accusing Sir John of conspiring to disinherit him, he petitioned the Parliament of 1445 to have this latter arrangement overturned, although apparently without pursuing matters to a formal conclusion.13 PPC, vi. 36-37; CPR, 1441-6, p. 334; SC8/85/4247; P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 13. Assuming that Thomas’s second marriage had already occurred at this date, it is conceivable that the quarrel with York had political ramifications, since his Swynford in-laws were related to York’s political opponents the Beauforts. Margaret Swynford’s father was the son and namesake of the better known Sir Thomas Swynford (d.1432), son of John of Gaunt’s mistress Katherine Swynford by her first husband.14 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 27; Oxf. DNB, ‘Katherine, duchess of Lancaster’.

Although of uncertain date, the match had certainly occurred before 1460 when Thomas Mille*, one of the feoffees of the resulting marriage settlement, died. Possibly the half-brother of Pauncefoot’s mother Alice, Mille was also a trustee for the Pauncefoot family on other occasions.15 C1/44/46-48; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 26; CCR, 1441-7, p. 272; CPR, 1441-6, pp. 320-1; SC8/85/4247. Another feoffee of the Pauncefoot-Swynford marriage settlement was Margaret’s uncle John, Lord Beauchamp of Powick, an associate of Pauncefoot’s since at least the mid 1440s. The latter had attested a conveyance to which Beauchamp had been party as a feoffee of the late countess of Warwick in November 1446, and he witnessed a quitclaim in favour of Beauchamp himself in mid 1453.16 CPR, 1494-1509, pp. 99-102; CCR, 1447-54, p. 445. No doubt Pauncefoot came into contact with Beauchamp in the King’s household, of which the peer was a leading member and of which he himself was an esquire from at least the early 1440s.17 E101/409/9, 11, 16; 410/1, 3, 6, 9. It is possible that his status as a member of the royal establishment helped him to gain election to two consecutive Parliaments of the later 1440s, particularly that of 1447 which contained a high number of Household men serving as knights of the shire.18 B.P. Wolfe, Hen. VI, 219. On both occasions he was returned alongside Pauncefoot feoffees, John Cassy in 1447 and Thomas Mille in 1449.

Notwithstanding any ties of friendship which may have existed between him and Cassy, Pauncefoot was in 1455 appointed to a commission of inquiry charged with investigating the latter’s misdeeds in Gloucestershire. As a curious lawsuit heard in the court of King’s bench later that decade demonstrates, the relationship between the two men deteriorated further thereafter. In November 1459 Cassy appeared in person in that court to sue a bill alleging conspiracy on the part of Richard Beauchamp † (the son of Lord Powick) and others, including Pauncefoot. He claimed that in the previous July they had plotted together in Middlesex to ensure that he would be made to answer a plaintiff in the court of the admiralty on 4 Aug. that year, rather than at common law. The plaintiff, one John Clerk, claimed that Cassy had taken valuables worth £4 from him (a gold cross and several precious stones), an accusation that the latter did not attempt to refute in King’s bench, his purpose being to assert that the admiralty had no jurisdiction in the case, since it concerned events that had occurred at Stratford-le-Bow, Middlesex, rather than on the high seas. Beauchamp and his co-defendants had yet to answer Cassy’s suit when Henry VI was toppled from his throne, and the full circumstances of the quarrel are unknown.19 KB27/794, rot. 36.

In the meantime, Pauncefoot himself incurred the displeasure of the authorities, since in February 1457 the government issued commissions for his arrest in both Gloucestershire and Herefordshire. These commissions arose from a quarrel between Pauncefoot and the abbot of Gloucester, who had complained to the King about certain ‘riots and injuries’ the MP and two associates, John Clynton and George Monnington, had committed against him. The commissioners were informed that the three men had stayed away from home so as to avoid writs of privy seal ordering them to appear before the King and Council to answer the abbot’s complaint; and that they had ignored subsequent proclamations to the same effect.20 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 347-8. At the end of the same decade, Pauncefoot joined the bailiffs of Worcester, the priors of Great Malvern and Little Malvern and others in a complaint against Makelin Walwyn*. By means of a certificate of 8 Mar. 1459, he and his fellow complainants informed the Crown that Walwyn had reneged on an agreement made three years earlier to sell the manor of Massington, Herefordshire, to Richard Beauchamp, who had lost over £40 as a result.21 Add. Ch. 72943. Whether Pauncefoot lent his support to Beauchamp as a feoffee or in another capacity is unclear. In any case, he had his own reasons for disliking Walwyn, with whom he himself had quarrelled in the previous decade. Both of them held lands at Ledbury in Herefordshire, and Pauncefoot had sued Walwyn for raiding his holdings there in October 1444.22 KB27/734, rot. 81.

Not long after Pauncefoot put his name to the certificate of complaint against Walwyn, the authorities were again investigating his own lawless ways. First, in Michaelmas term 1459 the Crown ordered the sheriff of Gloucestershire to arrest him and two associates and bring them in to King’s bench on 3 Nov. that year, so that they might answer for certain unspecified riots and trespasses. In the event, they had yet to appear there when Henry VI lost his throne.23 KB27/794, rex rots. 19d, 32d; 798, rex rot. 30d. Secondly, in Easter term 1460 he was the subject of a complaint from the abbot of St. Augustine, Bristol, to which monastery an ancestor of the Pauncefoots had granted the manor of Ashleworth in Gloucestershire. Having quarrelled with the abbot over a rent, Sir John Pauncefoot had made a formal release of Ashleworth to that ecclesiastic in September 1442,24 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 27; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 125-6. but within a few years his son had renewed hostilities. The abbot’s petition concerned the activities of Thomas and other ‘malefactors’ at Ashleworth over the past decade and more, and he complained of distraints of livestock and crops as well of assaults committed against him, his servants and a fellow canon.25 KB27/796 rex rot. 32. For example, he alleged that on 6 May 1450 Pauncefoot and his men had attacked one of the abbot’s servants at the Haw next the river Severn, into which they had thrown their unfortunate victim who had nearly drowned. At the time the servant had been bearing a sub poena to serve against the MP on behalf of his master, a writ that perhaps related to a suit of uncertain date that the abbot had brought against Pauncefoot in the Chancery, for hindering the monastery’s officers on the manor and sending there some 30 ‘mysruled persons or Walschemen’, arrayed as for war.26 Procs. Chancery Eliz. ed. Caley and Bayley, ii. p. xxix. On 1 July 1450 the Crown ordered the sheriff of Glos. to apprehend Pauncefoot and bring him to the Chancery, to answer for his contempt in not appearing there earlier for ‘certain causes’: KB27/757, rot. 35. On 6 Sept. in the following year, the petition further alleged, Pauncefoot and his followers had apprehended the abbot himself, led him to Hasfield and held him there for several hours until he had paid them 12 marks. In response to abbot’s petition, the Crown issued a writ, dated 6 May 1460, ordering the sheriff of Gloucestershire publicly to proclaim within his bailiwick on two market days that Pauncefoot should appear in King’s bench at the following quindene of St. John the Baptist, but there is no record that he afterwards answered for his actions in that court.27 KB27/796, rex rot. 32. The matter does not feature in the following two plea rolls: KB27/797-8.

Whatever his disorderly involvement in local quarrels, there is no evidence that Pauncefoot participated in the wider conflicts which marred the final years of Henry VI’s reign. Perhaps mindful of his Lancastrian antecedents, he took the precaution of obtaining a royal pardon within a year of Edward IV’s accession.28 C67/45, m. 36 (6 Feb. 1462). He played no part in local government after Edward seized the throne, but this lack of involvement scarcely marked a dramatic change from the previous reign. In any case, he was by no means persona non grata to the new regime, which was to summon him to receive a knighthood at the coronation of Elizabeth Wydeville, an honour he chose to decline. He did however incur one serious setback after 1461, for in mid 1462 he conveyed away Crickhowell to the leading Yorkist Sir William Herbert*, now Lord Herbert. No doubt he had come under pressure to surrender it to Herbert, since it was to comprise part of a new marcher lordship which the King created for his servant just over a year later. It is not known whether he was financially compensated for his loss.29 CCR, 1461-8, p. 149; C.D. Ross, Edw. IV, 77. The loss of Crickhowell had its ironies: Herbert was probably a family connexion of Pauncefoot’s, since he was the brother-in-law of Sir Henry Wogan of Wiston, Pembrokeshire,30 Griffiths, 150. while Wogan had served as a councillor of the Lancastrian Jasper Tudor whom Herbert would supplant as earl of Pembroke.

In the late 1460s or early 1470s, Pauncefoot began a Chancery suit connected with his marriage to Margaret Swynford, then still alive. The evidence for this case is fragmentary since his bill has not survived, but it concerned Hasfield and three other Pauncefoot manors, Leighton and ‘Pesbrugge’ in Herefordshire and Bentley Pauncefoot in Worcestershire. Pauncefoot claimed that the manors’ feoffees, Margaret’s relatives Richard Beauchamp, bishop of Salisbury, and John, Lord Beauchamp of Powick, had refused his request to re-convey them to him. In response, the bishop asserted that Pauncefoot did not enjoy free disposition of the properties in question since they had been set aside to provide Margaret with jointure lands of 40-50 marks p.a.31 C1/44/46-48. It is not known when Margaret died but the visitation evidence records that Pauncefoot survived her and found a new wife in Eleanor Brydges.32 Vis. Glos. 236, 257-8. Possibly the visitations confused the MP with his grandson John Pauncefoot, who appears to have married Eleanor the daughter of Sir Giles Brydges (d.1511): J. Duncumb, Hist. Herefs. (continued by Cooke), ii (1), 99. In another Chancery suit, of the 1470s, Pauncefoot took action against John Arthur, one of the executors of Thomas Mille. According to his bill, he had borrowed £12 from his deceased associate, to whom he had given a bond as a security. He had repaid the loan in full but by then Mille had mislaid the bond, which Arthur had discovered after his death. After obtaining the bond, Arthur used it to sue Pauncefoot in the borough court at Gloucester, the proceedings of which lawsuit the latter now sought to have stayed so that the chancellor could consider the matter.33 C1/64/889.

Like his father, Pauncefoot enjoyed impressive longevity, for he was still alive in the early years of Henry VII’s reign. In this period, the descendants of William Walpole brought actions against him in the Chancery over a manor at Welland, Worcestershire. The plaintiffs claimed that he was wrongfully detaining the property, of which he had been a feoffee in the early 1460s, but he asserted that Walpole had sold it to him.34 CCR, 1461-8, p. 147; C1/82/49; 109/72; VCH Worcs. iii. 555. The records of yet another Chancery suit show that Pauncefoot quarrelled with his son Henry in his latter years. In a bill dating from the late 1480s or early 1490s, he sought the compliance of the feoffees of his manor at Hasfield whom, he complained, Henry had turned against him.35 C1/153/44-46. Still alive at the beginning of 1491, when he conveyed land in the same parish to Christopher Throckmorton, Pauncefoot probably died in early 1494.36 Genealogist, n.s. xxiii. 245-6. On 23 Jan. that year the escheator of Gloucestershire was directed to hold an inquisition post mortem for him,37 CFR, xxii. no. 973. but the record of this inquisition has not survived. His will – assuming that he made one – is likewise no longer extant.