PECCHE, Sir William

The Pecche family had made its fortune in the fourteenth century as merchants in London. William’s great-grandfather, John†, a member of the politically powerful Fishmongers’ Company, had been mayor in 1361-2 and represented the city in Parliament on four occasions between 1361 and 1372, before being impeached in the Good Parliament of 1376 for profiteering from the monopoly of the sale of sweet wines in the capital. This did no lasting harm to his descendants, even though the reversal of the judgement against him in the final Parliament of Edward III’s reign did not lead to his re-admission to the freedom of London. John accumulated landed estates scattered through half a dozen counties, and by acquiring the valuable manor of Lullingstone in Kent established his family among the county gentry. His son Sir William Pecche† sat as a knight of the shire in two Parliaments, after training for the profession of arms. He expanded the family’s lands through marriage to the elder of the two daughters and coheirs of the prosperous London grocer John Hadley†, who when Sir William died in Calais in 1399 took on the guardianship of his ten-year-old son John.11 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 32-33. Early in 1410 the latter fell coheir to the Hadley estates, following the deaths of his grandfather and mother within a few weeks of one another.12 Ibid. iii. 260-3; CIPM, xix. 723-7, 753. John became a landowner of substance, taxed in 1436 on an income of £115 p.a. from his holdings in Kent, Cambridgeshire, East Anglia, Middlesex and London, his combined paternal and maternal inheritances. Pricked as sheriff of Kent in 1430, he served on several royal commissions there and was knighted, perhaps while engaged in the war across the Channel.13 E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14 (iv). Sir John made his will in 1439 and died shortly afterwards.14 Archaeologia Cantiana, xvi. 228-30.

It is not known how old William was when his father died, but he had certainly attained his majority by May 1446. In that month the juries empanelled to sit on the inquisitions post mortem of Katherine, the wife of Sir William Wolf*, returned that William, her great-nephew, was her heir and aged at least 21 years. Because Katherine (the sister of Pecche’s grandmother Joan Hadley), had died childless, her share of the Hadley estates, comprised of several properties in London and Middlesex and – even more important – the manor and advowson of Hintlesham in Suffolk, now passed to Pecche, thus reuniting the Hadley inheritance. In July the escheator of Suffolk was ordered to deliver seisin to the heir, who took possession of Hintlesham before May the following year.15 CIPM, xxvi. 419-21; CFR, xviii. 21-22; CPR, 1446-52, p. 53. Yet William’s tenure soon met with a challenge from Sir William Wolf. Bad feelings between the Pecches and Wolf went back several years: Sir John Pecche had quarrelled with Wolf and his wife over the former Hadley manor at Mile End, outside London, only to be forced to accept that the couple would both retain interests in the manor for term of their lives. Nor was Wolf inclined to give up Hintlesham. A certain Henry Parker, probably acting in the interests of Katherine’s widower, laid claim to this estate and other properties in Suffolk, prompting William Pecche to bring an action of novel disseisin against him in the spring of 1448, and in pleadings heard in the court of common pleas in the following Michaelmas term he alleged that Wolf, along with the parson of Nacton, Suffolk, and another local man had illegally maintained Parker in the assize. The suit remained unresolved until 1451, perhaps only ending with Wolf’s death. Meanwhile, in January 1449 Pecche had sued for a royal licence to settle Hintlesham on an important group of feoffees, led by the chief justice (Sir) John Fortescue*, the King’s carver Sir Edmund Hungerford* and the queen’s carver Sir Edward Hull* and including several prominent London merchants and lawyers.16 C66/466, m. 38d; CP40/751, rot. 438; CPR, 1446-52, p. 221; 1452-61, pp. 377-8. The purpose of the enfeoffment is not readily apparent, but five years later the surviving feoffees conveyed the estate at Hintlesham to another group to hold to the use of John Timperley I*, so it would seem that this was in the nature of a sale.17 KB27/774, rot. 49d; CPR, 1452-61, p. 150.

If this was the case, then the choice of feoffees in 1449 may not be a reflection of Pecche’s personal connexions. He himself did not figure as a member of the royal establishment. Furthermore, there is no sign that he was ever associated with the unpopular treasurer James Fiennes*, Lord Saye and Sele, who dominated Kentish society. The knighthood he received at some point in 1449 or 1450, may be attributed to military service in Normandy, but if he did join the English armies across the Channel it was only to share in their defeat. Pecche’s precise whereabouts during Cade’s rising in Kent in the summer of 1450 are not known, although he was expected to be in the county in August that year, when he was appointed as one of the commissioners to assess the subsidy on land and fees granted in the parliamentary session at Leicester, which ended when news of the rebellion reached the King. At Rochester on 5 Oct. Pecche was elected as a knight of the shire for Kent to the next Parliament, summoned to meet on 6 Nov. Three weeks into the first session, on 29 Nov., he joined three other MPs, (Sir) Walter Devereux I*, Sir Edmund Mulsho* and Thomas Uvedale*, in entering recognizances in £200 to guarantee the appearance of another member of the Commons, Robert Poynings* (then sitting for Sussex), before the King and Lords in the Parliament chamber on 7 Dec. Poynings had been seriously implicated in Cade’s rising, allegedly acting as Cade’s lieutenant, yet his actions in the summer of 1450 probably stemmed from a continuation of his battle to recover the Poynings estates in Kent from members of the affinity of Fiennes. It may well be that Pecche sympathized with him in this regard, and he may have had other motivations as well. Both Devereux and Mulsho were closely affiliated with Richard, duke of York, who, recently returned from Ireland, now challenged the authority of the King’s counsellors, in particular Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset.18 CCR, 1447-54, p. 238. It is tempting, in hindsight, to identify Pecche too with the political reforms demanded by Cade’s rebels and the disaffected York.

Yet not until 1452 did Pecche’s Yorkist sympathies, seemingly unsuspected by the government, emerge into the open. On 17 Feb. that year he was among the Kentish gentlemen named on a commission of array to resist York’s forces then marching towards Dartford to confront those of the duke of Somerset, yet rather than leading his men to support the Crown he himself joined York’s army, or so it was later alleged. Following the debacle at Dartford, Pecche purchased a pardon on 6 Apr., but in September he was indicted before Somerset and his fellow commissioners of oyer and terminer on charges that on 1 Mar. on the ‘Sandhille’ he had stood arrayed for war in support of York’s treasonable purposes.19 C67/40, m. 33; KB9/955/2, mm. 2, 3. Whether his actions may be put down to the impetuosity of youth or a previous commitment to the Yorkist cause is unclear, but Pecche’s indictment was not immediately called into the King’s bench and he ingratiated himself with the Lancastrian regime by contracting in July 1453 to serve in Gascony under John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury. The following month his company, a large retinue of 19 men-at-arms and 300 archers, along with those of his fellow Kentishmen William Fiennes, Lord Saye and Sele, and Sir Richard Frogenhale, mustered at Barham Down, but if they did set sail for France they arrived too late as Talbot had already been defeated and killed at Castillon on 17 July.20 E403/793, mm. 16, 18; CPR, 1452-61, p. 124. Frogenhale did see service in 1453 as he was captured and held to ransom, but it is not clear whether this was as part of the same force as Pecche joined: SC8/85/4217.

It is not known whether Pecche was present at the first battle of St. Albans on 22 May 1455, but on 20 Feb. the following year he purchased another general pardon for offences committed before the previous July. It was this pardon that he pleaded when his indictment for supporting York at Dartford was called into the King’s bench in Easter term 1457. Accordingly, he was permitted to go sine die.21 C67/41, m. 9; KB27/784, rex rot. 5. Even so, a possible confirmation of Pecche’s political sympathies in this period is provided by another indictment, relating to an alleged theft of his goods from a property in Fulham in September 1454, for among the stolen pieces of silverware and cloth were several gowns in York’s livery colours of blue and murray.22 KB9/275/22. Whatever Sir William’s political affiliations, his local standing survived the end of York’s first protectorate. In June 1456 he was one of only two knights in Kent named in a letter instructing the local gentry to be attendant upon the justices of oyer and terminer at Maidstone in the wake of John Percy’s abortive rebellion.23 PPC, vi. 288.

At some point in the 1450s Pecche married Isabel, widow of William Tresham, the Speaker in four Parliaments who had been murdered in September 1450. She may well have come to his notice during his time in the Parliament which met shortly afterwards, for her petition for justice against her husband’s killers had been formally presented there. The match had certainly taken place by February 1459 when Pecche settled property in Stepney and elsewhere in Middlesex on a group of feoffees including his stepson Thomas Tresham* and his new wife’s brother, William Vaux*, to provide Isabel with jointure. The marriage brought to him her dower in Northamptonshire, worth at least £35 p.a.24 CAD, vi. C4128; C145/328/5; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 430-1.

The arrangements for his marriage to Isabel, who must have been considerably older than her new husband, are obscure, but it provided him with useful connexions at the Lancastrian court, as both Tresham and Vaux were firmly committed to Henry VI at this time. In January 1460 Pecche was named on the commission of array in Kent designed to resist the Yorkist lords after their successful raid on Sandwich, and he was appointed to a similar commission the following month. Nevertheless, his sympathies lay with the exiles. On 26 June the earls of Warwick and March and Lord Fauconberg landed again at Sandwich and on this occasion marched on London. According to a seventeenth-century history of the Cobham family, Pecche joined them as they rode through Kent,25 Add. 12514, f. 64. and it may be assumed that he was present at the Yorkist victory at Northampton on 10 July. Although his whereabouts in the following winter are not documented, in all likelihood in February 1461 he was either in the force commanded by the earl of March (now duke of York) at the battle of Mortimer’s Cross, or else accompanied his Kentish colleague, Robert Horne*, to St. Albans, to share in Warwick’s defeat. Horne was slain at Towton the following month, and it may well be that Pecche took the field there too, only his was a different fate. The rewards heaped upon him in the first months of Edward IV’s reign indicate that he had emerged as one of the new King’s most trusted servants. Assigned a prominent place at Edward’s court as one of a select group of four carvers, as such he received robes for his ceremonial role at the coronation in June, and in October he was granted an annuity of £40 from the issues of Kent in recognition of his new status.26 E361/6, rot. 54d; E101/411/13, f. 36; 411/15, f. 22v; 412/2, f. 36; CPR, 1461-7, p. 51.

Meanwhile, in July 1461 Pecche had been appointed to the first Yorkist commission of the peace in Kent and given the office of collector of ‘sandgelt’ in the lordships of Marke and Oye across the Channel in the march of Calais. The office, which on the following 15 Dec. was granted to him for life, promised to be lucrative for it allowed him to charge 7d. on every cart entering Calais from the lordships.27 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 90, 130; C76/145, m. 31. That November he was pricked as sheriff of Kent, and then, most unusually, in September the following year he was formally granted the shrievalty along with custody of Canterbury castle with an annual fee of £40, until such a time as lands to the same value should be awarded to him in tail male.28 CPR, 1461-7, p. 210. This break with the established order, whereby sheriffs were replaced every year, indicates not only that Kent remained unsettled, but that Pecche was deemed to be the best person to enforce royal rule, standing alongside Sir John Scott† and Sir John Fogg† as leading members of the Yorkist affinity in the county. Nevertheless, he was not infrequently called away from his official duties. In the summer of 1462 he sailed to Calais with an armed force to resist a rumoured attack from the French at the request of Queen Margaret,29 E403/827A, m. 1. and by that December he had ridden to the north of England, to serve with the earl of Warwick in reducing the Lancastrian strongholds in Northumberland. Sir John Paston† wrote to his brother explaining how he and Pecche had been commanded by the young duke of Norfolk to take victuals and munitions to Warwick at Warkworth.30 Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, iv. 60. Following his return to Kent and his long-overdue replacement as sheriff, Pecche was among those ordered by the King to arrest felons in the county, with the result that early in March 1464 some of those implicated in the murder of William Isle* came together at Chelsfield intending to kill him.31 KB9/50/12, 26.

During the 1450s Pecche’s involvement in the affairs of other members of gentry society in Kent had sometimes led to litigation in the court of Chancery, as when the son and heir of the late John Warner* alleged that he and his co-feoffees were unjustly refusing to deliver seisin of his inheritance; and similarly the cousin and heir of John Chipstead claimed that he had failed in his duty as a trustee of the manor of Chipstead.32 C1/28/155; 33/309. Later, in 1464 he joined Sir Robert Harcourt* as a trustee of lands in Essex on behalf of William Fowler, one of the earl of Warwick’s retainers,33 CCR, 1461-8, p. 366. and his interests in London led to participation in the transactions of the citizens. Pecche petitioned the chancellor in the early 1460s regarding his inability to execute of the will of John Wrythale, a neighbour from Lullingstone who had required him to sell a tavern called Le Egle in West Cheap, as Wrythale’s feoffees had refused to release it to him. Evidently successful in his suit, for a while Sir William made the property his London home, where he could entertain fellow courtiers such as (Sir) John Howard*, although in 1473 (perhaps because of his commitments in Calais), he quitclaimed his interest in the tavern to two lawyers.34 C1/38/268; CCR, 1468-76, no. 1446; Howard Household Bks. ed. Crawford, i. 570. Other petitions to the chancellor show a less pleasant side to Pecche’s character. In one it was alleged that he had maliciously caused the imprisonment of Thomas Bayly, a tenant of Cecily, duchess of York, on suspicion of felony,35 C1/29/301. while another protested against the influence he might exert to pervert justice. Thomas Waren, a London armourer, complained that Sir William had brought a false action of trespass against him in order to avoid paying a debt, wrongly accusing him of breaking into Pecche’s residence at Lullingstone and stealing his goods, in particular ‘an helmet garnysshed with precious stonys and perles set in silver to the value of xl li’. Waren feared that he would be unable to ‘resist the myght of the said Sir William’, who would pack the jury with his friends and neighbours, ‘entendyng to have your said oratour condempned’.36 C1/45/291. An increasing number of suits against him, coupled with the need to counter the tenacity of Exchequer officials pursuing him for his failures as sheriff, led Pecche to purchase a pardon of all his offences on 3 Feb. 1466. This was duly presented at the Exchequer by his attorney.37 CPR, 1461-7, p. 423; E159/240, Mich. fines rot. 10.

Any involvement that Pecche may have had in the turbulent events of 1470, which saw Edward IV forced to flee to the Low Countries and Henry VI recover the throne, has not been discovered. He was not placed on the two commissions for the peace issued in Henry VI’s name in December 1470 and in January the following year, which saw the removal of the leading Yorkist figures in Kent society: Scott, Fogg, Thomas Vaughan* and Sir William Haute were similarly treated. Pecche, who did not accompany Edward into exile, sued out a general pardon from the Readeption regime on 4 Feb. 1471, but remained a committed supporter of the exiled King, and it is likely that on Edward’s return he fought for him at Barnet on 14 Apr. Four days later he was named on a commission of array, and together with the men he raised he helped defend the Tower of London against the forces of the Bastard of Fauconberg. Shortly afterwards, along with Sir Thomas Bourgchier, he was sent into Kent to hold special judicial sessions to try Fauconberg’s followers. He conducted these in his capacity as a j.p., after being named on the new Yorkist commission of the peace on 27 June.38 E403/844, mm. 7, 10; E405/53, rot. 4d.

Before long, Pecche’s main focus shifted to Calais. The appointment of the King’s chamberlain, William, Lord Hastings, as lieutenant there in July 1471 ensured that Household men would form the backbone of the military administration of the town and marches. Pecche, whose role as one of the King’s carvers meant that he must have known Hastings well, now took up near-permanent residence across the Channel.39 D. Grummitt, ‘William, Lord Hastings’, in Social Attitudes and Political Structures ed. Thornton, 154-7. On 11 Nov. he received letters of protection for going overseas in Hastings’s retinue and a year later he was among those members of the council at Calais appointed to hear an appeal concerning a judgement in the mayor’s court.40 C76/155, m. 15; 156, m. 8. He was also called upon to receive important visitors to the stronghold: in September 1472, along with other members of the council, he entertained Louis of Bruges, lord of Gruthuyse, prior to his visit to England.41 C.L. Kingsford, English Historical Literature, 384. Pecche retired from his post in Calais at some point after 1474, although it was not until November 1480 that he severed his ties there by surrendering the patent granting him the right to collect ‘sandgelt’ in the outlying lordships.42 C76/164, m. 4. The date of his second marriage is uncertain, but it may have taken place in the mid 1470s. Anne, the widow of the Kentish esquire Ralph St. Leger and of John Ellingbridge, who died in 1473, brought him further landed holdings in Kent and Surrey, including the manor of Chaldon and other parts of Ellingbridge’s estate.43 Archaeologia Cantiana, xvi. 230-1; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 467, 1137.

Edward IV’s death in 1483 saw the end of Pecche’s long service in the royal household, yet when the duke of Buckingham rebelled against Richard III that autumn he took an active part in defending the new King’s interests in Kent. While the King was in Lincoln preparing to march against a rising organized by Buckingham in Wales, Sir William assisted his friend and former colleague Sir John Howard (whom Richard had elevated as duke of Norfolk), in taking immediate action to contain the trouble in the south-east. On 10 Oct. Howard instructed Pecche to lead an advance party into Kent to resist the rebels.44 Howard Household Bks. i. 153, ii. 470. What happened to this force is unclear; the records of the city of Canterbury suggest that it was John Brooke, Lord Cobham, rather than Pecche, who mobilized the county on behalf of the King.45 Canterbury Cath. Archs., Canterbury city recs., chamberlains’ accts. 1483-99, CCA-CC-F/A/7, ff. 4v, 10-11. Richard III renewed Pecche’s annuity of £40 on 4 Apr. 1484, and evidence of his high standing in the eyes of the Ricardian regime may be found in the marriage arranged between his son and heir, John, and Elizabeth, the niece of one of the King’s closest supporters John, Lord Scrope of Bolton.46 Vis. Yorks. (Harl. Soc. xvi), 280. Pecche sank into obscurity on the accession of Henry VII and took no further part in local administration.

Pecche made his will, ‘lying on my dede bed’, on 8 Apr. 1488, and asking to be buried in his parish church at Lullingstone. Provision for his soul only extended as far as the payment of his debts, a hope that his executor would make amends for ‘all iniuryes and wrongis doon by me’ and the instruction that the remainder of his goods and chattels be disposed of and the proceeds distributed in alms. Sir William provided 100 marks for the marriage of his daughter, Elizabeth, and instructed his feoffees to deliver seisin of the manor of Lullingstone, as well as his property in London and Surrey, to his son, heir and executor, John.47 PCC 12 Milles (PROB11/8, f. 99v). According to the jurors at the inquisition post mortem held in Kent on 24 July 1489 he died the following day. They failed to report on the full extent of Sir William’s landed holdings, referring merely to three manors, worth no more than £8 10s. a year, although a London jury found, probably more accurately, that his property spread over nine city parishes was worth £70 10s. p.a.48 CIPM Hen VII, i. 482, 485. Both juries returned that his heir, John, was aged ‘17 years or more’ at the time of Sir William’s death, indicating that he was still a minor and suggesting that there had been an attempt to conceal his wardship from the Crown. In any case, John cannot have been the son of Sir William’s first wife, Isabel Tresham, who must have been past child-bearing age when they married in the 1450s, and she was still alive in 1468; and even if Sir William married his second wife, Anne, very soon after the death of her previous husband Ellingbridge in 1473 their child could have been no older than 15 when he died.

John Pecche emerged as one of the leading figures in early Tudor Kent and a prominent member of Henry VII’s court. In 1494 he was lauded for his prowess in the jousts held at Westminster in his role as one of the King’s challengers alongside the earls of Suffolk and Essex. Appointment as sheriff of Kent followed the same year, as such he resisted Perkin Warbeck’s landing in the county in 1495, and two years later he was knighted at the battle of Blackheath. Pecche served Henry VIII both in a military capacity and at court only to die, childless, in Ireland in 1522.49 Archaeologia Cantiana, xvi. 232-8; LP Ric. III and Hen. VII ed. Gairdner, i. 394-400.