POYNTZ, Nicholas

Descended from the Barons Poyntz of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Nicholas pursued a career characterised by service to two magnate families, the Staffords and the Berkeleys. It was from the Staffords, whom Nicholas’s father Robert Poyntz likewise served for many years, that the Poyntzs held their principal manor at Iron Acton. Robert was particularly associated with Anne, the dowager countess of the 5th earl of Stafford. In the early fifteenth century he was steward of her estates, and both he and his second wife Katherine, Nicholas’s mother, were intimate members of her household. Considerably more active in local government than his son and heir, the long-lived Robert also enjoyed a more extensive parliamentary career than his son, since he was twice a knight of the shire for Gloucestershire in Henry V’s reign.10 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 132-3.

The earliest known reference to Nicholas is provided by a deed of February 1411, through which his maternal grandfather, Sir Thomas Fitznichol, arranged for Robert and Katherine Poyntz and their children to succeed to the manor of Hill.11 CPR, 1408-13, p. 271. Perhaps still a minor at this date, Nicholas had married his obscure first wife Margaret by the following July when Robert settled his manor of Elkstone on the couple and the heirs of their bodies.12 CPR, 1408-13, pp. 297-8. Margaret, who did not bear her husband any surviving children, must have died not long afterwards, for it was in association with his second wife Elizabeth Mille that Nicholas received a royal pardon in April 1415.13 C67/37, m. 43. Later that year, Nicholas embarked for France with Sir Walter Hungerford†, a magnate with estates in Gloucestershire. Hungerford and his company fought at the siege of Harfleur and at Agincourt, where they took at least eight French prisoners.14 N.H. Nicolas, Agincourt, 351; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 449. Poyntz returned to France in 1417, this time as a member of the retinue which Sir William Bourgchier†, the third husband of the countess of Stafford, brought on Henry V’s second expedition to France.15 DKR, xliv. 592; E101/51/2.

During the early years of Henry VI’s reign, Poyntz was active at home as one of the executors of his father-in-law, Thomas Mille, and as escheator of Gloucestershire. While escheator, he found time to pursue his own affairs at Westminster. In the spring of 1425 he appeared in person in the court of common pleas to initiate suits for debt against several defendants, among them John Hampton II*, another esquire with links to the Stafford family. All of these actions concerned debts contracted in London, indicating that Poyntz spent time in the City in the earlier part if his career.16 CP40/657, rot. 258d. Possibly he did so in order to pursue a training in the law, a profession in which his son and heir John was certainly a member. A few months after this initial term as escheator expired, he attested the election of the knights of the shire for Gloucestershire to the Parliament of 1426. He himself was returned to his only known Parliament just under five years later, and in the spring of 1434 he and his brother Thomas were among the residents of Gloucestershire who swore the widely administered oath to keep the peace.17 CFR, x. 124; CPR, 1429-36, p. 373. In the following autumn he began a second term as escheator and in August 1436 he was placed on his sole ad hoc commission for the county. He is not known to have played any further part in the administration of Gloucestershire, even after Robert Poyntz’s death in June 1439, a striking lack of involvement given that it is possible that he possessed legal qualifications.

Although already seised of Elkstone (and, perhaps, of lands at Yazor in Herefordshire),18 Feudal Aids, ii. 418. Nicholas did not succeed immediately to his complete inheritance when his father died. Some of the Poyntz estate remained in the hands of his widowed mother – last heard of in 1448 but possibly still alive in the mid 1460s – who enjoyed a life tenancy in the Poyntz manors at Iron Acton and the former Fitznichol manor of Hill. In March 1448, however, Katherine Poyntz surrendered Hill to her son, who had probably also taken control of the Iron Acton manors by June 1452, when he received a royal pardon describing him as ‘of Iron Acton’.19 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 132; CCR, 1435-41, pp. 409-10; CPR, 1446-52, p. 148; C67/40, m. 27. Hill comprised just one part of the Fitznichol estates that Katherine had brought to the Poyntzes, since her share of her father’s lands also included moieties of the manor of Nympsfield and the advowson of a chantry at Kinley, and a share of an annual rent of 18 marks from the manors of Filton and Stoke Henry.20 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 132; CP25(1)/79/89/52. In the event, Robert Poyntz had transferred the Nympsfield and Kinley property to his second son Thomas upon the latter’s marriage in 1432, so providing Thomas with the ‘honest portion’ of lands to which the Tudor antiquary John Leland refers.21 CPR, 1429-36, p. 204; J. Leland, Itin. ed. Toulmin Smith, ii. 13.

It is impossible accurately to estimate Poyntz’s landed income, although no doubt he could comfortably have supported a knighthood, an honour he was to decline in 1458. In all likelihood, he augmented his estates over the years, and it is conceivable that lands he held at Colesbourne and a share of a manor that he held at Winson were properties he had purchased.22 CP25(1)/79/90/94; VCH Glos. vii. 42. He must also have possessed property, and possibly commercial interests, at Bristol. It was ‘of Bristol’ as well as Iron Acton that he received his pardon of June 1452,23 C67/40, m. 27. and there is other evidence of his connexion with the town. In January 1439 he began a lawsuit against John Dygas, a ‘gentleman’ from nearby Shirehampton, and an accomplice, claiming that they had committed an assault against him there.24 KB27/711, rot. 57; 712, rot. 19; CPR, 1436-41, p. 329. Later in the same year, he took action against Richard Clavylde, a merchant from Berkeley, Gloucestershire, over a bond for £200 that Clavylde had entered into with him at the town’s staple.25 C241/228/21; C131/64/12. Furthermore, Poyntz was identified as ‘late of Bristol’ in a lawsuit that one John Danyell brought against him in the mid 1450s. Danyell alleged that Poyntz and John Jewe* had illegally maintained several husbandmen and other lesser men from Gloucestershire in a suit that he had brought against that group in the common pleas.26 CP40/778, rot. 357. Later in the same decade, Poyntz was a feoffee for the Bristol burgess William Canterbury. According to one, admittedly error-strewn, pedigree of the Poyntz family, Canterbury married Alice, one of Poyntz’s daughters; elsewhere, Canterbury’s widow (another Alice) is believed to have married Henry, one of Poyntz’s younger sons.27 Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. xii. 151-2; J. Maclean, Mems. Fam. Poyntz, 59, 95; Bristol Wills (Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. 1886), 139. Finally, another link with the town is provided by Maurice Poyntz of Bristol, who died in 1501 and was probably another of Poyntz’s sons.28 PCC 3 Blamyr (PROB11/13, f. 40v).

If inactive in the administration of Gloucestershire after succeeding his father, Poyntz was kept extremely busy in the service of the Staffords, so perhaps explaining his minor part in local government. As early as 1432, he stood surety for Anne, countess of Stafford, who by 1435 had awarded him an annuity of ten marks, presumably for his counsel.29 CFR, xvi. 83-84; Rawcliffe, 234. He subsequently served her son Humphrey, earl of Stafford and duke of Buckingham, as a councillor and in various other capacities, including that of receiver of the Stafford estates in Gloucestershire, Hampshire and Wiltshire. It was largely thanks to the efforts of Poyntz and another Stafford retainer, Robert Whitgreve*, that the earl recovered Holderness, the Yorkshire lordship which Henry IV had granted to Thomas, duke of Clarence, but which the Countess Anne had claimed as part of her inheritance. In the summer of 1439 Poyntz and Whitgreve were in London pursuing Stafford’s claim in Exchequer chamber and the King’s council, and the successful outcome of their endeavours resulted in an increase in their master’s revenues of over £700 p.a.30 Rawcliffe, 17-18, 47, 223, 234; Household Humphrey, 1st Duke of Buckingham, 50; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 835. Whitgreve was a lawyer and Poyntz’s role in this process, as well as his appointment as one of Stafford’s justices in Brecon, supports the suggestion that he was likewise a member of the legal profession.

A good illustration of the onerous and time-consuming nature of Poyntz’s duties as Stafford’s receiver is his itinerary following the auditing of his accounts at Michaelmas 1439. Immediately after the audit, he was obliged to attend Stafford at Writtle in Essex, where creditors of the recently deceased Countess Anne were seeking payment of her debts and where the earl required his advice about other problems needing prompt attention. Having returned from Writtle to Thornbury, the Stafford manor in Gloucestershire, Poyntz carried out three separate inspections of surrounding farms and manors before touring his entire receivership to collect rents and examine the accounts of subordinates. In the same period he also found time to negotiate with tenants over their entry fines and to supervise elections of officials in local courts.31 Rawcliffe, 47.

It was thanks to his connexion with the Staffords that Poyntz obtained a share of the keeping of the castle and town of Bronllys and other lordships and manors in Brecon, all part of the de Bohun inheritance. The Staffords and the Crown had disputed the ownership to these estates since the partition of the wider inheritance between Henry V and Anne, countess of Stafford, in 1421. The Staffords claimed that they belonged to the lordship of Brecknock, assigned to Anne at the time of the partition; the Crown asserted that they did not, meaning that she should share them with the King. In July 1429 the Crown, with Anne’s consent, committed them to the bishop of Bath and Wells and Sir Roger Aston*, to farm at £73 14¾d. p.a. while the matter was pending,32 CPR, 1422-9, p. 542. as it still was when she died in October 1438. In late 1440 the estates were reassigned to Poyntz and John Abrahall, to hold jointly at the same farm – one half of which they were to pay to the King and the other to the earl of Stafford – until the dispute was resolved.33 CFR, xvii. 179-80; CCR, 1435-41, pp. 410-11; CPR, 1436-41, p. 491. By then Abrahall was already serving as the royally-appointed steward and receiver-general of the estates,34 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 2-4. offices in which Poyntz was now associated with him. Poyntz and Abrahall held them jointly until the latter died in March 1443. In the following December, however, the Crown granted the stewardship to Walter Skulle* to hold during pleasure, only to rescind Skulle’s letters patent by recommitting the office to Poyntz in February 1444, a grant backdated to Abrahall’s death.35 CPR, 1441-6, p. 240. The grant was perhaps in response to a petition about an unknown matter which Poyntz submitted to the Crown in 1444: SC8/190/9472. This new grant proved short-lived, for it was superseded by fresh letters patent issued in Skulle’s favour in the following July.36 CPR, 1441-6, p. 275. As for the farm, it had proved impossible to pay. As a petition Poyntz submitted to the Crown in 1452 pointed out, the lawlessness prevailing in that part of the Welsh borders had prevented him from collecting the issues and profits of the estates in his keeping. The purpose of the petition was to seek relief from the Exchequer’s demands for the farm and all arrears of the same, and the King responded to it by pardoning him all the sums in question.37 E159/229, brevia Mich. rot. 18; E368/225, recorda Hil. rots. 3-4; Rawcliffe, 223.

Although prominent in the Staffords’ service, Poyntz also enjoyed an association with James, Lord Berkeley, another connexion he had inherited from his father, who had witnessed several important enfeoffments on behalf of James’s uncle and predecessor, Thomas, Lord Berkeley. The relationship was not always a smooth one, for in the mid 1430s he pursued two lawsuits against James in the common pleas, for the recovery of debts totalling over £73. In spite of these suits, he made further loans to Berkeley, of £113 in the autumn of 1440 and another 22 marks in about 1448, arrangements that are as much testimony to his own wealth as to that peer’s penury. Berkeley borrowed the latter sum in response to appeals for money from his wife, then in London. Pleading poverty, Lady Berkeley had claimed that, unless he sent her the money, she would have to use her horse as a pledge and walk home from the City. As a security for the loan, Berkeley deposited with Poyntz his gilt mass book, silver chalice, altar cloths and vestments from his private chapel.38 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 133; CP40/702, rot. 342d; Cat. Med. Muns. Berkeley Castle ed. Wells-Furby (Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc.), i. 569-70; Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. iii. 311. Berkeley was not the only person to whom Poyntz lent money, since at some stage – the date is uncertain – the MP lent £9 to the Somerset esquire, John Newton II*, who conveyed lands worth 12 marks p.a. to him as surety for repayment. This arrangement subsequently featured in a bill that Newton, who claimed to have repaid the loan, brought to the Chancery. Newton alleged that Poyntz, exploiting the title he had derived from the enfeoffment, had attempted to extort from him an annuity of 40s. for life, or a lump payment of £20.39 C1/73/8.

Perhaps in return for acting as a creditor for Lord Berkeley, Poyntz gained an interest in parts of the Berkeley estates. First, in the spring of 1440 Berkeley granted to his son Sir William Berkeley and the MP a joint lease for 40 years of his manor of Portbury, Somerset. Sir William surrendered his share of the tenancy to his cousin, John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, and others in 1447 but Poyntz may have retained his interest in Portbury for the rest of his life. Secondly, in November 1440 Berkeley made a grant to Poyntz and his wife of several properties in Gloucestershire: the manor of Daglingworth, a moiety of the manor of Brokenborough in Almondsbury and the advowson of a chantry, also in Almondsbury. Finally, he assigned the Gloucestershire manor of Little Marshfield to the couple in early 1441. As it happened, the grant of November 1440 contradicted an earlier settlement, witnessed by Poyntz himself, by which Berkeley had assigned Daglingworth and Brokenborough to feoffees, so that after his death they might use them to pay off his debts before settling them to his younger sons. In practice it would appear that Poyntz retained them until his death, after which Berkeley, who survived him, again treated them as his own. This was not the end of the matter, for Berkeley’s grants to the MP were to cause a dispute between their respective descendants several decades later.40 Cat. Med. Muns. Berkeley Castle, i. pp. xlvii, 531, 473; ii. 660-2; CP25(1)/79/90/87, 88; CPR, 1485-94, p. 433.

Among the Berkeley feoffees of Daglingworth and Brokenborough was Lord Berkeley’s cousin Sir Maurice Berkeley II*. Sir Maurice likewise acted in the same capacity for Poyntz, as did the lawyer John Andrew I*. In turn, Poyntz was regularly a feoffee and witness on behalf of his fellow gentry in Gloucestershire, and on one occasion he acted as a surety for John Cassy*. It was as a feoffee that he came in the 1430s to have an interest in the manor of Dymock, formerly the property of Richard Ruyhale†. Poyntz and his co-feoffees, who included the countess of Stafford’s son, Henry Bourgchier, count of Eu, took possession of Dymock from John Merbury*, whose stepson had married Ruyhale’s widow. Apparently it was intended they should sell it, but there followed several long and complicated lawsuits which were not finally resolved until 1438. Poyntz retained a connexion with Dymock after this date, since a decade later he was involved in settling the manor on Sir Walter Devereux I* and his wife Elizabeth, Merbury’s eldest daughter.41 Cat. Med. Muns. Berkeley Castle, i. 396-7, 473; ii. 660-2; CP25(1)/79/90/87; 91/113; KB27/778, rot. 53d; 730, rex rot. 31; CCR, 1422-9, p. 400; 1435-41, pp. 100-1; 1441-7, p. 56; 1454-61, pp. 82, 134, 172; Bristol RO, Ashton Court mss, AC/D/6/48; Glos. Archs., Hale mss, D1086/T2/9; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 141, 281-2; 1436-41, p. 159; 1446-52, p. 131; CFR, xvi. 148; E159/209, brevia Trin. rot. 8; 210, brevia Easter rot. 17, Trin. rot. 1d; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 718-19; iv. 27, 845.

In the latter part of his life Poyntz was busy with settlements of his own. In June 1456 he confirmed certain arrangements made nearly six years earlier for the benefit of the children of his third marriage, by having a will for his lands enrolled on the dorse of the close rolls. The will divided the properties which James, Lord Berkeley, had given to him in November 1440 between his sons Maurice and Nicholas, with contingent remainders to their siblings should neither of them produce any sons.42 CCR, 1454-61, p. 134. A few months after the will’s enrolment, Poyntz had the manor and advowson of Elkstone settled in tail-male on Humphrey, his younger son by his previous marriage, and he formally acknowledged the title of his brother Thomas to the Poyntz moiety of the manor of Nympsfield in mid 1457.43 CP25(1)/79/92/135, 136; CPR, 1452-61, p. 357. By then an old man, he lived until the late summer or early autumn of 1460.44 CFR, xix. 282; xix. 293. He was survived by his third wife, whom he had appointed an executor of his no longer extant last will,45 CP40/838, rot. 341. and succeeded by his son John.46 CCR, 1454-61, p. 465; C67/45, m. 37.

A lawyer, John had gained the favour of (Sir) John Fortescue*, Henry VI’s last chief justice of the court of King’s bench, receiving licence, at Fortescue’s special request, to dine in Lincoln’s Inn whenever the judge himself was present.47 L. Inn Black Bks. i. 15. Escheator of Gloucestershire in 1448-9, he died before 13 Dec. 1466, leaving as his heir his son, Robert, then a minor.48 CFR, xviii. 103; xx. 177, 190, 291; Genealogist, n.s. xxv. 87; CCR, 1461-8, p. 429. Robert Poyntz married Margaret, an illegitimate daughter of Anthony Wydeville, Earl Rivers, and so the niece of Queen Elizabeth Wydeville, and both his younger son, John†, and his nephew, Sir Nicholas†, would sit in the Commons in the sixteenth century.49 The Commons 1509-58, iii. 147-9. The late MP’s widow did not formally receive a dower interest in the Poyntz estates until 1470, after the Crown had extracted an oath from her not to remarry without the King’s consent.50 CCR, 1468-76, nos. 215, 575. In the following year Elizabeth, in her capacity as Poyntz’s executrix, sued the abbot of St. Augustine, Bristol, for £40.51 CP40/838, rot. 341.