RADEMYLDE, Robert

Robert’s father, who represented Sussex in the Parliaments of 1420 and December 1421, had inherited the family manors of Rodmill-Beverington, Lancing and Albourne, which were worth at least £33 p.a. according to the tax assessments of 1412. Ralph’s standing in the locality was considerably enhanced through his marriage to Margaret Camoys, grand-daughter of Thomas, Lord Camoys, and niece of Robert, 4th Lord Poynings, and when she unexpectedly inherited a portion of the Camoys estates on the death of her brother Hugh in 1426 his income more than doubled. After initial difficulties when the inheritance was disputed by the girls’ uncle Sir Roger Camoys (who called himself Lord Camoys), it was divided more or less equally between Margaret Rademylde and her sister Eleanor, who was married to Roger Lewknor*, the son and heir of Sir Thomas Lewknor* of Horsted Keynes.3 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 167-8. The Rademyldes’ share of an estate consisting of at least 14 manors and other properties principally in Sussex and Oxfordshire but also in Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire, was valued at Ralph’s death at £55 p.a., probably an underestimate.

As the heir to both his parents, Robert was naturally a good catch in the marriage market. A year or so before he died Ralph negotiated an agreement with their influential neighbour James Fiennes, a highly-favoured esquire for the King’s body, for the young man to wed Fiennes’ daughter Emmeline. The terms of the contract included the provision that Fiennes would pay 200 marks as his daughter’s dowry, and that inter alia the groom’s father would settle on her an annuity of ten marks from the Camoys manor of Broadwater. The wedding was postponed while Fiennes was overseas on royal service, so that it had not taken place by the time of Ralph Rademylde’s death on 3 Aug. 1443. However, just three days later Fiennes obtained a royal grant of Robert’s marriage, together with sole custody of his landed inheritance until he should come of age.4 Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Stafford, f. 118; C139/109/34; CFR, xvii. 269-70. Excluded from this grant were the family manors of Beverington and Lancing, which Ralph, who had remarried after Margaret Camoys’ death, had settled on his new wife, Agnes, for term of her life. As a consequence, these never came into Robert’s possession, since he predeceased his stepmother. He was eager to stake his claim to his patrimony. Even before he received seisin of his estates, and while still a minor, he began legal proceedings against the minister of the house of the order of Holy Trinity of Mottenden in Kent regarding conflicting claims to the patronage of the church at Lancing. In suits in the court of common pleas beginning at Hilary term 1446 he successfully recovered the advowson, but in the spring of 1447 a precept was sent for him to appear in the following Trinity term to answer the minister concerning falsity and deception practised in this case, and a jury was to be summoned to testify.5 Bolney Bk. (Suss. Rec. Soc. lxiii), 77-78; C139/163/15; Add. 39376, ff. 38, 39; CP40/740, rot. 324.

Meanwhile, thanks no doubt to the influence of his father-in-law or to that of his wife’s uncle Sir Roger Fiennes*, the treasurer of the royal household, Rademylde had been accepted at court as one of the esquires of the hall and chamber, where he received fees and the King’s livery for at least ten years from the time of his father’s death.6 E101/409/11, 16; 410/1, 3, 6, 9. Among those with whom he was associated in this period was another ‘King’s esquire’, Robert Langton*, the duke of Norfolk’s constable of Bramber castle in Sussex. In June 1447 Langton entrusted him along with other of the duke’s retainers with his goods and chattels.7 CCR, 1447-54, p. 438. Earlier that year Rademylde’s father-in-law had been elevated to the peerage as Lord Saye and Sele, and it was probably on his recommendation that he was appointed sheriff of Surrey and Sussex in November following. Precisely when he attained his majority is uncertain, for it was not until 26 Jan. 1448 (during his shrievalty) that he was granted royal licence to enter the lands of his inheritance without suing livery thereof. Henceforth, he lived either at the former Camoys estate at Broadwater or else at the family manor of Albourne.8 CPR, 1446-52, p. 125; E159/224, brevia Easter rot. 1. The lawsuit regarding the advowson of Lancing still continued, and in Trinity term in order to force Rademylde to appear in court a precept was sent from the common pleas to the coroners of Sussex, since he, being sheriff, could not be expected to serve a writ on himself. Even so, he failed to make an appearance. When proceedings were able to go ahead in the Michaelmas term the judges ruled that his recovery of the right of presentation be annulled owing to the deception he had practised upon them; the Trinitarians were to hold the advowson as before, and Rademylde was to be arrested by the new sheriff.9 CP40/750, rot. 584; 751, rot. 505.

Notwithstanding his youth and this blot on his reputation, Rademylde was returned to Parliament on 30 Jan. 1449. Furthermore, on 28 May, during the second session, he obtained letters under the privy seal exonerating him from paying £40 due from the revenues of Surrey and Sussex on his shrieval account at the Exchequer. It was an easy matter, following the appointment of his father-in-law Lord Saye as treasurer of England, to obtain in the autumn a pardon for an additional 50 marks still owing from his year of office.10 E159/226, brevia Mich. rot. 3. Rademylde’s prospects of rapid advancement were dashed when his father-in-law was killed by Cade’s rebels in July 1450, and his public service for the Crown came to an end.

Naturally enough, Rademylde retained close contact with his wife’s family, and was appointed the administrator of the estate of her mother Emmeline, who died in 1452. His brother-in-law, William Fiennes, the new Lord Saye, had been married in 1448 to Margaret, the only child of William Wykeham* of Broughton castle, Oxfordshire, and Rademylde was made party to a settlement of jointure on the couple. To secure the match Wykeham had given Lord James a bond for 4,000 marks in the statute staple at Westminster, and shortly after Wykeham’s death in 1456 Rademylde (acting as administrator for his late mother-in-law), attempted to enforce payment.11 CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 436; C241/240/6. Perhaps the connexion had also given him some standing in Kent, for at Canterbury on 19 Feb. 1453 he headed the list of attestors to the county elections to Parliament, when John Thornbury* and the duke of Buckingham’s retainer William Hextall* were returned.12 C219/16/2. A few weeks earlier his uncle Roger Lewknor had been singled out to receive the honour of knighthood in the company of the King’s half-brothers, Edmund and Jasper Tudor, who on the same occasion were elevated to the earldoms of Richmond and Pembroke, so it may well have been through Lewknor that Rademylde came into the Tudors’ sphere: on 28 Mar. he stood surety for the two earls at the Exchequer. More unexpectedly, in the following year, on 24 July 1454, he was one of the four men who provided mainprise under a pain of £500 on behalf of Sir William Bonville*, Lord Bonville, to guarantee that Bonville (himself bound in recognizances in £2,000), would keep the peace towards his enemy Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, and appear in Chancery. Bonville promised his mainpernors that he would save them harmless towards the King in respect of their sureties.13 CFR, xix. 30; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 512-13. What these transactions tell us about Rademylde’s political leanings is that he stayed loyal to the Lancastrian regime. On 9 Aug. 1455, following the Yorkist victory at St. Albans, he took out a royal pardon, in which he was described as ‘of Broadwater, Sussex esquire, and formerly of West Malling, Kent’. At the same time his uncle Sir Roger Lewknor did likewise.14 C67/41, m. 32.

In about 1451, Rademylde’s wife had given birth to their son and heir, William, and while he was still an infant Rademylde entered a contract with John Norris* the wealthy esquire for the King’s body for his marriage to one of Norris’s daughters. To secure the match, in March 1454 he placed all his landed holdings in Oxfordshire in the hands of feoffees to hold to Norris’s use. The feoffees, who included several members of the leading gentry of the region, such as (Sir) William Catesby*, (Sir) Edmund Hampden* and Thomas Stonor II*, were evidently nominated by the bride’s father. Yet at some point before 27 Mar. 1457 Rademylde apparently changed his mind about the match. Perhaps the bride had died, or else the lessening of Norris’s influence at court made it politic for him to withdraw from the alliance. For whatever reason, he now granted seisin of his Oxfordshire estates to a different group of feoffees (save for Hampden), headed by Alice de la Pole, the dowager duchess of Suffolk. Most likely it was now intended that his heir should marry the duchess’s daughter.15 Westminster Abbey muns. 9204. For William’s marriage to a da. of the duchess of Suffolk, see VCH Oxon. vii. 11. Clearly by this time the focus of Rademylde’s interests had moved away from the south of England to its centre. At an unknown date in the mid 1450s he had negotiated a fresh partition of the former Camoys estates with his uncle Sir Roger Lewknor and the latter’s eldest son, Thomas. Their new agreement gave him the lion’s share of the holdings in Oxfordshire (full possession of seven manors), in return for relinquishing his moiety of seven manors in Sussex, although he retained all of the Broadwater estate. Whether this was entirely to his advantage is unclear, although according to the inquisitions held after his death his share of the Camoys estates was worth £55 5s. 8d., a sum remarkably close to the valuation made 14 years earlier when his father died.16 C139/163/15.

Rademylde met with a violent death. He was killed (‘interfectus’) at Chalgrove, Oxfordshire, on the night of 22 June 1457.17 Westminster Abbey muns. 9204. Not surprisingly, his affairs were left in some disorder, with an outstanding debt of £100 owed to John Mayneforth a minor household official and Thomas Hayward, gentleman, one of his feoffees, under a statute staple entered into at Westminster.18 C131/70/10. Although the enfeoffments he had made ensured that his young heir William, now aged about six years old, was not taken into royal wardship, the boy’s combined Rademylde and Camoys inheritance was to be lost to the male line before the end of the century, for although William eventually produced four children all of them were bastards and he died without legitimate issue. On his death in 1499 his heirs were found to be his aunts, Margaret and Isabel (wives respectively of John Goring of Burton, Sussex, and Nicholas Lewknor (a half-brother of William’s great-uncle Sir Roger Lewknor). However, in the last few years of his life William had sold certain of his estates, and reached further agreements with the Lewknors, thus increasing still further their share of the former Camoys properties.19 PCC 32 Horne (PROB11/11, f. 253); CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 786; Suss. Feet of Fines (Suss. Rec. Soc. xxiii), 3319; VCH Oxon. vii. 11, 123-4; Suss. N. and Q. 73-74.