REDE, Edmund

In spite of living in turbulent times, Rede appears to have enjoyed a career of untroubled prosperity. Although he joined Henry VI’s Household, there is no evidence that he participated in the civil conflicts of the period and he died at an advanced age. He was from a family of recently acquired wealth and status, since the Redes were of no consequence before the days of his grandfather John Rede. A self-made man and lawyer of some distinction who rose to the rank of serjeant-at-law, John sat for Oxfordshire in two of Richard II’s Parliaments. Having come into a quarter share of the manor of Checkendon and Stoke Marmion in that county through his marriage, he used his legal earnings to purchase two other manors there, Standhill in the parish of Pyrton and Gatehampton in that of Goring. He was succeeded by his son Edmund, the MP’s father.14 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 180-1. Perhaps another lawyer,15 In his latter years he was a member of the quorum as a j.p. for Oxon. the elder Edmund Rede served as a j.p. in Oxfordshire from October 1413 until his death, as a member of various ad hoc commissions, and as escheator in Oxfordshire and Berkshire from November 1428 to February 1430. His was a relatively undistinguished career but in 1412 he made an extremely advantageous marriage to Christine, daughter of the wealthy and influential Robert James and a kinswoman of the de la Pole family. It is assumed that the marriage drew the Redes into the powerful political nexus headed successively by James’s friend, Thomas Chaucer*, and Chaucer’s son-in-law, William de la Pole, earl and later duke of Suffolk,16 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 337. although there is no evidence that the MP was regularly associated with the de la Poles before the 1460s.

Some 16 years after the Rede-James match, Robert James settled his manors of Clapcot and Rush Court in Wallingford, Berkshire, on his daughter (by then his only surviving heir) and her husband, in return for an annual pension of 50 marks.17 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 488. As it happened, Robert survived until February 1432, so outliving his son-in-law. Christine, who died three years later, never acquired complete control over her inheritance because she predeceased her stepmother Maud, who retained a dower interest in these estates. It was following Maud’s death in August 1437 that the younger Edmund Rede, by then already in possession of those parts of the James lands not in her hands, as well as the considerably less significant Rede holdings, came fully into his own.18 CIPM, xxiii. 638-40; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 144, 147-8; Boarstall Cart. 165-6, 167; CFR, xvi. 301. Presumably it was in acknowledgement of his good fortune in succeeding to the James estates that Edmund made arrangements in the following February to have his maternal grandparents and great-grandparents commemorated in the daily masses held at the Oxfordshire abbey of Dorchester.19 Boarstall Cart. 221. Apart from Clapcot and Rush Court, the substantial James inheritance included the manors of Boarstall, which he was to adopt as his principal residence, and Oakley in Buckinghamshire; others at Headington, Piddington, Benson and Adwell in Oxfordshire; and the bailiwick of the royal forests of Bernwood, Shotover and Stowood.20 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 486, 487; CIPM, xxiii. 638-40. He soon disposed of Adwell by means of an exchange (agreed in February 1438) with Richard Marmyon of Checkendon, to whom he was related through his maternal grandmother, Cecily Rede. In return for Adwell, Marmyon conveyed away his half share of the manor of Checkendon and Stoke Marmion to Rede. At some unknown date, Rede also obtained the quarter share which Cecily’s sister Margaret had held in the same manor, meaning that he came to possess the whole of that property.21 Oxon. RO, Marmion mss, III/i/1; Boarstall Cart. 2-3, 7, 33. In 1449 he extended his rights of lordship in Boarstall by acquiring the privilege of nominating chaplains to the church there from the prior of St. Frideswide, Oxford.22 VCH Oxon. vi. 317; C1/222/113; Boarstall Cart. 185; VCH Bucks. iv. 14.

In subsequent years Rede engaged in numerous further property transactions. In February 1453 he and others acquired the farm of properties at Deddington near Banbury from the Crown,23 CFR, xix. 28. and in the following month he agreed a minor exchange of lands and rents with the prior of Wallingford. As part of this arrangement, he was assigned a rent from a garden in the town then in the tenure of John Warfield. He and Warfield (son of John Warfield*) were no strangers, for earlier in the same decade they had quarrelled over other properties in Wallingford.24 Boarstall Cart. 274, 278. Rede must have enjoyed a good long-term relationship with Wallingford priory, for he assigned to it a 99-year lease of his manors of Rush Court and Clapcot in 1465, in return for a rent of 40 marks p.a. In the same period, or perhaps during the first half of the 1470s, he acquired the right to present to the priory’s rectory of Garsington, by grant of its mother house, the great Benedictine abbey at St. Albans.25 Med. Archs. Christ Church (Oxf. Historical Soc. xcii), 145; Reg. Whethamstede ed. Riley, ii. 198. In spite of the long lease he made to the priory in 1465, Rede appears to have remained active in Wallingford in subsequent years, since he secured a small plot of land there from the corporation of that town over a decade later.26 Berks. RO, Wallingford recs., deeds W/T TLa 18. Rede also augmented his estates through a process of piecemeal accumulation of lands in Boarstall, Checkendon and Standhill, and by purchasing a manor at Stoke Lyne, Oxfordshire, a transaction completed in 1471.27 Boarstall Cart. 130-1, 133-4, 136-7, 144-5, 147, 150, 152-3, 292; VCH Oxon. vi. 317; C1/222/113. According to his inquisitions post mortem, his estates were worth £68 12s. p.a. at the end of his life, but this is almost certainly a very considerable underestimate. In any case, several of his manors do not feature in the inquisitions, even though they were still in his hands when he died.28 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 465-7.

There is no evidence that Rede gained any lands from his first wife, whom he married shortly before attaining his majority, but the match was a success in so far as Agnes was to bear him several sons. The daughter of the lawyer John Cottesmore, she was several years younger than Rede, for she was still a minor at the beginning of 1438.29 Marmion mss, III/i/1. A resident of Oxfordshire, Cottesmore had been an associate of Rede’s father, with whom he had served on several commissions in that county and Berkshire. He was also the son-in-law of William Bruley, a feoffee and associate of Rede’s grandfather Robert James. Rede was appointed one of the administrators of Cottesmore’s estate after his father-in-law died intestate in August 1439, just eight months after becoming chief justice of the court of common pleas. In the following October the Crown directed him and his fellow administrators to deliver the late chief justice’s seal of office and various documents belonging to the common pleas to his successor, Richard Newton.30 Oxf. DNB, ‘Cottesmore, John’; CPR, 1416-22, p. 140; 1422-9, pp. 221, 495; 1429-36, pp. 70, 72-73; CCR, 1413-19, pp. 512, 522; 1435-41, pp. 294-5; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 395.

By now Rede had already begun a career in local government, for he had become sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire in the autumn of 1438. Given his relative youth and lack of administrative experience, his appointment must have owed much to his wealth and connexions. It is possible that he was already a Household man at this date since he was certainly an esquire of the hall and chamber by 1441, a position he still held in 1452.31 E101/409/9, 11, 16; 410/1, 3, 6, 9. Shortly after his term as sheriff had expired, he was appointed a j.p. in Buckinghamshire and he was pricked for the shrievalty of that county and Bedfordshire in 1442. He was to remain almost continuously on the bench in Buckinghamshire for most of the rest of his life, even though he sought a respite from the burdens of public administration in 1447. In July that year he acquired letters of exemption from office-holding,32 CPR, 1446-52, p. 81. possibly because he was particularly occupied with his Household duties at that time.

When Rede was returned to Parliament as a knight of the shire for Oxfordshire just over three years later, it was in unfavourable circumstances for the Household. After the Parliament was called, Richard, duke of York, who had assumed the role of the chief opponent of the government and Court, played an active role in securing the return of his supporters to the Commons, which contained fewer Household men than in previous Parliaments and in which his chamberlain, Sir William Oldhall*, served as Speaker.33 PROME, xii. 159-71. Nevertheless, Rede was easily of sufficient means to stand for election on his own account rather than solely as a King’s servant. In his capacity as a substantial landowner, who was not infrequently called upon to act as a witness or feoffee on behalf of his fellow gentry in Oxfordshire and elsewhere during his long career,34 CCR, 1447-54, p. 507; 1461-8, pp. 92, 143, 379; 1476-85, nos. 1326, 1401; CPR, 1471-2, pp. 471-2; C1/34/82-83; 150/74; Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Charlgrove deeds, 2b, 22b, 24a; CP25(1)/191/28/47; 29/6; VCH Bucks. ii. 363; VCH Berks. iii. 282; Northants. RO, Fitzwilliam (Milton) Chs. 684-5. he could reasonably have expected to garner considerable support from the electorate of the county. It is likewise unclear whether his fellow knight of the shire, Sir Robert Harcourt*, stood for election as a candidate backed by the Crown. Although associated with the Court in this period, Harcourt was also then embroiled in a serious feud with the Staffords of Grafton. Quite possibly, he felt impelled to seek a seat because his enemy, Humphrey Stafford III*, was standing for election in Worcestershire. During the Parliament, the Commons petitioned for the permanent removal of various courtiers and other royal servants from the King’s presence,35 PROME, xii. 184-6. but Rede was never sufficiently identified with the Court to incur such condemnation. In contrast to more prominent Household men, there is no evidence that he had exploited the King’s misguided largesse in order to enrich himself, although he does appear temporarily to have fallen under a cloud in the spring of 1454. On 16 Apr. that year he and several sureties, including Richard Quatermayns*, entered substantial recognizances (he for £400 and each of his sureties for £200) for his appearance in Chancery on the following 8 May, although for what reason is unrecorded. He duly appeared and was dismissed sine die. Occurring shortly after the duke of York had assumed the protectorate of the realm in the spring of 1454, this episode did not, however, necessarily have any political connotations, and its timing could have been entirely coincidental.36 C244/76/21.

It is unlikely that Rede’s appointment to a second term as sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire within a month of the opening of the Parliament of 1450 was controversial, even if combining the office with that of a knight of the shire breached the spirit of a parliamentary ordinance of 1372.37 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 179-80. A year after completing his term, he received a general pardon apparently unconnected with his time in the shrievalty.38 C67/40, m. 13. His final appointment as sheriff was made in 1460, although he also performed some of the duties of that office in the mid 1450s. In November 1454 he and John Pulter were tasked with collecting what they could of the issues of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, which had gone without a sheriff in 1453-4.39 CPR, 1452-61, p. 203. The unfilled vacancy arose from the government’s failure to find a successor for Robert Olney*, sheriff in 1452-3, who had endured such difficulties while in office that no one would succeed him after his term had expired. Olney laid most of the blame for his problems on the quarrels of various lords and other notable men, since these had prevented him from properly fulfilling his duties. He was too circumspect to name the culprits but it is likely that he was referring to Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, and Ralph, Lord Cromwell, then in the middle of a serious dispute over the Ampthill estate in Bedfordshire, and their respective followers. Olney also claimed that the King’s granting away of many of the liberties and franchises in Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire had only compounded his difficulties in collecting the revenues of his bailiwick. Rede is hardly likely to have welcomed his onerous ad hoc appointment, although he received some recompense in early May 1455 when he was assigned £50 to cover his costs.40 PRO List ‘Sheriffs’, 2; E159/231, brevia Trin. rot. 10; E403/801, m. 2.

There is no evidence that Rede was present at St. Albans later in the same month or, indeed, any subsequent civil war battle. It is not clear whether he was still a member of Henry VI’s household in May 1455, and it is unlikely that the royal pardon granted to him five months after St. Albans was of especial significance.41 C67/41, m. 26 (23 Oct. 1455). The same might be said of another such pardon issued to him on 12 Feb. 1458: C67/42, m. 32. Whatever his role (if any) in wider events, he found time for personal matters in the following year. During the 1440s he had obtained a couple of papal licences to keep a portable altar in his household,42 CPL, ix. 303, 585. and he provided further provision for his spiritual welfare in the spring of 1456, by forming an association with the Austin friary at Oxford. In April that year the friars acknowledged a claim he had made to the privileges of their founder and received him as such in a solemn ceremony held at their friary church. The basis of his claim was his descent from his maternal ancestor Sir John Handlo, whose supposed role as one of the house’s founders was fabricated for the benefit of both sides. Not only did the arrangement bolster Rede’s honour and gained for him the friars’ intercessions in perpetuity, it also provided him with lodgings in Oxford because the friars granted certain chambers at the friary to him and his eldest son William, to hold for their lives in survivorship. For their part, the friars secured a wealthy and influential patron who granted them the rectory of Warpsgrove in south Oxfordshire (an advowson he had purchased from Dorchester abbey) a few years later and who would provide generously for their house in his will.43 Boarstall Cart. 223-4, 229; VCH Oxon. ii. 88.

Even if Rede did what he could to avoid the political turmoil of the later 1450s and early 1460s, he was appointed to an anti-Yorkist commission of array in Buckinghamshire a day after the controversial Parliament of 1459 was dissolved. In the spring of 1460 he was placed on a similar commission, ordered to resist the Yorkist lords as soon as they attempted to return to England from their exile abroad.44 CPR, 1452-61, p. 603. In spite of these appointments, he was pricked as sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire in November 1460, when the government was again under Yorkist control, and he was to remain a j.p. in Buckinghamshire following the accession of Edward IV. It is unlikely, therefore, that the royal pardon he purchased in early February 1462 had any political connotations.45 C67/45, m. 46. In the following September Edward’s government began to employ him on ad hoc commissions, and between March 1463 and October 1464 he was a member of the quorum as a j.p. His time on the quorum and his occasional service as an arbitrator notwithstanding, there is no evidence that he had received a formal training in the law, although he must have acquired a good knowledge of its workings through his family connexions with the legal profession and his service on commissions of gaol delivery.46 C1/44/247; Stonor Letters, i. (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, xxix), 112, 148; C47/37/3/18; CAD, ii. C2747. HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 411, assumes, without proof, that he was a lawyer. An Edmund Rede features as ‘of counsel’ with the queen in a valor of her estates of 1472-3, but presumably he was not the MP since this does not identify him as a knight: DL29/735/12056. If her counsellor was the subject of this biography, the omission of his title is particularly strange, given that the MP received his knighthood at her coronation.

Family affairs were probably of more direct concern to Rede in these tumultuous years, for in this period he found spouses for two of his children and contracted his own second marriage. In the autumn of 1460 his eldest son William was married to Agnes, daughter of the Northamptonshire esquire Walter Mauntell, and his daughter Joan to Mauntell’s son and heir, Henry. Shortly afterwards he himself married the recently widowed Katherine Green, whose second husband, John Gaynesford, had died in July 1460.47 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 232, wrongly states that Rede was her first husband and Gaynesford her second. The Gaynesfords were primarily Surrey gentry, but John had also held estates in Oxfordshire, including the manor of Hampton Poyle. Katherine possessed a jointure interest in the manor, which she brought to her marriage with Rede, although it reverted to her son George Gaynesford† after her death.48 VCH Oxon. vi. 161; CCR, 1468-76, p. 295; 1485-1500, no. 1076. For his part, having reserved the former James estates for his heirs by his previous marriage, Rede used his paternal inheritance to provide for his new wife, whom he married in early 1461. He surrendered the manors of Checkendon and Stoke Marmion, Standhill and Gatehampton and the other lands making up his paternal inheritance to the lawyers William Gaynesford* (a brother of Katherine’s previous husband) and John Catesby, who then re-conveyed the same estates to the couple. By means of this latter transaction, Checkendon and Stoke Marmion and Standhill were settled on the couple in tail-male and Katherine was granted a life interest in Gatehampton.49 KB27/799, rot. 196; CP40/800, rot. 81d; Boarstall Cart. 40. The settlement proved controversial since it prompted a falling-out, albeit a temporary one, between Rede and Walter Mauntell. Mauntell reacted to it by going to the Chancery. In a bill he submitted there some time in the first half of the 1460s, he accused Rede of breaching the terms of the earlier settlement for the marriage of their children. Rede responded by producing a copy of the indenture (dated 6 Oct. 1460) in which the terms of that agreement were set out, to prove that he had not undertaken to settle any part of his paternal estates on his son-in-law and daughter. He also brought a counter-suit in connexion with several manors and other lands he had conveyed to Mauntell to hold as a feoffee.50 C1/28/206-7.

It is not until these early years of Edward IV’s reign that there is definite evidence of an association between Rede and the de la Poles, in spite of the family connexions. From 1463 until at least 1477, he was their steward at Marsh Gibbon, one of three manors from which their almshouse at Ewelme derived its income. As steward he received a fee of £1 p.a. from William de la Pole’s widow Alice and her son and successor John, duke of Suffolk, for whom he also witnessed deeds and served as a feoffee.51 Genet, 1455; J.A.A. Goodall, God’s House at Ewelme, 24, 119; CCR, 1468-76, no. 666; CAD, v. A10950; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 980. In the wake of Edward IV’s accession, it was no doubt advantageous for Rede to possess a connexion with the de la Poles. In spite of their Lancastrian antecedents, they were by now closely identified with the Yorkists, for Alice had married her son to Edward’s sister, Elizabeth, in 1458. Whether through his de la Pole connexion, or the Yorkist government’s desire to ensure the loyalty of a substantial and respectable member of the gentry of Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, Rede was among those whom the King knighted at the Tower of London on the eve of the queen’s coronation in May 1465. He was further favoured in October 1467, when he was assigned an annual tun of wine from the port of London and exempted from office under the Crown.52 CPR, 1467-77, p. 67. Both of these grants were for life, although his exemption did not in fact mark the end of his career as an office-holder, which was uninterrupted by both the Readeption of Henry VI and restoration of Edward IV. The seemingly ever cautious Rede did, however, take the precaution of securing a pardon from Edward in the autumn of 1471.53 C67/48, m. 31 (24 Nov. 1471).

During Edward IV’s second reign, Rede was an active supporter of Magdalen College, Oxford, so ensuring that his name was mentioned alongside those of its other benefactors at its daily masses. From a quarry he owned at nearby Headington, he supplied stone and earth for the building of the college chapel, a project begun in 1474, and he appears also to have supplied Magdalen with timber from the royal forest of Shotover. In the same period he was involved as a feoffee in the transfer to the college of the manor of Duddington, Northamptonshire, a property which Alice Deincourt (d.1474), the widow of both William, Lord Lovell, and Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley, had left to Magdalen in her will.54 Magdalen Coll. Reg. ed. Bloxam, ii. pp. xxix, 228, 233; C143/453/20; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 557-8. It is also said that Rede became a benefactor of the divinity school at Oxford as well, by similarly providing it with timber and stone for building works: G. Lipscomb, Bucks. i. 63.

During the 1470s, Rede was also caught up in at least two disputes which came before the Chancery. The first, brought before that court in the early part of the decade, concerned various holdings at Burcot in Oxfordshire. He was not, however, one of the parties in this quarrel, since it appears that his involvement was only that of a feoffee of one of those centrally involved.55 C1/44/1-3; CCR, 1468-76, no. 855. In the second, dating from the mid 1470s, he was the defendant in a suit initiated by John Brecknock*. Brecknock had entrusted a release of all of his lawsuits against Sir John Plomer alias Leynham, a former London grocer living out his retirement in Buckinghamshire, to Rede for safe-keeping, and in his bill he complained that the MP had delivered the release to Plomer without his consent. Rede was acquainted with Plomer, who was one of those knighted alongside him on the eve of the queen’s coronation in 1465, but it is not known whether they were friends. In any case, when answering the bill he stated that the release was still in his possession, that it was his duty to deliver it to his fellow knight only after Sir John had performed certain unspecified undertakings and that he was ready to produce the document for examination in Chancery.56 C1/51/248, 257; W.A. Shaw, Knights of Eng. i. 135; P. Nightingale, A Med. Merchant Community, 535. In all probability the release was in some way connected with the acquisition by Leynham of Brecknock’s estates in Bucks.: C140/58/70; 73/74; CP25(1)/22/125/30; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 471-2. Leynham also entered a bond for 500 marks to Rede and others at some stage between 1465 and his death in 1479, as a security that he would perform some unknown undertaking: PCC 37 Wattys (PROB11/6, ff. 285v-286v).

In the later 1470s, Rede faced a direct challenge to his own interests at Standhill, where for some four decades he had supplemented his holdings by farming various lands and meadows from the Stonor family. In about 1479 he received the unwelcome news that (Sir) William Stonor† had made a new lease of these properties to another farmer. To make matters worse, Stonor had also ‘laboured’ the prior of Osney for the tithes of Standhill, which Rede had farmed from the abbey for a similar length of time. Rede responded by writing his fellow knight a reproachful letter, claiming that it was ‘meeter’ for him to retain both farms and asking Stonor to show him his ‘goodwill’, although with what result is unknown.57 Stonor Letters, ii. (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, xxx), 80-81.

Following the death of Edward IV, Rede was not reappointed to the bench in Buckinghamshire, although he served as a j.p. in Oxfordshire during Richard III’s reign. He remained keeper of the royal forests of Bernwood, Stowood and Shotover, and it was as such that he secured a pardon from Richard in the spring of 1484.58 C67/51, m. 22 (24 May). In the same spring he entered a bond on behalf of Nicholas Gaynesford*, his wife’s brother-in-law from her previous marriage, whom the Parliament of 1484 had attainted for his part in the duke of Buckingham’s rebellion. As it happened, Gaynesford’s rehabilitation was remarkably swift, for he received a general pardon on the following 16 July. Rede took the precaution of purchasing yet another royal pardon for himself following the accession of Henry VII.59 CCR, 1476-85, no. 1258; C67/53, m. 12 (4 Mar. 1486). He was not appointed to any further public office after the first Tudor took the throne, but by then he was 72 years of age and had already drawn up his last testament.

Dated 7 Apr. 1484, this lengthy and elaborate document bears testimony to Rede’s wealth and status.60 Boarstall Cart. 286-91. Requesting burial in the chapel of the Holy Trinity in Boarstall church, he left detailed instructions for his funeral, trental and year’s mind and made bequests to members of his extended family. He bequeathed various items of plate to his wife Katherine, including a silver cup known as ‘le Egle cuppe’, and a copy of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis. To his grandson and heir William, the son and namesake of his deceased eldest son, he left all his household ‘stuff’, the clothing which had belonged to his own grandfather, John Rede, all the deeds and evidences relating to his estates (kept at Boarstall), his armour and most of his books, including a second copy of Confessio Amantis. Rede’s library was a typical collection of chronicles and didactic works, although its size (the will mentions 24 named volumes) suggests a man of more than average education.61 So leading the editor of the Boarstall Cartulary to suggest that he might have attended Oxford university as a young man: Boarstall Cart. p. x. Apart from Gower’s work, it included a book of chronicles, a ‘life’ of Alexander, a copy of De studio militari by Nicholas Upton, various prayer books (including a still extant late thirteenth-century psalter),62 Christ Church, Oxf. MS 98 (see Archer, ‘Piety, Chivalry and Family’, for Rede’s books in general and the psalter in particular). and various law books. Among the prayer books was a breviary which had once belonged to the chapel at Standhill. In 1447, as lord of the manor of Standhill, Rede had consented to a reduction in the chapel’s services to only one each week, a measure prompted by the depopulation of Pyrton, the parish in which it stood. Evidently the chapel was no longer functioning at all by the time he drew up his testament, although he left instructions for the return of the breviary, should it ever be restored to use.63 VCH Oxon. viii. 171. Rede was content to leave no more than a token part of his personal estate to each of his younger grandchildren, William’s siblings John, Sebastian, Thomas and Katherine. Furthermore, the as yet unmarried Katherine was to receive her ten marks only if she submitted to the ‘governance’ of her stepmother and namesake. Rede also provided for his sons, Thomas and Alan, for his daughter, Joan, the wife of one ‘Wykeham’, and for his stepchildren, each of which beneficiaries were to have a share of his clothing. Furthermore, Thomas, a priest whom he had provided to the living at Chinnor,64 Ibid. 72. was to receive a cup and several books; Alan, the sum of £10 and other books (including a ‘siege of Troy’); and Joan, various items of plate and a set of amber beads. Rede gave a horse to each of his stepsons, George and William Gaynesford, of whom William was also to have two books, a copy of John Harding’s chronicle and another ‘siege of Troy’. Finally, Rede assigned a horse and two books (a bestiary and a ‘book of assizes’) to Richard Hall of Swerford, the husband of his stepdaughter Elizabeth Gaynesford. He appointed four executors: his wife Katherine, Richard Hall, the clerk John Sampson and Robert Ardern.

Nearly four years after composing the testament, Rede made a last will for his lands, dated 21 Feb. 1488.65 Boarstall Cart. 291-5. First, he set aside lands at Boarstall, Oakley and Clapcot in Berkshire for seven years, in order to support three priests through their education at Oxford university. He left the matter of selecting the priests to his executors, although he specified that one of these clerics, each of whom was to receive a salary of five marks p.a., was to come from the Austin friary at Oxford, the house of which he was patron. To the friary itself he set aside the considerable sum of 100 marks from his estates for repairs to its structure. For their part, the priests were required to sing daily masses for the souls of himself, his wives and benefactors, and to hold a service at Boarstall every year on his anniversary. After the seven-year term had elapsed, his heir was to have the same estates in fee simple, provided that he paid the executors £160. Should the heir refuse them on such terms, his executors were to sell them and to spend the money so raised on charitable works. Secondly, Rede awarded his wife Katherine with an estate for life in all his purchased lands in Checkendon and Standhill. Following her death, his surviving executors were to hold them for ten years, after which his heir was to have them for 80 marks, again payable to the executors. Thirdly, he assigned to his son Alan all his lands and tenements in Stanton St. John for life, and the reversion in tail-male of his manor of Bainton following the deaths of him and Katherine. Fourthly, he provided for his grandsons John and Sebastian Rede by leaving his manor in Benson and lands in south Oxfordshire to John, and various other holdings in the same county to Sebastian. If they were not of ‘good and virtuouse disposicion’, the same properties were to pass to their elder brother William. Finally, Rede awarded his ‘chief place’ in Wallingford and all other lands in his ‘immediate possession’ to his stepson William Gaynesford as a reward for his ‘good service’, probably as a member of his household at Boarstall.66 William was known as ‘of Boarstall’ in the mid 1480s: CCR, 1476-85, no. 1258. For whatever reason, he named a different set of executors for his will: Hall, Sampson and Thomas Lee, the rector of the de la Pole living at Ewelme.

The combined will and testament was proved just over three weeks after Rede’s death on 7 June 1489. His inquisitions post mortem were held in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire during the following August and September, when his grandson William, by then 22 years of age, was formally recognized as his heir.67 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 465-7. For her dower, Rede’s widow was assigned a share of his manor and other estates in Headington as well as various lands in Boarstall. Katherine, who also retained the manors of Checkendon, Stoke Marmion and Standhill which he had assigned to her in jointure, survived him by another nine years. Following her death in August 1498, all of these holdings passed to William Rede.68 CFR, xxii. 634-5; PCC 24 Horne (PROB11/11, ff. 197v-198); CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 237-8. Her inq.post mortem in Oxon. found that she had died on 6 Aug. but that held in Bucks. declared that her death had occurred on the 9th of that month.