RICKHILL, John

The second son of a prominent judge, John profited greatly from his father’s will of 1407, through which he received the main family manor of Islingham and other properties in Kent and the Cambridgeshire manor of Ditton Camoys, a settlement made at the expense of Sir William Rickhill’s eldest son and namesake.1 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 210. John had certainly taken possession of these estates by October the following year when he appointed officers for his own household in Frindsbury.2 CP40/695, rot. 113d. It was probably thanks to his father’s generosity that he was able to marry the daughter of a Sussex knight rather than a lady of lesser rank.

While details for much of Rickhill’s early career are lacking, he may have accompanied his unfortunate elder brother, William, to France, where the latter served in the retinue of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, during the Agincourt campaign. It would appear that he had at least some military experience, since in December 1419 he was one of 12 men named by commissioners in Kent as possessing arms and armour for the defence of the county, a list in which Gloucester’s followers featured strongly.3 E28/97/15. By then Rickhill was already involved in public affairs, having attested the election of Kent’s knights of the shire to the Parliament of 1417 and gained his first appointment to an ad hoc commission in March the following year.

Like his brothers William and Nicholas, Rickhill was also active at Rochester before the end of Henry V’s reign. In April 1421 John Estwelle made a release to him, Robert Rolleston, keeper of the wardrobe, and Henry de Rowe of a messuage there, almost certainly to the use of the city’s bridge of which de Rowe was a warden;4 CCR, 1419-22, p. 104. and in March the following year Bishop Langdon appointed him, his brother William and others to settle a dispute between the parishioners of St. Nicholas’s church and the cathedral priory.5 Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, Rochester Diocese bishops’ registers, Langdon, DRb/Ar 1/8, ff. 10v-12v. Apart from de Rowe, Rickhill developed connexions with other individuals involved in the affairs of Rochester bridge, among them Henry Hickes*, an attorney of his at Westminster from at least 1421,6 CP40/644, rot. 206; 659, rots. 48, 184, 252; 678, rot. 238; 680, rot. 284d. and Thomas Langley, bishop of Durham and chancellor of England, one of the bridge’s most important patrons. In July 1427 Bishop Langley headed a group of feoffees to whom Rickhill and his brother Nicholas granted two inns in Rochester, again probably for the use of the bridge.7 Harl. Ch. 55 F 34. Yet, even if well respected figures in and around Rochester, the Rickhills were not above subterfuge in their dealings in the city. In the mid 1420s, for example, the widow of a London grocer sued John and Nicholas for occupying a messuage there that was part of her inheritance.8 CP40/659, rot. 110d Furthermore, in 1431 John Cust of Rochester alleged that Henry de Rowe, John Deeping* and others acting for the bridge had attempted to defraud him of property in the city by means of a false deed by which Thomas Chamberlain had enfeoffed it on John and Nicholas.9 CP40/681, rot. 138.

Earlier, the Rochester connexion played a part in the marriage of John’s daughter, Joan, to the Lancashire lawyer, James Hopwode*, of which Hopwode’s uncle, Bishop Langley, was a prime mover. Langley agreed to pay Rickhill £66 13s. 4d. to secure the match, fixed to take place between 24 July and 2 Nov. 1421.10 CCR, 1422-9, pp. 42-34, 45-46. For a while, the resulting alliance appears to have worked well and during the early 1420s the Rickhills and Hopwode played an important role in the parliamentary politics of Rochester and Kent. Already a j.p., in this period John Rickhill sat for the county in Henry VI’s second Parliament and served a term as its sheriff, and while sheriff he presided over the return of Hopwode to the Parliament of 1425 as a burgess for Rochester. If, like his elder brother, Rickhill had served under the duke of Gloucester in France, it is possible that he enjoyed the duke’s support when elected to the Commons in 1423 and pricked as sheriff in 1424. Gloucester wielded considerable influence in Kent, where he possessed a power base in the north and west of the county and held office as warden of the Cinque Ports.11 M. Mercer, ‘Kent and National Politics’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1995), 3. Indeed, the strength of his following in Kent may have provided some mitigation against the dominance of his brother, the duke of Bedford, on the King’s Council.12 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 81. Owing to the delay in appointments occasioned by Bedford’s return from France, Rickhill retained the shrievalty until 15 Jan. 1426 when he was replaced by William Clifford, a relative newcomer to the county who had connexions with Gloucester.

Following his shrievalty, Rickhill remained a j.p. until March 1429, but he appears otherwise to have retired from local government and an active role in the affairs of Rochester bridge in his later years, possibly because they were plagued by ill health. It was probably in the summer of 1428 that he was named as a feoffee of estates in Sussex and Dorset which Sir Richard Poynings* assigned for the support of his widow, the dowager countess of Arundel, and their children in his will. The connexion with Poynings, a prominent soldier killed at the siege of Orléans the following year, might support the hypothesis that Rickhill himself had earlier pursued a military career. On the other hand, it is equally possible that he and the knight owed their association with each other to Sir Thomas Lewknor*, who served Poynings as a feoffee and was the brother-in-law of Rickhill’s wife, Joan.13 CIMisc. vii. 503; CCR, 1422-9, p. 390.

Whatever the state of his health, Rickhill had important matters to attend to at the end of his life. In October 1430 he claimed exemption from parliamentary taxation in respect of property in Sussex, probably held in the right of his wife; he did so as a freeman of Winchelsea, revealing an otherwise unknown connexion with that Cinque Port.14 E179/225/50. Family affairs also loomed large, for the Rickhill-Hopwode alliance had turned sour by the beginning of 1431. In Hilary term that year Rickhill sued his son-in-law at Westminster for breaking into his house in Frindsbury and stealing certain documents, and in the following November Hopwode and his wife were divorced. By the latter date Rickhill was no longer alive, and it was Joan’s uncle, Nicholas Rickhill, and Richard Bruyn*, a lawyer from the north-west connected with Humphrey, earl of Stafford, who helped to arrange the separation.15 CP40/680, rot. 364; Lancs. RO, Hopwood of Hopwood deeds, DDHP 39/35a, b. Joan, who succeeded to her father’s lands and was also Nicholas’s heir, married Bruyn soon afterwards. It is possible that Rickhill was already dead when his manors of Ditton Camoys and Cheveley in Cambridgeshire were conveyed to a body of trustees headed by the treasurer, Walter, Lord Hungerford†, on 25 May 1431.16 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 132-3. Although among the estates that passed to his daughter and her new husband, the Bruyns did not retain these particular properties: in 1434 the couple released them to the lawyer, John Fortescue*, in return for an annuity of ten marks during the lifetime of Joan’s mother and namesake and 20 marks thereafter. By the middle of the century they had been acquired by the Household servant, William Cotton*.17 CP25/1/292/67/150; VCH Cambs. x. 47, 87.

Rickhill’s will is no longer extant but he is known to have appointed his widow, Richard Downe of Frindsbury, ‘gentleman’, and two yeomen, Simon Goold of the same parish and John Shamyll of Rochester, as his executors.18 CP40/684, rot. 189d. Following the MP’s death, the elder Joan Rickhill married her co-executor, Downe, and together they were involved in litigation over the settlement of his debts. Some of the lawsuits in question brought them up against prominent opponents, so revealing something of the breadth of Rickhill’s connexions, even if the background to them is either uncertain or unknown. In 1432 Henry, 6th Lord Grey of Codnor, and his receiver, John Curson*, began to pursue the Downes and their fellow executors over an alleged debt of £10, while in the same year Joan and Richard sued Bishop Langley for 300 marks, probably an action related to the failure of the Hopwode marriage. Several of the lawsuits were still pending when Downe died, at some stage between the spring of 1433 and the autumn of the following year. Joan soon found yet another husband, for she married Geoffrey Harley, an esquire from Brampton Bryan, Herefordshire, in late 1435 or 1436. Prior to the marriage, Harley agreed to allow Joan a life interest in estates worth £40 p.a. within the marcher honour of Wigmore. To guarantee that he would meet this undertaking, he entered into a bond for £400 with her brother, Sir Thomas Etchingham, and three other prominent figures (Sir Roger Fiennes*, John Fortescue and Edmund Brudenell), in the court of common pleas on 4 Nov. 1435, a transaction witnessed by Sir Richard de la Bere, William Ludlow I*, Robert Inglefeld* and Hugh Mortimer of Kyre Wyard, Worcestershire, esquire. Following the marriage, Harley was associated with Joan as her co-defendant in another suit for debt – this time for £12 – claimed from the late MP’s estate by Lord Grey and Curson.19 CP40/684, rots. 189d, 366; 688, rot. 88d; 689, rot. 438; 695, rot. 114d; 699, rot. 107d; 700, rot. 172d; 717, rot. 518. He himself was dead by the autumn of 1446 when Joan obtained a royal pardon describing her as his widow as well as the widow and executrix of both Rickhill and Downe.20 C67/39, m. 13 (30 Nov.). Joan survived until 1455. During the last years of her life, she was caught up in litigation over the Etchingham estates in Sussex. She and her sister, Elizabeth, widow of Sir Thomas Lewknor, had been granted a moiety of the lands belonging to their maternal grandfather but they quarrelled with the holder of the other moiety, Sir Richard Fiennes. The dispute was still in progress when Joan died and her interest in the estates was inherited by her daughter and namesake and son-in-law, Richard Bruyn.21 Add. 39376, ff. 73, 76, 77; CP40/778, rot. 338; 779 rot. 658d.