RAMSEY, Thomas

The Buckinghamshire manor of Hitcham, which pertained to the royal honour of Wallingford, passed by marriage in the late thirteenth century from the Neyrnut family to that of Beauchamp, and then, through the marriage in about 1377 of the heiress Isabel Beauchamp, to her husband, the son of Adam and Philippa Ramsey. This son, our MP’s father (whose first name is not known) probably died young. In 1382 the heiress, using her maiden name, obtained a confirmation of a grant of free warren at Hitcham made to her ancestor Miles Neyrnut.3 VCH Bucks. iii. 232; CPR, 1381-5, p. 193; CP25(1)/288/50/802. Whether she had already been widowed is not stated. Isabel also held an estate in Berkshire, at West Ilsley, and was returned as holding land there by the service of half a knight’s fee in 1428. In 1440 she failed to attend the view of frankpledge held at Compton as required,4 VCH Berks. iv. 34; Feudal Aids, i. 66. but may have died before that date, since although she had regularly paid suit of court to the honour of Wallingford for her property at Hitcham (doing so, for instance, in 1432 and 1436), in October 1438 her name had been crossed off the court roll and that of her son Thomas Ramsey, our MP, inserted in its place.5 SC2/212/7, 8, 11.

What this means is that Ramsey had to wait until late in life before he fully entered his inheritance – something which was not finally to happen until several years after he sat in Parliament. Where and under whose guardianship he spent his youth has not been discovered. Yet there are strong grounds for believing that feudal ties led to him being taken under the wing of the steward of the honour of Wallingford, who from 1399 was the influential Thomas Chaucer* of Ewelme. Before he came into his own, Ramsey built up an acquaintance among the gentry of the region, who included Chaucer’s associate Sir Walter Sandys†. Thus, in 1426 in the company of John Harris† and Nicholas Clopton* he was made a feoffee of the manor of Catherington in Hampshire, the purpose of the enfeoffment being to put into effect a marriage settlement for Sandys’s son Thomas.6 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 83-84; CIPM, xxv. 608. Much more important, it was to Chaucer’s immediate circle that Ramsey owed his own marriage, for his wife’s father had been Chaucer’s friend, her brothers John and Edmund Hampden married sisters who were kinswomen of Chaucer’s wife, and her half-brother Thomas Stonor had been Chaucer’s ward.

From his marriage Ramsey derived considerable benefits, both financial and political. Isabel was the widow of John Wroughton, the Wiltshire landowner.7 Reg. Chichele, ii. 407-8. Stonor Letters, p. xix lists Isabel’s marriages in reverse order (with Ramsey as her 1st husband), while G. Lipscomb, Bucks. ii. 232, 345 gives contradictory information on this point. An extent of Wroughton’s lands made on 12 June 1429, immediately after his death, set their gross value at over £191 p.a., and out of this total his widow retained a substantial part, since her jointure was worth £80 6s. 8d. and her dower a further £27 7s. 11d. When all deductions had been made she was assured of a net annual income of over £53. Isabel owed the successful negotiation of a financial settlement with her late husband’s feoffees to the mediation of her half-brother Stonor and her brother John.8 C139/42/85; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 277-9; iv. 483-4. Ramsey’s marriage to her thus drew him closer into the circle of these prominent esquires, and to Chaucer as one of the guardians of his stepson, Wroughton’s young heir, John*. There can be no doubt that Chaucer, who was constable of the castle of Wallingford as well as steward of the honour and of unrivalled influence in the middle Thames valley, backed Ramsey’s election for Wallingford to the Parliament summoned to meet on 12 Jan. 1431. His fellow MP for the borough was John Warfield*, yet another very close associate of Chaucer and Stonor, who themselves served in the Commons as knights of the shire for Oxfordshire.

In the remaining years of Chaucer’s life Ramsey served his mentor in matters concerned with the management of his estates. He and John Hampden became Chaucer’s co-feoffees of the manor of Sutton Valence in Kent, which William Clifford of Bobbing and Elizabeth his wife were licensed to grant them in October 1432. More significantly, at an unknown date, probably also in the early 1430s, Ramsey was enfeoffed along with Hampden and William Borde* of the valuable manors of Hook Norton and Kidlington in Oxfordshire, to hold to the use of Chaucer and his wife Maud. Indeed, after Chaucer died in November 1434 the feoffees were given seisin not only of these properties, but also of other manors in Hampshire and Oxfordshire, including Ewelme itself, which they continued to hold after Maud’s death in 1437, in the interest of Chaucer’s only daughter and heiress, Alice, countess of Suffolk. That Ramsey had been taken into the confidence of so powerful a figure as the former Speaker and cousin of the Beauforts, indicates that he was a man who inspired trust.9 CIPM, xxiv. 351-2, 354; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 247, 448-9, 456; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 335, 337; 1435-41, pp. 91, 93. So much so, indeed, that Chaucer named him as one of just three executors to assist his widow Maud, while she herself appointed the same three men to see to the execution of her will. Thus Ramsey had the task of tidying up the couple’s affairs. As executor he also took on the custody of another of Chaucer’s wards, the heiress Eleanor Moleyns, until she proved her age in 1440.10 CIPM, xxiv. 681, 685, 687; xxv. 527; E159/213, brevia Trin. rot. 41d, recorda Trin. rot. 15. In 1439 he had attended the post mortem for Margery’s grandmother, the wid. of Sir William Moleyns†: C139/94/52; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 753.

These were not Ramsey’s only responsibilities in the 1430s and beyond. During the parliamentary session of early 1431, his brother-in-law Thomas Stonor, his fellow Member of the Commons, died. The close-knit group of friends and kinsmen rallied to support his widow Alice and their children. On 1 Dec. 1432 Ramsey was among the group of trustees (including his Hampden brothers-in-law) to whom Alice and her new husband Richard Drayton* granted an annual rent from the Stonor manors of Penton Mewsey and Beerton by Aylesbury and from property in Westminster so that over the next ten years they might maintain and educate one of Stonor’s daughters. He was subsequently enfeoffed of the reversion of the Stonor manor of Ermington in Devon, which Alice held for life, and among the payments which John Warfield made as receiver of the Stonor estates in 1436-7 was one of £26 13s. 4d. to him and Drayton. The latter was among Ramsey’s co-feoffees when the manor of Dunton, Buckinghamshire, was entailed on Edmund Hampden and his wife by royal licence granted in November 1442.11 CAD, i. C1229; C140/29/48; Stonor Letters, ii (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, xxx), 181; CPR, 1441-6, p. 138.

By this stage in his career, Ramsey had clearly become a leading member of the Buckinghamshire gentry. He was listed with John Hampden among the esquires who attested the parliamentary elections held at Aylesbury in January 1442 and at Buckingham in January 1447, and in the meantime, in July 1445, he had witnessed a quitclaim by Sir William Lucy* of the manor of Little Marlow and the advowson of the local priory.12 C219/15/2, 4; CCR, 1441-7, p. 310. Yet, remarkably, this former MP who had been trusted to be an executor by so powerful a figure as Chaucer, was never appointed to ad hoc commissions of local government, or to Crown office. Nor did he have any recorded dealings of consequence with Chaucer’s son-in-law William de la Pole, soon to be duke of Suffolk and pre-eminent in the King’s counsels.

Ramsey died shortly before 26 Apr. 1448, when a writ de diem clausit extremum was issued by the Exchequer. The fact that the jury assembled for his post mortem at Great Missenden on 12 Nov. professed ignorance about the date of his death, his property and the identity of his heir may mask an attempt by his family to avoid the consequences of royal wardship.13 CFR, xviii. 74; C139/132/30. Ramsey’s widow apparently lived on until 1464.14 CFR, xx. 126. No inq. post mortem has survived. Evidently, Ramsey was succeeded by his eldest son, a namesake whose career did not properly begin until Edward IV’s reign. Naturally enough, the young Thomas continued his father’s close association with his kinsmen the Stonors and Hampdens, notably by acting as a feoffee of their estates and as executor of the wills of Thomas Stonor II* (d.1474), his widow Jane (d.1493), and their son (Sir) William† (d.1494),15 CFR, xx. 158; CAD, iii. C3132; Stonor Letters, i. pp. xxv, xxxv, 162; ii. 1; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1031. and he also maintained amicable contact with his relations on the Wroughton side.16 CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 52, 60. Our MP left two other sons: Adam, who entered the Church and died in 1476 (Thomas, referring to the death of this ‘kynde brother’ noted that ‘we Ramseys go awey fast: as God wol, so most hit be’),17 Stonor Letters, ii. no. 177. and Edmund, whom Thomas made an executor of his will in 1499. The male line, carried on by a third Thomas (c.1471-1509), ended when the latter’s son and namesake (1503-24) left a daughter, born posthumously.18 PCC 39 Horne (PROB11/11, f. 312); CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 313; VCH Berks. iv. 34.