TIMPERLEY, John II

It is often difficult to identify Timperley since he shared his name with both his father and eldest son. He is first heard of when John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, appointed him and his father joint stewards and constables of the Mowbray pocket borough of Reigate in 1446, and it was probably about this time that he became the duke’s parker at Great Chesterford. By the second half of the 1440s a John Timperley was an esquire of the King’s household,7 E101/409/16. but it is unclear whether this was the elder or younger man. It would nevertheless appear that it was the latter who had become an annuitant of Sele priory in Sussex, a religious house of which the Mowbrays were patrons, by 1453.8 Cat. Suss. Deeds, Magdalen Coll. ed. Macray, i. 134, 186; ii. 115; VCH Suss. ii. 61. While the date John I died is uncertain, it is likely that a long-since disappeared inscription in Hintlesham parish church, recording the death of John Timperley in 1460, referred to him.9 J. Weever, Funeral Mons. 765. It is therefore possible that it was John I, rather than his son, who received royal pardons in November 1455 and April 1458;10 C67/41, m. 24; 42, m. 25. who was distrained for knighthood in the late 1450s; and who attested the election of Suffolk’s knights of the shire to the Parliament of 1459. Either John could have sat for Reigate in the Parliament of 1453 and Ipswich in that of 1455 (the man who sat for Ipswich was admitted to the freedom of that borough a year before his election to Parliament),11 Add. 30158, f. 17v. but probably John II sat for Reigate in 1460, the year his father appears to have died. It was almost certainly the younger John who received a bond for £20 from Sir Roger Chamberlain* at Framlingham, the Mowbray castle in Suffolk, in late 1455, since it was in relation to this security that John Timperley sued the knight’s widow and executrix in the late 1460s.12 CP40/827, rot. 206d.

Like his father, Timperley played an extremely limited role as a royal commissioner in East Anglia and never served as a j.p. He was appointed to his first ad hoc commission a few months into the reign of Edward IV. Issued in July 1461, this ordered him and his fellow commissioners to take Buckenham castle and several manors in south-east Norfolk into the King’s possession. Sir Andrew Ogard* had purchased these properties from his father-in-law, Sir John Clifton, in 1447 but his young son and heir, Henry Ogard, was a ward of Henry VI’s queen and seen as a rebel by the new government. By the summer of 1461 the estate was in the hands of Clifton’s nephew, John Knyvet, and Knyvet’s son, William†, who had taken advantage of Henry’s absence to seize it for themselves. In September that year three of the commissioners (although not Timperley) rode to Buckenham, but they were refused entry to the castle, where John Knyvet’s wife, supported by a garrison of 50 men, had raised the drawbridge. In the following month Timperley was included in a new commission – which now included his patron, the duke of Norfolk, and John de la Pole, duke of Suffolk – but the Knyvets were able to persuade the Crown that they had a just claim to the Clifton lands before the commissioners could take action.13 R. Virgoe, E. Anglian Soc. ed. Barron, Rawcliffe and Rosenthal, 137-41; CPR, 1461-7, p. 67. Between the issuing of the two commissions, the King granted Timperley, by means of letters patent of 12 Aug. 1461, a rent of £20 p.a. from the issues of Norfolk and Suffolk, to hold for life or until an office of like value was found for him. It is not clear whether John was ever provided with such a position in lieu of the annuity, which was exempted from the Acts of Resumption passed in the first three Parliaments of Edward’s reign.14 CPR, 1461-7, p. 71; PROME, xiii. 38, 186-7, 340. Timperley was also exempted from the Act of Resumption passed in the Parlt. of 1472, but this applied to any grants made to him rather than just to the annuity: PROME, xiv. 206.

It is likely that Timperley owed his annuity to his association with the duke of Norfolk, since his letters patent referred to him as the duke’s servant. After his patron died leaving a 17-year-old heir in late 1461, Timperley remained loyal to the Mowbrays, becoming one of the new duke’s councillors.15 Moye, 99. During 1462 he and other feoffees of the family conveyed to the old duke’s widow certain lands in Sussex which her husband had set aside for her as part of her dower.16 Add. 39376, f. 155. In the same year he stood surety at Westminster for another Mowbray follower, William Lee‡, and in the spring of 1469 he was among those to whom the duke illegally distributed liveries at Framlingham.17 CP40/805, rot. 347; KB27/839, rex rot. 31. In 1471 Timperley was named as one of those Mowbray men who had breached the Statute of Liveries: KB27/841, rex rot. 49. In the following August either Timperley or his son and namesake took part in the duke of Norfolk’s siege and capture of the Paston family’s castle at Caister near Great Yarmouth. Mowbray subsequently made him one of his feoffees for Caister and other properties from the estate of the late Sir John Fastolf which had come into the Pastons’ hands.18 Norf. Archaeology, xxxvi. 309; CCR, 1468-76, no. 622; Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, i. 297-8. It is unlikely that Timperley was ever on close terms with the Pastons: in 1454 either he or his father had sided with their enemy, (Sir) Philip Wentworth*, in a quarrel over the wardship of Thomas Fastolf†, and in 1461 they had feared he would support William Yelverton* and William Jenney*, who were disputing their claim to the Fastolf estate. Among those who had taken the side of Yelverton and Jenney against the Pastons was a fellow Mowbray follower, Gilbert Debenham I*, a former associate of Timperley’s father and another of the besiegers of Caister. By the later 1470s, however, the MP had fallen out with Debenham, whom he successfully sued at Westminster for a wrongful disseisin at Reydon in Suffolk.19 Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 94, 248; CP40/863, rot. 306.

It was as ‘late of Framlingham castle’ that Timperley acquired his royal pardons of 1462, 1468 and 1472,20 C67/45, m. 25; 46, m. 22; 48, m. 19. and in the latter year he was elected to his last Parliament as a burgess for Gatton in Surrey, one of the Mowbray pocket boroughs in the south of England. It is not known if Mowbray had also played a role in getting him returned as an MP for Great Yarmouth to the Parliament of 1467, although his son and namesake sat in the same Parliament as a burgess for Steyning in Sussex, another borough under Mowbray control. In January 1475 Mowbray, short of money and facing the expense of accompanying the King to France, named Timperley as one of those feoffees to whom he wished to convey lands in several counties, so that they could sort out his finances.21 PROME, xiv. 263-4. After the duke died a year later without a son and successor, Timperley participated in settlements made for his widowed duchess.22 E210/9414-15.

Another widowed great lady for whom Timperley acted as a feoffee was Elizabeth de Vere, the dowager countess of the twelfth earl of Oxford, although in 1473 he and five co-feoffees discreditably agreed to convey her lands to the King’s brother, Richard, duke of Gloucester, who had coerced her into selling them to him.23 CCR, 1468-76, no. 1214; Procs. Chancery Eliz. ed. Caley and Bayley, i. pp. xc-xci; M. Hicks, ‘Last Days of Elizabeth Countess of Oxford’, EHR, ciii. 76-95. Timperley was also a feoffee and surety for John Wymondham*, a onetime Mowbray retainer who had left the Mowbray affinity for that of the de la Pole dukes of Suffolk, and a surety for the de la Pole servant, John Heydon*, in 1472.24 KB9/297/53; C1/48/364; C140/55/24; CFR, xxi. no. 150. By that date, however, the earlier rivalries between the Mowbray and de la Pole affinities had subsided. As it happened, Timperley fell out with Wymondham, whom he sued in Chancery at some between 1472 and mid 1475. Asserting that he had stood surety for the defendant in 1461, in relation to a debt of £10 the latter owed John Selot, master of St. Giles’s hospital in Norwich, he complained that Wymondham had never settled the debt, leaving him liable to legal action on Selot’s part.25 C1/48/364.

No doubt through his association with the Mowbrays, Timperley came to form an important connexion with their relative and councillor, (Sir) John Howard*, subsequently Lord Howard. A member of Edward IV’s household and an important figure in his own right, Howard issued a livery of crimson cloth to either Timperley or his eldest son in May 1465.26 Howard Household Bks. ed. Crawford, i. 165. One day some seven years later, shortly after he had arrived in London to attend the Parliament of 1472, Timperley visited Howard at his town house by the river Thames at Stepney, to negotiate a marriage between his eldest son, John, and Jane, one of Howard’s daughters. The two men strolled down to the river, where Howard’s ship the Margaret Howard lay, while they talked about the match. Timperley initially rejected the marriage portion of only £100 which Howard offered to provide for Jane as insufficient, and at one stage Howard called over the lawyer, Richard Southwell*, who was waiting a little to one side, to brief him on their discussions. In spite of the hard bargaining which took place, they reached an agreement on the same day. The terms of the marriage settlement were recorded in an indenture dated 14 Oct. 1472. Much more was expected of Timperley, but this was the price he had to pay for securing such a prominent match for his son. Howard, who got his way over Jane’s portion, agreed to pay for the garments that his daughter would wear on her wedding day and (apparently) for a wedding dinner. For his part, Timperley agreed to assign Jane a jointure estate in lands in Hintlesham and the neighbouring parish of Hadleigh worth 40 marks p.a. and to convey to his son lands with an annual income of £30 on the day of the marriage. He also undertook to pay for his son’s wedding clothes and the couple’s board and lodging for three years, and agreed that the younger John and his male heirs by Jane should succeed to an estate worth £100 p.a. in Hintlesham and Hadleigh after his death.27 C1/110/104. Although it is said that Jane was illegitimate (so, perhaps, explaining her small marriage portion),28 Norf. Archaeology, xxxvi. 309; Ryan and Redstone, 16n. she was quite a catch for the Timperleys. Her father was already a peer when the marriage negotiations took place and he became duke of Norfolk under Richard III. The younger John Timperley took part in Howard’s naval expedition against Scotland in 1481 and he accompanied his father-in-law when the newly-created duke rode to Windsor with King Richard in July 1483.29 Howard Household Bks. ii. 4, 411. It was probably the yr. John who served as Howard’s collector of revenues at Framlingham castle in the late 1480s: Add. 19152, f. 53v. Roger Timperley, probably the younger John’s younger brother, was a member of the force which Howard raised for Richard III early in the following year,30 Howard Household Bks. ii. 489. There were at least two Roger Timperleys in the later 15th cent., one of whom was a yr. s. of the MP. It was probably this Roger, rather than his cousin and namesake (a s. of the MP’s brother, Thomas), who served Edw. IV’s queen as a yeoman of the chamber: CP25(1)/224/120/30; CP40/863, rot. 306; Howard Household Bks. i. 307. but it is not known whether any of the Timperleys accompanied the duke to the battle of Bosworth in August 1485.31 Although Ryan and Redstone, 22, suggest that at least one of them must have gone to Bosworth.

Two years after the accession of Henry VII, the MP conveyed his manor and advowson of Hintlesham to a powerful group of trustees (possibly feoffees to the use of his last will) headed by John Morton, archbishop of Canterbury, and including the eminent lawyer (Sir) John Sulyard* as well as his son, William Timperley.32 CPR, 1485-94, p. 211. He survived until 18 Dec. 1491 and was succeeded by his son, John, by then well into his adulthood. The inquisition post mortem taken after his death found that he had held the manor and advowson of Hintlesham, along with other messuages, lands and tenements in that parish, and another manor and various holdings in neighbouring Hadleigh and Aldham.33 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 809. John’s age was given as ‘40 years and more’ in his father’s inq. post mortem. This was probably an underestimate: if he was only just over 40 at this date he would have sat in the Parl. of 1467 at a very tender age. Not mentioned in the inquisition are the three small manors in Sutton by Woodbridge which his mother had brought to the Timperley family – it is possible that his parents had sold them in the mid 1450s – or a house he held at Ipswich.34 Ryan and Redstone, 4, 9; CP25(1)/224/119/13; PCC 5 Milles. He had attempted to add to his holdings at Ipswich by purchasing a couple of tenements in the town from Margaret, widow of William Weathereld*, in the early 1460s, only for her to renege on her agreement to sell.35 Ipswich bor. recs., composite roll, 1464-5, C/2/10/1/2, rot. 2. Nothing is known about any lands which the MP’s obscure first wife, another Margaret, brought to him in marriage, although his second wife, Alice, held the manor of Shelley, a few miles south-west of Hintlesham.36 PCC 5 Milles. Previously the spouse of John Kyng, a London grocer who had business dealings with John Howard, Alice predeceased her second husband and was buried in the church of St. Mary at the Quay in Ipswich.37 P. Nightingale, A Med. Mercantile Community, 535; Add. 32484, f. 9. While it is possible that Timperley came to hold property in London in Alice’s right, he may already have possessed interests there before their marriage: in the mid 1460s John Timperley and Edward Yns sued a tailor for breaking into their house in the City’s parish of St. Andrew Hubbard: CP40/819, rot. 138. Elsewhere in Suffolk, Timperley had received £2 p.a. from the manors of Harborough in Debenham and Aspall, an annuity for life that the lord of those properties, Sir Edward Brooke*, Lord Cobham, had assigned to him in September 1446.38 C140/13/26. Outside the county, Timperley had held life tenancies in the Mowbray manors of Gatton and of Crick in Northamptonshire but it is unclear whether he had retained possession of Gatton after its sale in 1469.39 Moye, 434, 437.

Shortly after Timperley’s death, his heir fell out with another of his sons, William Timperley. William staked a claim to certain of their late father’s lands in Suffolk, but the younger John Timperley declared that the lands in question were his by virtue of the settlement made for his marriage to Jane Howard.40 C1/110/98-106. William was probably the William Timperley who had entered the service of the MP’s future trustee, John Morton, by 1474: E404/72/1027. In the event, William did not long survive their father, for he died in 1493.41 CFR, xxii. no. 473.