UVEDALE, Henry

As the first-born son of the wealthy Thomas Uvedale, Henry was the heir apparent of the substantial family estates in Hampshire and Surrey. Furthermore, as the son of Thomas’s first wife, he was also heir to his mother’s inheritance – the Foxley manors of Westington in Ayot St. Peter (Hertfordshire), Rumboldswyke in Sussex, and Bramshill in Hampshire, which his father held ‘by the courtesy’ after her death, which probably occurred in the late 1440s. At an unrecorded date Thomas arranged for Henry to share possession of Westington with him, and accordingly Henry occasionally took up residence there. Yet most of the time he appears to have lived in Hampshire.3 C140/49/26; VCH Suss. iv. 171; VCH Herts. iii. 64.

The date of his parents’ marriage is uncertain, and nor is it known when he was born. Nevertheless, it seems likely that Henry was still under age when, on 6 Feb. 1447, he accompanied his father and uncle William Uvedale II* to the county court at Winchester to attest the shire elections to the Parliament summoned to Bury St. Edmunds. Two years later his great-uncle, William I*, who was childless, left him a scarlet robe trimmed with fur in his will. Round about the same time he was taken up by William Waynflete, the bishop of Winchester with whom his father enjoyed amicable relations. It was to Waynflete that Henry owed his marriage to a minor heiress. On 28 Nov. 1451, in return for his past services and those he would render in the future, Waynflete granted this ‘dear and faithful esquire’ the wardship and marriage of Margery Pershut, so that he could marry her as soon as she reached lawful age. Henry thereby came into possession of property at Kilmeston, not far from the bishop’s manor of Marwell – some five miles from Winchester.4 C219/15/4; Lambeth Palace Lib. Reg. Stafford, f. 176; Reg. Waynflete, pt. 1, f. 3** (Waynflete instructed two Suffolk esquires to find and take custody of Margery on his behalf). A royal pardon dating from the mid 1460s described him as ‘of Marwell’, suggesting that he belonged to Waynflete’s establishment there.5 C67/45, m. 4.

Henry is not known to have had any personal interests in Portsmouth, the borough which twice returned him to Parliament, but his mother’s manor in Sussex was fairly close, as were both the family seat at Wickham and his uncle William’s home at Titchfield, and undoubtedly his father’s influence in the county and his own connexion with Bishop Waynflete would have counted for much with the electors. In the 1440s Henry’s father had been a frequent visitor to Portsmouth to take musters of armed forces sailing to France, and while Henry’s first Parliament, that of 1453, was still in being, Thomas was appointed keeper of Portchester castle.6 Thomas rented property in the town: Portsmouth Recs. ed. East, 494. By then Henry had established other connexions of note in the region. In the early 1450s, curiously described as ‘of London, esquire’, he provided pledges for Sir Godfrey Hilton† from Lincolnshire, in the suit he brought in Chancery for recovery of plate placed in the safekeeping of a servant at the time of Cade’s rebellion.7 C1/1/72 (printed in Procs. Chancery Eliz. ed. Caley and Bayley, i. p. li). Sir Godfrey had come south following his marriage to the widowed daughter-in-law of Thomas Poynings, Lord St. John (d.1429), and his association with the Uvedales followed on from the marriage of Henry’s father to one of that lord’s great-grand-daughters, and a mutual interest in his estates. After the dissolution of his first Parliament, in the Michaelmas term of 1454, Henry appeared in the King’s bench as a pledge for John Devenish*, the sheriff of Surrey and Sussex, who was fined £20 for diverse misprisions; and as ‘of Hampshire, esquire’, he stood surety at the Exchequer for Richard Strecche, given custody of the manor of Little Weldon, Northamptonshire, in the King’s hands owing to the death of Isabel, widow of John Cheyne I*, for whom his father had once acted as a feoffee.8 KB27/774, fines rot. 1d; CFR, xix. 116.

Henry’s employment by the Crown began in the autumn of 1457 with his appointment along with other members of his family as a commissioner of array. It seems that, in unexplained circumstances, he was subsequently taken prisoner by the French – perhaps while fending off an opportunistic engagement in the Channel – for in the following February letters of protection were granted to the master and crew of the Marie of Spain, trading to England to obtain his ransom.9 DKR, xlviii. 424. Appointment as escheator of Hampshire and Wiltshire later in 1458 may be attributed to his lord Bishop Waynflete, the chancellor. After the end of his term of office Waynflete rewarded him for his continued diligent service with the post of keeper of the episcopal park at Hambledon. The proscription of the Yorkist lords in the Coventry Parliament of 1459 presented the Uvedales with difficult questions of loyalty to the Lancastrian crown, exacerbated by their natural concern for their kinsfolk. Henry’s sister Elizabeth had been married to Thomas Roger*, son and heir of John Roger I*, who numbered among the retainers of the duke of York and died in suspicious circumstances early in 1460. In June the treasurer James Butler, earl of Wiltshire, and commissioners of oyer and terminer went to York’s lordship of Newbury to conduct trials of those alleged to have shown friendship to the duke. They imprisoned Thomas, along with nearly 70 men from his late father’s territory in Wallingford castle, where they remained until after the Yorkist victory at Northampton in July. The victors appointed commissioners of gaol delivery in September, prominent among them being three members of the Uvedale family: the brothers Thomas and William, and Thomas’s son, our MP.10 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 648-9. Henry’s brother-in-law was elected to the Parliament which met on 7 Oct., shortly after his release. For Henry himself, his links with Waynflete, a loyal Lancastrian now demoted from the chancellorship, brought an end to his appointments to royal commissions.

After the accession of Edward IV Henry is rarely recorded save in the context of local affairs. His activities remained focused on Winchester. Thus, along with three other members of his family he was present at proceedings in 1462 when the prior of St. Swithun’s successfully refuted a claim to the manor of Winnall. His close association with Waynflete continued: in March 1463 the bishop commissioned him to sequestrate the possessions of a rector from the diocese, and in November following he committed to him the administration of the goods of the late warden of the hospital of St. Cross.11 Reg. Common Seal (Hants Rec. Ser. ii), 397; Reg. Waynflete, pt. 1, ff. 74*v, 80*v. Even so, although he was listed as a potential juror at important judicial hearings conducted in Winchester at Easter 1462 and in August 1466, he was not empannelled.12 KB9/299/19, 20; 314/86, 87. Henry again represented Portsmouth in the Parliament of 1467, but it was his younger brother, Reynold, who was returned to that assembly for the county.

While their father yet lived, Henry died on 11 Oct. 1469, and Reynold just a few months later. Apparently neither left surviving issue.13 C140/49/26; CFR, xx. 247. If a post mortem was ever held for Reynold, it has not been discovered. Henry’s widow took her property in Kilmeston to a second husband, Thomas Troys†, an esquire who in later years served as master of the chaces and parks of the bishopric of Winchester, a post previously held for life by Henry’s father.14 Surr. Arch. Collns. iii. 104-6.. Following the death of (Sir) Thomas Uvedale in 1474, Westington and the other Foxley manors belonging to his first wife, Henry’s mother, passed to her grandson Thomas Roger (d.1488), our MP’s nephew. The principal family estates descended to Henry’s half-brother William.15 The acct. in Oxf. DNB, ‘Uvedale, Sir William’, contains several factual errors with regard to earlier members of the fam.