SPENCER, Henry

It was probably this Henry Spencer who appeared in the Exchequer in the Michaelmas terms of 1447 and 1448 to present the accounts due from Edward Langford* for the shrievalty of Oxfordshire and Berkshire, for he later acted as a feoffee of Langford’s estates.2 E159/227, brevia Trin. rot. 1. Even so, he soon moved from Langford’s employment into that of Henry VI (as a yeoman of the Crown), and of his chief minister William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk. When the duke sailed from Ipswich on 30 Apr. 1450, to start his life in exile, Spencer was in his company, carrying letters from the King addressed to the commanders of the garrisons at Calais and Guînes, perhaps, among other things, ordering them to give the duke their assistance. The flotilla reached the straits of Dover either later the same day or early on 1 May and a pinnace was sent ahead to Calais to find out how Suffolk would be received. The pinnace was intercepted by the Nicholas of the Tower, manned by the duke’s enemies, and Suffolk was taken on board, subjected to a trial, found guilty and executed the next day, 2 May. His body was thrown onto Dover Sands. The duke’s servants, Spencer among them, were put on shore unharmed but despoiled of their goods, Spencer himself being robbed of 44 marks of his own money and the King’s letters. After this, he was also unlucky enough to be sent to the West Country the following month, during the popular uprisings, and was robbed of another £10 by the Wiltshire rebels who slew Bishop Aiscough of Salisbury.3 E404/68/63; R. Virgoe, ‘Death of William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk’, Bull. J. Rylands Lib. xlvii. 492-4.

Spencer’s return for Wallingford to the Parliament summoned for 6 Nov. following was most likely made in the interest of the Crown, since he was by then attached to Henry VI’s chamber.4 E101/410/6, f. 41; 9, f. 44. Yet he was probably well known to the burgesses through his service to the murdered duke of Suffolk and to his widow the dowager Duchess Alice, who continued to hold the constableship of Wallingford’s castle and lived nearby at Ewelme. Proximity to the King eventually led to Spencer’s preferment. Somewhat tardily, in January 1452 a warrant was sent to the Exchequer authorizing an assignment of £24 to be made in his favour from the issues of Oxfordshire and Berkshire to compensate him, if only in part, for his losses in the troubled times of 1450. The assignment was eventually made in July and then, on 5 Aug., he was granted for life the fishery and agistment of the park of Hampstead Marshall, for which he was to render 26s. 8d. p.a., and on 12 Nov. following he was awarded 6d. a day from the lordship of Hampstead Marshall, backdated to the previous Easter, as his wages as a yeoman of the Crown. Appointment as steward of the lordship for life followed just three days later.5 E404/68/63; E403/788, m. 3; CPR, 1446-52, p. 567; 1452-61, pp. 32, 86; CCR, 1447-54, p. 387. The earl of Shrewsbury’s forces had recently re-taken Bordeaux from the French, but the duchy of Aquitaine remained under threat of invasion and in late December commissioners were urgently sent into the counties to treat for loans, which were to be brought into the receipt of the Exchequer before 24 Jan. 1453. Spencer himself assisted by collecting a ‘gift’ of £250 8s. from the inhabitants of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, which he paid into the Exchequer on the 31st.6 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 52-53; E401/830, m. 27. The loss of Aquitaine in July helped to precipitate the King’s mental collapse, and in November 1454 reforms of the Household reduced the numbers of dependents during his illness.7 PPC, vi. 222-33. Spencer was among those who ceased to be employed there, at least for a while. He recovered his post as a yeoman of the Crown by March 1457, when he was committed keeping of the lordship of Hampstead Marshall for as long as 40 years, at a farm of £21 p.a., and he received livery as attached to the royal chamber from Michaelmas 1458.8 CFR, xix. 186; E361/6, rot. 51d.

While so engaged in Henry VI’s service, Spencer was returned to his second Parliament, again as a representative for Wallingford. The main business of the Parliament, held at Coventry from 20 Nov. 1459, was the attainder of the Yorkist lords for treason. The victory of the latter at the battle of Northampton in the following July, placed the King’s retainers, such as Spencer at risk of losing their privileged places in the Household. Furthermore, as Spencer’s petition to the Yorkist chancellor George Neville, bishop of Exeter, makes clear, he was also in financial difficulties. His plea concerned a five-year lease he and John Golok had taken of the parsonage of Chalke in Wiltshire. To satisfy a debt owed by the lessor, a cleric named Leysan Jeffray, they had agreed to pay £20 of the annual rent of 100 marks every year for four years to Richard Caunton, the archdeacon of Wiltshire. Caunton, who was given the procuracy of the parsonage, persuaded them to enter obligations to him for the £80 due, but then he and Jeffray fell out, and the latter revoked the procuracy and put Spencer and his colleague out of the farm after just two years, leaving them ‘grevously sewyd and troublid’ for the £40 remaining of the debt.9 C1/28/113. At the end of August 1460 Spencer ceased to receive remuneration as a member of the Household. There was no question where his loyalties lay in the civil wars of that winter. He joined Margaret of Anjou’s army in the north of England and fought for his master Henry VI at Towton on 29 Mar. 1461. In the Act of Attainder passed in Edward IV’s first Parliament at the end of the year, he was called ‘late of Westminster, yeoman’.10 PROME, xiii. 42-44, 51. Nothing is then recorded regarding his whereabouts for several years, although in 1468 John Besyngby* (formerly his fellow yeoman of the Crown) who had offered mainprise for him when he had taken on the farm of Hampstead Marshall, obtained a royal pardon in his capacity as surety.11 C67/46, m. 11. Perhaps he had remained in personal attendance on Henry VI during his exile. He re-emerged during the Readeption. Then, in February 1471, he was one of the many people, headed by Walter Blount*, Lord Mountjoy, whom Edward Langford enfeoffed of his manors in Berkshire.12 C140/50/38; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 934. Henry VI’s death in the following April left Spencer with little option but to sue for pardon from the restored Edward IV, which he did on 18 Sept. that year and again on 20 Apr. 1472. In the latter pardon he was styled ‘late of Newbury, Berkshire, woolman’ as well as, more predictably, ‘late of London, yeoman, alias late of Hampstead Marshall, parker, alias late yeoman of the Crown to Henry VI’, so it may be the case that in the troubled times of the 1460s he had been attempting to earn a living through trade.13 C67/48; 49, m. 24.

Spencer remained in obscurity until Henry VII seized the throne. His devotion to the Lancastrian dynasty had not been forgotten, for he not only won back his former place as a yeoman of the Crown, but was granted on 27 June 1487 a life-annuity of £10 from the revenues of Berkshire, backdated to Easter 1486. Furthermore, a petition was presented to the King by the Commons in the Parliament of 1489 for the reversal of Spencer’s attainder, in view of his faithful allegiance and true service to the new King’s uncle Henry VI, and this was duly granted.14 CPR, 1485-94, p. 174; PROME, xvi. 46-47. Nevertheless, the years of exclusion had left their mark. Spencer subsequently claimed that he was disabled by his great losses from suing out the letters patent exemplifying this grant, and on 14 Dec. 1490 a precept was sent to the keeper of the hanaper authorizing the delivery of the required letters to Spencer, free of the customary fee. Two years later, on 29 Oct. 1493, in consideration of his good service to Henry VI in his youth and the tribulations sustained as a consequence of his loyalty, he was awarded the place of one of the knights receiving the King’s alms in the royal college of Windsor.15 Materials for Hist. Hen. VII ed. Campbell, ii. 555; CPR, 1485-94, p. 455. It was no doubt there that Spencer ended his days.