TOWE, William

Towe’s father John, a bailiff of New Windsor in 1400-1, acquired some 36 acres of land in the neighbourhood in 1410, and witnessed deeds in the town over the next few years.4 Eton Coll., Windsor deeds, 186; CP25(1)/12/80/15; St. George’s Chapel recs. XV 45/63, 71. In 1426 he settled a messuage in New Windsor and two acres of land in ‘Underore’, on his daughter, Isabel, in tail, stipulating that if she died childless the property should revert to William and his heirs.5 Eton Coll., Windsor deeds, 722. As it happened, Isabel left a son, Thomas Wollesby: ibid. 242. Presumably William inherited other family holdings when his father died, perhaps among them being the messuage in ‘Peusecroft’ Street which he conveyed to John Kent of Clewer in 1438.6 St. George’s Chapel recs. XV 45/131. Nothing is known about how he made a living, although his status was sometimes given as ‘husbandman’. Towe, who was frequently asked to attest local conveyances,7 Ibid. XV 45/110, 121, 140, 145, 162, 187; Eton Coll., Windsor deeds, 199, 209-10. took a leading role in borough administration for 40 years, in the course of which he held office as bailiff and mayor for as many as six annual terms each. In addition, he served as a juror at an official inquiry conducted in 1438.

New Windsor’s first ever parliamentary indenture, dated 3 Feb. 1447, was attested by the mayor, bailiffs and seven townsmen.8 C219/15/4. Towe was among this select group, and two years later, during his third mayoralty, he was himself returned to Parliament, in company with one of the bailiffs, Roger Sherman alias Hunt*. The Parliament met for two sessions at Westminster and a third, in the summer of 1449, at Winchester. There is no record of the participation of Towe and Sherman in the proceedings of the Commons, but in the Trinity term of 1453 the two men were sued in the court of common pleas for the very large sum of 200 marks by John Norris*, the influential esquire for the King’s body who had sat with them as a knight of the shire. No explanation is provided as to how this debt had accrued. Perhaps they owed it in their official capacity.9 CP40/770, rot. 88d. By contrast, in the course of the 1440s and 1450s successive treasurers of the Household had run up a number of debts to Towe, presumably for goods or services supplied while the King was staying at Windsor castle. By the end of 1460 the sums owing to him amounted to £45 18s. 4d., and finding it impossible to secure payment in return for a number of the tallies he had been given, he was forced to sell his inheritance. The King, in response to his petition, granted him the £15 p.a. which the bailiffs of New Windsor then paid at the Exchequer for the fee farm of the borough until he received satisfaction.10 CPR, 1452-61, p. 644. This is not dated on the patent roll, but Bodl. Ashmole mss, 1126, f. 8v (wrongly ascribed to 38 Hen. VIII instead of Hen. VI) gives 25 Nov. Whether this grant was honoured by Edward IV when he came to the throne just a few months later does not appear in the records.

Towe was sometimes placed in a position of trust with regard to property in New Windsor. Perhaps acting as an executor, in 1445 he and a widow called Alice Chyppis conveyed to John Hende*, one of the King’s esquires, a tenement and curtilege in ‘Le Shete’ Street.11 St George’s Chapel recs. XV 45/148-51. Other of his dealings proved to be contentious. A few years earlier Alice, daughter and heir of Richard Pomfret and wife of John Clerk, a London cutler, had petitioned the chancellor to complain that Towe had refused to give her seisin of holdings in ‘Bishops Street’ of which he had been enfeoffed by her late father. However, not all of Alice’s woes, caused by the alleged forgery of bonds and a seal, could be laid to his charge.12 C1/39/3; 73/24; Eton Coll., Windsor deeds, 755. Towe is not recorded after 1460.