TRESHAM, William

Tresham’s career provides an illustration of how a family could be elevated to the first rank of a county’s gentry through the success of one man. His origins are uncertain. The most likely speculation is that he hailed from a family settled at Tresham in the Gloucestershire parish of Hawkesbury, even though he is not known to have inherited lands there. In 1415, when offering mainprise in Chancery, he is described as of that county, and Leland, writing of the family in the 1540s, noted that ‘Sum say that there is a manor place in Glocestreshire caullid Tresham Haule ... and that by likely hod that should be the auncientest house of the Treshams’. Our MP’s father may thus have been Thomas Tresham, who served as both coroner and tax collector in Gloucestershire during the last years of the fourteenth century, and it is a further point in favour of this identification that our MP gave his eldest son the same Christian name. The coroner was a descendant of Lawrence Tresham, summoned in 1300 for military service against the Scots as having lands in Gloucestershire worth more than £40 p.a.13 J. Leland, Itin. ed. Toulmin Smith, iv. 97; N. Saul, Knights and Esquires, 144; CFR, xi. 26; C60/80, m. 13d; Knights of Edw. I (Harl. Soc. lxxxiii), 47. It must be doubted whether our MP’s immediate ancestors were ever as wealthy as that, but it does seem that he could claim descent from a family of gentle status, albeit one seemingly in decline.

The records are silent on the question of when Tresham moved to Northamptonshire. He does not seem to have inherited any property there, and it is not known when he married the daughter of another family who had recently settled in that county, the Vauxs.14 In the 1320s Laurence Tresham had laid unsuccessful claim to the manor of Passenham in south Northants., but there is no other evidence of the family’s connexion with the county before William’s time: RP, i. 395; VCH Northants. v. 214. It is likely, however, that his connexion with Northamptonshire predates his marriage by some years. His wife seems to have been a mere child on her father’s death in 1405, and Tresham first appears in the records only a few years later. During these early years of his career he resided in Northampton. On 23 Feb. 1411 he offered surety in the Exchequer for a prominent burgess of the town, Henry Caysho, and a year later to the day he joined with another local man, John Ditton, in taking a lease of a messuage there at a rent of 5s. payable to the Crown.15 CPR, 1422-9, p. 27; CFR, xiii. 206, 236. The first of his many land purchases probably also occurred in Northampton: on 20 Dec. 1415 the surviving feoffees of Thomas Overton† granted a tenement in St. Sepulchre’s Street to Tresham and Henry Stone* in fee.16 C145/321/3; Add. Ch. 22373.

There is nothing in his early career to identify Tresham with a particular patron.17 His wife was a gt.-niece of Sir William Thirning but this is the only evidence to connect Tresham with the c.j.c.p. who died in 1413. His later career leaves no doubt that he enjoyed a legal training (as his putative father, judging from his election as coroner, may also have done), and it was probably this which won him a place in the Exchequer during the later years of Henry IV’s reign. In 1412 he was described as ‘de scaccario’ when he delivered the Northamptonshire subsidy return into the receipt of the Exchequer. His ability is apparent in his early promotion. On 11 Apr. 1415 he was commissioned to make payments to the owners of ships requisitioned by the Crown for the forthcoming expedition to France, and in the following March he was constituted auditor of accounts in South Wales.18 E179/155/52, m. 1d; CPR, 1413-16, pp. 342, 385.

Such service brought rewards of great significance to one who began his career landless, and it was largely through royal grants that Tresham established his place among the gentry of his adopted shire. On 17 Oct. 1415 he shared with Ralph Green†, one of the wealthiest Northamptonshire gentry, and William Aldewyncle*, a lawyer with whom he was to maintain a long and close association, a grant of the wardship of the lands and the marriage of William Tyndale (b.1397) of Deene, at a farm to be agreed with the treasurer. Since the inquisition into the Tyndale lands had been held only the day before, Tresham and his colleagues had lost no time in petitioning for the wardship, but despite the grant they were to be quickly disappointed. On the following 1 Dec. the land and marriage of the heir were entrusted to the noted soldier, Lewis Robessart.19 CFR, xiv. 125-6; CIPM, xx. 288-9; C138/54/117; CPR, 1413-16, p. 377.

Tresham was more fortunate a few years later. On 16 Nov. 1420, he joined two other local lawyers, Thomas Billing* and Thomas Compworth*, in an undertaking to pay the King £100 for the wardship and marriage of Ralph (b.1409), grandson and heir of Ralph Parles† of Watford. This was a bargain price since the marriage alone was worth that sum.20 CPR, 1416-22, p. 308; C138/53/107. In the long term, however, much more important to Tresham’s fortunes was a grant made to him nearly three weeks before: on 28 Oct. he and William Thirlwall, the duke of Clarence’s receiver-general, were awarded the custody of lands in Sywell, Earls Barton and Hannington at an annual rent of £5. These had been taken into the King’s hands in payment of the debts of Thomas Beston of Sywell, a filacer of the court of King’s bench and chief bailiff of the honour of Wallingford, and were part of the estate Beston had purchased from Sir Edward Dallingridge† of Bodiam in Sussex. Beston had been murdered by his wife in June 1420 and his heirs never recovered his lands. Instead Tresham, by means unknown, converted his joint-lease to a fee simple, a process which was probably complete by 1428 when he was returned as holding the Dallingridge property in his own right. He later made his principal residence at Sywell, a few miles north-east of Northampton.21 CFR, xiv. 356; CCR, 1392-6, pp. 388, 396; KB9/216/2/21; Feudal Aids, iv. 33.

With the benefit of these grants, Tresham quickly assumed a prominent role in Northamptonshire affairs at the beginning of the next reign. In 1422 he was named among the feoffees of a local esquire, John Seyton of Maidwell; and on 5 May 1423 he joined three senior lawyers in returning an award in the property dispute between Roland St. Liz of South Luffenham (Rutland) and Sir Thomas Chetwode of Chetwode (Buckinghamshire). Two months later, on 5 July, he acted for William, Lord Lovell, one of the two peers resident in the county: he was party to a bond in as much as 700 marks to Henry Chichele, archbishop of Canterbury, in connexion with Lovell’s sale of two manors to the archbishop. He was to remain closely associated with Lovell throughout his career, although there is no reason to suppose that he owed his advancement to the young nobleman.22 Add. Ch. 21265; Lansd. Ch. 145; CCR, 1422-9, pp. 72-73; E326/4611.

Even against this background, it is slightly surprising that Tresham had local standing enough at this early stage in his career to secure a county seat in Parliament and begin what was to be a virtual monopoly of one of the county seats for more than 25 years. On 30 Sept. 1423 he was elected in company with one of the county’s leading gentry, Richard Knightley*, who was also one of Tresham’s colleagues in the Exchequer. As he was to do for the rest of his career, he took the opportunity of presence at Westminster to make himself useful to himself and his local clients. During the first session of the assembly, he entered mainprise in Chancery for Thomas Chamberlain of Raunds to do no hurt to Margaret, widow of Sir John Pilkington (sheriff of Northamptonshire in 1419-20), and acted in a final concord with two Northamptonshire lawyers, Aldewyncle and Richard Willoughby, concerning property in Warwickshire.23 C219/13/2; CCR, 1422-9, p. 131; Warws. Feet of Fines (Dugdale Soc. xviii), 2531. Soon after the end of the assembly he was appointed to the quorum of the county bench (having briefly served on that of Rutland in 1422), and it is fair to assume that he had actively sought this post while an MP. His sudden rise to prominence was underpinned by successful efforts to acquire a landed base sufficient to justify that prominence: in 1425 he completed the acquisition of a small estate in Rothwell and Northampton from the baronial family of Zouche of Harringworth, the other peerage family resident in the county.24 CP25(1)/179/93/15; CP40/655, cart. rot. 1d; 658, cart. rot. 3d.

Tresham was again returned to Parliament on 25 Sept. 1427. While at Westminster he acted for another rising young lawyer, Thomas Palmer*, in the purchase of two manors in Leicestershire, and offered mainprise for the prosecution of a petition in Chancery against two former bailiffs of Northampton. He also appears to have been deputed to settle a dispute pending in that court over lands in Peterborough.25 C219/13/5; CP25(1)/126/74/10; 179/93/43; C1/7/34; CCR, 1422-9, p. 407; C88/113/2. More significantly, during the prorogation he was involved in a conveyance which was many years later to have fateful consequences: on 21 Dec. Richard Holt, clerk, brother and heir of Hugh Holt and son of Sir John Holt (d.1418/19), j.c.p., conveyed his considerable inheritance in the county to Tresham and others.26 Oxf. DNB, ‘Holt, Sir John’; Add. Ch. 21555. He was a close friend of the Holts. In 1424 he had represented the interests of Hugh Holt’s widow in a final concord, and in her will of 1425 she had bequeathed him a book called ‘The Brute’ and 20s.: CP25(1)/291/65/27; Reg. Chichele, ii. 320. Once more elected to Parliament in 1429, he again directly benefited from his parliamentary service: towards the end of the first session he and his friend Thomas Wydeville* were awarded the keeping of the manors of Gayhurst and Stoke Goldington in Buckinghamshire during the minority of John Neville together with the heir’s marriage. Early in the second session, on 5 Feb. 1430, he acted in a bond relating to the marriage of his sister-in-law, Eleanor Vaux, and in the following month he was appointed to his first ad hoc commission of local government.27 C219/14/1; CFR, xv. 289; E368/203, recorda Hil. rot. 5; C54/280, m. 13d (where he is called Thomas in error). Tresham was not returned to the next Parliament, but he was consecutively elected at the hustings on 3 Apr. 1432 and 25 June 1433.28 C219/14/3, 4. On both occasions John Gage was one of the mainpernors for his attendance, and this provides another oblique connexion between Tresham and Glos. On 10 Aug. 1432 John Gage esq. and his wife enfeoffed Lord Lovell, Tresham and others of lands in Cirencester in that county: Vis. Glos. (Harl. Soc. xxi), 246. The feoffor was the father of the mainpernor, and it seems that the younger Gage, together with his cousin John Bovy, came to Northants. to make their careers in Tresham’s service. Not improbably the Treshams and the Gages were related. Six days before the latter election, he shared with Walter Green* a royal grant of the wardship of Henry Green*, heir to one of the greatest gentry inheritances in Northamptonshire. This was clearly intended as a favour to the heir for both grantees numbered among the feoffees of his father. But on the following 5 July, three days before the Parliament began, both the marriage and the keeping were given to Archbishop Chichele.29 CFR, xvi. 150; Northants. RO, Stopford Sackville mss, 4225.

By the early 1430s Tresham was becoming a lawyer of more than merely local significance, establishing a string of important connexions, and it may be that his parliamentary service played a part in enabling him to do so. In February 1430 he had been granted an annual fee of 40s. by Anne, dowager countess of Stafford, and three years later her son, Earl Humphrey, appointed him as his steward of the manor of Rothwell.30 Rawcliffe, 204, 237. His professional expertise was also in strong demand among prelates. On 18 Feb. 1432, he was named with Nicholas Radford* among Cardinal Beaufort’s attorneys in the action of praemunire brought against him; a year later he was appointed as attorney by the abbot of St. Albans, who was going to the general council at Basle; and in June 1436 he was nominated in the same capacity by Robert Mallory, prior of the hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in England.31 Foedera ed. Rymer (orig. edn.), x. 500, 551; G.L. Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort, 216-17; E159/212, recorda, Trin. rot. 4. It may have been as a nominee of the cardinal that, in Oct. 1436, he was chosen as an arbiter in the long-running dispute between the city of Canterbury and the abbey of St. Augustine: Canterbury Cath. Archs., Canterbury city recs., Woodruff’s list, CCA-CC-WOODRUFF, bdle. 44, no. 24.

Had Tresham chosen to do so there can be no doubt that he could have followed John Hody* in further advancing himself through promotion in the legal profession, but his expertise appears to have been as much financial as legal. He decided instead to resume his employment in the Exchequer, perhaps because of an association with Ralph, Lord Cromwell, who became treasurer in August 1433.32 From 1438 Tresham acted for Cromwell in all the lord’s important transactions: CP40/712, rot. 110d; CP25(1)/192/9/10, 14; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 218-19, 222-3. Six months later an assignment was made to the treasurer of the royal household ‘per manus Willelmi Tressam’, and in the following June he and Hody were each paid £1 as a special reward for tasks they had been ordered to do by Cromwell as treasurer. It was no doubt as part of his Exchequer service that he undertook work for the Crown in Parliament. Once more an MP in the assembly which ended on 23 Dec. 1435, on 2 Dec. he was paid ten marks for labouring in Parliament to further the King’s business there and two weeks later, on 16 Dec., he received £3 as special reward ‘pro laboriosis scripturis et ingrosacione’ of divers parliamentary grants.33 E403/715, m. 9; 721, m. 10; J.S. Roskell, Speakers, 108-9n.

A further avenue of employment and advancement for Tresham was the administration of the duchy of Lancaster. He was retained as an apprentice-at-law by the duchy early in 1438, if not before;34 DL28/5/2, ff. 12v, 120. and it was seemingly also at this time that he was appointed by the feoffees of Henry V as joint steward of their estates in Northamptonshire and neighbouring counties.35 Somerville, i. 586. This goes some way towards explaining why, when Parliament met at Westminster on 12 Nov. 1439, the Commons elected him as their Speaker.36 His election was no doubt welcome to the treasurer, who, early in this assembly, faced a challenge from Sir John Gra* to his illegal tenure of the valuable manor of Multon Hall. His service to the duchy and Exchequer gave him expert knowledge upon which the Commons could draw in respect of one of the main points of debate in this assembly: the resumption of those valuable parts of the duchy estates enfeoffed to the implementation of Henry V’s will and the assignment of the revenues to the expenses of the royal household. On the one side of this argument were the Commons and the earl of Suffolk; on the other, Henry V’s three surviving feoffees, headed by Cardinal Beaufort. Tresham may here have felt himself in rather an equivocal position as both the Commons’ representative and steward of the feoffees.37 Harriss, 307-8. But, whatever momentary difficulties this debate caused him, he did not neglect to use his position to the advantage of his own concerns. His late friend Thomas Wydeville had been unable to collect the considerable sum of £619 owed to him by the Crown for the custody of two distinguished prisoners. Now, as one of his executors, Tresham petitioned for redress, and on 1 Mar. 1440, just after the close of Parliament, he and his fellow petitioners were granted £40 p.a. from the royal manor of Kingsthorpe (Northamptonshire) in discharge of the debt.38 This arrangement held until 1454 when the remaining executors were assigned a lesser sum in annual payment: CPR, 1452-61, p. 199. Earlier in the same assembly he had been nominated by one of the knights of the Household, Sir Ralph Rochford, to act in a similar capacity with respect to a much larger sum owed to the knight from his time as captain of Hammes, and it may be that Tresham’s influence as Speaker was also of significance here.39 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 359-60, 387.

Tresham’s service as Speaker marked a watershed in his career, elevating him to a higher rank among the King’s servants at a time when the fund of royal patronage in his native county had been expanded by the reversion of Queen Joan’s dower. He was rewarded accordingly. On 15 May 1440 he was granted £40 p.a. out of the issues of the royal manor of King’s Cliffe for his good service to both Henry V and Henry VI. In the following May he added to this a joint share in a further £20 p.a. assigned on the manor of Brigstock, and in September 1441 he joined with a senior Household servant, John Hampton II*, in the purchase from the Crown, no doubt at a favourable price, of the wardship and marriage of John Woodhill (b.1435).40 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 430, 554; 1441-6, pp. 2-3; C139/102/6; 170/44. Less remunerative but of symbolic value as a mark of his newly-acquired local status was the grant made to him in the following November of free warren in his demesne lands in Rushton (where he had acquired a manor in 1438), Sywell and Hannington.41 CChR, vi. 30; Add. Ch. 62426. With such major gains went a more central place in government affairs. In September 1440 he was one of a group of royal intimates, including the earl of Suffolk, Bishop Aiscough and James Fiennes*, to whom were conveyed the extensive estates of the alien priories in royal hands preparatory their settlement on the King’s foundation at Eton. Shortly afterwards he appears in the first surviving list of those in receipt of robes as an esquire of the royal household.42 CPR, 1436-41, p. 471; J. Watts, Hen. VI and the Politics of Kingship, 169-70; E101/409/9. His son and heir, who was b.c.1425, was ‘brought up of a child’ in the Household: PROME, xiii. 350-2.

On 28 Dec. 1441 Tresham was again elected to Parliament, but it is possible that his dominance of one of the county seats was beginning to lead to local resentment. The election indenture suggests the possibility that there was a contest, for it has two unusual features. First, it names no fewer than 86 attestors, more than double the number that had attested any previous Northamptonshire return. Second, the name of the second attestor has been quite deliberately erased in the two places it occurs on the return. There can be little doubt that the election was contested, with Tresham and his brother-in-law, William Vaux, representing the successful ‘ticket’, and it is a reasonable speculation that the second attestor refused to append his seal.43 C219/15/4. Nevertheless, while Tresham may not have had the unanimous endorsement of his constituency, he was once more his fellow MPs’ choice as Speaker when Parliament assembled at Westminster on the following 25 Jan. The assembly was principally notable for the completion of work begun in the previous Parliament: the resumption of the enfeoffed lands of the duchy. No doubt Tresham, with his ties with the Household, was now a firm supporter of this measure; it is an open question whether the Commons as a body would have been of the same view had they known that the issues were to be applied not to the reform of Household finance but rather to the foundation of Eton College, a project in which their Speaker was intimately involved.44 PROME, xi. 368-73; Harriss, 323; Watts, 185-6.

In the aftermath of his second Speakership Tresham was again significantly advanced by the Crown. This time the pretext was the resumption of the duchy lands. On 3 July 1442 he was appointed for life, in reversion after the death of Walter Shiryngton, clerk, to the chancellorship of both the duchy and the county palatine of Lancaster. A year later, in July 1443, he had licence to hunt in the royal forests of Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire, taking annually for term of his life a buck and two does. On the following 27 Nov. he and his son Thomas were appointed (in joint survivorship) to the office he had previously held under the feoffees, namely the stewardship of the duchy of Lancaster lands in Northamptonshire and three neighbouring counties. Two days later, he received the honour of nomination as one of the feoffees for the implementation of the King’s will. Further, in 1445 he was able to convert his life grant of an annuity of £40 assigned upon King’s Cliffe to one in survivorship for his own life and that of his son, and a year later the two men received on the same terms another £40 annuity chargeable on the duchy.45 Somerville, i. 210, 476, 586; DL37/11/18; CPR, 1441-6, p. 192; Roskell, 230; PROME, xi. 404-10; DL28/5/6, f. 8v. These gains may have prompted Tresham to embark on another round of property acquisitions. In 1444 he purchased the manor of ‘Brownes’ in Hannington near Sywell from Sir Richard Waldegrave and his wife, and in the following year he acquired about 400 acres in Boughton, Geddington and Newton.46 CP25(1)/179/95/112, 113; CCR, 1441-7, p. 385.

On 19 Jan. 1447 Tresham was returned once more, on this occasion in company with another member of the royal household, Henry Green, who had briefly been in his wardship; and his son Thomas was elected for Buckinghamshire (where the family held the manor of Broughton Parva by the grant of Lord Lovell).47 C219/15/4. There was an obvious political dimension to these elections as they came as the duke of Suffolk was preparing to act against Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. Further, on 3 Feb., a week before the opening of Parliament, Tresham was rewarded with a payment of five marks for advancing certain unspecified royal matters, and when the assembly opened at Bury St. Edmunds he was once more elected Speaker. His conduct in that office must have been more than satisfactory to the Crown. On 1 Mar., two days before the close of Parliament, he shared with John Hampton a grant, free of farm, of the wardship of the lands of the late William Harrowden (who had been married to his sister-in-law, Margaret Vaux).48 E403/765, m. 15; E159/229, brevia Hil. rot. 9d. Among the Household men, Hampton may have been a particular friend of our MP. In 1448 he employed Tresham in the settlement of a jointure: CCR, 1441-7, pp. 170-1, 179. Among the great events of this Parliament, Tresham characteristically found time to promote a matter of his own, facilitating the progress of a petition in which he was personally concerned. He and the other executors of the immensely wealthy London alderman, John Brockley† (d.1444/5), complained that his widow and executrix was impeding the will’s execution by detaining money and sureties worth between 7,000 and 8,000 marks.49 PROME, xii. 11-12. A memorandum drawn up for Tresham in 1448 is chiefly concerned with moneys to be disbursed in execution of Brockley’s will: Add. 39828, f. 13.

Tresham’s involvement in the principal concerns of Suffolk’s regime found further expression a few months after this Parliament. On 8 July 1447, at Deptford in Kent, he was among the royal commissioners of inquiry, headed by Suffolk himself, who took treason indictments against the late duke of Gloucester’s leading retainers, and 11 months later he joined Suffolk and others in arbitrating a dispute involving tenants of Eton College. He continued to benefit from royal patronage. On 10 Dec. 1447 he was appointed chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster lands in the hands of feoffees (of whom he was one) from the previous Michaelmas at a fee of £40 p.a. On the following 8 June he secured a royal grant designed to enhance his local authority in the estate he was building in central Northamptonshire: he was given in fee the view of frankpledge in the manor of Sywell.50 KB9/255/2/21; CCR, 1447-54, p. 66; DL37/16/8; CPR, 1446-52, p. 162. The price of such rewards was a round of almost ceaseless activity. While busy about the affairs of the court and the administration of the duchy, he continued to represent the interests of the Crown in local government. For example, on 24 Oct. 1446 he had received assignment at the Exchequer, with others unnamed, in repayment of over £231 lent two days earlier, and it is probable that this sum represents the money he and his colleagues had raised as loan commissioners in Northamptonshire during the previous summer.51 E403/765, m. 3. He himself made several loans to the Crown, two of as much as 100 marks in Feb. 1436 and Oct. 1449: PPC, iv. 326; E403/749, m. 4; 755, m. 3; 777, m. 2. On 20 May 1448 he sat as a j.p. at Northampton, and on the following day he presided there over a royal commission of inquiry into concealments in the county.52 KB27/753, rex rot. 2; C145/313/12.

On 16 Jan. 1449 Tresham was elected to Parliament once more, but he was not the choice of the Commons as Speaker. This fell upon another royal servant, John Say II*, who shortly before the beginning of the third session of the assembly received a grant of the reversion of Tresham’s duchy of Lancaster chancellorships.53 C219/15/6; Somerville, i. 476. This can hardly have been welcome to our MP, who probably hoped that his son would succeed him in the offices (as he was to do in the chancellorship of the enfeoffed lands), and it may be that his connexions with the court were weakening as its fortunes declined. This, at least, is the implication to be drawn by his growing closeness to Richard, duke of York. Unfortunately the surviving evidence does not reveal when he entered the duke’s service. As early as March 1440 he had acted as a feoffee of lands in Hertfordshire in company with York and three of his servants, but it may not have been until towards the end of the decade that the two men established a more formal connexion. In any event he was serving on the duke’s council by 12 June 1448, when he attended a meeting in London, and thereafter he was intimately involved in the reordering of York’s finances preparatory to the duke’s departure for Ireland in July 1449. By final concords levied shortly after he left the duke conveyed several manors to an influential group of feoffees, comprising, besides five spiritual and temporal peers, Tresham and six other of his councillors. On 8 Sept., while still in Ireland, York petitioned the royal council, on the grounds of pressing financial need, to licence both this alienation and that of other properties held in chief to the same feoffees. The intention, no doubt, was that Tresham and his fellows should dispose of the properties as financial need dictated.54 CCR, 1435-41, p. 376; SC6/1113/9; CP25(1)/293/71/346, 347; E28/79/3; P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 63.

It is in the context of this involvement in the duke of York’s affairs that Tresham’s final appearance in Parliament is to be seen. On 23 Oct. 1449 he was elected in company with another royal servant, Thomas Thorpe*.55 C219/15/7. As events unfolded, he was to be placed in a highly equivocal position. When Parliament met on 6 Nov. in the tense atmosphere engendered by the collapse of the English position in Normandy, the Commons elected Sir John Popham*, an old soldier and servant of the duke of York, as their Speaker, but his unwillingness to act (perhaps under pressure from the government) led to Tresham’s selection. It is easy to see this as a reverse to those in the Commons opposed to the duke of Suffolk’s regime: Tresham had risen to prominence during Suffolk’s dominance of royal patronage and had acted as Speaker in 1447 when the Commons had been ready to do the court’s bidding. Why, however, should an assembly, later so vociferous in its condemnation of the government, have been prevailed upon to elect such a man, albeit as second choice? The truth is that he was chosen because of his links with the opposition. Not only was he a councillor of the duke of York but he had long been associated with Lord Cromwell, who, if one chronicler is to be believed, took a leading part in engineering the attack on Suffolk. This is not to say that Tresham was any more than the spokesman of the Commons in this attack, but there can be little doubt that Suffolk’s interests would have been better served by one more wholly committed to his regime. Leaving these great matters aside, Tresham characteristically took the opportunity to protect his own interests. He escaped almost entirely from the Act of Resumption passed in the last session of the Parliament, losing only a single annuity of £20 (a small sacrifice considering that his other annuities totalled 280 marks). He also employed his influence on the part of others: a petition from the collegiate church of St. Mary in Leicester for exemption with respect to its grant of a tun of wine is subscribed ‘per Willelmum Tresham’.56 Roskell, 92-93; PROME, xii. 122-3; C49/58/11. The 280 marks includes the annuity of £40 and ‘regard’ of 40 marks p.a. which he received from Feb. 1449 as chancellor of the duchy: DL28/5/6, f. 9v.

This was, however, the last significant act of Tresham’s career, and it is tempting to see its tragic conclusion as a product of the growing contradiction between his court connexions and service to the duke of York. But if this did contribute to his murder it was only a subsidiary factor: the main one was a long-standing local quarrel. The best source for the circumstances of his death is the well-known petition presented by his widow Isabel to the King in the first session of the Parliament which met on 6 Nov. 1450. His death, it claimed, was the result of a conspiracy headed by Simon Norwich (described as a gentleman of Bringhurst in Leicestershire), who ‘of sotill ymagination and malice of longe tyme forethought’ had planned to kill her husband. On the evening of 22 Sept. the conspirators, having discovered that Tresham had been summoned to the presence of the duke of York (recently returned from Ireland), sent William King of Kislingbury to visit him at Sywell to find out his proposed route and time of travel. Armed with this knowledge the conspirators with ‘dyvers mysdoers and murderers of men, to the nombre of an CLX persones or moo’ were waiting for him at 6 a.m. on the following morning at ‘Thorplandclose’ in Moulton as he travelled from Sywell to meet the duke. There a Welsh yeoman, Evan Aprice, ‘with a Launcegay, smote [him] thorough the body a fote and more, wherof he died’. On 20 Dec., two days after the prorogation of the first session of this Parliament, a writ was sent to Thomas Wake* as sheriff of Northamptonshire, ordering him to make proclamation against those named in Isabel’s petition. It was delivered to him at his home at Blisworth on the following 4 Jan., and a week later he duly made the proclamation. Predictably this had little effect. Of those named in the petition only Simon Norwich appeared in King’s bench, and the curious pleading which ensued shows that he did so only because he had already reached a settlement with Tresham’s widow. She claimed that he was the son of another Simon Norwich and thus not the same man as cited in her petition, who was, she said, the son of Alexander Norwich; the fortunate defendant acknowledged this and was dismissed from the court. This was clearly collusive: Simon Norwich was the only man of account accused by Isabel and the pleading was designed to terminate her appeal against him, probably because he had agreed to pay her damages.57 PROME, xii. 175-9; KB27/759, rot. 51. Of the other accused, Evan Aprice and William King were among those outlawed on 26 July 1453: KB29/89, rot. 26. Their subsequent fate has not been traced.

Even by the lax standards of the time, the murder of one of the most influential gentry in the realm appears to have generated remarkably little heat. No inquest before the county coroners or indictment before j.p.s. survives, and it is unlikely that any such was taken. Isabel claimed in her petition that this was due to the threats of the perpetrators, who had allegedly told jurors called by the coroners that, ‘uppon peyne of their lyfes … they shuld no verdit gif, but if they wold endite the seid William Tresham of his owen deth’. Even so, while this might explain the lack of action in the immediate aftermath of the murder, it does not explain why it was not until 26 Oct. 1452, when a powerful commission of oyer and terminer visited Northamptonshire to take indictments against those involved in the duke of York’s Dartford rising, that any jury was called upon to bring the crime to the notice of the Crown. Then a minor jury endorsed as true a lengthy bill which leaves no doubt as to the motive for the murder and confirms the validity of the widow’s accusation against Norwich. Nearly all of this bill was concerned with describing a series of feoffments of the Holt estates as a preface to the indictment of Norwich and his father-in-law Hugh Boyville* for several forcible entries upon the possession of the feoffees in the weeks preceding the murder. Tacked on to the end is an indictment for the latter crime with, significantly, two clauses struck out: first, that the murder had been brought about ‘per excitacionem, procurationem et mocionem’ of Norwich and Boyville, and, second, that these two esquires had feloniously received the murderers. Equally strikingly, the grand jury made no reference at all to the murder although it did endorse a less detailed bill concerning the entries.

There can be little doubt that Tresham’s leading part in keeping Norwich, as the common-law heir of the Holts, out of that family’s valuable estates, was the reason for his murder. This is implicit in the lengthy bill endorsed by the lesser jury with its concern to detail conveyances of the disputed lands dating back to the 1420s. According to this testimony, Tresham and four lesser men had been feoffees for the implementation of Richard Holt’s will and had continued their estate for 20 years or more, distributing issues in works of charity for the benefit of Holt’s soul according to the terms of the will. Thereafter, for a reason unstated, the lands had been divided into two: in respect of one part, five new feoffees had been added to the surviving three; the other part had been settled on a much more distinguished group, headed by the King’s carver, Sir Robert Roos, and including Tresham and three other prominent lawyers. These two sets of feoffees had then remained seised until disseised by Norwich.58 KB9/94/1/10, 22: Add. Ch. 62423. The will of Richard Holt does not survive and it is impossible to know whether the feoffees were exceeding their instructions in holding on to the lands for more than 20 years after his death. It may be that he did not intend them to pass to his distant cousins and heirs, the Norwichs, but it is perhaps more likely that his intention was that the feoffees should maintain their estate during the minority of Simon Norwich, who had been a mere baby at Holt’s death in 1429. However this may be, if the young heir had become aware of the division of the enfeoffed lands, it cannot but have raised suspicion in his mind. The five men added to the three surviving original feoffees in one part of the lands were all close associates of our MP, and it must thus have appeared that Tresham intended to annex this part to himself and his heirs. Clearly Norwich’s entry into the lands was provoked by the refusal of the feoffees to surrender the lands to him upon his coming of age, and there can have been no doubt that he blamed Tresham for this refusal.

Norwich may have felt himself empowered to act by the dislocation in central politics, and, more importantly, by the support of the unscrupulous Edmund, Lord Grey of Ruthin, who was becoming a potent force in the politics of the county. According to the chronicle attributed to William Worcestre, Tresham was killed by Grey’s men, and this assertion is repeated by Leland, who, reflecting a tradition current in the Tresham family in the 1540s, names two of the perpetrators as ‘Salisbyri and Glin of Wales’.59 Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, ii. 769; Leland, iv. 97. These reports cannot be dismissed. Norwich himself numbered among Grey’s followers, and there can be no doubt that the men of Wales implicated in the murder came from Grey’s estates there.60 C140/27/16; KB27/769, rot. 51d; R.I. Jack, Grey of Ruthin Valor, 74n. Perhaps Norwich was simply exploiting his place in Grey’s service to assemble an armed band to pursue a private quarrel, but it is difficult to believe that he did not have his lord’s consent, at least passively.61 Grey himself seems later to have assisted Norwich in making good his title to the Holt lands. On 22 Aug. 1452 an inquest held before the county escheator at Towcester, where Grey was lord, found, quite untruly, that Richard Holt had died seized of his entire inheritance and, correctly, that Norwich was his heir: E149/192/7; C139/146/13. Grey and Tresham appear to have been on good terms in the early 1440s: on 15 Feb. 1442, while serving as Speaker, Tresham joined another MP, Grey’s servant, John Enderby*, in witnessing the important deed by which Grey concluded a dispute with a wealthy London grocer. Thereafter, however, tensions may have arisen from Tresham’s role as one of the feoffees for the performance of the will of Edmund’s grandfather, Reynold, Lord Grey (d.1440). The feoffees’ discharge of these responsibilities had led to litigation in Chancery. They were sued by Reynold’s widow, Joan Astley (d.1448) for their refusal to convey the Leicestershire manor of Burbage to her, and, in an action pending at the time of the murder, by her son, Sir Edward Grey, for their failure to allow him the annuity of £20 bequeathed to him by Reynold. Although there is no reason to suppose that Lord Edmund was affronted by the frustration of the interests of his step-grandmother and uncle of the half blood, these actions show that the feoffees were still seised to the performance of the will as late as 1450 and this may well have been a bone of contention between him and Tresham.62 CCR, 1441-7, p. 55; C1/17/81; 1489/63.

These circumstances help to explain why the murder seems not to have been a matter of outrage for the leading men of the shire. Tresham was probably considered to have brought his sad end upon himself. In any event, by the time the indictments were taken in the autum of 1452, the cause of the dispute had been laid to rest: in the previous May our MP’s son and heir, Thomas, and Simon Norwich had put the dispute over the Holt lands to the arbitration of an influential panel of local arbiters, headed by Thomas Wake and William Catesby*.63 They were to be supported by four leading lawyers, Thomas Billing, William Lacon I*, Robert Tanfeld* and Henry Sotehill: Add. Ch. 62431. The subsequent descent of the Holt lands in the Norwich family suggests that their award was in favour of the heir.

Other evidence adds to this impression that Tresham had made himself unpopular. An anonymous chronicler, referring in passing to Tresham’s murder, describes him as ‘an extorcioner’, and there is some indirect evidence, independent of the circumstances of his death, to support the accuracy of this description.64 C.L. Kingsford, English Historical Literature, 372. Apparently without hereditary expectations, he built, by purchase alone, an estate sufficient to raise his family to the ranks of the leading county gentry. Moreover, the bulk of his documented purchases came in the period before the bounty of royal patronage greatly augmented his income. No doubt the legitimate profits of legal practice contributed to these purchases, but less acceptable usages must also have played a part. In the late 1430s Margaret, widow of John Bosworth (d.1434), petitioned both the King and chancellor, complaining that Tresham, by his ‘grete puissance’ and ‘suttyl werkyng’, was intent of depriving her of property in Northampton, which she valued at over £11 p.a.65 SC8/295/14734; C4/1/16. Whether she gained redress does not appear, but it is likely that her lands were part of the large accumulation of property in Northampton that Tresham left at his death.

Like other substantial purchasers, Tresham probably exploited the unfair advantage the common law gave the mortgagee over the mortgagor. Direct evidence is lacking, but it seems very likely that his important acquisition of the manor of ‘Westhalle’ in Rushton together with the advowson of the church there arose out of a mortgage. It appears that the property had originally been mortgaged by William Penythorne to a group including two London citizens, and in 1438 Tresham took quitclaims from both the Penythornes and their putative mortgagees. Further, when, in 1441, Sir Ralph Bulmer (d.1444) of Wilton in Cleveland (Yorkshire) conveyed his Northamptonshire properties to Tresham and others, it is probable that this too was a mortgage for not only was the deed witnessing an apparently minor conveyance enrolled on the close roll but Tresham’s co-feoffees all numbered among his intimates.66 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 186, 266; 1441-7, pp. 51-52. Even stronger suspicion is aroused by the inclusion in an account of Tresham’s receiver for 1446-7 of the manors of Abbotsley (Huntingdonshire) and Stathern (Leicestershire). The former had been acquired in 1434 from Ralph Pakington and his wife, and the latter in 1437 from the feoffees of Sir John Reynes (d.1428) and his wife, but neither transaction was a purchase for both manors returned to the right heirs after his death. Again it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Tresham held them on mortgage.67 CP25(1)/94/35/22; Stopford Sackville mss, 2912; VCH Hunts. ii. 258; J. Nichols, Leics. ii (1), 356. More direct evidence is available in another case. In 1435 his former ward, John Neville, conveyed two manors in Buckinghamshire to him and a group of his friends. According to a petition presented to the chancellor by Neville’s widow, Joan, the feoffment was made for the repayment of 40 marks her late husband owed to the feoffees and for the performance of his last will, but they had refused to make estate to her under the terms of this will even though she had discharged the debt.68 CIPM, xxv. 223; C1/10/307. Such conduct appears to have been typical of Tresham.

However questionable some of Tresham’s business practices, his expertise and obvious ability made him a useful agent for many greater men and this, in turn, was another source of profit for him. Indeed, to William, Lord Lovell, whom he served almost from the moment he entered his inheritance in 1423, he was probably indispensable. By 1440 he had an annuity of £10 assigned on Lovell’s lordship of Titchmarsh. In return, he seems to have been responsible for the administration of all Lovell’s legal business. This, at least, is the implication of the surviving account of the sum of £50 dispersed in the furtherance of that business during Hilary and Easter terms of that year, for which Tresham accounted to the lord’s receiver on the following 12 July at Sywell.69 Roskell, 229-30n.; Northants. RO, Finch Hatton mss, 3152. His annuity may not have been the only financial benefit he derived from this service. Lovell’s inquisition post mortem records a very curious arrangement with respect to his manor of Broughton in Buckinghamshire. The lord had conveyed it to Tresham in tail male on a two-fold condition connected with Lovell’s attempt to secure the valuable Burnell inheritance, which he claimed by virtue of an ancient entail. The feoffment was to stand if, first, Tresham delivered to Lovell or his heirs certain bonds drawn up between Lovell and Sir John Radcliffe* (d.1441), the husband of Katherine, one of the coheirs of Sir Edward Burnell, and, second, the couple released to Lovell and his heirs all their right in certain Burnell manors. It is difficult to be certain what lies behind this arrangement, but it looks like the manor was intended as a reward for Tresham for securing a favourable settlement with Radcliffe and his wife. The conditions were fulfilled and the manor descended to Tresham’s son and heir.70 C139/158/28; 161/10; VCH Bucks. ii. 323. It was probably in connexion with this great dispute that, on 15 Feb. 1438, Lovell entered a recognizance in £1,000 to Tresham and others: CCR, 1435-41, p. 173.

Tresham had other important connexions among the peerage. As we have seen, he was routinely employed in land transactions by Lord Cromwell, and he was the Northamponshire steward of another great lord, Humphrey, earl of Stafford.71 In July 1441 the earl nominated him to act as an arbiter in his great dispute with Sir Ralph Shirley† over the Basset of Drayton inheritance: Berkeley Castle mss, GC 4219. He was also among the many prominent lawyers retained by Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, in the late 1440s.72 SC6/1122/3, m. 4. Other baronial families employed him more casually. In 1442 Margaret, widow of Richard, Lord Grey of Wilton, included him among a powerful group of feoffees to whom she conveyed her lands in five counties; and in 1448 he presented to the church of Overstone in Northamptonshire as a feoffee of a more prominent peeress, Margaret, widow of John Beaufort, duke of Somerset.73 C139/146/12; J. Bridges, Northants. i. 460. More interestingly, in 1442 Elizabeth, the elderly widow of Richard, Lord Grey of Codnor (d.1418), included him among the influential group to whom she conveyed the bulk of her paternal inheritance. Here he was representing both her interests and those of another of the feoffees, William, Lord Zouche: her daughter had married Zouche’s younger brother, John, and the intention of the feoffment was to divert a significant part of her inheritance to this favoured daughter and away from her son, Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor. Later, in 1450, he acted for Lord Zouche in the settlement of a jointure on the lord’s second wife, Elizabeth St. John, daughter of the duchess of Somerset by her first husband.74 CAD, iv. A6637. This connexion with Lord Zouche explains the marriage of Tresham’s son and heir, Thomas, to Zouche’s daughter, Margaret. It is not known when this marriage took place, but, since her first husband had died in 1447, it may well have done so during our MP’s lifetime.

The profits of Crown and baronial service funded Tresham’s purchases of land, almost exclusively concentrated in Northamptonshire. The surviving records allow the annual value of these purchases to be calculated. The account of his receiver for 1446-7 records a total charge of over £356. Of this, arrears accounted for £63, royal annuities (although not designated as such), £85, foreign receipts, £43 (namely, £33 from the sale of wood and underwood and £10 from Tresham’s expenses as an MP in the Parliament of 1447), and landed revenues, £165. Cash liveries amounted to an impressive £263 and the accountant went quit as the rest of the charge was allowed him as expenses. These expenses are not detailed, and it is not possible to reach an accurate estimate of the clear annual value of Tresham’s lands, particularly because his valuable tenements in the county town do not figure in the account. None the less, there can be no doubt that this value was well in excess of £100, and this is confirmed by an inquisition of 1477 which assigns the Tresham lands in Northamptonshire a clear value of just under £150 p.a.75 Finch Hatton mss, 571; CIMisc. viii. 457. In short, it is a fair guess that Tresham bought estates with a capital value, reckoned at 20 years’ purchase, of in the region of £3,000, although he no doubt acquired them at significantly below the market price. That his landed wealth at his death was matched by wealth in moveable property is demonstrated by a dispute between his widow and heir. On 22 Oct. 1451 William Vaux and Thomas Salisbury, archdeacon of Bedford, returned an award at Sywell designed to ensure to her goods worth as much as 500 marks, including silver plate valued at 200 marks and wool at 50 marks.76 Add. 39828, f. 14. For Isabel’s dower: C145/321/3; CPR, 1461-7, p. 431. By Feb. 1459 she had married Sir William Pecche*, who must have been many years her junior: CAD, vi. C4128.