WAWETON, William

The place of the obscure Waweton in his family’s pedigree (itself a source of confusion) is unclear, although he counted Sir Thomas Waweton* among his kin.1 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 789, 791. He was not the ‘William Walton’ of Norf. (who predeceased the MP), nor the officer in the Irish exchequer of that name, nor, it seems, the King’s esq. granted an annuity of £10 for life as a reward for helping to resist the Percy rebellion in Hen. IV’s reign: CFR, xiii. 62, 92, 179, xvii. 275; CPR, 1399-1401, p. 192; 1405-8, p. 448. There is good reason to believe that he served in France in the earlier part of his career, being the William Waweton who fought at Agincourt as a member of the retinue of Sir John Grey. Grey was the son and heir of Reynold, Lord Grey of Ruthin, of whose family Sir Thomas Waweton was long a retainer.2 E101/47/17.

At home, William’s links were with Bedfordshire before 1429, although there is no definite evidence for his interests in that county. In March 1429 he and Sir Thomas Waweton were associated with one of Sir Thomas’s patrons, John Holand, earl of Huntingdon, in receiving seisin of property at Bedford from one John Bayus. In the following December William relinquished his interests in the same holdings to John Beaufort, earl of Somerset, and others, including John Ragon*, John Fitzgeffrey* and Thomas* and Ralph Bole*. While the purpose of these transactions is unknown, it seems certain that his involvement was that of a feoffee.3 Beds. and Luton Archs., deeds, W21 W23.

It was his lack of a connexion with neighbouring Huntingdonshire that embroiled William in that county’s election dispute of the same year. When it met at Huntingdon on 20 Aug., the shire court returned him and Robert Stonham*, but this election was challenged by a group of prominent landowners led by Sir Nicholas Styuecle*. Styuecle and his associates alleged that Sir Thomas Waweton, with the help of a gang of ‘outsiders’ from Bedfordshire, had obliged the sheriff to return William, a Bedfordshire resident with no lands or tenements in Huntingdonshire, and Stonham. As a result, a new election was held on 17 Sept., just five days before the Commons assembled, and Styuecle and his ally, Roger Hunt*, were chosen. What lay behind the 1429 election dispute is debatable, but it was perhaps due to worsening rivalry between John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, and Sir Thomas’s patron John Holand.4 J.S. Roskell, Commons of 1422, 17-18n; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 482, 528; R.E. Archer, ‘The Mowbrays’ (Oxford Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1984), 258-62, suggests that it arose from infighting among the gentry themselves. Later that year, William and Stonham were appointed tax collectors in Huntingdonshire, perhaps as an act of revenge on the part of Styuecle and Hunt, whose duty it was as knights of the shire to nominate candidates to this lowly and onerous office.

In 1433, however, Waweton succeeded in gaining election for Huntingdonshire. By now he did reside in that county, having settled at Great Staughton where Sir Thomas Waweton held property. When assessed for the subsidy of 1436, he was calculated to enjoy a landed income of £40 p.a.5 H.L. Gray, ‘Incomes from Land in Eng. in 1436’, EHR, xlix. 635. Early in the following decade, he sued several men who had poached hares, rabbits, pheasants and other game from his warren at Great Staughton.6 CP40/720, rot. 366d. It is possible that Waweton enjoyed the powerful backing of Humphrey, earl of Stafford, when he stood for Parliament, since he was acting as a mainpernor for the earl within two weeks of its opening.7 CPR, 1429-36, p. 284. Stafford, recently lieutenant-governor of Normandy and one of the King’s councillors, owned property in Huntingdonshire, including the castle and lordship of Kimbolton, so he may well have exercised some influence there.8 CP, ii. 388. It could be that Waweton was a Stafford retainer, and that he should be identified with the William ‘Walleton’ awarded an annuity of five marks from the earl’s lands at Holderness in Yorkshire, 12 years later.9 C. Rawcliffe, Staffords, 191, 193, 238. An important concern of the 1433 Parliament was the breakdown of law and order in the kingdom. In the following spring the Crown imposed throughout England an oath to keep the peace, of which Waweton and his fellow knight of the shire and erstwhile opponent of 1429, Roger Hunt, had the task of administering in Huntingdonshire. The two men had already received a commission to distribute the reductions allowed locally of a tax granted in the same Parliament.10 CFR, xvi. 186, 190. Perhaps because he was a relative newcomer to Huntingdonshire, Waweton did not become a j.p until May 1440, and he had a limited career in local administration.

During the later 1430s, Sir Thomas Waweton was caught up in the feud between his patron, Reynold, Lord Grey of Ruthin, and Lord Fanhope in Bedfordshire, but there is no evidence that William was likewise involved. In October 1435 William was pardoned the outlawry he had incurred for failing to appear in the court of common pleas to answer a London skinner, John Poule, in a plea of debt.11 CPR, 1429-36, p. 480. Four years later, he and Sir Thomas witnessed a deed concerning several manors in Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire on behalf of Arthur Ormesby† and his wife.12 CCR, 1435-41, p. 242.

In early 1440, however, Sir Thomas was William’s opponent at law, having made a claim for a third part of the manor of ‘Stokton’ (in Great Staughton) held by his kinsman. Sir Thomas claimed that his parents, Thomas and Elizabeth Waweton, had received it by a conveyance of Edward III’s reign and that it should have descended to him as their heir, and he won the case when it eventually came to trial in January 1442.13 CP40/716, rot. 318. A few months later, the knight, along with his sister, Agnes, and her husband, John Vescy, was engaged in another suit against William, this time over a sum of 40 marks that the latter had allegedly withheld from them.14 CP40/725, rot. 341; 726, rot. 482. Notwithstanding these suits, the two kinsmen were associated as witnesses to a conveyance in Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire of 1442 and a quitclaim of lands in Huntingdonshire in 1447.15 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 56, 489.

There is no further evidence of William’s activities between 1447 and his death in the early 1450s. He died before 4 Apr. 1452 when a writ of diem clausit extremum was sent to the escheator in Huntingdonshire.16 CFR, xviii. 231. The record of the resulting inquisition post mortem has not survived and if he made a will it is also now lost. A royal pardon of April 1468 named John Wake† of Little Staughton, a younger son of Thomas Wake*, as the ‘tenant’ of the late MP’s lands17 C67/46, m. 26. but it is not known by what means they had come into Wake’s hands.