WELSBOURNE, John II

Not always easy to distinguish from his father, John is first heard of in the mid 1430s. In August 1435 he and the elder John Welsbourne attested the return of the MPs for Wycombe to the Parliament of that year, and a few months later he was party to the conveyance of a messuage and its appurtenances in Wycombe, apparently on behalf of Walter Kyppeloue and his heirs.3 CP25(1)/22/120/24. During the lifetime of his father, who had died by early 1450, he was usually known as John Welsbourne ‘the younger’, but it would appear that afterwards he himself adopted the sobriquet of ‘elder’ to distinguish him from another namesake. Presumably it was the lands in and around Chinnor in Oxfordshire that he had inherited from the elder John which qualified him to serve a term as escheator in that county and Berkshire, although he was to convey away these properties to John Wykes and his wife in January 1450.4 CAD, vi. C5012. A yeoman of the Household, Wykes was probably a relative, since it is likely that the MP’s father was the John Wyke alias Welsbourne active in Wycombe at the beginning of the century.5 CPR, 1401-5, p. 437.

By 1450 John was himself a royal servant, for it was as a yeoman of the Crown that he had received letters patent of October 1445, granting him a daily fee of 6d. for life from the issues of Oxfordshire and Berkshire.6 CPR, 1441-6, p. 405. John’s royal salary subsequently fell into arrears, since in June 1452 he brought a bill in the Exchequer against William Wykeham* for the £9 2s. 6d. he should have received during Wykeham’s term as sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire in 1449-50.7 E13/145A, rot. 54. John was just one of several Wycombe men to enter the King’s service. Another was Thomas More I*, who at the beginning of 1456 bound himself in £40 to the MP and several other burgesses, to guarantee that he would provide for his parents’ souls by assigning certain rent charges to the borough’s parish church. It is possible that Thomas was the man to whom Welsbourne gave a recognizance for £40 in the summer of the following year, although for what purpose is not known.8 Centre for Bucks. Studies, CH1 T/6/12; CCR, 1454-61, p. 217. The Thomas More who received the recognizance was ‘of Leighton Buzzard’ in Beds., but it is likely that he and Thomas of Wycombe were one and the same man.

As a royal servant who was also from Wycombe, Welsbourne was an obvious candidate to sit for the borough in two successive Parliaments. In the first of these assemblies, summoned so that the government could bring down its opponent, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, he was part of a larger than usual Household contingent in the Commons. By the time he re-entered the Commons, however, the government was far less in control of events, and in the next Parliament, that of November 1449, the King’s unpopular chief minister, William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, was impeached. Following Suffolk’s downfall and death, the Parliament of 1450 attempted to recover some of the resources which the King had so foolishly lavished on his servants with an Act of Resumption. In the event this was easily circumvented, even by minor Household men like Welsbourne. He and another lesser royal servant, John Redeshull (perhaps the Wycombe MP of 1442), were able to obtain an exemption covering any grants which either of them had received from the Crown, provided that none of these was worth more than £10 p.a.9 PROME, xii. 128. Welsbourne was likewise unaffected by ordinances for the re-ordering of the royal establishment made in November 1454, since he remained in place as a yeoman of the Crown.10 PPC, vi. 224. He was also among the 24 minor Household men who succeeded in obtaining exemptions from the Act of Resumption passed by the Parliament of 1455, so allowing him to retain his daily fee of 6d.11 PROME, xii. 417; SC8/28/1379. His Household connexion might explain why he was among those involved in a series of legal transactions concerning the manor of Bainton in Oxfordshire in the later 1450s, since it was a property subsequently purchased by Edmund Rede*, previously (and, perhaps, still at that date) one of the King’s esquires.12 VCH Oxon. vi. 317; Hants RO, Cope mss, 43M48/278, 280. Welsbourne continued to receive liveries of cloth from the royal wardrobe in the same period, and he appears to have retained his place in the Household until the Yorkists seized control of the government in the summer of 1460.13 E361/6, rots. 50, 51d.

There is no way of knowing whether John participated in any of the armed conflicts of this period, although at the beginning of 1461 the government, still under Yorkist control, issued a commission for his arrest.14 CPR, 1452-61, p. 658. If ever arrested, he cannot have remained in custody for long, for he was in a position to sue Walter Colard* and the priest Thomas Skaryngton in the Chancery shortly after Edward IV seized the throne. Acting in his capacity as executor of Margaret Hill of Wycombe (widow of John Hill II*), he alleged that the two men had refused to give up their interest in certain properties in the town which they had held in trust for her. In due course the court commissioned the abbot of Thame and the judge Robert Danvers* to examine local witnesses, and the examinations were held at Wycombe in Danvers’ presence on 5 Sept. 1461. The seven witnesses, comprising ‘the saddyst and wurshypfullest men’ of the borough, upheld Welsbourne’s claims, and a few weeks later the court ordered Colard and Skaryngton to surrender their title to the properties.15 C1/27/300-1; 29/23-24.

Four years later, Welsbourne made a brief will, dated 6 Sept. 1465. He asked to be buried in the church of St. Mary Wolnooth in London, to which he left 6s. 8d., and appointed two executors, his wife Cecily and son Thomas. He was dead by 10 Feb. 1466 when the will was proved.16 PCC 12 Godyn. Although there were many commercial links between Wycombe and London, it is likely that he owed his ties with the city to his career in the Household, since he must have spent considerable periods of time there and at Westminster while attending the King. His Household service probably also explains why he was able to style himself ‘esquire’ in the will’s preamble. In July 1467 the widowed Cecily Welsbourne appeared at a view of frankpledge at the Hospitallers’ manor of Temple Wycombe, to prove her right to two small plots of land held of that order.17 Centre for Bucks. Studies, Temple Wycombe ct. roll, 1462-71, D176/5, m. 3. It was probably also in the later 1460s that she was sued in the Chancery by Ralph Kempe, for refusing to hand over certain deeds and evidences relating to his livelihood which had come into her possession.18 C1/32/398.