WOTHE, Walter

To judge by the bequests in the will of Walter’s grandfather, Thomas Wothe (d.1407) of Cannington in Somerset, the Wothe or Othe family were fairly well-to-do, for Thomas was able to leave his unmarried daughter the sum of 100 marks.3 Som. Med. Wills (Som. Rec. Soc. xvi), 27-29. Walter’s father held property and land elsewhere in the same county in Charlton ‘Camville’ (now Charlton Horethorne), as well as land in Dorset, which was taken into royal wardship on his death in 1429. His heir was his elder son, John, then aged eight, who himself died on 4 May the following year. Although John was named in the grant of wardship made ten days later, it was presumably his brother Walter who then fell under the guardianship of John Spencer III* and Walter Sergeant*. Inquiries held in 1437 established that he was then 11 years old, but were unhelpful with regard to specifying the lands of his inheritance, juries merely noting that this included a rood of land in Putton in Dorset, worth just 2d. p.a. and left untenanted since his brother had died. The Somerset holdings were in the hands of feoffees, all men of standing in the region: John Cheverell†, Henry Gouvitz and Richard Byle*.4 CPR, 1429-36, p. 67; CFR, xv. 321; xvi. 2; C139/85/16.

Nothing further is recorded about Walter until he appeared at the shire court at Dorchester on 27 Jan. 1449 to attest the election indentures for the knights of the shire. It was while he was there that he himself was returned as an MP for the borough of Dorchester.5 C219/15/6. Why the burgesses elected him is unclear. He had no known connexion with the town or its inhabitants (although he may then have been living just a few miles to the south at Putton), and he was still a young man, lacking any experience of local administration. Even so, a much more important member of the local gentry, John Mone* of Hammoon, asked him to be a feoffee of his land on the Isle of Wight in 1458, in company with John Fillol*, Thomas Martin* and Henry Trenchard*, all of whom had sat in Parliament as knights of the shire.6 I.o.W. RO, Oglander mss, OG/D/11. Wothe attested the shire elections twice more in Henry VI’s reign, in 1455 and 1460 (on the second occasion also providing sureties for the attendance in the Commons of William Chyke*, one of the representatives for Wareham), but it was not until after Edward IV took the throne that he came to the attention of the government. In 1462 he was appointed to a commission to deliver the gaol in Dorchester.

Wothe died at an unknown date before 16 May 1468, when a writ de diem clausit extremum was directed to the escheator of Somerset and Dorset.7 CFR, xx. 215. No post mortem survives. Further information about his landed holdings was revealed much later, after the death of his widow Margery, who survived him by 31 years. Together with her he had held the manor of Westport in Wareham as well as the land at Putton, worth about £3 13s. 4d., in accordance with a settlement made by his appointed trustees, Walter Cheverell* (son of his father’s feoffee) and the prominent Dorset lawyer John Newburgh II*. Having married William Prude, the widow died in 1499, whereupon the late MP’s property descended to his 40-year-old daughter Alice, the wife of Robert Bele†, who had sat for Wareham in 1478.8 CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 255.