WOTTON, Nicholas II

Nicholas’s father, Walter Chapman, expanded his property-holdings in Wootton Bassett by transactions completed in 1378 and 1389,6 CAD, i. C858; CP25(1)/256/56/8; VCH Wilts. ix. 193-4. Other lands there called ‘Privetthay’ passed to Walter’s son John Chapman by 1402: VCH Wilts. ix. 193; CAD, vi. C4581, 5788. and the messuages and land acquired on the latter date passed by early 1407 to our MP, who for an unknown reason had by then adopted the surname of Wotton, derived from the place where they lived. He seems to have eschewed the name ‘Chapman’ thereafter. Nicholas soon commenced his own expansion of the family’s landed interests, by purchasing more property in Wootton Basset along with holdings in Calne and Calstone Wellington in 1418. By the time of his death his estate in his home town comprised 20 messuages, three virgates and nine acres of wood and meadowland.7 CAD, i. C1329; Wilts. Feet of Fines, 365; VCH Wilts. ix. 193-4. While his acquisitions were initially concentrated on north Wiltshire, near his home and Swindon (and included properties in Draycot Foliat which were described as a manor when he died),8 CAD, vi. C5941; VCH Wilts. ix. 45-46. he also bought land elsewhere in the county, focusing on the eastern part near the border with Berkshire. Thus, in 1409 he purchased lands and tenements in Ramsbury, and it was there that he took up residence, probably in the house which he and his first wife held in 1415. Also in Ramsbury was the manor of Hilldrop, confirmed in Wotton’s possession by the widow of Sir Thomas Brooke† in 1423.9 C146/1044, 3399; CAD, iii. C2963; Wilts. Feet of Fines, 341; VCH Wilts. xii. 24. Two years earlier he had started the process of acquiring from Edmund Gascryk of Lincolnshire the manor of ‘Grascryk’ in Purton, north of Wootton Bassett, which along with holdings in Malmesbury and Brokenborough he made his own.10 SC2/209/48; SC6/1056/18; 1307/30; CAD, iii. C2969; Feudal Aids, v. 261. In addition, also before his only known election to Parliament in 1422, he had looked beyond the borders of Wiltshire for further accretions of property, by buying the Oxfordshire manor of Kingston in Aston Rowant, known as ‘Kingston Blount’ after its earlier owners.11 In The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 905-6, this Oxon. estate is wrongly assigned to the London merchant Nicholas Wotton I*.

Wotton’s property qualification to represent Marlborough in Parliament consisted of a ‘barton’ he held there adjacent to the hall belonging to a putative kinsman, John Chapman. This was mentioned in a deed of June 1422, attested by Marlborough’s lord, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester.12 Som. Archs., Walker-Heneage mss, DD\WHb/1970. Even so, no evidence has been found to ascribe Wotton’s return directly to the duke’s influence. The key to his rise to the status of a ‘gentleman’ and landowner of substance was his profession as a lawyer. Where he was educated and trained has not been discovered, but the ordinances for the chantry eventually founded at Ramsbury in his name point to the difficulties he may have encountered in obtaining an education in his early years: the chaplain was to instruct in the rudiments of grammar poor and indigent scholars ‘flocking to the town’ from any part of the realm, without taking any payment from his pupils. Wotton’s training as a man of law had probably been completed by 1402, when he appeared as a surety in Chancery, and over the next five years he began to attract clients of note. For instance, he acted as an attorney in the court of common pleas for the stepmother of Laurence Drew† in a suit brought against her by Richard Mawarden†.13 CCR, 1402-5, p. 130; 1405-9, pp. 350-1; Hungerford Cart. ii (Wilts. Rec. Soc. lx), 1188 (the official record is in CP40/583, rot. 646). This was an important contact, for Drew had been a member of Richard II’s council, and took a prominent role in the Parliament of 1406. Perhaps he mentored the younger man.

From 1413 Wotton often appeared as an attorney at the assizes held at Salisbury, most notably on behalf of monastic houses in Wiltshire such as Bradenstoke priory and Malmesbury abbey,14 JUST1/1527, rots. 24, 25; 1529, rot. 16; 1531, rots. 45, 47d; 1536, rots. 36, 37; 1540, rots. 110-12, 116. and in November 1420 he came to Chancery with three other members of the shire gentry to offer securities of £200 that they would answer for the profits from the temporalities of Amesbury priory during a vacancy.15 CCR, 1419-22, pp. 91-92. His relations with the monks at Malmesbury were particularly close, perhaps because he was the abbey’s tenant at Purton. As a consequence the abbot regularly asked him to act as his proxy in Parliament, a responsibility he undertook at least five times, the first being in the Parliament of December 1421,16 Feudal Aids, v. 261; SC10/47/2332. apparently before he had any experience of the workings of either House. In the following summer he took on a brief in the common pleas for William Darell*, the sheriff of Wiltshire who was to be responsible for making the electoral returns a few months later, thereby endorsing Wotton’s entry to the Commons. One of the knights of the shire on that occasion was the veteran parliamentarian and former Speaker Sir William Sturmy*, who may be credibly viewed as exercising influence over the representation of the Wiltshire boroughs and of Marlborough in particular. Wotton was known to Sturmy, for whom he witnessed deeds both before and after they sat together in the Parliament of 1422. Yet he was not so intimately linked with the knight as to be named among his feoffees or remembered in his will.17 CCR, 1413-19, p. 458; Year Bk. 1 Hen. VI (Selden Soc. l), 59 (a suit recorded in CP40/646, rot. 119d); E326/10711; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 523. While up at Westminster for the Parliament Wotton was associated with John Ludwell*, then representing Chippenham, as an attorney in the King’s bench for the executors of Robert Hallam, the late bishop of Salisbury,18 KB27/646, rot. 28. and in the same Michaelmas term he also attended the law courts to sue a number of his debtors.19 CP40/647, rot. 131.

Thereafter, Wotton was frequently engaged by Wiltshire litigants to be their spokesman in the common pleas, among them the bishops of Salisbury and Winchester, the abbot of Stanley and heads of the religious houses at Farleigh and Amesbury. In this capacity he remained active into the 1440s.20 CP40/648-720, att. rots. Less often, he took on pleas in the King’s bench, these including the defence of Thomas Stokke*, who was accused by the duke of Gloucester of poaching on his estates near Marlborough.21 KB27/657; 667, rot. 30; 672, rot. 3d; 693, rot. 67; 720; 722. Wotton’s increasing wealth led to his employment as a surety, for instance by the new alnagers of Somerset in 1433 and for Henry Chancy* in the common pleas in 1439, although such undertakings might prove risky. He provided bail in the Marshalsea for two men from Gillingham in Dorset, guaranteeing that they would keep the peace, but by a ‘Divine visitation’ the two men were prevented from returning to court owing to illness, so that Wotton and his fellow bailsman Thomas Pakyn* had to petition the King for a pardon and exoneration from paying the resulting penalties.22 CFR, xvi. 111; CP40/715, rot. 424; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 442-3. Besides his legal practice at the law-courts at Westminster, he took on the trusteeship of landed estates in the localities, such as those in Devon belonging to John Wroughton (d.1429) whose feudal tenant he was in Wiltshire. In 1433 as the ‘guardian’ of Wroughton’s young son and heir, John Wroughton*, he sued John Ernele* for detention of a pyx.23 CIPM, xxiii. 175, 318; CP40/688, rot. 420d. While Wotton took no part in county administration after his single appointment as a tax collector, he did occasionally serve as a juror at Marlborough, notably at inquisitions post mortem on Joan, Lady Cobham, and on the young son and heir of the earl of Arundel.24 C139/65/37; 87/41; 88/50.

While busy on behalf of his clients, Wotton never neglected his own concerns, which focused on the steady accumulation of property. Some of this, situated in Somerset, came through his second marriage. His wife Isabel’s maternal ancestors, from the Braunche family, had held the manor of Frome-Faleise and the hundred of Frome, and although these particular holdings did not descend to her,25 C143/98/1; 132/18; J. Collinson, Hist. Som. ii. 187. she was the heir of her mother, Margaret Silveyn. In 1415 the latter was found to be one of four coheirs of John Marland, who died in possession of the Somerset manors of Orchardleigh and Egford near Frome, and land in south Wiltshire. A settlement made on Wotton and Isabel in 1425, provided them and their issue with five messuages, five virgates and rents in and near Wilton (at South Newton and Chilhampton); and promised them land in Frome ‘Branche’ after the death of Isabel’s parents. In addition, they obtained an annual rent of 20 marks from her family’s moieties of Orchardleigh and Egford.26 CIPM, xx. 325; CCR, 1422-9, p. 90; CP40/657, cart. rot. 2; 729, cart. rot. 1. Isabel did not long survive after bearing Wotton a daughter, but he continued to hold her inheritance by the courtesy.

Wotton’s third wife brought him her dower and jointure from her previous marriage to Richard Pavele. He was quick to seize the opportunity presented by Pavele’s death: following the probate of Pavele’s will on 18 May 1430, he offered his services as proctor to the widowed Elizabeth so that she might be committed the administration of her late husband’s estate, and married her less than four months later. Together they occupied property on the south coast at Weymouth, but more importantly they held for Elizabeth’s lifetime the Pavele manor and advowson of Fairoak together with other lands in Somerset.27 Some Som. Wills, 135; CAD, vi. C6374; Som. Feet of Fines, 100; CP40/732, cart. rot. 1d. Wotton consolidated his estate in Oxfordshire too. In 1424 he had obtained from Thomas Chaucer* and others a quitclaim of their title to lands in Kingston, and three years later he put his possessions there into the hands of feoffees headed by John Coventre I*, a fellow Member of the Parliament of 1422.28 VCH Oxon. viii. 25-26; CAD, ii. C2041; vi. C3818, 4374, 6160. The interest of the Crown in the manor of Kingston Blount, which was held in chief, prompted inquiries to be conducted in March 1437 regarding unlicensed transactions completed 13 years earlier, but eight months later the Exchequer was ordered to cease process against him.29 CIMisc. viii. 88; E159/214, brevia rot. 39d. In Wiltshire Wotton’s other important acquisitions in the 1430s included the manor of Westrop and Hampton by Highworth, also held of the King in chief, and a third part of that of Little Bedwyn.30 CPR, 1429-36, p. 118; Wilts. Feet of Fines, 513; Harl. Ch. 46 H 10. According to VCH Wilts. xvi. 56, he held the whole manor of Little Bedwyn. As a consequence of his standing as a landowner in both counties, he was required to take the oath not to maintain law-breakers, as administered in 1434, not only in Wiltshire but also in Oxfordshire.31 CPR, 1429-36, pp. 371, 395. Although the precise value of his holdings is not recorded, distraints for refusing to take up knighthood indicate that they were worth at least £40 a year, and in the subsidy returns of 1451 his income in Wiltshire alone was assessed at £50 p.a.32 E179/196/118. This was probably an underestimate.

Throughout his career Wotton was a fierce litigant on his own account, bringing many suits against his debtors from Wiltshire and neighbouring counties, as well as pleas for trespass and under the statutes of labourers. These he continued to present in person at least until 1448.33 CPR, 1422-9, pp. 147, 154; 1429-36, p. 588; 1441-6, p. 214; KB27/657, rot. 30; CP40/680, rot. 268; 688, rot. 18d; 698, rot. 146d; 715, rots. 66d, 208; 721, rot. 173d; 724, rots. 117, 168; 748, rot. 375d; 768, rot. 210. Although in 1442 he himself was the defendant in suits brought by John and William Aston for breaking their closes at Malmesbury and assaulting their tenants, three years later he claimed excessive damages of 100 marks after one Geoffrey Peion had allegedly burned down his house at Wootton Bassett. At the same time he was pursuing his tenants there for extensive wastes on the property, for which he claimed as much as £100.34 CP40/724, rot. 476; 738, rots. 220d, 455d.

In such suits Wotton was sometimes joined as plaintiffs by the feoffees he had put in possession of Westrop and Hampton, who included such prominent figures as Sir John Juyn j.c.p., Sir William Beauchamp* (the King’s carver), Walter Strickland I* and John Bird*, besides members of his family, Henry and John Wotton*. In November 1446 he obtained a royal licence for the surviving feoffees to put into effect a settlement of this manor whereby after his death it would pass to his daughter Elizabeth (the only child of his second marriage) and her issue, and his third part of Little Bedwyn and substantial holdings in Wootton Bassett further provided for her.35 CPR, 1429-36, p. 118; 1446-52, p. 52; CP40/698, rots. 264d, 371d; C139/154/27. After Elizabeth inherited from her grandmother Margaret Silveyn an estate at Frome, she and her husband John Milis demised it to Wotton for his lifetime. In the event, however, she predeceased her father: when Wotton died on 27 July 1454 his heirs were Elizabeth’s daughter Emmota, aged ten, and her half-sister Agnes, aged 24. To the latter, the issue of Wotton’s third marriage, he had already allotted the reversion of his manor of Kingston Blount, to hold with her husband William York, and the couple were also destined to inherit his manors of Aldbourne, Draycot Foliat and Hilldrop in Ramsbury, and various of his holdings in Marlborough and elsewhere, together with a moiety of those in Wootton Bassett. To young Emmota were assigned the valuable estates of Westrop, the third of Little Bedwyn, and substantial holdings in Wootton Bassett, as well as her great-grandmother’s property.36 C139/154/27. The Yorks were duly given seisin of their share of the estate in November 1454, while in the same month Robert Ingleton*, the comptroller of the Pipe, was granted at the Exchequer Emmota’s portion. Initially required to pay the full extent of the property, from the following February Ingleton’s payment was reduced to just 20 marks a year.37 CCR, 1452-61, pp. 10-11; CFR, xix. 117, 128-9. No mention of Emmota’s marriage had been made in the grant, but it is significant that she was married to one of Ingleton’s mainpernors, Henry Hogan or Ogan, a ‘gentleman’ of London, before she came of age in 1458.38 CPR, 1452-61, p. 489; C139/174/50; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 315-16; E159/235, brevia Hil. rot. 4d.

Agnes York died about that time. Her husband William was concerned about the legality of the settlement of Kingston Blount; he wanted Wotton’s feoffees to be examined by the chancellor to see if they knew of any ‘defaute, deseyt or mal engyne upon the makyng of the seides feoffement lees and remaynder or nay’.39 C1/16/319. Yet in other respects York honoured his father-in-law’s memory. In 1459 this ‘King’s servant’ obtained a licence to found a chantry in the church of Holy Cross at Ramsbury, where daily services could be conducted in honour of the Holy Trinity at St. Mary’s altar for the souls of Wotton and his own late wife, and prayers offered for the welfare of the King and York himself. As already noted, the chantry-priest was expected also to act as a schoolmaster. The endowment was worth £10 p.a.40 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 502-3. Although Wotton’s will does not survive, it seems likely that his testamentary arrangements lay behind the foundation. A chaplain was active in the church by 1469, but six years later York purchased a further licence, from Edward IV, for him or his executors to found a chantry in perpetuity. He died in 1476, whereupon his son John York (our MP’s grandson) promptly added to the endowment an estate in Purton and elsewhere including several cottages in Ramsbury, and the foundation charter was formulated in 1478.41 VCH Wilts. xii. 43-44; CPR, 1467-77, p. 523; 1476-85, p. 11; CAD, vi. C6196; C140/56/42. Wotton’s grand-daughter Emmota died in 1486, leaving her husband Henry Ogan to hold her inheritance ‘by the courtesy’ until his death in 1499. Their son Richard Ogan then inherited his part of the estate so ably built up by his great-grandfather.42 CFR, xxii. nos. 7 (where Emmota is wrongly called a widow), 645, 656; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 275-6, 789.