WYCHE, Hugh

Wyche’s family hailed from Wich-Malbank (Nantwich) in Cheshire, and he seems to have been the youngest of at least four brothers, all of whom came to London in the early fifteenth century. Little is recorded of his parents other than their names, mentioned by Wyche in his will. While his brothers Thomas and William became fishmongers, Hugh followed the eldest of the four, Richard (d.1424), in joining the more prestigious Mercers’ Company, and was apprenticed in 1413-14 to John Boston.9 Stowe 860, f. 55; PCC 23 Godyn (PROB11/5, ff. 189-91); S.L. Thrupp, Merchant Class Med. London, 375-6; Med. Acct. Bks. of the Mercers, 264-5, 340-1. He maintained close relations with his brothers, particularly William, whom he supported in making arrangements for his marriage to Joan, the daughter of Robert Coventre, a prominent member of Wyche’s company. In May 1435 he entered into a series of bonds in Chancery in which he and his second wife undertook to convey a lease on property in London to the couple. It was also agreed that on the day of his marriage William should have £100 in goods and chattels.10 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 367-8.

Within the Mercers’ Company Wyche swiftly rose to a position of prominence. He issued from his apprenticeship in 1422-3, and obtained the freedom of the city soon afterwards. His admission to the livery took place in the customary three stages between 1427 and 1430, and in the later year he took on the first of his many apprentices whom he trained and who doubtless assisted him in building up a successful business. In 1438 he was chosen as one of the wardens of the Company, an office in which he would serve another term in 1444-5, before being elected its master on four further occasions. Along with Geoffrey Feldying*, Ralph Verney* and John Middleton* he became one of the most prominent members of the Company, a fact reflected in the collective choice of these men to act as feoffees of the Mercers’ quitrents in 1457. That same year they were asked by the Mercers’ court to enter into discussions with the Company’s legal counsel, Thomas Burgoyne*, in connexion with their undertaking.11 Sutton, Mercery, 556-7; Acts of Ct. Mercers’ Co. 1453-1527 ed. Lyell and Watney, 45, 59. He established some important links with fellow mercers: as early as 1443 he came before the chamberlain of London to stand surety for the patrimonies of the children of Robert Large*, and was later to act in transactions along with Verney and Middleton.12 Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 280; jnl. 3, f. 153v.

There is no doubt that Wyche was able to use his influential friends within the Company to build up an impressive network of business contacts. From the early 1430s he was extremely active as an exporter of cloth through the port of London: in May and June 1433, for instance, he took five shipments across the Channel in different vessels.13 E122/73/20, m. 15; 203/1, ff.18, 22-23, 34. His involvement in overseas trade led to his appointment on two occasions to commissions charged with hearing appeals from the admiral’s court, both of which concerned mercantile matters. In London he was also frequently nominated as an arbiter in disputes.14 Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, pp. 6, 10, 26. It was as an exporter of wool, and as a merchant of the Calais staple, that Wyche seems to have made most of his substantial fortune. It is not known precisely when he became involved in shipping this commodity through Calais, but by the early 1460s he was well established as a wool merchant.15 CPR, 1461-7, p. 222; C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, ii. 404-5. One of Wyche’s chief partners in the export trade was his fellow mercer John Middleton. The nature of their partnership was revealed in a petition submitted to Chancery by Ralph Wolseley*, one of the barons of the Exchequer, who had joined Middleton in agreeing to purchase wool worth £1,038 from Wyche. Middleton was responsible for selling the wool, but in the meantime both he and Wolseley were to repay Wyche in three instalments. In his petition, delivered in the autumn of 1469, after Wyche’s death, Wolseley alleged that Middleton and Wyche’s widow, Alice, had tried to defraud him by taking out actions of debt in respect of two of the instalments, whilst having already raised the money by selling the wool.16 C1/44/198; C253/42/75. The source of Wyche’s wool is not recorded, but it is likely that much of it came from the West Country: among those with whom he established links was John Busshel, a ‘woolgatherer’ from Gloucestershire, who probably supplied Wyche in the mid 1460s.17 Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, p. 45.

On occasion Wyche was accused of malpractice in his dealings with Italian merchants and financiers. In the autumn of 1454 he was the subject of a Chancery petition from the Florentine Rinaldo Baronzelli, who was engaged in a dispute with a fellow Italian, Jacopo de’ Bardi. The matter was submitted to the arbitration of another Florentine, but while de’ Bardi was absent abroad it was claimed that Wyche had pretended ‘by grete covyn and subtyle ymaginacion’ to be his factor and attorney. Thus, when the arbitration award was made, Wyche had apparently managed to gain possession of the bond entered into by Baronzelli with the arbiter to perform the award or else face a financial penalty.18 C1/24/40; C253/34/133. Otherwise, however, there is much other evidence to show that Wyche enjoyed good relations with the Italian community in London. In June 1447, for example, he and Feldyng had stood surety in Chancery for Benedetto Borromei, a member of the wealthy banking family, who had been imprisoned for an unspecified offence by the city’s sheriffs.19 CPR, 1446-52, p. 158; E159/236, recorda Mich. rot. 30.

The proceeds of his exports of wool and cloth enabled Wyche to purchase a wide range of goods on the continent for distribution throughout England. Linen, broad cloth, paper and dyestuffs were among the commodities noted in customs accounts in the mid 1440s as being brought into the port of London by him.20 E122/72/2, ff. 18v-19, 22; 203/3, ff. 8, 10. He was also involved in the wine trade, although not always successfully: in December 1441 he was found by the city’s scrutineers to have a barrel of putrid wine in his house. He was ordered to pay 13s. 4d. to have the wine disposed of, plus another 26s. 8d. so that he would not interfere in the work of the officials.21 Jnl. 3, f. 107. Yet such difficulties were part and parcel of the distributive trade in such comestibles. Elsewhere he enjoyed far greater success, establishing links with middlemen throughout the country. In 1446 the inventory of a York chapman, Thomas Grissop, listed a debt of 22s. owed to Wyche, as well as other sums owed to Feldyng and Verney. These debts probably represented purchases of fine continental cloth and other goods, also listed in the inventory, which the London mercers had supplied.22 P. Nightingale, Med. Mercantile Community, 440; Test. Ebor. iii. (Surtees Soc. xlv), 101-5. An extensive network of provincial contacts was reflected in the other debts owed to Wyche, as well as in the transactions which saw him extend credit to suppliers and customers. In 1439, for instance, two Salisbury merchants made a gift of their goods and chattels to Wyche and other men, while in the summer of that year a chapman from Dunstable in Bedfordshire made a similar grant to him, although in his case he opted to put up his lands in Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire as well. The many individuals who owed money to Wyche, and who were outlawed for failing to appear in court to answer him, included several men from Kent, as well as another chapman who may have helped to distribute his goods in Northampton. The perennial problem of trying to secure the repayment of such debts doubtless encouraged merchants such as Wyche to take an aggressive line towards their debtors. A petition from two Oxfordshire men submitted to Chancery alleged that he had sued on obligations concerning the sum of £57, despite the fact that the money had been handed over to his servant, John Derby.23 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 285-6, 330; Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, p. 156; CPR, 1436-41, p. 208; 1441-6, p. 17; 1467-77, pp. 387, 433; C1/11/221. Even more extensive were Wyche’s trading links with his fellow Londoners. Numerous gifts of goods and chattels were made to him from the early 1430s until the 1460s, and while many of them were from other mercers, perhaps men with more involvement in the distributive trade, there were several made by drapers, tailors, grocers and goldsmiths.24 Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, pp. 241, 264, 267, 271; 1437-57, pp. 152, 164, 173-4, 179, 185; CCR, 1435-41, p. 234; 1441-7, pp. 200, 203; 1454-61, pp. 144, 223, 256, 268, 377; 1461-8, p. 82.

Wyche’s success as a merchant enabled him to acquire property in London and elsewhere which, as early as 1436, was said to be worth £21 p.a.25 Thrupp, 385. The full extent of his holdings is difficult to assess, for although very active in conveyances of property in the city, it is clear that in the vast majority of cases he was acting as a feoffee for others, including non-citizens such as James Fiennes* and John Cockayne, nephew of Henry† and a member of a wealthy Bedfordshire family.26 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 259, 261, 267-9, 445; London hr 154/71, 74-75; 161/24; 165/27; 170/60; 172/15; 173/18; 174/6; 178/1; 184/9; 186/21; 194/15-16. As an associate of Ralph Verney he served from 1458 as a feoffee of buildings in several parishes that belonged to Robert Whittingham II*, whose daughter and heir married Verney’s son. In 1466 he and his co-feoffees managed to persuade the Crown to establish a commission to look at whether Whittingham’s estates, seized into the King’s hands in 1461, should be returned to them.27 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 521, 553.

A number of Wyche’s own holdings came to him as a consequence of his three marriages. The guardianship of his first wife , Denise, one of three daughters and coheirs of a chandler named John Beaumond, who died in 1416, passed initially to Beaumond’s executor, William Middleton, who subsequently married her sister, Juliana, and then after his death to Juliana’s second husband, the draper Philip Malpas*.28 London hr 149/36; Cal. Letter Bk. London, I, 256. Wyche, who had only recently emerged from his apprenticeship, was connected with Middleton and had been named by him as one of his executors, alongside Malpas.29 Some years later he was sued in Chancery by a disgruntled debtor who claimed that he had exceeded his authority in trying to recover money owed to Middleton and had refused to abide by an arbitration award: C1/18/35. Yet the latter, as Denise’s legal guardian, seems to have raised objections to Wyche’s proposal to marry her, and in the summer of 1425 this match was found unacceptable by the court of aldermen. Nevertheless, the marriage did eventually take place, probably soon after Malpas was discharged of the guardianship in August 1426. Relations between the two men seem to have improved thereafter: in February 1437 Wyche, along with Thomas Canynges*, John Norman* and four others stood surety for Malpas in the huge sum of £2,000 each so that he would keep the peace towards an opponent in a dispute.30 Jnl. 2, f. 51; 3, f. 127; Cal. Letter Bk. London, I, 256. The extent of the holdings brought by Denise to the marriage is not recorded, although judging from a partition agreement between her two sisters and their husbands, drawn up after her death, they were probably fairly substantial. In a petition submitted to Chancery by one of her sisters, Margaret, it was claimed that in a covenant made between Hugh and Denise on the one part, and Margaret and her first husband, the mercer John Everard, on the other, the revenues from the lands inherited by the sisters should be paid alternately to each couple for periods of a year at a time. She alleged that after Everard’s death, five years into the arrangement, the Wyches had taken the opportunity to deprive her of this income for the year that followed.31 C1/74/89; London hr 164/25.

By the autumn of 1434 Wyche had married as his second wife Joan, the daughter of a London salter and widow of Robert Colbroke, an ironmonger who had served as one of the wardens of London Bridge. As well as taking on the guardianship of her children by Colbroke, Wyche received a grant from the city government of an annual rent from property belonging to the Bridge.32 Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 180; jnl. 3, f. 221. Joan’s patrimony of £200 had been delivered to Colbroke, soon after their marriage, in May 1416: Cal. Letter Bk. London, I, 153. Over the next two decades Hugh and Joan acquired property in several parishes in the city, including two tenements in that of St. Leonard Eastcheap which they held from 1441 until 1459 when they sold them.33 London hr 170/22-25; 188/9. By the late 1440s, Wyche had acquired a residence in the parish of St. Stephen Colman Street, and as one of the churchwardens he became involved in 1448 in the foundation and endowment of two chantries established to offer prayers for Henry VI and his queen, the royal physician Master John Somerset*, and a number of Somerset’s associates.34 Ibid. 173/31; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 176-9, 307; C1/24/251. He had already been associated with Somerset, as well as with Henry Frowyk I* and Thomas Canynges, in the foundation of the prestigious fraternity of the Virgin in the church of All Hallows Barking, near the Tower of London.35 Sutton, A Merchant Fam. 60; Surv. London: All Hallows Barking, i. 13. Wyche’s other acqusitions in London and the suburbs included property in Southwark, and unspecified lands and tenements in the parishes of St. Margaret Lothbury, where he was living at the time of his death, and St. Michael Bassishaw,36 London hr 184/9; Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, p. 99. while his will indicated that he had at various times been a parishioner of three other churches, including St. Dunstan in the East and St. Magnus the Martyr. During the 1450s he also began to acquire land in Essex, notably in Barking, and there is also a suggestion that he held part or all of the manor of Whybridge in Hornchurch.37 VCH Essex, v. 210; vii. 39.

The date of Wyche’s third marriage, to a daughter of a Norfolk landowner, is not known, although it is likely that it occurred a short time after the death of her former husband, the mercer William Holt, in 1464. Alice held a life interest in property in the parish of St. Dionis Backchurch, where Holt was buried, as well more in Southwark that she disposed of in her will;38 Sutton, A Merchant Fam. 17, 61. while as one of the heiresses of her father, John Stratton, she probably also brought Wyche land in East Anglia.39 Thrupp, 375-6; J. Hall, Hist. Nantwich, 84. Alice acted as overseer of the will of her sis. Elizabeth (d.1473), who had married the prominent lawyer John Andrew III*: PCC 11 Wattys (PROB11/6, ff. 87v-88). After his marriage to Alice Wyche became embroiled in a lengthy dispute over the lease of a quay known as Sherborne Key in London with a fishmonger named John Kempe, whom he had first encountered in the late 1440s, when Kempe had brought an action for debt against him in his role as an executor of his brother William. Kempe had then married William’s widow and in 1453 made a quitclaim to Hugh of all actions pending between them.40 Jnl. 3, f. 129v; 4, f. 114v; Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 353; Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, p. 135. Relations between the two men improved thereafter, to the extent that Wyche, according to Kempe, promised the fishmonger £120 if he secured the lease on Sherborne Key, said to be worth some £44 p.a. Kempe claimed that he entered into negotiations on Wyche’s behalf, and having laid out a sizeable sum of money to secure the lease from the current holder finally managed to obtain it. But Wyche allegedly refused to hand over the £120, and it was left to his widow to try to refute Kempe’s claims in Chancery, and to pursue a separate debt of £11 that Kempe owed to her late husband.41 C1/11/387; 39/153-5, 176; C253/42/72.

Wyche’s long civic and administrative career began in the mid 1430s with his election in 1436 as one of the four auditors of London, the usual stepping-stone to higher office in the city. The previous year he had attested the election of the city’s MPs for the first time and was to do so again during his term as auditor, and indeed on a further eight occasions. The usual appointments to civic committees followed, interspersed with other duties. In January 1440, for example, he was appointed to adjudicate in a dispute between Henry Frowyk and a prominent grocer; and in the summer of 1442 he was one of the collectors of a levy which was to assist the city in its dispute with the citizens of Bayonne in Gascony.42 Jnl. 3, ff. 13, 34, 36, 101, 114v-115, 143. His election to the shrievalty followed in the autumn of 1444, and like a number of other holders of this position he felt it prudent to obtain a royal pardon shortly after relinquishing it.43 C67/39, m. 44. In January 1447 he was elected to Parliament, as one of the four citizens who agreed to attend the assembly at Bury St. Edmunds. Unusually, Wyche himself was one of those who attested the election in the husting court, a circumstance perhaps indicative of the difficulty of finding men prepared to travel to Bury. After the end of the Parliament more mundane committee duties followed, but in April 1449 Wyche made a first bid for membership of the court of aldermen. He was a candidate for the vacant ward of Broad Street, but in the event William Marowe* was preferred by the aldermen.44 Jnl. 5, ff. 8-9. Wyche appears to have been relatively inactive in London for much of the 1450s. He may nevertheless have been in the city in 1456 during the anti-Italian riots that involved many of his own Company, and led to the brief imprisonment of William Cantelowe*, for in June the following year, with the atmosphere still tense, he was said to have restrained a would-be rioter, Thomas Graunte, who had intended to target alien merchants in Cheapside after the rumour spread that an Englishman had been murdered by Lombards.45 Ibid. ff. 47v, 66; 6, f. 179; Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 386. Wyche resumed his civic duties that autumn and given his experiences of that summer was perhaps deemed an ideal person to serve on a committee dealing with aliens and other strangers. On 17 Nov. he put himself forward for election as alderman of the ward of Bassishaw, this time losing out to Geoffrey Boleyn* who had decided to move from Castle Baynard. He had more success in October 1458, however, when the death of John Olney left vacant the ward of Colman Street, which included his parish church of St. Stephen. After more than 20 years of participation in civic affairs Wyche finally joined the aldermanic bench. It was at this point that he began to establish closer financial links with the Crown, having been consipicuously absent from the lists of lenders to Henry VI in the 1440s and 1450s. Even so, he does not appear to have advanced significant sums, although in October 1458 he received ten yards of scarlet cloth and a jewel for providing money to pay for a gold collar for the King, and the following year assignment was made on three separate occasions in respect of money he had advanced to Sir Thomas Tuddenham* for the expenses of the Household.46 E403/817, m. 2; 819, mm. 1-2.

By then the political atmosphere was becoming increasingly tense, leading to the armed confrontations at Blore Heath and Ludford Bridge in the autumn of 1459, and the summons of a Parliament to meet at Coventry, where the Yorkist lords suffered attainder. Shortly before the Parliament was due to assemble Wyche, by then serving once again as master of the Mercers’ Company, was chosen as a member of a delegation sent by the Londoners to see the King at Coventry and to assure him of the city’s continued loyalty.47 Jnl. 6, f. 145. Within 12 months the tables had turned, as the Yorkists won a convincing victory at Northampton in the summer of 1460, although it took further blood-letting in the winter of 1460-1 before the Lancastrian dynasty was set aside, and Edward IV was crowned. The civic elite of London had taken the side of the new rulers at an early date, and Wyche, who was elected mayor of London in the autumn of 1461, soon became a trusted servant of the new King. While in office he asked the leading men of the Grocers’ Company, some of whom had invested heavily in a Yorkist victory, to go to Westminster to speak with the King, possibly in order to secure the renewal of grants made to the London companies by the deposed Henry VI.48 Nightingale, 520. On a more personal level also, Wyche now began to provide finance to the Crown on a substantial scale. By the end of his mayoralty he had lent a total of £100, but this was followed a year later by a sizeable advance of £733 6s. 8d. made jointly by him, William Marowe and John Norman, to be used in the crushing of residual Lancastrian resistance in the north, and by further sums of money in subsequent months.49 E 403/827A, mm. 1, 4; 830, m. 1; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 222, 320, 324. Wyche received his reward in May 1465 when, on the eve of the coronation of Elizabeth Wydeville, he was knighted, along with a number of other prominent citizens, including Thomas Cook II*.50 Wars of the English, ii. [784]; Three 15th Cent. Chrons. 80. This was doubtless also a further encouragement to him to provide finance: in the late summer of 1467 he alone lent the King £633 6s. 8d., and as security for the repayment of that sum two Italian merchants, including the wealthy financier Gherardo Caniziani, delivered to him a large gold salt cellar, in the shape of an elephant. It weighed some 16lb and was encrusted with 249 pearls, 70 rubies, 25 diamonds and nine sapphires. The debt had not been paid at the time of Wyche’s death, but his widow agreed to hand over the magnificent artifact in return for letters authorizing repayment of her late husband’s loan by assignment.51 Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, pp. 51-52.

By the time he made this loan Wyche had drawn up his will, dated 17 May 1467, although he was in fact to survive for at least another 18 months. He requested burial in the church of St. Margaret Lothbury under a tomb ‘late by me newe made with myn owen propre coste’, suggesting that he had been making arrangements for some time. Services held for his soul were also to remember those of his parents, his former master John Boston, and his wife’s first husband, William Holt. At a cost of 200 marks a chantry was to be established in the chapel of Our Lady and St. Nicholas in the same church ‘where I was wont to sitte’, where prayers would be offered for 20 years after his death. He also sponsored an obit for ten years in St. Andrew’s church in St. Albans, for the benefit of the soul of his kinsman, William Wyche. Further anniversaries were to be held in St. Albans abbey, Syon abbey and the Charterhouse, while he made detailed arrangements for the administration of funds for similar religious services in St. Margaret’s in London. Wyche left ten marks to the fraternity of the parish clerks in London, requesting that their priest should sing masses for his soul for 33 days, as had been done for his second wife. His charitable bequests included £33 6s. 8d. for russet cloth and gowns for poor people in his native Nantwich, and £50 for the relief of poverty in three London parishes. Another £100 was left for repairs to ‘foule and noyous’ highways within 40 miles of the capital. Relatives mentioned in his will included his sole surviving brother, John, who received £20, and Margaret Wyche, a nun of Catesby abbey in Northamptonshire who was to have £10. As Wyche had no surviving children, the bulk of his estate was left to his widow, who was to have £3,000 worth of money, jewels and household goods. His clothes and personal effects were to be sold and the proceeds used to buy vestments, chalices and other ornaments for poor churches. Wyche chose as his executors his widow, Ralph Verney, and a fishmonger, William York. A note appended to the will recorded that he formally approved its contents before witnesses on 13 Apr. 1468, but he had little longer to live for it was proved a month later on 12 May.52 PCC 23 Godyn.

Alice’s remaining years saw her preoccupied with her fellow executors in disposing of Wyche’s estate and settling his business interests. Even so, when she drew up her own will in June 1474 she asked to be buried next to her first husband, Holt, in St. Dionis Backchurch. The will was proved on 16 Nov., and just over a year later its provisions were read and confirmed by the court of aldermen, probably as part of arrangements for the purchase of two annual rents in the city which were to be used to fund a chantry for her soul and those of her husbands.53 CP40/845, rots. 307-8; PCC 19 Wattys (PROB11/6, ff. 139-40); Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, pp. 93, 101-4; Corp. London RO, London husting bk. 1, f. 117v. She also left bequests to her niece Elizabeth, wife of John Sulyard*, and Thomas Windsor†, her executor, who had married her other niece, Anne.