WYKEHAM, William

The Wykehams of Broughton owed their status to William’s great, great-uncle and namesake, William of Wykeham (d.1404), bishop of Winchester. William’s father was born Thomas Perrot, a younger son of the obscure William Perrot of Ash, Hampshire, but he and his brothers had the singular good fortune of becoming protégés of the bishop, whose surname they adopted. Found a place in Richard II’s household, Thomas also spent a few years in the 1390s studying civil law at New College, his patron’s foundation at Oxford. More significantly, he became the bishop’s sole heir after the death without issue of his elder brother (yet another William) in 1401, and in due course he inherited Broughton and several other manors in Oxfordshire, Hampshire and Somerset. According to Robert Lowth, William of Wykeham’s 18th-century biographer, these estates were worth as much as £400 p.a. Possibly this was an overestimate although Thomas, who augmented his inheritance by means of several purchases, was certainly a wealthy landowner. Knighted before the end of Henry IV’s reign, he enjoyed a busy career as a j.p., ad hoc commissioner and sheriff in several counties, as well as a knight of the shire for Oxfordshire in four Parliaments.5 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 921-2.

In the Parliament of 1422 Sir Thomas Wykeham sat alongside the influential Thomas Chaucer*, in turn a cousin of the powerful Beaufort family. It was probably through Chaucer that the subject of this biography enlisted for service in France with Sir Edmund Beaufort, later duke of Somerset, in February 1427.6 DKR, xlviii. 248. William had come of age a few years previously, but nothing is known about him before the later 1420s,7 Although a William Wykeham was among the yeomen of Henry V’s household in 1415: E404/31/326. and there is no evidence that he had followed his father’s example and attended one of Bishop Wykeham’s colleges. In the autumn of 1431 he received letters of protection as a member of the retinue of Edmund Beaufort’s uncle, Cardinal Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, who was then in France.8 DKR, xlviii. 279. Given that Beaufort crowned the young Henry VI king of France in Paris the following December, it is possible that Wykeham attended the coronation.

Service abroad must have provided a useful outlet for Wykeham’s energies while he was waiting to succeed his long-lived father. Sir Thomas Wykeham’s longevity probably explains why his son had a considerably less extensive career than him as a local office-holder. While of sufficient consequence in his own right to swear the widely-administered oath to keep the peace in 1434,9 CPR, 1429-36, p. 395. William did not serve as a j.p. and sheriff until after Sir Thomas’s death. His only position of importance during his father’s lifetime was that of a knight of the shire for Oxfordshire in the brief Parliament of 1442. Sir Thomas took care, however, to involve his heir in family affairs, ensuring that William was a party to the conveyances and other arrangements he made for his estates. During the 1430s, for example, the latter was associated with the knight in disposing of Appleton, the Berkshire manor Sir Thomas had purchased some years earlier.10 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 176, 375-6, 456; VCH Berks. iv. 339; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 921.

The bulk of Sir Thomas Wykeham’s estates passed to his eldest son after he died in October 1443. In Oxfordshire William succeeded to Broughton, the manor and hundred of Bloxham, the manor of North Newington and a quarter share of that of Standlake; in Hampshire he inherited the manors of Ash and Quidhampton, along with the reversion of another at Burghclere. Sir Thomas had provided for his younger children by settling Otterbourne and Church Oakley, two other manors in the latter county, on his second son and namesake, and giving his two daughters at least a temporary interest in his manors of Burnham and Brean in Somerset. As it happened, the younger Thomas died without issue, meaning that in due course the Hampshire properties, like those in Somerset, passed to his elder brother as well.11 CIPM, xxvi. 173-5; VCH Oxon. ix. 4, 60, 88, 89; xiii. 182; VCH Hants, iii. 441-2; iv. 199, 206, 215, 279; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 922; CCR, 1435-41, pp. 375-6, 456; Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Otterbourne mss, 83; C1/93/19. William was also one of the coheirs of his maternal grandmother Elizabeth, the daughter and heir of Sir John Trillow† and successively the wife of William Wilcotes†, Sir John Blaket† and, apparently, Sir Robert Conyers*. She died in possession of the former Trillow and Wilcotes estates in 1445, following which these properties descended to her surviving daughter Isabel, widow of John Barton I* and subsequently the wife of Sir Robert Shotesbrooke*, and to her grandchildren, Wykeham among them. The estates in question were extensive, consisting as they did of manors and other lands and rights of lordship in Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. Apart from a share of the manor of Seacourt in Berkshire, it is not clear exactly what part of them fell to Wykeham, although in the years which followed he and his fellow coheirs were to dispose of parts of the inheritance, Seacourt included, by sale.12 CIPM, xxvi. 403; xix. 889-92; VCH Oxon. v. 161; x. 198; xii. 124, 221, 299; VCH Berks. iv. 422; VCH Worcs. iii. 320; CP25(1)/191/28/49; 293/72/386.

Within five years of succeeding his father, Wykeham secured a husband for his daughter and only child, Margaret, who was married to William Fiennes, son and heir of James Fiennes*, 1st Lord Saye and Sele, in early 1448.13 C139/166/29; VCH Oxon. ix. 88; VCH Hants iv. 199; CP25(1)/191/28/42, 45; 293/71/331, 336. At the time the marriage must have seemed a particularly attractive alliance to the Wykehams since Lord Saye was then chamberlain of the royal household and an influential courtier. There is no evidence that Wykeham himself was ever a Household man but he could well have come into contact locally with the elder Fiennes, who held a couple of manors in Oxfordshire and was distrained for knighthood as of that county in 1439.14 VCH Oxon. vii. 127-8; CCR, 1422-9, p. 345; 1429-35, pp. 45-46, 64, 69; E159/216, brevia Mich. rot. 26. Having given Lord Saye a bond for 4,000 marks in the statute staple at Westminster in order to secure the match, Wykeham granted the couple the reversion of his estates in Oxfordshire and the manor of Ash, Hampshire, to vest after the death of himself and his wife Joan.15 CP25(1)/293/71/331, 336. No doubt many of his hopes of advantage from the alliance with the Fiennes family were dashed by the downfall of James Fiennes. Lord Saye and Sele was murdered two years later during Cade’s rebellion, having become extremely unpopular as a courtier and for his oppressive and corrupt activities in his adopted county of Kent.

At the time of the rebellion Wykeham was serving as sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire. While sheriff, he was forced to attend to a private matter, a dispute between him and a London skinner, Thomas Sherde. Sherde took action in the common pleas at Westminster, alleging in pleadings of Michaelmas term 1450 that Wykeham owed him just under £5 for 66 skins (marten and lamb) purchased from him in London six years earlier. Wykeham denied owing the skinner any money and the matter was referred to a jury. Yet it is unlikely that the proposed trial, still pending in the spring of 1455, ever took place.16 CP40/759, rot. 96. Wykeham’s term as sheriff was not without its shortcomings. Shortly after he had relinquished the office, his successor, Edmund Rede*, seized part of his property at Bloxham on behalf of the Crown, a distraint in some way connected with the part he had played as sheriff in administering a tax on aliens.17 E199/37/13; PROME, xii. 47-48. Furthermore, his conduct as sheriff featured in a series of Exchequer suits. First, the custodian of the Franciscan friary at Oxford sued Wykeham in December 1451, alleging that he had not acted upon a tally assigning the friary nearly £10 from the issues of his bailiwick. Secondly, Thomas Stonor II* took action against him in the same month, claiming that the former sheriff had failed to pay him his wages as a knight of the shire for Oxfordshire in the Parliament of 1449-50. Thirdly, in May 1452, one Thomas Wattes accused Wykeham and one of his subordinates in the shrievalty of having unjustly seized his sheep at Lyford. Finally, the royal yeoman John Welsbourne II* alleged, again in 1452, that Wykeham had neglected to pay him a daily fee of 6d. which the King had assigned to him from the issues of Oxfordshire and Berkshire. In response to all of these suits, Wykeham obtained licences from the barons of the Exchequer to treat with his opponents out of court where, presumably, these matters were settled.18 E13/145A, rots. 21d, 22d, 23d, 40d, 54. In late 1452 he went to the trouble of purchasing a royal pardon; although this did not specifically refer to his time as sheriff.19 C67/40, m. 9 (16 Nov. 1452).

Having completed his term as sheriff, Wykeham continued to serve as a j.p. but personal affairs dominated his later years. By means of settlements of 1453 and 1455, he ensured that his wife would enjoy an interest for life in his manors of Broughton, North Newington and Bloxham.20 CP25(1)/191/28/42, 45. He also appeared in the court of King’s bench in November 1454, to ratify the estate of Robert Danvers* in the manor and advowson of Alkerton, Oxfordshire, which Sir Thomas Wykeham had sold to Danvers’s father John*.21 KB27/774, rot. 91; VCH Oxon. ix. 47. A few months before his death, he likewise formally relinquished any claim to Wilcote, another manor in that county disposed of by Sir Thomas.22 CP25(1)/191/28/49; VCH Oxon. xii. 299. Wykeham died on 8 Sept. 1456.23 C139/166/29. A couple of months later, James Fiennes’s son-in-law, Robert Rademylde*, made a claim for the 4,000 marks arising from the bond that the late MP had given Lord Saye in 1448. The security had come into Rademylde’s hands because he was the administrator of Fiennes’s widow and executrix, Emmeline, who had died in 1452.24 C241/240/6. It is unclear if he had a justifiable claim, as it is impossible to tell whether Wykeham had failed in some way to honour his part of the no longer extant Fiennes-Wykeham marriage settlement. In any case, Rademylde himself met a violent death not long afterwards, for he was killed (‘interfectus’) at Chalgrove, Oxfordshire, in June 1457.25 Westminster Abbey muns. 9204.

Wykeham was succeeded by his daughter and heir, Margaret Fiennes, by then about 28 years of age.26 C139/166/29. She did not come fully into her own immediately, since her mother was still alive in 1458. At that date Joan had both recently remarried and fallen out with her son-in-law, William Fiennes, Lord Saye and Sele. In Hilary term that year she and her new husband, Thomas Seyton*, lord of a manor at Barford St. Michael a few miles south of Broughton, brought two bills against Fiennes, then a prisoner in the Marshalsea. First, they complained that on 15 Aug. 1457, before their marriage, he had broken into Joan’s close and houses at Broughton and taken goods worth 200 marks. Secondly, they alleged that he had forcibly entered her manor of Broughton on the same date, since when it had remained in his hands.27 KB146/6/36/2. The marriage between Joan and Seyton was for a few years only, since by March 1464 she was dead and he had remarried.

Margaret’s husband was far poorer than his father, since the lands James Fiennes had held by royal grant were resumed during the Parliament of 1450. Furthermore, it appears that William was taken prisoner during the civil wars, so compounding his financial difficulties. Forced to mortgage many of his estates, some of which he afterwards sold, he also disposed of some of his wife’s inheritance, selling the manor of Otterbourne to William Waynflete, bishop of Winchester, for £180 in 1458. In spite of his problems, William was not an insignificant figure. Although a member of the Household since the early 1440s, he seems to have escaped the opprobrium attached to his father. First summoned to the Lords in 1451, he was also a member of that House in the next eight Parliaments. He attended a meeting of the Council in the spring of 1454 but subsequently threw in his lot with the Yorkists, joining the earl of Warwick at the battle of Northampton in 1460. Although close to the earl during the early 1460s, he stayed loyal to Edward IV in 1469, accompanying the Yorkist King into exile in the following year. Upon his return to England, he was killed fighting for Edward at the battle of Barnet.28 CP, xi. 482; Otterbourne mss, 81; HP Reg. ed. Wedgwood, 157, 193, 228, 252, 276, 300, 324, 345, 368.

Following Fiennes’s death, Margaret married John Hervy, apparently a kinsman of the Hervys of Thurleigh, Bedfordshire.29 S. Hervey, Dictionary of Herveys, i. 147-52. It was a brief second marriage since she died in May 1477, having outlived her son Henry Fiennes, who had died in the previous August. The heir to her Wykeham lands (valued at £120 p.a. in her inquisitions post mortem) was Henry’s six year old son, Richard, although she had awarded Hervy an estate for life in those in Somerset.30 C140/62/45; CP, xi. 483; Som. Feet of Fines, ii (Som. Rec. Soc. xxii), 146-7. Richard was successively the ward of Richard, duke of Gloucester, of (Sir) Richard Harcourt* (his maternal grandfather), of Thomas Brandon and, finally, of Richard Croft†. After attaining his majority, he sued William Bedyll in the Chancery for detaining the deeds and other evidences relating to his inheritance, which the by now long dead MP had entrusted to Bedyll’s father, Henry Bedyll of Overton, Hampshire, for safekeeping. The suit cannot have achieved its purpose, for shortly before his death Richard sued another bill in Chancery for the return of these documents, this time against Hugh Bedyll’s executor William Crowfeld.31 C1/93/19; 239/40. Still a young man when he died in October 1501, Richard predeceased his stepfather John Hervy, who lived until March 1504.32 CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 436, 548, 705, 950. The Wykeham estates, including Broughton castle, one of the finest surviving examples of a fortified medieval English manor-house, passed to Richard’s son and heir and then down the generations to the MP’s modern descendants.33 VCH Oxon. ix. 89; N. Pevsner, Buildings of Eng.: Oxon. 492-3.