WYMONDESWOLD, William

The pedigree of the Wymondeswold family, which seems to have hailed from Wymeswold in north Leicestershire, can only be speculatively reconstructed, but the probability is that the MP was the younger brother of the well-connected John Wymondeswold.4 The MP is to be distinguished from his namesake of Coventry, assessed on an annual income of as much as £30 in the Warws. tax returns of 1435-6: E179/192/59. Named as a feoffee of the wealthy Nottinghamshire knight, (Sir) Hugh Willoughby* in 1435, John was serving as deputy steward of the honour of Leicester under John, Viscount Beaumont, in the early 1440s.5 Nottingham Univ. Lib. Middleton mss, Mi D 1614, 4755; R. Somerville, Duchy, i. 563. He also, from early in his career, had interests in the town of Leicester: he held office as the town’s common clerk from before 1418 to the late 1440s and farmed the duchy of Lancaster mills in the town throughout the 1430s and 1440s at the considerable annual rent of £17.6 C1/69/285, 295; DL29/198/3122-3; 212/3252-63.

It was, however, William who came to be more intimately concerned in the town’s day to day affairs. The first reference to him dates from Michaelmas term 1420, when he personally appeared in the court of King’s bench to sue men of Foxton and Great Bowden, some miles to the south-east of Leicester, for trespass.7 KB27/638, rot. 50. This implies, and later evidence confirms, that he held property outside the town. Indeed, by this early date his only connexion with Leicester may have been through his putative brother, but when he next appears in the records it is in the guise of a tradesman of the town. By Easter term 1424 he had married a local woman called Emma and was in trade as a spicer.8 CP40/653, rot. 219d, 372; 655, rots. 67d, 366.

No sooner had Wymondeswold become established in Leicester than he became involved in a dispute with the town’s collegiate church of St. Mary in the Newarke. On 27 Nov. 1424 he entered into a recognizance in £20 to the King that he would behave well towards them until the next sessions in the town, when he would find security of the peace before the j.p.s or else give himself up for imprisonment.9 CCR, 1422-9, p. 186. This dispute was later to escalate seriously, and it seems that Wymondeswold was the leader of a large faction in the town opposed to the dean and chapter. According to a vivid petition presented to the King by the latter, on 7 May 1432, during Wymondeswold’s second term as bailiff, he led ‘a grete multitude of the Communes’ to the number of some 700 or 800 men in ‘a grete orrible and full perilous insurrecion’ against them. When the mayor, John Loughborough*, intervened to stop the violence, the rioters trampled him under foot, and the dean and chapter took refuge in their church where they remained ‘for fere of deth’. They now complained that, even after the riot had subsided, ‘they see and feel daylie in diuers wyse the malice of some of the Comunes … so cruel and so fervent a yens tham’. The cause of this ‘malice’ is not known, but the petition led Henry VI’s minority council to make an effective intervention. On the following 14 Nov. Wymondeswold and other lesser townsmen named in the petition personally appeared in Chancery, and undertook to abide the arbitration of four prominent local figures, William, Lord Ferrers of Groby, Sir William Babington, c.j.c.p., Sir William Trussell† and William Babthorpe, baron of the Exchequer. Since these arbiters were charged with reconciling the dean and chapter not simply with Wymondeswold and the other rioters but with the mayor, burgesses and community of the town, it seems that, even though the mayor had acted to stop the riot, the dean and chapter’s unpopularity extended beyond the rioters. In any event, the arbitration appears to have brought the dispute to an end. In Hilary term 1433 Wymondeswold and the other leaders of the riot again appeared in Chancery and were dismissed quit.10 SC8/336/15875; C244/7/111.

After this violent interlude, Wymondeswold’s career entered calmer waters. In 1439 he added to his interests outside Leicester by purchasing 50 acres in his native Wymeswold in north Leicestershire. He also had property at Scraptoft, a few miles to the east of Leicester, for in 1443 he sued a group of eight husbandmen for depasturing his grass there to the value of as much as £20.11 CP25(1)/126/75/48; CP40/729, rot. 223. It is probable that he was using the profits of his trading interests to increase the family landholdings. He mixed his landed interests with an increasingly prominent part in Leicester affairs. On 21 Dec. 1441 he attested the town’s parliamentary return, and his own election as mayor came in the following Michaelmas.12 C219/15/2. Later, while in office as one of the four stewards of the fair for the year 1446-7, he was allegedly involved in an offence against the property of the Crown’s bailiff in the town, Richard Hotoft*. According to a writ sued out of King’s bench by Hotoft on 12 Jan. 1448, he and four lesser men had, in the previous July, broken Hotoft’s close at Humberstone, depastured crops worth 40s. and abducted two of his servants. This apparent hostility between the two men might explain why Wymondeswold served on the jury which, sitting before royal commissioners of inquiry on 2 April 1448, indicted Hotoft for illegally distributing livery to men of the town. Indeed, given Hotoft’s later strained relationship with the burgessess, it may be that, as in the case of the earlier dispute with the collegiate church, the quarrel was not simply a personal one.13 KB27/747, rot. 62; 749, rot. 9d; 751, rot. 28d; C145/313/13; CIMisc. viii. 213.

Elected for his second term as mayor in 1452, Wymondeswold returned to Parliament on 1 Mar. 1453, one of only three occasions in our period when the choice of the electors fell on the serving mayor.14 C219/16/2. Since he had ranked among the leading townsmen for more than 30 years, it is surprising that his first known return to Parliament was so long delayed. Perhaps he had been elected in 1439 or 1445, Parliaments for which returns for Leicester do not survive, but the fact that he appears only once as an attestor to an election may be taken to imply that he was not greatly interested in parliamentary service. Wymondeswold last appears in the records in an active role a few months after his term as an MP. By a deed dated 6 Dec. 1454 he conveyed six plots of land in the parishes of St. Michael and St. Peter to four feoffees, headed by Robert Brown, described as one of his former serving men. The date of his death is unknown, but it occurred before 1464, when he was referred to as a deceased feoffee of a chaplain, Robert Twyford. He is probably to be identified with the ‘Mr. Wymeswold’ for whom an obit was celebrated in the church of St. Martin until the 1540s.15 Wyggeston Hosp. Recs. ed. Thompson, 350, 354, 362; J. Nichols, Leics., i (2), 570.

Wymondeswold’s career was remarkable in its variety. Although seemingly from a lesser gentry family, he developed considerable commercial interests. In his long career he was variously described as grocer, chandler, wax chandler, spicer and merchant.16 CP40/655, rot. 366; 710, rot. 377; 738, rot. 421; KB27/751, rot. 28d; 771, rot. 25. Such extensive interests made him a more frequent plaintiff in actions of debt in the court of common pleas than any other Leicester MP of the period. For instance, in Trinity term 1438 he had suits pending against as many as 14 individuals for debts totalling 67 marks.17 CP40/710, rots. 297, 377, 454d, 476. Such actions also provide the best evidence of his range of social connexions. In 1437 he was joint plaintiff with one of the leading townsmen, Ralph Brasier alias Humberston*, in a writ of trespass; and ten years later he was jointly defending a similar writ with another townsman, William Newby*.18 KB27/705, rot. 33d; 747, rot. 62d. As befitting his gentry origins, he also had connexions outside the confines of Leicester. In 1430 he was joint-plaintiff in an action of close-breaking with two of his putative brother’s masters, Lord Beaumont and (Sir) Hugh Willoughby; and in 1448 he was able to call on two local gentry, Thomas Burton* and Thomas Farnham, a member of the county bench, to act as sureties for him in the court of King’s bench.19 CP40/677, rot. 381d; KB27/749, rot. 9. Such connexions, together with his lands outside the town, single him out as one of the most important men to represent Leicester during Henry VI’s reign.

Nothing is known for certain about Wymondeswold’s descendants. His putative brother John was dead by June 1452, apparently leaving a son Richard as his heir. It may thus be that John Wymondeswold, who held office as deputy porter of Leicester castle from 1453 to 1459, is to be identified as our MP’s son, but this, like all else appertaining to the family pedigree, is a matter of speculation.20 CCR, 1447-54, p. 362; DL29/213/3265-9.