WYNNESBURY, John

The career of Wynnesbury raises problems. According to the earlier biography the MP married Joan, heiress of the manor of Pillaton Hall in Staffordshire, as early as 1393, and left by her a son and heir, Hamlet, improbably said to be only 30 years old ‘and more’ on Joan’s death in 1450.2 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 926-7; C139/137/15. There are, however, difficulties in identifying Joan’s husband with the MP. The Shropshire subsidy returns of 1428 show that Hamlet was already then seised of land at Hockleton (in Chirbury), and those of November 1431, in which he is described as ‘of Pillaton Hall, gentleman’, record him as the tenant of other Shropshire lands at Winsbury and Stalloe.3 Feudal Aids, iv. 256, 262. Clearly he was much older than 30 in 1450 (as one would expect if his parents had been married in 1393), and it is probable that his father had died shortly before the taking of the 1431 subsidy. The father’s attestation of the Staffordshire election to the Parliament of January 1431 is his last certain appearance in the records, and his death soon after would explain why Hamlet was holding the family lands later in that year. If this speculation is correct then the father cannot have been the Shropshire MP of 1432, and it is probable that only a few references in the earlier biography relate to this John: he was tax collector in Staffordshire on three occasions between 1398 and 1413, attested three elections in that county between 1419 and 1431, and was indicted in 1414 for illegally receiving livery from Sir Edmund Ferrers of Chartley.4 CFR, xi. 264; xii. 187; xiv. 27; C219/12/3; 13/3; 14/2; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xvii. 9, 20-21.

The MP’s identity is rather to be found in a more important man, John Wynnesbury of Glazeley, who appears alongside Hamlet in the Shropshire subsidy returns and cannot have been his father. A pardon of 1464 and a deed of 1479 demonstrates that the manor of Glazeley and other Shropshire property passed from him not to Hamlet, who died in 1473, but to a daughter and heiress, Margaret, wife of Fulk Sprenghose of Plaish (Salop).5 C67/45 m. 8; Salop Archs., Sandford of the Isle mss, 465/57. Beyond the details cited above, all else in the previous biography relates to him. 6 In the 1420s, when the two careers overlapped, occasional trouble was taken in the Chancery records to distinguish one ‘of Pillaton Hall’ and the other ‘of Glazeley’: CFR, xv. 206; CCR, 1429-35, p. 190.

This John Wynnesbury was survived by a widow named Elizabeth rather than Joan. In January 1452 two yeomen of Bridgnorth are said to have hunted illegally in her park at Glazeley; and in 1459 she was sued for debt as the executrix of her late husband’s will.7 KB9/103/1/17; CP40/795, rot. 67. It seems that our MP made very generous provision for her: in the early 1460s she claimed in a petition to the chancellor that she had been seised of the manors of Winsbury (where the other branch of the family also held property), Glazeley, Stanway (in Rushbury) and Edgton in fee, had made a feoffment to the use of her and her heirs and had then suffered from the refusal of one of the feoffees to make estate. The most likely explanation here is that our MP had alienated the Wynnesbury inheritance to her with the intent that it should pass on her death to their daughter.8 C1/28/42.

The daughter had a troubled marital history. Before 17 Dec. 1453 (and probably some years before) she had married Fulk Sprenghose, but the marriage encountered trouble. After the death of William Burley I* in 1458, Sprenghose, who numbered among the powerful Burley’s servants, abandoned her in the hope of contracting a marriage with Burley’s widow, Margaret Grey, who had an extensive jointure interest in the Burley lands. Our MP’s daughter resisted her desertion, securing a verdict in favour of the validity of her marriage from the archbishop of Canterbury, but Fulk’s appeals to the papacy left the matter unresolved as late as 1468.9 Sandford of the Isle mss, 465/476; CP, xii. 463-4, 600. Whether the marriage was restored is not known, but our MP’s daughter was a widow by the spring of 1479 when she made a settlement of the Wynnesbury lands on her four daughters by the errant Sprenghose.10 Sandford of the Isle mss, 465/57.

Aside from these revisions, there is little to add to the earlier biography. It seems that as a young man Wynnesbury campaigned against the Glendower rebels in Wales, serving between 1404 and 1406 in the retinue of Thomas Neville, Lord Furnival.11 E101/44/6, mm. 2, 5. His mother’s identity is provided by a deed of 31 July 1411 in which he is described as nepos (grandson) of Robert, father of the John Stapleton† who was MP for Shropshire in the Parliament of December 1421.12 Salop Archs., Shackerley mss, 1781/2/5. The biography of John Stapleton in The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 461-2, conflates the two rival branches of the Shropshire Stapletons. This kinship explains why our MP was so frequently associated with the younger John: in the late 1410s he supported him in the dispute within the Stapleton family over the ownership of the manor of Stapleton and was later one of his feoffees in that manor.13 KB27/633, rot. 10; SC8/295/14741; Salop Archs., deeds 6000/2805.

Although not a member of the quorum, Wynnesbury was one of the most active of the county’s j.p.s. Between June 1435 and June 1439, for example, he was present on all 17 days for which the j.p.s were paid for sitting.14 E101/584/22. This did not, of course, prevent him from being involved in some questionable activities. Additionally to those outlined in the previous biography, in 1423 he was appealed of murder by one William Sydnale, who failed to pursue the action, and in 1437 he was employed as a feoffee by Katherine, widow of William Horde*, in an unsuccessful attempt to defraud her stepson, John Horde*. Late in his life he almost became sheriff for a second time: he was on the pricked list for November 1448.15 KB27/650, rot. 2; C1/9/296; C47/34/2.