CULPEPPER, Richard

The Culpeppers were a Kentish family of some antiquity, having been established at Brenchley and Bayhall in Pembury since the early thirteenth century, and founding branches elsewhere in the county. Some confusion about the identity of Richard, the parliamentary candidate of 1455, might remain, owing to the existence of contemporary namesakes,4 Another Richard, the s. of Peter Culpepper of East Farleigh, Kent, disputed with his niece Eleanor and her husband Edmund Chertsey* ownership of the family manors of Bletchenden in the parish of Headcorn and ‘Brisyng’ in Langley (C1/10/281), only to give up his claims in the late 1440s: CCR, 1441-7, pp. 493-4; 1447-54, pp. 157-8. That Richard, as ‘of East Farleigh, gentleman’, was pardoned with Chertsey at the time of Cade’s rebellion: CPR, 1446-52, p. 355. Care has also been taken to distinguish the subject of this biog. from Richard Culpepper (d.1516), 2nd s. of Walter Culpepper (d.1462) of Goudhurst, Kent.: Suss. Arch. Collns. xlvii. 56-60; CP40/814, rots. 484, 484d, 488. After the marriage of that Richard’s er. bro. Sir John Culpepper (d.1480) to Agnes, da. of John Gaynesford I* and wid. of Richard Wakehurst (d.1454) of Wakehurst in Ardingley, Suss., Richard and a third brother, Nicholas Culpepper, abducted and married Agnes’s das. Margaret (b.1444) and Elizabeth (b.1447), the coheiresses of their gdfa. Richard Wakehurst† (d.1455). The well-documented and acrimonious lawsuits over the Wakehurst estates in Suss. and Surr. lasted from the late 1450s for some 20 years. For that Richard’s will and burial, see Suss. Arch. Collns. xlviii. 65-66; Mon. Brasses ed. Mill Stephenson, 501-2. but there is sufficient evidence to show that he was the Richard who belonged to the Culpeppers of West Peckham, and was a grandson of the wealthy Sir John Culpepper (d.1413/14), j.c.p. and his second wife Katherine, from whom he eventually inherited several manors in Kent and other lands in Surrey.5 C1/84/2, 4; E. Hasted, Kent ed. Drake, v. 3, 63-64 (an acct. not without errors). The judge was said to have estates in Kent worth £132 p.a. (Feudal Aids, vi. 476), but by no means all of them passed to his offspring by his 2nd wife. It was from the judge’s 1st wife that Sir Thomas Culpepper (d.1429) and his son, John Culpepper* were descended. West Peckham, in central Kent, had long been the home of this branch of the family, and the judge and his son Sir William (Richard’s father) both chose to be buried in the parish church there, close to where Sir John established a chantry.6 Archaeologia Cantiana, xxii. 272-3, 315; lxxx. 93; CPR, 1408-13, p. 55; W.D. Belcher, Kentish Brasses, ii. 105, no. 342. It is not known precisely when Richard inherited the family estates, but it was not until after he stood for Parliament. His father Sir William, the sheriff of Kent in 1426-7, is said to have died in 1457, and his mother lived on into the 1460s.7 N. Pevsner, Buildings of Eng.: Kent: West and the Weald ed. Newman, 651. After Sir William’s death she married Richard Bruyn*: C1/42/57-61. By the time of his own death Richard possessed ten manors in Kent, with an estimated annual value of at least £37.8 C141/6/28. The fact that he held six of them as a feudal tenant of the Stafford dukes of Buckingham offers the key to the direction his career was to take. His father was probably a retainer of their overlord Humphrey, earl of Stafford (duke from 1444), for in the spring of 1430 Sir William headed the list of witnesses at Stafford’s seat at Tonbridge when the earl made settlements of his manors and lordships in Kent.9 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 357-8. Not surprisingly, as a young man Richard entered the service of the earl, who ten years later retained him for life with an annuity of £5 from the lordship of Tonbridge (of which honour the Culpeppers held their principal manor). In 1447 he was among the few retainers of the duke who accompanied him to Calais during his captaincy of the fortress.10 C. Rawcliffe, Staffords, 75, 233; E101/54/8.

It may have been Culpepper’s status as one of Buckingham’s servants that led him to become embroiled in the disputed Kentish election of 1455. In the aftermath of the duke of York’s seizure of power following the battle at St. Albans, the King’s council wrote to the sheriff of Kent, Sir John Cheyne II*, warning him that there were plans by some elements within the county to interfere in the electoral procedure. He was ordered to observe the statutes concerning parliamentary elections and report any malefactors to the council.11 PPC, v. 246-7. On 7 July, just two days before the Parliament was due to assemble at Westminster, Cheyne made proclamation in the county court at Rochester. According to a bill presented later in the Exchequer of pleas, Sir Thomas Kyriel* and Richard Culpepper were duly elected, but Cheyne then altered the return, erasing Culpepper’s name and replacing it with that of (Sir) Gervase Clifton*. Nevertheless, it seems that Cheyne was less motivated by political concerns than to secure the election of MPs sympathetic to the pressing needs of the Calais garrison. Both Cheyne, as victualler, and Clifton, as treasurer, faced personal ruin if the parlous state of the garrison’s finances was not addressed, and the election of two knights of the shire with first-hand experience of the current situation in Calais was an attempt to ensure that its affairs would be high on the parliamentary agenda. Culpepper was less well-versed with matters across the Channel; but whatever the circumstances of the election, he was powerless to prevent Clifton and Kyriel from taking their seats in the Commons. It was left to his brother, William Culpepper, esquire, to sue Cheyne in the Exchequer court in an attempt to recover the £100 he had pledged as surety for Richard taking up his seat. The case petered out in the autumn of 1457.12 E13/146, rots. 11-11d, 36-36d, 43, 46d; printed in Parliamentarians at Law ed. Kleineke, 180-95. For his relationship to William see C1/42/57-61.

Culpepper’s lord Duke Humphrey of Buckingham fell at Northampton in 1460, but he himself went on to enjoy a long and active career in the public affairs of Kent under the Yorkists. He was granted an annuity of £10 by Edward IV in November 1463,13 CPR, 1461-7, p. 269. and nominated to various ad hoc commissions in the county. In April 1471, immediately after Edward recovered the throne, he was pricked as sheriff, holding office until November. On 13 June 1472 he received a pardon of all offences committed by him and all fines due as a consequence of his shrievalty.14 CPR, 1467-77, p. 346. Now a landowner of consequence, early in 1480 he took as his second wife Isabel Worsley, whose father Otwell had bequeathed 300 marks to her for her marriage. Part of the payment, £40, which was made on 1 May 1480, is recorded in the receiver’s account of her kinsman William Worsley, the dean of St. Paul’s, and £110 was handed over within eight weeks of the marriage. This took place shortly before, at the end of May, Culpepper enfeoffed the dean and others including Sir Henry Ferrers† (perhaps his kinsman) of his Kentish manors of Oxenhoath and Offham to hold to the use of his new wife.15 C1/84/6; William Worsley, 175-6; C141/6/28.

In the last year of his life Culpepper, like other members of his family, may have joined the conspiracy against Richard III led by Henry, duke of Buckingham, his feudal overlord. If so, he was fortunate to escape attainder in the Parliament assembled in January 1484, and be able to secure a royal pardon in the following March.16 C67/51, m. 27. He died soon afterwards, on 4 Oct. A year earlier, on 12 Sept. 1483, he had placed eight of his manors in the hands of feoffees to perform his will. The date of the transaction raises suspicions (given that it coincided with Buckingham’s rebellion), but the findings of his inquisition post mortem state (albeit in an insertion made by the escheator) that the conveyance had been done without fraud or collusion. It may well have been thought that Culpepper was attempting to avoid his lands falling in wardship to his lord. His children were under age, and indeed his son and heir, Thomas, said to be aged only 14 weeks when the post mortem was held on 19 Jan. 1485, must have been born posthumously.17 CFR, xxi. no. 831; C141/6/28 (called ‘the elder, esquire’).

Owing to the forfeiture of the duke of Buckingham’s estates, the wardship and marriage of Culpepper’s heir reverted to the Crown, and were granted to one of King Richard’s favoured servants, Sir John Savage the younger, on the following 18 May.18 CPR, 1476-85, p. 534. However, young Thomas himself died prematurely, aged just nine, on 7 Oct. 1492, leaving as his heirs his three sisters of the half-blood (the daughters of his father’s first wife, Sybil) – namely, Elizabeth (b.c.1450), by then wife of Henry Barham, Margaret (b.c.1452), wife of William Constantyn, and Anne (b.c.1462), wife of John Holden – together with his two sisters of the whole blood, Joyce aged 12 and Margaret aged 11. Before her son’s death the widowed Isabel Culpepper had married John Legh (d.1523), the son and heir of the wealthy Ralph Legh*of Stockwell, Surrey, and between them the couple had arranged for young Joyce to marry Legh’s brother, another Ralph.19 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 820. Through a later marriage, to Lord Edmund Howard, a younger son of the duke of Norfolk, Joyce became the mother of Henry VIII’s fifth consort, Katherine Howard.20 Oxf. DNB, ‘Katherine’.