MOUNTFORT, Sir William

More may be added to the earlier biography.7 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 797-800.

Mountfort was probably of age by February 1396, when he or a namesake witnessed a minor conveyance at Coleshill, and certainly so by June 1400, when he granted a shop there to Richard Haversham, who was later to be steward of his household. His minority can only have been brief, but it resulted in recurring problems. In 1402 his guardian, Sir William Bagot†, sued him for account, and later, as cited in the earlier biography, for marrying without his licence.8 Birmingham Archs. Wingfield Digby mss, MS3888/A396, 420; CP40/567, rot. 560d. For Haversham as our MP’s attorney-general and steward of his household, see Wingfield Digby mss, MS3888/A476; Shakespeare Centre Archs., Guild of Holy Cross, Stratford-upon-Avon mss , reg. BRT1/1, f. 32v. Despite Mountfort’s considerable wealth, it was some years before he began to play a part in local administration. One reason for this delay in the start of his local career was his persistent involvement in disorder. His most lawless act was the murder of Alan Waldieve on 24 May 1406, for which he was pardoned by the Crown in the following April. Waldieve had acted as feoffee and attorney for Sir Baldwin Freville (d.1400), and it may be that the context for the crime was the Freville claim to the lands which came to our MP through Peter, Lord Montfort.9 CPR, 1405-8, p. 327; C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 365; CIPM, xviii. 420. Butler and Freville were the heirs of Lord Montfort, who had alienated part of his lands to his illegit. s. John, our MP’s gdfa.

In any event, rival titles to these lands were later to lead Mountfort into more disorder. On 26 June 1415 he and another claimant to the Montfort lands, William Butler of Sudeley (Gloucestershire), were brought before the King at Westminster after the justices of assize and a j.p., John Weston†, had reported that their rivalry threatened the local peace. Both were required to find surety of the peace in £1,000, Mountfort producing as his guarantors Sir Thomas Clinton†, William Brokesby (whose widow he was later to marry), Brokesby’s brother, Bartholomew*, and his servant, Haversham.10 KB27/617, rex rot. 23. It may be not be coincidental that, soon after, Mountfort took service in France in the retinue of his lord, Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick. The dispute, however, continued. In Easter term 1417, just before he returned to France for a second time, he sued Butler and Sir Baldwin Freville (d.1418) for the manor and advowson of Whitchurch and other former Montfort property under terms of a fine of 1326, a renewal of an action unsuccessfully sued by his brother in 1393; but a jury at Coventry on the following 19 Aug. vindicated the title of the defendants under a fine of 1286. This marked the end of his dispute with the legitimate Montfort descendants (although his claim was to be revived by his grandson, Sir Simon Mountfort†).11 CP40/625, rots. 393, 395; KB27/861, rot. 80; Peds. Plea Rolls ed. Wrottesley, 193-4; Carpenter, 365-6.

Later Sir William was troubled by yet another claimant to his Montfort lands. On 22 Oct. 1425 a special assize of novel disseisin was granted at the suit of John Catesby* and his wife, Margaret Montfort, who claimed the manors of Kingshurst near Coleshill and Kingford near Solihull and other property against him. Like Sir William, Margaret was descended in an illegitimate line from Lord Montfort, and it is difficult to see her claim as anything more than opportunistic. Yet it met with some success. On 19 July 1426 a jury sitting before the justices of assize accepted Sir William’s claim as heir-in-tail to the two manors under a settlement made by Lord Montfort, but asserted that the entail did not include certain other property claimed by the plaintiffs, who were awarded damages of £40 for the disseisin committed against them by our MP. The other property was extensive, comprising 24 messuages, 15 tofts and over 2,000 acres of land, meadow, wood and pasture in Coleshill, Solihull and several other scattered vills. If three deeds dated between 1363 and 1365, which Catesby had copied under the seal of the mayor of Northampton three days before the jurors met, are accepted as genuine, then the verdict was a correct one in that it reflected the division Lord Montfort had made between his illegitimate sons. None the less, the division was rather an impractical one, and it is likely that a compromise was reached with Sir William buying out the claims of the Catesbys.12 JUST1/978/5; KB138/127; CAD, v. A13635.

Mountfort’s first appointment as sheriff on 26 Nov. 1431 raises interesting questions, for there can be no doubt that absence abroad made him an unsuitable nominee. On 9 Dec. he was in Paris with his lord, the earl of Warwick, and he was no doubt still there a week later to witness the coronation of Henry VI. He was probably not back in England until the King himself returned at the end of January.13 Warws. RO, Beauchamp household bk. CR1618/W19/5, f. 135. In these circumstances the burden of the office must have descended on his under sheriff, who was either Thomas or Edmund Starky, minor gentry from Stretton-on-Dunsmore.14 A contemporary acct. colourfully claims that one of the Starkys, as our MP’s under sheriff in 1432, was for ‘his vntrewe labour’ in making a false return to a writ against the interest of Robert Arneburgh, ‘smetyn with a palsey and his mouthe sette a syde and his yen drawen’: C. Carpenter, Armburgh Pprs. 27, 65. During his second term as sheriff in 1441-2 he employed both of them in the subsidiary office, and his treatment of them provides an object lesson in the dangers of serving a man like Mountfort. After the end of his term he relentlessly pursued them for some real or imagined defects in their conduct. He had them imprisoned successively in Warwick gaol, the Fleet and the Marshalsea, first for the sum of £123 13s. 5½d. which his own auditors found due to him from their term as his under sheriffs and then on a bond of 100 marks, by which they had undertaken to indemnify him for any fines that might fall on him because of their failings in the office. When, in 1447, the latter action was tried by a Middlesex jury – the bond was dated at Westminster – it was found that the single failing Sir William had alleged against them, namely that they had made a false return to a writ of arrest for which he was fined 30s., was groundless.15 E199/45/6, mm. 1, 3, 4; C244/37/16; E13/143, rot. 11; 144, rots. 36, 37, 44, 49; KB27/738, rot. 34d.

This is one of several episodes that cast an unflattering light on Mountfort’s character. A Chancery petition, from the period of his third shrievalty, adds to this impression: it claimed that no one, ‘for feir and drede’ of Sir William, dared to offer bail for one William Mariot, arrested and imprisoned for an alleged assault, although, in Mountfort’s defence, it may be that this statement was a fiction designed to secure a corpus cum causa to the imprisoning authorities, namely the mayor and bailiffs of Coventry.16 C1/19/28. Nor was it only with his inferiors that Sir William could prove uncompromising. When sitting in the Parliament of 1450, he was pricked for a third term as sheriff, but he refused to act until the Crown accorded him the privilege of accounting in the Exchequer by oath, in other words, only for what he could collect rather than for what the Exchequer demanded.17 E159/228, brevia Hil. rot. 18 (printed in B.P. Wolffe, Crown Lands, 95).

Mountfort had important connexions and interests not cited in the earlier biography. The range of these connexions is most clearly evidenced by the surviving receiver-general’s account for his estates, dated 1433-4. This lists among the visitors to his household at Coleshill the abbess of Polesworth, his son-in-law, Sir Maurice Berkeley I*, Sir Richard Vernon*, who was the father of Joan, wife of his son and heir, Baldwin, Ralph Bracebridge, Robert Arderne* and Robert Whitgreve*.18 Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 336-7; Shakespeare Centre Archs. Archer mss, DR37/73/32. Baldwin’s marriage to Joan Vernon had taken place by 1425: Vis. Warws. (Harl. Soc. xii), 56; Harl. 2131, ff. 14v-15; VCH Staffs. xvii. 171. Incidental references add to this picture. Earlier, in 1427, he had received a deputation at Coleshill sent by William, Lord Ferrers of Groby, to discuss the marriage of Ferrers’s grand-daughter and heiress-presumptive, Elizabeth, to Edward, younger son of Reynold, Lord Grey of Ruthin. Yet earlier, in 1416, he had been named among the feoffees of another future peer, Sir John Tiptoft†.19 Add. Ch. 65954; HMC Var. vii. 332; CP25(1)/291/63/41.

Mountfort’s second wife, Joan, had an annuity of £20 from the queen-dowager, Joan of Navarre (d.1437), assigned on the Wiltshire manor of Stratton St. Mary, probably from a period in the queen’s household. After Joan’s marriage to our MP the queen assigned the manor to the couple in lieu of payment. If an inquiry of 1446 is to be taken literally, Mountfort responded by exploiting the manor, taking payments from tenants for repairs that were never made and for licences to waste their customary tenements.20 SC6/1062/27; CIPM, viii. 176. Less contentiously, in 1428-9 he and his second wife together with the soul of his first wife were admitted, free of fine, to the important guild of the Holy Cross in Stratford-upon-Avon.21 Reg. Gild of Holy Cross, Stratford-upon-Avon ed. Macdonald, 120.