WHAPLODE, William

More may be added to the earlier biography.3 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 822-4.

A ‘Waplod’ was among the commoners of Winchester College in 1412-14,4 T.F. Kirby, Annals of Winchester, 111-12. but the MP had certainly begun his adult career by that date.

As the cursus honorum above shows, Whaplode’s career as an estate officer of Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, was much more extensive than previously noted. It would appear that he took over the stewardship of the episcopal estates in the lifetime of his predecessor Richard Wyot*. Still steward in 1442, he probably relinquished the office when Beaufort died on 11 Apr. 1447. He did not, as previously suggested, retain it until his own death, for he was no longer steward when Beaufort’s successor as bishop, William Waynflete, was consecrated on the following 31 July. Whaplode did not always exercise his duties as steward alone. His absence abroad in the summer of 1435, when he accompanied Beaufort to the Congress of Arras, probably explains why a ‘supervisor’, Master William Estcorte, was associated with him in the office during the accounting year 1434-5.5 Bp. of Winchester’s pipe rolls, 11/M59/B1/178, 182, 184.

Following the election of Whaplode to his last Parliament, the return that the sheriff, Sir Thomas Waweton*, sent to Chancery mistakenly named him and his fellow knight of the shire, Sir Thomas Sackville*, as the men elected for Bedfordshire, the county with which Buckinghamshire shared its sheriff. While this scribal error was never amended, it was not repeated on a separate schedule listing the representatives of both counties, of whom James Gascoigne* and John Wenlock*were those actually returned for Bedfordshire.6 C219/14/4.

Since the writing of Whaplode’s previous biography, it has been realised that his second wife had been married at least twice before, first to the Wiltshire landowner, Nicholas Baynton, father of her stepson, John Baynton*, and afterwards to Edward Cowdray. Whaplode’s match with Joan must have come about through his service to Henry Beaufort, since Cowdray had been another of that ecclesiastic’s servants. Following the marriage, John Baynton renegotiated with Whaplode the terms of the landed settlement made on Joan by his father, who had awarded her jointure interests in the Wiltshire manor of Faulstone, along with lands in Wroughton and Compton Chamberlayne in the same county and four houses in Salisbury. In February 1429 Whaplode and Joan relinquished her jointure in Faulstone and the holdings at Wroughton to her stepson, who in return conveyed his Hampshire manors of Chilton Candover and Week to Joan to hold for life.7 Wilts. Feet of Fines, 440; CPR, 1416-22, p. 411; CIPM, xxi. 800-3; CP25(1)/207/32/26; VCH Hants, iv. 185. It was in defence of Joan’s interests that Whaplode and his wife sued Thomas Freeman* of Salisbury in 1431, alleging that he had failed to render account as receiver of her money.8 CP40/680, rot. 18d. In due course, Freeman was outlawed for failing to appear in court, although he successfully sued for a pardon of outlawry in 1434.9 CPR, 1429-36, p. 320.