WYDEVILLE, Thomas

More may be added to the earlier biography.4 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 915-17.

Thomas Wydeville’s will gives the surname of his second wife as Roger, and there is indirect but compelling evidence that she was the daughter of John Roger, a wealthy merchant of Bridport in Dorset, and the widow of (Sir) Thomas Lovell, who died young in 1414.5 His will survives only in a much later copy: G. Baker, Northants. ii. 162-3. Its identification of his second wife as a Roger is, however, confirmed by the heraldic evidence of his brass. This has the Wydeville arms impaling what now appears as on a chief a fleur de lys. There can be little doubt that the latter is a badly worn version of the Roger arms i.e. argent, a mullet pierced sable, on a chief or a fleur de lys gules. In 1426 Wydeville acted as one of the feoffees for the settlement of jointure on the marriage of Lovell’s daughter and coheiress, Agnes, to Thomas Wake*.6 C139/172/19. Wake was a wealthy young man and a near-neighbour of our MP in Northamptonshire: what could be more natural than that Wydeville should have brokered his marriage to his stepdaughter? Indeed, since the Wakes had no interests of their own in the West Country it is difficult to explain the marriage in any other way. It is also likely that Wydeville had a hand in arranging the marriage of Agnes’s sister, Margery, to (Sir) Edward Hull*, kinsman of his deceased first wife.

In Michaelmas term 1426 Wydeville was called to answer Robert Otteley and his wife Joan for a third part of manors in Stoke Bruerne and Alderton near Grafton Regis. These thirds had been purchased by his paternal grandfather in 1366 and Joan claimed as heir in tail under an earlier settlement. Although her action appears to have been unsuccessful, Wydeville was not entirely unmoved by her claim. He referred to it in his will, instructing his feoffees that, after they had settled an annuity of 100s. on the parents of the parson of Stoke Bruerne and received 200 marks either from the issues of the manors or from the persons who claimed as heirs-in-tail (presumably the Otteleys), they were to make estate according to the old entail.7 CP40/663, rot. 2; J. Bridges, Northants. i. 324. There can be no doubt that Wydeville, like most of his contemporaries, felt a tension between the sanctity of entails and the practical considerations of family and finance. Here he was prepared to restore an entail but only after his death and in return for a payment to his feoffees.

The same tension seems also to have informed the most important clause of his will, the settlement of the family’s caput honoris, the manor of Grafton Regis, upon his half-brother and heir male, Richard Wydeville, and the compensatory bequest to the heirs-general of his purchased lands together with further lands with a capital value of 200 marks to be bought by his feoffees. It is hard to escape the conclusion that Grafton was entailed to the heirs-general and that the compensation was a salve to his conscience and an investment in his soul’s salvation. This was certainly the interpretation adopted in a Chancery petition against the surviving feoffees in the early 1450s: Wydeville’s great-niece, Agnes, and her husband, Thomas Wylde, claimed that the testator had bequeathed his purchased lands to the heirs- general ‘for recompense in his consciens of dyvers lyvelode entayled to [them] and by him discontynued’.8 C1/19/330-1.

Wydeville also made a more expensive investment in eternal salvation. He instructed his feoffees to make estate to the abbot and convent of St. James near Northampton of the hermitage of Grafton (an ancient foundation of the Wydevilles), ‘Shaw Wood’ in Grafton, the manor of Astcote in Pattishull and other neighbouring property together with land in Figheldean (Wiltshire). The abbot and convent were to hold these properties in perpetuity if the necessary licence could be obtained or, failing that, for the term of 50 winters; in return, they were to find five poor men and to perform certain other observances for the health of his soul and of those of his wives, his parents and ‘grainser’ Thomas Lyons and Margaret, Lyons’ wife. This settlement was duly carried through by his feoffees in September 1442 and, since the abbot had two years earlier paid £100 for a royal licence to acquire lands in mortmain to the value of 40 marks, it was clearly intended to be permanent. Many years later, however, it was undone by Wydeville’s great-nephew of the half-blood, Anthony Wydeville, Earl Rivers. To the earl’s great discredit, he imperilled his ancestor’s soul by dispossessing the abbey, which had to wait until his execution in 1483 for restoration.9 CPR, 1436-41, p. 407; Baker, ii. 171.

Wydeville’s date of death is unknown, but it was slightly later than implied in the earlier biography. He last appears in an active role on 15 Sept. 1435 when he attested a Northamptonshire parliamentary election for the eighth recorded time. There is no reason to suppose that he was not also still alive in the following June when he had a loan of £40 to the Crown credited to him in the Exchequer. He was, however, certainly dead by Trinity term 1437 when his executors were distrained to answer for a plea of detinue of charters. Given his absence from his usual place among the attestors, it is a reasonable inference that he was dead before the election held at Northampton on 3 Jan. 1437.10 C219/14/5; 15/1; E403/725, m. 8; CP40/706, rots. 144, 315.