WYKEHAM, Sir Thomas

More may be added to the earlier biography.4 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 920-2.

It is not known what might have prompted Wykeham to purchase the royal pardon issued to him on 1 Feb. 1415.5 C67/37, m. 57.

The records of the court of common pleas reveal that Wykeham was an executor of his father-in-law, William Wilcotes. The court’s plea roll for Trinity term 1425 includes pleadings in a suit for debt that he and his co-executors, Sir William Bysshopeston* (another of Wilcotes’ sons-in-law), the clerk Richard Compton and the testator’s widow Elizabeth (by then wife of Sir John Blaket†), had brought against a yeoman from Swerford, Oxfordshire.6 CP40/658, rot. 302d.

Five years later, Wykeham arranged a match between his daughter Alice and John, the eldest son of William Bramshott†. An esquire with estates in Hampshire and Sussex, William agreed that John should have a moiety of the manor of Rustington in the latter county as part of the marriage settlement between the two sides. The indenture, dated 3 May 1430, was intended to uphold this undertaking, since it provided for the couple to receive a rent of 50 marks p.a. from William’s manor of Gatcombe on the Isle of Wight if John were denied possession of the Rustington property. Alice would predecease John, who married a grand-daughter of Sir John Pelham* in 1444.7 I.o.W. RO, Seely of Brook mss, JER/SEL/84/5; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 335-6.

In August 1439 Wykeham made a contingent grant to the Winchester merchant John Wryther* and his wife, permitting them to levy ten marks p.a. from his manor at Dean in Hampshire, should they fail to receive another annuity of £4 drawn upon Otterbourne, another of his manors in the same county.8 Hants RO, St. John’s Winchester charity, deeds, 34M91W/269. The circumstances in which these arrangements were made are unrecorded, although possibly they related to a debt the MP owed Wryther.

Noting Wykeham’s close dealings in his later years with the Warwickshire knight, Sir Thomas Strange†, the previous biography speculated that Strange was his son-in-law. Armorial evidence recorded by the seventeenth-century antiquary Sir William Dugdale from windows (now gone) in the parish church of Wellesbourne, Warwickshire, proves that Strange’s wife Elizabeth was indeed the MP’s daughter.9 W. Dugdale, Warws. i. 574. After Strange died in 1436, the widowed Elizabeth married Thomas Middleton*. Following the match, which had occurred by July 1437,10 C67/38, m. 4. Middleton, a younger son of the Northumbrian knight Sir John Middleton*, settled in Warwickshire. A deed of 1 Mar. 1440 shows that Wykeham himself married twice, a fact not realized by the previous biography. The deed records arrangements intended to ensure that his second wife – one Margaret – should enjoy dower rights in his manors of Otterbourne and Church Oakley.11 KB27/718, rot. 39d.

When Wykeham died his second son and namesake owed him the considerable sum of £200. On 1 Apr. 1440 the younger man had entered into a bond in statute staple at Oxford, as a security that he would pay his father that amount on the following 24 June. The younger Thomas failed to meet this deadline, and in early 1444 proceedings were initiated against him in respect of the unpaid debt.12 C241/229/24.

The previous biography of Wykeham incorrectly stated that it is his tomb which survives in Broughton church, an error quickly dispelled by a visual inspection of the monument in question.13 The error was based upon a misidentification in VCH Oxon. ix. 88-89.