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ii. Essex and Middlesex

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2009

Extract

The first purchases made by Fraunceys outside the city came, as with Pyel, at the time of the Black Death. Unlike Pyel, however, he seems not to have returned to his native county, wherever it may have been, to buy land, but stayed quite close to the city. Fraunceys was associated with Pyel in a number of property transactions in and near London, certainly from the late 1340s to the early 1360s. He was also nominally involved with Pyel's dealings in Northamptonshire, as joint purchaser or trustee. His purchases in his own right, however, focus on north Middlesex and the south-western fringes of Essex, within striking distance of London. On 1 February 1349 Fraunceys bought, jointly with Thomas de Langeton, the manor of Wyke from John Gauston and his wife, Eve. This manor, which included Hackney Wick, and parts of Old Ford and Stepney, had been consolidated by a London draper, Simon de Abyndon, mostly in the second decade of the fourteenth century. After Simon's death in 1322, his widow, Eve, married John de Causton, a London mercer, who thereby received the estate.

Type
Landed Estates
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1993

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References

59 F130.

60 F88–101, 108–113.

61 F99, 109, 111–2, 123–5, 128. The thirty-five acres of land with water-mill were leased for ten years in 1319 (F112), but there is no record of their subsequently being granted in perpetuity or of the lease being renewed.

62 F170, 140–44.

63 F158–9.

64 See Glennie, Paul, ‘In Search of Agrarian Capitalism: Manorial Land Markets and the Acquisition of Land in the Lea Valley c.1450–c.1560’, Continuity and Change, iii (1988), 1140, esp. 1415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

65 F55–6, 59–60.

66 F22, 16.

67 Bird, , Turbulent London, 8.Google Scholar

68 Stow, John, A Survey of London, ed. Kingsford, C.L., 2 vols. (Oxford, 1908), i, 172.Google Scholar

69 The nearness of the memorials strongly suggests that this was the clerk associated with Adam Fraunceys, but if so the date of his death is incorrect, as Langeton was still alive in 1359.

70 Creaton, , ‘Mercers' Wardens' Accounts’, i, 148; PRO C67/21.Google Scholar

71 CWCH i, 672–3.Google Scholar

72 CPR 1348–50, 560. See below.Google Scholar

73 CCR 1354–60, 109.Google Scholar

74 Thrupp, , Merchant Class, 188.Google Scholar

75 William Canynges, the great fifteenth-century Bristol merchant, for example. See Sherborne, J., William Canynges 1402–1474 (Bristol Historical Association Pamphlet, 1985).Google Scholar

76 There is a reference to a canon of Sulby abbey by the name of Thomas de Langeton, whose chest at Little Addington was burgled, for which crime the perpetrator was pardoned in September 1360 (CPR 1358–61, 397Google Scholar). The association of Thomas de Langeton, canon of Sulby, a house which, as we have seen, had financial links with both Pyel and Fraunceys, and Little Addington, where Pyel had substantial land-holdings and whose church sported the Pyel arms is interesting. One of the canons appointed in 1353 to deal with Pyel and Fraunceys was named Thomas de Langeton (P35). Could it be that he retired to end his days as a Premonstratensian canon?

77 Pateshull, like Faunceys, was well-connected with the priory of St Helen's, Bishopsgate. He was rector of St John Walbrook, a church in the gift of the priory. In his will of 1394 (Guildhall MS 171/1 f. 33v.) he left 10 marks to the house, 1 mark to Dame Margaret Morey and £2 to Dame Margery Buntyng, nuns of St Helen's, and asked to be buried in the convent cemetery. He also seems to have acted as feoffee for the priory (CPR 1391–6, 156Google Scholar). I am most grateful to Dr Catherine Paxton for this information.

78 See, for example, Keene, Derek, Survey of Medieval Winchester, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1985), i, 190.Google Scholar

79 F143–4.

80 Thrupp, , Merchant Class, 284.Google Scholar

81 F1270.

82 For Favelor see below.

83 F989.

84 F822, 826, 843.

85 F862, 864, 868, 876–7, 880.

86 F980.

87 Some members of the Marsh family seem to have moved to London, like Nicholas, son of John Marsh, who was probably a mercer. (See, for example, his appearance on a witness list with other prominent mercers in 1340, CCR 1339–41, 469.)Google Scholar

88 F763–4.

89 F899–904, 920, 927, 974–5.

90 Depham was alderman for Candlewick ward, 1338–59, M.P. for London in 1334, Common Clerk in 1335 and Recorder from 1338 until his death in 1359 (Beaven, , i. 385).Google Scholar

91 F1016–7.

92 F1068–72.

93 F1166, 1249–50.

94 Both Causton and Depham acquired land from John le Venour. Depham also received a substantial amount of land from John Marsh in compact parcels over a period of years, leased land from John de Chilterne and bought up plots of land from the widow of Thomas de Anesty.

95 F1204, 1271.

96 Holmes, G.A., The Estates of the Higher Nobility in Fourteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1957), 6970.Google Scholar

97 CCR 1330–3, 120, 169.Google Scholar

98 CPR 1338–40, 324Google Scholar; CCR 1333–41, 465.Google Scholar

99 Ibid., 1337–9, 562; 1339–41, 188.

100 CPR 1334–8, 531.Google Scholar

101 CPR 1348–50, 560.Google Scholar

102 CPR 1343–5, 374.Google Scholar

103 F1271.

104 F1279–80; PRO Inquisition Ad Quod Dampnum C143/367/17.

105 CCR 1360–4, 411.Google Scholar

106 Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford, Essex and Northampton. The proximity of Edmonton manor to Bohun's own manor at Enfield probably encouraged his friendship with Fraunceys, who may have already been known to the family through Peter Favelor, steward to Humphrey's father, William, earl of Northampton. See O'Connor, , ‘Fraunceys and Pyel: perceptions of status’.Google Scholar

107 CPR 1367–70, 312–3.Google Scholar

108 CCR 1369–74, 292.Google Scholar

109 Ibid., 309.

110 CIPM xiii, nos. 167 (p. 142), 105Google Scholar. The fee in Middlesex was also close to Simon Fraunceys's manors of Northolt and Down.

111 A possible explanation of the acquisition of this manor is given in 3 below.

112 VCH Bedford ii, ed. Page, W. (1908), 231–2.Google Scholar

113 VCH Middlesex v, ed. Pugh, R.B. (1976), 155Google Scholar. Simon Fraunceys also held lands in South Bedfordshire some seven or eight miles distant at Holwell, whose manor he held of John Malory (VCH Bedford ii, 286Google Scholar). In Essex, St Helen's held the manors of Mark, in Leyton, and Walthamstow, while Simon Fraunceys had the adjoining manor of Low Hall, and Adam Fraunceys the nearby manor of Ruckholts. It is uncertain whether the convent had held the manor since the thirteenth century, or was endowed with the land later by the Fraunceys family (VCH Essex vi, ed. Pugh, R.B. (1973), 260).Google Scholar