HENRY, FIRST LORD NORREYS OF RYCOTE Reproduced by permission of Mrs. A. F. Bertie (!&obr~ ~tact anb tb t eurtnt% VICISSITUDES OF A HOUSE 1539-1615 BY NORREYS JEPHSON O'CONOR c ••• the said House and the said Servauntes beinge there then in Godes peace and the Queenes.' From an Elizabethan Trial (St. Ch. S, C 70/11) CAMBRIDGE HARV ARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1934 PRJNTED IN GREAT BRITAIN PROLOGUE THIS book had its inception at a dinner party. After working for some time at printed sources deding with his Elizabethan forbears, the author was invited to meet Professor Leslie Hotson, of Haverford College, Pennsylvania, who, when asked if in his researches he had discovered any information about the Norreys family, replied, 'Of course you know about the slander suit?' A confession of ignorance brought the answer that, in I 597, Sir John Norreys had sued the Earl of Lincoln for slander. The words complained of seemed, upon examination, to refer as much to Lord Norreys as to his son, Sir John, and indicated, not a single instance of anger, but the _culmination of a feud of long standing. The Complete Peerage showed that the widow of Wi11iam, the eldest son of Lord Norreys, married as her second husband Henry, Earl of Lincoln, and that there were, in the British Museum, two letters ofthe Earl, written from the prison ofthe Fleet, complaining that he had been put there by the maJice of Lord Norreys and ofthe Countess of Bedford, the Earl's mother-in-law. Here, obviously, was the beginning of a story. Unfortunately, the letters gave little further knowledge, save that the Earl had arrived at his own house somewhere abroad, to find it in the possession of others, and that he was the victim of a plot in which the ringleader was named Crofts. Investigation of the Index to the Proceedings of the Star Chamber, which are preserved at the Public Record Office, disclosed, in the first volume consulted, a suit brought by James Crofts against Henry, Earl of Lincoln. This document contained the story of the Earl's raid upon the manor house at Weston, which, amplified from numerous other documentary and printed sources, forms the present book. To make clear the central incident of the attack on the house, given in Part IV, it has seemed necessary to tell something of the earlier history of the manor and its owners, and, in explanation of the Earl's behaviour at Weston, to add an outline of the later events in his life; thus the interlude produced by his Lincolnshire vi PROLOGUE neighbours is pertinent. No attempt has been made to give more than a brief biographical sketch of the Earl. The picture of Elizabethan England in these pages is typical of what happened to many ordinary people at a time when remnants of medieval violence still lingered. The events are especially inter­ esting as having taken place during the period of Shakespeare's greatest activity; they may serve to illuminate the social background of his plays. Every effort has been made to attain accuracy of fact and to avoid conclusions unsupported by evidence. The subject matter has been rearranged to bring out latent narrative possibilities, but the aim has been to allow the participants, wherever possible, to tell the story; therefore the actual phrasing of documents is used, difficult words and allusions being explained in square brackets. Punctuation, capita1i~tion, and spelling have occasionally been modernized with a view to clarity. Good fortune has led to the discovery of much new material and to the correction of a number of errors. The author prays with Cowper: Defend me ••• • • . from the toi,l Of dropping buckets into endless wells And gruwing old in drawing nothing up. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS THE author thanks: Professor Leslie Hotson, not only for informa­ tion concerning the slander suit, but for helpful advice as to the resources of the Public Record Office, London; the Officials and Staff of the Public Record Office, especially those in the Legal Room, and Miss N. O'Farrell for constant assistance in the inter­ pretation of manuscripts; the Librarian and Staff of the Lon­ don Library, especially Mr. G. E. Manwaring for his friendly interest and his counsel as to the value of books and documents; the Officials and Staff of the Departments of Printed Books and of Manuscripts in the British Museum; the Officials and Staff of the Bodleian Library; Mrs. A. F. Bertie, Miss Irene Bertie, Miss Mary Crosbie, Miss Elizabeth D'Oyley, Miss H. G. Thacker, the Earl of Abingdon, the Earl of Ancaster, Lord Greville, Sir Philip Gibbs, Professor Carleton Brown, Professor F. N. Robinson, H. C. Bickmore, Esquire, A. H. Doubleday, Esquire, R. M. Glen­ cross, Esquire, the Vicar of Tbame, the Vicar of St. Mary's Church, Watford, and particularly E. A. Greening Lamborn, Esquire. The map end-papers have been reproduced from parts of the maps which appear in Camden's Britannia. CONTENTS PART I. DEALS WITH THE BEGINNINGS OF WESTON MANOR, AND WITH ITS OWNER, 1539-59, LORD WILLIAMS OF THAME, AND WITH THE SECOND AND THE THIRD HUSBANDS OF LADY WILLIAMS, SIR WILLIAM DRURY AND JAMES CROFTS, ESQUIRE • • · • • page I PART II. DEALS WITH THE SUCCEEDING OWNER OF WESTON, LORD NORREYS, AND WITH ms SON, WILLIAM, WHO DIED BEFORE ms FATHER, AND WITH WILLIAM'S WIFE, ELIZABETII MORISON • • page 25 PART III. DEALS WITH HENRY, EARL OF LINCOLN, WHO MARRIED THE WIDOW OF WILLIAM NORREYS AND LAID CLAIM TO WESTON • page 43 PART IV. DEALS WITH THE EARL'S ATTEMPT TO SEIZE WESTON page 51 PART V. DEALS WITH THE RESULTS OF THE EARL'S ACTION, ms SUB­ SEQUENT EXPLOITS, AND ms FURTHER INJUSTICES TOWARDS ms NEIGH- BOURS AND ms RELATIVES • • • • • . page So PART VI. DEALS WITH AN INTERLUDE EXPRESSING THE ATTITUDE OF THE EARL'S LINCOLNSHIRE NEIGHBOURS TOWARDS HIM: THE DYMOKE CASE AND WHAT CAME OF IT • • • • • page 108 PART VII. RETURNS TO LORD NORREYS, HIS ENTERTAINMENT OF QUEEN ELIZABETH, WITH LEITERS TO AND FROM THE QUEEN, THE FURTHER DISPOSITION OF WESTON, AND A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE HOUSE TO-DAY • • • • • • • page 127 INDEX . page 147 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Henry, First Lord Norreys of Rycote • • • frontispiece (Reproduced by permission of Mrs. A. F. Bertie) Tomb of Lord Williams of Thame and His First Wife in Thame Church . • • • • • /acing p. 17 (Reproduced by permission of the Vicar of Thame) The Tithe Barn, Weston-on-the-Green • ,, 55 (Reproduced by permission of the Lord Greoille) The Manor House, Weston-on-the-Green, from the rear . ,, (Reproduced by permission of the Lord Greoille) Part of a 16th-century map of Oxfordshire front end-paper (Reproduced from Camde,ts Britannia) Part of a 16th-century map of Lincolnshire back end-paper (Reproduced from Camden's Britannia) PART ONE DEALS WITH THE BEGINNINGS OF WESTON MANOR, AND WITH ITS OWNER, 153~59, LORD WILLIAMS OF THAME, AND WITH THE SECOND AND THE THIRD HUSBANDS OF LADY WILLIAMS, SIR WILLIAM DRURY, AND JAMES CROFTS, ESQUIRE As a stone dropped into a pool spreads rings of water to a far distance, so events frequently have consequences remote in time. Thus the founding of the Augustinian Monastery of the Blessed Virgin, at Oseney, in Oxfordshire, during the reign of King Henry I, was to affect the history of several famiHes prominent in the days of Queen Elizabeth, to result in a series of lawsuits dealing with riotous and unlawful assembly, perjury, and slander centring about the mansion house at Weston-on-the-Green, Oxfordshire. At present almost part of the railway at Oxford, but once 'emong the isles that Isis ryver ther makith', 1 Oseney was established about 1129 by Robert d'Oylly-legend says at the request of his wife, Edith, who 'usid to walke out of Oxford castelle with her gentle­ woman to solace, and that oftentymes where yn a certen place in a tree, as often as she cam, a certen Pyes usid to gither to it, and there to chattre, and as it were to speke on to her. Edithe much mervelyng at this mattier, and was sumtyme sore ferid as by a wonder, where­ upon she sent for Radulphe a chanon of S. Frideswides, a man of vertuous life and her confessor, askyng hym counsell; to whom he answerid, after that he had sene the faschion of the Pyes chatter­ ing only at her cnmmyng; that she shulde bilde sum churche or monasterie in that place. Then she entreated her husband to help build a priorie, and so he did, making Radulp the first prior of it.'2 The monastery of Oseney became one of the great religious houses, and its church one of the architectural glories, of medieval England. Gradually the abbey acquired other possessions in Oxfordshire, as at Weston-on-the-Green, and in the neighbouring counties of Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, in Bedfordshire, in Northamptonshire, in Huntingdonshire, in Lincolnshire, as well as 'elsewhere in England, Wales, and the marches thereof'. 3 By B 2 BEGINNINGS OF WESTON MANOR November 1480 the foundation had become so renowned that the Register ofRotherham, Archbishop of York, records an Indulgence of forty days to all who visit the Lady Chapel 'either in pilgrimage or devotion, or who should bestow any of their goods upon it'. In the tower of the church, which stood until 1644, was a 'large and melodious ring of bells, thought to be the best in England'. There were originaUy only three bells, but Abbot. Leech added others. In accordance with custom, these were christened Hauteclare, Doucement, Austyn, Marie, Gabriel, John. 'Towards the sup­ pression' these bells were recast, rechristened: Mary and Jesus, Meribus and Lucas, Conger and Godeston, and two others were added to the peal, New Bell and Thomas.