Family and Education

m. by 1400, Alice, 1s.

Offices Held

J.p. Hants 28 Nov. 1399-1435.

Bp. Wykeham’s bailiff of Twyford and Merdon, Hants 19 Apr. 1401-aft. Sept. 1404.1

Commr. of inquiry, Southampton Feb. 1402, Mar. 1406 (rents due to God’s House), July 1407 (expenditure of money collected for fortifications), Feb. 1409 (property of St. Denis priory), Oct. 1410 (obstructions at the water-gate), Hants Jan. 1414 (lollards), Aug. 1414 (murder), July 1416, Mar. 1417 (counterfeiters), Apr. 1417 (piracy), May 1425 (q. salmon poaching); to hold assizes, Dorset, Wilts. Feb. 1405.

Biography

If Richard was a younger son of Thomas Wallop of Over Wallop, who died in 1361, then he must have been born before 1362 and have lived to be very old. Another possibility is that he was a younger son of Thomas’s son and heir, John, who was born in about 1353. In that case, Richard could have been born about 1370 and have come of age by 1391, when he is first recorded. There is no doubt, however, that he was a younger son, and that his landed holdings were small. In 1391 he obtained the reversion of premises in Nether Wallop (held for life by Julia, widow of Edward Spircock), of which he came into possession before 1428.2

Wallop made a career for himself as a lawyer. He was practising at the Hampshire assizes by 1398 (acting, for example, for Sir John Lisle’s* wife), and his ability is attested by the exceptional length of his service on the bench (beginning immediately after the accession of Henry IV), his place on the quorum from 1406 until his death, and his frequent appointment to other local commissions of a judicial nature. Because of his profession he was sometimes placed in positions of trust; thus, for instance, John Uvedale*, a fellow j.p., named him as a feoffee of his estates in Hampshire and Surrey. The accounts of the city of Winchester for 1421-2 (the year of Wallop’s only known return to Parliament) mention payments made for a breakfast given to him, Richard Holt† (also a j.p.) and others unnamed, and the sum of £1 paid to him as a fee, presumably for legal advice. Wallop attended the Hampshire elections held at Winchester in 1423 and 1429.3

An interesting aspect of Wallop’s career is his long-standing connexion with William of Wykeham and the bishop’s collegiate foundation at Winchester. This connexion began before October 1400 when the bishop granted him and his wife a licence to have a private oratory; six months later Wallop was appointed as bailiff of two of Wykeham’s manors; and in the codicil to his will, made on 10 Jan. 1404, Wykeham left him £5. In 1413 Wallop was involved in transactions regarding property left by the bishop to his great-nephew, (Sir) Thomas Wykeham*, and in the following year he witnessed a grant to Winchester college by other of the founder’s kinsmen, in order to provide for the annual distribution of alms in the bishop’s memory. Subsequently, he acted as a feoffee of the estates of John Fromond, steward and benefactor of the college, most notably in settlements connected with the building of his chantry. From 1429, however, he was being sued by Fromond’s executors with regard to his title to one of the testator’s manors; and the matter was still unresolved two years later when he and his son, another Richard, entered into a bond with the plaintiffs for £100. The younger Richard had himself studied at the college (from 1405 to 1414), and, having gone on to New college, Oxford, had subsequently become clerk to the Hampshire j.p.s (of whom, of course, his father was one), an office he discharged from 1417 to 1424.4

Richard Wallop, senior, probably died shortly before November 1435, when his name was excluded from the list of members of the Hampshire bench.

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

• 1. Reg. Wykeham (Hants Rec. Soc. 1896-9), ii. 524; Reg. Common Seal (Hants Rec. Ser. ii), nos. 72-73.
• 2. CIPM, xi. 456; Reg. Wykeham, i. 54; Peds. Plea Rolls, ed. Wrottesley, 269; VCH Hants, iv. 528; Feudal Aids, ii. 324.
• 3. JUST 1/1502 m. 220; CPR, 1408-13, p. 412; 1422-9, pp. 198-9; CCR, 1413-19, p. 352; HMC 6th Rep. 602; C219/13/2, 14/1.
• 4. Reg. Wykeham, ii. 520; R. Lowth, William of Wykeham, p. xlvii; Biog. Reg. Univ. Oxf. ed. Emden, iii. 1968; Winchester Coll. muns. 9601-2, 9699, 10386, 16720-1; CCR, 1422-9, p. 45; C1/8/17; E. Stephens, Clerks of Counties, 93.