William Bonville, 1st Baron Bonville (12 or 31 August 1392 – 18 February 1461), was an English nobleman and an important, powerful landowner in south-west England during the Late Middle Ages. Bonville's father died before Bonville reached adulthood. As a result, he grew up in the household of his grandfather and namesake, who was a prominent member of the Devon gentry. Both Bonville's father and grandfather had been successful in politics and land acquisition, and when Bonville came of age, he gained control of a large estate. He augmented this further by a series of lawsuits against his stepfather, Richard Stucley. Bonville undertook royal service, which then meant fighting in France in the later years of the Hundred Years' War. In 1415, he joined the English invasion of France in the retinue of Thomas, Duke of Clarence, Henry V's brother, and fought in the Agincourt campaign. Throughout his life, Bonville was despatched on further operations in France, but increasingly events in the south-west of England took up more of his time and energy, as he became involved in a feud with his powerful neighbour Thomas Courtenay, Earl of Devon.
In 1437, King Henry VI granted Bonville the profitable office of steward of the Duchy of Cornwall. This had traditionally been a hereditary office of the earls of Devon, and the Earl was enraged at its loss. The dispute soon descended into violence, and Bonville and Courtenay ravaged each other's properties. The situation was exacerbated in 1442 when the Crown appointed Courtenay to effectively the same stewardship it had appointed Bonville, which inflamed the situation even more. The feud between them continued intermittently for the next decade. Generally, Henry and his government failed to intervene between the two parties; when it did, its efforts were ineffectual. On one occasion Bonville was persuaded to undertake further service in France—primarily to get Bonville out of the region—but the mission was poorly funded, a military failure, and when Bonville returned the feud reignited. In 1453, King Henry became ill and entered a catatonic state for eighteen months, heightening the political factionalism that had riven his reign.
Bonville generally seems to have remained loyal to the king, although his guiding motivation was to support whoever would aid him in his struggle against Courtenay. Their feud was part of a broader breakdown in law and order which eventually evolved into the Wars of the Roses in 1455. Bonville seems to have managed to avoid implication in the variable swings in political fortune which followed until 1460. At this point, he threw in his lot with the rebellious Richard, Duke of York. His new allegiance brought him little profit; his son was killed alongside York at the Battle of Wakefield in December 1460, while Bonville himself took part in the Second Battle of St Albans two months later on the losing side; with the new Earl of Devon watching, he was beheaded on 18 February 1461.
Background and early life The Bonvilles were one of the major gentry families of late-fourteenth-century Devon, often working in close co-operation with their neighbours. The most important of these were the Courtenay earls of Devon. Bonville's grandfather had been a retainer of the 11th Earl, Edward. The historian Christine Carpenter comments, on the family's social position, that they were of sufficiently "landed and official status to be regarded as what might be termed 'super-knights'"; she echoed the medievalist K. B. McFarlane, who had previously described the family as "a powerful and respected element in Devon...there was no need for them to stand in dread of the great, for they were not small themselves".
William Bonville was born on either 12 or 31 August 1392 or 1393 in Shute, Devon, to John Bonville (d. 1396) and Elizabeth Fitzroger (c. 1370–c. 1414). William Bonville's grandfather was his namesake Sir William Bonville, who had been member of Parliament for Somerset and Devon on multiple occasions and has been described by a historian as one of "the most prominent west-country gentry in the late fourteenth century". On hearing of the birth of his grandson, a contemporary reports, Sir William "raised his hands to heaven and praised God". Along with the Abbot of Newenham, he stood godparent to the young William. The younger William was heir to both his father and grandfather; the latter—who had married twice—had substantially expanded the family patrimony. He has been described by the scholar Ralph Griffiths as a "capable, energetic and well-connected man".
Bonville's father died when his son was four, and young William probably grew up in his grandfather's household. Grandfather Bonville died in 1408, while Bonville was still legally a minor. As was customary, King Henry IV took both Bonville's wardship and marriage into his own hands. This was valuable royal patronage, which the King granted firstly to Sir John Tiptoft, and then to Edward, Duke of York. Bonville had a younger brother, Thomas, who, by the time William came of age, had already married a cousin of Robert, Baron Poynings. This connection to the Poynings family, the historian J. S. Roskell has suggested, was instrumental in Bonville's own marriage.
Marriages and children In 1414 he married Margaret Grey, daughter of Reginald, Baron Grey of Ruthin. Lord Grey promised to pay 200 marks to Bonville on the wedding day, and Bonville likewise contracted to settle estates to the value of 100 pounds on himself and his wife, jointly. Grey also paid another 200 marks in instalments over the following four years. With Margaret he had four known children: William Bonville, who around 1443 married Elizabeth Harington, only daughter of William Harington, 5th Baron Harington. Margaret Bonville, who married Sir William Courtenay, of Powderham. Philippa Bonville,who married Sir William Grenville, of Stowe, whose mother was from a branch of the Courtenay family. Elizabeth Bonville,who by November 1446 married an important Midlands landowner, Sir William Tailboys. These marriages further enhanced Bonville's aristocratic and political connections.
After Margaret died, sometime between April 1426 and October 1427, he married Elizabeth Courtenay, widow of John Harington, 4th Baron Harington and daughter of his grandfather's associate Edward Courtenay, 3rd Earl of Devon. The couple required papal dispensation to marry because Elizabeth was already a godmother to one of Bonville's daughters and in the eyes of the church this placed her within a prohibited degree of consanguinity. Since Elizabeth was already well connected, being the sister-in-law of William Harington, 5th Baron Harington, and aunt of Thomas Courtenay, 5th Earl of Devon, this marriage greatly increased Bonville's links to the peerage.
With Elizabeth he had no known children, but with Isabel Kirkby he had an illegitimate son, John Bonville (died 1491), who married Alice Dennis. His father granted him a financial endowment in 1453, and at death bequeathed him "substantial" property.
Estates and wealth Bonville's father and grandfather had both had successful careers. As such, when Bonville came of age in 1414 he inherited an income of approximately £900 per annum; for context, the historian Martin Cherry says this was "a figure not far short of that enjoyed by the fifteenth-century earls of Devon themselves". His lands—comprising 18 manors—were situated all over England, although concentrated in Devon, particularly around Shute in the south-east of the county, and Somerset. These lands encompassed his grandfather's patrimony, with manors in Devon, Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire. The Fitzroger estates were mainly in Leicestershire, the East Midlands, and the south-east of England in Kent and Sussex.
Owing to the deaths of their husbands in 1396 and 1408, respectively, Bonville's mother and grandmother each held a third of his inheritance in dower. His mother had remarried in 1397, to Richard Stucley, an important Essex landowner. In 1410 she granted Stucley a life-interest in her inheritance, with remainder to their children. On her death in April 1414 Stucley thereby gained Devon lands worth around £105 per annum as well as Wiltshire manors of the Bonville estate, including the valuable manor of Chewton. Stucley based his claim on the tradition of courtesy. On reaching his legal majority, Bonville sued his stepfather for his maternal inheritance. This struggle took over six years, but he succeeded in establishing his rights to the estates by 1422. Bonville's grandmother survived until 1426; by then Bonville had also inherited substantial estates from other relatives, including a cousin and an aunt. These brought him the manors of Yelverton and Mudford Sock, and as a result, says the History of Parliament, "without doubt Bonville ranked among the very wealthiest landowners of the West Country".
Political career and royal service
Bonville undertook royal service in France in 1415, and joined Henry V's Agincourt campaign, travelling in the retinue of the King's brother, Thomas, Duke of Clarence. While in Normandy, sometime before his seventeenth birthday, Bonville was knighted.
In 1421, Bonville acted as one of the Duke of Clarence's executors following the latter's death at the Battle of Baugé. Roskell suggests that Bonville must have been greatly trusted by Clarence—at the time of his death, heir presumptive to the English throne—because the Duke had borrowed money from Bonville. Bonville had returned to England before May, when he attended parliament at Westminster. Henry V died in France in August 1422 leaving his six-month-old son Henry as his heir, and his surviving brothers, John, Duke of Bedford and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester as the baby King's regents. The war in France continued in spite of Henry VI's youth, and Bonville returned in 1423 in Gloucester's army. Bonville fought in the campaign to regain Le Crotoy, bringing with him a retinue of ten men-at-arms and 30 archers.
On his return to England, much of Bonville's time was occupied with the administration of his estates. Extensive as they were, there was occasional friction—some of it violent—with his neighbours. In 1427 he was engaged in a bitter feud with Sir Thomas Brooke, whom Bonville—described as a "thrusting and able man"—accused of unilaterally enclosing parkland in Axmouth and obstructing roads that Bonville's tenants needed to use. The matter went to the arbitration of Bonville's godfather, the Abbot of Newenham, who found against Brooke, who had to pay all Bonville's legal costs and reverse his enclosure. By now, Bonville was also a royal official, having been appointed Sheriff of Devon in 1423, although he received few other commissions in the county before 1430. From then on he was regularly occupied with his duties as a royal official in the region: he was a justice of the peace for Devon from July 1431, for Somerset from March 1435, and for Cornwall from November 1438. Other commissions included local inquiries into necromancy, piracy, extortion, desertion (from the Earl of Warwick's fleet in 1438), felonies, smuggling and concealment of treasure.
In 1437 King Henry VI's minority ended, and he began his personal rule. Bonville was appointed to the King's Council, being described as a "King's knight". He was zealous in combating piracy off the Cornish coast, to such an extent that in 1454 the Duke of Burgundy made an official complaint to the English government about the treatment meted out to Burgundian shipping in the area. In 1440 Bonville, with Sir Philip Courtenay—a close friend of Bonville's—commanded a small fleet of thirty galleys to patrol the Channel. They saw little action; the occasional encounters with the enemy did not necessarily go in their favour, as on one occasion rival Portuguese merchants captured two ships from Bonville's fleet.
Feud with the Earl of Devon
1437–1440