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In the second of his 3-part blog series, Elmbridge resident Chris Dawson explores the next generation of the Rede family, influential local landowners who shaped Walton and Weybridge in the early Tudor period.
Using a range of sources including the Domesday Book, the will of Bartholomew Rede from Goldsmiths Company Library & Archive and local Surrey History and West Surrey Family History Society publications, this blog brings to life legal disputes over land and property and the strong personalities who fought for their interests.
Through his second marriage to Isabel Blount, William Rede found himself in close proximity to the court of King Henry VIII, and following his death, his son John because a ward of Thomas Cromwell.
Read on to discover the twists and turns of this fascinating Tudor family.
Site of Goldsmiths’ Hall, near Cheapside, on Agas Map of 1560.
In 1511, Elizabeth Rede took a last look at the frontage of Crosby Hall in the line of buildings on Bishopsgate, and put her City life behind her. The provisions of her late husband Sir Bartholomew Rede’s will six years earlier had left her his numerous properties for the term of her natural life, but now a few years later she wanted to make Oatlands, in the Surrey countryside, her main residence. She would live there alone for the next twenty years, receiving visits from her sister Philippa who was married to a notable jeweller, and from her late husband’s brother John and sister-in-law Anne, and from her nephew William with his wife and children who lived close by.
William Rede had followed his esteemed uncle into the goldsmith’s trade, benefitting from his patronage. On Bartholomew’s death, he even took on his duties of Master of the Mint alongside Robert Fenrother who had held the title some years previously, but despite this position and his jewellery business, the following decade was not a favourable one. Although he was Bartholomew’s heir, he was not able to reside at Oatlands until the death of his aunt, who remained in good health, so he and his family lived across the river at the impressive, but less splendid, manor house of Shepperton. Then, on the accession of Henry VIII to the throne of England in 1509, he and Fenrother were unceremoniously replaced at the Mint by Sir William Blount, 4th Baron Mountjoy, who had been Henry’s boyhood tutor — although a silver lining was that among his relatives, the Blounts of Kinlet, was William’s future second wife, Isabel.
Next, in 1511, as Elizabeth Rede was moving permanently to Oatlands, there was trouble at the Goldsmiths’ Company when he found himself standing, unrepentant, before its leadership at Goldsmiths’ Hall as charges were read out. It had begun when, for some unspecified reason, he had refused a request to be one of the bearers of the coffin of William Marshall, a recently deceased Warden, to St. Dunstan’s Church for burial. Initially, he was fined 40 shillings but refused to pay, and was then brought before the Assembly at which his ‘contumacious conduct’ — wilfully disobeying their authority — put him in danger of imprisonment. Instead, in full view of all of the Wardens, he was dismissed from the Goldsmiths’ Company. The following year, his reputation suffered further when a commission of twelve senior courtiers and lawyers was established to enquire into ‘extortions and deceptions’ during his time as Master of the Mint under Henry VII.
Weybridge (as Webrige and Webruge) in the Domesday Book 1086.
The roots of the legal issues that the Rede family would face, stretched back almost five hundred years to the Domesday book where Weybridge, then home to just seven households, was mentioned in two separate entries, and where three manors were identified. The first entry, written as ‘Weybrige’, listed the Abbey of Chertsey as both ‘Tenant-in-chief’ and ‘Lord’ (according to the feudal structure) of eight acres of meadows and woodland occupied by three households. A further eight acres, where the Abbey was still Tenant-in-chief, were being ploughed by ‘an Englishman’ who was the Lord of the Manor, with two households. Over the centuries, these tiny communities would become the manors of Weybridge and Oatlands (or Ottelands, Otlands or Otlond), and at some point the Tenant-in-chief would become the crown, possibly at the same time as Byfleet (which was also originally held by the Abbey of Chertsey) in the early fourteenth century.
The second entry, ‘Weybruge’ in the Elmbridge Hundred, was the same size as the other two combined, encompassing 16 acres where two households lived — a villager and a smallholder. This manor had belonged to two sisters before the Norman conquest, but was now under the Lordship of Herfid of Throwley in Kent, although the ultimate Tenant-in-chief was Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. Odo was William the Conqueror’s half-brother, sharing the same mother, and appeared in the Bayeux tapestry (which he may have commissioned) in full chain armour at the Battle of Hastings. In later medieval documents, this manor was called Hundulsham, or occasionally Hundeswaldesham.
A few weeks after the death of Sir Bartholomew Rede in 1505, an Inquisition Post-Mortem was put in place to establish the extent of his landholdings and identify his heirs and their status — whether there was in fact an heir, and whether he or she was a widow, or a minor — and thereby ensure that any fees or services due to the king were continued without a break. The Inquisition was organised by the local Sheriff who selected a jury of freeholders who could be relied upon, with their local knowledge, to spot any discrepancies or forgeries in the documents that the Rede family would present to prove ownership of property and land; or in the case where no deeds were to be found, to confirm possession on the basis of their collective community memory. The resulting document listed Bartholomew’s acquisitions in Surrey, amongst them 124 acres called ‘Otlands’ (previously owned by John Coke, a lawyer) and another of almost 500 acres, called ‘Hundeswalde’ alias ‘Wodehammes’ (previously owned by Robert Turberville and Thomas Elynbrigge). These two sets of prior owners were known to each other as there appeared to have been some confusion over title at the end of the fifteenth century, when a court case had been brought by Turberville and Elynbrigge against John Coke, regarding “Brooklands, Hundeswaldesham and Byfleet.” Nevertheless, with the official duties completed, Elizabeth Rede and her nephew William took legal possession of their estates.
There was, however, an objection. The Wodeham family had owned a house and land referred to as Hundulsham on their land deeds since at least the 1250s. In 1484, John Wodeham of Weybridge died and his estate was granted to his daughter and heiress, Margery and her husband Edmund Waker, who lived in Berkshire. Learning that the Redes had taken possession of what they considered their manor house and lands, they contested the findings of the Inquisition Post-Mortem, and arguments continued back and forth for several years until around 1515 when Margery Waker brought a case against Elizabeth and William Rede in the Court of Chancery, where civil disputes over property were handled. The court ordered the discovery of documents to support the case and subsequently, maybe providing an insight into the resolve of Elizabeth Rede, her nephew William was forced to bring a separate case against his aunt for “Detention of Deeds of the Manor of Hundulsham, required for the defence of title against the bill in this court of Margery Waker.”
The Redes disputed the very existence of a separate manor of Hundulsham, arguing that there had always been two houses on their estate in Oatlands, both of which they owned. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the Rede family won. After Margery Waker’s death, her son Thomas tried to appeal the ruling in 1522, but lacking funds he was forced to file a complaint in the Court of Requests, which was known as ‘the court of poor men’s causes.’ He protested at the injustice of trying to fight against a family ‘of great substance, with many friends in the county’ but the original decision was upheld.
This diagram shows the line of inheritance of the manor of Oatlands
No longer a goldsmith but referring to himself as a ‘gentleman’, William Rede married Isabel Blount as his second wife in 1528, and she became stepmother to his children. With Elizabeth Rede still living in Oatlands, William and his new wife continued to live in Shepperton.
The claim to fame, or infamy, of Isabel’s family was centred around her eldest sister, Bessie Blount, who had followed what would become a well-worn path from maid-of-honour to the Queen to mistress of King Henry VIII. Her distinction was that in 1519, she gave birth to a boy, who was named Henry Fitzroy in recognition of his royal father, and whom Henry openly acknowledged as his son. As the lack of a legitimate prince continued, Fitzroy was raised to the peerage in 1525 aged six, as the Duke of Richmond and Somerset. The attraction of Isabel Blount for William Rede might therefore have been partly this proximity to royalty and intrigue, as she was in effect an aunt of the king’s only son. How she benefitted from an older husband, who was a former goldsmith with a question mark over his integrity, is less clear although the prospect of becoming Lady of the Manor of Oatlands might have had an appeal.
In 1532, Elizabeth Rede died, and her nephew was finally able to move his family into the manor house of Oatlands. It was to be his misfortune that he was only able to enjoy his new surroundings for a short period because he died in 1534, leaving Isabel as potentially the second widow in succession in long-term residence. A new Inquisition Post-Mortem was established, but the situation was very different this time since ownership was passed to William’s eldest son John, who was still a minor. The rules stipulated that in this case, the child was to be placed into royal wardship, whereby the person to whom the wardship was granted had full control over the property and lands, and the marriage prospects of the ward. This created a market for wardships, which could be bought and sold, being particularly sought after by wealthy fathers looking to improve the fortunes of their daughters.
Unusually, John Rede was made a ward of Thomas Cromwell, recently appointed Henry VIII’s principal secretary and chief minister, and left for London immediately, even though there was no formal paperwork filed until 1536 — possibly an oversight that given future circumstances needed to be quickly rectified. This left Isabel in a precarious position, reliant on Cromwell, who had his hands full dealing with the king’s ‘Great Matter’, for the decision as to whether she could remain at Oatlands.
Isabel’s actions reveal her as a feisty woman, who had no fear of dealing with powerful men. A month after William Rede’s death, a request was made on her behalf to Cromwell for John to return to Oatlands for the ‘month’s mind’ requiem service, and masses, because she felt it would be beneficial as there would be ‘a great assembly of his kin.’ The next year, she wrote directly to him “to know whether I shall continue your tenant in Brokeland and Otlond during the nonage of my son-in-law. If you put me out it will be a great undoing.” Not receiving an answer, she travelled up to London with her counsel to tackle him face to face. Thomas Stydolf, Cromwell’s local agent in Surrey who kept him informed of goings on, wrote that ‘she takes me for a great enemy, and has complained about me to honourable men.’ At the same time, he was fielding enquiries as to whether Oatlands, or other properties owned by the Redes in Weybridge, might become available, and attempts were made to surreptitiously find out what Isabel knew about the terms of the various land grants; but she was too clever to be taken in, and told him to take up matters with Cromwell as he had custody of the child.
Isabel Blount’s effigy from her parents’ tomb in Kinlet Church.
Events reached a turning point in late 1537 when a scheme came to light to create a vast hunting ground adjacent to Hampton Court, to be called Hampton Court Chase, which would necessitate the crown buying up, and fencing off, all of the land between the rivers Mole and Wey. The manor house of Oatlands happened to be positioned at its western edge, and was already of a sufficient calibre to be transformed into a royal hunting lodge, or even a standing palace, as it would require little additional expenditure to convert to the king’s tastes. In December 1537, Henry VIII spent a fortnight at Oatlands making plans, and at the start of the New Year a deed was drawn up whereby, in exchange for the Manor of Oatlands and the lands in Weybridge and Walton, John Rede — whose great uncle Bartholomew had established the great estate — was granted the former lands of the Augustinian Priory of Tandridge, 25 miles to the south east, which had just been disbanded.
Sir Bartholomew Rede had built the prestigious manor house, and his family had lived there contentedly for almost fifty years but with its loss were left with only memories. If they had in fact used any underhand means to unjustly increase their landholdings after his death at the expense of Margery Waker, then being purposefully deprived of Oatlands by Thomas Cromwell, acting for Henry VIII, could be seen as a sort of comeuppance.
This is based on being deputy at the Royal Mint in his early twenties.
Deputy to Bartholomew Rede at the Royal Mint
Joint Master of the Mint
Dismissed from the Goldsmiths’ Company
Accused of Extortion and Deception when Joint Master of the Mint
Court case with Margery Waker; files case against his aunt Elizabeth Rede
Son and heir John Rede was born to his first wife, whose surname was Stede. John was still a minor (under 21) in 1538, so must have been born after 1518.
Bessie Blount, older sister of Isabel Blount, was mistress of Henry VIII and gave birth to his only recognised illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy (1519-1536).
Court case with Thomas Waker re. Hundulsham
Married Isabel Blount, as his second wife
Moved from Manor of Shepperton to Oatlands on death of Elizabeth Rede in December 1532
Died at Oatlands
