Sir John Culpepper, Kt., of Bayhall, Hardreshull & Bedgebury

John Culpeper, Lord of Bedgebury

• BIRTH 1424 Goudhurst, Tunbridge Wells Borough, Kent, England
• DEATH 22 Dec 1480 (aged 55–56) Goudhurst, Tunbridge Wells Borough, Kent, England
• BURIAL Goudhurst Cemetery Goudhurst, Tunbridge Wells Borough, Kent, England
• Father: Walter Colepeper b: ABT 1398 in Bayhall, Pembury, Kent, England
• Mother: Agnes Roper b: ABT 1402 in St Dunstan, Canterbury, England

Biography

Sheriff of Bayhall, Hardreshull, Bedgebury 1466-7; Commissioner of Array 1470 - From unidentified pedigree. His two brothers, Richard and Nicholas, under somewhat romantic circumstances, married Margaret and Elizabeth Wakehurs, (granddaughters and co-heiresses of Richard Wakehurst, sen. of Wakehurst, in Ardingly). These two girls were confided by Elizabeth, their grandmother, to the care of John Colepeper and Agnes, his wife.

Sir John Colepeper, of Bedgebury, by Agnes, his wife, had two sons:

• (i) Alexander, progenitor of the senior line of Bedgbury, in Goudhurst, co. Kent, and
• (ii) Walter, ancestor of the Wigsell branch of the family.

Sir John Culpeper, Knight (d. 1480), Lord of Bedgebury, Kent by his wife Agnes, sister of John Gainsford. [Magna Charta Sureties]

Notes

Although Richard is entered in the Visitation in Kent, in 1619, as Walter Colepeper's eldest son, this was not the case, as Sir John, as the eldest son, inherited Hardreshull, co. Warwick, Bayhall, co. Kent, and Wigsell, co. Sussex. It appears also from the same Visitation that this Sir John married Agnes, daughter of John Bedgebury, but no mention whatever is there made of the undoubted fact that some time before 1460 he was the husband of Agnes Gainsford, which is clearly proved by the Proceedings in Chancery relating to the abduction of the two Wakehurst heiresses by Sir John's brothers, Richard and Nicholas, where it is expressly stated that a sister of John and William Gainsford was wedded to John Culpepyr, and later on in the same suit mention is made of John Culpeper and Agnes, his wife. The marriage is also alluded to in De Banco Roll, Trin., 5 Edward IV., m. 118d, and it explains the mention of Ottewell and George Gainsford (grandsons of the above John Gainsford, who married Anne Wakehurst, aunt of the co-heiresses, and sons of Sir John Gainsford, by Anne, daughter of Ottewell Worsley), as cousins in the will Walter Colepeper, of Calais, 1514--1516.

The question arises, therefore, as to whether the record of Sir John's marriage with Agnes Bedgebury is not due to a mistake on the part of the heralds. In their pedigree they certainly omit these two important facts, viz., that before 1460 Sir John was the husband of Agnes Gainsford, and also that his father Walter's wife, of the same Christian name, was the widow of John Bedgebury. It seems therefore not improbable that these two marriages have been confused; such, indeed, must have been the case unless Sir John was twice married, and of this the Visitation affords no evidence whatever. Sir John Colepeper died 22nd December, 1480, and was buried at Goudherst.

His two brothers, Richard and Nicholas, under somewhat romantic circumstances, married Margaret and Elizabeth Wakehurst, (granddaughters and co-heiresses of Richard Wakehurst, sen., of Wakehurst, in Ardingly. These two girls were confided by Elizabeth, their grandmother, Thomas Echyngham, Thomas Hoo, John Gaynesford and William Gaynesford, their guardians, to the care of John Colepeper and Agnes, his wife, the former of whom "promysed on the faithe and trouthe of his bodye and as he was a gentylman," that they should not be wronged. In spite of this promise, however, he, with Richard and Nicholas his brethren, "with force and armes riotously agense the Kynges peas arayed in the manr of warre at Goutherst toke and caried" them away to Bobbing, Alexander Clifford's place in Kent, and afterwards transported them to London to a place of John Gibson, "the seide Margarete and Elizabeth at the tyme of their takyng away makyng grete and pittious lamentacion and wepyng."

This high-handed proceeding on the part of the two fortune hunting brothers was productive of much litigation, as Elizabeth Wakehurst, grandmother of the two heiresses, refused to resign the title deeds of their estates, and it was some time before a peaceable settlement was obtained. Richard died without issue, but Nicholas became the ancestor of the Colepepers of Wakehurst, and as the brass to him and his wife Elizabeth in Ardingly Church shows ten sons and eight daughters, we may conclude that they lived long and happily together. [The famous herbalist, Dr. Nicholas Culpeper, was the great-grandson of this Nicholas].

Sir John Colepeper, of Bedgebury, by Agnes, his wife, had two sons:--

• (i.) Alexander, progenitor of the senior line of Bedgebury, in Goudhurst, co. Kent, whose descendants, as belonging more to Kent than to Sussex, we shall here omit.
• (ii.) Walter, ancestor of the Wigsell branch of the family.

[The Sussex Colepepers, from Sussex Archeological Collections, Col. FWT Attree & Rev JHL Booker]

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Father: Walter Colepeper b: ABT 1398 in Bayhall, Pembury, Kent, England

Mother: Agnes Roper b: ABT 1402 in St Dunstan, Canterbury, England

Marriage 1 Agnes Anne Gaynesford b: ABT 1442 in Crowhurst, Surrey, England. Married: in Crowhurst, Surrey, England

Children

  1. Has Children Alexander Culpeper b: ABT 1460 in Bedgebury, Goudhurst, Kent, England

2. Has No Children Joyce Culpeper b: ABT 1464
3. Has No Children Isabel Culpeper b: ABT 1461
4. Has No Children Walter Culpeper Lord of Wigsell b: ABT 1458 in Bedgbury, Kent, England
Sources:

  1. Repository:

Title: Magna Charta Sureties 1215
Author: Frederick Lewis Weis, additions by Walter Lee Sheppard Jr, 5th Ed
Publication: 1999
Page: 16d-12
2. Title: The Sussex Colepepers, From Sussex Archaeological Collections; Col F.W.T. Attree & the Rev J.H.L. Booker {1904}
Page: XLVII:53-54
3. Title: The Royal Descents of 500 Immigrants to the American Colonies or the United States
Author: Gary Boyd Roberts
Publication: 1993
Page: 432
4. Title: Pedigrees of the Families of the County of Kent; William Berry {1830}
Page: 78
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=aet-t&id=...

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It appears from an indenture dated 4 January, 21 Henry VIII [1529/30] which has survived (Harl. Charter, 76 H 12) that Sir John left a will (otherwise lost) disposing of his estates among two sons, Alexander(9) and Walter(9), named respectively for their maternal uncle, Alexander Clifford of Bobbing (thus introducing among the Culpepers a name which was to appear in Virginia), and for their grandfather, the Squire of Agincourt. These estates included the manors acquired by the Bedgebury marriage (Bedgebury and Haselden) in Kent, an inherited Culpeper manor (Wigsell) in Sussex, and certain lands in Essex which Sir John had purchased; and the will in question divided them among the two sons, the intention of the testator being that, despite the Kentish custom of gavelkind, the elder should take all the lands in Kent, and the younger those in Sussex and Essex.

Wigsell, which thus devolved upon Walter(9) and was to be the seat of three generations of his descendants, was at the time of the death of Walter's father a manor 'holden by Knights service of the Lord of the Castle of Hastings,' consisting of some 600 acres of plough and pasture, with as much more of wood and heath, in the Sussex parish of Salehurst; lying close under the southwestern border of Kent, not far from Bayhall and Bedgebury. It was purchased in 1348 (Sussex Feet of Fines, 22 Edward III) from Simon de Etchingham by Sir John Culpeper(5); whose heir, Sir Thomas(6), records in his will of 1429 (Harl. Ch., 80 H 27) that it was settled upon him on the occasion of his first marriage. Wigsell was not yet a place of residence, however: its original value lay in the supply of charcoal which its forest cover provided for the iron smelting industry in which the Culpepers, like so many of their neighbours in the Weald, were profitably engaged in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (Victoria County History, Sussex, ii, 241). At the death of Sir John(8), Wigsell must already have been somewhat denuded and so of less value than it had been; but the title was sufficient, nevertheless, to enable its inheritor to pursue the thrifty practice of his ancestors and negotiate a marriage which established Culpeper of Wigsell for a century and a half to come.

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Source of preceding: Fairfax Harrison, "The Proprietors of the Northern Neck"

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Sir John's two brothers, Richard and Nicholas, under somewhat romantic circumstances, married Margaret and Elizabeth Wakehurst, (granddaughters and co-heiresses of Richard Wakehurst, sen., of Wakehurst, in Ardingly). These two girls were confided by Elizabeth, their grandmother, to the care of John Colepeper and Agnes, his wife. For further deatils, see narrative for Nicholas.

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Alexander and Walter, the two sons of Sir John and Agnes, were respectively, the progenitors of the senior line of Bedgbury, in Goudhurst, co. Kent, and the Wigsell branch of the family in nearby Salehurst, co. Sussex.1

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