Sir Richard Fermor, MP

Richard Fermor

Richard Fermor (1480x84–1551), was an English wool merchant.[1] His father was also a wool merchant in Witney, Oxfordshire, called Thomas Fermor.

He was a merchant of the staple at Calais.

He married Anne, daughter of Sir William Browne, Lord Mayor of London. They had five sons, inclusing John and Thomas, and five daughters.[1]

In 1509, he was one of the jurors who convicted Richard Empson and he benefited financially from Empson's fall by buying the manor of Easton Neston. From 1520 to 1523, Fermor was the warden of the Grocers' Company. In 1540, Fermor was found guilty of misprision of treason and on 9 May 1540 he was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Marshalsea Prison and attainted. In 1541, he was pardoned.[1]

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Fermor

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• Sir Richard Fermor1,2,3
• M, #90357, b. circa 1495, d. 17 November 1552
• Father Thomas Fermor4 b. c 1445
• Mother Emmotta Harvey4 b. c 1453
• Sir Richard Fermor was born circa 1495 at of Easton Neston, Northamptonshire, England.1 He married Anne Browne, daughter of Sir William Browne, circa 1520.4,2,3 Sir Richard Fermor died on 17 November 1552 at of Easton Neston, Northamptonshire, England.4
• Family Anne Browne b. c 1498
• Children
  • Joan Fermor1,2,3 b. c 1521
  • Sir John Fermor+5 b. c 1523, d. 12 Dec 1571
• Citations
• 1.[S5] Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, p. 556.
• 2.[S16] Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry, 2nd Edition, Vol. III, p. 276-277.
• 3.[S4] Douglas Richardson, Royal Ancestry, Vol. IV, p. 279-280.
• 4.[S61] Unknown author, Family Group Sheets, Family History Archives, SLC.
• 5.[S11572] The Lineage and Ancestry of H.R.H. Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, by Gerald Paget, Vol. II, p. 168.
• From: http://our-royal-titled-noble-and-commoner-ancestors.com/p3008.htm#...
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• Richard Fermor1
• M, #398066, d. 17 November 1552
• Last Edited=20 Sep 2009
• Richard Fermor married Anne Browne, daughter of Sir William Browne.1 He died on 17 November 1552.1
• He lived at Easton Neston, Northamptonshire, England.1
• Child of Richard Fermor and Anne Browne
  • 1.Sir John Fermor+1 d. 12 Dec 1571
• Citations
• 1.[S22] Sir Bernard Burke, C.B. LL.D., A Genealogical History of the Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited, and Extinct Peerages of the British Empire, new edition (1883; reprint, Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1978), page 607. Hereinafter cited as Burkes Extinct Peerage.
• From: http://www.thepeerage.com/p39807.htm#i398066
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• Richard Fermor1
• M, #235837
• Last Edited=26 Jun 2007
• Richard Fermor lived at Easton Neston, Northamptonshire, England.1
• Child of Richard Fermor
  • 1.Mary Fermor1 d. 27 Sep 1573
• Citations
• 1.[S21] L. G. Pine, The New Extinct Peerage 1884-1971: Containing Extinct, Abeyant, Dormant and Suspended Peerages With Genealogies and Arms (London, U.K.: Heraldry Today, 1972), page 167. Hereinafter cited as The New Extinct Peerage.
• From: http://www.thepeerage.com/p23584.htm#i235837
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• Richard Fermor1
• M, #336187
• Last Edited=17 Feb 2009
• Child of Richard Fermor
  • 1.Ursula Fermor+2
• Citations
• 1.[S37] BP2003 volume 3, page 3532. See link for full details for this source. Hereinafter cited as. [S37]
• 2.[S37] BP2003. [S37]
• From: http://www.thepeerage.com/p33619.htm#i336187
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• Richard FERMOR
• Born: 1480
• Died: 1551
• Father: Thomas (Ricards) FERMOR
• Mother: Emmote HARVEY
• Married: Anne BROWNE BEF 1515
• Children:
  • 1. Joan FERMOR (m1. Robert Wilford - m.2 John Mordaunt, 2° B. Mordaunt - m.3 Thomas Kempe)
  • 2. Ursula FERMOR (b. BEF 1555) (m. Richard Fiennes, 6° B. Saye and Sele)
  • 3. John FERMOR of Easton Neston (See his Biography) (m. Maud Vaux)
  • 4. Jerome FERMOR
  • 5. Thomas FERMOR
  • 6. Mary FERMOR (m. Richard Knightley)
  • 7. Anne FERMOR (m. William Lucy)
  • 8. Dau. FERMOR
  • 9. Son FERMOR
  • 10. Son FERMOR
• Son of Thomas Fermor alias Ricards of Witney, Oxon. by his second wife Emmote, dau. and h. of Simkin Hervey of Herefs.; brother of William. Richard Fermor's father, a wool merchant who had made two prosperous marriages, died in 1485 leaving 200 marks and property in Oxfordshire to each of his three younger sons. Sixteen years later, under the will of his mother, Fermor received £100 and more property in Oxfordshire. He followed his father and grandfather into the wool trade and by 1505 had become a merchant of the staple. In 1518 he was admitted to the Inner Temple, being pardoned all vacations and offices.
• Fermor shared the contract for victualling the King's army during the Tournai campaign of 1513 and he also profited from the sale of large quantities of armour and munitions. His service was rewarded by frequent licences to export wool direct to Italy and while he was at Florence in 1524 he gave financial assistance to Wolsey's agents in Rome: at his fall in 1529 the Cardinal owed Fermor £125. On two occasions when Fermor was threatened with trading losses, in 1515 because of piracy and in 1538 through imperial obstruction, the King ordered his Ambassadors to solicit compensation.
• By 1509, when he was named one of the jurors for the trial of Sir Richard Empson, Fermor was living at Isham. The reason for his settlement in Northamptonshire has not been discovered, but while also acquiring property elsewhere he had by 1530 purchased from Empson's descendants a substantial part of their estate in Northamptonshire, including Easton Neston. A dispute over these lands was settled in Fermor's favour by Cromwell and Chancellor Audley. A measure of his wealth is his assessment for the subsidy of 1536 on £1,000.
• In Jul 1532 Fermor stood surety for a loan made to Sir Edward Seymour by the King and in the autumn of that and the following year he was nominated but not pricked sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire he had acquired several properties in Bedfordshire and in 1534 for Northamptonshire. At about the same time he was also the 3rd Earl of Derby's chief steward in Northamptonshire. In 1537 he was appointed a juror for the trials of those involved in the northern rebelion during which he had again helped in victualling the royal forces. Three years later Fermor was himself attainted in the King's bench for breaches of the Act extinguishing the authority of the Bishop of Rome (28 Hen. VIII, c.10). His offence had been to shield his Catholic chaplain, whom he visited in prison after the priest had been condemned under praemunire, but the French Ambassador Marillac reported that he was a marked man for having spoken too boldly against the King's rights and prerogatives in the Commons; two other Members, Marillac added, had acted more wisely in leaving the country after settling their affairs. In his brief allusion to the case the chronicler Edward Hall, who himself sat in this Parliament, makes no mention of Fermor's Membership, and since there is no other evidence of it his return for London is a matter of inference. By the Subsidy Act (32 Hen. VIII, c.50) of its second session the appointment of the collectors of fifteenths and tenths was vested in the Members, but the letter of 4 Aug 1540 asking for nominations was sent to only three of the four London Members; two of these, Sir Richard Gresham and Sir Roger Cholmley, had been chosen by the court of aldermen and the third, Paul Withypoll, by the court of common council, as the missing Member must also have been. Fermor, a liveryman and leading merchant, but not an alderman, would have been a likely choice and his sentence a ready explanation of his omission from the procedure; he had himself recently been a subsidy collector in the wards of Farringdon Within and Queenhithe. His prosecution was to be followed by an attack on his son-in-law, the London alderman Robert Wilford (an elder brother of Nicholas Wilford), who in Jan 1542 was accused before his fellow-aldermen of being a ‘maintainer’ of the Pope.
• Sentenced on 9 May 1540 to life imprisonment and forfeiture, Fermor was first committed to the Marshalsea of the King's bench but in Aug 1540 he was released on bail, his brother William Fermor, who had sat with him in the Commons as one of the knights for Oxfordshire, acting as a surety, and he retired to the Northamptonshire rectory of Wappenham. He had been specifically excluded from the general pardon (32 Hen. VIII, c.49) enacted while he was in prison, but in Jun 1541 he received a pardon and in 1542 his poverty was relieved by grants of the manors of Marston Butlers and Pebworth, Warwickshire, and of other property in Essex and Somerset. Further rehabilitation had to await the death of Henry VIII: in Jul 1547 some of Fermor's goods were restored to him and in Mar 1550 he regained lands to the yearly value of £386, a dramatic move which placed him among the dozen or so men who benefited most from the redistribution of crown lands during the reign. The story that the King's jester Will Somers won a pardon from Edward VI for his former master Fermor may if there is any truth in it at all refer to these grants.
• Fermor was thus a wealthy man again when he died at Easton Neston on 17 Nov. 1551 and he had been able to make proper provision for his wife and family in his will of the previous 1 Jul. He had also made good marriages for his children, one of his sons-in-law being Sir John Mordaunt. He was buried in the church at Easton Neston where the inscription on his tomb wrongly records the date of his death as 17 Nov 1552.
• Richard Fermor, had been the Earl of Derby's chief steward in Northamptonshire and his son Thomas was later to be a friend of Sir Thomas Stanley: his eldest brother Sir John Fermor was a knight for Northamptonshire in Oct 1553 and another brother and a nephew were to sit for Brackley in the reign of Elizabeth.
• From: http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/Bios/RichardFermor.htm
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• FERMOR, Richard (1480/84-1551), of Isham and Easton Neston, Northants. and London.
• Family and Education
• b. 1480/84, yr. s. of Thomas Fermor alias Ricards of Witney, Oxon. by 2nd w. Emmote, da. and h. of Simkin Hervey of Herefs.; bro. of William. m. by 1515, Anne, da. of William Browne of London, 5s.inc. Jerome†, Sir John and Thomas 5da.2
• Offices Held
  • Warden, Grocers’ Co. 1520-3.3
• Biography
• Richard Fermor’s father, a wool merchant who had made two prosperous marriages, died in 1485 leaving 200 marks and property in Oxfordshire to each of his three younger sons. Sixteen years later, under the will of his mother, Fermor received £100 and more property in Oxfordshire. He followed his father and grandfather into the wool trade and by 1505 had become a merchant of the staple. In 1518 he was admitted to the Inner Temple, being pardoned all vacations and offices.4
• Fermor shared the contract for victualling the King’s army during the Tournai campaign of 1513 and he also profited from the sale of large quantities of armour and munitions. His service was rewarded by frequent licences to export wool direct to Italy and while he was at Florence in 1524 he gave financial assistance to Wolsey’s agents in Rome: at his fall in 1529 the cardinal owed Fermor £125. On two occasions when Fermor was threatened with trading losses, in 1515 because of piracy and in 1538 through imperial obstruction, the King ordered his ambassadors to solicit compensation.5
• By 1509, when he was named one of the jurors for the trial of Sir Richard Empson, Fermor was living at Isham. The reason for his settlement in Northamptonshire has not been discovered, but while also acquiring property elsewhere he had by 1530 purchased from Empson’s descendants a substantial part of their estate in Northamptonshire, including Easton Neston. A dispute over these lands was settled in Fermor’s favour by Cromwell and Chancellor Audley. A measure of his wealth is his assessment for the subsidy of 1536 on £1,000.6
• In July 1532 Fermor stood surety for a loan made to Sir Edward Seymour by the King and in the autumn of that and the following year he was nominated but not pricked sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire—he had acquired several properties in Bedfordshire—and in 1534 for Northamptonshire. At about the same time he was also the 3rd Earl of Derby’s chief steward in Northamptonshire. In 1537 he was appointed a juror for the trials of those involved in the northern rebellion during which he had again helped in victualling the royal forces.7
• Three years later Fermor was himself attainted in the King’s bench for breaches of the Act extinguishing the authority of the bishop of Rome (28 Hen. VIII, c.10). His offence had been to shield his Catholic chaplain, whom he visited in prison after the priest had been condemned under praemunire, but the French ambassador Marillac reported that he was a marked man for having spoken too boldly against the King’s rights and prerogatives in the Commons; two other Members, Marillac added, had acted more wisely in leaving the country after settling their affairs. In his brief allusion to the case the chronicler Edward Hall, who himself sat in this Parliament, makes no mention of Fermor’s Membership, and since there is no other evidence of it his return for London is a matter of inference. By the Subsidy Act (32 Hen. VIII, c.50) of its second session the appointment of the collectors of fifteenths and tenths was vested in the Members, but the letter of 4 Aug. 1540 asking for nominations was sent to only three of the four London Members; two of these, Sir Richard Gresham and Sir Roger Cholmley, had been chosen by the court of aldermen and the third, Paul Withypoll, by the court of common council, as the missing Member must also have been. Fermor, a liveryman and leading merchant, but not an alderman, would have been a likely choice and his sentence a ready explanation of his omission from the procedure; he had himself recently been a subsidy collector in the wards of Farringdon Within and Queenhithe. His prosecution was to be followed by an attack on his son-in-law, the London alderman Robert Wilford (an elder brother of Nicholas Wilford), who in January 1542 was accused before his fellow-aldermen of being a ‘maintainer’ of the pope.8
• Sentenced on 9 May 1540 to life imprisonment and forfeiture, Fermor was first committed to the Marshalsea of the King’s bench but in August 1540 he was released on bail, his brother William Fermor, who had sat with him in the Commons as one of the knights for Oxfordshire, acting as a surety, and he retired to the Northamptonshire rectory of Wappenham. He had been specifically excluded from the general pardon (32 Hen. VIII, c.49) enacted while he was in prison, but in June 1541 he received a pardon and in 1542 his poverty was relieved by grants of the manors of Marston Butlers and Pebworth, Warwickshire, and of other property in Essex and Somerset. Further rehabilitation had to await the death of Henry VIII: in July 1547 some of Fermor’s goods were restored to him and in March 1550 he regained lands to the yearly value of £386, a dramatic move which placed him among the dozen or so men who benefited most from the redistribution of crown lands during the reign. The story that the King’s jester Will Somers won a pardon from Edward VI for his former master Fermor may— if there is any truth in it at all— refer to these grants.9
• Fermor was thus a wealthy man again when he died at Easton Neston on 17 Nov. 1551 and he had been able to make proper provision for his wife and family in his will of the previous 1 July. He had also made good marriages for his children, one of his sons-in-law being Sir John Mordaunt. He was buried in the church at Easton Neston where the inscription on his tomb wrongly records the date of his death as 17 Nov. 1552.10
• From: http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1509-1558/member/fe...
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• FERMOR, Jerome (1528-1602), of Wood Burcote and Wappenham, Northants.
• b. 1528, 3rd s. of Richard Fermor† of Easton Neston by Anne, da. of William Brown, ld. mayor of London; bro. of Sir John† and Thomas†. m. 1560, Jane (d. 1606), s.p.
• From: http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1558-1603/member/fe...
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• FERMOR, Sir John (by 1516-71), of Easton Neston, Northants.
• b. by 1516, 1st s. of Richard Fermor, and bro. of Jerome† and Thomas. educ. I. Temple. m. by Nov. 1544, Maud, da. of Sir Nicholas Vaux, 1st Lord Vaux of Harrowden, 3s. 3da. suc. fa. 17 Nov. 1551. Kntd. 2 Oct. 1553.1
• From: http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1509-1558/member/fe...
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• FERMOR, Thomas (by 1523-80), of Horde Park, Bridgnorth, Salop and Somerton, Oxon.
• b. by 1523, 4th s. of Richard Fermor, and bro. of Jerome† and Sir John. educ. ?I. Temple. m. (1) by 1552, Frances (d.1570), da. and h. of Thomas Horde of Horde Park or Bridgnorth Park, Bridgnorth, wid. of Edward Raleigh of Farthinghoe, Northants.; (2) Bridget, da. and event. coh. of Henry Bradshaw of Halton, Bucks., wid. of Henry White of South Warnborough, Hants and London, at least 1s. 2da.1
• From: http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1509-1558/member/fe...
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• KNIGHTLEY, Sir Richard (1533-1615), of Fawsley, Northants.
• b. 1533, 1st s. of Sir Valentine Knightley of Fawsley by Anne, da. of Sir Edward Ferrers† of Baddesley Clinton, Warws. m. (1) Mary (d.1573) da. of Richard Fermor† of Easton Neston, 3s. inc. Valentine 3da.; (2) Elizabeth (d.1602), da. of Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, 7s. 2da. Kntd. 1565; suc. fa. 1566.2
• From: http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1558-1603/member/kn...
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Richard Fermour, his brother, having been bred a merchant of the staple of Calais, raised a noble fortune, and settled himself at Eston-Neston juxta Towcester, in Northamptonshire, which, together with the hundred and manor of Towcester, he had purchased, as also many fair lands and royalties in that county; at which seat he lived many years with great splendor and hospitality. But being a very zealous Romanist, and not complying with the frequent alterations in religion, introduced by Henry VIII. he changed his hospitality into charity for those of his opinion ; and fell under that King's heavy displeasure, for conveying relief to one Nicholas Thayne, formerly his Confessor, and at that time a close prisoner in the gaol of Buckingham, although nothing was ever legally proved against him, except that he had sent him 8 d. and a couple of shirts. But his .great wealth, and Thomas Cromwell Earl of Essex, the King's Vicar-General, were powerful incentives to his ruin; and being found guilty of a praemunire, his whole estate, both real and personal, was seized on for the King's use; and executed with such strictness and severity, that nothing was left him or his family.

Oned of our historians, living in that age, writes, that he was rich and wealthy man, and of a good estimation in the city, but for relieving certain traitorous persons, who denied the King's supremacy, he was committed to the Marshalsea, in July 1540, and after, in Westminster-Hall, was arraigned, and attainted in a praemunire, and lost all his estate.

The good old man, when he was stript of all he had, retired to a village called Wapenham, in sight of his former habitations, and lived in the parsonage house there; the advowson of which had been in his gift, and the parson thereof presented by him. There he passed several years with a most consummate piety, and entire resignation, till 1550.

In the time of his prosperity he had in his family, according to the custom of the age, a servant, Will Somers, who, by his witty or frothy discourses, past for his Jester ; and afterwards served the king himself in the same office and capacity. This man remembering with some gratitude his first master, and having admission to the King at all times and places, especially when sick, melancholy, and towards his end, let fall some lucky words, which awakened the King's conscience, so as at least to endeavour a restitution; and accordingly he gave immediate orders about it; but being prevented by death, it was never effectually performed till the 4th year of Edward VI. by letters patent, bearing that date: but so miserably lopt and torn, by the several grants and sales made by the Crown during the aforesaid interval, that what he did obtain was not one third of what he had before possessed. Those lands restored to him were, the lordships and manors of Towcestour, and Eston-Neston, the advowsons of the rectories of Cold-Higham, and of the vicarage of Eston-Neston, the hundred of Wilmersley, with very large privileges thereto belonging, and several houses in Cotfon-End, in the county of Northampton; the lordship and manor of Offley St. Legers, ia the county of Hereford; the lordship and manor of Granno-, in the county of Worcester; the lordship and manors of Lutonhoe, and the hermitage lands in Luton, and Runtisford Farm, in Runtisford, in the county of Bedford, Yet King Edward, to make some compensation, granted by the same charter, to Richard Fermor, and his heirs, several other lordships, manors, lands, and tenements, viz. the lordships and manors of Corsecomh, Hol- stocke, Nether-Stoke, and the advowson of the rectory of Corse- combe, in the county of Dorset; the manor of Mudfort, in the county of Somerset; the house and seat of the then late dissolved priory of Svvadersly, and divers woods and lands thereto belonging ; the manor of Hide in Rode, and several lands in Rode in Ashen, in the county of Northampton; the manor of Newport Pound, and the advowson of the rectory and church of Rawrith, in the county of Essex, &c. Yet all this was but a small compensation for the great loss he had sustained.

c Stow'» Ann. edit. 1614. p. 580. * Hall, \a-h\s Life of K. Henry VIII. fol. 142.

He therefore, being repossessed of part of his estate, and of some addition, as aforesaid, returned to his mansion-house at Eston-Neston, where he departed this life on November 17th, 1552. It is further remarkable, that having some foreknowledge of his own death, he invited on that very day many of his friends and neighbours, and taking leave of them, retired to his devotions, and was found dead in that posture, and afterwards buried on the north side of the chancel of the parish church of Eston-Neston, under a grey marble tomb. Anne his wife survived him, and after her decease was buried at Eston-Neston ; she was daughter to Sir William Brown, Lord Mayor of London; by whom he had five sons, and five daughters; viz.

I. Sir John, ancestor to the present Earl of Pomfret.

3. William. 3. George, who both died infants.

4. Thomas Fermor, who inherited the estate of Wiliaro, hi* uncle, at Summertcn, twas one of the members' for ChippingFERMOR EARL OF POMFRET. 201

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• Links
• http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1509-1558/member/fe...
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Fermor
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mordaunt,_2nd_Baron_Mordaunt
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