FILONGLEY, Henry, of Old Filongley, Warws.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1386-1421, ed. J.S. Roskell, L. Clark, C. Rawcliffe., 1993
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Jan. 1390

Family and Education

m. 1s. Henry†, 3da.

Offices Held

Serjeant of the King’s scullery by 22 Nov. 1399-aft. 1415.

Commr. of inquiry, Berks., Kent, Mdx., Wilts. Feb. 1404 (removal of tables and other furniture from royal palaces and manors).

Biography

Henry was probably a member of the Warwickshire family which had been settled at Old Filongley since before 1202; he was called ‘of Warwickshire’ when he acted as a surety in Chancery in 1393. He was also related to the Glympton or Clinton family of Hertfordshire; in 1396 he acted as a feoffee for Henry Glympton in lands at Little Hadham and Stortford, of which as Glympton’s kinsman he was himself heir. The inheritance was made subject to his founding a chantry, and he appears to have relinquished his interest within ten years.1

It seems likely that Filongley entered the service of Henry of Bolingbroke some time before Henry’s accession to the throne; perhaps he held a minor office at Kenilworth castle, only a few miles from Warwick. Certainly, in November 1399, after Henry had become King, he granted him an annuity of £10 charged on the royal revenues from Warwickshire, as his fee as serjeant of the royal scullery. It was in connexion with his office that in 1400 Filongley received a writ of aid to buy victuals for the Household, and in 1404 he was appointed to make an investigation into the disappearance of tables, trestles and benches from the Tower of London and elsewhere. In January 1413 he was pardoned for the loss of silver dishes and other utensils, as well as for arrears in his accounts. Two years earlier he had been granted a corrody at Llanthony priory near Gloucester. His annuity was confirmed by Henry V, and he was probably still holding his post in the Household in May 1415 when, along with other ‘King’s esquires’, he contracted to serve on Henry’s first French campaign. However, in March 1422 when he was again required to go to France in a military capacity, he enlisted another squire as a substitute. Henry VI’s council renewed Filongley’s annuity that December, and he was still alive nine years later, when he claimed that the then sheriff of Warwickshire (Nicholas Ruggeley†) owed him £5 towards the same.2

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

Variants: Felongley, Fylongleye.

  • 1. VCH Warws. iv. 71; CCR, 1392-6, p. 128; VCH Herts. iv. 54; CAD, v. A11508.
  • 2. CPR, 1399-1401, pp. 120, 356; 1401-5, p. 426; 1408-13, p. 459; 1413-16, p. 69; 1422-9, p. 21; E404/31/304; CCR, 1399-1402, p. 19; 1419-22, p. 255; J.H. Wylie, Hen. IV, iv. 208-9; C1/12/73; C115/K2/6682 f. 34. In his later years he is difficult to distinguish from his son, the Henry Filongley who sat for Weymouth in 1449 (Feb.) and for Warws. in 1453. The later become (by 1428) a retainer of Joan, Lady Beauchamp of Abergavenny, and subsequently entered the service firstly of her son-in-law, James, earl of Ormond, and then of her gransdon James, earl of Wiltshire. A lawyer, from 1440 he shared with his brother-in-law, Robert Darcy* of Maldon, Essex, the office of keeper of writs in the common pleas, and from 1453 to 1459 he was clerk of the Great Wardrobe. In 1436 his lands in Warws. had been valued as £53 p.a. It is possible that he died with his master Wiltshire at Towton. (M.C. Carpenter. 'Pol. Soc. Warws.' (Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1976), app. pp. 13, 32, 107, 116; EHR, xlix. 639.)