PAGMAN (PACKMAN, PAGENHAM, PAKENHAM), Robert (by 1497-1552), of Tooting Bec, Surr. and Kirkstall, Yorks.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. by 1497, s. of Hugh Pagman by Agnes, da. and h. of William Clement. m. Elizabeth, da. and h. of Maurice Berkeley of Wymondham, Leics., 5s.2

Offices Held

Clerk comptroller, the counting house by 1518, clerk of the accts. by 1543; clerk of the green cloth by 1547; surveyor within the dresser at the coronation of Anne Boleyn 1533; commr. to audit accts. of cofferer of Prince Edward Dec. 1541; member, household of Queen Catherine Parr 1543-8.3

Biography

Robert Pagman probably owed his advancement to the connexions which his family had built up through advantageous marriages: his cousins in varying degrees included John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, and (Sir) Henry Sidney and among his uncles was Sir William Fitzwilliam I, Earl of Southampton. By 1518 he was an officer in the royal counting house and by 1547 clerk of the green cloth, an office which he kept until his death and in virtue of which he attended Henry VIII’s funeral. The ‘jewel set with stones which was my Lady Lovell’s’ that he was to leave to his wife perhaps signalized his friendship with another officer of the Household, Gregory Lovell, although it hints at the patronage of Sir Thomas Lovell I. Other associations of Pagman’s are reflected in the names of those with whom he was party to a deed of 1534 relating to Cockington, Devon: these included Leonard Chamberlain and Hugh Paulet.4

In 1544 Pagman was listed among those who were to go to France with the army and was ordered to supply two horsemen, four archers and five others. In November 1544 he was a master victualler to the army, disbursing £4,820 with Richard Esquyers, and reporting to the 3rd Duke of Norfolk that the wagons were imperfect. In the following year he was commanded by the Privy Council to go to Calais to view the victuals there and ‘to hasten the furniture of Guisnes from thence’. He was to have expenses of 10s. a day, but when he returned from his mission after eight days to report a shortage only of vinegar and ale the Privy Council ordered him to be paid £10.5

Pagman’s wife was heir to her brother John Berkeley, and in 1540 the couple received livery of her lands. In the same year Pagman secured from the court of augmentations a 21-year lease of the site of Kirkstall, abbey, Yorkshire. When in August 1548 lands were granted to John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, Pagman and his wife were included in that part of the patent relating to the manor of Tooting Bec. The inquisition taken after Pagman’s death shows that Warwick had conveyed to them his interest in the manor within three days of its acquisition, perhaps in exchange for lands in Leicestershire which he received from Pagman at some unknown date.6

Pagman’s return to the Parliament of 1547 for Great Bedwyn he presumably owed to the favour of either the Protector Somerset or his brother Admiral Seymour. With Somerset himself Pagman had no known connexion but as a member of the household of Queen Catherine Parr, who in 1544 and 1545 had given him New Year’s gifts of black satin, he is likely to have enjoyed both her support and that of her new husband. The election to this Parliament of a Berkeley as knight of the shire for Somerset and another as Member for Hereford may also indicate that, in this respect as in others, Pagman was fortunate in his marriage.7

The will which Pagman made on 2 Sept. 1552, and the inquisition post mortem taken on 1 Feb. following, reveal that he had three grown up sons, Edmund, John and Anthony, and another, Robert, aged eight at the time of the inquisition, and that when he died on 5 Sept. 1552 his wife Elizabeth was ‘great with boy’. He made provision for the first three, and for the unborn child, who were left all the lands which he had leased and purchased, but the younger Robert, unmentioned in the will, was to be named in the inquisition as his father’s nearest heir. The nature of this arrangement is made more clear in the grant of general livery to the younger Robert on 20 June 1566, where it is stated that a third of his father’s lands had descended to him. It is possible that the precedence as his father’s heir which the eight year-old Robert had been given over his elder brothers was a device to provide for his wardship which was granted to his second cousin Sir Henry Sidney on 24 May 1554.8

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: R. L. Davids

Notes

  • 1. Hatfield 207.
  • 2. Date of birth estimated from first reference. Vis. Suss. (Harl. Soc. liii), 44-45; Vis. Leics. (Harl. Soc. ii), 2-3; Lincs. Peds. (Harl. Soc. lii), 748; PCC 32 Powell; Wards 7/6/109.
  • 3. LP Hen. VIII, vi, xvi, xix; LC 2/2, f. 28; Add. 21116, f. 57; information from Susan Roberts.
  • 4. Vis. Surr. (Harl. Soc. xliii), 6; LP Hen. VIII, ii. xviii; Soc. Antiq. (1790), 218; LC 2/4/1; CPR, 1553, p. 5; Machyn’s Diary (Cam. Soc. xlii), 24-25; NRA 7028, nos. 1-4.
  • 5. LP Hen. VIII, xix, xx.
  • 6. VCH Surr. iv. 94-95; LP Hen. VIII, xvi; CPR, 1547-8, pp. 105-7; 1548-9, pp. 29-31; 1553-4, p. 474.
  • 7. E101/423/12, ff. 8, 12.
  • 8. PCC 32 Powell; Wards 7/6/109; 9/62/6, f. 159v; CPR, 1553-4, p. 81 giving incorrect date of death (1 Sept.).