RESTWOLD, Anthony (by 1517-55/60), of The Vache, Bucks.

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

Constituency

Dates

Nov. 1554

Family and Education

b. by 1517, 3rd but 1st surv. s. of Edward Restwold of The Vache by Agnes, da. of John Cheyne of Drayton Beauchamp. m. by 1541, Alice Wilkes, s.p. suc. fa. 1547.1

Offices Held

Servant of Lord Mautravers in 1541.2

Biography

The Restwold family was of Berkshire origin and had long been prominent in that and neighbouring counties. It also had links with the north of England; three of its five earlier Members had sat for Cumberland and Westmorland, and in 1542 Anthony Restwold’s father sold the castle of Highhead in Cumberland shortly after buying the Buckinghamshire manor of Monks Risborough. He also held the manors of The Vache and Hedsor in Buckinghamshire and lands in Berkshire and Wiltshire. By a will which was proved on 12 Nov. 1547 two thirds of all this property went to his widow, who in 1549 married Thomas Waterton I, and one third to Anthony.3

Anthony Restwold’s wife had attended Catherine Howard before her marriage and was involved in her disgrace and downfall. She was first questioned about her former mistress on 5 Nov. 1541 and on 22 Dec. pleaded guilty to misprision of treason as having concealed the facts of the Queen’s behaviour. The conviction and sentence, forfeiture of goods and life imprisonment, were confirmed by Parliament (33 Hen. VIII, c.21) in the following February, but within a few weeks she received a pardon. Her husband appears only once during this crisis. On 27 Nov. the Privy Council at Westminster asked the deputy governor of Calais, Lord Mautravers, to excuse the absence of his servant Anthony Restwold, detained because of his wife’s examination. In 1544 Mautravers succeeded as 12th Earl of Arundel and Restwold may have stayed in his service, since nothing is known of his career until he was returned to Parliament.4

Arundel was not Restwold’s only link with the adherents of Mary. The executors of Edward Restwold’s will were his wife and her brother-in-law Sir Edmund Peckham, and the witnesses included Doctor Feckenham, the future abbot of Westminster, then domestic chaplain to Bishop Bonner. Peckham’s estate at Denham made him a neighbour of the Restwolds in Buckinghamshire, where in 1549 he bought Hedsor from Anthony Restwold and where he took the lead in proclaiming Mary four years later. Through Peckham Restwold was distantly related to another leading Marian, Sir Leonard Chamberlain, who presumably secured his return for New Woodstock in the autumn of 1554, perhaps on the recommendation of Peckham, once Chamberlain’s colleague at the Tower. Peckham himself was probably responsible for Restwold’s election at Aylesbury in 1555. These official connexions notwithstanding, Restwold was one of those (Peckham’s son Henry being another who opposed one of the government’s bills in the Parliament of 1555.5

Neither will nor inquisition post mortem survives for Restwold, but on 1 Jan. 1560 his sisters and coheirs, together with their husbands (who included Richard Bunny, Robert Lee and Thomas Waterton II) and their cousin John Babham, had licence to alienate Monks Risborough to Thomas Fleetwood.6

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: T. F.T. Baker

Notes

  • 1. Date of birth estimated from age at fa.’s i.p.m., C142/86/5. Misc. Gen. et Her. ii. 135; Vis. Bucks. (Harl. Soc. lviii), 153.
  • 2. LP Hen. VIII, xvi.
  • 3. Trans. Cumb. and Westmld. Arch. Soc. n.s. xii. 25-28; LP Hen. VIII, xvi; PCC 48 Alen.
  • 4. LP Hen. VIII, xvi, xvii; DKR, iii. 264-6.
  • 5. VCH Bucks. iii. 55; APC, ii. 332; Guildford mus. Loseley 1331/2.
  • 6. CPR, 1558-60, p. 376; VCH Bucks. iii. 188.