Family and Education

b. by 1525, poss. yr. s. of Thomas Fowke of Brewood, Staffs. by Margaret Lane of Hyde, Staffs.; ?bro. of Robert Fowke.1

Offices Held

Surveyor, chantry lands Suss. by 1546-50 or later.2

Biography

Henry Fauxe’s background and upbringing have not been traced. He was of gentle birth, and this single clue to his origin suggests that he may have been a younger son mentioned in a 17th-century pedigree of a minor Staffordshire family. Whoever sat for Steyning in 1547 presumably owed his election to Admiral Seymour, to whom the borough was amenable. If by 1547 Fauxe was already an agent for paying victuallers for the navy, he could have come to Seymour’s notice as admiral, but the surveyorship of chantry lands which he had obtained as a result of the Act (37 Hen. VIII, c.4) might have afforded an earlier connexion. Fauxe’s absence in Sussex surveying property during the early months of 1549 was perhaps not unconnected with Seymour’s attainder at the beginning of that year. Later in the year he was commissioned with John Arscott, John Hales II and John Marshe, to survey Seymour’s property in Sussex and where necessary to disenclose it. In November 1550 he was mentioned by Thomas, 9th Lord La Warre, in a letter to Cecil as collecting wheat in Sussex to be sent to Calais. It was as a ‘deputy of Sir Anthony Awcher’, the master of the jewel house, that he made the returns for chantry goods in Sussex, but his work was disowned by Awcher on the ground that he was in the service of a particular surveyor called Anthony Stringer, a relationship borne out by several chantry certificates earlier signed by Fauxe. Fauxe eventually sold his post to Peter Bollokhert, but when he failed to hand over the relevant papers Bollokhert appealed to (Sir) Richard Sackville II, chancellor of the court of augmentations, for assistance in obtaining them. The outcome of Bollokhert’s petition is not known, although it was favoured by Sackville, but charges brought before the Privy Council against Fauxe of defrauding victuallers led to his committal to the Fleet in May 1552: as this was not long after the dissolution of Parliament, it is possible that until then Fauxe had been protected by his Membership.3

The fact that nothing further has been discovered about Fauxe raises the possibility that he was the Henry Voyce of Horsham, Sussex, who was buried on 8 Aug. 1552. The Voyce family, long established at Horsham, was well known there and elsewhere in Sussex. Either Henry Voyce or his father (d.1550) appears, as Henry ‘Foyes’, in the survey of Seymour’s property which Fauxe helped to prepare in 1549, as keeper and under steward of Chesworth House, on the outskirts of Horsham, and receiver of the baronies of Bramber and Lewes, and the elder of them appears as ‘Foys’ on a certificate of 1550 signed by Fauxe of lands owned by St. Leonard’s chapel. Such a conjunction of the name in variant spellings creates a presumption that their bearers were different and unrelated persons.4

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: A. D.K. Hawkyard

Notes

• 1. Date of birth estimated from first reference. The Gen. n.s. ii. 301.
• 2. Suss. Rec. Soc. xxxvi. 135-6.
• 3. C219/19/112; APC, iv. 33; Suss. Rec. Soc. xxxvi. 90, 92-96, 99-102, 113, 129, 135-6, 139; CPR, 1548-9, p. 304; SP10/11/3.
• 4. Suss. Rec. Soc. xxi. 7, 301, 304, xxxvi. 95; Comber, Suss. Gen. (Horsham), 344; PCC 2 Holder, 20 Maynwaryng, 9 Bucke, 24 Thower; C219/18C/120, 19/108; SP10/6, f. 10.