Sir William of Cotton and Dennington Wingfield [19307] ²⁵

  General Notes:

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Kntd. by Jun 1365. Commr. to conscript masons for the King's works, Essex Apr 1361; of inquiry, Suff. Jan 1371 (concealments), Norf., Suff. Apr 1381 (liberties of the borough of Gt. Yarmouth), Feb 1382 (wastes), Suff. Mar 1383 (assaults), Sep 1384 (revolt against royal officials at Lowestoft), Essex, Suff., Norf. Jan 1387 (theft of a ship's cargo), Essex, Herts., Suff. May 1392 (wastes on De Vere estates), Suff. Jul 1392 (export of gold), Aug 1395 (concealments), Oct 1395 (discovery of hidden bullion), May 1397 (disturbance at Eye); to collect the parochial subsidy Jun 1371; of array Aug 1372, Apr, Jul 1377, Feb 1379, Mar 1380, Apr 1385, Jun 1386, Mar 1392; oyer and terminer Mar 1375, Nov 1385, Norf. Dec 1386, Suff. Dec 1391; to hold special assizes Apr 1380, Jul 1382, Nov 1391; restore goods seized by insurgents, Norf. Jun 1381; put down rebellion, Suff. Dec 1381, Mar, Dec 1382; fortify Orwell Sep 1386; administer the oath in support of the Lords Appellant Mar. 1388; of arrest Nov. 1391; gaol delivery, Eye Aug 1394. Tax collector, Suff. Dec 1372; surveyor Aug 1379. J.p. Suff. 6 Jul 1378-89, 10 Nov 1389-Dec 1396.
It is generally accepted that William was a first cousin of Sir John Wingfield (d. 1361) of Wingfield and of Sir John's brother, Thomas (d. 1378) of Letheringham.
William's own entry into the Prince Edward's retinue was facilitated by his cousin John. He saw military action under the prince's banner at the siege of Calais in 1347, and in Jun 1355 he delivered 100 marks to Sir Baldwin Botetourt as a gift made by the prince at Sir John Wingfield's suggestion. William took part in the sea fight with the Spanish fleet off Winchelsea in 1356, so he cannot have been at Poitiers with the prince's army. He had served in Edward III's army in France in the winter of 1359-60.
After the death of his cousin, William left Prince Edward's company to become a favoured retainer of Thomas De Vere, 8th Earl of Oxford. In Dec 1364 De Vere obtained a royal licence to grant to his esquire for life the manors of Langley and Bradley in Berkshire, and he subsequently also gave him and his first wife a joint life estate in the manors of Market Overton and Paston in Northamptonshire. It was while in Earl Thomas's service that Wingfield was made a knight, and he followed him across to France in the duke of Lancaster's army in 1369, there to take part in the engagement 'a le Hille vers Harreflete' (Harfleur). In Dec 1371, after Thomas De Vere's death, the widowed Countess Maud, feeling too weak to travel, named Sir William as one of her attorneys to sue in Chancery for her dower lands.
Wingfield was returned to his first Parliament in 1376 in the company of Sir Richard Waldegrave. In this Parliament, known at the time as the Good Parliament, Sir William played a prominent part in the Commons' attack on ministerial corruption, by providing evidence for the impeachment of John, Lord Neville of Raby. His sympathies may have been determined by his early connexion with the Black Prince, who seems to have supported the stand taken by the shire knights; certainly he had maintained a close association with some of the prince's retainers. But a more immediate influence on Wingfield's stance in the Parliament was that of Michael, Lord De la Pole, the husband of Catherine, daughter and heiress of his cousin, Sir John Wingfield. One of the charges brought against Neville was that he had purchased tallies at a discount from Reynold Love, a London merchant, and had then secured full allowance on them at the Exchequer. Love, on being examined in Parliament, said that he had given the tallies to Neville in part payment for wool and that their full nominal value had been deducted from his debts, at which point De la Pole and Wingfield came forward with the assertion that, only the day before, Love had admitted in their presence the truth of the Commons' allegations. Their testimony forced the merchant to retract his earlier statement and so added to the weight of evidence against Neville.
In 1381 Wingfield held Thrandeston of Edmund De Paston (Paston Letters). In Feb 1382, while attending the second session of the Parliament of 1381, he and John of Gaunt's retainer, Sir Henry Green, shared a grant from the duke of the farm of the manor of Willisham (Suffolk), rent-free for the duration of a minority. As there is no other evidence to connect Wingfield with Lancaster in a personal way, it may be the case that this favour marks an attempt by the duke to attach the shire knight to his interests of the moment, for he needed support in the Commons for his Castilian venture.
Well-respected in the community of East Anglia, Wingfield was constantly in demand as a trustee of estates and an executor of wills. In the 1360s he had been a feoffee-to-uses of the important Bures estates inherited by Sir Richard Waldegrave's stepdaughter, Alice; the early 1370s saw him taking on the trusteeship of those of John, Lord Bourchier, as such exercising Bourchier's rights of presentation to the hospital of St. Giles at Little Maldon (Essex); and in 1375 he had served as executor of the will of the Norfolk landowner, Sir Ralph Shelton the elder. Along with Waldegrave, he became in 1377 a custodian of yearly rents amounting to £300 from manors in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire, in this instance on behalf of Waldegrave's kinsman, Sir John Burgh. More significantly, he had attracted the attention of William Ufford, earl of Suffolk (d. 1382), who thought so highly of him as to leave him in his will, made in Jun 1381, an 'enpension' of £20 a year for life as well as a covered goblet to keep in his memory. In later years Wingfield served as a feoffee of the estates of the earl's kinsman, Sir Robert Ufford. Then, in 1384-5, he was involved in property transactions on behalf of John Bacon, the King's secretary, a connexion which had probably come about through the intervention of his kinsman by marriage, Michael, Lord De la Pole, who was then chancellor and shortly to be created earl of Suffolk. Wingfield's connexion with De la Pole was particularly close: Lord Michael had headed the list of his own feoffees as named in 1377. Among the rest were Sir Nicholas Gernoun, another of the earl of Oxford's retainers, who was later (in 1384) to bequeath to him a sparver and a gold ring, and his cousin, Thomas Wingfield of Letheringham, for whom he acted both as a trustee of estates and as an executor. Naturally, other of Sir William's kinsmen called on his services, too, including Thomas Wingfield's son and heir, Sir John, and his stepson, Sir Robert Carbonel.
The fortunes of the De la Pole family had suffered a serious rebuff in 1388, and the earl of Suffolk had died in exile in the following year. But Wingfield continued to offer support to the earl's son, Sir Michael De la Pole, the new owner of the main Wingfield estates: he witnessed deeds on Sir Michael's behalf in 1392 and 1397; and in the meantime he became a feoffee of his lands and, in Oct 1396, stood as godfather at the baptism of his second son, William (who was eventually to be the 4th earl of Suffolk).
Wingfield died on 25 May 1398 and was buried in the chancel of Dennington church, where traces of his monument yet survive. He was succeeded by his son, another William, for whom about two years earlier he had arranged an important marriage, to Catherine, the younger daughter and coheir of John Hadley, a prominent merchant and financier of London. In 1417 the younger William served in France at Agincourt under the earl of Suffolk (his father's godson). There, the Duc Charles D'Orleans was, Suffolk's old friend, was captured. When, in the following year, he died childless, his commander, as his nearest male kinsman, Suffolk inherited his estates.

William married Joan Paston [19308] [MRIN: 9235], daughter of Edmund of Thrandeston de Paston [19309] and Unknown. (Joan Paston [19308] was born about 1326.)

William next married Joan Limbrey [19311] [MRIN: 9238], daughter of Julian de Limbrey [19314] and Unknown.

William next married Margaret (Margery) [19313] [MRIN: 9239] before Jan 1370.