Sir William Hawte (also Haute or Haut) (c. 1430 – 2 July 1497) was a prominent member of a Kentish gentry family of long standing in royal service, which, through its near connections to the Woodville family, became closely and dangerously embroiled in the last phases of the Wars of the Roses.
It is claimed that he is the same Sir William Hawte who was a composer of liturgical and devotional choral music (who flourished c. 1460–1470), represented in a number of manuscript choirbooks that survive to this day. Two settings of the Benedicamus Domino are found in the Pepys Manuscript,Magdalene College, Cambridge MS Pepys 1236. and another work attributed to him, a Stella coeli, extirpavit (a Latin prayer to the Virgin, for protection from plagueG. Mursell, English Spirituality: From Earliest Times to 1700 (S.P.C.K., London 2001), pp. 161-62.) exists in the Ritson Manuscript.See 'William Hawte' brief biographical entry at HOASM.org.
Family Hawte the composer is identifiedS.R. Charles, 'Haute, Sir William (born 1430), composer', Grove Music Online (2001). (subscription needed). Preview at Oxford Index. as a son of William Haute of Bishopsbourne, Kent, M.P., by his second wife, Joan Wydeville, daughter of Richard Wydeville, M.P. (1385–1441), of Grafton, Northamptonshire and Maidstone, Kent, who married c. 1429.L.S. Woodger, 'Haute, William (d.1462), of Bishopsbourne, Kent', in J.S. Roskell, L. Clark and C. Rawcliffe (eds), The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1386–1421 (Boydell & Brewer 1993), History of Parliament online. William the father did have a child by his first wife, and there is mention of a young William Haute seeking a novitiate at Christ Church priory in Canterbury around 1430.'Letter of Dom. John Elham to the Prior of Christ Church', in J.B. Sheppard (ed.), Christ Church Letters. A Volume of Mediaeval Letters Camden Society, New Series XIX (London 1877), pp. 7-9. However the weight of evidence is that Sir William was Joan Wydeville's son.W.G. Davis, The Ancestry of Mary Isaac, c. 1549–1613 (Author, Portland, Maine 1955), pp. 97-193 at pp. 156-58. He was therefore, by affinity and probably by blood, nephew of the 1st Earl Rivers and first cousin to Elizabeth Woodville, Queen Consort of King Edward IV.
Young life and marriage William therefore grew up, probably at Bishopsbourne, with an elder half-sibling and with three younger brothers and various sisters, one of whom, Alice, was by 1462 married to Sir John Fogge (as his second wife). William also was married before that date, and had a son of his own called William by his wife, Joan Horne (daughter of Henry Horne, M.P.L.S. Woodger, 'Horne, Henry, of Horne's Place in Appledore, Kent', in J.S. Roskell, L. Clark and C. Rawcliffe (eds), The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1386–1421, (Boydell & Brewer 1993) History of Parliament Online .), both of whom are mentioned in his father's will. Made in May 1462 and proved in October, this document is concerned mainly with the furnishings and chattels, the estates themselves having been disposed of by a testament now lost. Old William asked to be buried between his two wives before the image of St Katherine in the church of the Fraternity of St Augustine's, Canterbury. Among other things William inherited from his father the residue of his interesting collection of religious relics, after some of the choicer items had been allocated to selected recipients.Will of William Haute of Bishopsbourne (9 May/October 4, 1462); Consistory Court of Canterbury, Vol. 2, fol. 79. Lengthy abstract in Davis, The Ancestry of Mary Isaac, p. 150-52.
Both William and his father were included in commissions of array of December 1459 and 1460 to resist the rebellious adherents of Richard Earl of Warwick.Calendar of Patent Rolls Henry VI: 1452–1461 (HMSO 1910), pp. 561, 563. William junior had already entered the service of Edward IV in 1461 when he was granted for life the office of Keeper of the King's Warren, near Sandwich, and soon afterwards received instructions to cause beacons to be set up along the Kentish coast to give warning of the approach of the king's enemies.Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edward IV, 1461–1467 (HMSO 1897), pp. 125; 102. He was created a knight at the queen's coronation on 26 May 1465,N.H. Nicolas, 'Appendix: Chronological List of Knights', in History of the Orders of Knighthood of the British Empire, (John Hunter, London 1842), III, p. viii. and rode before the queen's litter in the procession; in 1466–1467 he was for the first time High Sheriff of Kent (an office in which his father, his grandfather and his great-uncle had preceded him),Richard Kilburne, A Topographie, or Survey of the County of Kent (Thomas Mabb/Henry Atkinson, London (Old Holborn) 1659), pp. 393-95 (Kent Archaeology pdf, pp. 214-17). and received the freedom of Canterbury in 1467.
Sir William Haute and Richard Haute, Esq. In 1470 Hawte's cousin Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers, appointed William his attorney for entry into his Kentish estates.'The will of Anthony, Earl Ryvers, 1483', in S. Bentley (ed.), Excerpta Historica, or, Illustrations of English History (Samuel Bentley, London 1831), pp. 240-48, at pp. 241-42. William's sister Anne was in the later 1460s and earlier 1470s engaged to marry Sir John Paston, but was released from the arrangement.J. Gairdner (ed.), The Paston Letters, AD 1422–1509, Library Edition (Chatto & Windus, London 1904) Vol 1, pp. 268-70; Vol. 4, Letter 687 and note, pp. 300-01. William's brother Richard inherited some estates jointly with his brother by grant from their father, and in 1463 and 1468 released tenements in Canterbury to William.Davis, The Ancestry of Mary Isaac, p. 163, citing British Library, Harleian Charters ref. 78 G 9 and 78 G 10. The full estates were finally granted among the brothers by their father's trustees in 1480, in tail, with mutual remainders. In the meantime Richard married Dame Elizabeth Darcy, widow of Sir Richard Darcy of Maldon and Danbury, and daughter of Sir Thomas Tyrrell of Heron, Essex, restoring the familial bond formed by his grandfather Nicholas Haute's second marriage. Like William Haute, Darcy was knighted at Elizabeth Woodville's coronation, but died in 1469 leaving a son Thomas aged 10.
Elizabeth remarried almost immediately to Richard Haute who held commissions for the peace for Worcestershire in 1472 and 1473 and for Shropshire, Gloucestershire and Herefordshire in May 1474.Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edward IV, Henry VI, 1467–1477 (HMSO 1906), pp. 615-16, 628, 636. Richard was, from 1472 to 1475, Member of Parliament for Essex and from 1472 to 1480 held commission for the peace in that county.Cal. Patent Rolls 1467–1477, p. 614. He was further Sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire in 1474–1475. In the latter year Richard was granted the freedom of the city of Canterbury by birth, and represented it in parliament in 1478. He was appointed a justice in eyre of the queen's forests in 1477.Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edward IV, Edward V, Richard III, 1476–1485 (HMSO 1901), pp. 51-52. By the partition indentures of 1480 Sir William received the old family manors of Bourne, Ford and Wadenhall, and the de Marinis lands of Otterpool, Blackmanstone and Elmsted, while Hastingleigh, Alderlose and Ightham Mote fell to Richard, their brother Edward taking the manor of Crofton, lands in Hougham near Dover and rents in Canterbury.Davis, The Ancestry of Mary Isaac, citing British Library, Harleian Charter 78 F 45.
Through this period Sir William, the eldest brother, held a prominent position among the gentry of Kent. Although only two of his sons, William and Thomas, and a daughter Alice, reached maturity, there were besides four other sons and two daughters born in this time who appear to have died in their youth.Davis, The Ancestry of Mary Isaac, p. 161, citing 'Copy of Monuments in Kent Churches', Parsons, in the Library of the Kent Archaeological Society, p. 178. He was a justice of the peace for Kent in 1461, 1462, 1464, 1465, 1467, 1469 and 1471–1475.Cal. Patent Rolls 1461–1467, p. 566. C.P.R. 1467–1477, p. 618. With a commission of oyer and terminer to judge certain alleged traitors in 1463, in 1465 he was appointed to a commission against smugglers,Cal. Patent Rolls, 1461–1467, pp. 301, 453. and was reappointed in 1474 and 1475.Cal. Patent Rolls, 1467–1477, pp. 489, 571. Often in association with Sir John Fogge, Sir John Scott, Sir John Colepeper and Ralph St Leger the younger (who married Richard Haute's daughter Isabel), he took musters of soldiers in 1468, held commissions of array in 1469–1472, and mustered at Sandwich in the latter year.Cal. Patent Rolls 1467–1477, pp. 127, 195, 199, 219, 283, 340, 352.
He was (with Lord Rivers) commissioned to arrest rebels in 1471, to investigate fees owing to the king's progenitors in 1473, and to survey walls and ditches in 1474 and 1479.Cal. Patent Rolls 1467–1477, pp. 285; 407; 428, 463. He made an important lease of his lands at Shelvingford in 1474, at much the same time that he received lands from his cousins, the daughters of his grandfather's nephew John Haute of Pluckley.The National Archives (UK) Discovery Catalogue, item E 326/3214. His second term as Sheriff of Kent was in 1475–1476.Kilburne, A Topographie, p. 395. In 1478, when the king granted him an annuity of 20 marks, he was appointed to conduct an inquest into the castles and lands of the Duke of Clarence.Cal. Patent Rolls 1476–1485, pp. 100, 109, 111. And in that year, 1478–79, Richard Haute of Ightham served as Sheriff of Kent.Kilburne, A Topographie, p. 395.
Towards revolt Queen Elizabeth had appointed Richard Haute to be a tutor to her son Edward the Prince of Wales in 1472,Cal. Patent Rolls 1467–1477, p. 366. a duty which took him to Ludlow Castle, and he became comptroller of the prince's household: but it is questioned whether this Richard was Sir William's brother, or their cousin the younger (Sir) Richard Haute, of Swerdling in Petham, Kent, (a descendant in a junior line from Sir Nicholas, William's grandfather),Davis, The Ancestry of Mary Isaac, p. 163.The two are mischievously entangled by Charles Ross, see C. Ross, Richard III reprint (Yale University Press 2011), p. 107. who was knighted in c. 1482. In 1478 one Richard Haute had distinguished himself in the tourneys at the marriage of Prince Richard, Duke of York to Anne Mowbray,C.L. Scofield, The Life and Reign of Edward the Fourth, King of England and France and Lord of Ireland, 2 vols (Longmans, Green & Co, London 1923), p. 205. and in 1481 Richard Haute the younger was made steward of the Gower lordship of that prince during his minority, and constable of Swansea Castle.Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edward IV, Edward V, Richard III, 1476–1485 (HMSO 1904), p. 288. Close association with the Wydevilles brought the Hautes into the sphere of the Duke of Gloucester's enmity.