William Haute

William Haute (1390–1462) of Bishopsbourne, Kent, was an English politician. Early life Haute was born 1390 in Waddenhall, Kent, the eldest son of Sir Nicholas Haute, MP, of Wadden Hall in Waltham, Kent, and Alice, daughter of Sir Thomas Couen or Cawne of Ightham Mote and his wife Lora (Moraunt). William's mother having died in March 1400, leaving him as her heir, his father remarried to Eleanor Flambard (daughter of Edmund Flambard of Shepreth, Cambridgeshire), formerly the wife of Walter Tyrrell of Avon (between Ringwood and Christchurch), Hampshire. William Haute thus became stepbrother to Sir John Tyrrell of East Horndon, later to be Speaker of the House of Commons and Treasurer of the Royal Household. In 1415, for Henry V's expedition to France, both Sir Nicholas Haute and his son William were mustered to join the retinue of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. William chose to enlist not in his father's company but in that of Tyrrell his stepbrother, and in that capacity was at the Battle of Agincourt. Nicholas is thought to have died, perhaps of wounds, within a year or so after his return to England: William had succeeded to him by 1417, and Eleanor died in 1422. Two marriages Haute was a Member of Parliament for the Shire of Kent in 1419, and before October of that year he married Margaret Berwyk, daughter of Sir Hugh Berwyk of Frilsham, Berkshire. She was the sister and heiress of Thomas Berwyk, and the widow of Ralph Butler of Gloucestershire. William and Margaret had one daughter. In 1420-1421 they together conducted a suit against William Sevenoke for the wardship of one William Bryan of Turville, Buckinghamshire, in a case which drew in the mayor and aldermen of the city of London. He was appointed Sheriff of Kent for the year of 1420-21, during which he supervised elections for the county to three parliaments. In 1423 he was a commissioner for weirs and impediments to navigation between Reculver and Maidstone. From 1424 he held commission of the peace for Kent, During the 1420s his relations with John and Edmund Tyrrell presumably encouraged his continuing allegiance to the Duke of Gloucester.