VINCENT, George (by 1493-1566), of Peckleton, Leics.

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

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. by 1493, 1st s. of Richard Vincent of Messingham, Lincs. by Anne, da. and h. of William Grimsby of Lincoln, Lincs. educ. I. Temple, adm. 1519. m. (1) by 1517, Jane, da. of William Story of Sleaford, Lincs. 7s. 2da.; (2) by 1542, Anne, da. of Richard Radcliffe, wid. of Roger Lache of Daventry, Northants., (3) Amy, da. of Peter Colles of Preston Capes, Northants., 2s. 1da. suc. fa. bef. 1515.1

Offices Held

J.p. Leics. 1538-d.; commr. subsidy 1542, benevolence 1544/45. relief 1550, goods of churches and fraternities 1553; escheator, Warws. and Leics. 1543-4, 1549-50; bailiff, Leics. lands formerly of Sheen abbey 1538-53; dep. forester, Leics. 1562.2

Biography

George Vincent’s grandfather, who was heir to a line of unimportant north country gentry, had moved to Lincolnshire on marrying a minor heiress. In the next generation, Richard Vincent further improved the family position by marrying Anne Grimsby, who not only inherited her father’s estates after her brother’s death but was also coheir through her mother to an important Leicestershire family, the Motons of Peckleton. It was this inheritance which not only provided George Vincent with the bulk of his estates but also brought him into contact with powerful if distant connexions.

Vincent was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1519, but his exemption in the following year from keeping vacation or holding office suggests that he wanted to acquire, rather later in life than usual, the smattering of law, and perhaps the other accomplishments, useful to a gentleman. He was, indeed, already involved, and would long continue, in litigation. Some time before 1515 Robert Brudenell sued Vincent’s mother in Chancery over an alleged bargain relating to her manor of Peckleton which she and her second husband were refusing to complete; the action evidently failed, for George Vincent kept possession. In 1517 the death of Philippa Heroy, who had held Peckleton as a free tenement in the right of her first husband Robert Moton, brought her son-in-law John Harington I into conflict with George Vincent and his cousin Germain Poole, who were named as her heirs in the inquisition post mortem. The case, which appears to have turned on the nature of the entail of the manor, went against Harington, for in 1547 Vincent and Poole summoned him in the common pleas to deliver seisin and they both held a moiety of the manor at their deaths.3

The Harington affair might have been expected to evoke a conciliatory intervention by Sir Richard Sacheverell: he had arranged Harington’s marriage with his ward Elizabeth Moton and had doubtless also had a hand in Vincent’s marriage with his niece Jane Story. In the upshot Sacheverell appears to have promoted the Vincents’ interest, for George Vincent remained his adherent and as such sided with the Hastings faction in its long struggle against the Greys: Vincent was Sacheverell’s principal agent in the harrying of Reginald Grey and his ultimate ejection from the manor of Barwell, and when in 1534 Sacheverell came to make his will George and Jane Vincent were among the principal beneficiaries.4

In middle life Vincent emerged as an active local administrator, his regular inclusion in commissions of oyer and terminer, and of gaol delivery, doubtless owing something to his acquaintance with the law. In 1544 he was one of the Leicestershire gentry who led a contingent in the vanguard against France. It was not, however, until 1558, and then for the only time, that he was returned to Parliament. He sat as first knight of the shire with George Sherard, who may have owed his nomination to the 2nd Earl of Rutland; Vincent himself presumably relied on his Hastings connexion and may have benefited by the elevation of Sir Edward Hastings to the peerage and the disappearance, perhaps through illness, from the parliamentary scene of Sir Thomas Hastings. Of his role in the Commons nothing is known.5

Vincent had taken advantage of the Dissolution to consolidate his estate. His purchase of Potters Marston from the crown in 1540 had probably been financed in part by a loan and was followed two years later by the sale of the undisputed portion of his Moton inheritance. In 1553 he acquired the unexpired lease of Germain Poole’s half of Peckleton. By his will, made on 8 Feb. 1565, he left all his property to his eldest son Edward, subject to certain annuities for the younger children. (One of his daughters by his first marriage had married William Faunt, his immediate precursor as knight of the shire.) The will throws little light on his personality or on his religion, in which he had been returned as ‘indifferent’ in 1564. Vincent died on 3 Jan. 1566.6

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: S. M. Thorpe

Notes

  • 1. Date of birth estimated from i.p.m. of Philippa Heroy, Peckleton Manor ed. Farnham, 42, but said to be aged 80 at death, Vis. Leics. (Harl. Soc. ii), 80-82.
  • 2. E315/265; LP Hen. VIII, xiii-xv, xx; CPR, 1553, pp. 356, 414; 1558-60, p. 279; 1560-3, p. 439; 1563-6, p. 241; Somerville, Duchy, i. 568.
  • 3. Cal. I.T. Recs. i. 47, 83; C1/290/35, 415/6, 1129/18-24; Peckleton Manor, 42; G. F. Farnham, Leics. Med. Peds. 63.
  • 4. Peckleton Manor, 45 seq.; HMC Hastings, i. 50; St.Ch.2/16/314 seq.; PCC 15 Hogen.
  • 5. LP Hen. VIII, xiv, xv, xix; PPC, vii. 235; Quorndon Recs. ed. Farnham, 200, 202; CPR, 1553, p. 358; 1553-4, p. 371; 1558-60, p. 279; APC, ii. 446; iv. 371.
  • 6. Peckleton Manor, 42; CPR, 1553, p. 395; 1563-6, p. 497; PCC 5 Crymes; Cam. Misc. ix(3), 30; C142/144/97.