William (Smith)
Smyth(e) was the Bishop of
Coventry and Lichfield (1493-1496) and then translated Bishop of Lincoln, (1496-1514). He was born in Lancashire in about
1460 and he probably passed some of his early days at Knowsley under the roof of Margaret Beaufort,
Countess of Richmond and Derby. This lady was none other
than the great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt and
Catherine Roet - and the mother of the future king, Henry
Tudor. She was of the same family as Joan de Beaufort,
wife of Ralph Neville, 1st Earl of Westmoreland which latter,
according to Burke, is supposed to have leased Rosedale
Abbey to William 'Smithdike' and the Smyth/e family. Also
use this link - Ralph
Neville, 1st Earl of Westmoreland - to access a comprehensive set of Tudor era
family histories. Margaret Beaufort (1443 -1509) founded another school in 1497, This was the original of what is now Queen Elizabeth School - in Dorset. Later (1505) she refounded God's House, Cambridge as Christ's College and was also the foundress of St. John's College, Cambridge - although the latter was achieved after her death and not without difficulty since her bequest was in the form of an unsealed codicil. It is chiefly to the credit of Bishop John Fisher of Rochester - who was also her confessor - that Christ's College came into existence. Bishop William Smythe of Lincoln was instrumental in overseeing other aspects of her Will, relating to her properties - particularly in the West Country. Margaret Beaufort's first marriage had been to John de la Pole (son of William de la Pole) - her second to Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond who died at Carmarthen Castle in 1456. Her third husband was Sir Henry Stafford (d. 1481) and she was married a fourth time - to Thomas Stanley, the first Earl of Derby who had previously been married to Eleanor Neville who had died c. 1472. Thomas, the 1st. Earl of Derby, gained the title for service to Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosworth. From information gleaned from "The Complete Peerage" Vol. IV pp 205-207 - The father of Thomas, 1st Earl of Derby, was Thomas Stanley, Knight, Lord of Latham; his mother, Joan Goushill. Thomas STANLEY (Knight Lord of Lathom) Born: BEF 1405/6, probably Knowsley, Lancashire and died: 11/20 Feb 1458/59, Knowsley, Lancashire. He succeeded his father in Mann and his other estates in 1432. He had been knighted some years before his father's death. In the same year he was appointed Lieutenant of Ireland for six years, and shortly afterwards Comptroller of the King's Household. During the first year of his rule in Ireland he called together a Parliament for the redress of grievances; but, being called to England by the King's command soon afterwards, that kingdom fell into great disorder, and he was obliged to return to it in 1435, when he successfully repressed a serious revolt. In 1441 he was appointed one of the Lieutenant justices of Chester, at a salary of £40 per annum. He was one of the Commissioners who treated with the Scotch for a truce in 1448, and, when it was concluded, he became one of its conservators. He also served on a commission for the custody and defence of the town and castle of Calais from 1450 to 1455. During the year 1451 he held the office of sole Judge of Chester, and in 1452 he was commissioned to treat for a new truce with Scotland. In 1456 he was summoned to the House of Peers as Baron Stanley, being made Lord Chamberlain of the King's Household, and, in the following year, one of the Council of Edward, Prince of Wales. He was again appointed one of the ambassadors to treat with the Scots in 1460, "but, dying the latter end of the year, the nation was deprived of this very great and valuable person, and the King of one of his best subjects" . . . He was brave in the field, wise in the Senate, just to his Prince, an honour to his country, and an ornament to his family." He married Joan, daughter and heiress of Sir Robert Goushill, by whom he had issue three sons, Thomas, William, and John; and three daughters. Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby, died on 29th July, 1504 at Latham in Lancashire. The Stanley/Neville children were as follows: George (Strange of Knockin), John, Thomas, William, Edward (1st Mounteagle), Richard, Jane, Catherine, Anne, James (Bishop of Ely) Margaret, Alice and Agnes.
Descended from original Beaufort
illegitimacy, Margaret's son, Henry VII, was regarded by
many as usurping the throne. By design - through a
previous vow to join the two factions through marriage if
he became King through battle, the new king quicky
cemented his position by marrying one of the two
legitimate claimants - but eventually executing the other
- in 1499 - the Earl of Warwick, son of George, Duke of
Clarence and the Lady Isabel Neville. Almost all of the old noble houses were swept away or vastly reduced by the Wars of the Roses and it is not difficult to ascertain the kind of atmosphere in which the key players of church and state moved at this time; those who met with success were clearly those who cast their lot with the winning House. Such a man was William Smythe. He was a member of Lincoln College, Oxford but his early connections held him in good stead because, in 1485, just after the Battle of Bosworth, he was made Keeper of the Hanaper of Chancery. The duty of the Keeper was to record fees paid on the writs that began every action at common law. In this capacity, William Smythe would have been apprised of each and every action to be heard and, as such, would have been a useful source of information for a new king grappling with insecurity. The office was so named because the writs, and the returns to them, were kept in a wickerwork box called a hanaper - or hamper. The office was eventually abolished in 1852. Two of King Edward IV's daughters were entrusted to William Smythe's keeping. In 1485 he was paid the princely sum of £200 for this purpose. It is recorded that he transferred this sum to Margaret (Beaufort) - Countess of Richmond (Henry VII's mother) who "of late hadde the keping and guiding of the ladies, daughters of King Edward iiiith.". He was a member of the Royal Council and he obtained the livings of Combe Martin, Devon, of Great Grimsby and of Cheshunt, Hertfordshire. In 1491 he was made Dean of St. Stephen's, Westminster and two years later Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield. The Bishop was a member of Prince Arthur's council in the Marches of Wales, and in 1501, five years after he had been translated to the important Bishopric of Lincoln, he became Lord President of Wales. Whilst he was Bishop of Litchfield, he "refounded the ruionous hospital of St. John, originally a priory of friars, but transformed by him into an almshouse and free grammar school. To it he annexed the hospital of Denhall or Dunwell in Cheshire and secured for it liberal patronage from Henry VII. This Hospital still survives at Litchfield as a monument to Smyth's memory." (Dictionary of National Biography) Because of his association with the Prince of Wales (Arthur) he spent much of his time at Ludlow in Herefordshire and Bewdley in Worcestershire. In 1501 - a man of great substance and wealth by this time - he bought an estate at St. John's, Bedwardine, near Worcester. In about 1507, at the close of Henry VII's reign, with Sir Richard Sutton (d.1524) (see inset panel below) he set to work to found a new college (Brasenose) in Oxford. They rebuilt Brasenose Hall, added other existing halls to it and, having obtained a charter in 1512 - the third year of Henry VIII's reign - called it The King's Haule and College of Brasennose. At this time, Oxford lay within the vast See of Lincoln.
"In the Reign of Henry the eighth
[(ann. 3.)] for the further advancement of
Learning, William Smith Bishop of
Lincoln, built Brazen-Nose-College [(so
called from a Hall, distinguished by that name;)] which, ann.
1572. was endow'd by that pious and good old man Alexander
Nowell, Dean of St. Pauls, [with Exhibitions
for thirteen Scholars. Of late years, it hath been
adorn'd with a beautiful Chapel, Library, and Cloysters;
the elegant structure whereof was begun in the year 1656,
and the Chapel consecrated by the Bishop of Oxford An.
1666.] About the same time, Richard Fox, Bishop of
Winchester, founded Corpus-Christi-College,
[which was design'd for a Seminary of Monks to the Priory
of St. Swithin in Winchester, An. 1513. But the
Founder, diverted from that design, and assisted by Hugh
Oldham Bishop of Exeter, establish'd it for a Society
of Students, An. 1516, with Endowments so ample, and
Statutes so admirable, as have made very many of its
members men of singular piety and learning.]" Bishop William Smythe was one of the executors of Henry VII's will but he retired from public life just after this King's death, possibly because of differences between Bishop Richard Fox and himself. He was, however, President of Wales until his death at Buckden in Huntingdonshire on the 2nd of January 1514. After his death, Wolsey became Bishop of Lincoln. Wolsey had been Chaplain to Henry VII and would, of course, endure many turbulent years during Henry VIII's reign.
There was another celebrated Matthew Smyth who was of the Bristol Smyth family - portrait link adjacent. He married Jane Tewther. He was a legal man and sometime Master of the Revels. The link explores the history of the Bristol Smyths and examines some portraiture associated with that branch.
The question hangs in the air: did Bishop William Smythe perhaps have an illigitimate son, dubbed William Smithdike? Bishops (and clergy in general) were not permitted to marry until after the Reformation but, notwithstanding this vow of celibacy, over the centuries several children were born to men of the cloth - including those holy men who wore the "robe". For example - and very "close to home" - James Stanley (born c. 1471) - who was one of the sons of Eleanor Neville and James Stanley, the 1st Earl of Derby - became a father ... and he was the Bishop of Ely. He was associated with a woman named Margaret by whom he had a son, Sir John Stanley of Honford. The mother of this child later married Sir Urian Brereton. Thus, it is not impossible that his 'brother' Bishop created a similar "indiscretion" - named William! Unlikely - but possible. In his closing years he made many generous gifts, endowments and bequests to relatives and to the places he held most dear - to complement a series of charitable acts, during his lifetime, not least of which was the founding of the Grammar School at Farnworth in Lancashire where he had been born and raised and where he spent some youthful years at Knowsley, "beneath the roof of Margaret Beaufort". On 30 January 1513 the Will of Bishop Smythe was proved. Amongst his bequests to Brasenone College Chapel was 'a pair of orgaynes bought at London of the facion of a countyng borde or lowe-table'.
As may be seen, this Stanley/Neville line was very closely connected with Bishop William Smyth (Smith) and it may well have been collateral descendants of this line who were granted the lease of Rosedale Abbey in Yorkshire and founded the majority of the Irish Smyth houses – notably Drumcree, and Barbavilla (qv The Smith Smyth Smythe families of Ireland - David Smyth's in-depth study of this lineage) David Smyth notes, 'A Charles Duncombe bought the Rosedale estate from George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, at some point between 1620 and 1628. Was this Thomas Smith ('or Neville') a brother of our William Smyth? And was Dacomb a variant of Duncombe in that era of free-form spelling? And above all, why does the diarist refer to Thomas Smith as "Thomas Smith, or Neville, son and heir of Sir Thomas Neville? If he was the legitimate son and heir, how does the Smith name come into play?' Rosedale Abbey in Yorkshire, was a seat of the Nevilles and it was in their gift to lease it ... to a favoured family. The Smyths were being looked after very well, it seems - and this was because of a Smyth/Neville kinship. In fact, the Neville family features prominently in a variety of "Family Vault" connections - Cecily Neville providing the key link in the maternal line but the Nevilles were also closely associated with Smyth/e family in the 15th century. Another clear example of the Smyth/Neville relationship is seen through the person of Isabella Nevill/e - born after 1457 and d. 1516 - who married Sir William Huddleston and then - after 1505, Sir William Smythe, Sheriff of Staffordshire, who had a daughter, Margery Smythe, by his first (Staunton) marriage. Some analysis -
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Bishop William
Smith/Smyth and Margaret - 'My Lady - the King's Mother'
...
The "Brazen Nose" door knocker
of the Oxford College (left) and (right) the
Sanctuary knocker of Durham Cathedral ...
From Camden's
Britannia, Oxfordshire, 1586 
