Walter Culpeper1

Male, #8416, (say 1303 - )

Parent*Sir Thomas Culpeper of Bayhall in Pembury, co. Kent (s 1260 - 1321)
Parent*Margery Bayhall (s 1265 - )
Walter Culpeper|b. say 1303|p8416.htm|Sir Thomas Culpeper of Bayhall in Pembury, co. Kent|b. say 1260\nd. 1321|p8400.htm|Margery Bayhall|b. say 1265|p8401.htm|Sir Thomas Culpeper of Brenchley and Bayhall|b. say 1230\nd. after 1309|p8399.htm||||||||||

Name Variation  Walter Culpeper was also known as Colepeper. 
Name Variation  Walter Culpeper was also known as Culpepper. 
Birth*say 1303 Walter was born say 1303. 
 He was the son of Sir Thomas Culpeper of Bayhall in Pembury, co. Kent and Margery Bayhall. 
Marriage* He married Elizabeth (?). 
Marriage* He married Alice (?). 
Biography* Walter, the eldest son of Thomas Colepeper, married, first, Elizabeth, widow of Thomas de Cobham, and, secondly, Alice . . . (who re-married Richard Charles, and died about 1386), but died without issue, when his brother, Sir John Colepeper, succeeded to Bayhall.
- Source: The Sussex Colepepers-I, page 54. 
Biography The date at which iron-working was begun on Oldlands is unknown, but it was perhaps by the 14th century when the Culpepers of Bayhall in Pembury, Kent, who had iron works near by at Tudeley, owned it. Iron was certainly founded at Buxted in 1492. The frequent changes of ownership in the 16th and early 17th centuries suggest commercial activities connected with the iron industry, either from direct exploitation of the estate or, more likely, through letting it to tenants. The increase in the purchase price, from £563 in 1576 to £2200 in 1609, may indicate that such financial speculation was justified.
     In 1313 or 1314 Thomas Culpeper of Bayhall and his wife Margery acquired a messuage and 60 acres of land in Buxted from Ralph Marescot and in 1319 or 1320 another messuage and 50 acres in Buxted and Maresfield from Reynold Burgess. Culpeper was appointed forester of Rotherfield in Tonbridge chase in 1315, and in 1318, at the request of his patron, Bartholomew de Badlesmere, and others, Edward II granted to him the forestership of Ashdown and the keeping of Maresfield park. He was involved with Badlesmere in the rebellion of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, and was sentenced to death and executed at Winchelsea in 1322. His possessions were forfeited to the Crown, but the lands in Buxted and Maresfield were restored in 1324 to Margery, whose date of death is unknown. Their son and heir, Walter, died childless between 14 July 1359 and 20 July 1364, and the estate descended under an entail to Walter’s younger brother Sir John Culpeper. The John Culpeper, esquire, whom John of Gaunt appointed constable of Pevensey castle in 1372 and master forester of Ashdown chase in 1375, may have been a kinsman, possibly a younger son. By 1378 Sir John had been succeeded in the estate by his son Sir Thomas, who died late in 1428 or early in 1429. Sir Thomas devised it to a younger son Nicholas, who died late in 1434 or early in 1435. From Nicholas it descended to his daughter Joyce (d. 1486) and her husband Walter Lewknor (d. 1498), whose elder brother Richard Lewknor (d. 1503) held the manor of Buxted itself in 1483–4.
     Walter’s and Joyce’s son and heir Humphrey Lewknor (d. by 1531) sold Oldlands at an unknown date to George Nevill, Lord Abergavenny (d. 1535), who sold it in 1533 to Edmund Pope of Little Horsted...2 

Family 1

Elizabeth (?) (say 1310 - after 1359)

Family 2

Alice (?) (say 1325 - 1386)

Charts The Earliest Colepepers and Culpepers (10 generations)
Last Edited 25 Nov 2002

Citations

  1. Col. F.W.T. Attree R.E./F.S.A. & Rev. J.H.L. Booker M.A., "The Sussex Colepepers, Part I", Sussex Archaeological Collections, XLVII, 47-81, (1904) http://gen.culpepper.com/historical/sussex/default.htm.
  2. Sussex Archeological Collections, Sussex, England: Sussex Archaeological Society.
    Janet H. Stevenson, "Alexander Nesbitt, a Sussex antiquary, and
    the Oldlands estate", 1999, Volume 137, pages 163-164.