The fruits of royal service

In the first of two articles, John Goodall explains how a soldier–probably with the help of his mother–won the trust of a child king and created a great castle in the Cotswolds with the rewards

- John Goodall

Sudeley Castle, Gloucestershire, part I The home of Elizabeth, Lady Ashcombe, and the Dent- Brocklehurst family

AT Westminster on May 5, 1458, Ralph Botiller, Lord Sudeley, a soldier and royal servant in his late sixties, was issued with a pardon for having fortified or battlemented two of his manors without royal permission. One of these, The More, Hertfordshire, is now forgotten, but, in the 15th century, it was one of the grandest residences in the environs of London. Enlarged by a succession of powerful owners, it eventually came into the hands of Cardinal Wolsey and, in 1525, was judged by the French ambassador to be more magnificent than Hampton Court. The More fell into ruin during the reign of Elizabeth I and the site of it is now a field.

The other manor mentioned in the pardon was Sudeley, Gloucestershire, on the edge of the Cotswolds. This was Ralph’s family seat and the property from which he took his title. The buildings he created here form the earliest parts of a castle that was likewise admired and extended by a sequence of powerful owners. It was archly described by the historian and divine Thomas Fuller in his posthumously published Worthies of England (1661) as ‘of subjects’ castles... the most handsome habitation, and of subjects’ habitations the strongest castle’. Whether Fuller actually saw the castle before its devastation in the Civil War is an open question.