Sir Richard Abberbury Senior

Richard Abberbury (or Adderbury) was born into a wealthy landowning family with estates in Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Northamptonshire and Sussex. After his father Thomas died at the Siege of Calais in 1353, Richard became an extremely wealthy man. Around the same time, he married Agnes, the daughter of Chief Justice Sir William Shareshull, what additionally added to his wealth.

Richard made a military career, first he served with Henry of Grosmont, Duke of Lancaster in Brittany and Normandy in 1356, and later he transferred to the retinue of the Black Prince, his feudal overlord, who knighted him by 1359. During his campaigns with the Black Prince, father of the future King Richard II (r. 1377-1399), Abberbury won prince’s admiration and was put in charge as seneschal of the Limousin after his lord’s return to England in 1371.

After the death of the Black Prince in 1376, Abberbury remained close to his widow, Joan of Kent, and her son, the future King Richard II. Abberbury became the boy’s “master”, responsible for his safety and upbringing, and such was his concern for the boy’s welfare that he sold his own manors of Old Shoreham and Todham, Sussex, to John, Lord Arundel, in order to raise money to help support the boy’s estate.

After the ascent of Abberbury’s protégé as King Richard II, Abberbury became a trusted Royal diplomat who negotiated the terms of an Anglo-Breton alliance in 1379, and in 1380 he negotiated King Richard’s marriage to Anne of Bohemia with the representatives of her brother, Wenzel IV, King of the Romans (r. 1376-1400). For the rest of his life he continued to be close councilor of the court.

Abberbury’s lifetime service dedicated to the highest members of royalty was repaid with honors and estates. His estates were augmented by acquiring the manor of Peasemore (in 1378), an interest for life in the Golafre estate at Langley, together with the bailiwick of Wychwood forest (in 1380) and the reversion of the manor of Kidlington. Throughout his career he was engaged in a generous endowment of religious and charitable foundations.