Miles Partridge

Sir Miles Partridge (died 26 February 1552) was an English courtier and a soldier during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI. He was arrested in 1551, before being convicted of felony and hanged, as part of the factional struggle that followed the fall of Protector Somerset.

Life

Origins

Sir Miles Partridge of Almondsbury and Bristol is said, conventionally, to have belonged to one of the numerous Partridge or Partryche families of Gloucestershire, as may seem likely from his association with that region during his lifetime. Sir Bernard Burke claimed that he was a relative of William Partryche of Wishanger in Miserden,'Partridge of Bishop's Wood: Lineage', in B. Burke (ed. Burke), ''A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry in Great Britain and Ireland'', 8th edition (1894), vol. II
p. 1570
(Internet Archive). shown as a descendant of Sir Roger Partryche of Kendal, although Miles's name is not shown in the pedigree of that family taken in the 1623 Heraldic visitation for Gloucestershire. Miles is commonly identified as a son of Sir John Partridge and his wife Agnes Bennett shown in this pedigree.

However, Clive Cheesman, Norroy and Ulster King of Arms, has pointed out that when Hugh Partridge, brother of Miles, was granted arms by Gilbert Dethick, Norroy, in February 1548/49, he was described as "borne in ye northern partes gentelman... descended of a house undefamed". The arms awarded to Hugh (tricked with a crescent cadency mark for the second son) were entirely unlike those of the Partridges of Wishanger. Apparently an augmentation (and perhaps a confirmation) of Hugh's arms was prepared for Miles Partridge by Sir Christopher Barker, Garter (died January 1549/50). That Hugh and Miles were brothers appears from their various joint grants or conveyances of former monastic properties, and other transactions, at this date. If they were born in northern parts, this seems to contradict the proposed Gloucestershire origins.C. Cheesman, 'Partridges: the history of a prohibition', ''The Coat of Arms. The journal of the Heraldry Society'', Third Series, Vol. IV part 1, No. 215 (Slough, Spring 2008), pp. 29-62
at pp. 50, 58, and Plate 5
(Heraldry Society pdf).

Courtier and soldier

Miles has been described as a courtier and a soldier, an urbane figure who mixed with well-read courtiers. In the London subsidy of 1541, where his name is listed next to that of the historian John Leland, he was appraised at 20s on property valued at £40 in the half-parish of St Michael-le-Querne, in the ward of Farringdon Within. He was granted the lordship and manor of Almondsbury in Gloucestershire (formerly belonging to St Augustine's Abbey, Bristol), with a reservation of £8.10s rent, in fee, for £1,773 (April 1545).

With the grant of Almondsbury, Partridge received also certain lands and mills in Kingswood, South Gloucestershire, and also "the buildings and steeple commonly called Jhesus Steple in the parish of St Faith, London, with the site and precinct of the same... except the bells in the said steeple". This relates to a celebrated story. Partridge held the office of chief Master of the King’s games, pastimes, and sports, and gained notoriety as a gambler. It was commonly said that on one occasion, when gambling with the king, he staked £100 on a single throw of the dice against the bells of the Jesus Chapel in the churchyard of St. Paul's Cathedral and the tower on which they hung. Partridge won, and had the bells broken and the tower taken down. "The same had a great spire of timber, covered with lead, with the image of St Paul on the top."

Partridge retained Henry's favour, for at the Coronation of Edward VI he was confirmed as Groom Porter to the young king under a grant of reversion made by Henry, so displacing Edward's own preferred servant Edward Cornwallis."4 Edward VI, Part VI. 1 September 1550, Leighes", in ''Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edward VI'', III: A.D. 1549-1551 (HMSO, London 1925)
p. 327
(Hathi Trust). He accompanied Sir Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset in the expedition to Scotland in 1547. He accepted the surrender of Thornton Castle, fought at the battle of Pinkie on 10 September, and was knighted at Roxburgh on 28 September.

In 1547-48 (commencing 27 November 1547) he served as High Sheriff of Gloucestershire, the oldest secular office under the Crown. In 1548, he was granted extensive former monastic properties in and around Bristol, and with Sir John Butler he purchased other properties in Gloucestershire. In May 1549 he acquired the riverside mansion at Kew which John Machell had purchased in 1546 (befitting a Master of the Clothworkers' Company): Partridge's occupancy was equally short-lived. In June 1550 he was also occupying a large property in Paternoster Row (in the parish of St Faith under St Paul's), belonging to the estate of Sir Christopher Barker, Garter Principal King of Arms, the same who granted arms to Miles Partridge.

Condemnation and death

In September 1550 Edward Cornwallis was granted a reversion to succeed Partridge as Groom Porter. After his long service in the court of Henry VIII and Edward VI, Partridge became implicated in the plot against Edward Seymour’s successor as Regent, John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland. On 7 October 1551 he was accused by Sir Thomas Palmer of having undertaken to raise London and seize the Great Seal of the Realm, with the help of the apprentices. It was reported that he had entered too deeply into the amusements of the Court.

His guilt is not clear: both Palmer and Northumberland subsequently confessed that the evidence was false. While gallantly protecting a duchess, he was arrested at her house on 16 October 1551 on charges of conspiring against Lord Dudley. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London and was afterwards moved, on grounds of ill-health, to the lieutenant's house on Tower Hill, where his wife was permitted to attend him. The charges brought against him, and against Sir Ralph Vane, Sir Thomas Arundel and Sir Michael Stanhope were for "the Felony of moving, stirring and procuring of diverse persons for the felonious taking imprisoning and killing of diverse of our Privy Council", to which all four knights pleaded Not Guilty.

A commission being appointed for his trial on 29 November, he was convicted of felony and was hanged on Tower Hill on Friday 26 February 1552.The writs for the executions of the Duke of Somerset and the four knights are printed at length in T. Rymer, ''Foedera, Conventiones, Literae, et Cujuscunque Genere Acta, etc.'' (A. and J. Churchill, London 1713), vol XV
pp. 295-97
(Google). Others implicated were executed there the same day: Vane was also hanged, and Arundel and Stanhope were beheaded.E.W. Brayley, ''Londiniana: or, Reminiscences of the British Metropolis: including characteristic sketches, antiquarian, topographical, descriptive, and literary'' (Hurst, Chance, and Co., London 1829), IV
p.166
(Internet Archive). Partridge was little pitied, wrote John Strype, both because of his association with the actions of Edward Seymour, and also because his destruction of the bells at the Jesus Chapel was thought to have served King Henry's renunciation of papal authority.

After his death, on 16 April 1552 the capital messuage, gardens, orchards, stable, dairy house and lands at Kew (within the parish of Mortlake), together with all his goods and chattels there, were granted to Sir Henry Gates, Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, in light of the attainder of Miles Partridge. In April 1553, by patent of the Court of Augmentations, his widow Joan received compensation of her dower from the Crown and was granted the lordship, manor and borough of Kenn, in Devon. Early in the reign of Queen Mary, in December 1553 his heirs were restored in blood by private act of Parliament,'Martis, 5o Decembris. Pertryche's Restitution' (05 December 1553), in ''Journal of the House of Commons: Volume 1, 1547-1629'' (London 1802)
pp. 32-33
(British History Online, accessed 6 February 2025). and by further grants Joan's dower was confirmed to her during 1554.

Family

Miles Partridge had one documented brother, Hugh Partridge, who was granted arms at London in 1549 by Sir Gilbert Dethick. Miles and Hugh acted jointly in land acquisitions in Bristol, Gloucestershire and elsewhere during the period 1545-1551. One Hugh Partridge married Eleanor Burbage (as her second husband) soon after 1553: she remarried to Oliver St John of Lambeth (1510-1571) in July 1567.C.F.H. Evans, 'The family of St John of Lambeth', ''Surrey Archaeological Collections'' LXIII (Surrey Archaeological Society, Guildford 1966), pp. 151-56
at p. 153, and see note 15 at pp. 155-56
(Internet Archive).

The suggested relationship of Miles (and therefore Hugh) to William Partridge of Wishanger, as sons of Sir John Partridge of Cirencester and Dame Agnes (or Anne) Bennett, was a conjecture by Sir Bernard Burke for which no documentary verification was cited.

Miles Partridge married a wife named Jane (or Joan). Two daughters, Margery and Katherine, are named as his heirs when, following his attainder and execution, they obtained restitution in blood by act of Parliament in 1553.

One of these daughters married William Stokebrege, Grocer. In 1563 George Barton, rector of St Mary Abchurch, was imprisoned for committing adultery with her.

Daughters:
* Margery Partridge, living 1553.
* Katherine Partridge, living 1553.

* ? Anne Partridge, (reputedly) married (as his first wife) John Vavasor of Waltham Abbey, Essex, son of Marmaduke Vavasor of Acaster and Anna Saltmarsh.'Vavasor', in W.C. Metcalfe (ed.), ''The Visitations of Essex in 1552, 1558, 1570, 1612 and 1634'', 2 vols, Harleian Society XIII-XIV (1878-79), II: Miscellaneous Essex Pedigrees
p. 611
(Internet Archive).

References

;Attribution
*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Partridge, Miles
1552 deaths
People executed under the Tudors for treason against England
Executed English people
16th-century English knights
High sheriffs of Gloucestershire
People executed under Edward VI
Year of birth unknown
English people of the Rough Wooing