Name William Hawte | Role Composer | |
Sir William Hawte (also Haute or Haut) (c.1430-1497) was a prominent member of an important Kentish gentry family of long standing and royal service, which, through its near connections to the Woodville family, became closely and dangerously imbroiled in the last phases of the Wars of the Roses.
Contents
It is claimed that he is the same Sir William Hawte who was a composer of liturgical and devotional choral music (who flourished c. 1460–1470), represented in a number of manuscript choirbooks that survive to this day. A setting of the Benedicamus may be found in the Pepys Manuscript, and a number of his works, including a Stella coeli, exist in the Ritson Manuscript.
Family
Hawte the composer is identified as a son of William Hawte of Bishopsbourne, Kent, M.P., by his second wife, Joan Wydeville, daughter of Richard Wydeville, M.P. (1385-1441), of Grafton, Northamptonshire and Maidstone, Kent, who married c. 1429. He was therefore nephew of the 1st Earl Rivers and first cousin to Elizabeth Woodville, Queen Consort of King Edward IV. William Hawte was knighted in 1464, at the queen's coronation.
Hawte's grandfather, Sir Nicholas Haute, had a younger brother Edmund, whose son John Haute represented a cadet branch of the family at Pluckley, Kent. In 1474 Sir William received land from his cousins, the daughters of John.
According to the Harleian pedigrees he had three brothers (Richard, Edward and James) and two sisters, one of whom, Alicia (died 1462) was the first wife of Sir John Fogge. Sir William married Joan, daughter of Henry Horne, MP.
Sir William Hawte of Bishopsbourne died on 2 July in the 12th year of Henry VII (1497), seised of the manors of Wadnale, Bishopsbourne, Elmsted, Blakmanston, Otterpool, Warehorne and Snave, in fee. His son and heir Thomas Haute was then aged 33 and more.
Children
Sir William and Dame Joan were the parents of: