page_title: St Mary Magdalene's Church, Battlefield
section_title: Disposal of properties
hierarchical_section_title: St Mary Magdalene's Church, Battlefield / Dissolution / Disposal of properties
caption_attribution_description: English: Walter Mildmay (1523-1589), Chancellor of the Exchequer, Founder of Emmanuel College, Cambridge
context_page_description: St Mary Magdalene's Church is in the village of Battlefield, Shropshire, England. It was built on the site of the 1403 Battle of Shrewsbury between Henry IV and Henry "Hotspur" Percy, and was originally intended as a chantry, a place of intercession and commemoration for those killed in the fighting. It is probably built over a mass burial pit. It was originally a collegiate church staffed by a small community of chaplains whose main duty was to perform a daily liturgy for the dead. Roger Ive, the local parish priest, is generally regarded as the founder, although the church received considerable support and endowment from Henry IV. After the dissolution of the college and chantry in 1548, the building was used as the local parish church and it underwent serious decay, punctuated by attempts at rebuilding from the mid-18th century. A restoration in Victorian times was controversial in intention, scope and detail, although many original features remain. Today it is a redundant Anglican church. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II* listed building, and is under the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.
context_section_description: While John Cupper handled the income stream from the properties of the former college, they were advertised for sale by the Court of Augmentations. The business was handled centrally for the Court by Sir Walter Mildmay, one of its surveyors, and a client of Thomas Seymour, although a future Chancellor of the Exchequer of England. The asking price was generally twenty times the annual value. Locally, the valuations and details of the Shropshire properties were signed off for the Court of Augmentations by Richard Cupper or Couper, its surveyor in Shropshire and Staffordshire, who seems to have been John Cupper's brother, and who was certainly a Shropshire man, although he too was now based in London. Richard Cupper was a client and close aide of William Paget, a key figure in the king's administration and an important Staffordshire landowner, although his family too were probably of humble origins in the West Midlands.
  John Cupper then appeared in his rôle as a large-scale speculator. In concert with Richard Trevor, both said to be London gentlemen, he bid for the Battlefield College properties. However, the venture was much bigger than this. For a batch of properties, including numerous chantry estates, which were granted to them on 10 April 1549, they paid the Court of Augmentations the then large sum of £2050 13s 9d, (equivalent to £992,009 in 2019) The former assets of Battlefield included in the deal were the church and rectory of St. Julian, Shrewsbury; the site of the college (excluding the curate's lodging); Albright Hussey chapel; tithes of grain, corn, sheaves and hay in Harlescott, then in the tenure of Thomas Ireland; cottages called "lez bothes" on Hussey estate land near the college, which seem to have been market stalls; and the proceeds of the annual fair on St Mary Magdalene's day. Thomas Ireland bought his tithes from John Cowper on 2 July that year. It is probable Cowper and Trevor disposed of the remaining properties in a similar way, looking first to purchasers who already had an interest in the land and thus in maximising the profit of their own labours: certainly the former Hussey land was bought back at some stage in the process and remained in the family until 1638.
  Small estates in Lancashire, around St Michael's on Wyre were marketed in a similar way and granted on 12 December 1549 to John Pykarell and John Barnard, who paid £243 18s 10d. (equivalent to £118,009 in 2019) for a batch that also included properties in Norfolk and Kent. The particulars for the sale, drawn up by the Court of Augmentations, priced these former Battlefield properties at £26 8s., twenty-two times their annual value. Thomas Sydney of Norfolk and Nicholas Halswell of Norfolk agreed to pay £40 for the township of Aston at Shifnal on 3 April 1553. This was granted on 1 May as part of a large batch for which they paid £1709 19s. 8½d. (equivalent to £731,331 in 2019), channelling the payment through Sir Edmund Peckham, a prominent supporter of Princess Mary who was high treasurer of all the mints in England 
  This fire sale at the end of a Protestant reign was followed by a long lull. Not until late in the reign of Elizabeth I did sales recommence, with the rectory of Shifnal put on the market in 1588 and Ford church two years later. The patronage and rectory of  St Michael's Church, St Michael's on Wyre, were retained by the Crown until the reign of James I.
caption: Sir Walter Mildmay, a general surveyor of the Court of Augmentations in the 1540s
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