In the year 1305, July 1st. to July 4th., King Edward I was hosted at the great house at Milkhouse, the name of the village just outside the manor. The deBarhams decided to sell the property about 1490 or shortly before and retire to the manor of Teston near Maidstone. The buyer of the property was Thomas Baker.
John Baker to whom King Edward III granted our heraldic coat of arms during his reign from 1327-1377.
Richard Baker died in 1504 leaving Sissinghurst to his eldest son, John, who was but sixteen years old. The property was to be managed by his executors until John reached the age of twenty-four.
John’s father’s will had a bequest to find him to his “Learnings in Court”. Historians have picked up on this bequest with the analogy that he “was bred for the law”. On June 29, 1506, when John was eighteen years of age, we do find him at the Inner Temple in London, where a chamber was assigned to him under the Library. The Temple was the seat of training for those in the judicial system at that time. Students of law were housed there during their period of learning. So were those sitting on the Bench.
John Baker’s lifelong association with the Temple began when he was Clerk of the Kitchen (June 22, 1515), called to the Bench (February 11, 1517), Attendant on the Reader (1520) and appointed Reader (April 25, 1521). On November 22, 1532 he was 21 appointed one of the Governors and in 1533, on All Souls’ Day, was made Treasurer, but was excused if his duties as Recorder of London prevented him from serving.
In 1540 John Baker was one of the commissioners to inquire into a heresy case at Calais, France where one Adam Damplip had been preaching contrary to the Statute of the Six Articles set forth in 1539.
In July 1540 came the attainder and execution of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex (July 28, 1540). Through his fall promotion again came to Mr. Attorney General Baker.
In August 1540 John Baker is appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer.
On appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer John Baker received. It should also be noted that he also held the office of Under-Treasurer. The two offices were not always held together.
Sir John Baker, as the King’s attorney, appeared in many recorded actions in the dissolution of the Catholic Church. Three months after his appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer, on November 11, 1540, we found Sir John Baker, late Attorney General, was to be “Chancellor of the Court of First Fruits and Tenths and Keeper of the Privy Seal of that Court”. Perhaps, as this was a newly formed Court, it was thought to be a more important office.
Sir John Baker served as Speaker of the House of Parliament under Henry VIII and many recordings of such are on record. At the end of the year 1546 the King was in failing health. In January 1547, under the will of Henry VIII, Sir John Baker was constituted one of the assistant trustees of the Crown during the minority of Edward VI and received a legacy of 200 pounds.
King Henry VIII died on January 28, 1547. Sir John Baker still maintained his position and titles. On January 28, 1548 Sir John the Exchequer prevailed as Speaker of Parliament. Sir John, as the ruling lawyer, was involved in many cases of record. Sir John Baker remained out of the controversy and retired to his new house at Sissinghurst. In Edward VI’s diary it is noted that the Marechal St. Andre, French Ambassador, was received by Mr. Baker at his house at Cranbrook.
The King’s health was now failing. The Duke of Northumberland induced King Edward, being weak with sickness, to make a testament excluding his sisters Mary and Elizabeth from the throne and bequeathing the Crown to Lady Jane Grey, lately married to Northumberland’s son. To this project Sir John Baker, with other chancellors, was an unwilling assenter. On June 12th. Sir John Baker, Sir Edward Montague, Chief Justice of Common Pleas, and Justice Bromley, the Attorney and Solicitor General, were ordered to appear at the Court at Greenwich. They were commanded to draw up a Book of Articles regarding the above which they refused to do. On June 14th. they were again commanded to attend. After much hesitation Sir Edward said, for his part, he would obey the King’s command and so did Mr. Bromley. The King said to Sir John Baker, “What say you? You never said a word today!” Evidently Sir John Baker did not distinctly refuse and he did sign the document that was drawn up with the other counselors. This signing did proclaim Lady Jane Grey as Queen, but after the departure of Northumberland, he joined with the other counselors upon the death of Edward VI in 1533 in proclaiming Mary, the Duke’s sister, Queen.
Under Queen Mary, Sir John Baker continued as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Under Treasurer of England and again was a member of the Privy Council. In the Parliament of 1553 he sat as a member for the borough of Bramber. On November 29, 1553 the bill for the unification, dissolution, or creation of new courts was committed to Sir John Baker after its second reading. In the reorganization of the revenue courts following on this, “Act (1 Mary st.2, c.10)”, he lost the Chancellorship of First Fruits that had been established under 46. Ibid p.21-22 28 Henry VIII.
Sir John started with little, a quarter share in his father’s fairly modest legacy. At his death his estate was enormous. In various parts of Kent and Sussex he held over forty manors and a fortune in addition, which was not completely exhausted two hundred years later despite constant subdivision of the estate and the extravagance of his descendants. Most of this came to him by outwardly legal means. He had gained Henry VIII’s affections at the moment the pickings of the Reformation were greatest.
In the Parliaments of 1554, 1555, and 1557 Sir John Baker was the last of the Knights of the Shire for the County of Kent. In the two Parliaments held in 1554 he and his two sons Richard and John II all sat, an achievement rarely equaled. John II also sat in 1555. The record shows a Thomas Baker representing Bramber that year.
Queen Mary married King Philip of Spain in Winchester Cathedral in 1554. Her marriage was entirely her choice and it provoked riots among the Protestant gentry in Kent. Sir John Baker, as her attorney in many of the cases, was also branded in his home County Kent as ” Bloody Baker”.
Sir John Baker sat in every Parliament held between 1529 and 1558, eleven times as an elected Member in Commons and once as an assistant in Lords. The climax of his Membership was his Speakership of the Parliaments of 1545 and 1547.
His ability and industry carried him through his career. His freedom from political ambition and religious zeal allowed him to swing with the moods of the monarchs and to retain his position. His capacity for working and mixing with disparate elements present in the House were all credits to his professional ability.
It is impossible to say what affect Sir John’s long tenure had on the Commons. His two speakerships certainly coincided with important developments there. Membership grew from 349 when he first became Speaker to 379 when he laid down the office. There was the removal to St. Stephen’s Chapel, the rise of committees, and the regularizing of divisions. Whenever such changes originated it must have fallen to Baker to guide the House in its adaptation to them and here his continuity of longtime service may have been his greatest asset.
The manor of Sissinghurst passed to Sir John’s eldest son, named Richard. He made little attempt to emulate the heights of his father’s career, but it began on similar lines. Queen Elizabeth I made a tour of Kent in August of 1573. She came to Sissinghurst from Knole after staying there with Cicely Baker Sackville. She stayed the 15th.-17th. of August at the castle.
The next sixty years of this line can be passed over rapidly. There are few personal records regarding these Bakers. The births, marriages, and deaths are there, but tell us little. The same lands and manors they inherit pass on dutifully from father to son. Sissinghurst passed down through the generations until the direct line of descent ends in 1661.
In 1756 there was a 9,000 pound mortgage on Sissinghurst Castle. Sissinghurst became a prison for reportedly up to 1,750 French prisoners. Much devastation of property took place before the end of the war in 1763. The Beagham family owned the property and filed for damages to it.
Throughout the nineteenth century Sissinghurst was regarded as the most important farm in the entire Weald Estates. In 1855 George Neve was teneting the farm of both the Castle and also Bettenham farms, a total of 767 acres. The Manns built Neve, a large Victorian house in 1855, which sits to the right of the approach to Sissinghurst Castle today. The property passed down through the Corwallis line until they decided to sell it in 1903. The property was held by Barton Chessman until 1926 when he sold it to William Wilmshurst whose son and heir put it up for sale in 1928.
On April 4, 1930, Vita Sackville-West, a direct descendant in the thirteenth generation of Cecily Baker and Thomas Sackvill of Knole, visited Sissinghurst for the first time accompanied by her young son Nigel. She went there out of more than curiosity as she and her husband, Harold Nicolson, were looking for a house in Kent where they could make a new garden, since their house, Long Barn, Seven Oaks Weald, two miles from Knole, was threatened by a proposed building of chicken houses in the fields surrounding their property. The property caught instantly at her heart; she fell in love with it at first sight. She wrote of her feelings, “It was a Sleeping Beauty’s Castle; but a castle running away into sordidness and squalor; a garden crying out for rescue. It was easy to foresee, even then, what a struggle we should have to redeem it.”61 And redeem it they did! Thanks to Vita and her husband Harold and sons Harold and Nigel, the Baker Estate of Sissinghurst shall live on forever.
A full accounting of Sissinghurst Castle can be found in Nigel Nicolson’s illustrated history of Sissinghurst Castle. His mother, Vita, died at Sissinghurst in June 1962 in the first floor bedroom of the Priest’s House. She left the Castle and a large part of the estate to her son Nigel, excepting the South Cottage which was bequeathed to her husband Harold for his lifetime. He died there in May 1968. Nigel transformed the South Wing of the entrance range to his private quarters for his family and opened negotiations with the National Trust to take over the Castle and part of the estate in part-payment of the estate duty. The negotiations were concluded in April 1967 and Sissinghurst now belongs to the National Trust and is open to the public daily from April until October. Nigel Nicolson still lives there and oversees the property on the Trust’s behalf.