William Hawte

Sir William Hawte (also Haute or Haut) (c. 1430 – 2 July 1497) was a prominent member of a Kentish gentry family of long standing in royal service, which, through its near connections to the Woodville family, became closely and dangerously embroiled in the last phases of the Wars of the Roses. 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. Two settings of the Benedicamus Domino are found in the Pepys Manuscript, and another work attributed to him, a Stella coeli, extirpavit (a Latin prayer to the Virgin, for protection from plague ) exists in the Ritson Manuscript. Family Hawte the composer is identified as a son of William Haute 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. William the father did have a child by his first wife, and there is mention of a young William Haute seeking a novitiate at Christ Church priory in Canterbury around 1430. However the weight of evidence i