CHARLTON, Thomas

For much of the fifteenth century, the Charltons were the wealthiest gentry family resident in Middlesex, a county dominated by the city of London and a number of wealthy religious houses (not least the great abbey of St. Peter at Westminster), but otherwise largely free from the overbearing political influence of any individual secular magnate. The family had a tradition of parliamentary service which reached back as far as the early years of Edward III’s reign, when a John Charlton† had represented Middlesex in the Parliaments of 1337 and 1338 (July).9 He may have been the same John de Cherleton who had sat for the city of London in 1318. In 1381 and 1384 (Nov.) Thomas Charlton†, grandfather to the subject of this biography, followed in his footsteps, but it was not until the reign of Henry V that the Charltons began to represent their neighbours in the Commons on a more regular basis. The family’s prominence in the gentry community of Middlesex owed much to two advantageous marriages contracted by this first Thomas and his synonymous son and heir. The former had at some point in or after 1386 married the widow of the wealthy landowner Henry Frowyk† of South Mimms, head of a family of equal prominence in Middlesex and the city of London. Relations between the Charltons and the Frowyks remained close throughout the fifteenth century, and both the subject of this biography and his father were regularly associated with the latter’s half-brothers, Thomas Frowyk I* (five times a knight of the shire for Middlesex), and Henry Frowyk I* (on several occasions master of the Mercers’ Company, twice mayor of London, mayor of the Westminster staple from 1446 to 1457, and five times an MP for London), and later with the two men’s sons, Henry II* and Thomas II*, who each also rose to prominence in their own right and represented Middlesex in the Commons.10 Westminster Abbey mun. 462; J.S. Roskell, Commons of 1422, pp. 164-5. If the elder Thomas had by his marriage gained the family valuable connexions, it fell to his son and heir to increase substantially their landed wealth. He took as his bride Elizabeth, one of the coheiresses of Sir Adam Francis†, the rusticated heir of Adam Francis†, a former mayor of London, and one of the city’s richest citizens in the mid fourteenth century.11 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 516-17; iii. 118. Quite apart from providing the Charltons with further ties among London’s merchant elite, and the expectation of a valuable inheritance, this marriage directly connected the family with the higher nobility, for Sir Adam’s sister, Maud, had married John Montagu, earl of Salisbury, and the later Speaker could consequently claim Alice Montagu, countess of Salisbury, as his second cousin, and the later ‘Kingmaker’, Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, as his second cousin once removed. It is not clear to what extent the Charltons basked in the reflected glory of their exalted relatives, but others certainly maintained that the subject of this biography ‘Comitissam de Salisbury vendicaret in gradu propinquiori consanguineam se habere, et propterea elatior in multo’,12 Reg. Whethamstede, ed. Riley, 203. and his place as a member of the wider Neville family found recognition by his inclusion on their genealogical and heraldic record, the ‘Salisbury Roll’.13 M. Hicks, Warwick, 96.

According to his purported age at the time of his father’s death, Thomas Charlton, the future Speaker, was born about 1417. No details of his education have been discovered, and the books found in his possession at his death give no indication whether he had a grasp of either French or Latin. If he had read these books himself, rather than simply inheriting them, he may nevertheless have been familiar with some of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer† and William Langland, as well as (to a limited degree) have concerned himself with contemporary political thought, for his library, described by K.B. McFarlane rather flatteringly as ‘[m]uch the most attractive collection known to [him]’ and ‘[t]he library of a man of evident discrimination’,14 K.B. McFarlane, Nobility of Med. Eng. 237-8. included ‘an engelische booke calde Giles de regimine principum’, ‘an engelysche boke the whiche was called Troles’, ‘a booke of Persse Plowman in Engelish’ and ‘a booke part of Caunterbury talis in Englisch’.15 Westminster Abbey muns. 6625, m. 2; 6646, m. 2d. The ‘boke enlemyd with pagentes coverid with velvet þat my Lady Porter gave Mistress Elizabeth’ noticed by Colin Richmond evidently never belonged to Sir Thomas, and came into the executors’ hands after his daughter’s death: C.F. Richmond, Paston Fam. : Fastolf’s Will, 157; Westminster Abbey muns. 6629, 6630, m. 5.

Little is known of the early part of Charlton’s career. Unlike his father, who had served in the duke of Bedford’s retinue in 1420 and accompanied the young Henry VI on his coronation expedition in 1430, he appears to have played no part in the defence of Lancastrian France.16 On chronological grounds it seems unlikely that he was the man who served in the retinue of Sir John Radcliffe* at Evreux in Jan. 1430: Bibliothèque Nationale, Fr. 26290/6. He is first heard of for certain in January 1440, as one of the feoffees of the Buckinghamshire landowner John Fitzjohn.17 CPR, 1436-41, p. 367. By Michaelmas 1441 he had joined the King’s household as one of the esquires of the hall and chamber. In this capacity, he would receive annual liveries until at least 1452, and probably until Henry VI’s deposition, serving a brief spell as controller of the Household in the final months of the reign.18 E101/409/9; 11, f. 38; 16, f. 34; 410/1, f. 30; 3; 6, f. 39v; 9, f. 42v. He was described as ‘miles quidam de familia Domini Regis’ by John Whethamstede in 1455: Reg. Whethamstede, 202. Membership of the Household may have brought him into contact with the family from which he would not long after draw his bride. There is some suggestion that Charlton’s father had originally intended him to marry the daughter and heiress-presumptive of the wealthy chancellor of the Exchequer, Henry Somer*, but if there had ever been such a plan, it came to nothing,19 The evidence for this betrothal, the deposition of a 94-year-old former bailiff from Essex made in the later 1470s or early 1480s, presents some problems. According to the bailiff’s statement, it was Somer’s widow who broke off the match after a disagreement with Sir Thomas Charlton. This was clearly not the case, as Somer lived until 1450, and in the event survived his daughter, who had married Sir Richard de Vere: The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 517; iv. 403-4; Edmonton Hundred Historical Soc. n.s. xxvii. 11-12. and in the autumn of 1441 Thomas himself agreed to marry Benedicta, daughter of the prominent Midland landowner Sir Richard Vernon, and sister of Fulk Vernon*, a fellow esquire of the Household. On 18 Nov. Charlton and Sir Richard agreed that within 40 days of the wedding, which was set for Sunday 21 Jan. 1442, Charlton would settle a jointure worth £40 on his wife, which would be augmented by a further 40 marks’ worth of lands, within a year of his coming into his inheritance. In return, Vernon would pay to him a total of £320 over the course of three years, £200 of which Charlton would repay, should Benedicta die without issue within four years of the wedding. Should she live, Vernon would additionally settle on the couple a manor worth 20 marks p.a. within the same period of four years. On 21 Nov. the contract was secured by reciprocal bonds for the vast sum of £1,000.20 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 42-44.

The marriage eventually produced no fewer than five surviving children,21 The birth dates of the three daughters are uncertain, but at least two of them were still under age when Charlton made his will in 1465: PCC 8 Godyn. but Thomas had to wait until 28 June 1449 before his wife provided him with a son and heir. The birth was not an easy one, and even two decades later a neighbour, Simon Kenford, whose wife supported Benedicta Charlton during her labour, recalled hearing the mother crying out throughout the night. Once the boy was safely born, Charlton immediately sent for his friend and Bedfordshire neighbour Robert Olney* to be godfather, but as Olney was away in the north, the Edmonton gentleman William Deynes and the chaplain Richard Jauncys had to serve instead. Years later, witnesses remembered how Joan Frowyk (wife of Charlton’s cousin Thomas II) came on her white horse from nearby South Mimms to be godmother.22 C140/35/64.

Nothing is known of Charlton’s activities in his first Parliament, to which he had been elected ten days before his wedding, and in which he was joined by one of his new brothers-in-law, William Vernon*, who had been chosen a knight for Derbyshire. At the end of Parliament, Charlton and his fellow Middlesex Member, the King’s physician John Somerset*, were commissioned in the customary form along with the treasurer Ralph, Lord Cromwell, to distribute the rebates to the grants of taxation made by the Commons among the vills of Middlesex.

The death of Charlton’s father in 1445 placed in his hands the bulk of the family estates. In 1436, Sir Thomas’s annual income had been assessed for tax purposes at £100, but in reality it was rather greater.23 EHR, xlix. 638. The lands which now descended to his son included the Middlesex manors of Swakeleys (in Ickenham), Cowley Hall, Hercies and Little Hillingdon, and lands at Uxbridge and Colham in the same county.24 VCH Mdx. iv. 73, 74, 102; C140/17/31. The inheritance had been somewhat diminished by the father’s alienation of a number of properties, including the manors of Burston in Hertfordshire and Cowley Peachey and Little Greenford in Middlesex,25 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 517; VCH Mdx. iii. 173; iv. 124; CP40/789, rot. 322. but Thomas was more than compensated by those which came to him after his mother’s death in February 1451. These included property in the city of London worth more than £18 p.a., the Bedfordshire manor of Eyworth, said to be worth 20 marks p.a., and half the Middlesex manor of Edmonton, extending over several hundreds of acres and worth £20 p.a.26 CFR, xviii. 178, 198; C139/143/33; VCH Beds. ii. 231; VCH Mdx. v. 149. Over the course of his life, Charlton further augmented his holdings, acquiring the Cambridgeshire manors of Barton Burwash and Arnolds (in Trumpington), the manors of ‘Rocalde’, ‘Chobhams’ and ‘Refhams’ in the parishes of Writtle and Danbury, and some 250 acres elsewhere in Essex, as well as further property in Surrey, Northamptonshire and Middlesex, including the manor of Deephams in Edmonton, which Charlton bought from the executors of Lord Cromwell for the sum of 350 marks.27 VCH Cambs. v. 163; viii. 256; CCR, 1461-8, p. 132; C140/17/31; CP40/740, rot. 137d; Westminster Abbey mun. 9207A, m. 5. The Mdx. property also included the lands of the rectory of Ruislip which Charlton held to farm from the dean and canons of Windsor from Mich. 1453: St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, recs. XV.48.23, m. 8; 25, m. 9; 26, m. 7; 27, m. 7; 31, m. 6. Two decades later, it was believed that Deephams, which had originally belonged to the Somer family, had been surrendered to the grasping Cromwell by the widow of Henry Somer with the explicit intention of thwarting the elder Thomas Charlton’s ambition to own it.28 Edmonton Hundred Historical Soc. n.s. xxvii. 11-12. The death in 1461 of Thomas’s maternal aunt Agnes (the widow of Henry V’s executor Sir William Porter† of Wimpole) eventually allowed him to reunite in his hands the entire Francis estates, and it is likely that the £218 5s. 10d. at which his lands were valued at the time of his death represented something of an underestimate.29 C140/17/31.

It is probable that Charlton’s membership of the King’s household (as much as his new-found landed wealth) played some part in securing him election to the Bury Parliament of 1447, which was dominated by men connected with the court, and, following the arrest and death of the duke of Gloucester, marked the final phase of the ascendancy of William de la Pole, marquess of Suffolk. The two years that followed the dissolution were marked by the rapid disintegration of the English military position in Normandy, and the eventual summons of a new assembly to meet at Westminster in February 1449 represented a last-ditch attempt to raise the taxation desperately need to shore up the duke of Somerset’s forces in the duchy. On this occasion, Charlton was not re-elected, although he was named second among the Middlesex gentry who put their seals to the sheriff’s indenture. The limited aids agreed by the Commons in this Parliament did little to improve the plight of the English in Normandy, and not much over two months after the dissolution writs were issued for a fresh Parliament. This time, the electors of Middlesex once again chose as one of their representatives Charlton, who earlier in the autumn had been treating with his neighbours for loans to the effectively insolvent government.30 The name of Charlton’s colleague is illegible: C219/330/24. Yet, by the time the Commons assembled on 6 Nov., Rouen had capitulated, and news of the surrender must have reached London early in the first session. Parliament proved a stormy occasion, dominated by the impeachment of Suffolk during the second session in early 1450. Nor was the final session, held in the early summer at Leicester, well away from the fractious mob of the capital, any less turbulent: reports of Suffolk’s murder on 2 May were soon followed by the news that all of southern England was in open rebellion on a scale not seen since the Peasants’ Revolt, and in the early days of June Parliament was hastily disbanded. With much of the south barely pacified, it is understandable that Charlton did not seek re-election to the new Parliament summoned that autumn. Along with his cousin Henry Frowyk II he headed the electors sealing the indenture which recorded the election of another cousin, Thomas Frowyk II.

Charlton’s activities over the following two years are obscure. At some point during this period he was knighted, perhaps alongside his kinsmen Thomas and John Neville, the sons of the earl of Salisbury, William Herbert*, Roger Lewknor* and William Catesby* at the ceremony held at the Tower on 5 Jan. 1453 for the dubbing of the King’s half-brothers, the newly created earls of Pembroke and Richmond.31 Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed.Stevenson, ii (2), [770], misdated to 1449; John Benet’s Chron. (Cam. Misc. xxiv), 208; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 698-9. A few weeks later, Charlton was elected to represent Middlesex in the Commons once more. Parliament assembled at Reading abbey on 6 Mar., already overshadowed by the increasingly desperate military situation in Gascony. In the light of the gravity of the crisis, the Commons rapidly agreed generous grants of taxation, and on 28 Mar. Parliament was prorogued for Easter. A second session at Westminster, which began on 25 Apr., lasted until 2 July, when the Commons agreed a further subsidy and were sent back to their constituencies until 12 Nov., on which day they were to reassemble at Reading. The intervening months saw a succession of dramatic events. On 17 July the English were routed by Charles VII’s forces at Castillon, the earl of Shrewsbury and a number of other English commanders were killed, and in October Bordeaux was surrendered to the French, bringing almost three centuries of English rule in Gascony to an end. The news of the defeat at Castillon sent Henry VI into deep despondency, and about the beginning of August he was laid low by a combination of total mental collapse, and near-complete physical immobility.32 Griffiths, 715. In view of the King’s illness, on 12 Nov. the reassembled Parliament was immediately prorogued further until 11 Feb. 1454, in the hope that Henry might recover his sanity. On that day, Parliament met once more at Reading, only to be told that the assembly would be transferred to Westminster, where MPs and Lords should reassemble three days later. With the King incapacitated, the question of who should preside over Parliament arose, and on 13 Feb. Richard, duke of York, was commissioned by the council to do so in Henry’s stead. Yet, even before the Commons could come to terms with the dramatically changed political circumstances, they found themselves faced with a procedural crisis rather closer to home. Thomas Thorpe*, the Speaker whom they had chosen in March 1453, was a known opponent of the duke of York, and – probably on account of a civil action brought against him by the duke in the autumn of 1453 – found himself in the Fleet prison when Parliament reconvened. This was not in itself an unusual circumstance: throughout Henry VI’s reign Chancery frequently issued writs of parliamentary privilege to secure the release of MPs and their servants from the King’s prisons. What was more unusual – and consequently indicative of the superior forces behind Thorpe’s arrest – was that the Commons had to petition formally for the release of their Speaker, as well as of Walter Ralegh*, a Devon Member also in prison on unspecified charges. In the case of Speaker Thorpe, the Commons were to be disappointed, for the Lords accepted the duke of York’s argument that the special circumstances of Thorpe’s offence precluded him from claiming privilege of Parliament, and the Commons were ordered to elect another Speaker. Their choice now fell on Sir Thomas Charlton.

The motives underlying the Commons’ choice are unclear, but it is possible that one consideration that played a part was that Charlton possessed links with both the royal household and (through his Neville kinsmen) family ties with York, who had by now emerged as the figurehead of those discontented with the duke of Somerset’s conduct of the French war: Charlton was an experienced MP who had sat in several previous Parliaments as a knight of the shire, a longstanding member of the King’s household, and widely connected, both through his wife’s Vernon relatives, and his own Frowyk kinsmen. The latter link may have been of some importance, as Charlton’s uncle Henry Frowyk I was at the time the most senior alderman in London and serving as mayor of the staple of Westminster, thus providing important connexions in the City, where the duke of York enjoyed considerable popularity. Charlton’s later career suggests that he himself also harboured Yorkist sympathies, perhaps even at this date, although it is uncertain what part his remote ties of kinship with the duke played.33 J.S. Roskell, Speakers, 255-6. Maud Francis, sister of Charlton’s maternal grandfather, was the grandmother of Alice Montagu, wife of Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, and sister-in-law of York’s duchess, Cecily Neville. Certainly, Charlton nurtured his links with his Neville kinsfolk, and in early 1458 ranked prominently among the feoffees of John Neville, the future Lord Montagu, and his wife, Isabel.34 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 213, 217, 219, 220, 241; CPR, 1485-94, p. 399. Similarly, it was undoubtedly his kinship with the Nevilles that led to his inclusion among the feoffees named in a draft feoffment of lands dated 5 Jan. 1454 and drawn up by the Neville associate and sitting MP John Archer II*.35 Shakespeare Centre Archs., Archer mss, DR37/1/Box 53/3141.

At least one – arguably biased – commentator maintained that Charlton had actively sought the Speakership to promote his private affairs. This was the opinion recorded with considerable venom by John Whethamstede, abbot of St. Albans, in his account of an acrimonious dispute over the Hertfordshire manor of Burston. This was an old Charlton property, which the Speaker’s parents had granted to John Fray† and his first wife, Agnes, in 1436, and which Fray had in his turn granted to St. Albans abbey after his wife’s death.36 C143/448/18; Reg. Whethamstede, 209-12; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 125. The manor was a valuable one, worth in excess of £11 p.a., and according to Whethamstede, Charlton, who coveted it, took counsel with some like-minded associates to seek its recovery. These associates, the abbot claimed, advised him that ‘quia obstabant sibi jura communia, multum posse in materia sua proficere, nisi quatenus in Parliamento, de proximo tunc tenendo, posset ipse Prolocutor fieri, vigoreque dicti officii trahere ad se Communes, ac ita suum promovere intentum juxta desiderium cordis sui’.37 C139/126/18; Reg. Whethamstede, 136. Having secured the Speakership (albeit belatedly), so Whethamstede said, through the influence of his important friends and kinsmen, Charlton drafted a bill by which he asked for the manor to be restored to him, even though it had been legally sold by his father and signed away by his mother. Unfortunately for Charlton, Abbot Whethamstede, himself a mitred abbot summoned to Parliament in the right of his abbey, by the intervention of Lord Cromwell got wind of the bill before it could be introduced, and succeeded in preventing its passage.38 Reg. Whethamstede, 137; Roskell, Speakers, 255. It is unclear what caused Cromwell to become involved, but one possible contributory factor may have been an old quarrel between Cromwell and Charlton’s father over rights of common in the manor of Edmonton.39 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 517-18.

Charlton would, however, have found little time to pursue his own affairs, as his attention was soon absorbed by far weightier matters. On 15 Mar. the young Prince Edward (who had been born the previous summer) was formally created prince of Wales, and a week later the chancellor, Cardinal Kemp, died, and was replaced on 2 Apr. by Charlton’s kinsman, the earl of Salisbury. A day later, an act appointing the duke of York Protector was passed.40 Roskell, Speakers, 256. After dealing with a variety of military matters, concerning particularly the defence of Calais and the keeping of the seas, Parliament was dissolved on 18 Apr. About Christmas, the King showed signs of recovery, and the following February the duke of York’s protectorate came to a formal end. The duke of Somerset, who had been imprisoned in the Tower since November 1453, regained his freedom, and before long also control of the government. The differences between York and Somerset were blatantly insurmountable by peaceful means, and were only settled by Somerset’s death in the streets of St. Albans on 22 May 1455.

As the Middlesex return for 1455 is lost, it is uncertain whether Charlton was re-elected when Parliament was summoned once more four days later. This did not, however, mean that he was compromised by his position as a member of the King’s household. Although the household had provided the backbone of the royalist forces at the battle of St. Albans, it seems unlikely that Charlton was with his monarch. His links with the duke of York evidently remained intact, for on 28 Nov., nine days after York’s reappointment as Protector, he was added to a special commission of oyer and terminer for Middlesex,41 CPR, 1452-61, p. 300. and on 11 Dec. he was placed in charge of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire as sheriff of the joint bailiwick. Such, indeed, was his position of strength, that during that Advent-tide he felt emboldened to renew his assault on the manor of Burston Hall. This time, he adopted a more subtle approach and procured the documents necessary to underpin his title by a cunning ruse. According to Abbot Whethamstede, Charlton persuaded one John Reve, ‘quemdam virum simplicem, sciolum, et doli nescium’ that he was the rightful owner of the manor by inheritance from his grandfather, and that Reve, in his turn, was nephew and sole heir of the last of his said grandfather’s feoffees, one William Reve, a priest. On this pretext, Charlton persuaded Reve to seal a charter granting the manor back to him, and staged a public delivery of seisin at Burston in the presence of numerous witnesses.42 Reg. Whethamstede, 205-6.

In the first instance, this ruse seemed to be successful. Informed of Charlton’s actions, Whethamstede prudently decided against trying to recover the manor in haste. Having taken counsel, perhaps with the leading lawyer William Lacon I* who would later be acting for him in the matter, he went to law and sued out a special assize. In the meantime, Charlton’s position had been substantially weakened by York’s resignation as Protector on 25 Feb. 1456. Charlton rapidly recognized that he stood little chance of procuring a favourable verdict from a Hertfordshire jury, and when the assize justices came to St. Albans on 6 Apr. he meekly stood at the bar and admitted wrongful disseisin.43 JUST1/340/8; Reg. Whethamstede, 206-16, 431. By this astute move he escaped formal sanctions, such as an award of substantial damages against him, but not extensive ridicule in the pages of the loudly crowing John Whethamstede’s registers, who delighted in repeating the tale of how he had twice thwarted the designs of the ‘miles factiosus’ with his ‘vulpinos … mores’ and his ‘cor satis exaltatum’ on account of his high-ranking kinsfolk, who had ‘per modum canis, ad suum vomitum revertentem’ returned a second time to his unsavoury quest for Burston.44 Reg. Whethamstede, 136, 203, 428, 430. Whatever Whethamstede might say, Charlton’s battle for Burston was not an isolated act of spite towards St. Albans abbey, but formed part of a broader attempt to recover the lands that his parents had alienated. Thus, by the summer of 1456 he was squabbling with the abbot of Wardon over lands in the manor of Eyworth, and two years later he was embroiled in a dispute with Elizabeth, daughter of Robert Warner* and widow of Walter Green*, over the manor of Cowley Peachey.45 CP40/789, rot. 322; 792, rot. 310.

It is a testament to Charlton’s political skills – even Abbot Whethamstede grudgingly admitted that he was thoroughly ‘cautus …, callidus, et subtilis’ – that he maintained good relations with both the court and the increasingly disaffected Yorkist lords as England slipped into civil war over the course of the following three years.46 Reg. Whethamstede, 136. His election to the highly partisan Coventry Parliament in November 1459 cannot simply be explained by his family’s influence in Middlesex and the court party’s failure to impose its own candidate. Charlton himself was this candidate, and the trust placed in him was further underlined by his appointment in December to array the county against the exiled Yorkists. Yet, he did not allow any residual loyalty to King Henry to sour his relations with the duke of York and his adherents. It is not clear whether he was present at the battle of Northampton in July 1460, but shortly after the earl of Warwick’s triumph he sat alongside his Neville kinsmen at the London guildhall among the judges trying the Lancastrian defenders of the Tower, and in August, when the officers of the King’s household were replaced wholesale, he was entrusted with the controllership of the Household.47 PROME, xiv. 44-45; KB9/75/1; Westminster Abbey mun. 6625, m. 7. In the autumn, Charlton was elected to the Parliament summoned by the victors of the battle of Northampton in their turn (as far as it is possible to tell, the first time in almost 30 years that a Middlesex knight of the shire had been directly re-elected), and played his part in overturning the acts which had been passed barely a year earlier by a Parliament of which he had also been a Member.

Now, however, the partisan divisions hardened. The death of the duke of York and the earls of Salisbury and Rutland at Wakefield on 30 Dec. made it clear that a settlement under the terms of which Henry VI would be nominally allowed to retain the throne for life, while the real power would lie in the hands of York, named as the King’s heir, and the Nevilles, could not be maintained permanently. A new arrangement had to be found that removed either the Lancastrian King or his Yorkist challenger from the scene for good. On 2 or 3 Feb. 1461 a Lancastrian army was routed at Mortimer’s Cross by York’s heir, Edward, earl of March, now the new duke. On the same day, Parliament was prorogued to reassemble in May. Charlton’s duties as controller of the Household, as much as his membership of Parliament, meant that he was still at Westminster at the time, and when his kinsman the earl of Warwick hastily assembled a force under the nominal leadership of Henry VI to meet the advance of Queen Margaret’s northern army on London, he accompanied his King. On 17 Feb. the two sides clashed, once again in the streets of St. Albans. The Yorkists were outflanked and decisively beaten, and two of their leaders, William, Lord Bonville*, and Sir Thomas Kyriel*, who had looked to the King for protection, were executed. Charlton, his distant kinsman John Neville, Lord Montagu, and the treasurer’s brother, John, Lord Berners, were captured, but their lives were spared in the first instance.48 CSP Ven. 1202-1509, no. 370. The queen’s army now marched on London, but the skilful prevarication of the citizens combined with the approach of a fresh army under Edward of York from the west, forced its withdrawal northward towards York, taking its prisoners with it. Here Charlton remained in captivity, while the future of the crown of England was settled on the battlefield of Towton on 29 Mar., until he was set free on the eve of the victorious Edward IV’s entry into the city.49 A letter from Bp. Neville of Exeter to Francesco Coppini says that Charlton’s fellow captives, Berners and Montagu, remained in York when the Lancastrian royal family fled, but makes no explicit mention of Charlton, who may nevertheless be assumed to have been in the same position: ibid.

By contrast with the dramatic upheavals that had gone before, the final five years of Charlton’s life seem curiously uneventful. He evidently remained in favour with the new King, for at his death he was in possession of a valuable enamelled collar of Edward’s livery of suns and roses, linked by the white lion badge of the earls of March, weighing no less than 11 ounces and sold by his executors for the princely sum of £11.50 Richmond, 157; Westminster abbey muns. 6625, m. 3. One of the executors’ inventories claimed that the collar weighed only eight ounces, but was nevertheless bought by Frowyk for £11, even though it had only been appraised at £8: Westminster Abbey mun. 6646, m. 5. Nevertheless, he was not called upon to play a leading part in local administration. Between 1461 and 1465 he was appointed to just a single commission in his native Middlesex, although he did remain on the county bench throughout this period. It is possible that during these years he was fully occupied unravelling the tangled affairs of his maternal aunt, Agnes Francis, who had died in 1461, having outlived her three husbands Thomas Basings, William Standon† and Sir William Porter, and putting his own house in order. He thus found only little time for the services as a trustee or feoffee to his neighbours that his social position required him to perform.51 CCR, 1454-61, p. 424; 1461-8, p. 82; 1468-76, no. 1199; PCC 10 Stokton (PROB11/4, ff. 75v-76v); London Metropolitan Archs., Rivington pprs., ACC/0727/1. On 11 Mar. 1462, he settled all of his estates on feoffees headed by his kinsmen Henry and Thomas Frowyk, his friend Robert Olney and a group of associates.52 CCR, 1461-8, p. 132; C140/17/31. The following year, he committed himself to the establishment of a chantry in the university of Oxford to commemorate the souls of Agnes Francis and his own wife, who had died not long before, as well as agreeing to pay four marks p.a. to Agnes’s executors in partial support of a second chantry chaplain.53 CCR, 1461-8, pp. 181-2; Westminster Abbey mun. 5476, m. 1.

On 26 Feb. 1465 Charlton made a brief will, and died on the same day, probably after a short, but intense illness, for on 31 Oct. his executors delivered two silver salt cellars worth £4 7s. 6d. to an apothecary called Byrell to settle a bill of 51s.54 Westminster Abbey mun. 6625, m. 3. Otherwise, the provisions of Charlton’s laconic will were commonplace. He asked to be buried on the north side of the high altar in the chancel of the parish church of Edmonton. He left 6s. 8d. to the high altar of the church, and made bequests to the fabric of the London church of St. Mary Aldermanbury and for the rebuilding of the chancel of the parish church at Ickenham, but otherwise left any other arrangements for the benefit of his soul to his executors’ discretion.55 PCC 8 Godyn. Among Charlton’s chapel furnishings at Swakeleys were found two little tablets with images of St. John the Baptist and St. Anne, while elsewhere there was a tablet of gold containing unspecified relics.56 Westminster Abbey muns. 6630, m. 5; 6646, m. 6. Charlton’s steward, Nicholas Molle, would later remember his master’s wish that the churchwardens of Uxbridge might have 20s. towards the works on their steeple, and by agreement of all of his executors a set of vestments, two altar cloths and an altar frontal of damask, the latter specially embroidered with the Charlton arms, were given to Edmonton church.57 Ibid. 5471, f. 11; 6625, m. 4.

Charlton’s other bequests included dowries of £200 each to his two unmarried daughters, Agnes and Mary, 40s. to each gentleman of his household, silver-gilt cups to the lawyer William Manser, a former under sheriff of Middlesex, and his kinsmen Henry and Thomas Frowyk, the last being appointed supervisor of the will. The task of executing Charlton’s will was entrusted to Manser, Thomas Swan, the steward Nicholas Molle, and William Rolf alias Joynour, each of them being promised 100s. for their efforts.58 PCC 8 Godyn. This was a generous reward, but hardly equal to the enormity of the task. Charlton’s surviving children had to be provided for, his numerous houses emptied and the goods appraised and sold. The former Speaker’s plate alone was valued at almost £70, and included items such as spice dishes with images of a man and a woman and a riding man, a gilt goblet with a cover decorated with a white lion, a silver gilt standing piece with a cover and an eagle on top, and 25 silver spoons, 12 of them set with diamonds.59 Westminster Abbey muns. 6625, m. 2; 6630, mm. 4-5; 6646, m. 4. In Charlton’s armoury were found not only his sword ‘with a chape of silver and over gilt’, two pairs of gilt spurs (the symbol of his knightly rank) and a selection of bows and crossbows, but also a number of handguns, perhaps souvenirs of the battles of the civil war.60 Ibid. 6626, m. 1d; 6630, m. 6d.

The difficulties faced by the executors are exemplified by the sale of just 11 of a set of a dozen silver spoons, because the twelfth had been lost ‘by my Master Houmfrey at Clement’s Inn’, and the matter of the ‘little portuas’, which the chaplain Thomas White took to Edmonton and forgot to return, and summed up by Nicholas Molle’s request to be allowed a year’s wages after his master’s death, as he had been unable to attend to any of his own business, but only attended to his executorship.61 Ibid. 5471, f. 21; 6625, m. 2. More than a decade after Charlton’s death his affairs had still not been settled in full. Small wonder, then, that the executors unanimously agreed to reward themselves by dividing six ‘flechys of bakon’ among themselves.62 Ibid. 6630, m. 6d.

Charlton’s children were taken into the household of their kinsman Thomas Frowyk. The executors soon opened negotiations with Richard Turnaunt, stepson and heir of the draper John Gedney*, and between them they found the vast sum of 1,000 marks to purchase the wardship of the 16-year-old heir, Richard Charlton, from the Crown, and married the boy to Turnaunt’s daughter, Thomasina.63 E13/151, rot. 44d; C1/66/286; Westminster Abbey muns. 5471, f. 9; 9207A, m. 5; M. Erler, ‘Three 15th-century Vowesses’, in Med. London Widows ed. Barron and Sutton, 176. The girl was given one of Sir Thomas’s gold rings for a wedding ring, but needed a second one to set before it, to prevent it from slipping from her finger.64 Westminster Abbey mun. 6625, m. 2. On account of their youth, Richard and Thomasina remained in Thomas Frowyk’s care until 1468, when Richard was deemed old enough to enter the household of his kinsman, George Neville, archbishop of York.65 Ibid. 9207A, m. 8. With the archbishop he travelled to Calais for the wedding of the duke of Clarence to another relation, Isabel Neville, and he later accompanied the prelate when he rode to York to hold Edward IV’s – ultimately abandoned – Parliament of 1469.66 Ibid. 9207A, mm. 6, 7. In July 1470 Richard proved his age and was granted livery of his inheritance.67 C140/35/64; CCR, 1468-76, no. 463; E405/55, rot. 1d; 56, rot. 2. Within a few years, he had divorced Thomasina Turnaunt (who subsequently married her earlier lover Sir John Rysley†), and remarried. By his second wife, Elizabeth, he had a son, John.68 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 51; C1/66/286; Apostolic Penitentiary, ii (Canterbury and York Soc. civ), 3036, 3110.

Richard remained a staunch adherent of the house of York, and fought for Richard III at Bosworth. He was killed in the battle, and posthumously attainted by the Parliament of 1485.69 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 51; PROME, xv. 107-9. The Charlton estates were taken into the new King’s hands, and parcelled out to his supporters, such as Sir Thomas Bourgchier† (Sir Richard’s brother-in-law), Sir John Fortescue†, Sir Richard Haute, and (ironically) Sir John Rysley.70 E199/28/5; VCH Mdx. iv. 73, 103; v. 149; VCH Cambs. viii. 256; VCH Beds. ii. 231; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 732, 917; CPR, 1485-94, pp. 63, 96, 210, 365. In 1504 Sir Richard’s son and heir, John, petitioned for the reversal of his father’s attainder, but although the King’s response was favourable in principle, nothing was done, ostensibly on the grounds that Parliament ‘draweth so nere to the ende’. It was not until 1552 that the Charltons eventually succeeded in having the attainder overturned.71 PROME, xvi. 331-2; C89/4/4. In spite of Sir Richard’s forfeiture, his widow and son succeeded in saving some of the family property from Henry VII’s grasp. In December 1485 Charlton’s widow Elizabeth secured a grant of her former husband’s goods and chattels, and within a year of Bosworth, married the Yorkshire lawyer John Gunnace, by whom she had a daughter, Dorothy. After his death in 1488 she married as her third husband John Kendale, a former yeoman of the Crown to Richard III. She successfully staked her claim to a life interest in some of her late husband’s holdings, and an inquiry in 1510 found that John Charlton and Thomas Kendale were among a number of individuals who had received the profits of the Charltons’ London lands since 1485. Elizabeth died in 1493.72 CPR, 1485-94, pp. 47, 439; Ric. III, Crown and People, ed. Petre, 231; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 273; VCH Mdx. iv. 73, 103; C142/24/28, 78/54, 55.

The Speaker’s younger son, William, died within three years of his father, probably in early 1468. He was buried in the church of Harlington under a marble stone, procured from a London craftsman for 5s., and simply inscribed ‘Hic iacet Willelmus Charlton, filius Thome Charlton militis, cuius anime propicietur deus. Amen’. Charlton’s daughter Elizabeth was probably betrothed to the Lincolnshire heir Thomas Swynford before her father’s death, but only outlived Sir Thomas by a few months and was buried at Ickenham.73 Westminster Abbey muns. 5471, ff. 5v, 18v, 21v, 22v; 6625, m. 1. The two remaining daughters, Agnes and Mary, divided their time between Thomas Frowyk’s house and periodic sojourns at Haliwell priory, perhaps with a view (on Frowyk’s part) to induce the girls to take the veil.74 Ibid. 5471, f. 16v; 6625, m. 3. In 1470, Agnes married the London grocer Thomas Bledlowe, newly widowed after the death of his first wife, Thomas Frowyk’s daughter Isabel. Following Bledlowe’s death in 1478, she went on to marry Sir Thomas Bourgchier, a son of John, Lord Berners.75 CPL, xii. 763; C1/85/12. Mary Charlton eventually married Thomas Brown, an Essex landowner, and their son Sir Humphrey was summoned to attend the lords as one of the justices of common pleas from the later years of Henry VIII.76 Oxford DNB, ‘Browne, Humphrey’.