CURSON, John

The Cursons were an ancient family, established in Derbyshire from shortly after the Conquest. Early in the thirteenh century they divided into two branches: the one living at Croxall in the southern extremity of the county; the other at Kedleston, a few miles to the north-west of Derby. The latter came to prominence during the career of our MP’s father, who greatly benefited from the usurpation of 1399 and rose to hold office as steward of the duchy of Lancaster honour of Tutbury. He died at the height of his influence, leaving our MP as a minor. The heir, however, escaped royal wardship because all the family estates, the bulk of which were held of the duchy, were in the hands of feoffees headed by the Cursons’ neighbour and cousin, Robert Twyford of Kirk Langley.10 C137/52/4; CIPM, xix. 6. These feoffees were probably responsible for arranging John’s marriage to Margaret Montgomery, a daughter of one of the leading Derbyshire families. On 11 Aug. 1411 they settled a generous jointure – the manor of Kedleston, together with the neighbouring lordship of Weston Underwood – on the couple subject to the dower interest of our MP’s mother, who had already taken Sir Hugh Hussey† of Flintham (Nottinghamshire) as her second husband.11 Derbys. Chs. ed. Jeayes, 1505. His mother’s marriage to Hussey explains that of our MP’s yr. bro., Thomas, to Margaret, da. of Hussey by his 1st wife and wid. of Henry Sutton† (d.c.1416) of Averham in Notts.: Add. 6672, f. 155; C1/115/1.

It is impossible accurately to assess the value of the Curson patrimony at this date, but it seems that, among the gentry, only a small group of ancient knightly families, of which the Montgomerys were one, had greater estates in Derbyshire. In the tax returns of 1435-6, when his lands were no longer burdened by his mother’s jointure, our MP was assessed on an annual income of as much as £60.12 E179/240/266. In the tax returns of 1412 the lands of our MP in Derbys. were assessed at only £20, an underestimate even in view of his mother’s dower, valued at £10 p.a.: Feudal Aids, vi. 413. She survived her 2nd husband, who died in the late 1420s, but was dead by Dec. 1431, when omitted from the comprehensive Derbys. subsidy returns: E40/9164. His holdings were concentrated in a relatively small area: in addition to Kedleston and Weston Underwood the family held a manor in Hungry Bentley, only a few miles to the west of Kedleston, together with property in Derby. Their only remote holding was a manor at Wingerworth near Chesterfield, and, unusually for a family of their wealth, they held no land outside their county of residence.13 Feudal Aids, i. 277, 289, 295, 297, 299. Later, as the dower of his 3rd wife, our MP had an interest in lands at Barthomley (Cheshire) and Glenfield (Leics.).

Soon after his marriage Curson made his first recorded appearance in public affairs in what was to be a lengthy and active career.14 In the Derbys. visitation of 1611 he is accorded the nickname ‘Whittehed’: Genealogist, n.s. vii. 74 On 15 Oct. 1411 he attested the election to Parliament of his wife’s grandfather, Sir Nicholas Montgomery†, and acted as one of the pledges for his attendance. On 8 Nov. 1414 he again attended the county election before turning his attention to more significant matters.15 C219/10/6, 11/5. By this date he had probably already found a place in the service of the only peer resident in Derbyshire, Richard, Lord Grey of Codnor. Grey’s lordship was the natural focus of Curson’s aspirations: not only had Grey risen in the service of Henry IV to a position of influence which extended beyond the merely local, but he had been a friend of our MP’s father. Thus, on 12 June 1415, Curson sued out letters of attorney as about to go abroad in Grey’s retinue, and went on to serve with his lord at Agincourt and under his lord’s heir, Sir John Grey, in the campaign of 1417. After Lord Richard’s death in August 1418 he served under John as the new Lord Grey in the 1421 campaign, but this marked the end of his military career.16 DKR, xliv. 570; N.H. Nicolas, Agincourt, 378; E101/50/1, m. 4; 51/2, m. 32. It was his namesake of Croxall who had letters of protection in the service of the duke of Bedford in the late 1420s: DKR, xlviii. 234, 243, 258. It was his administrative rather than his military gifts which recommended him to the Greys. On 16 Apr. 1417 he was granted an annuity of £5 charged on their manor of Toton in Nottinghamshire, and it was clearly intended that he should take a senior position in their estate administration.17 Notts. IPM (Thoroton Soc. xvii), 20. By the summer of 1426 he was acting as receiver-general for Lord John, and in the following May, he was nominated as one of his attorneys in England during his absence in Ireland.18 SC6/1295/2/3; CPR, 1422-9, p. 409. Curson’s appearance in the latter role supports the other indications that he had a legal education. In 1423, for example, at the probable nomination of the justices of assize, he was appointed, alongside his brother, Thomas, and a prominent local lawyer, Henry Booth*, to settle the dispute between Ralph Hussey†, younger brother of his stepfather, and Thomas Dethick of Uttoxeter in Staffordshire.19 Wm. Salt. Arch. Soc. xvii. 115.

One so closely connected with the Greys was a likely candidate for both election to represent Derbyshire in Parliament and appointment to local administrative office. Curson duly sat for the county in both 1423 and 1429, on the second occasion with another retainer of Lord Grey, Gerard Meynell*.20 C219/13/2, 14/1. In the following decade he became one of the principal workhorses of royal administration in his native shire. In November 1430, nine months after the end of his parliamentary service, he was appointed escheator for the first of three terms in the space of only ten years. While in office, he was commissioned as one of the assessors of the abortive subsidy granted by the Parliament of 1431 and appointed to the county bench.21 Feudal Aids, i. 275-6, 279, 308. He combined these duties with continued service to the Greys. As chief steward of Richard, Lord Grey’s widow, Elizabeth, he travelled in May 1432 from Kedleston to Bytham in Lincolnshire to hold courts on her behalf. This journey must have taken place in the first days of the month, for, having been elected as an MP once more on the previous 27 Mar., he was due to arrive in Westminster for the opening of Parliament on 12 May.22 Middleton mss, Mi M 137/6; C219/14/3.

During the early 1430s the peace of north Derbyshire was disturbed by a violent conflict between Sir Henry Pierrepont and a rising esquire, Thomas Foljambe, culminating in the maiming of Pierrepont and the murder of his supporters, Henry Longford and William Bradshaw, on New Year’s Day 1434 in Chesterfield parish church. Curson had an earlier connexion with Pierrepont (late in 1433 they had acted together in a fine by which the Montgomerys resettled the manor of Cubley) and on the following 1 Apr., when a powerful commission of oyer and terminer sat at Derby, our MP and his brother, Thomas, sat on the same grand jury as the maimed man. None the less, there is no evidence that Curson was opposed to the Foljambes. Indeed, there is some evidence to the contrary: in the following Michaelmas term he acted as a mainpernor in the court of King’s bench for some of those appealed of murder by Bradshaw’s widow, and a year later he acted in the same capacity for persons allegedly involved in the attack on Pierrepont himself.23 S.M. Wright, Derbys. Gentry (Derbys. Rec. Soc. viii), 128-9; KB9/11/5; KB27/695, rot. 53; 698, rex rot. 6. Although not himself directly involved in the confrontation that precipitated the visitation of the justices, he was one of several leading men of the shire indicted before them for giving livery. In the same term as he stood mainprise for those appealed by Bradshaw’s widow, he pleaded not guilty to this charge in the King’s bench, and on 26 Feb. 1435 he appeared in person before the justices of assize at Derby to hear a jury return that the recipient of his livery had been entitled to it as one of his household servants.24 KB27/694, rex rot. 8d.

On 15 Sept. 1435 Curson was once again elected to Parliament in company with Meynell. While this assembly was in session he was once more named as escheator, and as soon as this term was over he was pricked as sheriff. So onerous an administrative burden was deserving of reward, but when it came it was a disappointing one. In May 1439 he was appointed keeper of the duchy of Lancaster park at Shottle in Duffield Frith, but he did not enjoy the office for long. On the following 8 Nov. he was summoned to appear in the duchy chancery, bringing with him his letters patent of appointment. This summons explains the loss of the office to the influential Household man, Bartholomew Halley*, who was probably able to show a prior grant.25 DL42/18, ff. 115v, 142v. Given his father’s dedicated service to the house of Lancaster and his own activity as a local administrator, Curson had reason to be aggrieved at such treatment. He was, however, partially compensated by what were presumably beneficial leases: by 1440 he had taken the farm of the duchy herd of 40 cows and a bull in the neighbouring park of Postern at an annual rent of £8, and in 1443 he (jointly with Hugh Halley) added that of the agistment there for a further four marks p.a.26 DL29/369/6180, 370/6183.

When Curson lost his duchy office he was once more an MP, for he sat in the Parliament which met between November 1439 and February 1440. Soon after the end of this assembly he was called upon to arbitrate a property dispute between Sir Thomas Erdington* and Robert Arderne*. The importance attached to the settlement of this dispute is reflected in the status of the arbiters: Sir Richard Vernon*, Sir William Mountfort* and two lawyers, John Bowes* and John Harper*, were to act for Erdington; and John Hampton II*, our MP and two other lawyers, John Vampage* and William Comberford*, for his rival. More interestingly, the presence of several of these arbiters in the immediately preceding Parliament implies that some initiative towards settlement had been taken during the course of the assembly. Curson probably owed his nomination to the fact that he was one of the volatile Arderne’s few friends among the MPs. His connexion with the Ardernes appears to have been long standing. In 1419 he and Robert’s father, Sir Ralph Arderne†, had been among those to whom his wife’s grandfather, Sir Nicholas Montgomery, granted all his goods. Moreover, after the award had been returned at Warwick on 25 May 1440, he is found acting in Robert Arderne’s interest. In one of the suits to which the award gave rise, Arderne claimed that on 30 Sept. 1442 Erdington released to him all actions by a deed dated at Kedleston, and some time after this he conveyed his lands in Cheshire to our MP and others.27 CP40/742, rot. 314; Add. 6672, f. 154v; KB27/740, rot. 77; CCR, 1441-7, p. 419; DKR, xxxvii. 177-8.

Curson had maintained his close connexion with the Greys throughout the 1430s. In 1434 he was one of those to whom Henry, brother and successor of John, Lord Grey, conveyed the manor of Denby (Derbyshire), and in 1438 he was employed by him in collusive litigation. Indeed, in an undated deed of the 1430s, Grey describes him, along with Peter de la Pole† and Henry Booth, as ‘de consilio meo’.28 CP40/710, rot. 120; CIPM, xxvi. 233; Leics. RO, Ferrers cartulary, 15D72, loose deed. This long service was remunerative: in addition to the £5 annuity granted to him in 1417 and his annual fee of £4 as Lady Grey’s steward, he received a further ten marks p.a. (although it is possible this included the earlier annuity) from her son Henry.29 Middleton mss, Mi M 137/6; E163/7/31/1. He may also have owed to their patronage his second marriage, to Joan Bagot. Her mother was the maternal half-sister of Lady Grey: both were daughters of Alice Dryby – Lady Grey by Ralph, Lord Basset of Sapcote (d.1378), and Joan’s mother by Sir Anketin Mallory. Even so, whatever he owed to the Greys, his loyalty to Lord Grey did not survive the crisis which overtook his master in 1440. Lord Henry’s leading role in a series of violent disorders attracted the hostility of Ralph, Lord Cromwell. At sessions of oyer and terminer, presided over by Cromwell and Humphrey, earl of Stafford, in the early autumn of 1440 indictments were laid against Grey and many of his servants. Conspicuous by their absence were the senior members of his affinity, of whom our MP was the most notable: wisely, they were not prepared to follow him in his folly. This year thus marked a major turning point in both Derbyshire politics and Curson’s career.

Grey’s discredited lordship was replaced by that of a much greater man, namely Stafford, steward of the honour of Tutbury (an office our MP’s father had once held). Curson, as the most important of Grey’s affinity, was the first to whom Stafford turned in the creation of his own Derbyshire connexion. On 31 Oct. 1440, by an instrument dated at London, he retained our MP at an annual fee of £10 assigned on the manor of Naseby in Northamptonshire. In return Curson undertook to serve in England only, with two yeomen, a page and four horses or such lesser number as the earl ‘liste to assigne or commaunde’.30 Wright, 68; Nottingham Med. Studies, xvi. 89; H.R. Castor, King, Crown and Duchy of Lancaster, 259. This new annuity compensated him for the loss of his payments from Lord Grey. Although his annuity assigned on the manor of Toton had been granted to him for life, it was discontinued in 1440 if not before. According to the jurors in Grey’s inquisition post mortem, on 31 Aug. 1444, six weeks after Grey’s death, Curson had levied a distraint of 12 oxen for arrears of this annuity, claiming that it had not been paid since 1426.31 Notts. IPM, 20. If it had been discontinued for so long it is hard to explain why our MP had not take effective action earlier, and it is perhaps more likely that the discontinuation dates from his abandonment of Grey’s service.

Stafford was not the only powerful man to whom the enterprising Curson offered his service. In the same month as he indented with the earl he is first found acting in the interest of Lord Cromwell. On 18 Oct. 1440 he was one of those commissioned by the Crown to take an assize of novel disseisin sued against Cromwell’s feoffees by Sir Henry Pierrepont for the former Heriz manors of South Wingfield and Tibshelf. Despite his earlier brief association with the plaintiff, there can be no doubt that Curson was appointed as a friend of Cromwell.32 Indeed, by this date he had his own grievance against Sir Henry, suing him, his son and two of his servants for debts of £40 each: CP40/714, rot. 342d; 718, rots. 53d, 348; 731, rot. 91. On the following 8 Dec. at Whitwell he was among the justices who heard a verdict in favour of the defendants, and it was surely not merely coincidental that on the same day Cromwell himself was at Whitwell to take yet more indictments against Grey.33 CP40/720, rot. 321; CPR, 1441-6, p.102; KB27/724, rex rot. 8. More striking evidence of the trust Cromwell placed in Curson comes in the following August when, in the humiliating settlement imposed on his former master, he was among those to whom Grey was forced to surrender several valuable manors, including that of Toton, to hold to Cromwell’s profit.34 CIPM, xxvi. 233-4, 237. He maintained his connexion with Cromwell into the 1450s: CCR, 1441-7, pp. 351-2; CFR, xvii. 11, 47; CP40/741, rot. 242; CP25(1)/293/71/348; Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Misc. 250.

It may be that Curson’s entry into the royal household was a product of his new connexions with Stafford and Cromwell or else that an existing place there recommended him to their service. He appears in the list of those in receipt of robes as a Household esquire from the autumn of 1441, but, in the absence of such lists for an earlier date, it is possible that he was established there before then (perhaps in the expansion of the royal household at Henry VI’s majority). However this may be, he remained in receipt of robes until the lists fail in 1452.35 E101/409/9, f. 37; 410/9, f. 42v. The Household esquire cannot have been our MP’s namesake of Croxall, who died in 1450: CFR, xviii. 132. These household responsibilities did not diminish his involvement in Derbyshire’s administrative affairs. Within a few days of indenting with Stafford, he was named as escheator for the third time. On 29 Jan. 1441, while in office, he was nominated to act as an arbiter on the part of his cousin and namesake of Croxall in the latter’s dispute with the prior of Repton.36 CCR, 1435-41, p. 468. At the end of the year, at the parliamentary election held on 28 Dec., he was again elected, on this occasion with another leading member of the recently-constructed Stafford retinue in the county, William Vernon*; and he was again returned, albeit for the last time, to the next Parliament.37 C219/15/2; CFR, xvii. 324, 329.

While for the earlier part of Curson’s career there is no record of his involvement in local disorder, the same cannot be said for its later part. If an indictment taken before Robert Strelley* as sheriff and Fulk Vernon* as j.p., sitting on 27 Sept. 1446 at Rosliston, is to be credited, Curson and his eldest son John had led an insurrection of some 80 armed men at Monyash 13 days before. They had allegedly broken into two houses and violently assaulted the unfortunate householders. There is nothing to place this apparently isolated episode in context. Monyash lies some 20 miles to the north-west of Kedleston in a part of the county in which Curson held no property, and it is both puzzling and suspicious that the indictment was taken many miles from the alleged offence. Moreover, although Strelley and Vernon were clearly acting under powers conferred by the statute of riots (13 Hen. IV, c. 7), the indictment makes no mention of the fact. In any event, the legal process caused our MP little inconvenience. In Easter term 1447 the indictment was ruled insufficient by the justices of the King’s bench because it was taken before one j.p. rather than the two demanded by statute.38 KB9/255/1/16; KB27/744, rex rot. 2.

Curson appears in a more positive light at the end of the decade. On 30 Oct. 1449, in company with Richard Bagot, his second wife’s brother, and the husband of one of Bagot’s sisters, Henry Bradbourne (another former Grey retainer now in the service of Stafford), he intervened to end a riot at Blore. According to a petition presented to the Commons by Ralph Basset, a gang, headed by John Cockayne and Thurstan Vernon, had come to his manor of Blore, and, but for this timely intervention, they would have burned the manor-house.39 SC8/96/4795; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iii. 192-4. Since Basset was also a member of the Stafford retinue, it is likely that Curson’s palliative action was motivated by this mutual connexion, although the two men were also connected, albeit distantly, by marriage. In 1439 our MP had witnessed deeds contingent on the settlement for the marriage of his nephew, Philip Okeover, son of his late sister, Margaret, to Basset’s daughter Thomasine.40 Derbys. Chs. 2133-4. Our MP’s sister Margaret was the wife of Philip’s fa. not (as in The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 864) his gdfa.: Derbys. Arch. Jnl. ciii. 109; Wright, 226.

One week before Curson had come to Basset’s aid he had headed the list of attestors to the Derbyshire election to the Parliament summoned to meet at Westminster on 6 Nov. 1449. Here he may have been acting in the interest of his other master, Lord Cromwell, for one of those elected, John Sacheverell*, was among Cromwell’s intimates.41 C219/15/7. Interestingly, both of those who were soon to lead the attack on Basset also appeared among the attestors. A year later, on 22 Oct. 1450, he again appears as an attestor, on this occasion witnessing the return of his fellow Stafford retainer, William Vernon. In the following Easter term he sued Robert Strelley, who had been sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire during his last Parliament, for arrears of parliamentary wages.42 C219/16/1; CP40/761, rot. 210; 762, rot. 52; 763, rot. 148. More interestingly, in May 1451 he was among a group of Stafford’s retainers to whom the duke sent letters, perhaps to summon them to attend him when he was with the King at Kenilworth and Coventry early in the following autumn.43 H.R. Castor, ‘Duchy of Lancaster’ (Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1994), 299.

The continuing close connexion between Duke Humphrey and several leading Derbyshire gentry was a factor in the serious disturbances which overtook the county between 1453 and 1455, chief among which was a violent campaign against Walter Blount* led by Sir Nicholas Longford, who numbered among Stafford’s retainers. Indeed, it was a common link with Stafford that unites the prominent local gentry who supported Longford, although there is no direct evidence that they were acting at Buckingham’s behest. Our MP was himself implicated. He was indicted on three counts before the powerful commission of oyer and terminer which came to investigate the disorders in the summer of 1454: in company with Longford, he is said to have instigated an assault on Thomas Blount* by Ralph Twyford on 31 July 1453; he is named among those who attacked the servants and tenants of Sir Thomas Blount† and Walter Blount at Sutton on 17 May 1454; and, albeit not among the many indicted for the famous sack of Elvaston eleven days later, he was one of three indicted as an accessory.44 KB9/12/1/13, 15, 23; Derbys. Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. Jnl. xxxiv. 48; xxxv. 234. Although in the first two cases his name had been struck from the indictments, there can be no doubt of his involvement in the campaign.45 The day after the sack Longford and others allegedly intimidated a sheriff’s servant, whom they had imprisoned, into undertaking to abide the award of our MP and the sheriff, (Sir) John Gresley*, over his grievances. His third wife’s relatives, Sir John and Randolph Mainwaring, and his stepson, Robert Fouleshurst, were allegedly present at the sack of Elvaston. Moreover, when trouble broke out after the departure of the investigating commission, there is more direct evidence of his hostility to the Blounts: on 11 Apr. 1455 Roland Blount was killed in an affray at Derby allegedly by one of our MP’s younger sons, Henry, acting on the orders of his father.46 KB9/280/67.

None the less, Curson’s involvement in these serious disturbances had no impact on his standing. Although, after 1451, he no longer farmed the duchy herd in Postern, in September 1454 his lease of agistment there was extended for a further term of 21 years and he added to this a lease of herbage and pasture in the neighbouring park of Ravensdale. On the following 16 Apr., five days after Roland Blount’s murder, the King summoned him to represent Derbyshire in the great council due to assemble in the following month, the meeting of which was prevented by the violent intervention of the Yorkist lords. This summons is a sure indication that he was opposed to the cause of York, with whom Walter Blount was closely identified. Such a stance accorded with his place in the royal household, which he may have lost at the reorganization of the Household during the duke of York’s protectorate, and he is unlikely to have welcomed the outcome of the first battle of St. Albans. It is thus understandable that, on the following 2 Oct., when York was in control of government, he sued out a general pardon.47 DL29/371/6199; PPC, vi. 340; C67/41, m.4. His death shortly afterwards spared him the task of negotiating the political vicissitudes of 1459-61.

No writs of diem clausit extremum were issued on Curson’s death and there has been considerable confusion over its date. He is generally said to have lived until 1460,48 Derbys. Arch. Jnl. ciii. 111. but it is clear from the plea rolls of the court of common pleas that he was dead by Hilary term 1456 when his executors (his widow, Cecily, his younger brother, Thomas, and his stepson, Robert Fouleshurst) were sued for debt there.49 CP40/780, rot. 213d. He last appears in the records on 20 Dec. 1455 when he witnessed a deed for the Okeovers: Derbys. RO, Okeover mss, D231M/E480. He is thus not to be identified with his namesake who was appointed to the Lancastrian commission of array in December 1459. The SS collar which adorns his tomb in the church of Kedleston is, however, indication enough of the family’s continued commitment to the Lancastrians.50 Cox, iii. 178-9. Further, the commissioner of 1459 was his son and heir, and this younger John was removed from the commission of the peace by the Yorkists in 1460. None the less, the family were not significantly damaged by the change of dynasty: the younger John found a place in the service of George, duke of Clarence, and served as sheriff of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire in 1472-3. He was less prominent than his father not because he was suspect politically but because of the long survival of his stepmother. She took and survived as her third husband, the wealthy Yorkshire knight, Sir John Melton*, de jure Lord Lucy. By her death in 1484, her stepson was an old man.51 Derbys. Arch. Jnl. ciii. 111; CP, viii. 255; C141/6/18.

Curson’s career was a remarkable one. Few fifteenth-century gentry could match his record of administrative service. In addition to his seven recorded appearances as an MP (including six of the nine Parliaments which met between 1429 and 1445), and his four terms as either sheriff or escheator, Curson was very active as a j.p. despite the fact that he was never appointed to the quorum. Between 1431 and his death he was paid for sitting on at least 59 days, and from the late 1430s he appears to have attended most of the sessions.52 Wright, 251; E101/122/12. It is impossible to say how far this almost constant involvement in local administration owed to his place in baronial service – first in that of the Greys and then in that of Stafford and Cromwell – but the two must have been connected. Not surprisingly his energy and exalted connexions made him a popular choice as a feoffee,53 CCR, 1435-41, p. 33; 1441-7, pp. 313-14, 426-7; C139/146/12; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iii. 204; CP25(1)/293/71/309. and the range of his connexions must have come in useful when he came to marry his brood of children. Remarkably, if one may judge from 17 children depicted on his tomb, he had as many as seven boys and ten girls. How many of these he had found spouses for by his death is unknown, but it is fairly certain that he was responsible for contracting his daughter Thomasine to Thomas, son and heir of John Statham (d.1453) of Morley,54 In Hil. term 1456 John Statham’s feoffees, among whom was the groom, sued our MP’s executors for a debt of £20, presumably in connexion with Thomasine’s portion: CP40/780, rot. 213d. and another daughter, Joan, to Ralph, son and heir of John Sacheverell. Both grooms numbered among his neighbours, but more important in determining the choice may have been mutual connexions with Cromwell: the grooms’ fathers were both members of that lord’s affinity.55 S.J. Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian Eng. 195. In 1453 Cromwell, our MP and Thomas Statham were feoffees of land in Wirksworth: Derbys. RO, Chandos Pole Gell mss, D258/52/19(j). Unfortunately it is not known to whom he contracted his son and heir. The family had a distinguished later parliamentary history.