BANASTER, Richard

Banaster was the most obscure man to represent Shropshire in the reign of Henry VI, although, as a representative of a younger branch of the well-established family of Banaster of Hadnall, he was of gentry birth.1 He is to be distinguished from a contemporary namesake of Gnosall in Staffs.: CIPM, xxiii. 720. His modest landholdings came to him from his mother, heiress of the senior branch of the Lacons. Her marriage to our MP’s father must have taken place after September 1406, when, described as Margaret Kendale, she joined her parents in acknowledging a debt of £40 to her cousin Richard Lacon*. Her first husband was probably Robert Kendale, who in September 1397 had been implicated in the murder of Lacon’s father.2 J.B. Blakeway, Sheriffs Salop, 62; Salop Archs., Shrewsbury recs., assembly bk. 3365/67, f. 50; G. Dodd, ‘Getting Away with Murder’, Nottingham Med. Studies, xlvi. 102-17. However this may be, she had married our MP’s father by 24 June 1415, for her parents then quitclaimed to the couple all their right in the manor of Lacon (in the parish of Wem) and other lands in the manor of Hinstock.3 Salop Archs., Corbet of Acton Reynald mss, 322/2/228. Our MP himself first appears in the records in April 1434: he took receipt from the receiver of the Talbot lordship of Blackmere of cash to be delivered to France for the payment of John, Lord Talbot’s ransom. Clearly he was already well established in Talbot’s service, perhaps recommended to it by his kinsman, Thomas Banaster of Hadnall, who had served in Talbot’s military retinue in 1421.4 Salop Archs., Bridgwater pprs. 212/Box 76 [1433-4]; E101/50/1; A.J. Pollard, John Talbot, 78-79. By January 1436, when in the garrison at Caudebec, where Talbot was captain, he had himself served abroad, and he was to do so again in the summer of 1442 when he brought a retinue of two men-at-arms (himself and his kinsman, Hugh Banaster) to campaign under Talbot, newly-promoted to the earldom of Shrewsbury.5 Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, fr. mss, 25773/1102; E101/54/2. His military experience may have been more extensive than this, but it seems probable that the Richard Banaster who served under the Beaufort brothers from 1440 to 1449 was a namesake, perhaps the same man who had begun campaigning in France before 1425: CPR, 1422-9, p. 299; Bibliothèque Nationale, fr. 25778/1820; nouv. acq. fr. 8637/54; E101/54/5, 11. Our MP may, however, have been in the retinue of Thomas, Lord Scales, at Granville in Sept. 1441: nouv. acq.fr. 8606/74.

By the end of the 1440s, and probably before, Banaster was acting as principal financial agent for the earl of Shrewsbury. In office as his receiver-general by Easter 1447, on 14 Feb. 1448 he received the massive sum of £1,000 at the Exchequer in money owed to the earl as lieutenant of Ireland, and in the following summer the Exchequer made reassignment to him on the earl’s behalf of bad tallies worth nearly twice that sum.6 Trans. Hunter Arch. Soc. ii. 359-60; E403/769, m. 12; 771, m. 6. Soon after, he had the chance to serve his master in another forum. On 30 Jan. 1449 he was elected to Parliament in company with another of the earl’s men, Nicholas Eyton*, at hustings conducted by the earl’s godson, (Sir) John Burgh III*. Significantly, the Talbots had an important matter to pursue in the forthcoming assembly. An award had been made in the previous spring in the great dispute between the earl’s wife, Margaret Berkeley, and her cousin, James, Lord Berkeley, and she was keen, unavailingly as it transpired, to have its terms given parliamentary sanction. This, no doubt, is the context of Banaster’s election, for he was not an important enough man to have secured election in his own right (particularly if he had not yet inherited his parental lands), although it is interesting to observe that two of his kinsmen, Thomas Banaster and Richard Huse of Albright Hussey, numbered among the attestors. While Parliament was in session he may have been responsible for securing a pardon for an unlicensed feoffment made by the absent earl. On 3 Apr. 1449, the day before the first prorogation, the Crown, on payment of £5, confirmed the estate of the feoffees, one of whom was Banaster, in various of the earl’s estates in Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Wiltshire.7 C219/15/6; A.J. Pollard, ‘The Talbots’ (Bristol Univ. Ph. D. thesis, 1968), 45-46; J. Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys ed. Maclean, ii. 62; CPR, 1446-52, p. 249. It is not certain that our MP had inherited the family lands by the time he served in Parliament. His obscure father was alive as late as May 1440 and his heiress mother at least as late as 1432: CIPM, xxv. 380; Corbet of Acton Reynald mss, 322/2/243.

Banaster probably died soon after this parliamentary service, maybe in France. On 10 Aug. 1449 he was present in the church of Prees to stand as godfather to Richard, son and heir of John Sandford of Sandford, and in Hilary term 1450 he was plaintiff in a minor plea of debt. But this is the last reference to him. In 1451 Ralph Banaster of Lacon was assessed to the parliamentary subsidy on an annual income of £5. He was either our MP’s still-living father, or else his successor, either brother or son. The fact that a Ralph Banaster attested two Shropshire elections in the 1470s suggests that it is more likely to be the son.8 C140/35/66; CP40/756, rot. 53; E101/681/39.