FRAUNCEYS (FRANCIS), Robert

Both Fraunceys’s father and grandfather sat as knights of the shire in Parliament. The latter had greatly advanced the family through the purchase of the manor of Foremark, a few miles to the south of Derby, and the former continued this advance. Our MP’s father sat in the Commons on at least nine occasions between 1384 and 1411, representing both Derbyshire and Staffordshire, and, even more remarkably, served six terms as sheriff. Few could match such a record of service in local administration. Moreover, Sir Robert, in common with other leading gentry of these counties, greatly furthered himself by his support for Henry IV, who, in addition to awarding him a handsome annuity, accorded him the honour of appointment as constable of Castle Donnington in Leicestershire.3 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 120-1. Robert would have been hard-pressed to replicate his father’s success even in the best of circumstances, but with the problems his father left him he faced an impossible task. His career was seriously compromised by the conjunction of his mother’s long survival and the generosity of the settlement his father had made for her. In the Derbyshire subsidy returns of 1435-6 she was assessed on an annual income of £80, compared with his own modest assessment of £13.4 E179/240/266. Although part of her income was derived from the property to which Robert was not heir, namely that of her first husband, Thomas Brumpton, it is clear from the subsidy returns of 1428 and 1431 that her interest in the Fraunceys estates was sufficient almost entirely to exclude our MP. He thus had to manage on an income entirely disproportionate to his family’s rank.5 Feudal Aids, i. 265, 278, 290, 302, 303, 305, 309.

Robert’s circumstances may have been further strained by the marriages of his eight sisters, most if not all of whom were his seniors and were contracted in marriage in his father’s lifetime. They were able to attract grooms of rank: Elizabeth married Sir William Peyto‡; Isabel, Sir Gervase Clifton*; Joyce, Thomas Giffard of Chillington in Staffordshire; and Joan, Sir Thomas Harcourt of Ellenhall in the same county.6 CPR, 1413-16, p. 324; Nottingham Univ. Lib., Clifton mss, Cl D 686; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xvi. 56; n.s. v. 109. After Harcourt’s death in 1420, Joan married Clifton’s neighbour, Sir Robert Strelley (d.1438). Such matches no doubt added lustre to the family but they were expensive, and it is likely that portion instalments were a charge on our MP’s estates (and those of his mother) during his tenure of them. His father had thus left him in a financially difficult position, and his own marriage to Anne Clinton, probably contracted for him by his father, brought him only partial compensation. She was the common-law heiress of her father, but he held his lands in tail-male. On the maternal side, however, she may, even at the time of her marriage to Fraunceys, have had better prospects. Her mother Joan was one of the four coheiresses of the Derbyshire knightly family of Meynell, and if the marriage took place after the death of Anne’s half-brother, Thomas Staunton (a ward of our MP’s father), in February 1423, she was contracted in marriage as one of the two coheiresses-presumptive to her mother’s share of this inheritance. Unfortunately, however, her mother’s long survival meant that our MP, doubly cursed by long-lived dowagers, never came to enjoy these lands.7 CFR, xiv. 40; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 595-6; Nichols, iii (2), 709.

The survival of his mother is one explanation for the obscurity of Fraunceys’s early career; another is the probability that he inherited as a minor. In any event, it was not until ten years after his father’s death that he first appears in a public capacity, attesting the Derbyshire election held on 27 Mar. 1432. A little over a year later, on 20 Apr. 1433, he was one of those to whom Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor, allegedly gave livery illegally at Codnor, an offence for which both were indicted when commissioners of oyer and terminer came to the county in the following April. This connexion with Grey explains why Fraunceys was able to establish an independent place in local affairs despite his comparative lack of acres. He attested the parliamentary election of 1435, at which two of Grey’s more important adherents, John Curson* and Gerard Meynell* (a relative of his mother-in-law), were returned, and he himself was elected in December 1436. This latter election corresponds with an established pattern, with one MP being an associate of Grey and the other (in this case Fulk Vernon*) of Sir Richard Vernon*.8 C219/14/3, 5; 15/1; S.M. Wright, Derbys. Gentry (Derbys. Rec. Soc. viii), 114, 131-2.

By the time that Fraunceys again appears as an attestor in the next surviving return, that of 28 Dec. 1441, the county’s political geography had undergone a transformation. Lord Grey’s orchestration of a series of violent disorders in the late 1430s attracted the hostility of Ralph, Lord Cromwell, and occasioned the disintegration of his affinity. Fraunceys, in common with other of Grey’s former followers (most notably John Curson), was quick to show himself well disposed to his erstwhile master’s more powerful rival. In February 1441 he sat on a grand jury to determine a writ of attaint unsuccessfully sued by Sir Henry Pierrepont* in his dispute with Cromwell over the Heriz inheritance; at about the same time he sat with known adherents of that lord on a petty jury which returned verdicts against Grey’s followers; and in 1445 he witnessed the deed by which Cromwell acquired a manor in Breadsall near Derby. He did not, however, progress to a closer relationship with that great lord, nor was there any particular reason why he should have done so, for their estates lay at opposite ends of the county.9 C219/15/2; C260/144/18/14; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 30, 34, 289.

The death of Fraunceys’s mother brought about a significant improvement in his material circumstances. She died at an unknown date between November 1443 and April 1445, and it is probably more than coincidental that this corresponds with his first (and only) appointment to an office of local administration.10 CPR, 1441-6, p. 229; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 303-4. After his term of office he briefly came to play a more active role in local affairs. Previously his only nomination to a commission of local government had arisen out of his parliamentary service in 1437, but in 1449 he was appointed to two important commissions of arrest, being among those instructed to imprison John Gresley* and his supporters for offences against the abbey of Burton-upon-Trent. He also attested three successive county elections between October 1449 and March 1453.11 C219/15/7; 16/1, 2.

Yet here Fraunceys’s public career more or less ended, and most of what is known of him in the 1450s relates to litigation arising out of the marriage of his two sons by his first wife. On the marriage of the elder, another Robert, at some date before 1451, our MP had settled property at Ingleby, Stanton by Bridge and Boulton (in the immediate vicinity of Foremark) on the couple, saving the reversion to himself. On young Robert’s childless death, it seems the bride, Mary, married his younger brother, Thomas, but that our MP denied them the property he had previously settled. This, at least, is one explanation for the action of trespass sued against him in Michaelmas term 1451 by the young couple and John Bate, dean of Tamworth, no doubt a kinsman of Mary. This was soon followed by an action brought by the dean claiming 300 marks against our MP, perhaps on a bond entered into on one of the marriages.12 KB27/762, rot. 45d; 763, rot. 53d; CP40/772, rot. 143; 775, rot. 98d. These actions disappear from the records, but on 14 Mar. 1457 Frunceys was outlawed for debt in London at the suit of his late wife’s mother, Joan Clinton, and the dean’s brother, Thomas Bate*. Although he pleaded error against the outlawry, this was merely the prelude to an escalation of the dispute.13 CP40/787, rot. 121d; 788, rot. 326. If a later action is to be credited, on 4 Jan. 1458 Fraunceys, in company with Nicholas Fitzherbert* and lesser men, forcibly entered the disputed property. When the case came before the assize justices on 21 July the defendants successfully challenged the array of the panel and no verdict has been traced.14 CP40/788, rots. 330, 362d; 789, rot. 430; 792, rot. 191. The appointment of Fitzherbert as sheriff in the following November may have served to delay further litigation, but the powerful connexions of Dean Bate put Fraunceys at a continued disadvantage. This is implied by bonds he entered into in the spring of 1459: on 5 May, in company with John Wastnes*, he was bound to the dean in as much as £400 before the mayor of the Westminster staple; and two days later he and his attorney, Henry Punt of Radbourne, bound themselves in £20 to pay the dean ten marks.15 CCR, 1454-61, p. 382; 1476-85, 433; C131/244/23. Thereafter the dispute fades from the records, perhaps because Thomas followed his brother to the grave.

Fraunceys’s general obscurity makes it impossible to be certain about his political sympathies during the civil war of 1459-61. On 11 Sept. 1460 he attested the election to the Parliament summoned to meet in the aftermath of the Yorkist victory at the battle of Northampton, but this is scant evidence and it is likely that he remained uncommitted. Indeed, almost nothing is known of his last years. On 3 July 1460 he had joined with his second wife in granting the lands she held in Somersal Herbert to her son, John Fitzherbert, but this, aside from his appearance as an attestor, is the last reference to him alive. He was dead by 16 June 1463, when writs of diem clausit extremum issued out of Chancery, but unfortunately either no inquisition post mortem was taken or else it has since been lost.16 C219/16/6; Derbys. Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. Jnl. iv. 17; CFR, xx. 94. Fraunceys was succeeded by his young son, Ralph, the issue of his second wife. Ralph came into the wardship of the family’s overlord in respect of the manor of Foremark: Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of William, Lord Ferrers of Groby, and her husband, Sir John Bourgchier. In Easter 1468 they claimed damages of £100 against our MP’s widow for abducting him from their custody.17 CP40/828, rot. 77. The outcome of this case is unknown, but it shows the standard pedigrees are mistaken in identifying Thomas Fraunceys (d.1482), appointed to the quorum of the peace towards the end of our MP’s life, as the latter’s son and heir.18 CPR, 1452-61, p. 664. This Thomas is probably to be identified with the clerk of the estreats at the Exchequer, appointed by James Butler, earl of Wiltshire, as treasurer in Nov. 1458: PRO List ‘Exchequer Officers’, 90.

Fraunceys’s connexions among the local gentry have a clear pattern. The marriages of his eight sisters placed him in an extensive network of kin which included several leading Midland gentry, and he was closely associated with at least one of his brothers-in-law. Captured by the French during the ill-starred campaign of 1443, Sir William Peyto raised loans calling upon security provided by his friends and relatives, including our MP.19 CP25(1)/293/71/309; CCR, 1441-7, p. 369. Fraunceys was also associated with his nephew Richard Harcourt*, who in 1445 stood as mainpernor for servants of our MP indicted of felonious theft. Yet, more important than these family ties were those he established with his neighbours. Of these the most significant seems to have been with the Fitzherberts. Before Easter term 1451 he took as his second wife the widow of a junior branch of that family, and in the late 1450s his daughter Cecily married William, a younger son of the head of the family, Nicholas Fitzherbert. Such ties no doubt explain why both Nicholas and William were implicated with our MP in the forcible entry of 1458.20 KB27/738, rots. 49, 50d; Genealogist, n.s. vii. 135.

In providing for his five daughters by his first wife, Fraunceys was assisted by their maternal grandmother, Joan Clinton, despite his apparent conflict with her. In the case of two of them he spared himself the cost of their marriages: Elizabeth became a nun at Polesworth in Warwickshire and her sister Joan at the prestigious house of Minories in London. For the other three Joan Clinton made some provision. In the will she made on 6 Apr. 1453 she left 40 marks for the marriage of Isabel and £40 to her sister Margaret who was clearly her favourite. Their less favoured sisters were to have nothing unless Isabel and Margaret died unmarried, in which case Cecily was to have £20 and Elizabeth, already a nun, ten marks. These arrangements were substantially maintained in the will Joan made five years later save in one important particular: Margaret was to have the much larger sum of 200 marks on condition that she married Robert, son of John Wele, a gentleman of Gloucestershire, and a generous 100 marks for any other approved match. The later will also laid down provision for the division of the estates she held in fee. These were not extensive for she had divided her paternal inheritance with her three sisters, but they were a useful windfall. She willed that they be divided between her grandsons, John Shirley (son of Ralph Shirley (d.1466) by Margaret Staunton), and his issue, and our MP’s son, Thomas (when he came of age), and his issue. If the latter should die before reaching his majority, his share was to be divided between his three sisters on condition that they settled life annuities of £3 on each of the sisters who were nuns. This implies that the Fraunceys share of her inheritance was worth £15 p.a., and, since Thomas did indeed die young and childless, it presumably descended to the sisters.21 CCR, 1447-54, pp. 426-7; Nichols, iii. 709-10 (from Harl. 4028, f. 28).