GRESLEY, Sir John

Sir John Gresley’s career is a curious one in that he was politically active for over 30 years before the death of his father finally gave him possession of one of the greatest gentry inheritances in Derbyshire and Staffordshire. This he enjoyed for only four years and his career is essentially that of an heir-apparent. This helps to explain two of its notable aspects: he continued his military career after the victorious campaigns of Henry V and he was virtually excluded from local administrative office. In a petition presented in the Parliament of 1425 he claimed that he had served Henry V for 18 years, and it is likely that he was brought up in the household of Henry as prince of Wales (although he was probably too young to have seen action in the prince’s Welsh campaigns).3 SC8/114/5698. This service, together with his considerable expectations, justified his dubbing at the coronation of 1413. His knighting aside, the most important event of his early career was his marriage into the wealthy south Yorkshire family of Clarell of Aldwark. On 15 Oct. 1409, as part of the marriage settlement, his father’s feoffees granted the couple an annual rent of 20 marks from the manor of Colton in Staffordshire. If the contract for the marriage of the bride’s sister Margaret to John Fitzwilliam of Sprotborough, drawn up in the following January, is anything to judge by, this was a profitable match, for Margaret was provided with the handsome portion of 450 marks.4 J. Hunter, S. Yorks. ii. 53; Derbys. RO, Gresley mss, D77/Box 3/387; Sheffield Archs., Copley mss, CD/2.

Sir John was drawn, albeit peripherally, into the disorders which so severely disturbed the peace of the Midlands early in the new reign. His family’s long-running dispute with their Staffordshire neighbours, the abbey of Burton-upon-Trent, broke out again, despite an arbitrated settlement in 1406. According to a petition presented in Chancery by the abbot, on 17 Feb. 1414 Sir John led an assault on his prior and cellarer at Branston and then, two days later, came to nearby Burton and made threats against the unfortunate pair in the conventual church.5 BL, Loan mss, 30, ff. 150v-151v; C1/6/208; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. vii. 245. For the rest, our MP’s involvement in the much greater disorders in both Staffordshire and Derbyshire was confined to offering mainprise in Michaelmas term 1414 on behalf of a friend of his father’s, Hugh Erdeswyk*, one of their chief authors. Soon afterwards, on 8 Nov. 1414, he was among those who attested his father’s election to represent Derbyshire at the Parliament in which Henry V turned from the making of peace at home to the waging of war abroad.6 Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xvii. 26; E. Powell, Kingship, Law and Society, 241-2; C219/11/5.

Sir John was one of those who enthusiastically embraced his master’s aggressive ambitions. On 28 May 1415 he was retained to serve abroad with one other man-at-arms and six archers, and a week later he and his father secured protections as members of the royal retinue.7 E404/31/328; DKR, xliv. 568. After the battle of Agincourt Sir John went on to serve in the retinue of Thomas Beaufort, earl of Dorset, captain of Harfleur, and he remained in France intermittently until the end of the reign. Having indented to serve in the 1417 expedition he participated in the campaign of the following year that culminated in the siege of the Norman capital of Rouen.8 E101/47/39; 51/2, m. 39; 70/2/596; DKR, xli. 711, 716. Not until the spring of 1421 is there evidence that he was back in England, presumably having returned with the King. He was certainly at Derby on 17 Apr. when he again attested his father’s return to Parliament and joined with another soldier, Thomas Blount† (his brother-in-law), in standing surety for the attendance at the assembly of the two Derbyshire MPs.9 C219/12/5. It was unusual for men of such high status to act in this role and it may be that there was some particular significance to his father’s return at this date. Perhaps Sir Thomas was elected as a supporter of the King’s expected request for taxation in face of the opposition of those who would have it resisted.

It is unknown whether Sir John returned to France in the expedition of the following June. If he did he appears to have returned home before the King’s death for, on 13 Mar. 1422, he witnessed a deed on behalf of his father.10 Gresley Chs. ed. Jeayes, no. 404. In the following October he was elected to represent Staffordshire in the first Parliament of the new reign. His father conducted this election as sheriff, but there is no reason to suppose that our MP was an unwelcome choice to electors who had twice returned his father to Parliament during the previous reign. It is, however, interesting to note the recurring mutual involvement of father and son in each other’s elections. Sir Thomas was still sheriff at the Staffordshire election in September 1423, when Sir John headed the attestors, and in 1427 Sir Thomas headed the attestors to his heir’s second election to sit for that county.11 C219/11/5, 13/1, 2, 5.

In the meantime Gresley had become embroiled in a dispute over the wardenship of the duchy of Lancaster chace of Duffield Frith, which had been granted to him on 4 Aug. 1420 for the term of his life.12 DL42/17, f. 74 (in his later petition he claimed, presumably in error, that the grant had been made a year earlier). This, as he was later to point out, was but a modest reward for his strenuous service in the French war (although it did bring the worthwhile annual fee of £9 2s. 6d.), but it was one he was not to be left to enjoy in peace. The confirmation of his letters of appointment on 15 Feb. 1423 did not prevent the office being granted to Sir Henry Pierrepont* in the following February, very shortly before his father, presumably more than coincidentally, lost the more important stewardship of High Peak. Soon after the wardenship was resumed and granted to a lesser man, John Bradshaw. It was probably in the first session of the Parliament of 1425 (of which Pierrepont was a Member) that our MP petitioned to have the office returned to him on the grounds of his long, otherwise unrewarded, service to Henry V. This petition was the prelude to the issue of two commissions of inquiry – one on 5 June, during the second session of the Parliament, and the other on 15 July, the day after the end of that session – into Gresley’s conduct during his brief period of office.13 DL29/402/6451; SC8/114/5698; DL42/18, ff. 197, 257, 263. This, in turn, raises the possibility that our MP lost the office not through an oversight on the part of the Crown but as a result of misconduct, an interpretation consistent with his father’s dismissal from the stewardship of High Peak for an accounting irregularity. In any event, the loss of office for both father and son proved permanent.

Little evidence survives of Sir John’s activities, whether in France or England, during the late 1420s. He did, however, form a connexion with the young Humphrey Stafford, earl of Stafford: on 3 Apr. 1427 he headed the witnesses to the earl’s confirmation (dated at Newport castle) of the charter granted to the borough of Newport by the Staffords in 1385. Even though this is the only reference directly to connect the two men, the fact that several of Gresley’s fellow attestors numbered among the earl’s intimates implies that their association (at this date at least) was a close one. The two men may have been brought together by their mutual military service, but there was also an obvious local dimension to their association. Sir John’s service to the earl might even have been a factor in his election to Parliament in 1427, although, since the attestors to this return included both his father and younger brother, Geoffrey, the family probably needed little external assistance.14 Archaeologia, xlviii, pt. ii. 450-1; C219/13/5. This proved to be the end of Sir John’s parliamentary career. His failure to sit again is probably a consequence of his continued involvement in the French wars. His military career is ill-documented. He was, however, an important figure during the regency of John, duke of Bedford, for by May 1435 he was acting as lieutenant-general of Rouen.15 Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, ii (1), 277; (2), 436; S.M. Wright, Derbys. Gentry (Derbys. Rec. Soc. viii), 8. He seems to have been in Eng. in May 1434 for he was among those sworn to the peace in Staffs.: CPR, 1429-36, p. 399. It is likely that ‘Thomas Grisele’, who in June 1435 contracted to serve in France with 14 men-at-arms and 42 archers, was his yr. bro.: E404/51/309. No doubt this service consumed the bulk of his energies and his repeated absences from his estates probably explain why he found difficulty in defending the interests of his second wife.

In about 1430 Gresley had married a wealthy widow who, remarkably, had lost three husbands in the space of a decade. All three left her an interest in lands in Cheshire. Unfortunately for the new couple, however, their possession was challenged by the brother of her first husband, the heir of her second and the feoffees of her third. The first of these disputes was a straightforward one over Margaret’s dower and jointure. In a petition to the chancellor, Sir John and Margaret claimed that she, presumably during her widowhood, had agreed with Sir Geoffrey Massey, brother and heir of her first husband, and his mother to abide by the arbitration of an apprentice-at-law, James Holt, concerning her entitlement in the Massey estates. The parties had entered into mutual bonds in as much as 1,000 marks to be kept by Holt and surrendered to the aggrieved party if either party defaulted on his award.16 C1/39/88. These bonds were made on 22 Oct. 1420, two months after the death of her first husband, and remained in Holt’s keeping until 1 Oct. 1429, soon after the death of her third: Warrington Lib., Beamont mss, 350. Holt awarded, among other things not detailed in the petition, that Margaret should have lands in Tatton worth as much as £15 p.a., but Sir Geoffrey had forcibly taken the bonds out of Holt’s hands and, in November 1433, disseised Gresley and his wife of three messuages in Tatton. Since Massey was ‘of grete powere, kyne and alye’ and our MP and his wife were ‘straungers and noght abydyng’ in Cheshire they claimed they were unable to obtain redress. This petition was probably presented soon after the alleged disseisin of 1433, but, if so, it did not bring the dispute to a satisfactory conclusion. On 26 Oct. 1440 Sir Geoffrey entered into an undertaking in Chancery to do no hurt to Margaret’s tenants on pain of £200.17 CCR, 1429-35, p. 445.

Another dispute Sir John inherited with his new wife concerned more complex issues. According to a further petition they presented to the chancellor, she, as a widow, had undertaken to pay 300 marks to John Delves in return for the marriage of his young son and heir-apparent, Richard (c.1416-1446), to her infant daughter Elizabeth Winnington. Soon after, however, she herself agreed to marry the groom’s father and he undertook to repay her the 260 marks she had borrowed for her daughter’s portion and to pardon her the remaining 40 marks. To ensure the young Elizabeth of her jointure and his new wife of her dower, Delves made arrangements for the settlement of his manor of Doddington and lands in Weston (together worth £10 p.a.) upon himself and Margaret for a term of six years from 14 Mar. 1429 with remainder to Richard and Elizabeth and their male issue. The rest of the Delves inheritance (with the exception of the manor of Crakemarsh in Staffordshire) was settled on Ralph Egerton*, William Lee* and Margaret herself to the intent that she should receive both her reasonable dower and repayment of any moneys owed to her from her daughter’s marriage portion. If the petitioners’ valuation was a correct one the Delves estates were able to bear such a burden for they were worth 200 marks p.a. Egerton overturned these arrangements. Four years after John Delves’s death in 1429 he forcibly abducted Richard from the custody of our MP and Margaret and persuaded him to disavow his young wife. Such a disavowal was possible because the couple had been married when Richard was not yet ten and Elizabeth under four years old. Later Egerton and Richard ‘with great multitude of people unknown in riotewyse arrayed’ disseised the Gresleys of the manor of Doddington and took goods of our MP worth £100. Moreover, since John Delves’s death, Egerton had allowed Margaret only six marks p.a. for her dower and had refused to pay her any part of the 260 marks still due to her.18 C1/39/87; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. vii. 263-5.

If this petition is to be accepted at face value, the motive for Egerton’s unreasonable behaviour can be inferred. The petition was presented not long after November 1438, when he had allegedly stopped paying Margaret her annuity of six marks; in May 1439 he secured a dispensation for the marriage of his daughter Ellen to Richard’s younger brother and heir-presumptive, John Delves†. It is a reasonable speculation that he had earlier urged Richard to repudiate his wife so that the Delves estates would eventually pass to John. As befitting so complex a quarrel, it gave rise to actions beyond the Gresleys’ petition to the chancellor. On 8 July 1439, before the bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, our MP’s stepdaughter, Elizabeth, formally consented to the marriage she had contracted within age, and it is likely that this marked Egerton’s defeat in his attempt to dissolve the match. To the same purpose were collusive actions sued in the palatinate court of Chester a few months earlier: in December 1438 the Gresleys had brought an action against Richard Delves for Margaret’s dower in property in Weston and Blakenhall and conceded the action when the defendant replied that he had nothing in the property save in joint estate with Elizabeth; and in the following April they joined Elizabeth with her husband in the same plea.19 CHES29/143, rots. 15, 27d. After Richard Delves’s death in 1446 the validity of his marriage to Elizabeth was again called into question as John Delves sought to deny dower to her: CHES29/152, rot. 5. At this point Gresley appears to have won the upper hand in the dispute, and the parties were back on good terms by November 1441, when Sir John and Margaret quitclaimed to Egerton and William Lee their right to the Delves lands in Staffordshire. This is a strong indication that her rights in Cheshire had been accepted by Egerton.20 Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iii. 170.

Less well documented is the third dispute arising from Gresley’s marriage. In the Chester court on 17 Apr. 1436 Richard Winnington, the heir of Margaret’s second husband, sued a writ of formedon against her and our MP for two-thirds of the manor of Marthall in Cheshire. Presumably the couple were retaining the whole manor instead of only the third to which Margaret was entitled as dower. A jury was summoned to appear on 6 Aug. 1437 when the Gresleys defaulted. When judgement was due to be awarded against them three weeks later they entered the unlikely plea that their default was due to their imprisonment by Richard Lane* at Abbots Bromley (Staffordshire) between 5 and 8 Aug. The case was then transferred into the court of common pleas and no verdict has been traced. This plea may have been no more than a delaying tactic, but it is possible that Lane’s intervention, if such it was, represents another episode in the dispute with Egerton. Perhaps significantly, Lane’s son and heir-apparent was the husband of Egerton’s daughter Margery, and he may have been ready to aid Egerton in discomforting the Gresleys.21 Ibid. 139, 142-3; CHES29/140, rot. 22.

The demands of defending the interests of his second wife is one reason for dating the end of Sir John’s military career to the death of the duke of Bedford. Another is his appointment as sheriff of Staffordshire in 1439, an unlikely appointment for one still actively involved abroad. Further, from about this date he began to make more regular appearances in local affairs. On 28 Dec. 1441 he attested the Staffordshire election, the first time since 1423 that he had appeared in that role, and in February following he joined with his brother Geoffrey and eldest son in a bond in £50 to the treasurer of the royal household, Sir Roger Fiennes*.22 C219/15/2; CCR, 1441-7, p. 53. More significantly, in October 1443 he acted in a conveyance on behalf of Sir Philip Chetwynd and Chetwynd’s wife, Ellen, widow of Sir Edmund Ferrers of Chartley. Since both Chetwynd and Ellen’s son, John Ferrers, were servants of Humphrey, earl of Stafford, it may be that our MP had maintained his connexion with the earl.23 CCR, 1441-7, p. 188; C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 699. He also made at least one appearance as a juror. In Trinity term 1445 he was attached to answer the courtier, John Sutton, Lord Dudley, on a plea of decies tantum. The plaintiff claimed damages of 500 marks against a jury headed by our MP, who had allegedly taken a bribe of £40 and a horse worth 20s. from a Staffordshire gentleman, Thomas Manley of Willenhall, at Mansfield (Nottinghamshire) on the previous 12 Mar. Sutton’s action does not ring true. He had sued Manley for damages of 100 marks for taking deer from his park at Sedgley near Wolverhampton on 22 Jan. 1440 and yet, in his action against Gresley, he claimed that Manley had distributed as much as £175 and 13 horses worth £13 to the 13 jurors. Unfortunately there is nothing to place this interesting suit into a broader context. It may, however, be significant that the two other leading jurors were our MP’s son-in-law, Hugh Wrottesley, and his nephew, Thomas Astley*.24 KB27/737, rot. 24; 738, rots. 34, 133.

The death of Gresley’s father on 9 Sept. 1445 finally gave him the family patrimony and seems to have further increased his involvement in the affairs of others.25 In his father’s inq. post mortem his age is underestimated as 40 ‘and more’: C139/121/1. In his few remaining years he acted as a feoffee for (Sir) Henry Beaumont II*; stood as a financial guarantor in the raising of a ransom for his son-in-law, Sir William Peyto‡; offered mainprise in Chancery for John Makworth, the notorious dean of Lincoln; and, on at least two occasions, witnessed charters for Sir James Butler, later earl of Wiltshire.26 Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xi. 234; CP25(1)/293/71/309; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 369, 448; Cat. Lyttelton Chs. ed. Jeayes, no. 343; HMC Hastings, i. 1-2. What, however, his father’s death did not bring him was further administrative responsibility, probably because, as an aging soldier, he was disinclined to shoulder the burden. His father had not served on the commission of the peace in either Derbyshire or Staffordshire since 1423 and our MP was not added to either on Sir Thomas’s death (in marked contrast to his own son and heir who was appointed in Derbyshire as soon as he inherited the family estates), nor is he recorded, either before or after his father’s death, on any of the other routine commissions of local government.

By the time Sir John finally came into his inheritance, his own son and heir-apparent had begun to play a disruptive part in local affairs. It seems that it was the younger John (together with his brothers) rather than our MP who was responsible for pursuing a quarrel with the Vernons which was to be a significant factor in Derbyshire politics during the 1450s. The early skirmishes of this quarrel led to the making of an award on 21 Sept. 1447, to which our MP was a party, by Ellen Chetwynd’s son, Sir William Ferrers of Chartley, but this failed to bring peace.27 HMC Rutland, iv. 29. The subsequent intensification of the dispute belongs to the career of our MP’s son, whose entry into the family estates also corresponded with the re-opening of the family’s longstanding dispute with the abbey of Burton-upon-Trent. It may be that Sir John’s death on 17 Jan. 1449 had removed a moderating influence.

Sir John’s children were married advantageously before his death. While still a young girl his daughter Thomasina took Hugh Wrottesley (b.1400) as her husband, making a match which probably arose out of our MP’s place in the service of Henry V: in 1403 the young prince of Wales had granted Hugh’s marriage to the boy’s maternal grandfather, Sir Robert Standish, from whom it was presumably acquired by our MP. Much later, in 1441, probably on the death of Hugh’s mother, Thomasina became the beneficiary of a substantial jointure settlement which included the manor of Wrottesley.28 Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. i. 56; vi (2), 191, 202, 207-8. Her sister, Katherine, was also contracted in marriage when very young. She can have been no more than in her early teens when widowed by the death of Thomas Stafford† of Baginton (Warwickshire), son of one of the coheiresses of the Derbyshire family of Sulney. Her father did not leave her a widow long for she was soon after married to Peyto, one of his colleagues in arms and a widower many years her senior. On 6 Oct. 1429 a group of feoffees, headed by our MP, his father, his brother-in law, Thomas Astley, and son-in-law, Hugh Wrottesley, settled Peyto’s manors of Chesterton, Sowe (Warwickshire) and Great Wyrley (Staffordshire) on the couple.29 Bodl. Dugdale mss, 15, p. 72. It is not clear how Sir John funded these marriages for they took place before both his entry into the family patrimony and the realization of the valuable asset represented by his heir’s marriage. The latter took place in about 1440 when the younger John was married into the knightly family of Stanley of Elford, a few miles from Drakelow. The last of Sir John’s children for which a marriage is recorded is his daughter, Elizabeth, who was probably the issue of his second wife. On 26 Apr. 1442 Richard Stafford, a minor Derbyshire esquire, entered into a bond in 500 marks to provide her with lands worth £10 p.a., presumably in jointure on their marriage.30 Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. i. 60; CCR, 1441-7, p. 66.

Sir John’s will does not survive, but a later suit shows that he named his nephew, Walter Blount*, as one of his executors, but nothing is known of its terms.31 Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iii. 217. Nor is it known who had seisin of his lands at his death. Although writs of diem clausit extremum were issued to the escheators of seven counties in which the family held property, inquisitions are recorded in only Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire and both juries recorded that he held no land. Since the only inquisition recorded on his father’s death had returned the same information, it is a reasonable assumption that the bulk if not all of the Gresley lands was in the hands of Sir Thomas’s feoffees.32 CFR, xix. 96-97; C139/121/1; 136/57.