ERDINGTON, Sir Thomas

The Erdingtons were a family of ancient prominence established at Erdington in the parish of Aston near Birmingham since the mid twelfth century. Sir Thomas Erdington (d.1218) elevated the family through service to King John, and his grandson, Sir Henry (d.1282), maintained the family’s rise by his marriage to one of the four daughters and coheiresses of Nichole, sister and coheir of Hugh d’Aubigny, earl of Arundel (d.1243). Their son, another Sir Henry†, MP for Leicestershire in 1309, received a personal writ of summons to the Parliament of January 1336; and, although the honour of parliamentary summons was not accorded to his descendants, this detracted little from their importance in the affairs of Warwickshire and Leicestershire, the counties in which the bulk of their estates lay. The second Sir Henry’s grandson, Sir Thomas† (d.1395), represented both counties in Parliament early in the reign of Richard II, and our MP’s father sat for the former county in 1411.3 CP, v. 85-89; VCH Warws. vii. 63. Indeed, the Erdingtons were among the richest gentry families in the west Midlands, with an estate valued in the subsidy returns of 1435-6 at as much as £170 p.a.4 E179/192/59.

The wealth and standing of the Erdingtons were reflected in the marriage contracted for our MP when he was no more than about seven years old and his bride a few years his senior. At the time of the marriage the bride stood coheiress-presumptive to the inheritance of the elderly Lord Burnell, and the death of her father soon afterwards transformed her into a coheiress-apparent. Her expectations were, however, not to be realized. After his only son’s death Lord Burnell contracted marriages for her two half-sisters on the understanding that they would be his heirs, selling the hand of one to Sir Walter Hungerford† for as much as £1,000, and effectively disinherited our MP’s wife by settlements made in the summer of 1416. Whether in doing so he defrauded the Erdingtons is difficult to say. It is at least as likely that Joyce was married to our MP on the condition that she would not inherit and that, in return, other concessions were made. One of these was Lord Burnell’s surrender of the Shropshire manor of Wellington, which the Erdingtons had long claimed against his family. By a final concord levied on the quindene of Michaelmas 1411 the manor was settled Lord Burnell and his son, Sir Edmund, for successive life terms, with remainder to our MP and his wife and his male issue, then, in successive tail male, to his four brothers, with a final remainder to him and his issue. Perhaps this was intended to stand in compensatory place for the bride’s potential share of the Burnell lands. In any event, the Erdingtons had to be content with what the marriage represented in social rather than material terms.5 Ancestor, viii. 172-7; CP, v. 90n.; Peds. Plea Rolls ed. Wrottesley, 113; CP25(1)/195/20/31. Although her disinheritance was lawful with respect to the bulk of the Burnell inheritance, she should have shared with her two half-sisters the three Norfolk manors of which their father had died seised in fee tail general: CIPM, xx. 517. But she does not appear to have done so: F. Blomefield, Norf. ix. 280, 337; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 157.

As was so often with the case with greater gentry families, the heir-apparent had established himself as a man of account in local affairs before coming into his patrimony. As early as 1428 Erdington was a plaintiff in the court of common pleas, but he was more enthusiastically involved on the other side of the law.6 CP40/669, rot. 349. In 1431 he was involved in a significant episode of disorder. Strained relations between Joan Fitzalan, widow of William Beauchamp, Lord Abergavenny, and Sir Edmund Ferrers of Chartley, culminated on 17 Mar., when an army of the latter’s adherents, said to number as many as 1,000, confronted Joan’s entourage at Birmingham. Serious violence was averted only by the timely intervention of a local lawyer, Thomas Greswold. Our MP, described as ‘junior, of Erdington, gentleman’, was among those indicted before the steward and marshal of the royal household at Coventry for supporting Ferrers.7 KB27/681, rex rot. 21; C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 389-90 (where our MP is confused with his father). He appeared by attorney in the ct. of KB in the following Trin. term to plead not guilty. It is possible that this support was motivated by personal resentment against Lady Joan, for she had acquired from her late friend, Lord Burnell, part of the property to which his wife was technically coheiress. If so, however, it was not the beginning of an effort on his part to reverse Joyce’s disinheritance, and he may simply have been acting as a supporter or even retainer of Sir Edmund. His support for that influential knight continued after the confrontation at Birmingham. In Michaelmas term 1431 Maurice de Maddoc appealed Sir Edmund, our MP and many others for mayhem in Leicestershire, and a year later Alice, widow of one Thomas Jenkes, appealed more or less the same group of men, again including Sir Edmund and our MP, for the death of her husband in Shropshire.8 KB27/682, rots. 35, 35d, 69; 686, rot. 12; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xvii. 142.

Erdington’s part in this violence and the legal actions attendant upon it did nothing to damage his prospects. The deaths of his father and stepmother in quick succession brought an unburdened patrimony.9 CIPM, xxiv. 181-3; CFR, xvi. 234. His stepmother, Sibyl, died on 3 Jan. 1435: CIPM, xxiv. 315-17. Further, almost immediately after his father’s death, he was appointed to the shrievalty in spite of both his recent violent conduct – Alice Jenkes’s appeal was still pending against him – and his inexperience in administrative matters.10 Alice did not abandon her suit until Easter term 1436: KB27/700, fines rot. 1d. The explanation may lie in the place he had already found in the service of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick (d.1439). In the financial year 1432-3 both he and his father were in receipt of annuities from the earl, who at this date was closely associated with Ferrers. A place in the service of so great a patron may also have brought our MP entry into the royal household. The personnel of Henry VI’s household is ill-documented in the period before the early 1440s. All that can be certainly said of Erdington is that he was a royal retainer by 1443, when described as ‘King’s knight’, but, in the absence of any evidence of a military career, it may be that he owed his knighthood shortly before Easter 1437 to household service.11 A.F.J. Sinclair, ‘Beauchamp Earls of Warwick’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1988), 334; Carpenter, 85, 686; CPR, 1441-6, p. 205. If so, it was as a household man that he was elected to represent Warwickshire in the Parliament which began on 12 Nov. 1439. On the following 20 Jan., during the second session of this assembly, there is further evidence of his association with the Beauchamps: he acted as mainpernor for Sir Ralph Butler and others when they were granted keeping of lands once of the earl’s widow, Isabel, who had died in the previous December.12 CFR, xvii. 122.

All this is rather speculative, but there is a much clearer narrative in respect of two major disputes in which he was involved in the late 1430s and early 1440s. The first of these – with the Shirleys over the valuable manor of Barrow upon Soar in Leicestershire – was of long standing. It had been very actively pursued in the 1380s and 1390s, but by the time our MP came into his inheritance his family had been in peaceful possession for some time. Concern that this might not long remain the case may explain why, on 16 Sept. 1435, Erdington leased the manor to his kinsman, Richard Harcourt*, and others to hold for 20 years at an annual rent of £40. Less than two years later, on 29 July 1437, he granted it to a group of feoffees headed by his wife’s uncle, Richard, Lord Strange of Knockin, and including three of the lessees.13 HMC Hastings, i. 72. Strange’s inclusion was probably due to both his kinship with our MP’s wife and to his distant claim (through a common descent from the d’Aubignys) to a share of the manor: Harl. 1985, f. 257. Another of the feoffees, Sir John Radcliffe*, was the husband of Joyce’s half-sister, Katherine Burnell. These precautions were soon justified by the revival of the Shirley claim, perhaps prompted by the serious reverses Sir Ralph Shirley† had suffered in his dispute with Humphrey, earl of Stafford, over other parts of the Basset of Drayton inheritance. In Easter term 1443 Sir Ralph brought an action against our MP, claiming £100 damages for forcible entry into nearly 1,000 acres at Barrow.14 CP40/729, rot. 344; 731, rot, 26d; 732, rots. 57, 502d; 733, rot. 433. Erdington responded by, on 16 Mar. 1444, indenting to sell the reversion of the manor to John, Viscount Beaumont, who had significant interests of his own in Barrow, for the very considerable sum of 1,000 marks. Beaumont’s influence at court must have helped our MP acquire the necessary royal licence for a settlement, which, although it did not defraud the Shirleys of what was rightfully theirs, may, as events transpired, have deprived the Crown of a rare escheat for Erdington was without heirs.15 HMC Hastings, i. 73; CPR, 1441-6, pp. 279-80.

Meanwhile Shirley’s action proceeded. On 10 July 1444, three days after the granting of this licence, a writ to distrain the jurors summoned to try this action before justices of assize at Leicester on the following 20 July was delivered to the sheriff, Laurence Sherard, at Warwick. Shirley can now have had little real hope of success: matters had progressed too far. By conveyances made on 23 and 26 July the disputed manor was settled on our MP and his wife and their issue, with remainders to him in tail and then to Beaumont and his feoffees in fee.16 E13/143, rot. 23. Since there was no prospect of our MP having issue by his wife of some 30 years, and little of him surviving her and producing issue by another, this effectively implemented the sale agreed a few months earlier. Shirley was left only with an action against Sherard, who, according to a bill sued in the Exchequer of pleas on 24 Feb. 1445, had failed to execute the writ of distraint against the jurors. Interestingly, Shirley brought this action on the day before Parliament was due to assemble. Is it mere coincidence that Erdington and Beaumont’s younger brother, Henry II*, had been elected to represent Leicestershire in this assembly? It may be that their election was secured by the viscount to forestall an anticipated attempt to challenge the sale. If so, it was probably an unnecessary precaution. Shirley’s death very soon afterwards seems to have marked the end of the family’s claim.17 Family tradition has it that Sir Ralph died overseas in 1443, but he seems to have been alive as late as Trin. term 1447 when still vainly awaiting jurors in his suit with our MP: CP40/746, rot. 133d.

While Sir Thomas was successfully engaged in this dispute he was also involved in a quarrel with Robert Arderne*, the son of his late stepmother, Sibyl, by her first husband, Sir Ralph Arderne†. Until her death in 1435 the two men seem to have been on cordial terms; thereafter, enmity was quick to develop. Judging from a later award, our MP had retained some muniments relating to the Arderne property she had held in jointure and dower as surety for the performance of financial undertakings Arderne had made to him. These undertakings probably arose from either money the indebted Arderne had raised on his surety or else compensation due upon the apparent reduction of Sibyl’s entitlement. Whatever lay behind it, the dispute was an important one. This is reflected in the high standing of those chosen to arbitrate it in 1440: Sir Richard Vernon*, Sir William Mountfort*, two of the wealthiest gentry of the Midlands, and two senior lawyers, John Bowes* and John Harper*, were those nominated by our MP; and John Hampton II*, John Curson* and two other lawyers, John Vampage* and William Cumberford*, were the equally important group chosen by his rival. At Warwick, on 25 May 1440, they awarded that Erdington should deliver all evidences concerning the manors to Arderne, who should in return surrender all relevant bonds and pay him 100 marks in four payments of 25 marks spread over four years. This seemingly balanced settlement faltered on Arderne’s intransigence. Despite a verdict in our MP’s favour at the Derbyshire assizes of February 1444, Arderne continually refused to pay. In a final attempt to secure payment, Erdington sued Hampton for detinue of charters, a collusive action designed to secure the enrolment of the terms of the award in a court of record, and the recalcitrant Arderne for a debt of £50 on broken bonds. His appointment as sheriff in the same law term as he brought these actions might have been considered an advantage in the pursuance of these actions, but it proved the opposite. Arderne resorted to some ingenious obstructive pleading. In Trinity term 1446 he contested the suits against him on the grounds that, contrary to the terms of the award, Erdington had demanded payment for the surrender of one of the charters. Here he was relying on the fact that our MP, as sheriff and plaintiff, could not impanel the jury and that the task therefore fell to the coroners. On 17 July 1447, before the Warwickshire justices of assize, he prevented the return of verdicts by claiming that only two of the four coroners had endorsed the writ summoning the jurors. A repeat of this effective delaying tactic led to an extraordinary confrontation at the assizes held at Coventry on 20 Apr. 1450. Although the relevant writ had, on this occasion, been endorsed by all four coroners, Arderne suborned one of them, John Upton, into denying he had been party to its execution. Despite the insistence of the other coroners that their colleague was lying, Upton stubbornly maintained his denial, provoking the justices to threaten him with a heavy fine for contempt. Arderne then foolishly, in the hearing of the justices, promised Upton indemnity against any fine, even one as large as £100. Upton’s committal to gaol led him to even rasher behaviour: in the words of the record, ‘adtunc insania et furore repletus’, he made ready to draw his dagger but settled instead for launching a verbal assault on our MP, telling him ‘inter alia verba contumeliosa “tu false mentiris in capud tuum”’. The thwarting of Upton may not, however, have been the only provocation offered to him. He claimed that Erdington, out of hearing of the justices, had told him he was false in word and deed. When the case returned to the court of common pleas for judgement in the following June this indiscretion cost Erdington a fine of 40s., but Arderne was fined the hefty sum of £40. Worse was soon to follow for the latter. Five months later a jury, returning a verdict in the debt action our MP had sued against him, awarded the plaintiff damages of £20 and costs of a further 100 marks (reduced to a total of £40 by the court on the technicality that our MP had claimed only this lesser sum). No doubt this victory was gratifying to Erdington, but Arderne’s execution for treason in 1452 probably meant that he recovered none of the money owed to him. Indeed, as late as 1457 he was pursuing his adversary’s son and heir for the debt and damages he had won in 1450.18 KB27/740, rot. 77; CP40/742, rots. 314, 318.

Aside from these disputes little else is known of Erdington’s career in these years. In July 1437 he and his wife had sued out a general pardon in which she was described as a coheiress of Sir Edward Burnell, an indication, perhaps, that they were not entirely reconciled to her disinheritance.19 C67/38, m. 5. On 29 Sept. 1443, as a King’s knight, he secured an exemption from office. This was the last of a long series of such exemptions granted to the family – his grandfather, Sir Thomas, had had one in 1379, and Sir Giles Erdington in 1352 – and was a mark of honour rather than a grant to be universally applied.20 CPR, 1441-6, p. 205; CP, v. 86-87. Presumably he could have invoked it to prevent his appointment to the shrievalty in November 1445 (during the third session of a Parliament in which he was sitting for Leicestershire), but did not do so. Given his disputes with Arderne and Shirley, it might be that he used his time at Westminster actively to seek appointment, although the office did little to aid him against the former. However this may be, considered from the point of view of administrative efficiency, he was an unfortunate choice. Parliament continued until 9 Apr. 1446 with a break of only a few weeks for the Christmas recess. As a result, while the assembly lasted, Erdington had to place considerable trust in the hands of his under sheriff, John Poers*. He left little to chance: on 10 Dec. 1445, at Barrow upon Soar, he took a bond from Poers in the large sum of £300, presumably to indemnify himself against any penalties arising from any failure of responsibility on his under sheriff’s part.21 CP40/761, rot. 194.

The political context of Erdington’s appointment is uncertain. It has been suggested that it was a manifestation of the influence of the new head of the Beauchamps, Henry, the recently-created duke of Warwick,22 Carpenter, 414. This is difficult to reconcile with the same author’s assertion that the duke discontinued the annuity his father had granted to Erdington: ibid. 420. but there can be no doubt that our MP was much more closely associated with Viscount Beaumont than he was with the new duke. Indeed, the latter connexion probably explains why he sat in the 1445 Parliament for Leicestershire, where the viscount was the dominant magnate, rather than Warwickshire. More direct evidence of his friendship with the viscount comes from his term as sheriff. At an assize session held at Leicester on 19 July 1446, the defendant in an action sued by the viscount claimed that the panel had been arrayed in the plaintiff’s favour by Erdington’s under sheriff.23 KB27/740, rex rot. 7d. It is also relevant that, during the third session of the 1445 Parliament, Erdington was named as a feoffee by his fellow MP, the viscount’s younger brother, Henry: Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xi. 234-5.

Whatever the reasons for his pricking, Erdington’s term as sheriff was not a profitable one. It did nothing to forward his dispute with Arderne and led him into some troublesome litigation in the Exchequer of pleas. On 27 May 1446 men of the neighbouring Warwickshire vills of Upton and Haselor sued him there for the wrongful taking of distraints. He defended himself on the grounds that the vill of Upton owed one mark and that of Haselor 15s. known as ‘schryffyeld’ in ‘aid’ of the sheriff and that distraint had been lawfully taken in payment. Not surprisingly this defence was not endorsed by a local jury, which awarded costs and damages totalling 26s. 8d. against him, and the barons of the Exchequer were similarly unimpressed, more than trebling this sum when the case came back to them in the following Michaelmas term. It seems likely that our MP had been guilty of levying too much as ‘schryffyeld’ – the men of Upton had asserted that they owed only 2s. p.a. – perhaps because he was having difficulty raising the shrieval farm.24 E13/144, rots. 34d, 35.

At about this date Erdington was also confronting a far more serious personal difficulty. The sale of the reversion of the valuable manor of Barrow in 1444 seems to imply that he had given up hope of an heir, at least during the lifetime of his present wife. If his ancient line was to end with him, however, he could at least provide a lasting memorial for the family. To this end, on 7 July 1447, he sued out a royal licence to found a chantry in the church of Bilston near Wolverhampton with a landed endowment worth a modest £2 p.a., and on 28 Mar. 1449 he did the same for a larger chantry in the church of Aston near Birmingham. The latter foundation was to have an endowment of £4 p.a. and it may be that he intended to make further settlements on both chantries as the opportunity arose.25 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 77, 254; VCH Warws. vii. 375. He did not act on the Aston licence until 1454 and on that for Bilston until 1458: C143/451/20, 452/10. Another indication that he had abandoned hope of issue is provided by a settlement he made between the granting of these two licences. On 9 Feb. 1448 he and his co-feoffees in the family’s outlying manor of Corfe Mullen demised it to his cousin, Richard Harcourt, and one John Wachet. The purpose of this conveyance is unknown, but since the manor came to the Harcourts after his death it was probably a prelude to a sale.26 E210/1175: J. Hutchins, Dorset, iii. 355.

During the early 1450s Warwickshire politics was in a period of transition. Richard Neville, the new earl of Warwick, was in the process of establishing himself in the county’s affairs and his rivalry with the other leading local lord, the duke of Buckingham, was yet to develop. This is reflected in Erdington’s own career. He was yet to form the close connexion with the new earl which was to have such a significant impact on his career later in the decade. Indeed, in February 1452 he was named alongside Buckingham among the feoffees of Sir William Birmingham.27 Bodl. Dugdale mss, 15, p. 76; Carpenter, 462-3. He also seems to have maintained his association with Beaumont, another lord who was later to number among the new earl’s opponents in national if not local affairs. This at least is the implication to be drawn from his appearance at the Leicestershire parliamentary election of 1453. Since this is his only recorded appearance at an election, there can be little doubt that some particular circumstance prompted his attendance, and it is significant that one of the viscount’s servants, Thomas Everingham*, was returned.28 C219/16/2.

Given his activity in local administration in the late 1430s and 1440s, Erdington’s exclusion from 1453 is striking. It may have been his own choice: he had after all secured an exemption from office as early as ten years earlier. None the less, the exemption had prevented neither his service as sheriff in 1445-6 nor his appointments to loan and inquiry commissions. Another possibility is that he was excluded because of his growing attachment to the new earl of Warwick. By 1453 he was in receipt of an annuity of £10 from Neville and is soon to be found acting in his interest. He was one of the leaders of the jury which gave a verdict in favour of another of the earl’s annuitants, Baldwin Mountfort, in the dispute over that family’s valuable inheritance. Since Baldwin’s opponent, his half-brother, Edmund Mountfort*, who sued the jurors for embracery in Michaelmas term 1454, was supported by the duke of Buckingham, the quarrel was one of a defining importance in the politics of 1450s Warwickshire.29 Carpenter, 274, 462-3, 697; Dugdale mss, 13, p. 434; KB27/774, rot. 78d. Warwick’s departure for Calais in late 1456 and the migration of the royal court to Coventry left our MP very much on the wrong side in local politics and an unlikely appointee to office. On the other hand, he was not so identified with enemies of the royal court – perhaps because of his earlier service in the Household and connexion with Viscount Beaumont – that he was unable to maintain a place in local affairs during these years. In September 1457 the wealthy Nottinghamshire esquire, Richard Willoughby*, had enough confidence in him to join him with the viscount and others in an important enfeoffment of his extensive estates.30 Nottingham Univ. Lib. Middleton mss, Mi D 4770. Nor was he deprived of those very minor marks of royal favour that customarily came the way of men of his rank. On 6 Feb. 1458 he sued out a routine royal pardon and, six days later, he secured a writ of ad quod damnum in pursuance of his foundation of a chantry at Bilston. On the following 1 July he was enabled to plead his pardon with financial advantage through a writ of non molestatis directed to the barons of the Exchequer. A few months later, a Staffordshire jury returned that it was not to the King’s damage if Erdington were to grant property in Wolverhampton and elsewhere to his chantry. The inclusion of Henry VI and Queen Margaret on the bederoll may have been no more than a concession to convention, but, taken together with what else we know of him in the late 1450s, it seems that he was prudently keeping his political options open.31 E159/234, brevia Trin. rot. 25d; C143/452/10.

After the attainders of the Coventry Parliament late in 1459 the time, however, for equivocation had passed, and, in any event, the death of Viscount Beaumont at the battle of Northampton in the following July removed Erdington’s last ties with the house of Lancaster. His appointment to the Warwickshire bench in December 1460 when the Yorkists were in control of royal government is a clear sign of his loyalties.32 On 12 May 1460 he had witnessed a deed for the Yorkist Sir William Hastings: HMC Hastings, i. 295-6. It is remarkable that the commission of the peace in either this county or Leicestershire had not come his way much earlier in his career, and this long delay gives his eventual appointment an added significance. What part, if any, he played during the decisive campaigns of early 1461 is unknown,33 His concerns were probably more personal. On 25 Mar. 1461, four days before the decisive battle of Towton, he granted property in Wolverhampton to his chantry in the church of Bilston: Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. vi (2), 218. but, whether or not he took an active part, his connexion with the Neville earl of Warwick gave him reason to hope he would benefit from the change of regime. His only gain, however, was rather an indirect one. On 12 Sept. 1461 he sued out a writ of precipe alleging that he and his wife had been disseised of the manor of Bordesley in Warwickshire by two eminent lawyers, Thomas Lyttleton and Richard Neel*. The manor was a former Botetourt property long before purchased by Hugh, Lord Burnell, and which had then passed to James Butler, earl of Wiltshire, via Joan, Lady Abergavenny: it was therefore one to which our MP’s wife had a claim, albeit a weak one. Presumably the earl of Wiltshire’s execution and attainder prompted the Erdingtons to seize the manor, and Lyttleton and Neel, as the earl’s feoffees, discharged their responsibilities by re-entering. Their action has been described as ‘a flagrant act of defiance’ to both the King and the earl of Warwick on the grounds that our MP was an annuitant of Warwick and had been granted the manor by the Crown.34 Carpenter, 493; CP40/802, rot. 125; CPR, 1461-7, p. 186. This is a curious interpretation for it was not until 30 May 1462 that Edward IV granted the Erdingtons a life interest in the property, and it looks as though this was the means of both resolving the dispute and providing Sir Thomas with a reward.35 Furthermore, a case pending in 1460 implies that Lyttleton was among our MP’s feoffees in the manor of Erdington and there is thus little likelihood of any personal animosity between them: CP40/796, rot. 7.

Thereafter Erdington’s advancing years made him an increasingly peripheral figure. Only a handful of references survive for his last years. In June 1462 he joined with his cousins, the Harcourts, in large bonds to the King, perhaps as a loan for the campaigns in the north, and in February 1466 he was pardoned by the Crown of the sums due under these bonds. More interestingly, in August 1464 he took advantage of the death and attainder of Viscount Beaumont to make another alienation, presumably a sale, of the reversion of the manor of Barrow on Soar to the advantage of the Yorkist peer, William, Lord Hastings.36 HMC Hastings, i. 74; Trans. Leics. Arch. Soc. xv. 152-3; J. Nichols, Leics. iii (1), 64-65, 568n. By this date it was probably clear that he had not much longer to live. Although the grant to him of the manor of Bordesley had been repeated in 1464, in December 1466 the reversion of the manor, expectant on the deaths of him and his wife, was granted to John Sutton, Lord Dudley.37 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 362, 541. His last appearance in an active role dates from earlier in the same year. According to an action sued by John Delves†, a wealthy Staffordshire esquire, on 7 May Erdington had been among those who broke his close and houses at Cold Norton (Staffordshire), taking 400 sheep. Among our MP’s fellow defendants were his kinsmen, Sir William† and John Harcourt, and it is likely that he was acting on their behalf in what was a family quarrel, for Delves too numbered among the numerous Harcourt kin.38 CP40/821, rot. 65.

Erdington’s death between June, when he was exempted from the Act of Resumption in respect of the grant of Bordesley, and 31 Oct. 1467, when his wife was pardoned as a widow, marked the end of an ancient line.39 PROME, xiii. 281; CPR, 1467-77, p. 43. And it is not surprising that, in the later part of his life, he had been concerned to establish physical memorials of his family. His establishment of chantries in the churches of Aston and Bilston was one aspect of this concern; another was the funeral monument he built for his parents in the former church. The armour of his father’s effigy is of a design unknown in the 1430s and it is thus a reasonable surmise that the monument is contemporary with the foundation of the chantry at Aston. In erecting the memorial our MP also appears to have been celebrating his own connexion with the royal household for the effigy of his mother is adorned with the SS collar as too, in all probability, was that of the male (but its necklace has largely worn away). In view of the change of regime in 1461 it is not surprising that he should have chosen a different device for his own memorial: his own effigy sports the Yorkist collar of suns and roses with a lion pendant.40 Trans. Birmingham Arch. Soc. xlvii. 69-71, 83-84. Although this account attributes the later monument to Sir William Harcourt, there can be little doubt that it belongs to our MP.

Joyce survived Erdington by only a few years. In October 1467 she secured a pardon for all grants and alienations made without licence, but this is her last appearance in the records. She was dead by Trinity term 1471 when her executors had a plea of account pending against one of her late husband’s servants, Thomas Holden of Erdington, gentleman. Since he is said to have been her receiver from 10 Dec. 1468 to 25 Dec. 1470, it is probable that that latter date is that of her death. Tantalizingly, among the sums he is said to have received were 300 marks from the late earl of Warwick at Coventry. How the earl had contracted so large a debt to our MP’s widow is a matter for speculation. Perhaps Joyce had lent him financial support in his campaign against Edward IV.41 CP40/839, rot. 67d; 841, rot. 130.

After his widow’s death, Erdington’s estates were treated as though he died without an heir in common law.42 The Corbets of Moreton Corbet (Salop), the descendants of our MP’s paternal great-aunt, Margaret (d.1395), da. of Sir Giles Erdington, do not appear to have pursued their claim. The manor of Erdington, for example, passed to the Crown (although not by escheat) and was granted to George, duke of Clarence, and that of Houghton-on-the-Hill (Leicestershire) passed into the hands of its immediate lords, the Zouches.43 VCH Warws. vii. 64; VCH Leics. v. 158. The manor of Barrow upon Soar, the legal remainder of which was vested in the attainted Beaumonts, would have joined the manor of Erdington in royal hands had not our MP sold it to Hastings in reversion expectant of his wife’s death. He made similar alienations of his other estates. At an unknown date late in his life he had granted the manor of Braunstone near Leicester to Sir William Harcourt in tail male with successive remainders to his brothers Sir Robert* and (Sir) Richard Harcourt. Another Leicestershire manor, at Knossington, passed into the hands of the nearby Augustinian abbey of Owston, presumably also by his grant.44 VCH Leics. iv. 429; v. 189; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 178.

Sir Thomas does not appear in the transactions of his neighbours as one might expect in the case of one of his status and longevity, although this probably reflects only the vagaries of the surviving evidence. His closest associates were his cousins, the Harcourts. Even before he had come into his inheritance he had been named among the feoffees of Robert Harcourt’s lands in Staffordshire and, in 1435, he returned the compliment by conveying all his lands to feoffees headed by Robert, Richard Harcourt and their stepfather, Sir Robert Strelley. This attachment lost none of its strength with the passing of the years and he was later an executor of Eleanor, widow of Richard Harcourt of Saredon (Staffordshire), the uncle of the Harcourt brothers.45 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 241, 243; CP40/779, rot. 354. He was also on good terms with another of the leading gentry families of the Midlands, the Willoughbys of Wollaton in Nottinghamshire. They had inherited in 1418 the manor of Middleton, only a few miles from Erdington, and it was thus natural that they should cultivate relations with their new neighbours. Thus in June 1438 Sir Hugh Willoughby named our MP as a feoffee in his manor of Wollaton, and, as we have seen, his son and heir, Richard Willoughby, named him in the same capacity. In the meantime, in April 1450, Erdington witnessed a charter for Richard’s stepmother at Middleton.46 Middleton mss, Mi D 1618, 4764, 4770. Our MP’s only other recurring connexion in the surviving records was with Joan Heronville, the heiress of Wednesbury in Staffordshire, and her successive husbands, William Leventhorpe and Henry Beaumont. In 1435 Leventhorpe named him as one of his feoffees as did Beaumont ten years later, and, by a fine levied in 1452, Joan herself conveyed Wednesbury to him and others, probably in preparation for her third marriage.47 C1/33/285; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xi. 234, 247; CP25(1)/293/72/370. More interesting is evidence of another baronial association beyond those with the earls of Warwick and Viscount Beaumont: on 2 Nov. 1447 William, Lord Lovell, granted Erdington and his wife an annual rent of £10 and on the following day added a further five marks, both charged on his manors of Wolverhampton, Willenhall and Bilston. Since the bulk of the Burnell lands had come into Lovell’s possession it may be that this grant was in the nature of compensation for Joyce’s frustrated expectations.48 CP40/821, rot. 401; C139/158/28.