COLSHULL, Sir John

The circumstances of Colshull’s birth at his father’s manor house of Tremodret on 1 Aug. 1416 were vividly recalled by a string of witnesses to the event some 21 years later. The birth was not an easy one, and more than two decades later the elderly John Wyse* remembered hearing the mother’s screams. Likewise, on hearing the news of the imminent birth the elderly Lady Margaret Carminowe set out from home at Bocconoc and rode ‘in festinacione’ to Tremodret to comfort her. Immediately following the delivery, Sir John Colshull sent messengers to summon godparents to the christening. One of these was John Honyland, prior of Launceston, who got lost on the way to Duloe and had to ask directions, but succeeded in arriving in time. Among the Colshulls’ tenants the news of the birth of their lord’s heir spread rapidly and became the talk of the region for days afterwards.10 C139/89/67. Yet, Sir John did not live to see his son grow up, for he died less than two years later, on 12 July 1418, aged not much over 27. Feeling death approaching, he had settled the bulk of his Cornish estates on feoffees the previous April, with instructions to provide an annuity of £100 for the boy’s sustenance.11 C138/34/41. Young John, as the heir of a tenant-in-chief, was taken into the King’s wardship. Since he stood to inherit considerable wealth, the custody of his estates and marriage were a worthwhile prize, especially when the greatest of the Cornish gentry, Sir John Arundell I* of Lanherne, was able to secure them for just £200.12 CFR, xiv. 288.

Nothing is known of Colshull’s minority, although it is probable that he was raised in the household of his guardian. He came of age on 1 Aug. 1437 and secured formal livery of his paternal inheritance four months later.13 CCR, 1435-41, p. 144. These estates, altogether worth in excess of £120 p.a., comprised 15 manors in Devon and Cornwall, part of the borough of Truro and the principal island and castle of Scilly, the latter held from the duchy of Cornwall by the peculiar annual rent of 100 puffins, later reduced to half that number.14 C138/34/41; C141/4/42; CP40/710, rot. 134; Cornw. Feet of Fines, ii (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc 1950), 1038; William of Worcestre, Itins. ed. Harvey, 21, 23, 115. After a protracted minority of almost twenty years it was perhaps unavoidable that the young John Colshull’s succession was fraught with a degree of difficulty. Many years before, his father had entrusted his estate archive to Prior Honyland for safe keeping, and one of the first tasks faced by the heir was its recovery, since Honyland’s successor claimed that the chest in which the records were contained was ‘adeo grandis et ponderosa necnon tam vetus et debilis’ to be moved without disintegrating.15 CP40/718, rot. 119d. Moreover, a rival claimant to the manors of Stratton, Binnamy and Week St. Mary, as well as to the Scilly Isles, now reappeared in the person of the Cornish landowner Thomas Neville, who had previously challenged the Colshull feoffees for these properties, basing his title on an entail made in 1377.16 CP40/669, rot. 303; 710, rot. 134.

Although for a number of years the holdings which came into Colshull’s hands were further diminished by the survival of his mother Anne, who remarried twice and lived on until 1455,17 Reg. Lacy ed. Hingeston-Randolph, i. 39; CFR, xix. 135. Anne’s two later husbands were John Yerde and William Mynors: CP40/710, rot. 134; 775, rot. 403d. his wealth was sufficient to enable him to secure an equally well-endowed and very well-connected heiress in marriage. Elizabeth Cheyne was the elder of two surviving daughters of Sir Edmund Cheyne, son and heir of the wealthy Dorset landowner Sir William Cheyne† (d.1420), and his wife Cecily, a relation by marriage of the powerful Bonvilles of Shute. Elizabeth’s mother, Alice, was a daughter of another wealthy Dorset landowner, Sir Humphrey Stafford of Hooke, and a niece of the half blood of John Stafford, bishop of Bath and Wells and for some years chancellor of England. Of even greater importance was the marriage of Alice’s niece Avice (1423-57) to James Butler, eldest son and heir of the earl of Ormond, and later earl of Wiltshire.18 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 558-9; iv. 441; CP, x. 128. Initially, Colshull came into conflict with Elizabeth’s stepfather, the influential Lincolnshire landowner Walter Tailboys*, who had married Alice Cheyne. In May 1438 he agreed to guarantee Alice’s tenure of her dower lands for life, and two months later bound himself to Tailboys in the sum of 250 marks.19 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 223-4; 1435-41, pp. 184-5. He proved his wife’s age in November 1438, and did fealty for her estates only days later.20 CCR, 1435-41, p. 220-1; C138/39/95; Reg. Lacy, ii (Canterbury and York Soc. lxi), 123.

Colshull’s connexions by marriage may have accounted for his appointment as sheriff of Cornwall in early November 1438, shortly before he secured his wife’s inheritance. The tenure of the shrievalty resulted in the usual range of minor litigation against the former sheriff for real or supposed official misconduct,21 E13/141, rot. 44. but none of the accusations brought against Colshull was of sufficient gravity to exclude him from later official appointments. He began to be included on ad hoc commissions, and his appointment to the county bench in 1442 and subsequent knighting, perhaps at the coronation of Queen Margaret of Anjou, speak both of his standing in his locality and the regard in which he was held at court.

Nor was Colshull’s standing more than temporarily damaged by his attempt in the mid 1440s to challenge the Crown’s claim to the feudal overlordship of the manor of Bodannan. The ownership of Bodannan had been disputed ever since it had been forfeited by Sir Robert Tresilian† in the Merciless Parliament, and by the early 1440s it had come into the hands of the Trenewith family of Trenowth.22 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 651. Colshull claimed to be the overlord of the manor, and consequently after the death of John Trenewith on 26 Nov. 1444 he seized the person of the 18-year-old heir, John*, and the manor itself. In January 1446 an inquiry found that Trenewith had in fact held a moiety of the manor in chief, and although Colshull was able proved his title to the whole manor in Chancery, custody of heir and property were granted to his brother-in-law John Nanfan* in December. This Colshull was not prepared to accept, and he consequently expelled Nanfan by force. Nanfan struck back, procured the appointment of a powerful commission of inquiry, and recovered Bodannan. Colshull now sought redress from the chancellor, but even though Nanfan defaulted, the court of Chancery maintained the Crown’s claim and ordered a renewed inquiry by jury.23 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 51, 138; C44/29/18.

In spite of the resources and energy that Colshull had invested in the Bodannan affair, he now cut his losses, for not only did the Trenewith heir come of age, but his own attention was diverted by other events. On the death of his mother-in-law, Alice, in March 1448, he gained control of his wife’s share of her dower lands.24 CPR, 1446-52, p. 155. Colshull’s Cornish estates alone now guaranteed him an annual income of in excess of £120 p.a., and placed him among the very elite of Cornish society.25 E179/87/92. For some time he had demonstrated a degree of disdain for the more mundane aspects of shire administration. His documented attendances at the sessions of the peace remained few and far between,26 E101/554/42, nos. 1-6; KB27/744, rex rot. 3. and his presence is recorded at just a single parliamentary election in the shire court, that to the Bury St. Edmunds Parliament of 1447. This may have gradually changed in the years that followed. If Colshull’s marital ties linked him closely to the court, his standing in his county in any event made him impossible to pass over for appointment to – at least – the more important local commissions, those of array and of oyer and terminer. Colshull’s wealth may have been at least as important as his connexions in securing him election to the Parliament of 1453 as knight of the shire alongside a consummate courtier, the lawyer John Trevelyan*, with whom he appears to have been on good terms. At the close of the Parliament, in the summer of 1454, he submitted an otherwise obscure dispute with John Arundell of Lanherne and Thomas Bodulgate* to the arbitration of Trevelyan and John Cheyne.27 Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR17/66. Such was Colshull’s standing that in April 1455 he was the sole Cornish representative summoned to a great council intended to be held at Leicester a month later. In the event, the council was pre-empted by the lordly feuding that culminated in the battle of St. Albans. There is no concrete evidence to show whether Colshull took any part in the battle, although a general pardon he sued out the following November when the Yorkists were in the ascendant may suggest that he did.28 PPC, vi. 340; C67/41, m. 17.

Nevertheless, he continued to receive occasional appointments both during the duke of York’s protectorates, and in the autumn of 1459 and spring of 1460, when the Ludford Bridge rout and subsequent exile of the Yorkist lords had hardened the political divide. These last appointments were perhaps among the most controversial that Colshull was to receive during the course of his long career, for they included instructions for the array of fighting men to resist the exiled lords in Calais, and to inquire into their forfeited goods in the south-west. It is thus not surprising to find his public role somewhat reduced in the aftermath of the Yorkist victory at the battle of Northampton that summer. Yet, within months of Edward IV’s accession Colshull had come to terms with the new rulers and was again trusted not merely to serve on the commission of array and of the peace, but to inquire into Lancastrian insurgency in his county.29 KB27/819, rex rot. 6d; 826, rex rot. 8; KB9/303/20, 306/25. Moreover, he now also felt emboldened to bring litigation before the barons of the Exchequer for his wages in the Parliament of 1453, which remained unpaid even seven years after the dissolution.30 E13/147, Mich. rot. 16. This reconciliation probably owed something to the good offices of Colshull’s nephew by marriage, the young Humphrey Stafford IV, who had become a close friend and ally of the new King. Following a succession of ad hoc commissions, Colshull was appointed to a second shrievalty of his native county in November 1466. If this term of office was, by and large, uneventful, it did result in a degree of noisome litigation for several years when Colshull failed to pay to the London grocer John Nicoll part of an annuity of £40 charged to his fee farm, in payment of a larger sum owing to the Londoner for a supply of gunpowder.31 E13/155, Trin. rot. 9d; 159, rot. 48.

Within two years of this renewed appointment the country once more descended into open civil war. While there is no concrete evidence to show whether Colshull took any personal part in the fighting sparked by the discontent of the King’s brother, the duke of Clarence, and his cousin, Richard, earl of Warwick, in the summers of both 1468 and 1470 he was again ordered to array fighting men in his county to counter successive risings. Yet, the crisis had a further, more personal, consquence for him. In late July 1469 a rebel army clashed with King Edward’s men under the earl of Pembroke and the newly created earl of Devon, Humphrey Stafford IV, at Edgcote near Banbury. The King’s men were routed and Pembroke taken and executed. Stafford escaped but was captured at Bridgwater on 17 Aug. and beheaded.32 J. Warkworth, Chron. Reign Edw. IV (Cam. Soc. x), 7; CFR, xx. 247. As he left no issue, Colshull’s wife and her sister and half-sister, the respective wives of Sir John Willoughby† and Thomas Strangeways†, now inherited his ancestral estates. Even though the lands of the earldom of Devon reverted to the Crown, the Stafford inheritance shared by the three women extended across eight counties and was worth in excess of £300 p.a.33 C140/32/30, 41/27; CPR, 1467-77, p. 186.

The heirs were granted formal licence to enter part of the Stafford estates in November 1469, but then their difficulties began to mount. In the first instance, they were forced to go to law to recover part of the dead earl of Devon’s muniments from the chancellor of Exeter cathedral, Nicholas Gosse, to whom they had been entrusted.34 C1/61/296. More seriously, Earl Humphrey’s distant kinsman Humphrey Stafford III* of Grafton took advantage of the political turmoil and seized eight of his manors in Worcestershire and Staffordshire. In the first instance, the renewed unrest of the second half of 1470 which culminated in Edward IV’s deposition and Henry VI’s readeption, made a legal challenge impractical. It appears that Colshull was at least initially regarded with suspicion by the restored King’s party, and he was consequently removed from the Cornish bench. Within a few months, however, he had made his peace, and his landed wealth and social position probably made it all but unavoidable that he should be restored to the status of a j.p.

The years after Edward IV’s return to power were marked for Colshull by the ongoing dispute with Humphrey Stafford III. The brief and limited marks of favour bestowed on him by the earl of Warwick’s regime in early 1471 did nothing to sour his relations with the Yorkist King. He rapidly secured a pardon and by early 1472 was once more entrusted with the array of armed men, and with finding workmen for the King’s ordinance.35 CPR, 1467-77, p. 398. Moreover, Edward IV further increased his landed powerbase by granting him custody of five forfeited Cornish manors which had been taken into the King’s hands by commissioners of concealments not long before, a grant which was renewed several times until Easter 1476.36 CFR, xxi. nos. 204, 205, 268, 313. Nevertheless, the lands seized by his wife’s Worcestershire kinsman proved elusive. In November 1472 Edward IV had tacitly accepted Stafford’s forcible occupation of the property by formally referring to him as the possessor of the disputed holdings in royal letters of pardon,37 C67/49 m. 13. but in September 1473 the Stafford heirs reasserted their claim by force. Litigation before the justices of common pleas followed, and dragged on without conclusion beyond 1477. Equally ineffective was a petition to the council of the young prince of Wales concerning three of the disputed manors, Bedcote, Stourbridge and Belbroughton.38 SC8/344/E1310; CP40/852, rots. 319, 418; PROME, xv. 206-7.

Throughout his career, Colshull took care to maintain his links with his various important, if distant, relatives in the south-west. In January 1456 he was named one of the arbiters in a dispute between Henry Bodrugan† and Sir John Arundell (d.1473) of Lanherne over property in Truro Vean;39 Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR3/315. in the 1460s he was attesting deeds for various female members of the Hungerford family, to whom he was linked by his sister’s first marriage; in 1474 he was pardoned as the only surviving feoffee of Philip Copplestone; and in 1475 he was acting as a witness for his wife’s aunt, Katherine, then widow of Sir John Arundell. From her first marriage to William Stafford Katherine was still seised in dower of a number of west country manors and after her death in 1479 these also passed to Earl Humphrey’s coheirs, finally giving them access to the complete southern portion of the Stafford lands.40 CCR, 1461-8, p. 271; 1468-76, nos. 236, 1384; 1476-85, no. 491; CFR, xxi. no. 543; C140/71/47; C67/49, m. 8.

It nevertheless seems that it was the ongoing dispute with Humphrey Stafford of Grafton that informed the aged Colshull’s attitude to Richard III’s usurpation. While there is no suggestion that he himself took any part in the duke of Buckingham’s rising in the autumn of 1483, it is noteworthy that he was dropped from the county bench during the duke of Gloucester’s protectorate and not restored when Richard seized the crown. While at least one of the other Stafford heirs, Sir Robert Willoughby, rose with the duke of Buckingham and subsequently joined the earl of Richmond in exile in Brittany, Humphrey Stafford of Grafton actively supported the King, by destroying the Severn bridges to prevent Buckingham’s Welsh tenants from crossing into England.41 C.D. Ross, Ric. III, 116; L. Gill, Ric. III and Buckingham’s Rebellion, 25, 97.

Colshull died not long afterwards, on 30 Mar. 1484. He left no children, so his estates passed to his sister, Joan, then said to be aged 50 (but in reality at least 66), who had survived three husbands (Sir William Hungerford, (Sir) Renfrew Arundell* and John Nanfan) and was then married to a fourth, Sir William Houghton. The inheritance subsequently passed to her son by her second marriage, Sir Edmund Arundell of Tremodret.42 C141/4/42; C1/208/3; CCR, 1476-85, no. 1269; CFR, xxi. nos. 846, 847; J.P. Yeatman, House of Arundel, 214; KB27/964, rot. 38. Colshull’s widow, Elizabeth, survived her husband by eight years, but never remarried. The attainder of Humphrey Stafford of Grafton in the Parliament of 1485 finally facilitated the restoration of the lands he had so long withheld from her and her siblings.43 PROME, xv. 206-7; C67/51, m. 28; 54, m. 3; CFR, xxii. 367, 368.