CONSTABLE, Sir John

The Constables had been established at Halsham in Holderness since the late twelfth century, and by the time of our MP they had long numbered among the leading gentry families not only of the East Riding but of Yorkshire as a whole. Sir Robert Constable went with Richard I to the Holy Land and fell at the siege of Acre; and in 1285 his descendant, Sir Simon, had a grant of free warren in the family’s extensive demesne lands.7 Early Yorks. Chs. ed. Clay, iii. 79-80; VCH Yorks. (E. Riding), v. 33; CChR, ii. 308. Nine years later, in a notorious case, the latter suffered death fort et dure for refusing to plead on several felony indictments, including that of poisoning his wife Joan, but this setback had no long-term impact on the family’s fortunes.8 S.S. Walker, ‘Litigation as Personal Quest’, in Wife and Widow ed. Walker, 93-95; Annales Monastici ed. Luard (Rolls Ser. xxxvi), iii. 377. Before Sir Simon’s unfortunate end, his son, Robert (d.1337), by his murdered wife, had married one of the four daughters and coheiresses of Roger, Lord Lascelles, thereby extending the family’s lands into the North Riding with the acquisition of the manors of Thrintoft (in Ainderby Steeple), Maunby (in Kirby Wiske) and Kirkby Knowle.9 E. Riding of Yorks. Archs., Chichester-Constable mss, DDCC/133/1; 135/51, no. 30; CP, vii. 448; VCH Yorks. (N. Riding), ii. 46. This Robert may have represented Yorks. in the Parl. of 1319, but the MP may equally have been his namesake of Flamborough: Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. xci. 49. Our MP’s grandfather, another Sir John Constable† (d.1408), who represented Yorkshire in three Parliaments between 1379 and 1383, further expanded the Constable estate by the purchase in 1379 of the manor of East Halsham from Sir Ralph Hastings and in 1394 by the acquisition of the former de la Pole estate there.10 Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. xci. 135-7; Scrope v. Grosvenor Controversy ed. Nicolas, ii. 296-7; VCH Yorks. (E.Riding), v. 33. It is a measure of the family’s high standing that this Sir John’s son, Sir William, should have been appointed to ad hoc commissions in the county while his father still lived.11 CFR, x. 216; CPR, 1391-6, pp. 233, 588; 1399-1401, p. 213; 1405-8, p. 478. He served on the Scottish expedition of 1400 and also perhaps in Ire. in 1396: E101/42/16, m. 44; CPR, 1391-6, p. 689. By Easter 1399 he had married the daughter of another East Riding knight, Sir Thomas Metham, but his tenure of the Constable patrimony was destined to be brief.12 CP25(1)/279/148/46. He was dead by September 1419 when his mother made her will, leaving our MP, then probably approaching his majority, various household goods, including a silver tankard and her best bed.13 Test. Ebor. i. (Surtees Soc. iv), 396-7.

The first significant event of Constable’s career was his marriage. His bride came from the great northern family of Umfraville, which was connected to the Percys through the marriage of Maud Lucy (d.1398), widow of Gilbert Umfraville, earl of Angus, to Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland (d.1408).14 CP, i. 150-3. All four of her sisters married into other leading northern families, most notable among them Elizabeth, who married Sir William Elmden*, and Maud, the wife of Sir William Ryther*. Following the death of their brother Sir Gilbert they were also heiresses, albeit ones with depleted expectations. The Umfraville inheritance had once been considerable, but the bulk of it had been either alienated to the Percys or settled in tail-male with remainder to the Tailboys family as descendants of the sister of their great-uncle of the half-blood, the earl of Angus who had died in 1381. Further, what little remained had to be divided into five. In July 1421 the escheator of Northumberland had been ordered to apportion the manor of Fawns (in Kirk Whelpington) and other lesser property between these sisters.15 CCR, 1419-22, p. 169. The only another Umfraville property known to have passed to the sisters was the manor of Wheatley (co. Durham): DURH3/44, m. 16. More significant materially than Margaret’s modest inheritance was the property she held from her first marriage to the royal justice, William Lodington. She had represented a socially-advantageous match for Lodington, and it appears that he gave her a life interest in the lands he had acquired, largely by purchase. In 1405, probably at the time of their marriage, the Lincolnshire manor of Waddingworth was settled on the couple, and later evidence shows that she also had a life interest in Lodington’s acquisitions at Halton, Steeping, Winthorpe and Wainfleet.16 CP25(1)/144/152/6; Feudal Aids, iii. 351. The marriage to Constable had not yet been made when the order was issued for the division of the manor of Fawns, but it had almost certainly taken place by the following 20 Apr. when John’s father’s feoffees, headed by his uncle Thomas Constable, quitclaimed to him all their right in the manors of Kirkby Knowle and Thrintoft with the advowson of the church of Kirby Wiske, presumably to give the new bride rights of dower therein. In any event, the couple were definitely married by 5 Dec. 1424 when they secured a licence to hear mass wherever they might be living.17 Yorks. Deeds, iv (Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. ser. lxv), 86; York Sede Vacante Reg. 1423-6 ed. Kirby, 43.

Constable’s career began in earnest in the late 1420s when he first appeared on ad hoc commissions and in the transactions of leading gentry both in the East Riding and Lincolnshire. In 1429, for example, he was named among the feoffees of John, brother of Sir William Tirwhit*, and a year later he had a pardon as one of the feoffees of his cousin and neighbour, Thomas Metham.18 CIPM, xxiii. 626; CPR, 1429-36, p. 66. In July 1432 he stood surety when Sir Thomas Cumberworth* was granted the keeping of the manor of Bonby in Lincolnshire, and a month later he was named as supervisor of the will of Joan, widow of his recently-deceased neighbour Sir Robert Hilton* of Swine and daughter of Sir Robert Constable† (d.1400) of Flamborough. His connexion with the Hiltons was particularly close. Joan made personal bequests both to him and his wife: to him ‘unum lectum de cerico de colore rubeo cum uno pale de nigro’ and to her, a gold cross.19 CFR, xvi. 93; Test. Ebor. ii (Surtees Soc. xxx), 24-25. Soon after, Constable found himself among those acting to protect the inheritance of Joan’s daughters. On 1 Dec. 1432 a commission of oyer and terminer was issued on the complaint of Sir Robert Hilton’s brother and heir male, Sir Godfrey†, that along with the influential Cumberworth and some 140 others Constable had broken his closes at his manors of Swine and Winestead and assaulted him and his men in various locations including York. These manors had been in the hands of Sir Robert, and it is likely that the complaint reflects the rival claims of Sir Godfrey and Joan’s two daughters, namely Elizabeth, wife of (Sir) John Melton* (another of those complained against by Sir Godfrey), and Isabel, widow of Robert Hildyard. The verdict of an assize of novel disseisin at York on 30 Aug. 1434 implies that our MP and his confederates were in the right: Sir Godfrey was asserting an illegitimate title to the inheritance of his nieces.20 CPR, 1429-36, p. 275; JUST1/1542, rot. 17. The interest of the case is that it shows a kinship group from the East Riding acting to protect legitimate rights of inheritance against a member of the same group. Constable’s late grandmother, Maud, had been the paternal aunt of the Hilton brothers (he was also distantly related to them through their common descent from Lord Lascelles); and through the Hiltons, albeit more remotely, he was connected to Cumberworth, who, like Sir Robert Hilton, had married a daughter of Sir Robert Constable, and whose sister was the mother of another of those allegedly involved in the raid on Swine, Sir Robert’s grandson, Robert of Flamborough.

By the mid 1430s Constable was established as a leading member of the gentry in both Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. In the spring of 1434 he was named to the East Riding bench.21 A ‘John Constable of Holderness’ was an E. Riding j.p. from Nov. 1429 to Oct. 1431: CPR, 1429-36, p. 627. Since, however, our MP is generally distinguished from namesakes by the addition ‘of Halsham’, it is likely that the j.p. of 1429 was his neighbour ‘of Hedon’. His pricking as the sheriff of Lincolnshire later in the same year is to be explained by the lands he held there in right of his wife and the government’s difficulty in filling that shrievalty from the leading gentry resident in the county. Other appointments more suitable to his geographical interests followed. While sheriff he was reappointed as a j.p. in the liberty of Beverley alongside several of the townsmen, and in November 1436 he succeeded his associate, Sir William Tirwhit, as sheriff in Yorkshire.22 CFR, xvi. 221, 234-5, 303; CPR, 1429-36, p. 628. It was also at this period that he received the knighthood that his wealth merited, but the occasion of his dubbing can only be a matter for speculation. He was knighted between 11 Apr. 1436 (when he certified into the Exchequer that he had implemented its order to sell a ship and certain uncustomed wool) and the start of his term as sheriff on the following 8 Nov.23 E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 5d; CFR, xvi. 303. Its occasion may therefore have been the siege of Calais in July. If so, however, there is no other evidence that he served abroad.

Alongside office Constable developed connexions with the local peerage. On 18 Dec. 1438 he was one of five knights who came to York to sit on the inquisition post mortem of Anne, the dowager-countess of Stafford and lady of Holderness, with whose son, Earl Humphrey, he was later to develop a close relationship. On the following 3 June he was a witness to a deed of the newly-consecrated bishop of Durham, Robert Neville, younger brother of Richard, earl of Salisbury, an indication of links with the younger branch of the great Neville family that were later to become more apparent. Against this background he was a natural choice to represent his native county in Parliament, and he was duly returned alongside a cadet of the Nevilles, Sir Alexander Neville*, to the Parliament that met on 12 Nov.24 CIPM, xxv. 238; CCR, 1435-41, p. 452; CFR, xvii. 149. During the second session, on 4 Feb. 1440, he sued out an exemption from office with the interesting proviso that, ‘should he act on one occasion he shall not be compelled to act on another because again chosen’.25 CPR, 1436-41, p. 374. His purpose was presumably to prevent a re-pricking to the financially-burdensome office of sheriff, for it was certainly not to scale down his involvement in public affairs. He continued to be routinely appointed to the ad hoc commissions. In November 1440, for example, he was named to a special commission to hear the assize of novel disseisin brought by the abbot of St. Mary’s, York, against Sir Robert Ughtred* and others over land in Hornsea and Wassand in Holderness.26 C66/448, m. 28d. Constable developed his ties with the Nevilles and Staffords. On 22 Dec. 1440 he was on a remarkable jury, headed by six knights, all past or future Yorkshire MPs, which assembled at York castle for the inquisition post mortem of Joan, dowager-countess of Westmorland and mother of the earl of Salisbury. Later, in August 1443, he was one of many prominent local figures confirmed in their seisin of various Neville manors by the earl’s half-brother, Ralph, earl of Westmorland, as part of an agreement concluding, to Westmorland’s disadvantage, the dispute over the Neville inheritance between the senior and junior branches of the family.27 CIPM, xxv. 519; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 150-1, 198 Several of Constable’s co-feoffees, such as Thomas Haryngton I* and Richard Weltden*, numbered among Salisbury’s intimates, but he himself had a much closer association, at least on the available evidence, with another great lord, Humphrey Stafford, earl of Stafford and (from 1444) duke of Buckingham. By 1442 Stafford was paying him an annuity of as much as £20 and from the mid 1440s he was serving as Stafford’s steward in the lordship of Holderness. Further, by 1447 his son and heir, John, who had been brought up in the Stafford household, was in receipt of an annuity from the duke of £10.28 Rawcliffe, 212, 232-3; CP40/808, rots. 345d, 377.

Such connexions both reflected and amplified Sir John’s local standing, and it is not surprising to find that he was in demand as a feoffee. Between 1439 and 1443 he was named as such by Sir William Tyrwhit, Sir Robert Roos*, Sir Richard Pickering*, and William, son and heir of Sir William Tempest*.29 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 244, 246; CIPM, xxv. 591; xxvi. 213-14; Harl. Ch. 55 A 43. That standing is also reflected in the marriage of his son and heir into the peerage, namely to Laura, a daughter of William, Lord Fitzhugh (d.1452), of Ravensworth in the North Riding, by Margery, daughter of William, Lord Willoughby of Eresby. This match had probably been made by April 1442, when the groom was named among Fitzhugh’s feoffees in land in Brandesburton in Holderness.30 Yorks. Deeds, ix (Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. cxi), 38-39; CP25(1)/280/158/41. It was, however not until 7 Mar. 1449, shortly before his own death, that Sir John made a generous jointure settlement on the couple, giving them in tail-general the manors of Kirkby Knowle and East Halsham. The deed for this settlement testifies to the local importance of the match for it was witnessed by an impressive array of local figures, headed by Ralph, Lord Greystoke, Sir Robert Ughtred, Sir John Melton, Sir John Conyers and Sir James Strangways*.31 Chichester-Constable mss, DDCC/133/3. His daughters were married less impressively although respectably enough. The two who married in his lifetime entered the East Riding family of St. Quintin of Harpham: Agnes married Thomas, the son and heir of Anthony St. Quintin, and Elizabeth, probably after Thomas’s premature death in 1445, William, Thomas’s brother and heir.32 Test. Ebor. ii. 95-96, 158; Clay, Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. ii. 303.

Little is known of the last years of Constable’s career. He sat in his second Parliament in 1445 and in June 1446, soon after the end of this long assembly, he sued out a general pardon.33 CFR, xvii. 331; C67/39, m. 48. In 1447 he purchased a fourth part of the manor of Ryehill in Burstwick from Thomas Sutton of Camerton and Beatrice, his wife.34 VCH Yorks. (E. Riding), v. 12; CP25(1)/280/159/50. On 9 Nov. 1448 he was on the pricked list for the Yorkshire shrievalty, but Sir John Conyers was chosen, and on the following 3 Nov. 1449 he was one of the 15 knights who attested the election of Sir James Pickering* and Sir William Normanvile*.35 C47/34/2/5; C219/15/7. By this date he may already have been ailing for on 23 Nov., while still under the age of 50, he made his will. Constable wanted to be buried in the chapel of the church of Halsham, where a chaplain was to pray for the souls of himself and his late wife for four years. He remembered his three daughters, who were each to have a ‘peciam argenteam’, and Maud, who remained unmarried, was to have additionally £200 to her marriage, an indication of his wealth. More unusually, he also remembered his tenants at Halsham, Burton Constable and elsewhere, who, from his goods, were to be exonerated from contributing to the first moiety of the fifteenth granted by Parliament for the term of St. Martin last passed.36 Test. Ebor. ii. 158-9. He was dead by the following 27 June, when a writ of diem clausit extremum was issued in respect of his lands in Yorkshire (although no inquisition survives), and it may be that he was already dead by February 1450 when his son was named to an ad hoc commission.37 CFR, xviii. 133; CPR, 1446-52, p. 319. Yet governmental inertia gave the impression that he still lived. In Trinity term 1450, when his son was being sued for debt as his executor, he himself appears as joint-plaintiff with Sir Thomas Percy and Sir William Euer* in another action, and he was named to the East Riding commission of the peace in July 1451.38 CP40/758, rot. 287; 761, rot. 100d; CPR, 1446-52, p. 597. The delay until 17 Jan. 1452 in the proving of his will adds to the mistaken impression that he survived beyond 1450.

As he requested, Constable was buried in the church of Halsham, where his effigy, lying on a tomb chest that once bore a brass in remembrance of his parents, still survives.39 P.E. Routh, Alabaster Tombs Yorks. 37-41. The son succeeded the father as Duke Humphrey’s steward in Holderness, but his political loyalties during the civil war of 1459-61 appear to have been determined not by this close connexion with the Lancastrian Staffords but by the family’s more tenuous ones with the Yorkist Nevilles of Middleham. In 1462 he was rewarded, presumably for his support for the house York, with a life grant of two-thirds of the manor of Roos, forfeited by Thomas, Lord Roos. He died a wealthy man: in his will of 1472 he left as much as 1,200 marks to be divided between his four daughters.40 Rawcliffe, 212; CPR, 1461-7, p. 230; Test. Ebor. iii (Surtees Soc. xlv), 279n. He was kntd. between June 1460 and May 1461, perhaps on the Yorkist side at Towton: CPR, 1452-61, p. 682; 1461-7, p. 31. The family survived in the male line until 1718 (when the heir general, Cuthbert Tunstall, assumed the Constable name) and provided two further MPs, Sir John Constable† (d.1579) and his son, Sir Henry† (d.1607), who both represented Hedon-in-Holderness and (certainly in Sir Henry’s case and probably in Sir John’s), Yorkshire. In 1620 Sir Henry’s son, another Sir Henry, purchased a Scottish peerage, becoming Viscount Dunbar.41 Clay, ii. 306-7.