CONSTABLE, Robert

The Constables of Flamborough traced their descent, in an illegitimate line, from the early 12th-century Constables of Chester; and they were, from the 12th to the seventeenth century, one of the wealthiest families of the East Riding. Their two principal manors were at Flamborough, held of the royal honour of Chester and valued at as much as 100 marks p.a. in 1488, and at Holme-upon-Spalding-Moor, held of the Cliffords and their predecessors and valued in the same year at £40 p.a.5 Early Yorks. Chs. ed. Clay, xii. 142-51; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 363. It was at the latter place that our MP was born. Unusually, the name of the midwife who delivered him is known. She was Joan, a kinswoman of Sir William Tirwhit*. More significant, however, is the identity of his godmother, Katherine, wife of Sir Thomas Hercy† of Grove in Nottinghamshire and heiress-presumptive of her brother, Sir Thomas Cumberworth*. As widow of Sir Marmaduke Constable (d.1404) she was also Robert’s grandmother and, already by the time of Robert’s birth, it was looking highly probable that he would be left heir to the valuable Cumberworth estates, since Katherine’s brother, married as early as 1400, had yet to have issue. The probability that Sir Thomas would remain childless was implicitly acknowledged in a deed of September 1428 by which Katherine and her three sons, two by Constable and one by Hercy, ratified the estates of her brother and his wife, another Katherine, in their jointure manor of Scremby (Lindsey) while saving her own rights as her brother’s heiress-presumptive.6 CIPM, xxvi. 241; Hatton’s Bk. of Seals ed. Loyd and Stenton, no. 489.

Thus Robert began his life as heir to an extensive East Riding estate, probably worth in excess of £200 p.a., and as the potential heir to another estate, lying largely in Lincolnshire, the holder of which was assessed for the purposes of the 1436 subsidy at £160 p.a.7 E179/136/198. To these very considerable advantages he was soon fortunate to add another. On his father’s death in May 1441 the Crown committed the wardship of his lands and his marriage to William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk.8 Suffolk originally undertook to pay 300 marks for the wardship and marriage, but the payment was remitted ‘by way of rewarde’: CFR, xvii. 191, 199; E159/219, brevia Hil. rot. 23. The earl may not have derived too much profit from the lands since, of the family’s two principal manors, that of Holme-upon-Spalding-Moor was part of the jointure of our MP’s mother and that of Flamborough was in the hands of feoffees, headed by Cumberworth.9 CIPM, xxv. 478. The marriage was, however, valuable and the earl bestowed it with advantage both to himself and Robert, contracting him to Agnes, sister of the King’s serjeant, Philip Wentworth*.10 This marriage had certainly been made by 8 Dec. 1449 when Constable joined the Wentworths in taking a statute staple in 500 marks from his wife’s half-brother, Thomas, Lord Roos, but it probably dates to bef. 1447: C241/237/17; CP40/775, rot. 139d.

With such excellent prospects, it is surprising that Constable was educated at Gray’s Inn. This at least is the implication of a much later legal action: in Michaelmas term 1486 he was one of those sued the steward of that inn for unpaid dues.11 J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), i. 84-85, 509. Yet, if he was educated as a lawyer, he had no need of a profession and his future lay elsewhere. It was no doubt Suffolk who sponsored his entry into the royal household, where he first appears as an esquire in 1449.12 E101/410/3. He continues to appear in the accts. for Henry VI’s household until their termination in 1452. To the earl he also owed the royal grant made to him in November 1447 of the wardship of the lands and marriage of Thomas Fastolf of Cowhaugh (Suffolk) at a price agreed, in the following April, at 100 marks. The grant was controversial for, it was alleged, the ward’s famous kinsman, Sir John Fastolf, had been appointed his guardian by Thomas’s father and only through imprisoning Thomas’s mother had the Crown been able to force her to hand her son over to Constable. Whatever the truth of these allegations, it was not directly Constable’s quarrel, for he was acting as the agent of Wentworth, who was the real purchaser of the wardship and to whom he surrendered it in February 1453.13 CFR, xviii. 79; CPR, 1446-52, p. 144; 1452-61, p. 46; Property and Politics ed. Pollard, 64; RP, v. 371-2 (cf. PROME, xii. 507); Paston Letters ed. Davis, i. no. 51, ii. no.886.

Although Constable seems to have made his early career at Court, he was too wealthy in his own right to make the Court the primary focus of his interests. On the death of his great-uncle, Cumberworth, in March 1451, his already substantial landed income was augmented by his inheritance of the Lindsey manors of Somerby, Searby-cum-Owmby, Scremby and Stain, and the East Riding manor of Argam.14 C139/143/29; W.O. Massingberd, Ormsby-cum-Ketsby, 258-9; Feudal Aids, iii. 350; VCH Yorks (E. Riding), ii. 6. Thereafter he came to play an active role in local government in both Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. He also appears to have begun an association with the Percy earls of Northumberland which, despite the vicissitudes of that great family’s fortunes, was to last until the end of his life.15 Here our MP needs to be distinguished from his great-uncle or cousin, Robert Constable of Barnby-by-Bossall (N. Riding), who was a Neville retainer down to his death late in 1454 (leaving another Robert as his son and heir): Test. Ebor. ii (Surtees Soc. xxx), 174-7; A.J. Pollard, North-Eastern Eng. 137-8. Failure to make the distinction leads Pollard into the error of asserting that our MP was appointed to the Percy stewardship in Aug. 1461 as a follower of the Neville earl of Warwick: Pollard, 289. Although this relationship was at its closest after the restoration of the eigth earl in 1470, it seems to have begun much earlier. In June 1454 Constable was indicted for his support for the Percys at the battle of Heworth on 24 Aug. 1453, and his connexion with the sixth earl may explain his summons for the East Riding to the great council of May 1455. Whether he followed the earl to the first battle of St. Albans, where the latter met his death, is unknown, but the fact that he sued out a pardon from the Yorkist regime in October 1455 is suggestive.16 R.A. Griffiths, King and Country, 333, n. 63; PPC, vi. 340; C67/41, m. 24.

Very little evidence survives to illuminate Constable’s career in the late 1450s, but he clearly remained loyal to the house of Lancaster at least until after the attainders of the Coventry Parliament. His election for Lincolnshire to that Parliament in company with the esquire for the body, William Grimsby*, together with his appointment to the Lancastrian commission of array of December 1459 and the Yorkshire oyer and terminer commission, headed by the new earl of Northumberland, in the following May, demonstrate his credentials as a loyalist.17 C219/16/5; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 560, 609. Only his surname is legible in the election indenture, but there can be no doubt that he was the MP. Yet it is striking how quickly he was able not simply to adapt to the new dispensation but to find positive favour with the Yorkist regime. While his probable master, the Percy earl, met his death at Towton, and his brother-in-law, Philip Wentworth, was attainted in the Parliament of 1461, he became the beneficiary of the generous patronage of Edward IV’s first reign. This implies that, at some point in the civil war of 1459-61, he changed sides. One might also infer from his knighthood, at an unknown date between September 1460 and May 1461, that he fought at one or more of the battles of these years.18 He was still an esquire on 25 Sept. 1460 when a juror at an inquisition post mortem held on the death of William Paulyn*, but he was a knight by 8 May 1461: C139/178/52; CPR, 1461-7, p. 31. Perhaps, despite his connexion with Percy, he was in the Yorkist ranks at Towton. This would explain the investment made in him by the new government. In May 1461 he was added to the bench in Lindsey; more significantly, in the following August, he was granted for life the stewardship of the Yorkshire lands of both the earldom of Northumberland and the barony of Roos (the property of his wife’s nephew of the half blood, the Lancastrian Thomas, Lord Roos) with a fee of £40 p.a.; and in November he was pricked as sheriff of Yorkshire.19 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 39, 567; CFR, xx. 48.

Given Constable’s previous connexions with Percy, the grant to him of the Percy stewardship may have been designed by the Crown to win the loyalty of the late earl’s tenantry, but the periodic reorganizations of Yorkist patronage meant that he held his stewardships only briefly. The Percy manors were granted to the young George, duke of Clarence, in August 1462 and most of the Roos manors were put in trust for the benefit of Thomas, Lord Roos’s wife, Philippa, in December 1461.20 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 39, 87, 198. Sir Robert was, however, handsomely compensated. On 23 Dec., a fortnight after the grant in favour of Philippa, he was awarded two East Riding manors for life at the nominal rent of 1d. p.a.: the Roos manor of Howsham and that of Hessle, forfeited by William Tailboys*. To these he added in June 1462 the Roos lands in Goxhill in north Lindsey to the value of £10 p.a., granted to him in tail male.21 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 86, 192. He went some way to earning these rewards when in the following December he took part in the campaign for the reduction of the northern strongholds of the Lancastrians. In April 1464 his status in northern society was recognized by his appointment as one of the commissioners to negotiate with the Scots, and, in December of that year, there came a further yet more handsome royal grant, that of the manors of Howsham and Hessle, the hamlet of Paddokthorpe and the advowson of the Augustinian priory of Kirkham (Yorkshire) in tail male. This was no doubt intended in part as anticipated compensation for his loss of Goxhill to Thomas Blount* in February 1465. He continued to earn marks of royal favour, being appointed as a commissioner to negotiate with the Scots once more in October 1466, and in the following month as the sheriff of Lincolnshire.22 Three 15th Cent. Chrons. (Cam. Soc. n.s. xxviii), 158; Foedera ed. Rymer (Hague edn.), v (2), 119, 142; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 344, 367. Soon afterwards, his already substantial wealth was augmented by the death of his mother early in 1467.23 Test. Ebor. ii (Surtees Soc. xxx), 80.

This gain had, however, soon to be balanced against the loss of his royal grants, save that of the manor of Howsham, under the terms of the 1467 Act of Resumption.24 PROME, xiii. 274. It is likely that this reflected a reorganization of royal patronage occasioned by increased financial stringency rather than any withdrawal of favour from Sir Robert personally. Nor can much significance be safely placed on his removal from the Lindsey bench in September 1470 on the eve of Edward IV’s departure into exile. Nothing is known of the part he played during the Readeption beyond his continued appointment to the East Riding bench in November 1470 and his nomination as a commissioner of sewers there in the following February.25 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 251, 621, 636.

These appointments did nothing to compromise Constable on Edward IV’s victorious return. In November 1471 he was again considered for appointment as sheriff of Yorkshire, although he was not chosen, and soon after he sued out a general pardon.26 C47/34/2/7; C67/48, m. 20. None the less, in the 1470s the pattern of his career changed as a result of the restoration of the Percy earl. In Edward’s first reign he had been a servant of the Crown, in the sense that he had benefited from royal patronage; in the second reign he was one of the leading members of the restored earl’s retinue. In March 1472, with his son-in-law, Sir William Euer, and other Percy retainers, he entered into bonds to Thomas Vaughan*, chamberlain of the prince of Wales, an arrangement that probably had something to do with the reversal of the earl’s attainder. In May 1475 he was one of those enfeoffed by the earl in lands in Northumberland and Leicestershire. His election, on 5 Jan. 1478, to represent Yorkshire in the Parliament in which the duke of Clarence was attainted, and his third appointment as sheriff, are to be seen as other aspects of his service to the earl.27 CCR, 1468-76, no. 849; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 542, 544; C219/17/3; Pollard, 157-8; CFR, xxi. 455. Within two weeks of becoming sheriff, he was assigned £310 for his charges in the office, an indication of the financial burdens of the shrievalty rather than a particular mark of royal favour to him: E403/848, m. 5. At an unknown date in the 1470s he was appointed to the stewardship of various Yorkshire lordships of the Percys, an office he held jointly with his eldest son, Marmaduke. As a servant, and probably a councillor, of the earl, in May 1480 he was one of the arbitrators in the first attempt to conclude the famous Plumpton dispute.28 CPR, 1485-94, p. 300; DKR, xxxvii (2), 125; Plumpton Corresp. (Cam. Soc. iv), p. lxxxi.

Beyond his Percy service, little else is known of Constable’s career in the 1470s. By 1472 he was in receipt of an annuity of £5 from Anne Neville, widow of Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, and wife of Walter Blount*, Lord Mountjoy. As lady of Holderness, she had an obvious interest in retaining leading East Riding gentry. In 1473 the local prominence of our MP and his wife was further recognized by their admission to the guild of Corpus Christi in the city of York. Less happily, a further Act of Resumption at the end of that year meant that his sole remaining royal grant, the manor of Howsham, was reduced from tail male to life.29 Add. Ch. 22645; Reg. Guild Corpus Christi York (Surtees Soc. lvii), 86; CPR, 1467-77, p. 418. Further, twice in the decade he came into conflict with royal authority: in October 1473 his arrest was ordered for the illegal seizure of a ship contrary to the Anglo-Scottish truce; and at the end of the decade he disobeyed a royal order to surrender, to Richard, duke of Gloucester, Morys Martin and others arrested for robbing at sea subjects of the duke of Brittany. On the latter occasion, he claimed that the prisoners were his own since they had been taken in his lordship of Flamborough in the county palatine of Chester, and this explanation was accepted. Both episodes are illustrative of the lordship’s importance as a port and suggest that Sir Robert had considerable shipping interests.30 CPR, 1467-77, p. 409; DKR, xxxvii (2), 141-2; Yorks. Arch. Jnl. xxi. 175-7. A suit in the Grimsby bor. ct. in 1473 shows he traded in fish: E. Gillett, Grimsby, 35.

The earl of Northumberland’s support for the regime of Richard III meant that our MP readily adapted to the changed political circumstances of 1483. Indeed, his son Marmaduke, by now a knight, became a generously rewarded follower of the usurper, and he himself was appointed as one of the conservators of the truce with Scotland in September 1484. He continued as one of the earl’s most intimate servants, a relationship clearly expressed in the bequest in Percy’s will of July 1485 that he ‘be payed his fee duryng his lyve, he doyng his service unto my heires as he dothe unto me’.31 Foedera, v (3), 153; Test. Ebor. iii (Surtees Soc. xlv), 306. Just as the earl was able, albeit with some difficulty, to make himself acceptable to Henry VII, so was Sir Robert, who had, over the years, proved himself a consummate trimmer. He sued out a general pardon in January 1486, and, in the following April, when the earl rode to greet the new King on his arrival in Yorkshire, our MP was among those who accompanied him.32 C67/53, m. 3; J. Leland, Collectanea, iv. 186. The family’s transition to the new regime was not, however, entirely seamless. One of his yr. sons, Philip, paid £100 for a pardon for supporting Lambert Simnel in the rising that ended at the battle of Stoke.: M.J. Bennett, Lambert Simnel, 103. This was the last significant act of his life. After a long and successful career, in which he survived several changes of monarch unscathed, he died on 23 May 1488.33 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 363.

Constable’s status and wealth were reflected in the provision he was able to make for his large brood of children. For his seven daughters he found as husbands seven knights, an achievement which required a massive capital investment probably well in excess of 1,000 marks.34 Clay, Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. ii. 288-9. The total rises to eight knights if one includes Sir Gervase Clifton of Hodsock, Notts., 2nd husband of Agnes, wid. of Sir Walter Griffith (d.1481). He was no doubt assisted here by the size and coherence of the great Percy retinue, for at least three of his sons-in-law (Sir Ralph Bigod of Settrington, Sir William Euer and Sir Thomas Metham) were retainers of the earl.35 Euer and Metham rode with him in the Percy retinue of Apr. 1486. Sir Gervase Clifton was also closely connected with the earl: Test. Ebor. iii. 309. His wealth also enabled him to make, in his own lifetime rather than post mortem, ample provision for his sons. In 1473, on the marriage of his eldest son, Marmaduke, to Joyce, daughter of Humphrey Stafford III* (whose wealth exceeded even that of our MP), he settled on the couple his adjacent Lincolnshire manors of Somerby Searby-cum-Owmby; and, at an unknown date, he also gave Marmaduke the manor of Holme-upon-Spalding-Moor at a rent of £20 p.a., about half its annual value.36 KB27/849, rot. 37; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 363. On his second son, Robert, he settled lands worth £10 p.a. and, perhaps in homage to his own legal education, embarked him upon a legal career – he was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in Hilary term 1477 – that was to culminate in appointment as a serjeant-at-law.37 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 363; Prerogativa Regis ed. Thorne, p. xlvi; Baker, i. 509-10. His third son, Philip, was given lands worth £8 p.a., his fourth, William, lands worth ten marks p.a. and his fifth, Roger, who is omitted from the pedigrees and hence probably died relatively young, what appears to have been a smaller estate. All these were life estates with remainder to the main line, so the considerable Constable patrimony was not put in danger of permanent diminution. The youngest son, John, needed no land for he was destined for a successful career in the Church. He died in 1528 as dean of Lincoln.38 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 363; Alumni Cantabrigiensis ed. Venn and Venn, i. 380.

As one of the greatest of the Yorkshire gentry, Sir Robert was in demand as an associate in the transactions of his neighbours and, in particular, of his kinsmen. Indeed, he appears to have been the central figure in the sort of large kinship network typical of northern society. He was, for example, supervisor of the wills of his great-uncle, Cumberworth (as well as a substantial beneficiary of the will) and of his son-in-law, Sir Walter Griffith of Burton Agnes (East Riding); and an executor of the will of his godmother and grandmother, Katherine Hercy. Despite his youth, he was nominated as one of his father’s executors and, in the 1450s, acted in the same capacity for his kinsman, Robert Constable of Barnby-by-Bossall, and his kinswoman, Margaret, daughter of Nicholas Gascoigne of Lasingcroft. In May 1455 he witnessed a deed of his elderly mother-in-law, Margery, Lady Roos. When, late in his life, he conveyed his Lincolnshire lands to feoffees, all four were drawn from his family: his eldest son, Sir Marmaduke, William Constable, clerk, who may have been his brother, and two of his sons-in-law, Sir William Euer and Sir Walter Griffith.39 Lincoln Diocese Docs. (EETS, cxlix), 56; C1/32/395; CP40/721, rot. 446; Test. Ebor. ii. 81, 176, 195n; iii. 270; Harl. Ch. 55 E 32; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 366. Less frequently is he found acting in the conveyances of those outside his extended family circle although, during his long career, he did act as a feoffee for Sir Robert Ughtred*, Sir William St. Quinton and his son John (d.1471), the impoverished northern peer, Owen, Lord Ogle, and Margaret, grand-daughter of Sir John Etton†.40 Yorks Deeds, ii (Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. lii), 122; Trans. E. Riding Antiq. Soc. xxi. 39, 41-42, 64, 77; Notts. Archs. Portland (of Welbeck) mss, DD/4P/42/15; Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Misc. 190.