LEVENTHORPE, Laurence

Laurence’s precise relationship to John Leventhorpe I* of Sawbridgeworth in Hertfordshire, the former receiver-general of the duchy of Lancaster and executor of both Henry IV and Henry V, has not been ascertained, but it was probably not a particularly close one for in John’s will of 1435 he was left no more than the sum of 20s.5 Reg. Chichele, ii. 529. In the early stages of his career he was called ‘of Yorkshire’ (from whence the Leventhorpes had originated), and appears then to have been in the service of Sir Robert Roos (d.1449), an important member of Henry VI’s household, for whom he provided sureties at the Exchequer in December 1439 and February 1442.6 CFR, xvii. 118, 209. Roos was married to the widow of Sir John Bohun (d.1433), the lord of Midhurst in west Sussex,7 CP, ii. 201. and it may have been through links with her that Leventhorpe came to sit for that borough in the Parliament of 1450. Yet, probably before this first election, he had followed his kinsman John Leventhorpe II* into the service of John Mowbray, 3rd duke of Norfolk. The duke held substantial estates in the same part of Sussex, and it is entirely possible that his retainers could exert influence over the burgesses to secure Laurence’s election. Significantly, Mowbray men were returned on that occasion by other Sussex boroughs, notably Lewes, New Shoreham and Reigate, which last elected John Stodeley*. Laurence Leventhorpe’s position in the duke’s entourage may be deduced from the contents of the now famous ‘newsletter’ which Stodeley sent to their lord on 19 Jan. 1454. It related that Henry VI, whose mental health had collapsed in the previous summer, had failed to respond when shown his baby son the prince of Wales, reported that Queen Margaret had formulated plans for a regency, and detailed the movements of the duke of Somerset, all ‘these thinges aforseid’ having been ‘espied and gadred’ by the chancellor (Cardinal Kemp), John and Laurence Leventhorpe and other reliable informants.8 Paston Letters ed. Gairdner (Lib. edn.), i. 263-8.

Laurence was active in the administration of the Mowbray estates, as parker and keeper of the warren of Stoke in the Sussex lordship of Bosham, which he recovered by an assize in 1455 and held for several years thereafter. More important, at some point in the mid 1450s he served the duke as treasurer of his household, in this role emulating his kinsman John Leventhorpe, who had occupied the post in the previous decade. Yet he was never given a part to play in royal administration in the localities, either under Henry VI or Edward IV, although he received a mark of favour near the beginning of the latter’s reign, when, on 19 Aug. 1461, he secured a potentially lucrative lease at the Exchequer. This, of the lands in ‘Shatcrave’ in the Norfolk hundred of Loddon, taken from the Lancastrian Richard Welles, Lord Willoughby, was backdated to the previous Easter and supposed to last for seven years. Significantly, one of his mainpernors, his kinsman Thomas Leventhorpe†, was then given as resident at Framlingham, Suffolk, the duke of Norfolk’s seat, and it may be speculated that the duke and his affinity, which had supported the new regime, had helped him to obtain the lease.9 CFR, xx. 40. Following the duke’s death later that year, Leventhorpe continued in the service of his son and heir John, the fourth duke, by whom he was employed in the 1460s as comptroller of his estates and then once again as treasurer of the Mowbray household. He himself was living at Framlingham in the spring of 1465, when together with (Sir) Gilbert Debenham II*, the duke’s steward there, he received a statute staple in £40 at the staple of Westminster from a London draper, only to fail to satisfy their creditor at the following Christmas. Duke John granted Leventhorpe and his wife an annuity of £6 6s. for life charged on one of the Mowbray manors in Bedfordshire, and this they continued to receive after their lord’s death in 1476.10 C241/250/21; C140/63/58; Moye, 425, 439. In the meantime Leventhorpe had been returned to Parliament for the second time, in 1472, on this occasion representing the Mowbray borough of Bramber in company with another of the duke’s retainers, John Timperley II*.

The wife with whom Leventhorpe received his annuity was Thomasina, widow of Thomas del Rowe, a clerk of the common pleas who had himself once represented the Mowbray borough of Horsham. Del Rowe had purchased a messuage and land in the parish of Chilham in Kent, and in his last will instructed his kinsman, the clerk John del Rowe, to make estate of it in fee simple to Thomasina if she undertook to pay his debts as his executrix. In November 1455 Laurence and Thomasina petitioned the chancellor to bring pressure to bear on John to complete the conveyance, but the clerk claimed to have no knowledge of the will, saying that he believed he had been enfeoffed of the Chilham estate to the use of Thomas’s heirs.11 C1/25/186. Besides the property in Kent, Laurence and his wife also held two messuages just outside the walls of the city of London, in Finsbury, which in 1475 they placed in the hands of feoffees headed by the East Anglian lawyer Roger Townshend†, who had also once sat for Bramber in Parliament. It seems likely that Thomasina had inherited the premises from her father, Peter Pope, in the same way as she had acquired property in an alley off Secoll Lane, outside Newgate. This last had been conveyed by Townshend and others to the Leventhorpes, only for them to sell it to Henry Ivy on 1 June 1478. Leventhorpe may have been in financial difficulties at this date, or else facing prosecution in the law- courts, for two days later he made a ‘gift’ of his goods and chattels to Townshend alone. By then he had taken up residence at Bushey in Hertfordshire, but for what reason is unknown.12 CP25(1)/152/98/53; London hr 208/7; CCR, 1476-85, no. 387. The last Mowbray duke of Norfolk had died two years earlier, and it may have been through the marriage of his daughter and heiress to the King’s younger son the duke of York that Leventhorpe eventually came to receive royal patronage. On 18 Mar. 1482 he was granted a place as one of the King’s alms knights in the royal college in Windsor Castle, where he might remain until he died.13 CPR, 1476-85, p. 301. He is not recorded thereafter.