MOLYNEUX, Thomas

The career of this Midhurst MP poses several problems of identification and only the most speculative of biographies can be compiled. He is certainly not to be identified with the namesake who, on the death of his father, Sir Richard Molyneux, at the battle of Blore Heath in 1459, succeeded to the manor of Sefton in Lancashire. An esquire of the household under Edward IV, sheriff of Lancashire in the 1470s and made a knight banneret at the siege of Berwick in 1482, he was too young to have sat in Parliament in 1447, and in any event the heir to a significant landed inheritance in Lancashire is hardly likely, at this date, to have been elected for a Sussex borough.3 For Sir Thomas: R. Horrox, Ric. III, 44-45; VCH Lancs. iii. 69; R. Somerville, Duchy, i. 462. Here, however, certainty ends. A Thomas Molyneux was active as a lawyer from the late 1430s until 1506, and while it is just within the range of chronological possibility that only one career is involved here, it is extremely unlikely. In all probability, there are at least two careers, the one relating to our MP and the other to the MP for Nottingham in 1491.

Where, however, are these careers to be divided? According to a visitation pedigree of the family of Molyneux of Hawton in Nottinghamshire (a junior branch of the family from Sefton), the Thomas Molyneux who established the line there died in the sixth year of the reign of Henry VII (1490-1).4 Vis. Notts. (Harl. Soc. iv), 72. It is therefore tempting to conclude that he is the Midhurst MP and that the Nottingham MP was his son. Yet there is much to be said for an earlier date of division and nothing, beyond supposition, to suggest that they were father and son. The surviving references from 1466, when a Thomas Molyneux, who established himself by purchase at Hawton, first appears as active in Nottinghamshire, until 1506, when a writ of diem clausit extremum was issued to the escheator there in respect of a Thomas Molyneux, seem to describe a single coherent career, and, without the evidence of the visitation pedigree, there would be no reason to make a division.5 Thomas Molyneux was first appointed to the Notts. bench in Nov. 1466: CPR, 1461-7, p. 569. Thereafter he or a namesake was named to nearly every peace comm. for the county until the issue of the writ of diem clausit: CFR, xxii. 853. Unfortunately, no inq. post mortem survives. Indeed, the pedigree evidence is doubtful: the records of the borough of Nottingham show that a Molyneux was employed by the borough both before and after the 1490s.6 Nottingham Recs. ed. Stevenson, ii. 396-7, 419-21; iii. 233, 315. Further, a Chancery petition, relating to property in Lancashire, shows that a Thomas Molyneux, described as ‘of Hawton, gentleman’, was named as a feoffee by a landholder, who died in 1459, and was alive at least as late as 1500.7 C1/208/26; CP40/810, rot. 374. Thus, it seems that the younger Thomas was first active in the late 1450s, and that it was he rather that the Midhurst MP who enjoyed the long career in Nottinghamshire.

Another approach to distinguishing between the two Thomases is to try to place them in the pedigree of the family from which they are most likely to have derived, that is, that of Molyneux of Sefton. Sir Thomas, who died in 1483, had a long-lived uncle named Thomas, a younger son of Sir Richard Molyneux (d.1454) by his wife Joan Haydock. This Thomas is known to have been a lawyer, owning an illuminated Statute Nova decorated with his parental arms. He was of age by May 1454, when he witnessed a deed for his elder brother, the Sir Richard killed at Blore Heath, and was alive at least as late as 1490.8 J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii. 1106; Lancs. RO, Blundell mss, DD BL 28/13. It was this Thomas who established himself in Nottinghamshire, probably with the help of John Stanhope*, one of the leading gentry of that county, who, in 1460 or soon after, married Molyneux’s sister Katherine.9 It is significant here that the first known reference to Thomas Molyneux in Notts. shows him acting in association with Stanhope as a nominee of Sir Robert Markham (d.1495) of Cotham, whose sis. or, more probably, da. was either already or was to be his wife: KB27/820, rot. 50; Vis. Notts. 24. Although, however, this Thomas was just about old enough to have been returned to Parliament in 1447, he was not old enough – he cannot have been born before about 1425 – to have established himself as a lawyer ten years earlier.10 His mother’s first husband, Sir Peter Legh of Lyme (Cheshire), did not die until June 1422: G. Ormerod, Palatine and City of Chester ed. Helsby, iii (2), 673. Thus he cannot be identified with his namesake, who, on 1 May 1437, joined the future judge, John Needham*, as a surety. Here described as resident at Prescot, a few miles from Sefton, he must, like his younger namesake, have been one of the Lancashire Molyneuxs, probably as the representative of a cadet branch.11 C237/41/94. It is possible that he was a yr. s. of the main branch in the generation before the other Thomas, that is, the son of Sir Richard† (d.1397) by Ellen, da. of Sir Robert Urswyk† of Tatham, Lancs. If so, however, he can have been born no later than 1398 and what is known of his career implies that he was born some years later. It is much more likely that he rather than the younger Thomas was the MP in 1447. All this suggests that the Midhurst MP, although there is evidence that he lived into the late 1470s, was, from the mid 1460s, a lesser figure than the namesake who made his career in Nottinghamshire. This assumption has been followed here.

Even with these caveats, the MP’s career is very difficult to describe satisfactorily. He was educated at Gray’s Inn. Although he is not definitely known to have been a member until 1449, this merely reflects the limitations of the Inn’s records. His appearance alongside a more senior Gray’s Inn man, Needham, suggests he was already a member by 1437. The early references to him are descriptive of the typical career of a young lawyer endeavouring to make his way in London. In March 1441 he acted in a conveyance of land in Wandsworth and Battersea (Surrey), once held by Nicholas Mawdite, the late serjeant-at-arms. Also involved in this conveyance was one of the coroners of Surrey, Adam Levelord*, with whom the young Molyneux appears to have been on friendly terms. In the autumn of 1442 the two men were named by John Chitecroft* as feoffees in his manor of Leasam near Rye (Sussex), and as this manor later came into Levelord’s hands, either by mortgage or purchase, it is probable that Molyneux was acting here for Levelord rather than the feoffor.12 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 460, 462; 1441-7, p. 462. On 4 Feb. 1443, described as ‘of London, gentleman’, he entered into statute staple at Westminster to the London grocer, John Young*, in £100. This he failed to discharge and some, probably temporary, financial embarrassment may explain why on 3 May 1445 he granted all his goods to John Godmanston*, a lawyer from Essex.13 C131/232/4; Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Apton Hall deeds, 24.

On 25 Jan. 1447 Molyneux attested the Surrey parliamentary election at Guildford and went on to represent Midhurst, a borough in neighbouring Sussex, in the controversial assembly that convened at Bury St. Edmunds on the following 10 Feb.14 C219/15/4. No obvious explanation for his election presents itself. One possibility can probably be dismissed, namely a kinship with the keeper of the privy seal, Bishop Adam Moleyns (an occasional variant of Molyneux), whose cathedral city was only a few miles south of Midhurst. Such a link is entirely speculative. More plausible is the connexion that appears to have existed at this time between the representation of the borough and Gray’s Inn. Between 1447 and 1453 three members of the Inn, none of whom had any connexion with the borough, were elected to represent it: our MP in 1447, another Lancashire man, Thomas Urswyk II*, from a family with whom the Molyneuxs were closely connected, in 1449, and John Baldwyn* of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire in 1453. This cannot have been coincidence and thus, for want of a better explanation, Molyneux’s election, through a connexion now lost, was a function of his membership of Gray’s Inn.

Later references to Molyneux suggest that his career never really progressed, certainly in comparison with those of his contemporaries at Gray’s Inn, Needham and Urswyk. In 1449, described as ‘of Holborn, gentleman’, he was sued for a debt of 40s. by the Inn’s steward, John Bank, presumably for his dues as a member. On 13 Feb. 1453 he attested the Essex election at Chelmsford.15 CP40/754, rot. 241; C219/16/2. There is no evidence that he had property of his own in that county, although he did have some indirect connexions there. Godmanston, MP twice for the county in the 1440s, was the trustee of his goods; his kinsman, Nicholas Molyneux, had returned from a career in France to settle at Barking; and his friend Urswyk had, by this date, begun to build up an estate around Dagenham.16 For Nicholas Molyneux: K.B. McFarlane, Eng. in the 15th Cent. 151-74. McFarlane considered Nicholas’s kinship with the Sefton fam. only ‘an outside possibility’: ibid. 157. Nicholas’s association with our MP, whose origins certainly lay in Lancs., means that this judgement needs to be reconsidered. By Mich. 1460 our MP was active as one of Nicholas’s executors: CP40/799, rot. 490. By the following summer Molyneux was acting as steward of the city of London in Southwark, and again the explanation for his appointment may have lain with Urswyk, who was just embarking on a successful career in the legal service of the city, succeeding Needham as its common serjeant in June 1453 and soon after becoming its recorder. Molyneux is again found in association with Urswyk in November 1456, when Reynold, Lord Grey of Wilton, granted his manor of Portpole, called ‘Greysynne’, to a group of the Inn’s senior members.17 Readings and Moots, i (Selden Soc. lxxi), p. xix; E. Williams, Early Holborn, i. 653. It was about this time that he extended his legal horizons beyond London by finding employment in the service of the great abbey of St. Albans. A chance reference shows that he was a j.p. in the abbot’s liberty by early in 1456 and he may for a time have resided in the vicinity of the abbey. In Easter term 1458, when sued by the executors of the London tailor, Ralph Holand, for a debt of 47s., he was described as ‘once of St. Albans’.18 CP40/789, rot. 206d. Soon after, his services were employed by another religious institution: shortly before 3 May 1460 he succeeded John Catesby as steward of the manor of Newington Barrow for the hospital of St. John of Jerusalem.19 Newington Barrow mss, ACC/2844/4, mm. 8d, 9.

In many cases such a series of appointments would have been the prelude to further advancement in the legal profession, but Molyneux fades from view in the 1460s. His younger namesake and his putative son, Robert, had both begun to outshine him. In 1469 or early in 1470 the latter became common serjeant of London, an office that was then the almost exclusive preserve of Gray’s Inn men.20 Readings and Moots, i, p. xli. His own appearances in the records are rare. In July 1466 he and Urswyk, then recorder of London, were named together as feoffees of John Gaynesford† of Crowhurst in Surrey, and in the following June he acted as a feoffee in Urswyk’s purchase of the manor of Uphavering in Essex.21 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 522-3; CAD, vi. C6477. He was alive as late as November 1479 when, in Urswyk’s inquisition post mortem, he was named as a surviving feoffee in Uphavering.22 C140/73/75.