ERLE, John

The MP may well have been the John Erle who was given for life a virgate of land in Bramshill, Hampshire, and a messuage and carucate of land in Oxenwood, Wiltshire, by Sir William Sturmy*, at an unknown date before the latter’s death in March 1427,2 CIPM, xxii. 717. A rent was later payable from the property at Oxenwood to Queen Margaret, as part of her dower estates: SC6/1055/16-19. for Sturmy, who was the MP’s great-uncle, put great reliance on John’s father Robert Erle, whom he made his executor and to whom he gave other lands.3 Although John would have been too young to be the juror of this name at inquisitions post mortem held at Little Bedwyn in the following year: CIPM, xxiii. 16, 23. In about 1439 John was married to Margaret Ludlow, whose kinsman Robert Warmwell of Salisbury granted her four tenements and shops and gardens in Minster Street in the city, and more property, including fisheries, in Fisherton Anger and Stratford sub Castle. At least, that is what a deed copied into the cartulary of the lawyer Thomas Tropenell* (who was to marry Margaret after Erle’s death) stated to be the case. However, in 1442 settlements were made whereby these particular properties were to be held by Warmwell and his wife for term of their lives; only at their deaths were they to pass to Margaret Erle and her issue.4 Tropenell Cart. ed. Davies, i. 151-2. Erle witnessed the will made by Warmwell in 1447, in which the Minster Street properties were confirmed to Margaret and her issue after the death of the testator’s widow, and his wife was also given a reversionary interest in Warmwell’s dwelling house.5 Ibid. i. 235-9. In addition, in the 1440s Erle and his wife’s kinsman Richard Ludlow received a rent of £10 p.a. from the manors of Buttermere and Collingbourne Sunton, Wiltshire.6 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 350, 464-5.

Little is known about Erle’s public career, although as his family held land near Reading it is likely that he was the man of this name who held office as coroner in the abbot of Reading’s liberty in the town at least by the beginning of 1441 and until 14 Nov. that year, when he was removed as being insufficiently qualified for the post.7 VCH Berks. iii. 217-18; CPR, 1436-41, p. 495; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 1-2. If so, he was the ‘gentleman’ who in 1446 witnessed conveyances relating to the almshouse at Thatcham.8 S. Barfield, Thatcham, ii. 159-61. His kinsmen the Sturmys had long been influential in Ludgershall, but his election to Parliament for that borough in 1450 must probably be attributed rather to the patronage of his father-in-law William Ludlow, a favoured member of Henry VI’s household who, having long held the manor and town by gift of the King, had only recently secured them by grant in tail-male.9 P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 87, was mistaken in thinking that Erle’s father-in-law was a ‘well-known soldier’. Ludlow himself represented the borough on six other occasions. Parliament met on 6 Nov. 1450, at a time when Erle’s father Robert did not have long to live, and it is quite likely that the opportunity to deal with family affairs at Westminster was a factor prompting John’s candidacy. Robert had held certain of Sir William Sturmy’s estates, most notably the valuable manors of Wolf Hall and Crofton Bray, ever since the knight’s death in 1427, and when he himself died (before the end of 1451), John attempted to keep possession of them. He challenged the title of (Sir) John Seymour I*, Sturmy’s grandson and coheir, who with good reason had expected to come into this part of his inheritance after Robert Erle’s death. In a petition to the chancellor our MP contended that John Benger† and others had been enfeoffed of these manors by Sir William with the intention that they should make estate to Robert Erle in tail-male, but that now ‘divers persons imagenynge to destroie the said entaille’ had spread rumours that the livery of seisin by virtue of the enfeoffment had not been completed until Saturday 22 Mar. 1427, whereas Sturmy had died on the previous day; these false allegations had it that Robert Erle ‘havyng grete reule aboute hym [Sturmy] at his dyng’ concealed the death until the Sunday. As John was likely to be disinherited, and as certain witnesses were too aged and infirm to come to the Chancery at Westminster, he asked that they be examined in the locality by commissioners headed by the bishop of Salisbury. His request was allowed, but when testimonies were given they evidently supported the case of Seymour, who, triumphant, had them enrolled on the patent roll in January 1452.10 C1/18/45, 46, 19/112, 360; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 554-6.

John Erle did not have long to enjoy possession of the rest of his patrimony, for he himself died shortly afterwards. Evidence presented at assizes of novel disseisin conducted in 1467 held it that his death occurred within a year of his father’s.11 KB27/836, rot. 72. Our MP’s widow Margaret married the highly-acquisitive Thomas Tropenell before May 1456. Together they held six messuages and nine acres of land in Salisbury, Fisherton Anger and Stratford sub Castle, which were presumably the properties she had been left by her kinsman Robert Warmwell.12 Tropenell Cart. i. 152-3; ii. 212-20. The arms of Margaret’s family are displayed in the Tropenell chapel in the church at Great Chalfield, and heraldic devices also relating to the Ludlows can be seen in various parts of the manor-house there, as well as on the tomb she shared with Tropenell at Corsham.13 Wilts. Arch. Mag. xciii. 86. Erle was succeeded by his son Richard, still a minor at the time of our MP’s death. Richard, aided by his stepfather Tropenell, who was fully capable of enlisting the help of influential landowners of the region and of bribing and manipulating juries, continued the family’s battles in the law-courts against the Seymours in the late 1460s. Their conflict played a part in his election to the Parliament of 1467 as a representative of the borough of Chippenham, while his opponent Richard Seymour* sat for Marlborough.