STANLOWE, William

William Stanlowe’s origins are obscure, but it is almost certain that he was closely related to another man of obscure origins, John Stanlowe, treasurer-general of Normandy during the 1430s and 1440s and a councillor of Richard, duke of York, in 1448-9.6 P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 239. The evidence, although indirect, is compelling. First, in 1421 John served in the Harfleur garrison under Ralph, Lord Cromwell, who was soon afterwards to become William’s mentor, and in 1438 John acted with William in a conveyance of the manor of Cottesmore (Rutland).7 E101/50/9; CP25(1)/192/9/11. Second, John had lands in Kent and hence was very probably related to another Kentish landholder and soldier, Hugh Stanlowe, whom William supported in a Kentish dispute of 1446.8 C1/11/349; 16/502; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 446-8; 1485-1500, no. 268. John died in June 1448 and hence cannot be the Stanlowe murdered by the Cade rebels: R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 652, n. 26; Archives Nationales, Paris, Dom Lenoir 74, f. 237. Third, an early reference to William suggests he began his life in Kent: in November 1425 auditors found that a widow of Rochester owed him £40.9 CP40/678, rot. 422. What brought him to Lincolnshire is unknown.10 Lincs. Church Notes, 219, claims John Stanlowe, lord of the vill of Silk Willoughby, died on 27 June 1409, and was bur. in the church there. This must be an error since the fam. had not then acquired the vill. It may have been his association with Cromwell, which had begun by early 1427 when he acted as attorney for him in the court of common pleas. The success of his career was certainly built on that connexion, which was already very close by Michaelmas 1429 when his wife was in receipt of a 50s. annuity from Cromwell’s manor of Elmton (Derbyshire). When Lord Ralph came, in May 1431, to draw up his will on the eve of his departure to join Henry VI’s coronation expedition, he bequeathed Stanlowe himself a 100s. annuity, thus singling him out as one of the most intimate of his servants.11 CP40/664, rot. 335; Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, De L’Isle and Dudley mss, U1475/E73; Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Misc. 359. Until Cromwell’s death in January 1456 he was involved in all his lord’s affairs – as estate official, feoffee and councillor – and it was to him that Cromwell turned for the secret drafting of the contentious will by which he partially disinherited his heirs. Fittingly, he was among those present at his lord’s death-bed at South Wingfield (Derbyshire) on 4 Jan. 1456.12 Nottingham Med. Studies, xxxiv. 1, 18; C1/26/75.

This intimacy explains why Stanlowe was able to benefit from the fruits of royal patronage between 1433 and 1443, when his master was treasurer of England. Soon after taking office Cromwell appointed his protégé to the post of foreign apposer, which carried with it the handsome income of £16 13s. 4d. p.a., supplemented by an unquantifiable amount from fees. In May 1434, along with John Tamworth, whom he had recently succeeded as Cromwell’s receiver-general, Stanlowe was awarded the keeping of two acres of land in Frampton (Lincolnshire) for 20 years; and in March 1437, with Tamworth and Thomas Meres*, he received custody of the valuable Lincolnshire lordship of Burwell, formerly in the hands of John, duke of Bedford (although this grant proved only a prelude to the transfer of Burwell, in the following March, to Cromwell himself).13 CFR, xvi. 204, 323; CPR, 1436-41, p. 165. Other grants followed: in July 1437 the keeping of the castle of Somerton was assigned to him, along with Tamworth and John Tailboys*, for 12 years, and on 14 Nov. 1439 two leases were made to him, one of some not very valuable Lincolnshire lands recently held by Sir Thomas Swynford (d.1432), and another, far more important, of the manor of Mansfield and other royal estates in Nottinghamshire. In making this latter grant Cromwell surrendered his own keepership of the bulk of these lands. In so doing he both rewarded his own followers and ensured the continued ready payment of that part of his fee as a royal councillor assigned on the property.14 CFR, xvii. 95, 106-7, 120; B.P. Wolffe, R. Demesne in English Hist. 108.

One of the things Stanlowe did to earn such rewards was to serve in Parliament. On 15 Jan. 1442 the electors of Lincoln returned him to the Parliament due to meet ten days later. It is surely more than coincidence that Stanlowe’s only appearance as an MP came in a Parliament in which his master faced pressure from Sir John Gra* to surrender the mortgaged manor of Multon Hall. Clearly, advance warning of the petitions to be presented against him led Cromwell to mobilize his electoral influence. This explains why Stanlowe had attested the county election held a week earlier, on 8 Jan., which saw the return of two men, Meres and Robert Sheffeld*, connected with his lord, and why he himself was returned to represent Lincoln.15 C219/15/2.

Such loyal service brought rewards beyond the direct profits of patronage. Stanlowe was a self-made man who inherited nothing; by his death he had built up, largely if not entirely by purchase, an inheritable estate sufficient to ensure the respectability of his heirs. His principal acquisitions were the Kesteven manors of Silk Willoughby and Dembleby (together worth about £16 p.a.), which had been forfeited to the Crown by Sir John Bussy† and granted to the Lancastrian servant William Loveney† in 1399.16 Feudal Aids, vi. 483; CPR, 1399-1401, p. 99; 1401-5, p. 322; 1408-13, p. 155; CCR, 1409-13, p. 68. It is unclear exactly how or when Stanlowe acquired them. He may have purchased them from Loveney, who died in 1435, or alternatively Bussy’s son John may have regained them, as he did other estates, from the royal grantee and either sold them on to Stanlowe or given them to him when he married his sister. Whatever the explanation, Stanlowe was careful to secure his title against both the Loveney and Bussy claim. In Michaelmas term 1436 he sued Loveney’s son John in a suit which was almost certainly collusive, asserting that John had disseised him and his wife Joan of the two manors. John conceded that their title was good. On 5 Mar. 1446 John Bussy did likewise by quitclaiming his own right to the couple and Stanlowe’s heirs.17 CP40/703, rot. 333; CCR, 1441-7, p. 376. Our MP added to his manor of Silk Willoughby other piecemeal purchases, valued at £3 p.a. in 1495, in the same town, and appears to have also bought the nearby lordship of Kirkby-la-Thorpe, likewise valued at £3 p.a., from the financially-embarrassed Gra.18 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1149. Further north towards Lincoln he acquired an estate at Navenby. Indeed, it is probable that this is where he first held lands for, in 1434, he was styled as ‘of Navenby, gentleman’. A later fine suggests he purchased a messuage, 80 acres of land and six acres of meadow there in 1445 from a Lincoln brazier.19 KB27/692, rex rot. 3d; CP25(1)/145/159/36. Further afield he acquired another former Bussy manor, that of Cottesmore in Rutland. In 1438 its owner, John Clipsham, conveyed it by fine to William, three other members of Stanlowe’s family, two Cromwell retainers, John Tailboys and Thomas Palmer*, and William’s heirs. If this, as is probable, marks an acquisition by our MP, it was one which, unlike the others, did not pass to his heirs for, within a year of his death, if not before, it was in the hands of the former chief justice of King’s bench, Sir John Markham.20 VCH Rutland, ii. 121; CP25(1)/192/9/11; CCR, 1441-7, p. 287. He may also have held property in Lincoln for, beyond representing the city in Parliament, he was appointed to two royal commissions there, and, in 1456, acted for the citizens in their acquisition of the manor of Canwick on the edge of the city liberties.21 C143/452/6; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 327-8; HMC 14th Rep. VIII, 11.

Stanlowe built up his landed estate in the first part of a career that became markedly less successful after Cromwell’s resignation from the treasurership in 1443. Soon after, he lost his remunerative post as foreign apposer, and no new grants of royal patronage, beyond the life exemption from office he sued out in March 1444, came his way. And although his custodianships of Somerton castle and the Swynford lands were renewed in Feburary 1451 and February 1452 respectively – a reflection of the influence his patron retained in the Exchequer as one of the chamberlains – Somerton was lost in the Act of Resumption of 1455.22 CPR, 1441-6, p.257; CFR, xviii. 196-7, 254; xix. 146, 161; E199/23/42. Whether he found a new patron on Cromwell’s death in 1456 is doubtful. He was both a neighbour and tenant of the powerful Lancastrian lord, John, Viscount Beaumont, but there is nothing to link him to his service. Nor is it known what part he played in the civil war of 1459-61. His removal from the Kesteven bench after Edward IV’s accession and the pardon he sued out in February 1462 imply he was not trusted by the Yorkist government. Relevant here may be his service, in October 1452, on a jury which returned true bills against those who had risen in support of the duke of York at Stamford and Grantham in the previous February.23 C67/45, m. 36; KB9/65A/3/21d. Nonetheless, it is equally probable, particularly in view of his appointment to the Yorkist commission of arrest of November 1460, that the change of government marked a voluntary retirement from public life, which was only disturbed by a brief reppointment as a j.p. in May 1470, rather than a fall into political disfavour.

In view of the pattern of his career it was inevitable that Stanlowe’s connexions were drawn from the overlapping ranks of Cromwell’s affinity and Exchequer officials.24 e.g. in 1441 he acted as co-feoffee of lands in Sarratt (Herts.) for John Croke, his successor as foreign apposer: Harl. Ch. 47 I 30. Even his nomination in 1440 as one of the executors of the Lincolnshire and Household knight, Sir Ralph Rochford, may reflect primarily his master’s rather than his own connexions (since Cromwell was one of the two supervisors of the will), although the will’s confirmation to him of a lease of Rochford lands in Dembleby and Scott Willoughby implies some more personal association.25 Fifty Earliest Eng. Wills (EETS, lxxviii), 121, 126. Other Cromwell retainers, including John Langholm I*, were among his fellow executors, and their task appears to have been an involved one: E404/56/293, 296; CPR, 1446-52, p. 219; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 128, 131-2; 1447-54, pp. 162, 474, 482; VCH Bucks. iv. 427. His closest independent links were with his father-in-law Sir John Bussy. In October 1438, on the marriage of Sir John’s daughter, Cecily, to Thomas, son of Sir Thomas Burton*, he acted as one of the couple’s feoffees in the Burton manor of Tolethorpe (Rutland). And when Sir John was in dispute with the wealthy Lincoln merchant, Hamon Sutton I*, in the 1440s, over the settlement for the marriage of his son, John, to Sutton’s daughter Agnes, it was Stanlowe who mediated between the two fathers and prevailed upon them to accept the arbitration of himself, John Tailboys, Robert Sheffeld and Thomas Fitzwilliam I*. He then allowed himself to be persuaded not to seal the final award, so rendering it void, or at least so Sutton claimed in a petition to the chancellor. A final agreement, in which Stanlowe acted as a Bussy feoffee, was, however, reached late in 1449.26 T. Blore, Rutland, 217; C1/15/141; CP25(1)/293/71/350; CCR, 1447-54, p. 164.

While Stanlowe owed his success in founding a landed family to his lengthy service to Cromwell, it was his legal training which made him an attractive employee. His appearance as an attorney and mainpernor in the central courts confirm that he was a lawyer, as does his, albeit brief, appearance on the quorum of the peace early in his career. In 1434, to cite one of many examples, he acted as a mainpernor for a priest from Fulbeck accused of various sexual assaults, including the rape of a woman who had come to him for confession.27 KB27/692, rex rot. 3d. His son, John, built on the foundations laid by his father by following a very similar career. Admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in 1459, he was appointed, in the mid 1460s, deputy chamberlain of the Exchequer to John Leynton*,and by 1483 deputy steward of the duchy of Lancaster honour of Bolingbroke to Sir Thomas Burgh†. In that year he also served as mayor of the city his father had represented in Parliament.28 J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii. 1451; Assoc. Archit. Socs. Reps. and Pprs. xxxix. 238.