STRICKLAND, Richard

Richard was probably brought up in the royal court, where his father Walter Strickland held the post of master of the King’s harriers. At the age of 11 he was granted the office jointly with his father, the two being awarded it for term of their lives in survivorship.3 CCR, 1441-7, p. 330; CPR, 1441-6, p. 452. The patent of appointment was not enrolled. The boy was the heir to his mother’s manorial holdings in Buckinghamshire, Leicestershire and Wiltshire, which following her death in April 1445 were retained for life by his father, in accordance with the provisions of settlements made in 1429 and 1442.4 CP25(1)/292/66/87; 293/70/263. Walter’s death a year later, in early April 1446, made the wardship and marriage of the 14-year-old heir a valuable commodity. At the inquisitions post mortem for Richard’s mother she was said to have held her principal manor, Haversham, of Lord de la Zouche, but the controller of the Household (Sir) Thomas Stanley II* and an Exchequer official, Thomas Stokdale† (one of the feoffees of Isabel’s estates), offered to prove at their own expense that it was in fact held of the King in chief by knight service, and on this basis the two men were promptly granted Richard’s wardship and marriage, on 6 May.5 C139/117/7; CPR, 1441-6, pp. 434-5. No doubt with the help of these guardians young Strickland remained master of the harriers. Although the reversion of the office was sold to Richard Restwold*, six months later Strickland was able to obtain authorization for payment at the Exchequer of a year’s arrears of his wages, and for the costs of a horse, 36 ‘rennynghoundys’ and nine greyhounds; assignment was made in discharge of the sum of £58 17s. due. As master of the harriers he continued to receive livery at the great wardrobe.6 CPR, 1441-6, p. 452; E403/765, m. 8; E361/6, rot. 44.

Other problems, resulting from the peculiar marital history of Richard’s mother, were not so easily resolved. His legitimacy, and that of his half-sister Katherine, daughter of Philip Boteler of London, had been put in serious doubt, since the papal curia had twice confirmed the judgement of ecclesiastical courts in England that in her youth their mother Isabel had been contracted in marriage to one John Godyn of London, before she married Boteler. The siblings petitioned the Pope to reverse this ruling, and in August 1447 the bishop of London and the abbots of St. Mary Graces and Bermondsey were instructed to test the validity of their claim to have been born in lawful wedlock.7 CPL, x. 348-9. Presumably, the outcome proved satisfactory to Strickland and those who had purchased his wardship and marriage.

It would seem that very soon after Walter Stickland’s death these had been bought from Stanley and Stokdale by Thomas Thorpe, the ambitious and influential Exchequer official, and in the autumn of 1446 Thorpe assisted Richard in bringing an action to contest the King’s right to the wardship. Thorpe made good use of his position as treasurer’s remembrancer to obtain a warrant formally instructing his fellow officials to examine inquisitions post mortem dating back to Edward III’s reign which related to Strickland’s inheritance.8 E159/223, brevia Mich. rot. 15. Content with the findings of the investigations, soon afterwards he married the heir to his daughter Beatrice. Thorpe’s controlling influence lay behind the enfeoffment of the manor of Haversham which Strickland, although still a minor, made on 22 Sept. 1448. This deed carefully set out his pedigree back to the early fourteenth century as a descendant of the Olneys of Buckinghamshire (alluding to the entail of 1324 on which his mother had based her title to the manor). The choice of feoffees was highly significant: they were headed by none other than the King’s chief minister William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, and Lords Dudley and Rivers, and included besides Strickland’s former guardian Stanley and father-in-law Thorpe several other prominent figures about the Court.9 CAD, iii. B4220. It may have been intended that Haversham should be settled on Strickland’s wife as her jointure, but if so no such settlement appears to have been made before his death.

Strickland’s brief career benefited from his father-in-law’s position at the Exchequer. Still under age, on 22 May 1450 he was granted with Richard Tunstall† a lease for ten years of a number of properties in Lancashire, which, however, he relinquished less than a year later.10 CFR, xviii. 175-6, 204. The Acts of Resumption passed in the Parliaments of 1449 (Nov.) and 1450 affected his position as master of the harriers, but on 11 Nov. 1451 he obtained confirmation of the office for life, without suffering any loss of wages in the intervening period.11 CPR, 1446-52, p. 503. That he remained close to the remembrancer Thorpe is clear from his appearance at the Exchequer in March 1452 to stand surety for him.12 CFR, xviii. 259. After his coming of age, in October that year he secured additional letters patent regarding his mastership of the harriers, which further clarified his position after the Acts of Resumption. He also sued out a royal pardon.13 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 20, 87; C67/40, m. 4. It was at this stage in his career, and aged just 21, that Strickland was returned to the Parliament summoned to meet at Reading on 6 Mar. 1453. This was a strongly royalist Parliament, and there can be no doubt that he owed his seat for the duchy of Lancaster borough of East Grinstead to his position and contacts at Court, and primarily to his father-in-law, who now entered the Commons as a knight of the shire for Essex. It is worthy of remark that a number of Thorpe’s subordinates at the Exchequer also secured borough seats, as did his son Roger Thorpe*, Strickland’s brother-in-law, but whether this involved tampering with the electoral returns when they were delivered to the Chancery is impossible to prove. Thomas Thorpe himself, recently made a baron of the Exchequer, marshalled enough support in the House for his election as Speaker.

Little of note is recorded of Strickland after the dissolution of his only known Parliament, save that he brought a bill in the Exchequer court in 1456 against a former sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire for failing to pay his wages as master of the harriers.14 E13/146, rot. 80d. He died on 9 Mar. 1458. As he was childless, his maternal inheritance fell in accordance with the entail made by his parents in 1429 to his distant kinsman William Lucy (c.1408-1466), an esquire living at Charlcote in Warwickshire, while any property he had inherited from his father (perhaps comprising lands in Westmorland) passed to his cousin and heir, Walter Strickland II*.15 C139/169/35b; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 242-3. Within a few years of his death his widow, Beatrice, married a lawyer, Richard Page* of London and Horton, Kent. The couple took out pardons from Edward IV on 12 Feb. and 19 Sept. 1462, the latter specifically for their trespass in marrying without the King’s licence. This was the delayed signal for the escheators of Buckinghamshire, Leicestershire and Wiltshire to assign her dower.16 C67/45, m. 33; CPR, 1461-7, p. 200; CCR, 1461-8, p. 111. Not content with this, she and Page tried to take over some property in the London parish of St. Mary at Hill beside Billingsgate, of which Strickland’s maternal grandfather John Olney had once held the reversionary interest. Over 50 years earlier, in 1411, Olney had left this reversionary interest in the premises successively to his widow and her unborn child for term of their lives; after their deaths it was to pass to the rector and wardens of the parish church to pay for prayers for their souls. Evidently, Strickland had failed to fulfil his grandfather’s wishes.17 C1/31/39; 38/269. According to settlements made in 1431, on the death of his parents Richard should have inherited a ‘great tenement’ and the advowson of the church of St. Mary, along with the reversionary interest in four tenements, five cottages and two stables in the parish held by Richard Horn and his wife Joan (quite likely his maternal grandmother): Corp. London RO, hr 160/20-22. Whether this included the same property as was later contested in Chancery is uncertain.

Claims to the London property were revived much later by Walter Strickland, the grandson and heir of Walter II, who asserted in his petition to the chancellor that Richard had been a ‘natural fool’ throughout his life, and had been gulled by his father-in-law into making settlements of his inherited lands in favour of his wife, Thorpe’s daughter.18 C1/224/62-64. Needless to say, whether Strickland had been mentally unsound or merely a foolish and easily guided young man cannot now be established.