SUTTON, Hamon II

Hamon began his career with the expectations of a younger son. His influential father seems originally to have intended that he become a mercer, apprenticing him in the late 1440s to Henry Frowyk I*; but better opportunities soon presented themselves, and the young Hamon found a place in the royal household, where his cousin Henry Vavasour was already in service. He was a yeoman of the Crown by 1450, when the burgesses of Kingston-upon-Hull paid him a mark for delivering to them a royal writ of privy seal, and he was soon after promoted to the Chamber.4 Med. Acct. Bks. of the Mercers ed. Jefferson, 638; Patronage, Crown and Provinces ed. Griffiths, 149. By Mich. 1450 he was in receipt of robes as a yeoman of the Hall: E101/410/6, f. 41. It was as a yeoman of the Chamber that, on 13 July 1452, he and 12 other minor household servants were granted a reward of 100 marks with expenses of £11 13s. 4d. for ‘theire grete jeopardie, charges and costs’ in the execution of recent royal commands, probably connected with the suppression of the duke of York’s Dartford rising.5 E404/69/184. They were still awaiting payment in June 1456: E403/807, m. 4.

The young Hamon’s prospects were greatly improved by the death of his elder brother early in 1452, which left him heir apparent to a large estate in the city of Lincoln and its environs. On his marriage, which probably took place soon after he had acquired this status, his father settled upon him and his wife in joint tail-general his outlying manor of Salmonby near Horncastle and that of Ownby-by-Spital, much nearer the main Sutton lands, valued together at just over £10 p.a. in 1467.6 C140/25/30. On 1 Feb. 1453 he was elected to represent Lincoln in Parliament, his father acting as one of the attestors. His position in the Household made him an obvious candidate. He was again returned at the elections of 12 Nov. 1459 and 13 Oct. 1460. On the two latter occasions Richard Bolton*, who had been his fellow Lincoln MP in 1453, and William Ryther, a feoffee of his father and later of himself, acted as his mainpernors.7 C219/16/2, 5, 6. He was one of very few MPs to be elected to both the Lancastrian Parliament 1459 and the Yorkist assembly which followed it, and it is thus unlikely that he was strongly identified with either side in the civil war of 1459-61.

Hamon’s father died in the autumn of 1461, and in the following February our MP took the precaution of suing out a general pardon.8 C67/45, m. 45. During his brief tenure as head of the family he further extended their already considerable estates. In 1463 he purchased from Robert Tilney* some 300 acres of land in the Holland vills of Whaplode, Holbeach and Moulton, well to the south of his other holdings. More significantly, in Michaelmas term 1465 he completed a purchase better designed to augment those holdings, namely that of the manor of Willingham by Stow, ten miles north of Lincoln, from John Manby. It is a measure of his rank that acting for him in this purchase were his mother’s nephew (Sir) Henry Vavasour, Sir Robert Markham† and William Babington*, with whom the Suttons were connected by marriage.9 CP25(1)/145/162/4, 13. For Manby: Lincs. Archit. and Arch. Soc. iv. 34.

Early in 1467 Sutton’s high status in society was marked by his appointment, like his father before him, to the Lindsey bench.10 CPR, 1461-7, p. 567. But his death soon after, on 22 Apr., ended prematurely what would probably have been a career of prominence in both city and county. He left as his heir a son, also named Hamon, aged only 11. The disagreeable prospect of a decade of royal wardship was averted by the family’s careful estate planning. In April 1458 the elder Hamon had conveyed all his lands, save those he had given to Hamon II, to four feoffees, headed by Hugh Tapton (d.1481), chancellor of Lincoln cathedral, and Thomas Fitzwilliam II*. These feoffees continued their seisin throughout Hamon II’s life. Moreover, our MP’s widow had a joint interest in his other inherited properties, as did Sir Henry Vavasour and others in his purchased manor of Willingham. At his death he was thus sole seised of no lands and his son escaped wardship. On coming of age, the latter continued a policy that was becoming increasingly common among landowners, that of permanently separating the beneficial enjoyment of a property from its legal estate. He never took seisin of his property, preferring instead that the surviving feoffees of 1458 should convey to a larger body of new feoffees, who remained seised until his death in 1500. His great-grandson, Ambrose†, represented Grimsby in the Parliament of April 1554.11 C140/25/30; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 597; Lincs. Peds. ed. Maddison, 939; The Commons 1509-58, iii. 409.