SUTTON, Robert II

Robert was the son of the wealthiest Lincoln merchant of his day, but since he died in his father’s lifetime his own career was brief and comparatively uneventful.2 He is not to be confused with his longer-lived namesake, merchant of the Calais staple and alderman of the guild of St. Mary, Boston. It was the Boston stapler rather than our MP who, contrary to The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 534, was cited in the suit of William Flete* against Hamon Sutton I: C1/16/448. His return to Parliament at the successive elections of 29 Sept. 1449 and 12 Oct. 1450, both of which his father attested, are its most significant events, and he played little other recorded part in public affairs.3 C219/15/7, 16/1. Soon after his first election he became one of the trustees, along with John, Viscount Beaumont, and Thomas, Lord Roos, of the Bussy estates settled on his sister Agnes when she was divorced from the Lincolnshire esquire, John Bussy; and a week before his second election he joined his father in attesting the county return.4 CCR, 1447-54, p. 164; Lincs. Archit. and Arch. Soc. i. 75.

Sutton’s premature and childless death less than a year after the close of his second Parliament must have come as a blow to his father, who had used his marriage to extend further the already extensive Sutton estates. Robert’s bride, Agnes Hawley, was the heiress of a long-established and influential county family. Her father had been assessed at 40 marks p.a. in the tax returns of 1436, but this underestimated the value of the lands to which she stood heiress-apparent, for her uncles had life interests in parts of the Hawley properties.5 E179/136/198. For the settlements made by her gdfa. Sir Thomas†, in favour of his yr. sons: Reg. Chichele, ii. 191-5. On her father’s death in 1438 Hamon purchased her valuable marriage for an unknown sum and soon after married her to Robert. She proved her age on 18 June 1449 and, on the following 2 July, the Lincolnshire escheator was ordered to deliver to the couple six bovates of land in Burgh on Bain (in the parish of Girsby).6 CFR, xvii. 44; C139/136/48; CCR, 1447-54, p. 92. The writ ordering her proof of age was issued on 22 May 1449. It is unclear why her husband had not sued it out earlier since she came of age, at the latest, in Nov. 1446. This small estate was all that Agnes’s father had been seised of at his death, and it is not clear when she acquired the greater part of her inheritance. Nearly all the Hawley lands were then in the hands of feoffees, who were under instructions to settle their feoffor’s debts by selling the lands if the issues would not suffice.7 CIPM, xxv. 17; C1/11/189. Further, in May 1438 Agnes’s mother claimed in Chancery that she had a joint estate in the manor of Girsby and all of her late husband’s other properties. This claim, at least in so far as it related to the six bovates in Burgh on Bain, was unsuccessful since the Crown committed their wardship to John Newport II* in the following October, but the rights of the widow and the feoffees made Agnes’s inheritance a less than straightforward matter.8 E163/7/18; CFR, xvii. 84, 152-3. Nevertheless, it seems that by the time Robert came to draw up his will on 23 Feb. 1452 the manor of Girsby, if not the rest of the Hawley lands, was in his hands since he made a bequest to his servants there.

Sutton’s will does not give the impression of wealth. His wish was to be buried in the family’s traditional burial place, the church of St. Andrew at Wigford on the western edge of the city of Lincoln. He bequeathed his sheep and household goods to his wife. His brothers, Hamon and John, had bequests of ten and five marks respectively; the former was also to have his halberd and a pair of black horses; and his father was bequeathed his hawk and white mantle. The greater part of the will was concerned with small bequests of clothes and money to his servants, one of whom was to have his woodknife. His father, wife and two brothers were appointed his executors. He died shortly before 18 Mar. 1452 when the will was proved.9 Lincoln Diocese Docs. (EETS, cxlix), 57-59. His widow married Thomas Blount*, a younger son of a leading Derbyshire gentry family, a marriage that probably came about through connexions made in the royal household, where both our MP’s younger brother, Hamon, and Blount had places in the 1450s.