MOUNTFORT, Edmund

The eldest son of his father’s second marriage, Edmund enjoyed a long and remarkable career in which a succession of high office in Henry VI’s household, political exile and a recovery of fortune ran in parallel with a major dispute with his kin of the half-blood over a substantial family inheritance. He first appears in the records in 1431, when he joined his parents in purchasing a small estate near the family home at Coleshill, an early indication perhaps of his father’s preference for him over his half-brothers.14 Warws. Feet of Fines (Dugdale Soc. xviii), 2556. At this date he was still a minor – his father’s first wife did not die until shortly before April 1417 – but by the end of the 1430s he was old enough to undertake a brief period of military service. In both 1438 and 1439 he was serving in the garrison at Honfleur under his father, who was captain there, twice accompanying him on visits to the lieutenant-general of Normandy, Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, at Rouen.15 Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, fr. 25774/1318, 25775/1403; Add. Ch. 6922.

The earl was the family’s patron both in France and at home, and soon after his death in April 1439 father and son seem to have abandoned military service, finding places in the royal household as it expanded in the early years of Henry VI’s majority. Edmund was in receipt of robes as a household esquire by 1441, and he quickly assumed an important place about the King. On 20 July 1444 he received a marked expression of favour, namely a grant for life of the manors of Solihull and Sheldon at the considerable annual rent of 50 marks. The grant was important because the manors lay in the immediate neighbourhood of Coleshill, and it must have been a disappointment to him that it was quickly repudiated. On the following 27 Sept. the manors were committed to a more senior household servant, (Sir) James Fiennes*, in another instance of the disordered way in which royal patronage was managed in these years.16 E101/409/9; CPR, 1441-6, pp. 244, 296. Such inconsiderate treatment did not, however, serve to distance our MP from the King, and some compensation came to him two years later. On 14 June 1446 he shared with another Household man, Thomas Daniell*, a grant of the offices of master of the game and steward on the Beauchamp estates in Warwickshire and Staffordshire (in royal hands during the minority of the daughter and heir of Henry Beauchamp, duke of Warwick); and three months later he and Daniell were awarded the reversion of the stewardship of the royal manor and park of Cheylesmore near Coventry (the reversion vested before the end of the year, following the death of its former holder, William Stalworth).17 CPR, 1441-6, pp. 433, 436; 1446-52, pp. 6, 27.

Another result of Mountfort’s household service was his marriage to a wealthy widow. His bride was the daughter of a Yorkshire peer and the widow of a Northumberland knight, Sir Ralph Gray, and since there was no geographical context for the match it can only have come about through connexions made through the royal household. After Gray, who spent his career campaigning in the north and France, had died in the spring of 1443, his widow sought to recover the moneys he was owed by the Crown for his keepership of the castle of Roxburgh. It was probably to advance her claims that, in 1445, she found a place in the household of the new queen, Margaret of Anjou.18 E159/223, brevia Easter, rot. 7; E403/743, m. 16. Her young son, Ralph Gray II*, was admitted to the King’s household at about the same time, and it was no doubt then that Mountfort came to know mother and son. By Michaelmas term 1449 he had married her.19 CP40/755, rot. 457d. Sir Ralph had died seised of a large estate in Northumberland and the palatinate of Durham, although one devalued by the depredations of border conflict. His widow’s interest in these lands must have augmented Mountfort’s income, yet her holdings did not inspire him to take any interest in the local affairs of the north.

On 16 Jan. 1447 Mountfort, perhaps already married, was returned to Parliament for his native shire. This was a highly significant return. Sons were rarely elected to Parliament in the lifetimes of their fathers, still less when they were younger sons. Edmund’s election must, therefore, have been the product of special circumstances. It came when the court, headed by William de la Pole, marquess of Suffolk, was preparing to move against the King’s uncle, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and was thus more than usually anxious to secure support in the Commons. Plainly, Edmund was elected because he was a household servant, but whether he went to Parliament with the ringing endorsement of his leading constituents must be doubtful. The election was conducted by another household man, Thomas Everingham*, and the indenture of return names as attestors only men of lesser gentry rank and below drawn almost largely from Solihull; leading gentry were notable by their absence.20 C219/15/4; C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 343-4.

Mountfort also appears to have represented the county in the next Parliament, and here again there was something unusual in the circumstances of his return for it was not he who was named as MP in the indenture. The sheriff, William Purefoy, certified into Chancery that on 10 Feb. 1449, only two days before Parliament was due to assemble, Thomas Bate* and Richard Hotoft* had been elected. The return is irregular in that, in common with the Leicestershire return for which the same sheriff was also responsible, it names no attestors. Further, Hotoft, a Leicestershire man, was a strange choice. He held no lands in Warwickshire save in the right of his wife, not generally a strong recommendation in the eyes of county electors, and he can only have secured election through his place in the Household. But if the electors were again ready to elect a household servant, Mountfort was a much more natural choice. Perhaps he was passed over by the electors because of some personal unpopularity connected with his election two years before, or else at the time of the hustings he was unavailable for election or perceived to be so. However this may be, there is every reason to suppose that the attestors’ preference for Hotoft, if such it was, was set aside in favour of Mountfort. On 1 Aug. 1449, two weeks after the conclusion of the assembly, Bate and Hotoft were named to the commission for the distribution of the allowance on the fifteenth and tenth it had granted; but when commissions were issued a week later to the tax collectors, the county’s MPs and ex officio the distributors of the allowance were named as Bate and Mountfort, and it is their names which appear in the audited account. The likely explanation is that on 1 Aug. the Chancery clerks were working from a list of MPs drawn up as the returns arrived in Chancery at the beginning of the Parliament; a week later, however, a new and better list of those who had actually attended the Commons was available.21 C219/15/6; CFR, xviii. 122, 125; E179/192/74. Mountfort thus seems to have taken Hotoft’s place, either before Parliament began on 10 Feb. or at some point during the Parliament’s three sessions. One can only speculate upon the process by which this came about. If the irregularity in the return, a contravention of the statute of 1406, led to it being set aside, it did not do so in respect of that for Leicestershire which shared the same defect.

This leads us to the major theme of Mountfort’s career, the dispute with his eldest half-brother, Sir Baldwin Mountfort, occasioned by the generous provision their father made for Edmund. It is understandable that Sir William should have wished to make respectable provision for the issue of his second wife, and as the richest member of the Warwickshire gentry he had the means to do so. Further, Sir Baldwin was well provided for by the Pecche inheritance, which had come to the family through his mother. None the less, even taking these considerations into account, the provision Sir William made for his second family went further than most contemporaries would have considered appropriate. The disinheritance was carried into effect by two final concords levied in Trinity term 1451. The two Staffordshire manors of Bescot and Aldridge and the Warwickshire manor of Monkspath were settled on Sir William for life, with remainders in tail first to Robert Mountfort and Mary, his wife, and then to Edmund. Even though this overturned a settlement made in 1425, giving Bescot to Sir Baldwin, the latter had no very substantial reason to resent the loss of these three manors. He could have had no expectation of inheriting one of them, that of Aldridge, the property of his stepmother, and Robert, as a younger son who had found a wife, had some claim to a reasonable provision.22 VCH Staffs. xvii. 171; Warws. Feet of Fines, 2648-9. Sir William had sons called Robert by both his wives. The er. Robert, bequeathed 400 marks in his father’s will of 1417, was later to be an active supporter of Baldwin’s cause: Birmingham Archs., Wingfield Digby mss, 3888/A473; KB27/773, rot. 52d. The beneficiary of this fine was the younger Robert: Carpenter, 218; CP40/771, rot. 466. The other fine, however, was very much more contentious and marked a serious rebuff for Sir Baldwin as heir. It settled the manors of Coleshill, Ilmington (Warwickshire) and Remenham (Berkshire) on Sir William and his second wife, Joan, for their lives with remainders to Edmund in tail and then to Sir William’s right heirs. This did very much more than compensate Edmund for the potential loss of his mother’s manor of Aldridge. The manor of Coleshill was not only the family’s main residence, it was also their most valuable property; and Ilmington, at the other end of Warwickshire, although less central to the family’s main interests, was also a substantial manor. Precise values are hard to ascertain, but the three manors were probably worth about £90 p.a.23 Warws. Feet of Fines, 2649. After Sir William’s death Coleshill was valued at 56 marks, Ilmington at £23 5s., and Remenham at a comparatively modest £9 15s. 2d.: C139/50/33. Further, there is good evidence that plans for the disinheritance were carried yet further: among the evidences in the custody of Edmund’s servant, John Denbawde, in 1460 was a grant from Sir William to Edmund of the lesser Mountfort manors of Kingshurst, Kingsford and Ullenhall.24 C54/326, m. 12d (only partially calendared in CCR, 1468-76, no. 1326). Interestingly, in Trinity term 1452, Edmund brought an action against some insignificant men for hunting in his free warren at Kingshurst: KB27/765, rot. 11d. It looks as though it was Sir William’s intention to deprive his eldest son of all the property that had come to him from his own father.

Sir Baldwin could still look forward to inheriting his mother’s substantial estate, principally the Warwickshire manor of Hampton-in-Arden. Even so the sacrifice he was expected to make was far greater than that demanded of the vast majority of heirs. In short, he had much to complain about: the course of the dispute suggests that although he was prepared to accept the loss of Remenham he could not reconcile himself to the loss of Coleshill or Ilmington. Sir William must have been well aware of this. According to a later complaint, ‘in dyvers parliamentes’ he ‘laboured to have hadde auctorised, approved and affermed’ the fine of 1451 ‘to the fynall disheritson’ of his eldest son. This cannot be taken literally: no Parliament met between the levying of the fine and Sir William’s death. One need not doubt, however, that he took measures to protect the settlement. When he drew up his brief will on 22 Feb. 1452, he excluded his eldest son from the administration of his affairs, naming his wife and our MP as his sole executors.25 R.A. Griffiths, King and Country, 377 (from Wingfield Digby mss, 3888/A590); Lambeth Palace Lib. Reg. Kempe, f. 302. More importantly, he also sought the lordship of his powerful neighbour, Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, who was later to be a strong supporter of Edmund. This support began before Sir William’s death. On 27 June 1452 a Staffordshire jury, largely composed of the duke’s adherents, and sitting before two j.p.s., John Harper* and Robert Whitgreve*, in the duke’s service, indicted Sir Baldwin’s son, Simon Mountfort†, for entering Sir William’s land at Bescot and Aldridge on the previous 4 May and then holding the property cum magna potencia.26 Carpenter, 457-8; KB9/270/56; I. Rowney, ‘Govt. and Patronage’, Midland Hist. viii. 63.

The dispute began in earnest when Sir William died on 6 Dec. 1452 and was to dominate Warwickshire politics for the rest of the decade. His death did not bring Edmund an immediate windfall of land: under the terms of the 1451 fine his mother had a life interest in the three disputed manors, an interest which, by his will, Sir William had charged with a modest annuity of 20 marks payable to Edmund from the manor of Ilmington. This, however, hardly diminished his powerful interest in defending the settlement, and he worked closely with his mother in doing so. Five days after her husband’s death she strengthened their position by naming powerful feoffees in the manor of Remenham. Her choice reflects the high-standing of her son in the royal court: the feoffees were headed by the King himself, to whom was added the duke of Buckingham and his eldest son, Sir Humphrey, Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, James Butler, earl of Wiltshire, and two household knights, (Sir) Philip Wentworth* and Sir Richard Tunstall†.27 Westminster Abbey muns. 4532, 4542.

Our MP’s influence and connexions are also apparent in the issue of a commission on 30 Dec. to Buckingham and others to inquire into Sir William’s Warwickshire lands, and the letters of denization granted to his mother three weeks later (she had been born in Brittany). On the following 27 Jan. Thomas Bate, a lawyer in Buckingham’s service, and the sheriff, Sir William Birmingham, sat as commissioners at Coleshill, and the jury assembled before them returned that the disputed manors of Coleshill and Ilmington were held under the terms of the fine of 1451.28 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 49, 58; C139/50/33. The comm. took the responsibility for holding the inq. out of the hands of the escheator, William Hugford†, a servant of the earl of Warwick. The tide was running strongly in favour of Edmund and his mother, and they quickly took further measures to secure their title. Sir Baldwin’s childless brother, John, was prevailed to release with warranty his right in the manor of Ilmington to Buckingham and others, including Edmund and his mother. The purpose of this release was to raise a warranty collateral to Sir Baldwin and his issue and so bar their claims under any earlier entail of the manor.29 CP40/790, rot. 526. Sir William bequeathed to John certain unspecified lands, perhaps as the price of this release: Reg. Kempe, f. 302. Ominously for Sir Baldwin, John also made other releases. Among the evidences in the custody of John Denbawde in 1460 were releases of the two other disputed manors, Coleshill and Remenham, together with those of Kingshurst, Kingsford, Ullenhall, Mollington (Warws.) and Hidcote Bartrim (Glos.), which had not been settled away from the senior line by final concord: C54/326, m. 12d.

None the less, disadvantaged as he was by Buckingham’s support for Edmund, Sir Baldwin was not without resources of his own. From 1451 he had been an annuitant of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, and he found the earl ready to lend him active support.30 SC6/1038/2; Carpenter, 457. This explains the indictment, taken before the county’s j.p.s at Warwick on 29 May 1453, of Edmund and his mother for forcible entry into the manors of Coleshill, Ilmington, Monkspath, and other Mountfort property two days after Sir William’s death. The victim of this entry was said to be a prominent local lawyer, Thomas Greswold; the purpose of this probable fiction was to falsify the findings of the inquiry held four months before by showing that, at Sir William’s death, Joan was not seised of the manors of Coleshill and Ilmington under the terms of the fine of 1451, but that the manors were in the hands of Greswold as the last surviving feoffee under an earlier settlement. This, in turn, raised the presumption that the final concord was ineffective at law.31 KB9/270A/74. Carpenter misinterprets this indictment, asserting that Greswold ‘let Edmund and his mother in’ to the property to further their claim: Carpenter, 464. To this setback for Edmund another was soon added. On 3 July 1452 he had again been granted the keeping of the manors of Solihull and Sheldon to hold from Fiennes’s death in 1450 for a term of ten years; two days short of a year later this grant was cut short for the benefit of the King’s half-brothers, although Edmund continued to farm them.32 CFR, xviii. 264. Among Denbawde’s evidences were acquittances from the earl of Pembroke for the farm of these two manors: C54/326, m. 12d. Worse still at the end of the year Greswold released and quitclaimed the manor of Coleshill to Sir Baldwin, who may then have been in effective possession. Edmund and his mother appear to have been left only with the manor of Remenham, which a Berkshire jury had, in the previous July, returned as being held under the 1451 fine.33 KB27/774, rot. 119; C139/50/33.

If 1453 was a bad year for Edmund Mountfort, the early part of 1454 was yet worse. On 7 Jan. the earl of Warwick presided over a session of the peace at Warwick in which one of Edmund’s servants, a yeoman of Kenilworth, was indicted for the murder of one of Sir Baldwin’s men at Coleshill. Nearly two months later, on 23 Feb., Sir Baldwin pursued his advantage by suing out a special assize of novel disseisin in respect of the manors of Coleshill and Ilmington. The nomination among the commissioners of three of Warwick’s servants, namely Thomas Hugford*, Thomas Burdet* and Thomas Throckmorton*, posed an obvious threat to our MP.34 KB9/290/7; C66/478, m. 17d. Further, Edmund’s position was undermined not only by local but also by national developments. The King’s mental collapse in the previous August had diminished the power of the royal household, and by the time the assize was taken before Hugford and a royal justice, Richard Bingham, on the following 6 May the national political situation had changed yet further against him. The duke of York, now in alliance with the Nevilles, had been named as Protector on 27 Mar. It would, however, be wrong to imply that the dispute was turning against Edmund because of these developments alone. There can be no doubt that his rival’s cause was more popular than his own among the leading Warwickshire gentry. Several of them, including his fellow Household man, (Sir) William Catesby*, had joined Warwick to hear the indictment of his servant, and others headed the jury which found against him at the assize. This jury awarded Sir Baldwin damages of £180 for a disseisin allegedly committed on 16 Dec. 1453, 12 days after Greswold’s release and quitclaim.35 CP40/779, rot. 507. The identity of the jurors can be inferred from an action of attaint brought by our MP in Mich. term 1454, but which never came to pleading. The jury included Sir Thomas Erdington*, Sir Edward Doddingselles*, Henry Everingham and Thomas Middleton*: KB27/774, rot. 78d.

Soon after this verdict Edmund and his mother found themselves facing a suit of a different type. In a petition to the chancellor, the prioress of Markyate in Bedfordshire complained that although she had farmed her convent’s churches of Coleshill and Kingsbury to them for a term of seven years from 12 Jan. 1453 at an annual rent of £29, no rent had been paid and, since that rent had been assigned upon the manor of Coleshill, she could expect none because Coleshill had been recovered against them ‘by a dewe mene of the lawe’.36 C1/24/263. Further, Edmund’s mother had difficulty in securing her interests in Staffs. In Mich. term 1453 she sued Sir Baldwin for her dower in the manor of Bescot: Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iii. 212; CP40/773, rot. 220d. Debt was thus one consequence of the recovery; another was to remove the property yet further from Edmund’s grasp. Sir Baldwin resorted to the same tactics his rival had earlier employed, conveying the disputed manors to powerful feoffees. On 20 June 1454 he gave Ilmington to the earl and countess of Warwick and others, including his own son, Simon; a little over a month later, on 26 July, he settled the legal remainder of Coleshill upon an even more powerful group in which the earl and countess were joined by the duke of York’s son, the earl of March, and the King’s half-brother, the earl of Pembroke, who, rather surprisingly, then numbered among York’s allies.37 CCR, 1454-61, pp. 186, 429.

Yet all was not lost for Edmund. To weigh against this series of setbacks, he had the continued support of the duke of Buckingham. Not only did the duke continue to harry Sir Baldwin and Simon by claiming damages £1,000 against them for close-breaking at Coleshill, but, much more importantly, his influence resulted in the reference of the dispute to arbitration at a time when the tide was running so fast against his client. The award, an imprecise record of which was preserved by the Warwickshire antiquary, William Dugdale, cannot be dated precisely, but a strong clue is given by the identity of the exalted panel of arbiters: they were Richard, duke of York, Warwick’s father, Richard, earl of Salisbury, John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, and Buckingham’s half-brothers, Thomas Bourgchier, archbishop of Canterbury, and Henry, Viscount Bourgchier. Such a panel could only have been chosen during one of York’s protectorates, and Worcester’s presence suggests that it was selected while he was treasurer of England, in other words, that the award was made during the first protectorate. It is probably to be seen as another instance of York’s efforts at peace-making at that time. If this is so the award’s terms show how far he was prepared to go to win the support of the powerful Buckingham. The arbiters awarded Coleshill to Edmund and Joan, with remainder to the Staffords (a clear indication that Buckingham’s support for Edmund was far from disinterested), and the less important manor of Ilmington to Sir Baldwin.38 KB27/773, rot. 52d; W. Dugdale, Warws. ii. 1011.

This division only made sense with reference to the interests of Buckingham: Coleshill was of particular interest to him because of its proximity to his castle of Maxstoke. Its assignment to Edmund suggests that the award was made after Sir Baldwin’s settlement of the manor on 26 July.39 The award is also to be dated to after 9 Aug. 1454, when, among the deeds acknowledged before the prior of Maxstoke by an elderly former feoffee of Sir William Mountfort, was a quitclaim of Ilmington to Buckingham and others: CCR, 1447-54, p. 519. More significantly, it marked a victory for Edmund in the most unpromising of circumstances. Sir Baldwin, just as it appeared that his local popularity and developments in national politics had turned the dispute in his favour, found himself thwarted by the demands of high policy with the Protector anxious to propitiate his rival’s patron. Indeed, in an important sense, the award left Sir Baldwin worse off than he had been under their father’s settlement, by which he or his descendants would have regained Coleshill in the event of Edmund dying childless, as it now seemed likely that he would. The limitation of a remainder to the Staffords must have been entirely unacceptable to him.40 It has been argued that the award was forced upon Edmund and Buckingham, an interpretation that hardly fits the facts: C. Carpenter, ‘Law, Justice and Landowners’, Law and History Rev. i. 223.

These considerations quickly became irrelevant. The award was too partial to bring a final settlement, nor, even had it been better conceived, would it have retained its relevance in the face of the ensuing political changes. After its making Edmund’s position was first strengthened by the King’s recovery only to worsen rapidly in the wake of the Yorkist victory at the first battle of St. Albans on 22 May 1455. The growing political divide meant that the duke of York no longer had any reason to molify Buckingham, and Edmund was now bereft of effective allies. In Trinity term following the battle he and his mother found themselves facing actions of forcible entry and detinue of charters; and on 14 Nov., five days before York was reappointed as Protector, the record and process of the special assize was called into the court of common pleas, at Sir Baldwin’s request, for execution of judgement, an execution which would overturn the partial award.41 KB27/774, rex rot. 24d; CP40/778, rot. 143; 779, rot. 507.

Yet, with bewildering speed in the rapidly-fluctuating politics of the mid 1450s, Edmund’s fortunes rose once more into the ascendant. The end of York’s second protectorate, the earl of Warwick’s departure for Calais and the removal of the court to Coventry gave him a new advantage, much greater than that enjoyed by his opponents between 1453 and 1455. On 8 Dec. 1456 Sir Baldwin was obliged to make a declaration destructive of his own title and supportive of that of his half-brother: he asserted that he had continued in possession of Coleshill and Ilmington despite the feoffment of 26 July 1454 (and, incidentally, despite the award) and hence that the earl of Warwick had never had any interest in the manors. This meant that his opponents need no longer name the earl in subsequent actions. Three days later he granted Ilmington to Edmund, and quitclaimed Coleshill to Buckingham, Stafford and Wiltshire. But now Edmund was not merely content to take what his father had given him by the fine of 1451. On 18 Jan. 1457 the unfortunate Sir Baldwin was obliged to quitclaim other of their father’s manors at Kingsford, Ullenhall and Kingshurst to Stafford (Buckingham’s son), Sir Philip Wentworth, Sir Richard Tunstall and others connected with Buckingham and Edmund.42 CCR, 1454-61, pp. 185-6, 364.

Edmund had now disposed of the claims of his elder half-brother, who seems, at about this date, to have escaped from his troubles by taking holy orders.43 Dugdale, ii. 1011. Not surprisingly, however, Simon Mountfort proved less ready to make the same surrenders as his elderly father. This is the probable explanation for his indictment for felony on 14 Dec. 1456 before a panel of j.p.s headed by Buckingham at Birmingham (sigificantly, not at Warwick), and his subsequent imprisonment forti et dura in the castle of Gloucester.44 Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 476-7; KB9/284/53. In Mich. term 1457, when Simon sued a writ of error concerning his outlawry, he claimed that, on the day he was outlawed, he was imprisoned in Gloucester castle by royal order, a claim not contested by the King’s attorney: KB27/786, rex rot. 4. Under this pressure Simon eventually relented, at least as far as two of the manors were concerned: on 3 Nov. 1458 he released to Edmund his right in Ilmington, and he followed this on 1 Mar. 1459 with a similar release of Remenham.45 CCR, 1454-61, p. 429; Westminster Abbey muns. 4544. In 1460 these releases were in Denbawde’s custody as were releases made by Simon of Kingshurst, Kingsford and Ullenhall: C54/326, m. 12d.

These facts raise the strong presumption that Edmund and his allies used illegitimate means to defeat their rivals. This presumption is given substance and definition by a declaration made by Sir Baldwin in 1471. It described how Buckingham and the earl of Wiltshire, ‘by myght and favour’ of Henry VI, had brought actions of forcible entry against himself and his son and ‘arted theyme to plete such matiers as to the seid late Duke, Eorle and Edmond liked, and theym tried agenst the seid Baldewyn and Symond, and afterward theire seid triall affermed by an atteynt’. Worse still, they compelled him to release his right after incarcerating him at Coventry and Maxstoke, and imprisoned Simon (perhaps on the indictment above) on his refusal to follow suit.46 Griffiths, 377-8.

The actions cited in this petition can be traced in the plea rolls, and it is clear that they were, as Sir Baldwin claimed, collusively pleaded. In Trinity term 1458, when he appeared to answer our MP for forcible entry into Ilmington, he pleaded an entail made by final concord in 1314; Edmund decisively replied that the entail was invalid as neither of the parties to the fine had anything in the manor when it was levied, and that in any event the claims of Sir Baldwin were barred by the collateral warranty of his childless brother, John. In the same term, a Warwickshire jury came into King’s bench in an action sued against Sir Baldwin by Buckingham and Wiltshire for forcible entry into Coleshill; it found against Sir Baldwin’s claim that the manor had been entailed by deed. This verdict was confirmed in an action of attaint by a jury sitting at Coleshill on 4 Jan. 1459, on the same day as another jury returned a verdict in Edmund’s favour in the action over Ilmington.47 CP40/790, rots. 526, 574. If these pleadings are not proof enough of the truth of Sir Baldwin’s petition, it finds further support in a document known to have been in Edmund’s possession in 1460: this was a testimonial made by Sir Baldwin before jurors in an action of attaint, asserting that ‘he sawe neuer non Entayle’ of the manor of Coleshill, in other words, he gave evidence against himself in an action in which he was the plaintiff.48 C54/326, m. 12d. It is more difficult to prove Sir Baldwin’s claim that the releases were extorted by imprisonment, but it may be significant that Simon later sued Edmund for assaulting and imprisoning him at Kenilworth: KB27/853, rot. 25.

The employment of such tactics serves to explain the continued unpopularity of Edmund’s claim to the disputed manors. In finding feoffees in these years he called upon the services of only one of the county’s gentry and that was Henry Filongley*, a courtier and servant of his ally, the earl of Wiltshire.49 Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 481, 622. This unpopularity encouraged Simon to continue his resistance after the verdicts of 4 Jan. 1459 and the releases he himself had made. In the law terms that followed Edmund and his allies were obliged to bring new actions and continue old ones against him and other of the earl of Warwick’s servants for close-breaking at Coleshill and Ilmington.50 CP40/792, rots. 356d, 394; 793, rot. 241d; 794, rot. 88; 795, rot. 291; 796, rot. 259d. An even greater change would be needed if Edmund was to enjoy peaceful possession of what he had gained by questionable means.

None the less, despite his apparent local unpopularity, Edmund was at the height of his fortunes as the 1450s ended. As national politics became so polarized as to make further serious conflict inevitable, his intimacy with the dominant court party made him a figure of importance, particularly because the court spent much of its time at Coventry. By November 1458 he had risen to the high Household office of King’s carver, and, on the following 27 Dec., he was granted a life annuity of 50 marks assigned upon the duchy of Lancaster manor of Long Bennington (Lincolnshire).51 E361/6, rot. 51d; DL37/28/30. Knighthood came soon afterwards. He took up the rank between 11 Apr. 1459, when he stood surety for his friend, the King’s chamberlain, Sir Richard Tunstall, and the following 13 Aug., when he was granted the office of ranger in the Staffordshire forest of Cannock.52 CCR, 1454-61, p. 386; CPR, 1452-61, p. 510. He then played a part in the campaign which ended in the rout of the Yorkist lords at Ludford Bridge. As the Yorkists assembled at Ludlow, the King himself was staying at Sir Edmund’s manor at Coleshill and Sir Edmund went on to be present at the rout.53 English Chron. (Cam. Soc. lxiv), 80. In the wake of this victory he was an obvious choice to represent his native county in the Parliament intended to complete the Lancastrian victory. He was duly elected on 5 Nov. in company with another household servant, Henry Everingham* (incidentally, one of the jurors who had found against him in 1454), although it must be doubted that he went to the assembly, summoned to meet at Coventry, with the endorsement of the county’s leading gentry. They were conspicuously absent from the hustings.54 C219/16/5. Four days after Parliament had assembled he was pricked as sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire.55 CFR, xix. 252. Most of the sheriffs had been named on 7 Nov., before Parliament began. It is not clear why our MP’s nomination was delayed.

Such services meant Sir Edmund benefited substantially from the forfeitures of the Yorkist lords carried through by the Parliament of which he was a Member. In the last 11 days of the parliamentary session he was appointed to two important offices: he was named as receiver-general of great estates forfeited by the earl of Warwick, and granted for life the stewardship of the earl’s lands in Warwickshire and Staffordshire. These offices made him a man of immense importance, if not popularity, in his native shire, lacking only an extensive estate of his own. Had the Lancastrian regime lasted, royal patronage would no doubt have provided him with one. A start was made early in 1460: on 5 Feb., ‘for good service against the rebels’, he was granted in fee tail two manors in the vicinity of Coleshill, those of Bolehall and Shustoke forfeited by his kinsman, John, Lord Clinton. To these he quickly added the nearby manor of Sutton Coldfield, once of the earl of Warwick, although this was granted to him only at farm for a term of ten years.56 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 527, 534, 584, 592. He had a remainder interest in the two Clinton manors under a grant made by Lord Clinton in 1452 or before.

This prosperity was, however, to be of short duration. The victorious return of the Yorkists in the following summer meant the loss of Sir Edmund’s grants and offices, and threatened his tenure of the manor of Coleshill and the other property claimed by the senior Mountfort line. There is little reason to doubt that immediately after the battle of Northampton on 10 July Sir Baldwin and Simon repossessed themselves of the disputed lands.57 Sir Baldwin and Simon were certainly back in possession by 30 Jan. 1461, when they received a release from one of Sir Edmund’s supporters: Wingfield Digby mss, A586. Sir Edmund had nothing left to lose: even leaving aside the dictates of loyalty and duty to his royal master, it was inevitable that he would remain in arms on the Lancastrian side. He was present at the battle of Wakefield on 30 Dec. 1460, where Lancastrian fortunes revived. Contemporary annals compiled at Coventry show that he was also in the victorious Lancastrian army at the battle of St. Albans on the following 17 Feb. It details a letter, sent to the city from the field under the signet of the prince of Wales, peremptorily ordering the mayor and aldermen to be ‘assystent, helping and faverable in all that ye can and may’ to our MP, Henry Everingham and William Elton*, another servant of the royal household, who, it implies, were expected to travel to the city.58 P. Fleming, Coventry and the Wars of the Roses (Dugdale Soc. occ. pprs. l), 34. Mountfort went on to fight at the great conflict at Towton, where the Lancastrians were decisively thwarted, and he continued in arms with the diehards of that cause. In the early summer he was part of a raiding party from Scotland, which, bringing the hapless Henry VI with it, unfurled its banners at Ryton and Brancepeth, presumably with the intention of attacking nearby Durham, but quickly retreated in face of superior force. Inevitably he was among those attainted in the first Parliament of the new reign and he spent the remainder of the decade largely in exile.59 PROME, xiii. 42-44, 49-51; Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, ii (2), [778]; C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, i. 186. Sir Baldwin and Sir Simon successfully petitioned in Parliament that the attainder should not prejudice their title to the manors of Coleshill, Ilmington and Remenham. They claimed that Sir Edmund, before retiring to the north with Queen Margaret, had been ‘moved in conscience’ to enfeoff Simon of the disputed manors. This claim was probably a fiction.

Oddly, although he was both attainted and in Scotland, Sir Edmund was the subject of actions in the common law courts in the early 1460s. In Easter term 1462 Alice, widow of one Henry Walron, appealed him, together with another Lancastrian, (Sir) William Vernon*, as accessories to the murder of her husband in Nottinghamshire. The plea roll gives no further details – the appeal, like so many others, was abandoned before it came to pleading – but it is a fair speculation that the murder took place as the Lancastrian army marched south after the battle of Wakefield. Since Walron had been a servant of the earl of Warwick, our MP had more than one reason to connive in his death. In the same term Simon Mountfort had an action pending against him for assaulting and imprisoning him at Kenilworth, and he and his servant, John Denbawde, were duly outlawed on 13 June 1463 for their failure to answer.60 KB27/804, rots. 51, 62d; 806, rot. 54d; 807, rot. 47d; 814, rex rot. 28d; 853, rot. 25. Walron had been the earl’s bailiff of Bawtry and Hothom (Yorks.), and was imprisoned in Aug. 1459 for speaking ‘opprobrious words’ against the King’s person. Although he was confirmed as bailiff by the Lancastrians after Ludford Bridge, he presumably rallied to the earl at the time of the Northampton campaign: CPR, 1452-61, pp. 518, 527.

Sir Edmund, as one of the most active of the Lancastrian exiles, was then well outside the reach of the common law. In June 1462 he travelled with Queen Margaret to Tours for the conclusion of her treaty with the French King, Louis XI, to which he was one of six Lancastrian signatories exclusive of the queen herself. A year later he was in the queen’s company as she sailed from Bamburgh to Sluys to seek an interview with Philip, duke of Burgundy. He may then have been present, along with his ill-fated stepson, (Sir) Ralph Gray, at the battle at Hexham of 15 May 1464, which brought an effective end to Lancastrian campaigns in the north. He was wise enough to flee, eventually joining the court of the exiled queen at Koeur. His stepson fared far worse, suffering a brutal execution on the following 10 July.61 Scofield, i. 252-3, 301; Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English, ii (2), [781].

Nothing else is known of Sir Edmund’s activities in the 1460s, but he did not return to England until the Readeption. He was probably back by early in 1471, and it was his presence (or prospective presence) that prompted Sir Baldwin, on 10 Jan., to make a formal declaration, in the presence of the prior of Maxstoke and others, that the conveyances he had made to Edmund and his feoffees in the late 1450s had been made ‘by compulcion’ and that the disputed manors were his by entail.62 Dugdale, ii. 1011. The concerns which prompted this declaration soon proved groundless with the defeat of Queen Margaret at the battle of Tewkesbury on the following 4 May. Given his persistent loyalty to her, it is a fair speculation that Sir Edmund was present on her side there just as Simon, by now a knight, was on that of her opponents.63 Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 516. He did not, however, land with her at Weymouth on 14 Apr. for he was certainly back in Eng. by 7 Mar.: CCR, 1468-76, 671. If so, he was fortunate enough, unlike many other of the Lancastrian leaders, to escape.

After this decisive setback to the queen’s cause, Sir Edmund finally bowed to the prevailing political wind. Little can be discovered about his activities, yet it is clear he remained in England awaiting the opportunity to reconcile himself to the restored Edward IV. Although there is no record of the reversal of his attainder on the Parliament roll for the King’s second reign, there can be no doubt (notwithstanding the fact that he sued out a reversal in 1485) that he was among the former household servants of Henry VI who secured such reversals in the long Parliament of 1472-5. There survives among the Mountfort archives a petition made to Edward IV by Sir Edmund, ‘nowe sory and repentant of that he hath offend ayenst your royal estate’, and asking for restoration; the petition was granted on condition that it did not prejudice the interests of Sir Simon. The general pardon granted to Sir Edmund on 4 Aug. 1474 suggests that he secured his reversal in the parliamentary session of the previous 6 June to 18 July.64 Griffiths, 381-2 (from Wingfield Digby mss, 3888/A591); C67/49, m. 3. He then moved to put himself on yet firmer legal ground. On the following 12 Oct. he sued out a writ of error in respect of his outlawry at Simon’s suit in 1463, and had the outlawry revoked on a legal technicality in Hilary term 1475.65 KB27/853, rot. 25.

Once restored, Sir Edmund was quick to re-establish his connexion with the Staffords. By 1475 he was steward of the household to the young Henry Stafford, duke of Buckingham, the grandson of his former patron, and in the following year the duke named him as one of his justices in the great Welsh lordship of Newport.66 Rawcliffe, 196; Pugh, 84. Despite the condition of the reversal of his attainder – that it was not to prejudice Sir Simon – our MP reasserted his claim to the Mountfort estates. Indeed, it seems that that reassertion, or at least some preparations for it, was in train within months of the Lancastrain defeat at Tewkesbury. On 1 Oct. 1471 a London tallow-chandler named one Thomas Graunger redelivered evidences relating to the disputed manors to Sir Edmund’s servant, John Denbawde, from whom he had received them as long before as 10 Feb. 1460; and on 1 Dec. 1472 an instrument, containing brief summaries of the evidences, was drawn up.67 C54/326, m. 12d. How Sir Edmund’s claim was forwarded thereafter is not known, but it is probable that a lost award affirmed Sir Simon’s right to Coleshill and Ilmington but gave our MP the manor of Remenham. A conveyance made on 30 June 1478 implies that our MP then held the latter manor: Thomas Butler, brother and heir of the last of the feoffees of the 1450s to die, namely, James, earl of Wiltshire, quitclaimed his right in this manor to Sir Edmund’s nominees.68 Westminster Abbey muns. 4551. In Mich. term 1478 Sir Simon sued Sir Edmund for forging deeds concerning his manors of Coleshill and Ilmington, probably in an effort to strengthen his title: CP40/868, rot. 382.

These feoffees were an impressive group and indicate how readily Sir Edmund had won the acceptance of the political community. They were headed by two knights of the royal body, Sir Humphrey Talbot†, a younger son of the first earl of Shrewsbury, and Sir Thomas Montgomery†, who was known to our MP through their mutual service in Henry VI’s household; to whom were added Sir Edmund’s old friend, Tunstall, who had become one of Edward IV’s councillors after the reversal of his attainder, the King’s attorney-general, William Hussey*, and a Stafford servant whose importance lay in the future, Reynold Bray†. By the end of the reign he had made a new feoffment to an equally impressive group, headed by John Morton, bishop of Ely, Francis, Lord Lovell, and (Sir) William Norris*. It was these feoffees who, on 10 Aug. 1482, demised the manor to a rising Lincoln’s Inn lawyer, Thomas Lovell†, to hold for a term of 20 years to our MP’s use. The probable purpose of these conveyances was to protect the manor from Sir Simon. An undated bond shows that their rival claims were put to arbitration with Norris acting for our MP and (Sir) Richard Harcourt*, William Berkeley† and John Brigges, serjeant-at-law, for Sir Simon. The presence of Norris among our MP’s feoffees in 1482 suggests that this award went in Sir Edmund’s favour.69 Westminster Abbey muns. 4531, 4545, 4551.

Sir Edmund did not, however, have everything his own way as a returning exile. At some point during the chancellorship of Thomas Rotherham as bishop of Lincoln, that is, between 1475 and 1480, he found himself imprisoned in the counter, having been outlawed in Middlesex for fines due to the Crown from the time of Henry VI. He petitioned the chancellor, presumably successfully, for a writ of corpus cum causa on the grounds that his pardon covered the fines. It is unknown what lay behind this episode, but it is a reasonable surmise that Sir Simon was involved and that the imprisonment was another manifestation of the dispute.70 C1/64/368. Sir Edmund’s prosperity was once again potentially threatened early in Richard III’s reign when his master, the duke of Buckingham, rose in an ill-conceived rebellion. He, however, like others of the duke’s men, stood aside. On 8 Nov. 1484 he sued out a general pardon as ‘of Coleshill, late of Westminster and London’.71 C67/52, m. 7. None the less, the reign was an uncomfortable period for him. Indeed, he may have come under pressure from one of his own feoffees, the chamberlain of the King’s household, Francis, Viscount Lovell. Early in the reign his other feoffees, headed by Norris, settled the manor of Remenham on him for life, with remainder to the viscount and his heirs. This may simply have marked the sale of the reversion by a childless tenant anxious to keep a property out of the hands of his half-blood kin, but equally it may have been forced upon him.72 CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 1055.

This uneasy period ended with Richard III’s defeat at Bosworth. Sir Edmund’s earlier history made him a natural supporter of his supplanter, and, although he must have been approaching 70 years of age in 1485, he may have been with Henry Tudor at this decisive battle. He certainly had the immediate trust of the new monarch: in the first Parliament of the new reign he secured what seems to have been the second reversal of his attainder ‘for true service and allegiaunce to Henry VI’, and on 14 Nov. 1485, while this Parliament was in session, he was named as sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire with a tally of reward of £90 as an inducement to serve.73 PROME, xv. 113-15; Materials for Hist. Hen. VII, i. 158, 231, 583. His connexions with the new regime were greatly strengthened by the marriage, very shortly before this appointment, of Katherine Wydeville, the widow of his former master, Henry, duke of Buckingham, to the King’s uncle, Jasper, duke of Bedford.74 This marriage had taken place by 7 Nov. 1485: CP, ii. 73. By the end of his life he was acting for the duke as chamberlain, and it may be that he secured this honourable office at the time of the marriage. He is found in connexion with him as early as February 1486, when the two men were named together on a commission to hear and determine the complaints of tenants on estates pertaining to the earldom of March, and it is hard to explain his appointment a month later as a justice in eyre in the lordship of Monmouth other than as one of the duke’s servants.75 CPR, 1485-94, pp. 85-86.

Bedford’s patronage was responsible for the grant made to Sir Edmund at the end of the year of the stewardship of various lordships in Worcestershire, Warwickshire and Staffordshire during the minority of the ill-fated Edward, earl of Warwick; as it was also for a grant made to him nearly five years later of the joint custody of the castle and cantred of Builth in Wales to hold during Bedford’s life.76 CPR, 1485-94, pp. 167, 345. As an old man Sir Edmund had regained much of the importance he had enjoyed in the late 1450s, but he was not destined to return to Warwickshire. His half-brother retained Coleshill and Ilmington (although he forfeited them for treason a year after our MP’s death), and it was in Gloucestershire that he took his place in county administration. His landholdings there were modest, comprising no more than some 100 acres in Hidcote Bartrim near the Warwickshire border (part of his father’s lands), but he was steward of the lordship of Thornbury, which the duke of Bedford held in right of Katherine Wydeville.77 CAD, v. A13340. This explains his nomination to the county’s bench in 1490, his first appointment as a j.p. coming when he was passed 70 years of age, and his election to represent the county in the Parliament of 1491. His advanced age did not protect him from one final appointment, for his long public career continued until the very end of his life: in his last months he was again in office as sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire.78 CFR, xxii. 489.

After so striking and interesting a career it is disappointing that Sir Edmund’s will was largely concerned with comparatively mundane matters, although it is not without interest. He made it on 12 Mar. 1494, within days of his death, asking divine pardon ‘of my grete and manyfolde synnes and trespasses that I haue in all my lyfe committed contrary to the will and lawes of allmighty god’. He wanted to be buried in the lady chapel of the parish church of Henley-upon-Thames near Remenham in a tomb with the inscription proudly recording his service to the great: ‘Here lieth Syr Edmunde Mounteforde knyght somtyme councelor and kerver with the most blessed kyng henry the vjth and after chambyrlayne unto the high and myghty prynce Jasper duke of Bedford brother to the seid prince the seid kyng’. He bequeathed an annual rent of ten marks from his manor of Remenham as the salary of a priest to pray perpetually for his soul in the chapel as soon as royal licence could be had. Subject to this rent, the manor was to pass successively in tail to his servant John Preston and Norris. He instructed that all his goods in the ‘loggyng’ in Holborn he rented from the master of St. Bartholomew’s hospital be delivered into Preston’s hands. The will does not give the impression that he died a wealthy man. Indeed, his royal livery collar had been pledged to the abbot of Gloucester, and he left the sum of £5 for its redemption.79 PCC 11 Vox (PROB11/10, ff. 83-84). He was dead within three days of making his will: CFR, xxii. 475. An inq. of 1496 is in error in dating his death to 6 Mar.: CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 1055. Preston soon surrendered Remenham to the King and it later passed into the hands of Bray and his descendants, even though Hen. VII had originally intended it for Westminster Abbey: E210/5023; M. Condon, ‘Reynold Bray and the Profits of Office’, Profit, Piety and the Professions ed. Hicks, 148-9.