MYTTON, William

The Myttons provide an example of the intermingling of the borough elite of Shrewsbury with the leading local gentry. Our MP’s grandfather, Reynold Mytton, was a prominent burgess of the town who contracted his eldest son, Richard, in marriage to a daughter of Sir Adam Peshale. By the time the marriage was made the daughter was probably already assured of a share of the Peshale inheritance, and it may be assumed that Reynold paid handsomely for the marriage.3 For the earlier hist. of the fam. and the career of Reynold: Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. ii. 110-15. Nothing is known of Richard’s brief career, but he must have owed his knighthood to service in France and may have died there. As security that she would inherit, a final concord was levied in Easter term 1406, by which the Peshale manors at Rugeley (to which was appurtenant the hereditary office of bailiff of the bishop of Coventry and Lichfield’s chase in the forest of Cannock) and Tamhorn (in Lichfield) were settled on the couple and their issue. Our MP’s inheritance from his mother was later to include further Staffordshire manors at Weston-under-Lizard, Bobbington (both near the Shropshire border) and Horton (in the north of the county).4 Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xi. 215; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 347 (an inq. of 1500 where the property Mytton inherited from Peshale is valued at £42 p.a.). Margaret Peshale’s marriage into the family was important to the Myttons from a social as well as a material point of view. She was the grand-daughter of a peer, John, Lord Botetourt, and through that connexion the Myttons became related to some of the principal families of the Midlands. Margaret’s full sister, Joan, married into the family of Birmingham of Birmingham and her half-sisters into those of Ferrers of Tamworth, Aston of Haywood and Willoughby of Wollaton. Our MP’s paternal inheritance, in terms of both property and social connexion, was more modest, yet it was probably the most substantial inheritance within the liberty of Shrewsbury. To be added to the property held by Reynold at his death – eight tenements in the town together with the manor of Meole, on a lease of 120 years (which began in 1404) from the abbey of Buildwas – were the larger holdings that came to the family through our MP’s grandmother, Eleanor, sister and heir of Thomas Skinner†. These were valued, in an inquisition taken just before our MP was awarded seisin of them, at nearly £17 p.a.5 CIPM, xxiii. 293; xxiv. 622; KB27/678, rex rot. 10.

Mytton was born at the house of his maternal grandfather, Sir Adam Peshale, at Weston-under-Lizard in 1415. His parents died when he was an infant, and on the deaths of Sir Adam and his widow Joyce in 1419 and 1420 he inherited a moiety of the Peshale lands, and they and he accordingly passed into royal wardship. His wardship and marriage were first entrusted to John Harper*, a prominent local lawyer, and William Leventhorpe of Wednesbury (Staffordshire), but, almost immediately afterwards, re-granted to Joan, widow of William Beauchamp, Lady Abergavenney, on the payment of 200 marks.6 CIPM, xxi. 299-301, 389-93, 541-6; xxiv. 719; CPR, 1416-22, p. 306. She may have had a particular reason to be interested in the wardship. She had acquired the Botetourt inheritance, in irregular and mysterious circumstances, from Hugh, Lord Burnell, the widower of the grand-daughter and heiress of John, Lord Botetourt. Through his mother, as one of this heiress’s many paternal first cousins, our MP had a claim to one-eighteenth of that inheritance.7 CIPM, xix. 261. There is no evidence that such a claim was ever asserted, but a concern that it might be may explain why Joan, a woman of fabulous wealth, bought the wardship. However this may be, there is no reason to suppose that the young Mytton was ever physically in Lady Joan’s care. He probably remained with his grandfather Reynold until the old man’s death in 1424 and then with his step-grandmother Alice until he came of age. This is the more likely because the family’s Shrewsbury property remained out of royal wardship. After Reynold’s death Alice’s feoffees – the ubiquitous lawyer, William Burley I*, and Sir Thomas Strange† – successfully resisted the Crown’s attempts to claim them.8 CIPM, xxiii. 293; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 106-7; KB27/678, rex rot. 10. The feoffment to Burley and Strange was made on 17 Apr. 1426: Salop Archs., deeds 6000/3861. Alice was alive as late as 1446: CP40/741, rot. 206d. It may even be that Alice was responsible for our MP’s marriage. The pedigrees identify his wife as a daughter of Thomas Corbet I, who, in 1420, was implicated in a murder in company with Alice’s second husband, Hugh Burley. The friendship between Corbet and Burley would certainly provide a context for the match.9 Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. ii. 119; KB27/646, rex rot. 13.

The first recorded episode of Mytton’s adult life concerned the lands of his paternal grandmother, Eleanor Skinner. For reasons that are unclear these lands, which, rather anomalously, included some small fractions of manors in Essex, Middlesex and Kent, had come into the hands of our MP’s kinsmen, the Falks of Hereford. On 8 Dec. 1435 Nicholas Falk*, then sitting as an MP for Hereford, granted them to Mytton and John Harper; in the following Hilary term Mytton surrendered the property outside Shropshire to Harper; and, by further conveyances in 1437, the Skinner inheritance was divided with Mytton taking those holdings in Shropshire, lying in Shrewsbury and its immediate environs, and Harper those that lay further afield.10 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 120, 123, 130; CP25(1)/292/68/181. It was probably in connexion with this transaction that, on 1 Mar. 1436, our MP gave Harper an annuity of five marks for his good counsel: CCR, 1429-35, p. 130. This acquisition made Mytton a leading property holder in Shrewsbury, despite his step-grandmother Alice’s interest in the property his grandfather had held, but he was not to play much of a part in the borough’s affairs. His Peshale manors in Staffordshire gave him a standing denied even the greatest Shrewsbury burgesses. Significantly, from the point of view of his later career, one of these manors, that of Bobbington, was held of the young Humphrey Stafford, earl of Stafford (and, from 1444, duke of Buckingham), and he did homage for it to the earl, probably in 1436.11 NLW, Peniarth mss, 280, p. 23.

Soon after, on 14 Feb. 1437, Mytton proved his age before the Staffordshire escheator, and a little over a month later he was awarded seisin of those of his lands that had, technically if not practically, remained in wardship.12 CIPM, xxiv. 719; CCR, 1435-41, p. 85. Now of age, his relationship with the earl of Stafford quickly developed into something more than one between tenant and lord. By letters of warrant, probably to be dated to 26 Nov. 1440, the earl ordered his Staffordshire receiver, Humphrey Cotes, to pay Mytton 22 marks, and soon after he personally intervened to protect him from a fraud. Early in 1442 a burgess of Shrewsbury, John Gamel*, confessed to the earl, both in Stafford castle and at the earl’s London inn at St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, that he and the widow of our MP’s kinsman, Hinkin Mytton, had forged a will for the dead Hinkin, by which certain unspecified lands were lost to our MP.13 Peniarth mss, 280, pp. 12, 21. Gamel was an executor of Reynold Mytton: CP40/684, rot. 95.

Mytton’s place in the Stafford retinue is the likely explanation for the accelerated start to his adult career. In the summer of 1440 he was appointed to the Shropshire bench, even though his lands in the county were almost wholly confined to the liberty of Shrewsbury, and two years later he was pricked as sheriff of Staffordshire. On 20 Jan. 1447 he was elected to Parliament for the latter county in company with another of the ducal retinue, John Stanley II*.14 C219/15/4. His service to the duke was active as well as administrative. In the late spring of 1450 he and Humphrey Cotes led a large detachment of the duke’s yeomen from Staffordshire to London to support their master in opposing the Cade rebels. More mundanely, in January 1452 he witnessed deeds for the duke, and a month later he was named as a feoffee by his cousin, Sir William Birmingham of Birmingham, yet another of the ducal retinue.15 Staffs. RO, Stafford fam. mss, D641/1/2/20, rot. 3; D(W)1721/1/1, ff. 25d-26; Bodl. Dugdale mss, 15, p. 76. Yet, although unquestionably the duke’s man, Mytton also developed relations with other of the local nobility. On 18 Oct. 1453 he headed the jurors at the inquisition post mortem held at Wenlock on the death of John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, an intimation of the close relations he was later to establish with that family. Later, in February 1455, he witnessed deeds by which James Tuchet, Lord Audley, made settlements on younger sons.16 C139/154/29; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 53-54.

Two further prickings as sheriff for Mytton followed in quick succession, the first in Shropshire in 1455 and the next, just two years later, in Staffordshire. The first of these is, at first sight, slightly surprising for it came when Richard, duke of York, in the wake of his victory at the first battle of St. Albans, was in control of government. Buckingham had been prominent in the King’s ranks at that battle, and it is not improbable that our MP had been with him there. Yet Buckingham’s local authority was undiminished by his opposition to York, and the climate of national politics soon turned again in his favour. Mytton’s appointment as sheriff in 1457 and to the Lancastrian commission of array of 1459 shows that he was, unsurprisingly, associated with his lord in adherence to Lancaster. As such, he was able to secure two, albeit very small, marks of favour from the impoverished Lancastrian regime of the late 1450s. On 23 May 1458 he was granted a pardon of account as sheriff of Staffordshire in £40, the standard sum allowed for that shrievalty, and in the following October he was excused from paying the fines due from him on the escape of several felons from his custody.17 E159/235, brevia Trin. rot. 17 (1); CPR, 1452-61, p. 460.

Given his close connexion with the Staffords, it was inevitable that Mytton’s career should have been damaged by the accession of Edward IV. In the wake of the Yorkist victory at the battle of Northampton in July 1460 he was removed from the Shropshire bench; and it may be that he had fought for Lancaster at that battle, in which the duke of Buckingham fell. Interestingly, on 17 July, a week after the battle, he witnessed a deed by which his old friend, John Harper, as the duke’s last surviving feoffee, conveyed the Stafford lordship of Caus to new feoffees. And yet, initially at least, Mytton seems to have adapted to the new political dispensation. In May 1461 he was named on commissions to seize the property of the Lancastrian royal family in Staffordshire and to arrest rebels, and a year later he was awarded a pardon.18 Cat. Med. Muns. Berkeley Castle ed. Wells-Furby (Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc.), ii. 947; C67/45, m. 19; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 29, 34. Then, however, for reasons that are unclear, he disappeared into the administrative wilderness. Not until the Readeption was he reappointed to the bench – in Staffordshire rather than Shropshire – and he was excluded from local ad hoc commissions for the rest of the 1460s.

There are other token signs that Mytton was not flourishing in these years. He found himself troubled by two interesting suits in the royal courts. From his term as sheriff in 1457-8 he owed £16 to a minor Exchequer official, Robert Caldecote, who, at the instance of our MP’s attorney, Reynold Sowdeley*, had undertaken to honour a tally in that sum payable to Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, as warden of the east march. Sowdeley had assured Caldecote that he would receive ‘muche thanke’ and repayment from Mytton for doing so. Our MP, however, had different ideas. He made a small payment to Caldecote on a visit to London in the early 1460s but left £13 unpaid. This, at least, is the story Caldecote laid before the chancellor in the late 1460s. Less easy to explain is an action of trespass brought against him by Thomas Osbern, one of the new King’s serjeants-at-arms. In 1464 he claimed £100 damages against Mytton and others for breaking into his house in London, assaulting him and taking goods worth as much as £40, including 21 gold rings. The curious aspect of the case is that the alleged offence took place as long before as July 1443, and it looks as though Osbern was seeking to right an ancient wrong as his fortunes waxed and our MP’s waned.19 C1/33/317; CP40/813, rot. 342; CP40/817, rot. 627.

On a more positive note, in the early 1460s Mytton contracted his eldest son, John, in marriage. By 13 Dec. 1463, when he settled on the couple some of his property in Rugeley, his son had married Anne, the widow of Humphrey Swynnerton* and daughter and coheiress of Thomas Swynnerton. She brought John an interest in her manors of Hilton and Essington (in Bushbury), Staffordshire, probably worth about £14 p.a., although they were not destined to form a long-term endowment for the Myttons as she had male issue by her first husband. None the less, the marriage was a good one, and one both made within the Stafford retinue and arising out of the civil war of 1459-61 (for Humphrey Swynnerton had been a servant of the duke of Buckingham and appears to have fallen on the Lancastrian side at the battle of Towton).20 Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. ii. 118-19; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 347. Alice died in 1470, but John retained her lands until his own death in 1500: CFR, xx. 260. His 2nd w. was the wid. of Thomas, s. and h. of John Brome II*: C1/85/57-61.

By the time of this marriage Mytton had replaced the lordship of the Staffords with that of the Talbots. He was closely identified with the interests of Elizabeth Boteler, widow of John Talbot, 2nd earl of Shrewsbury, who, like the duke of Buckingham, had fallen fighting for Lancaster at the battle of Northampton. On 13 Jan. 1466 he joined her in a series of bonds, registered before the Shrewsbury bailiffs, to Sir William Chaworth of Wiverton (Nottinghamshire), probably in connexion with the marriage of her daughter, Margaret, to Chaworth’s son. He was also, presumably, acting for Elizabeth when, a year or so earlier, he had been one of several local gentry, including his elderly father-in-law, Thomas Corbet I, who had raided the property of Elizabeth’s mother-in-law, Margaret Beauchamp, at Whitchurch and Blackmere (Shropshire).21 Salop Archs., Shrewsbury recs., assembly bk. 3365/67, ff. 57v-58; CP40/816, rot. 279d; I. Rowney, ‘Staffs. Political Community’ (Keele Univ. Ph. D. thesis, 1981), 158.

This Talbot connexion and a very brief term as a Staffordshire j.p. aside, the 1460s and early 1470s marked a long period of obscurity for Mytton. No doubt the change of regime in 1461 serves as an explanation, but it is only a partial one. Others, far more committed to Lancaster than he, did not suffer so lengthy a period of exclusion. Indeed, his career has a strange quality. Throughout it, even when he was an active office-holder in the 1440s and 1450s, he appears less frequently in the records that one would expect of a man of his standing, and it may well be that there was an element of wilful retirement underlying his diminished activity after 1461. None the less, he began to re-emerge in the mid 1470s when he was restored to the Shropshire bench and, under Richard III, he was appointed to two ad hoc commissions.22 It is possible, but unlikely, that the commr. under Ric. III was our MP’s younger cousin, William†, the son and heir-apparent of Thomas Mytton† by Elizabeth, daughter and coheiress of (Sir) John Burgh III*. The yr. William’s public career is not known to have begun until his election in 1491 as MP for Shrewsbury. In July 1480 he was an arbiter in a dispute between two of the leading Staffordshire gentry, Sir Walter Griffith of Wichnor and Humphrey Stanley†, the son of his old associate and fellow MP in the 1447 Parliament. More interestingly, as an old man, he was indicted along with his eldest son, John, and other local gentry for illegally receiving the livery of the young George Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, the grandson of Elizabeth Boteler, at Lichfield on 4 Sept. 1488.23 C244/129/52A, B; KB9/379/5.

The few other references to Mytton from these years relate to his domestic affairs. On 4 Mar. 1485 he took a 70-year lease from the abbey of Lilleshall, only a few miles from his home at Weston-under-Lizard, of ‘Lizard grange’ with its water-mill at an annual rent of 48s. 8d.24 Salop Archs., Lilleshall mss, 972/1/1/62. He also made provision for his younger son. In April 1490 he settled upon him in tail, in reversion expectant on his own death, of the lands in Shrewsbury and nearby vills that had descended to him from his grandmother, Eleanor Skinner.25 CP40/910, rot. 592d; Shrewsbury assembly bk. 3365/67, f. 36. Richard was later warden of the Drapers’ guild in Shrewsbury and an alderman: Shrewsbury recs., drapers’ co. mss, 1831/2/8/15-16.

Mytton died before 1 May 1496 when a writ of diem clausit extremum was issued in respect of his lands in Staffordshire and Shropshire. This was reissued two years later, but the writs were either not acted upon or the relevant inquisitions have been lost. His son John’s appointment as sheriff of Staffordshire in November 1495 – an unlikely nomination if the appointee was yet to inherit – suggests that even the first of these writs was belatedly issued.26 CFR, xxii. 532, 535, 591. The MP was alive in 1492: CIPM Hen. VII, i. 720, 726. John survived only until 1500 and our MP’s branch of the family failed on the death of John’s son, another John, in 1533, leaving a daughter, Joyce, as his heiress.27 CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 347; C142/55/73; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. ii. 128. John Leland, the Tudor antiquary, remarked that ‘Mitton of Weston’ had lands worth 100 marks p.a., but that Mytton’s grandfather had sold land to the same value.28 J. Leland, Itin. ed. Toulmin Smith, ii. 172. The vendor is generally said to be have been our MP.29 HP Biogs ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 621; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. ii. 119. Since, however, Leland did not visit the county until 1543, the Mytton to whom he referred was not our MP’s grandson but rather Edward Harpesfield, who, as Joyce’s son, had assumed the Mytton name. The supposed losses probably reflect Harpesfield’s resentment that some of the family patrimony had been settled away from his wife, for there is no evidence that either our MP or his son was responsible for any alienations.30 For Harpesfield and his descendants: Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. ii. 128-45. None the less, by the time of Leland’s visit, the descendants of our MP had been far exceeded in importance by another branch of the Myttons, descended from his cousin, Thomas Mytton, and the Burgh coheiress. Their grandson, Richard Mytton† (d.1591), had a notable parliamentary career.31 Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. xxxviii. 219-21; The Commons 1509-58, ii. 654-6.