OGLE, Sir Robert II

Ogle, from one of the most important and ancient of Northumberland families, was born around 1406. In the early 1420s his father contracted him in marriage to the heiress of a Lancashire knight. This gave him property before he inherited his patrimony, and, in view of the importance of his family, it is not surprising that he should have come to take a part in local affairs even in his father’s lifetime. On 19 Feb. 1434, the day on which his father indented as keeper of Roxburgh castle, he was retained as keeper of Berwick castle.8 PPC, iv. 204. The appointment of so inexperienced a man was an unusual one, but the fact that he was already a knight when appointed implies that he may already have established a military reputation of his own.

The young Ogle’s martial inclinations were soon to lead him into trouble. In September 1435, in a raid into Scotland, he and, on one estimate, as many as 1,500 others, were captured at Piperdean by William, the earl of Angus. The defeat cost the lives of many of Ogle’s men, including that of his putative uncle, Sir John Ogle.9 Ogle, 45-46; CP, x. 29; M.H. Brown, ‘Crown-Magnate Relations in the Personal Rule of James I of Scotland’ (St. Andrews Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1992), 474-5. The Sir John Ogle who died at Piperdean is probably to be identified with the individual who was serving as John, duke of Bedford’s lt. at Berwick-upon-Tweed in 1423: Rot. Scot. ii. 237. His incursion, designed to exploit the alienation of the Dunbars from James I, prompted a letter of complaint from the Scottish King, and a royal commission in the following February was instructed to redress border grievances occasioned by the raid. Ogle’s actions were also instrumental in leading to the outbreak of a brief period of open hostility between the two kingdoms, culminating in the humiliation of the Scots at the siege of Roxburgh in August 1436.10 PPC, iv. 309, 311-14; Brown, 485-7. As far as Ogle himself was concerned, his ransom of 1,000 marks was soon paid (although the problems resulting from raising this amount of cash were to dog him for several years to come), and he was free by the time of his father died in the same month as the siege of Roxburgh was lifted.

The death of Ogle’s father brought him important responsibilities to go with extensive landholdings in Northumberland. On 24 Aug. 1436 Bishop Langley entrusted him with his father’s office of constable of Norham castle, as well as the principal offices in the liberty of Norhamshire and Islandshire, for 20 years. The terms of his custody of Norham had been defined by indentures sealed the previous day: he was to keep the castle at his own cost, receiving 300 marks from the bishop only in time of war, and Ogle bound himself in the sum of £1,000 to observe the terms of this agreement. The list of nine mainpernors, each of whom entered into bonds for £200, demonstrated the support that he could count on from the leading men of the palatinate and included his uncle Sir John Bertram*, Thomas Ilderton* and Robert Manners*.11 Durham Univ. Lib., cathedral muns. pontificalia, 3.3. Pont. 1.

On 11 Dec. 1436 Ogle was elected to his first Parliament as one of the knights of the shire for Northumberland. His election, alongside the experienced parliamentarian John Cartington*, was witnessed by Sir Ralph Gray, Ogle’s brother-in-law, Sir Robert Harbottle (who had stood as one his mainpernors for the custody of Norham) and other men with property and interests in the palatinate, an indication of the importance of the bishopric in the parliamentary affairs of Lancastrian Northumberland.12 C219/15/1. Ogle’s motives for seeking election may, however, have been more personal. He was anxious to secure payment of the sums owed to his father as keeper of Roxburgh castle. So much so, in fact, that he presented a petition to the Commons requesting relief from his father’s debts accumulated while keeper. These debts were in excess of £2,000. He stated that warrants had been issued for the payment of £1,197 for the charges of Roxburgh, but these were as yet unpaid. Moreover, he pleaded that the ransom he had recently forfeited to the Scots left him unable to satisfy his father’s creditors and facing outlawry. His petition must have met with a positive response, and twice in March 1437 he received cash payments totalling almost £1,200 at the Exchequer for his father’s debts.13 SC8/132/6584; E403/725, m. 17; Cal. Scots. Docs. iv. 1098. Indeed, the affairs of the east march and Roxburgh more generally were of concern during the Parliament. In February a petition had been presented in the Commons, presumably by Ogle or Cartington, on behalf of the people of the march, lamenting the increase in Scottish raids and asking for ‘some grete and myghty lord’ to be appointed warden.14 SC8/128/6373. Following his return home from Parliament Ogle was named to the commission of the peace in Northumberland, and in November he was pricked as sheriff of the county.15 CPR, 1436-41, p.588; CFR, xvii. 3.

That same November of 1437 Bishop Langley died. In the brief vacancy that followed the Crown confirmed Ogle’s status as one of the leading men within the palatinate. On 8 Jan. 1438, when still in office as sheriff of Northumberland, he was appointed as sheriff of county Durham and the wapentake of Sadbergh, and on the following 16 Apr. this appointment was confirmed by the new bishop, Robert Neville, brother to Richard, earl of Salisbury. This marked the beginning of a long and important connexion between Ogle and the Neville family. On 1 May he was named among the justices of the peace in Durham, and on 1 Feb. 1439 Bishop Neville granted him the custody of Norham castle for life with the principal offices within the liberty.16 DURH3/42, mm. 1, 4, 10. It is tempting to see the influence of the Nevilles in the other offices and responsibilities that Ogle acquired in 1438. On 1 Apr. he and his kinsman, Sir Ralph Gray, entered into indentures retaining them as joint keepers of Berwick-upon-Tweed and wardens of the east march for a period of one year. Their appointment followed the year-long experiment of appointing John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, to fill the vacuum left by the resignation of the earl of Salisbury as warden some three years earlier. The wardenship of Ogle and Gray was marked by the familiar problems of finance that had dogged the tenures of Norfolk and Salisbury, but, none the less, early in 1439 they renewed their indentures for a further year. In April 1440 a more important man, Henry Percy, Lord Poynings, the heir to the earldom of Northumberland, assumed responsibility for the east march and Berwick, but it seems that Ogle and Gray continued to have responsibility for Roxburgh.17 E101/69/1/279; E403/733, m. 4; EHR, lxxii. 613-14.

On 4 Jan. 1442 Ogle was again elected as knight of the shire for Northumberland. His motives for seeking election were, as they had been in 1437, predominantly personal. Like previous wardens of the east march, he and Gray had been offered payment in the form of tallies assigned on the customs in the northern ports. These had proved impossible to convert into cash, and in March, while Parliament was still in session, Ogle secured reassignment of some of uncashed tallies to improve the prospect of payment.18 E403/743, m. 16 More pressing still was the matter of the ransom arising from his capture in 1435. Ogle had been promised a compensatory payment from the sale of a Scottish ship captured and held at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but that sale, made by William Bedford, lieutenant of the admiralty in the north under the late duke of Bedford, had raised only a modest 250 marks. Consequently, a dispute had arisen which had led to the unfortunate lieutenant’s arrest and his subsequent forced payment to Ogle of 400 marks for his freedom. Bedford had pursued Ogle at law over the imprisonment for some three years and now, probably with the connivance of Ogle, he petitioned the Commons for a settlement of the matter. It was agreed that both men should be compensated out of the estate of the late duke of Bedford and that Ogle be pardoned of any wrongdoing towards the lieutenant.19 PROME, xi. 342-3.

Throughout the 1440s Ogle remained involved in the affairs of the Scottish marches and the palatinate of Durham. In the middle of the decade he was asked to mediate between the prior of Durham and the monks of Durham’s sister houses at Coldingham and on Holy Island over property in Norhamshire. In 1446 Prior William Ebchester wrote to him requesting a meeting when he next came ‘to the country to visit St Cuthbert’; and two years later the prior agreed to admit a child, put forward by Ogle, into the priory school and asked in return that Ogle would support the prior’s proctor in collecting rents and other profits in Norhamshire.20 Durham cathedral muns., reg. parva ii. ff. 1v-2, 13, 28v. Ogle’s status in the north of England was such that in August 1444 he had been among an influential group of feoffees, led by Archbishop Kemp of York, and the earl of Salisbury, to whom Ralph, Lord Greystoke, granted lands in Yorkshire and elsewhere.21 Harl. Ch. 83 F 3.

Ogle’s responsibilities remained, however, predominantly military in character. In February 1447 he was commissioned to inspect the repairs made at Roxburgh by his successor as keeper, William Neville, Lord Fauconberg. In May the following year he joined the warden of the east march, Lord Poynings, on a raid into Scotland, burning the town of Dunbar in the process. While the Scots retaliated by burning the earl of Northumberland’s castles at Warkworth and Alnwick, there is no evidence that Ogle’s castle at Norham was similarly attacked.22 Ogle, 46; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 409. On 3 Apr. 1449 the King wrote to Ogle, his brother John, his nephew, William Bertram*, and Sir Ralph Percy thanking them for their recent report on the defence of the borders. He assured them that, ‘the purveance and saufgarde of the saide countrees and marches . . . hath ben righte sadly communed of by the lordes of this oure parlement’, and that Parliament would attend to the matter once more after the Easter vacation. By this time Ogle had again taken over the custody of Roxburgh, Lord Fauconberg having returned to Normandy (where in May 1449 he was captured by the French).23 Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, i. 491; CP, v. 282. Fauconberg returned to England and indented anew for the custody of Roxburgh in March 1452. Ogle, however, remained closely involved in the affairs of the borders throughout the early 1450s. Probably in August 1450 the prior of Durham admonished him concerning ‘certain persons of Redesdale under his governance’ that had stolen cattle from the prior’s park at Muggleswick. Two years later the Crown wrote to Ogle, along with Lord Poynings, (Sir) Ralph Gray II and John Heron*, ordering them to refrain at all costs from retaliating against the earl of Douglas’s recent raids into Northumberland.24 Durham cathedral muns., reg. parva ii. f. 42v; J. Hodgson, Hist. Northumb. i (1), 320.

At this date Ogle appears to have been on equally familiar terms with each of the two great northern families of Neville and Percy, and when open warfare broke out between them in the summer of 1453 he did not commit himself. Two years later, however, he made a dramatic commitment to the Nevilles. Why he should have done so can only be a matter for speculation. To add to his long-standing service to Bishop Neville, by the late 1450s he also drew an annuity of £20 from the bishop’s brother, the earl of Salisbury, but this reward may have been granted him only after he had committed himself wholeheartedly to their cause.25 A.J. Pollard, North-Eastern Eng. 264, 270. Whatever the reason, he was among the leading captains in the Neville ranks on 22 May 1455 when the earls of Salisbury and Warwick joined the duke of York in confronting Henry VI at St. Albans. While Warwick took most of the credit for capturing the King and bringing victory to the Yorkists, at least one source states that it was Ogle, a far more experienced soldier than Warwick, who was responsible for the decisive attack on the King’s position.26 Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, iii. 25-30; M.A. Hicks, Warwick, 114-16. Ogle thought it prudent to sue out a pardon in the Parliament summoned in the wake of St. Albans and on 5 Nov. he was pardoned as ‘Sir Robert Ogle of Northumberland, alias of Norham’.27 C67/41, m. 25.

Following the events of St. Albans Ogle returned to the north. Despite his allegiance to the Nevilles he was too important to the defence of the marches to be removed from office. Even after the death of Bishop Neville in July 1457 and his replacement by Queen Margaret’s chancellor, Laurence Booth, Ogle retained the principal offices in the episcopal liberty of Norhamshire and Islandshire.28 DURH3/48, mm. 1, 9. Further, the Lancastrian government were also prepared to place their trust in him. In February 1459 he and Sir Ralph Gray were reappointed as keepers of Roxburgh castle, and in the following October he was named as head of an embassy (which also included his eldest son, Sir Robert) to James II of Scotland. In November he and Gray were rewarded with an assignment of £4,000 in payment of debts for their previous tenure as custodians of Roxburgh castle.29 Rot. Scot. ii. 392 If, however, these expressions of trust were designed to win Ogle from his allegiance to the Nevilles, they failed in their purpose. Although he remained loyal to Lancaster when the duke of York and the Nevilles rose in rebellion in the autumn of 1459, he recommitted himself to the Nevilles in the following summer. Removed by the Lancastrian regime from the commission of the peace in June 1460, he attended the Northumberland election to the Yorkist Parliament of the following autumn.30 CPR, 1452-61, p. 673; C219/16/6. Whether he fought in any of the battles of the winter of 1460-1 is unknown, but he was an important partisan of the new regime by 16 Mar. 1461 when the new King Edward IV reappointed him to the wardenship of the east march. 31 Rot. Scot. ii. 401. Thirteen days later he was in the Yorkist ranks at the decisive battle of Towton.

In the weeks following Edward IV’s victory at Towton Ogle emerged as one of the principal Yorkist supporters in the north. In April he was besieging Henry VI and a band of renegade Lancastrians in Carham, Northumberland, and the following month he was commissioned to seize Harbottle castle, lately belonging to his old associate (Sir) John Heron, and to resist all those in the county still supporting the house of Lancaster.32 Paston Letters, iii. 268-9; CPR, 1461-7, p. 29. These and other services were well rewarded: he was singled out for promotion to the peerage, and summoned to Edward’s first Parliament as Lord Ogle, although he did not attend it, for the Yorkist hold on the far north remained precarious and his presence was required there.33 J.E. Powell and K. Wallis, House of Lords, 508-9, 514. Although on 31 July Ogle surrendered his wardenship of the east march to the earl of Warwick, this did not signal any diminution of his status and importance. Indeed, while the earl exercised a general lieutenancy in the north, Ogle may have continued as his de facto deputy on the border. Further, he gained from the new King’s largesse the rewards required to support his status as a peer. On 8 Aug. he was appointed for life to the stewardship of the great Northumberland estates forfeited by the earl of Northumberland, who had fallen in the Lancastrian ranks at Towton; and in the following January he was granted in tail-male the lordship of Redesdale, forfeited by the Lancastrian captain of Alnwick, William Tailboys*, and other forfeited Lancastrian property in Northumberland, including some former Percy lands and valued together at some £150 p.a. 34 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 44,113-14; Hicks, 236-8.

These grants were earned by near-continuous military service. In November 1462 Ogle was involved in meeting the threat of 400 Frenchmen who had accompanied Margaret of Anjou to Scotland and then been forced aground on Holy Island (where Ogle acted as the bishop of Durham’s steward). To whom credit should be given for defeating the French force is disputed: Ogle himself, a bastard son of his, and John Manners were variously attributed with the victory. The following month he and Warwick’s brother, John Neville, Lord Montagu, commanded the siege of Bamburgh castle (which surrendered on Christmas Eve).35 Chrons. London ed. Kingsford, 177-8; Paston Letters, iv. 60 Yet these Yorkist successes were not maintained. By the late spring of 1463 the key northern castles had again been lost. Bamburgh and Dunstanburgh had been captured by French and Scottish mercenaries, while at Alnwick Ogle’s erstwhile friend, Sir Ralph Gray, had allowed the Lancastrian Robert, Lord Hungerford and Moleyns, to re-occupy the castle in May 1463. At the beginning of July a Scottish army, led by the young King James III and accompanied by Margaret of Anjou, laid siege to Ogle’s castle of Norham. Ogle’s own part in these reverses is unclear. He may have shouldered some blame for the recapture of Alnwick by Lancastrian forces as the castle was officially part of the territories granted to him in August 1461. Alternatively, he may have accompanied the Neville lords south in February for the interment of the body of the earl of Salisbury and his son Thomas at Bisham abbey, Berkshire.36 Hicks, 228; C.D. Ross, Edw. IV, 51-54. More likely, perhaps, is that Ogle, already nearly 60 years of age, was in some way incapacitated and unable to carry out his military responsibilities in person. In any case, the Lancastrian-Scottish invasion was met by Warwick and Montagu who themselves raided 60 miles into Scotland after relieving the siege of Norham. On 5 Apr. 1464 Ogle was among the commissioners, led by Warwick, named to treat with the Scots for peace. The following month the Lancastrian threat in the north was finally ended by Montagu, who inflicted a decisive defeat on the rebels led by Henry Beaufort, duke of Somerset, at Hexham. Ogle’s contribution to the defeat of Lancastrian rebels was restricted, it seems, to capturing (Sir) William Tailboys whom he discovered hiding in a coalpit in his former lordship of Redesdale in July.37 Hicks, 245; Historical Collns. Citizen London (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xvii), 226. On 1 Aug., in recognition of Montagu’s actions in the campaigns of that year and of the altered power structure in the north, the Percy estates in Northumberland, previously in the hands of Ogle, were granted to Montagu who was elevated to the title of earl of Northumberland.38 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 332, 340-1.

Ogle probably acquiesced in this creation, perhaps a measure of both his commitment to the Neville family and to the defence of the northern borders. The ratification, in July 1465, of the grant to his family of the valuable lordship of Redesdale may have gone some way to compensating for the loss of control over the main bulk of the Percy lands. He also added to his landholdings by some self-help. The death on the Lancastrian side of his first cousin, (Sir) William Bertram, offered him the opportunity of regaining the important castle of Bothal, settled by his grandfather, Sir Robert Ogle (d.1409), on our MP’s paternal uncle, Sir John Bertram, father of William. On 14 July 1465 the keeping of the Bertram lands, including Bothal, was committed to two northern lawyers in royal service, Thomas Colt* and Henry Sotehill, to hold during the minority of William Bertram’s son and heir. This, however, did not meet with Ogle’s approval. Perhaps considering himself the more natural recipient of this grant, on the following 2 Aug. he entered the castle and manor of Bothal, and although he was summoned to answer for this entry in the Exchequer it is likely that he retained Bothal until his death.39 CPR, 1461-7, p. 466; E159/242, recorda Mich. rot. 31d. In Apr. 1467 he and his eldest surviving son, Owen, dated a grant at Bothal: Ogle, app. xiii. 87.

Ogle’s entry in Bothal aside, he continued his loyal service to the new regime in the more peaceful conditions following the battle of Hexham. He was employed in diplomatic negotiations with the Scots: in June 1465 he was among the envoys charged with negotiating a marriage between James III and an English bride; and in the following November he was one of those who successfully negotiated an extension of the truce. In the intervening September he was present at the great feast held in the archiepiscopal palace at York to celebrate both the elevation of Montagu to the earldom of Northumberland and the enthronement of George Neville as archbishop of York, an expression of his continuing support for the Nevilles.40 Ogle, 48-49; Hicks, 230-1.

Little is known of the last couple of years of Ogle’s life. In May 1467 he settled the manor of North Middleton, previously granted to his brother John, on his eldest son, Owen, and Owen’s wife, Eleanor, daughter of Sir William Hilton (d.1457) of Hilton, co. Durham. His last recorded act was in May 1468 when he and his wife were licensed to alienate the advowson of the parish church of Thoresby (Cumberland) to the prior and canons of Carlisle cathedral.41 Ogle, app. xiii. 85; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 83-84. He died on 1 Nov. 1469. The royal Chancery issued writs of diem clausit extremum six days later and inquisitions post mortem were held at Carlisle on the following 5 Feb., and at Newbiggin (Northumberland) three days later. He is recorded as having died seised of manors at Thoresby in Cumberland and at Ogle, Hepple, Twizel and Shilvington in Northumberland, together with other lesser holdings. More significantly, he also held the barony of Redesdale and castle of Harbottle by royal grant. The jurors returned that the value of these properties had been adversely affected by the depredations of the Scots in recent years and were worth little more than £100 p.a. They also stated that his son Owen, then aged 30 years and more, was his heir.42 C140/32/26.

The widowed Isabel outlived her husband by several years, making her will on 2 Jan. 1478. She asked to be buried in the monastery of St. Andrew at Hexham (presumably beside her husband, although his place of burial can only be inferred). Her lands in Lancashire, which she held as heir to her grandfather, Sir Richard Kirkby, descended to her only daughter, Isabel, and Isabel’s husband John Widdrington (by virtue of an earlier marriage settlement), whom she named as her executors. The younger Isabel’s son, John, from her first marriage to Sir John Heron of Chipchase (Northumberland), was to enjoy the remainder of the lands. Probate was granted on the following 5 Feb.43 Ogle, app. xxxvi. 336.

Lord Ogle’s heir, Owen, was his second son. His eldest son, also Robert, had enjoyed an active career alongside his father on the east march. Knighted by the summer of 1449, in 1453 he had joined his father in attesting the election to Parliament of his uncle, John. In 1460 his father granted him and his wife, Joan (probably one of the daughters of another leading northern landowner, Sir William Euer*), an annual rent from a messuage in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Following his father’s elevation to the peerage, the younger Sir Robert was frequently appointed to military and diplomatic commissions in Northumberland, but he died in his father’s lifetime.44 Ibid. 51-52; C219/16/2; Test. Ebor. ii. (Surtees Soc. xxx), 284-6. Owen Ogle may have suffered from some physical or mental impairment as he did not follow in his father’s footsteps by taking an active role in northern affairs. In February 1473 he secured a general pardon, probably in connexion with debts and other actions relating to his father. It was not until November 1482 that he received a summons to sit among the Lords, and not until 3 June 1484 that he had licence to enter into his father’s and mother’s lands. This, taken together with his absence from his mother’s will of 1478, suggests that some efforts were made to keep him from his inheritance, and the licence of 1484 was accompanied by a pardon ‘upon al contemptes etc. don upon the same’. The summons of 1482 (which was also the first time he was styled as a knight) may have had something to do with his involvement in the Scottish campaign of Richard, duke of Gloucester, of that year and, according to the ‘Ballad of Bosworth Field’, he was among the northern peers who turned out for Richard III in August 1485. He died on 1 Sept. 1486. His inquisition post mortem revealed the poverty of his estate, which was valued at £111 13s. p.a, a little more than it had been valued at his father’s death.45 CP, x. 32; Oxf. DNB.