STAUNTON, Robert

Robert’s father was a younger son of a Leicestershire knight who made his way in the world through service to the house of Lancaster and a second marriage to the heiress of a modest estate spanning the border of Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire. On his death in 1436 this estate passed to their son, Thomas, who had already embarked on what was to be a highly successful career in the royal household. Our MP’s prospects were less good: he was the issue of the elder Thomas’s first marriage to a woman of unknown family. She seems to have brought the Stauntons lands at Radbourne and Newton Solney in south Derbyshire, but this was an even more modest holding than came to our MP’s younger half-brother.8 Feudal Aids, i. 309; vi. 592; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 467. None the less, Robert was able to overcome his early disadvantages, enjoying a long and successful legal career. His father sent him to the Inner Temple, where he was studying by 1432. He is known to have progressed as far as giving a reading, probably in the late 1430s, although he made his career in baronial service rather than in the Westminster courts.9 J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii. 1458; Readings and Moots, i (Selden Soc. lxxi), p. livn. It is unlikely that he is to be identified with the ‘Staunton’ (first name unknown) who was briefly a filacer in the ct. of c.p. in 1440-1: CP40/717-21. His first patron was John, Lord and (from 1440) Viscount Beaumont, into whose service his brother had entered in the mid 1430s. By Michaelmas 1438 Beaumont had appointed Robert as his deputy steward of Castle Donington. This marked the beginning of a long public career. The Crown soon recognized his legal credentials, naming him in 1439 to a commission of gaol delivery and in 1443 to the quorum of the peace in Derbyshire.10 DL29/184/2917 (Somerville, 572, mistakenly refers to the dep. steward as John); CPR, 1436-41, p. 370.

Staunton’s election to the Parliament of 1447 to represent Grimsby, with which he had no previous or subsequent connexion, was engineered by Beaumont, who exercised great influence there. It involved the setting aside of the return of one of the leading burgesses, Richard Duffield*, formally elected only ten days before the Parliament was due to meet.11 E. Gillett, Grimsby, 60-61; Bull. IHR, xlii. 217. The political circumstances in which this Parliament assembled are explanation enough for Beaumont’s probable intervention to secure the return of a servant of both himself and the Crown. He appears to have done likewise in Leicestershire, where Thomas Staunton was returned for the first and only time. The viscount’s patronage also explains Robert’s return for that county to the Parliament of November 1450. The elections to this assembly occurred in the tense atmosphere occasioned by the duke of York’s sudden return from Ireland. The duke’s electioneering secured the return of Thomas Mulsho* for Northamptonshire and Thomas Palmer* for Rutland, and there are grounds for believing that Robert’s election, as a supporter of Beaumont and therefore of the royal court, was intended to balance the latter. This, at least, would explain why the Leicestershire election was held over until 12 Nov., six days after the Parliament had assembled. This allowed for Palmer’s election for Rutland, in which he had few interests, on 29 Oct., leaving a seat free for Staunton.12 C219/16/1.

Little else is known of Staunton’s career in the 1450s. In March 1451, while still sitting as an MP, he stood surety for Beaumont in Chancery, and two years later he attested the return to Parliament for Leicestershire of another Beaumont servant, Thomas Everingham*.13 CFR, xviii. 190; C219/16/2. For other evidence of his service to Beaumont: CP25(1)/145/161/12; CPR, 1446-52, p. 454; CCR, 1447-54, p. 441. It was no doubt as a lawyer in the viscount’s employ that he was added to the Leicestershire bench in 1454 and later appointed as his deputy steward in the queen’s honour of Leicester. His close association with Beaumont continued until the latter’s death at the battle of Northampton on 10 July 1460, and, in that he was one of his executors, beyond.14 E211/281; C139/181/76. He also attracted the attention of another powerful courtier magnate: in November 1453 Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, appointed him steward of his Nottinghamshire estates. Robert’s court connexion found further reflection in his summons for Derbyshire to the great council of 21 May 1455.15 PPC, vi. 340.

Staunton’s career might, like his half-brother’s, have come to an end with the fall of Henry VI. That it did not do so was entirely due to the association he had already formed with his Leicestershire neighbour, William Hastings of Kirby Muxloe. As early as Easter term 1459 he was joint-plaintiff with Hastings in an action of trespass sued in the court of King’s bench.16 KB27/792, rot. 71d. In Sept. 1460 he was a co-feoffee with Hastings in a messuage in Leicester: Wyggeston Hosp. Recs. ed. Thompson, 631. Hence, although the Yorkist usurpation may have occasioned a temporary hiatus in his career (in that he was omitted from the Leicestershire peace commission in July 1461), he was soon able to continue his career as a servant of the newly-created Lord Hastings. In the following February he took out a royal pardon; and early in 1464 he was restored to the county bench.17 C67/45, m. 44. Indeed, in this period he seems to have extended the range of his activities. In September 1461 he acted as arbiter in a dispute involving the Leicestershire abbey of Garendon; in either 1462 or early 1463, he was nominated by Nicholas Fynderne of Findern (Derbyshire) to act on his behalf as an arbiter in his dispute with John Bate, dean of Tamworth, over the Derbyshire manor of Stretton-en-le-Field; and by the spring of 1463 he was acting as the local agent of the Sussex knight, (Sir) Roger Lewknor*, collecting the knight’s rents at Long Whatton in Leicestershire and receiving an annuity of 20s. for his trouble.18 Nichols, iii (2), 823, 1028; SC6/1120/3. He was still receiving his annuity from Lewknor in the mid 1470s: SC6/1120/4. More significantly, during the accounting year 1463-4 he was acting with his Leicestershire neighbour Richard Neel* as legal counsel for the borough of Nottingham: they were paid 33s. 4d. as a reward and entertained to dinner on their two visits to the town at a cost of 29s. 9½d. Three years later, in July 1467, he was once more employed by the town as an arbiter in its dispute with Henry Pierrepont†.19 Nottingham Recs. ed. Stevenson, ii. 374-5, 415. Since Hastings acted as an umpire in this dispute, Staunton’s employment is probably to be seen as an aspect of his service to that lord, as is his election to Parliament on 7 May 1467.20 C219/17/1. Soon after this Parliament closed, he was granted, on 30 Aug. 1468, a life exemption from office, probably at the instigation of Hastings, whom he was serving as a feoffee by February 1469.21 CPR, 1467-77, p.97; Quorndon Recs. Supp. 29-30. Less happily, he had difficulty in securing the payment of his parliamentary wages, bringing actions against the sheriff who returned him, Sir Edward Ralegh, for non-payment of the £13 8s. due to him.22 Parliamentarians at Law ed. Kleineke, 382-3; CP40/835, rot. 367. Despite a verdict in his favour in the Exchequer of pleas against the defaulting sheriff, he was still awaiting payment in 1476: E13/155, rots. 24, 25; 157, rot. 81d.

Staunton was fortunate not to find himself compromised by this close association with so prominent a Yorkist when Henry VI was restored in October 1470. Although he was removed from the local bench on 13 Dec. a new commission was issued on the following day, the addition of his name being the only change. In the following February he took the precaution of suing a pardon from the Readeption government. On Edward IV’s restoration Staunton’s career fell back into its established pattern, despite the premature issue of writs of diem clausit extremum in June 1471 on what was clearly a mistaken report of his death.23 CFR, xx. 3 (several other writs were issued in error on the same day). Throughout the 1470s he preserved close ties with Hastings and his circle: in 1472 he attested the return to Parliament of the Hastings retainer and knight of the body, Sir William Trussell†; in May 1475, as Hastings prepared for the royal expedition to France, he nominated Staunton as one of a distinguished body of new feoffees; a year later our MP took office as his lord’s receiver-general; and in 1478 he headed the list of attestors to the return of two Hastings men, Trussell and William Moton†, to the Parliament which saw the fall of Clarence. In August of the same year he appeared before papal commissioners in the church of Ashby-de-la-Zouch to give evidence in favour of the granting of a dispensation for the marriage of Lord William’s heir to the Hungerford heiress. Two years later he was serving his lord, as he had previously done for Beaumont, as deputy in the stewardship of Castle Donington.24 C219/17/2, 3; HMC Hastings, i. 296-7; CPR, 1467-77, p. 517; CPL, xiii (2), 690. For other evidence of his association with Hastings: CCR, 1476-85, 734, 740; PROME, xiv. 438. Little evidence survives of the rewards this service brought, although, by Michaelmas 1471, he was in receipt of a fee of four marks p.a. from the abbot of St. Werburgh’s manor of Weston-on-Trent (Derbyshire), of which Hastings was steward.25 Property and Politics ed. Pollard, 155.

So varied a service can have left Staunton little time for other matters. Although a well-connected lawyer who enjoyed a lengthy career, he is found participating in the affairs of his neighbours less often than might be expected. In 1459 he was acting as an executor for a prominent burgess of Leicester, Thomas Dalton*, but not until the 1470s did he become noticeably active. In that decade he acted as a feoffee for John Bellers*, Margaret, widow of Thomas Everingham, and William Hasilrigge, the husband of his niece, Elizabeth, and he assisted the wealthy Leicester merchant, Roger Wigston†, in a purchase of land.26 CP40/794, rot. 88d; HMC Hastings, i. 91-92; Nichols, ii (2), 321; Quorndon Recs. 156-7; C140/49/21, 25; 55/26; Leics. RO, Hazlerigg mss, DG 21/29; Wyggeston Hosp. Recs. 793-4, 796-7; CP25(1)/126/79/29. As a feoffee of John Bellers he was sued by his wid. for not allowing her dower in the manor of Sysonby in contravention of John’s last will: C1/58/5. Similarly little evidence survives about the extent and location of his estates: it is probable that they were not extensive. His appointment to the Derbyshire bench early in his career implies he had lands there, probably from his mother. A lawsuit of 1445 shows he had a small estate in Nottinghamshire at Sutton Bonington, probably by grant of his father or brother, and in the late 1450s he brought actions for close-breaking in respect of property in the Leicestershire villages of Breedon-on-the-Hill and Quorndon, neither very far from Sutton Bonington. In 1473 he purchased 60 acres at Quorndon and nearby Woodthorpe.27 R. Thoroton, Notts. ed. Throsby, i. 17; Leics. Village Notes ed. Farnham, v. 77; CP40/792, rot. 227d; CP25(1)/126/79/26. But his main holdings were at Wanlip and he held these not in his own right but as the dower of his second wife, Margery Walsh.28 Acheson, 252. Although Margery was her gdfa.’s common law heiress, the Byron lands passed to her uncle. That she should not inherit was one of the terms of the contract of her marriage to Thomas Walsh: CCR, 1447-54, p. 108.

While the precise date of Staunton’s death is uncertain, he was certainly dead by 1 Mar. 1482, when Margery was described as his widow.29 DL42/19, rots. 29d-30d. He is not therefore to be identified with the namesake serving as under sheriff of Mdx. in June 1482: CP40/881, rot. 253. His brass, portraying him in full armour, survives in the church of Castle Donington. His eldest son, another Robert, followed him in a career of service which, although brief, was highly successful. On Henry VII’s accession he quickly established himself in the royal household: an usher of the chamber by October 1485, he was an esquire of the body by April 1488. He was also appointed to a string of midland offices, the most important of which were the constableship and stewardship of Castle Donington.30 Trans. Leics. Arch. Soc. xiv. 82-83; Somerville, 572-3.