PORTER, Thomas

Porter hailed from an insignificant family but one with an association with the Beauchamp earls of Warwick. In 1400 both Robert and Peter Porter were in receipt of fees from the Beauchamps, and our MP later won social advancement in the service of Richard Beauchamp, who succeeded to the earldom in 1401.2 C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 136; A.F.J. Sinclair, ‘Beauchamp Earls of Warwick’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1988), 323, 324, 327. He is not to be confused with another Warws. man, yeoman of the royal chamber to Hen. V and dep. keeper of Gloucester castle to Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, who enjoyed several grants of royal patronage and was alive as late as 1443: CCR, 1413-19, p. 71; 1441-7, p. 157; CPR, 1413-16, p. 172; 1422-9, p. 226. The two men are distinguished in the subsidy returns of 1435-6. The household servant, who lived at Billesley near Stratford-upon-Avon, had an annual income of £20; the MP enjoyed an income of more than twice that sum: E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14 (xii)d; E179/192/59. Isabel Despenser, whom the earl married in 1423, appears to have been his early patroness. Porter came from Solihull, and Isabel, as the Despenser heiress, had briefly been lady of the manor there in the reign of Henry V.3 VCH Warws. iv. 219. In his early appearances in the records Porter is described as an esquire of Solihull: CAD, iv. A9035. This gives added significance to the grant she made to Porter at about the time of her marriage: she granted him a life interest in her property at Yelvertoft and Kelmarsh in Northamptonshire, an indication of a prior association.4 The grant had been made by 24 May 1426, when he leased his interest in the lands: CAD, iv. A9035. Later, in the summer of 1428, he was among the familia of the earl who made gifts totalling over £10 to the fraternity of the abbey of St. Albans, and he continued to serve the Beauchamps for the rest of his career.5 J. Amundesham, Chron. S. Albani ed. Riley, i. 68.

Porter’s prominent place in the Beauchamp retinue explains why he took a greater part in the administration of Warwickshire, not least in his three elections to represent the county in Parliament, than his modest birth justified. It also, at least in part, explains his acquisition of a landed estate, lying in and around Solihull, worthy of his new status. In the latter lies the chief interest of his career, and the retinue provided the framework in which he made these acquisitions. In 1425, for example, he leased (for the term of his life at a rent of 100s. p.a.) the manor of Monkspath from one of the earl’s principal retainers, Sir William Mountfort*, the earl himself being party to the deed of lease. Such leases were generally uncontentious – although this one later led to litigation – but a gentry family could not be founded on leases alone, and Porter was also an aggressive purchaser of land.6 The lease is known only because Porter was sued in 1445 for taking wood contrary to its terms: CP40/736, rot. 259; 738, rot. 458. One of these acquisitions became the subject of a Chancery petition. Porter’s neighbour, William Gerard of Solihull, complained that he was retaining a messuage and 100 acres of land in Solihull and Longdon ‘with grett oppression and Iniury’ even though he was only feoffee at Gerard’s will. Not improbably a disputed purchase was at issue.7 C1/16/288.

Much more controversial was Porter’s acquisition of the manor of Eastcote and Longdon. In 1426 he prevailed upon the aged and dying Thomas Archer to surrender the manor, perhaps through the agency of Archer’s wife, who is said, in later hostile testimony, to have accepted £5 for her labour in the matter. This may not have been the only irregularity. Much later, the disinherited son and heir, Richard Archer, produced testimony that not only was the manor bound by entail but, at the time of the surrender, his father, in his eighties and bed-ridden, had been out of his mind. One of Richard’s witnesses colourfully claimed to have heard the dying and deranged Thomas say that one might make ‘good mete’ of an old window or of a ‘dede stoke’. The dispute was to be a long-running one, although it was mainly fought out after Porter’s death.8 Shakespeare Centre Archs., Archer mss, DR37/2/74/1; DR503, f. 48. Whatever the other merits of the Archers’ case, the evidence for the entail is very weak, and, even assuming the property was so bound, they gave contradictory accounts of their claim under it: Archer mss, DR37/2/83/17; CP40/771, rot. 137.

Porter’s apparent readiness to behave so unscrupulously can have done little to endear him to his neighbours. A disputed purchase also lies behind his quarrel with another Solihull man, William Hore. This troubled him in the mid 1430s. In 1436 Hore sued him for trespass against the statutes of livery, claiming that, on 28 Mar. 1434, Porter (then in office as escheator) had given 2½ yards of woollen cloth for a gown and cap to each of 18 local husbandmen and tradesmen, including two kinsmen, Henry Porter, a husbandman of Solihull, and William Porter, a mercer of Birmingham. The real matter in hand, however, was not Porter’s alleged disregard of statute, but rather some 100 acres of land and 27s. of annual rent in Solihull. This is the implication of an indictment taken at Solihull before the county j.p.s.: Hore and others were accused of forcibly entering on our MP’s possession. Porter also brought private actions for close-breaking at Solihull and Eastcote against Hore, who is likely to have come off the worst.9 KB27/700, rot. 68; 701, rot. 74, rex rot. 15; 702, rot. 96d; 704, rot. 14d; 705, rot. 33d; 711, rot. 37d; KB9/228/2/20.

Porter’s standing made him a formidable rival for men like Hore and even for more significant figures like Archer. That standing had found expression in his election to Parliament on 8 Jan. 1431 and in his nomination as escheator two years later.10 Interestingly, among the attestors to his election were three of his close connexions, his kinsman, Robert Porter, and his neighbours, Thomas Waryng of Tanworth, for whom he stood surety in King’s bench in 1432, and William Ridware of Birmingham, one of his feoffees: C219/14/2; KB27/684, fines rot. d; 743, rex rot. 24. It had also been supplemented, at about the time he held the latter office, by his marriage to Anne Prilly. This must have been his second match – his son and heir, Baldwin, was born before this marriage can have been made – and it was, from Porter’s point of view, an excellent one. Anne was both heiress and widow. In her own right, she held a third of the manor and advowson of Mancetter in north Warwickshire and the manor of Little Oakley in Northamptonshire, and she was later to fall coheir to a distant kinsman, lord of the manor of Great Munden in Hertfordshire.11 For her estates: CIPM, xx. 260-2; xxi. 495-7. Added to his own acquisitions, this explains why Porter was assessed on an income of as much as £43 p.a. in the subsidy returns of 1435-6.12 E179/192/59.

A self-made esquire of substance, Porter headed the attestors to the county election of 1435 and was named second among those present at the next election on the last day of 1436.13 C219/14/5; 15/1. He then, in a departure from his established career, went to France with his lord. Beauchamp, on appointment as governor of France and Normandy, had left England in late August 1437, and Porter may have gone with him then. He was certainly in the personal retinue of the earl at Rouen in the spring of 1439 and was probably present at the earl’s deathbed there on 30 Apr.14 Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, Fr. 25775/1394; Clairambault mss, 206/58-61.

On his return Porter’s career quickly resumed its established course, and he was elected to represent his native county in the Parliament which assembled at Westminster on the following 12th Nov.15 C219/14/5; 15/1; CFR, xvii. 140, 148. He may have had a personal motive for wishing to attend this assembly. This is the implication to be drawn from what is unlikely to have been an accidental correspondence of dates: on 15 Feb. 1440, the day on which Parliament ended, he was acquitted before the Warwickshire justices of assize of giving livery against the statutes.16 KB27/701, rex rot. 15. Much more speculatively one might ascribe to him a second motive, namely, a desire to travel to London with his dying mistress, for Countess Isabel died there on 27 Dec. 1439, eight days after the Christmas prorogation of the Parliament.17 CP, xii (2). 382.

In the early 1440s Porter was active in the service of Henry Beauchamp, who had succeeded his father as a fourteen-year-old. He served the young Henry, as he had served Earl Richard, as surveyor of the chace of Sutton Coldfield; and in 1444 he negotiated with the authorities of Coventry for a loan on Henry’s behalf.18 CIPM, xxvi. 592; Bodl. Dugdale 13, p. 434; Coventry Leet Bk. ed. Harris, 207. The young duke’s death in the summer of 1446 must, therefore, have been a blow to him. Yet, surprisingly, he was at his most active administratively in the period that followed. In November 1446 he was named as escheator of Warwickshire and Leicestershire for the second time; on the following 16 Jan., while in office, he was elected to Parliament with Edmund Mountfort*; and only five days after surrendering the office he was pricked as sheriff.19 CFR, xviii. 58, 81; C219/15/4.

This third election to Parliament came in special circumstances. The court, readying itself to move against Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, was more than usually anxious to secure support in the Commons, and this explains Mountfort’s return as a household esquire in an election conducted by another household man, Thomas Everingham*. Porter’s election cannot, however, be explained in the same terms. It is rather to be seen in the context of the exceptional nature of the indenture of return: it names only men of lesser gentry rank and below and, uniquely for a fifteenth-century Warwickshire indenture, it assigns a place of residence to 14 of the 16 electors. Strikingly, seven of them came from Solihull, among whom were four of those to whom Porter had allegedly distributed livery in 1434, including, quite remarkably, two smiths. Clearly Porter exerted himself to secure his own return, and it is probable that the election was irregular as a consequence of his manipulation rather than of Household intervention.20 C219/15/4; KB27/700, rot. 68; Carpenter, 343-4.

This burst of activity has no obvious explanation, but it may be that it was provoked by crisis and difficulty in Porter’s private affairs. The rival Archer claim to the manor of Eastcote and Longdon was in active agitation. Early in 1448 Porter’s son and heir, Baldwin, was assaulted by Archer’s men, and although Archer waited until the moment of our MP’s death before seizing the manor, the anticipation of such an act must have been very real in Porter’s last years.21 Carpenter, 425; KB9/285/68; KB27/754, rot. 107d. Porter probably saw the offices of escheator and sheriff as means of protecting his purchase. He was also faced with the difficulty of realizing, or, at least, salvaging something from, a claim that had unexpectedly accrued to his wife. With the wealthy Leicestershire esquire, John Bellers*, she had a claim to be considered coheir to her kinsman, Thomas Howard of Great Munden. This kinship was quite remarkably distant – she was, or claimed to be, his fourth cousin once removed – and consequently difficult to make good.22 Bellers and Anne were the descendants of the nieces of Howard’s great-great-great-grandmother, Margaret de Osenyll: E210/4478. Porter and Bellers seemingly joined forces to assert their rights before surrendering them, presumably for a cash payment. In the summer of 1447 they, with Porter’s wife, surrendered the manor and advowson of Great Munden to John Fray†, baron of the Exchequer.23 E210/4478; CP25(1)/91/115/138. Porter also used his power as escheator to assert his wife’s rights in another regard. He took inquisitions virtute officii showing that she was heir to one-eightieth of a knight’s fee in Medbourne (Leicestershire), which had (wrongly) been in royal hands since the death of her grandfather, William Prilly, in 1375, and that she and Bellers were coheirs to their first cousin twice-removed, Robert Strange, who had died in 1390. Such machinations were typical of him.24 CIPM, xxvi. 477, 483; PSO1/64/15; CFR, xviii. 85.

Porter died on 27 May 1448, while in office as sheriff, but no writ of diem clausit extremum was issued until the following October and then not for Warwickshire, where the bulk of his lands lay, but only for Northamptonshire. An inquisition was held in response on 5 Nov., ennumerating his holdings as land in Yelvertoft with one-third of the advowson of the church there, held for term of his life by the grant of Countess Isabel, and, jointly with and in right of his wife, the manor and advowson of Little Oakley.25 CFR, xviii. 96; C139/133/13. The failure to issue a writ in Warwickshire implies that his property there was in the hands of feoffees. Certainly, when Archer entered the manor of Eastcote and Longdon after Porter’s death, the property was held by his feoffees, John Palmer and Clement Draper, both kinsmen of our MP’s widow, rather than by our MP’s son and heir, Baldwin. However this may be, Porter’s death provoked open hostilities in the dispute over the manor of Eastcote as Richard Archer energetically asserted his claim. Baldwin’s career was to be dominated by the need to defeat that claim. That need was all the more intense because he was not heir to the property of Anne Prilly, for she was but his stepmother. The manor of Eastcote, our MP’s principal purchase, was all that stood between him and the loss of the family’s recently acquired gentility. Initially the Crown acted to defend the Porters’ ownership of the manor. This, at least, is a plausible explanation for the moves that followed Archer’s entry. On 24 May 1449 a royal commission was issued for the investigation of the entry; five days later the disputed manor was granted to royal keepers, including Thomas Lyttleton, King’s serjeant-at-law, whose sister was Baldwin’s wife, on the grounds that it was in royal hands as a distraint for our MP’s failure to account as escheator.26 Carpenter, 425-6; CPR, 1446-52, p. 270; CFR, xviii. 109; W. Dugdale, Warws. ii. 983. Thereafter, however, followed years of litigation and contradictory verdicts, and the dispute was still in agitation as late as 1484 when it was put to the arbitration of William Catesby† and Thomas Kebell†.27 CP40/771, rots. 137, 138; KB27/778, rex rot. 44; 785, rots 25, 26d; 786, rot. 114d; C1/16/432; 25/218; CCR, 1454-61, p. 253; Carpenter, 477, 558; Archer mss, DR37/2/73/38. The Porters eventually established their title, and Baldwin Porter†, as lord of Eastcote, and his brother, Henry†, who were probably our MP’s great-grandsons, both represented Coventry in Parliament in the late 1530s and 1540s.28 The Commons 1509-58, iii. 137-8.