ROOS, Sir Robert

The family of Roos of Gedney was a cadet branch of the barons Roos of Helmsley. Its founder, Sir Robert (d.c.1311), was a younger brother of William, Lord Roos (d.1316). His descendants were wealthy knights with their principal estates at Gedney, in the parts of Holland, where they were granted a yearly fair and weekly market in 1330, and Hunmanby in the East Riding, both held of the King in chief. They also held other Lincolnshire estates at Wyville with Hungerton (Kesteven), as tenants of the senior Roos branch’s castle of Belvoir, and at Normanby-le-Wold (Lindsey); and they were similarly tenants of the senior branch in their other East Riding lands at Breighton (in Bubwith) and Thorpe Garth in Aldbrough where, from 1332, they also had a fair and market.3 Knights of Edw. I (Harl. Soc. lxxxiii), 140-1; CChR, iv. 196, 288; CIPM, xvii. 893-4; xxiv. 591.

The subject of this biography was the son and heir of Sir James Roos, a j.p. in Holland, by a daughter of Sir Philip Despenser of Goxhill (Lincolnshire), promoted to the peerage in 1387.4 Plantagenet Ancestry ed. Richardson and Everingham, 247-8. The MP is easily distinguished from his two contemporary namesakes and distant cousins: the younger and more important Sir Robert (d.1449), carver to Hen. VI from 1432 and younger son of William, Lord Roos (d.1414); and the W. Riding knight of Ingmanthorpe who died in 1451. He was a minor at his father’s death in 1403, and the wardship of his lands was granted to two influential Lincolnshire brothers, Sir Ralph and Sir John Rochford, probably because he had already married one of the latter’s three daughters.5 CIPM, xviii. 696-7; xix. 1000; CFR, xii. 204. The marriage had certainly been made by 27 Aug. 1405, when the couple had licence to celebrate divine service in the chapel in the manor of Gedney, but the omission of the marriage from the grant of the wardship implies that it had already been contracted bef. the death of Sir James: Reg. Repingdon (Lincoln Rec. Soc. lvii), 43-44. The marriage was a good one but not as good as it appeared. Although Joan was soon to become her father’s common law coheiress, she did not add greatly to our MP’s estates. On the death of her father the bulk of his lands passed to his heir male, leaving Joan and her two sisters to inherit only those lands which had come to the family through Sir John’s mother, Joan, one of the two sisters and coheiresses of Sir Roger Hillary (d.1400) of Bescot in Walsall (Staffordshire).6 F. Blomefield, Norf. ix. 107; Lincs. Peds. ed. Maddison, 829; CIPM, xviii. 772-4. Further, it was not until after the deaths of Hillary’s widow in about 1411 and of the much-married Elizabeth, Lady Clinton, daughter and heiress of Hillary’s other sister in 1423, that Joan’s share of even this small inheritance came to her Roos husband: in about 1411 she inherited some lands at Goscote in Staffordshire, and in 1425, by which time she was already dead, the Warwickshire manor of Stretton-on-Fosse, worth no more than a few pounds a year, was conveyed to our MP by the feoffees of Lady Clinton.7 VCH Staffs. xvii. 173; CIPM, xxii. 341; CAD, iv. A8476.

These lands can have made only an insignificant contribution to Roos’s income. This was assessed at as much as £165 6s. 8d. p.a. for the purposes of the 1436 subsidy, making him the second richest non-baronial landholder in Lincolnshire behind his nephew by marriage, Philip Tilney of Boston. A far more substantial contribution came from the large annual fee of 40 marks he received from Humphrey, duke of Gloucester.8 E179/136/198; E163/7/31/1; 15th Cent. Eng. ed. Chrimes, Ross and Griffiths, 104. His connexion with the duke was the main determining factor in his career from as early as 1415. Then, he indented to serve in Gloucester’s retinue for the invasion of France (during which he was knighted) as he did again for the campaign of 1417.9 N.H. Nicolas, Agincourt, 333; E101/51/2, m. 1. As the size of his fee suggests, he went on to become one of the duke’s most intimate servants. In July 1424 he was among those enfeoffed by another follower of the duke, Sir John Keighley, in the disputed Lincolnshire manor of Theddlethorpe; and it is significant that he was the only one of the leading gentry of the county to support Keighley against the rival claimant, Walter Tailboys*, an illustration of how ties of service with a great lord outside the county could compromise ties of neighbourhood. Later, in 1432, he acted as a mainpernor when Gloucester was granted the wardship and marriage of the heir of Walter, Lord FitzWalter (d.1431), and in 1433 he appeared in the same capacity when the valuable Mowbray wardship was awarded to the duke.10 CCR, 1422-9, p. 267; CFR, xvi. 81, 143. Sir Robert’s return to the Parliament of 1422, in which Gloucester urgently needed support, and his nomination to the unpopular office of sheriff of Lincolnshire on as many as three occasions, are to be seen as aspects of his service to the sometime Protector. Indeed, it is far more than coincidence that his appointments to local office tended to correspond with the periods of his lord’s greatest political influence or need. His pricking as sheriff in November 1431, when Gloucester was seeking to mobilize support against Cardinal Beaufort, appears particularly significant in this context.11 J.S. Roskell, Commons of 1422, p. 213.

Nor is it only Roos’s public career that is to be explained in terms of his close connexion with Gloucester, for there can be little doubt that he owed his second wife to the duke’s patronage. Following the death of his first wife before March 1422,12 CFR, xiv. 423. he took as his second, Joan, daughter of a senior member of Gloucester’s retinue, Sir John Skelton.13 Joan is erroneously described as Skelton’s step-da. in The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 380. Negotiations for this match may conceivably have taken place at Westminster, for both Roos and Skelton were MPs in the Parliament of 1422. However this may be, the marriage was a good one for Roos, although, as with his first, it did not add significantly to his landed estates despite his bride’s status as a coheiress. Her Ireby inheritance appears to have long remained in the hands of her father, who did not die until 1439, and her half-sister Katherine, whose first husband was Skelton’s son Richard. By the time of Roos’s death in 1441 litigation was pending between his daughter by his second wife, Eleanor (even though she was yet a minor), and her aunt of the half blood, Katherine, over the division of their mutual inheritance.14 Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. tract ser. no. 2, p. 39; JUST1/1544, rot. 41; CP40/720, rot. 136; 723, rots. 541, 568, 603d; 730, rot. 420.

Given Roos’s wealth and the status he enjoyed as one of the leading retainers of a royal duke, it is a little surprising that 1422 marked his only return to Parliament. He does, however, appear to have had some influence on parliamentary representation on at least two of the four occasions he conducted elections as sheriff. His neighbours, Sir Robert Hakebeche† and Richard Welby† of Moulton, were each returned for the first and only time when he was presiding over elections in 1420 and 1421.15 Both Hakebeche and Welby acted as witnesses for Roos: CP40/618, rot. 547d; CCR, 1422-9, p. 380. For other evidence of association between them: CCR, 1419-22, p. 107; 1422-9, pp. 261, 263; 1429-35, p. 182. More interesting is the fact that he also exercised electoral influence in Yorkshire, the other county in which he held estates of note. As one of the ‘sectatores communes’ of the Yorkshire county court he nominated an attorney to attest every election between 8 Oct. 1414 and 17 Dec. 1436 (the last occasion on which the return took the anachronistic form of named suitors and attorneys), save that of 12 Sept. 1435, which he attested in person.16 Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. xci. table facing p. 237. It is not clear what entitled him to a role exalted beyond his rank, but it is significant that he succeeded as a suitor his distant cousin, William, Lord Roos, who died in September 1414 leaving a minor as his heir. Sir Robert may thus have been acting as an agent for the barons Roos, for whom he was a feoffee.17 CP40/647, rot. 114; CIPM, xxiii. 542, 548.

Sir Robert’s baronial connexions extended beyond the senior branch of his family and the duke of Gloucester. He was also closely connected with the Lincolnshire baron, Robert, Lord Willoughby of Eresby, who in 1421 named him as one of his feoffees and in turn was named by our MP as one of his. This connexion continued right to the end of Sir Robert’s life: as late as 1438, and probably beyond, he was acting as a Willoughby feoffee under another feoffment, while in 1439 he conveyed his Yorkshire manors of Thorp Garth and Breighton to feoffees headed by Willoughby.18 CCR, 1419-22, pp. 194-5, 198; 1422-9, pp. 379-80; 1435-41, p. 191; Harl. Chs. 49 I 31, 56 G 48, 58 B 16; C139/106/24. Hee H also had significant links with another Lincolnshire baron, John, Lord Welles, whom he served as a feoffee in Lincolnshire manors under a feoffment of 1421. A high degree of trust is implied here for the feoffment was made just five days before Welles’s death and was clearly designed to keep these manors out of royal wardship. In view of these connexions, Roos was a natural choice as one of the feoffees of the implementation of the contract made, in 1435, for the marriage of Richard, son and heir-apparent of Lionel, Lord Welles, and Joan, daughter of Robert, Lord Willoughby.19 C138/61/61; Cott. Ch. XII 22; Lincs. AO, Ancaster mss, 2ANC 3A/19.

Among the gentry Sir Robert’s connexions were varied but drawn principally from the immediate neighbourhood of his Holland and East Riding estates. In June 1415, before departing for France, he conveyed all his manors to a fairly undistinguished set of feoffees, including his neighbours Thomas Meres* (who was to be one of his executors) and John Flete of Frampton, the latter of whom was an executor of his father-in-law, Sir John Rochford. Also numbered among them were three Yorkshire esquires drawn from the vicinity of his East Riding lands.20 C40/618, cart. rots. 5d, 6; CCR, 1422-9, pp. 379-80. Although he added Lord Willoughby to those named in 1421 it was not until towards the end of his life that he employed feoffees more distinguished as a group. His Yorkshire feoffees of 1439, in addition to Willoughby, included his East Riding neighbour Sir John Constable* and two of the wealthiest gentry in Lincolnshire, Philip Tilney and Richard Pinchbeck of Pinchbeck.21 C139/106/24. It was with the families of the latter two that his association was closest. Both were his neighbours in Holland. At an unknown date, but probably in the early 1430s, he married his daughter, Margaret, to Richard Pinchbeck’s younger brother, Thomas, settling on the couple his small outlying manor at Stretton-on-Fosse, and in 1432 he was one of those enfeoffed by Richard in the Pinchbeck estates.22 E40/4668; CCR, 1429-35, p. 182. His ties with the Tilneys were equally close. Philip was the nephew of his first wife, and in November 1425 acted both in a bond with Sir Robert and as one of his feoffees in Stretton-on-Fosse. Another Tilney, William, was one of his Yorkshire feoffees up to 1439 while, in 1436, Sir Robert was acting as a feoffee for Philip’s aged grandmother Grace.23 CCR, 1422-9, p. 258; CAD, iv. A8476; C139/106/24; E179/136/198. It is striking how geographically limited were our MP’s gentry connexions for a man of his rank. Excluding his Yorkshire feoffees, necessary for the protection of outlying estates, they were drawn almost exclusively from the parts of Holland or, as in the case of his long-serving feoffee, Thomas Sutton of Milton, and John Wittlebury of Marholm (the second husband of his elder daughter, Margaret), from north Northamptonshire.24 In 1439 Sutton acted as arbiter in a financial dispute between Roos and Roos’s under sheriff of 1435-6, John Chevercourt: CP40/719, rot. 332; 720, rot. 115.

Sir Robert died in September 1441.25 There is some confusion about his date of death. Writs of diem clausit extremum issued out of Chancery on 23 Sept. 1441, but the jurors in his inquisitions post mortem of 25 and 28 Oct. 1442 claimed he did not die until 30 Sept. 1441: CFR, xvii. 196; CIPM, xxv. 590-1. He left as his coheiresses a daughter by each of his two wives, namely Margaret, who was soon to marry as her third husband a wealthy Northamptonshire esquire, Henry Green*,26 CPR, 1446-52, p. 531. Our MP named her, Thomas Meres, Thomas Pryfeld and John Irby, a chaplain from Boston, as his executors: CP40/736, rot. 161d; 755, rot. 215d. and a minor, Eleanor, who may have been born in the London ward of Bread Street on 10 June 1432.27 This was the finding of an inq. for proof of age taken in London on 14 Feb. 1449: C139/136/50. But an inq. taken, for some unknown reason, in Oct. 1499 found that she had been b. at Breighton in the E. Riding on 30 Sept. 1433: CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 254. On 23 Sept. 1441, more than a year before inquisitions were taken on Sir Robert’s death, Eleanor’s marriage and the wardship of her lands were granted to John Tailboys* for a payment of 200 marks and the yearly extent, a grant which, in the following March, was substituted for the lesser one of the wardship of the Roos lands in Hunmanby. Part of the reason for this change may have lain in a difficulty in securing the physical custody of the girl. Some seven weeks after the grant to Tailboys, the Crown dispatched one of its servants, Thomas West*, to East Anglia to collect her from Roger Wentworth and Roger’s wife, Margery. Our MP had two kinship ties with Margery: she was the widow of his distant kinsman, John, Lord Roos (d.1421), but, more significantly, she was his maternal first cousin. These ties had perhaps moved him to place his young daughter in Lady Roos’s household, and now her guardians were reluctant to surrender her.28 CPR, 1441-6, pp. 2, 51; CFR, xvii. 198; E403/743, m. 3. However this may be, it was the Crown rather than Tailboys who contracted Eleanor in marriage to Humphrey, son of the courtier John Sutton, Lord Dudley, while the wardship of her lands at Wyville with Hungerton came to Ralph, Lord Cromwell.29 Test. Ebor. iii (Surtees Soc. xlv), 330; SC11/822, m. 3. Her first husband did not long survive, and she took as her second, John, son and heir of (Sir) John Paulet*, a marriage that came about because of her half-sister’s marriage to Green, who had previously been married to the younger John’s mother, Constance.30 Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, ser. 5, ix. 145. The ‘Eleanor Roos’ listed among Queen Margaret’s damicella in 1452-3 was probably the da. of Hen. VI’s carver rather than of our MP: A.R. Myers, ‘Household of Queen Margaret’, Bull. John Rylands Lib. xl. 405; E. Seaton, Sir Richard Roos, 52.