RUGELEY, Nicholas

The Rugeleys had been established at Hawksyard in Armitage near Lichfield since the time of Henry III.1 S. Shaw, Staffs. i. 211*. Simon Rugeley†, a royal servant and MP for both Staffordshire and Shropshire in the 1330s and 1340s, may have been of the family, but, if so, he was its only distinguished member before the time of our MP. The early part of Nicholas’s career is lost in obscurity, and it is not known when he entered his modest patrimony. His father was one of several contemporary Richard Rugeleys, most probably Richard ‘the elder’, who died before 1419, leaving a widow named Joan and our MP as his executors. If this identification is correct, Nicholas must have been older than implied by other evidence, for this Richard had a grandson, another Richard, who was married and dead by 1419.2 Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xvii. 66, 69. The Richard Rugeley who attested the Staffs. elections of 1422 and 1423, may have been the youngest Richard’s father and our MP’s brother: C219/13/1, 2.

Nicholas’s own first certain appearance in the records dates to only six years before, when, in July 1413, Thomas Burgulon of Piry (Staffordshire) made a quitclaim to him, described as ‘of Hawksyard’, and others as his feoffees in lands in Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire.3 CCR, 1413-19, p. 97; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xi. 225. In Apr. 1410 Nicholas Rugeley offered surety on Henry Fayreford’s appointment as alnager of Staffs. but this was probably our MP’s namesake of Little Saredon, who died in 1413: CFR, xiii. 166; CIPM, xx. 105. The other three feoffees – Sir Baldwin Strange, Thomas Crewe† and William Birmingham† – were all closely connected with Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick. In the following year, another of the earl’s associates, Edmund Ferrers of Chartley, called upon Rugeley’s services as a mainpernor and one of the earl’s household servants, William Waldeve, nominated him as a feoffee.4 KB27/613, rex rot. 9; C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 317. According to the pedigrees, our MP married into Waldeve’s family, but if so the bride must have been an otherwise undocumented 1st w.: Shaw, i. 212*. There can be no doubt that Rugeley was also a member of that great retinue. Indeed, according to the Warwickshire antiquarian William Dugdale, he was in office as the earl’s ‘equitator’ of the chace of Sutton Coldfield, a few miles to the south of Armitage, as early as 1401.5 Bodl. Ms. Dugdale 13, p. 434; W. Dugdale, Warws. ii. 934. If so, it is curious that he should have been absent from the records for the next 12 years, but activity at so early a date is consistent with what can be surmised about his paternity.

The most puzzling episode of Rugeley’s enigmatic career dates from the autumn of 1417 when he and his wife, Edith, entered into a series of transactions with Joan Fitzalan, the widow of the earl’s uncle, William Beauchamp, Lord Abergavenny (d.1411). These imply that his wife was, albeit only potentially and remotely, a great heiress, with a claim to the estates of the barony of Botetourt. These lands had descended to Joyce, grand-daughter of John, Lord Botetourt (d.1385), but in 1407 she died without issue, and they remained in the hands of her husband, Hugh, Lord Burnell (d.1420). For reasons that can only be guessed, Burnell decided to alienate a large part of this property to Lady Abergavenney, and this is the context of the fines levied in Michaelmas term 1417. Sir Hugh Strelley and Joyce, his wife, surrendered their claim in a third of the castle of Weoley and other Botetourt properties in Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Staffordshire to Rugeley and Edith and her heirs; and then the Rugeleys surrendered their interest to Lady Abergavenny, Bartholomew Brokesby* and others. Later, on the following 5 July Strelley and our MP entered a bond in 500 marks to Brokesby, binding Strelley to making a further alienation to Lady Joan for which he had already been paid. Strelley’s part in the affair is clear: his wife, Joyce, was the grand-daughter of Isabel, one of the 11 daughters of John, Lord Botetourt, and the couple were selling their interest to Lady Joan.6 Ancestor, viii. 176-9; Warws. Feet of Fines (Dugdale Soc. xviii), 2504-5; E210/3149. The mystery lies in placing our MP’s wife in a similar relationship to Botetourt. The most that can be said is that Rugeley and his wife were closely concerned with the affairs of the Strelleys.

Little is known of Rugeley’s career in the 1420s. In January 1420 he was included a list, sent to the royal council, of Staffordshire gentry fit for military service, and in the same month he was appointed to a loan commission in the county.7 E28/97/97B; CFR, xv. 315. Two years later, moved, in Dugdale’s speculation, by his love of hunting, he acquired property in the shire he was later to represent in Parliament, purchasing from Sir Richard Stanhope* the manor of Dunton in Curdworth, near Sutton Coldfield and about 15 miles to the south of Hawksyard. Like much else about our MP’s career this acquisition cannot be straightforwardly interpreted. The manor had once been owned by the Cuilly family and had descended to an heiress who married Stanhope’s father, John (d.1380/2). She was not, however, the seller’s mother, and a deed shows that Stanhope’s interest in the manor was that of the lessee from John Foljambe of Dunton and Foljambe’s wife, Joan, to whom he paid an annual rent of five marks. In any event, whatever impropriety attached to a purchase from an apparent lessee, Rugeley made good his title and began extending his interest there, acquiring from William, Lord Clinton, a tenement called ‘Mekenhull’.8 Dugdale, ii. 934; Shakespeare Centre Archs., Leigh of Stoneleigh mss, DR18/1/252-3.

The acquisition of Dunton was enough to qualify him technically for his pricking as the Warwickshire sheriff that came his way in February 1430. None the less, as a recent import to the county, of no great wealth and with a single commission as the sum of his administrative experience, his nomination can only be explained in terms of his place in the Beauchamp retinue. His election to Parliament on 31 Mar. 1432, very soon after the end of his shrievalty, is to be seen in the same terms.9 Carpenter, 277; C219/14/3. Interestingly, he appears to have had personal reasons for seeking election at this date, suggesting, perhaps, that he was returned as a result not of the earl’s active patronage but of the enhanced standing with which membership of the comital retinue endowed him. At the time of his election, he was facing process in the Exchequer for a fraudulent return made to a royal writ requiring sheriffs to return the names of those liable to distraint of knighthood. Foolishly, he had returned that there was no-one so liable in either Warwickshire or Leicestershire; not only was this obviously false, but his successor as sheriff, (Sir) Humphrey Stafford I*, had later made a return of eight Warwickshire names, including that of Rugeley himself.10 E159/208, recorda Mich. rot. 11. The Exchequer also found Stafford’s return unsatisfactory. He may have hoped to use his time at Westminster to excuse himself.

Rugeley was also preoccupied at this time with further matters arising from his wife’s property claims. By a final concord levied during the course of the Parliament, he joined her in conveying the manors of ‘Bassettes’ in Middleton Arneys (Bedfordshire) and ‘le Westhalle’ in Rushton (Northamptonshire), with the advowson of Rushton church, to William Penythorne, who had purchased them from Sir Hugh Strelley’s putative elder brother, Sir John†. He also took advantage of his time at Westminster to appear personally in the court of common pleas, securing an adjournment in a plea of debt sued against him by a London draper.11 CP25(1)/292/67/125; CP40/686, rot. 392. Rugeley’s appearance was to no purpose. On his default in the following law term he was condemned in debt and damage of £11, and this rather set the tone for what else is known of his career. The last years of that career feature in the records as a series of difficulties. Henry Filongley† sued him the chancellor’s court, alleging that he had attempted to defraud him of half of his annuity of £10 assigned on the issues of Warwickshire by having his under sheriff, one ‘Avyngton’, who had no goods, bound for its payment. Rugeley, in turn, had problems in securing payments due to himself: in Michaelmas term 1432 he had an action pending against the new sheriff, Sir William Mountfort*, for failure to pay him his parliamentary wages.12 C1/12/73; E5/495. He was also faced with actions for debt, presumably in connexion with the agreements he had entered into regarding his wife’s lands: Lady Abergavenny sued him for 43 marks and William Penythorne for 50 marks. As a plaintiff, he brought suits of his own to recover moneys due to him and his wife as administrators of the goods of Joan, widow of Sir John Strelley.13 CP40/689, rot. 372; 696, rots. 95, 349, 382d; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xvii. 149.

Further evidence of Rugeley’s connexion with the earl of Warwick comes from late in his career. On 20 Jan. 1435 he and his wife conveyed the manor of Dunton to the earl and two other prominent members of that affinity, Mountfort (clearly the matter of the wages was not one to fall out over) and Robert Arderne*.14 Leigh of Stoneleigh mss, DR18/1/254-6. No doubt the feoffees were intended to implement his instructions regarding the manor after his death, their rank perhaps intended as insurance against any lingering doubts over his title. That death was not long delayed. Rugeley last appears in Trinity term 1436, as defendant in an action of debt sued by Thomas Wolseley, executor of Ralph Wolseley of Wolseley (Staffordshire), and he was certainly dead by 13 Jan. 1438, when his widow made her will at Coventry. She requested burial in the church of St. Nicholas at Curdworth, an indication of how far the couple had made Dunton their home. Given the mystery of her parentage, the will is frustratingly unrevealing. Beyond a few minor religious legacies, it contained only one specific bequest, the sum of 20 marks to Alice, daughter of John Clerk of Coventry. Since she named Clerk as her executor alongside her two sons, Nicholas and Thomas, it is a reasonable speculation that he was her son-in-law. She died before the following 12 Nov., when the will was proved.15 Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iii. 134; CP40/702, rot. 216d; PCC 25 Luffenham (PROB11/3, f. 193d). A later action shows that her eldest son, Nicholas, was also executor of his father’s will, and as such he continued to be troubled by Thomas Wolseley’s claim against his father at least until the mid 1440s.16 Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iii. 168; Leigh of Stoneleigh mss, DR18/1/257.