SKELTON, John II

According to the Cumberland subsidy returns of 1435-6 Sir John Skelton was the richest man in the county with an annual income of £118 6s. 8d. This over-estimates his family’s landed wealth in that a significant part of this income was drawn from royal annuities; none the less, the family patrimony, consisting of neighbouring manors at Whitrigg and Threapland with other outlying properties, was sufficient to ensure his heirs a place among the leading gentry of the county.4 E179/90/26. The family’s landholdings have to be inferred from scattered references and an inq. post mortem of 1544: Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. xii. 16-18. Our MP did not become heir apparent to these lands until the childless death of his elder brother, Richard, in 1430, and yet his father’s connexions and his own energies ensured that he made a success of his career as a younger son. Soon after coming of age he followed Sir John into the service of Edward, duke of York, who retained him with an annuity of 20 marks assigned upon the customs of Kingston-upon-Hull. Henry V’s ambitions in France then gave him the opportunity both to serve his lord in the field – he fought at the battle of Agincourt in York’s retinue – and to continue his family’s distinguished record of military service.5 CPR, 1413-16, p. 386; E101/45/2, m. 1; 19, m. 1. The duke’s death in that great victory did not deter him from further campaigning. In 1417 he may have served under the noted commander, Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury, and, even if the lack of other northerners in Salisbury’s retinue raises a doubt about this identification, there can be no doubt that fighting in France absorbed most of his energies at least until 1422.6 E101/51/2, m. 8. On 3 Mar. 1418 and 8 May 1419 John Skelton, described as an esquire of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was granted royal letters of protection as engaged in the defence of Berwick-upon-Tweed, but this is unlikely to have been our MP: C71/81, mm. 4, 7; Rot. Scot. ii. 222.

This energetic service recommended Skelton to Henry V. As early as 16 Jan. 1416, when the King confirmed to him his annuity of 20 marks from the Hull customs during the minority of Richard, duke of York, he was described as a royal esquire. Later, like many other soldiers, he was given a stake in the success of military conquest in France. On 30 Mar. 1419 the King granted him forfeited lands to the value of 600 sous in the bailiwicks of Caen and Côtentin to hold in tail-male; and, on 10 Jan. 1421, he had the lesser grant of two tenements (one ruined) in Harfleur in fee at 2s. 8d. p.a.7 CPR, 1413-16, p. 386; C64/11, m. 73; 15, m. 30. By the end of the reign he had become an important commander in his own right. On 1 May 1421 he was retained directly by the King to serve with five men-at-arms and 15 archers for half a year, and he campaigned beyond the end of that term.8 Harl Ch. 56 B 40; E101/50/1, m. 2. Protections were granted to members of his retinue as late as May 1422: DKR, xliv. 638. His own later testimony implies that Henry placed a high value on his service. In 1431 he claimed that, shortly before his death in 1422, Henry had given him land in France worth 100 marks p.a. together with letters of privy seal addressed to the chancellor of Normandy for the grant of a life annuity worth a further £20, but that the King’s death had prevented the execution of either of these grants.9 CPR, 1429-36, p. 190.

If Skelton continued to fight in France after 1422, his military activity has left no clear trace on the surviving records. He did, however, find a place in the service of another royal duke. In both 1415 and 1417 his elder brother, Richard, had fought in France under the banner of Henry V’s younger brother, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester; this, together with John’s own recommendations as a soldier, help to explain why, in September 1423, the duke granted him a generous life annuity of £20.10 E101/45/13, m. 4; 51/2, m. 1; Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. tract ser. ii. 177-8; E163/7/31/1. He may have earned his fee in the campaign of 1424-5, by which Gloucester attempted to make good his claim to the inheritance of his wife, Jacqueline of Hainault; alternatively, he may have been prevented from doing so by a serious personal misfortune. In 1439 he received a royal grant ‘in recompense of his ransom of 1,000 marks made to the King’s enemies in France, who took him on the sea in coming from John, duke of Bedford, to whom he was sent by the King and council’.11 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 518-19. No date is given for this setback, but his service to Duke Humphrey raises the possibility that it occurred in 1423 or 1424, when the duke of Bedford was attempting to arbitrate Gloucester’s dispute with Jacqueline’s deserted husband, John, duke of Brabant. However this may be, Skelton, whether returning from captivity or campaigning, was back in Cumberland by 17 Apr. 1425. On that day he joined his father in attesting the county’s parliamentary election, and, soon after, he was present at the church of Wetheral near Carlisle for the baptism of Richard Salkeld†.12 C219/13/3; C139/129/39.

Skelton continued to serve Duke Humphrey into the late 1420s and beyond. On 19 Nov. 1429 he received assignment in the Exchequer on the duke’s behalf; and on 3 Jan. 1435 he joined the duke’s receiver-general, Nicholas Thorley, in standing mainprise for their master’s purchase of a valuable marriage from the Crown.13 E403/692, m. 6; CPR, 1429-36, p. 445. Given his earlier military service, he is likely to have been part of the army Gloucester led to the relief of Calais in August 1436, although proof is lacking. Such service was important in forwarding his career, and the duke’s influence was probably instrumental in enabling him to win some compensation for his earlier sacrifices in the Lancastrian cause. On 24 Oct. 1431, in recognition of the Crown’s failure to execute the grants made to him by Henry V in his last days, he was awarded a royal annuity of £20 during pleasure assigned upon the fee farm of the priory of Coventry. Less than a year later, on 16 July 1432, he was granted the custody of the close of Southwaite in Inglewood forest, which had fallen into royal hands only two weeks before on the death of the previous keeper, William Stapleton†.14 CPR, 1429-36, p. 190; CFR, xvi. 100-1.

Further grants followed, as Skelton’s elderly father, himself a friend of the duke, sought to maintain his own grants from royal patronage in the hands of our MP, who, since his elder brother’s death in 1430, had been Sir John’s heir apparent. Late in 1435 Sir John surrendered his own grant of a purpresture at Armanthwaite, also in Inglewood forest, to the intent that his son might have the property for the term of his life and then for a further term of 40 years. On 25 June 1437 he made a similar surrender of a more important grant, that of five closes in the same forest, a valuable property from which the Crown reserved a rent of over £15; this was then re-granted to him and John in survivorship.15 CFR, xvi. 263; CPR, 1436-41, p. 66. More important still, on 3 Feb. 1439, only days before the knight’s death, the King granted the two men, again in survivorship, an annuity of 40 marks assigned upon the issues of Cumberland, which Sir John had enjoyed since 1404. In the following November our MP won another mark of royal favour when his annuity assigned upon the priory of Coventry was extended to life. His known royal and baronial life annuities now amounted to the impressive total of £80 p.a.16 CPR, 1401-5, p. 411; 1436-41, pp. 251, 350.

With Sir John’s death, Skelton finally entered into the family patrimony. On 19 Feb. 1439 his father’s feoffees surrendered their title to the manor of Whitrigg and he presumbly secured his father’s other properties at the same time.17 Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. tract ser. ii. 177-8. The manor of Whitrigg was burdened with an annual rent of 14 marks assigned to his elder brother’s widow, Katherine: CCR, 1429-35, p. 121. He appears to have held the family lands at Threapland as his brother’s heir. In May 1437 he was pardoned ‘as son of Sir John Skelton and tenant of lands late of Richard Skelton, late of Cumberland, junior, esquire, in Threapland’: C67/38, m. 24; E159/213, brevia Trin. rot. 2. His annuities made him as wealthy a man as his father had been, and this wealth now brought him the administrative burdens that he had earlier largely escaped (although he had served a term as escheator in 1437-8). On 4 Nov. 1440 he was pricked for the first of his three terms as sheriff of Cumberland; and in June 1444 he was appointed to an ad hoc commission of local government for the first time.18 CPR, 1441-6, p. 290; C47/7/6/10. His importance is emphasized by his reappointment as sheriff only four years after his first term and the fact that he continued to benefit from royal patronage despite Duke Humphrey’s loss of influence. On 19 May 1442 he took yet another lease in Inglewood forest, that of a house called ‘Le Glashous’ and two royal fisheries there; he had re-grants of his £20 annuity when earlier letters patent were annulled on technicalities; in November 1444 his leases of the purpresture in Armathwaite and close of Southwaite were converted to grants in fee; and on 7 Nov. 1446, three days after the end of his second shrievalty, he was rewarded with the lease of 100 acres in Armathwaite for the long term of 80 years.19 CFR, xvii. 228-9; xviii. 47-48; CPR, 1441-6, pp. 170, 324, 327. These grants in Armathwaite were of particular importance for he seems to have been the first of his family to make his residence there.

The Crown also recognized the burdens placed upon Skelton by terms as sheriff in a county where the farm had been seriously eroded by border warfare. In June 1446, during his second term, he was granted a general pardon, and in November 1447 he was rewarded with the protection of an exemption of office.20 C67/39, m. 43; CPR, 1446-52, p. 110. His willingness to spend time in London, presumably at court, no doubt helped him to maintain his place in royal favour. He is known to have been at Westminster on at least two occasions in the late 1440s: on 9 May 1447 he received reassignment in the Exchequer on behalf of the treasurer, Marmaduke Lumley, bishop of Carlisle and former warden of the west march; and a year later he made a personal appearance in the court of common pleas to sue an action of close-breaking.21 E403/767, m. 2; CP40/749, rot. 463.

Exemptions of office were not infrequently granted to those who had had distinguished military careers, and it seems that, despite his advancing age, Skelton’s exploits in the field were not yet over. In the late 1440s intermittent border skirmishes between the English and the Scots gave way to open warfare. On 23 Oct. 1448 an English force, commanded by Henry Percy, Lord Poynings, was heavily defeated by the Scots at the river Sark. Poynings, together with Sir John Pennington* and (Sir) Thomas Haryngton I*, are known to have been captured, and a royal grant of 1452 shows that Skelton was taken and ransomed at about this time. If, however, he was captured at the battle (as seems likely), his detention, like that of Pennington, was only brief, for both men appear among the attestors to the parliamentary election held at Carlisle on the following 21 Jan.22 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 409-10; H. Summerson, Med. Carlisle, ii. 435-6; CPR, 1446-52, p. 518; C219/15/6. It may have been a desire to lobby the Crown to compensate him for his ransom that led Skelton, at the advanced age of about 60, to take a more direct interest in parliamentary affairs when a second Parliament was called in the same year. On 28 Oct. he was returned for Cumberland in company with Richard Bellingham*, a supporter of the Percys.23 C219/15/7. Skelton was a tenant of that great family in respect of his manor of Threapland and may have been with Poynings on the river Sark, but later evidence suggests that his sympathies lay with the Nevilles as the politics of the north became increasingly polarized. None the less, the rivalry of Percy and Neville had yet to become the overriding factor in northern politics. For Skelton the motive for his candidature was probably personal, and it became more so as the assembly progressed. For one who drew a handsome income from royal annuities, his interests were seriously threatened by the demands of the Commons for a resumption of royal grants. His place in the Lower House gave him a better chance of protecting his own gains. He presented a petition, with the sponsorship of Ralph, Lord Cromwell, for exemption from the Act of Resumption, citing the losses he had sustained when captured by the French and Scots and adding that his son and heir remained in Scottish hands pending the final discharge of a ransom. However, he met with only partial success. He saved his annuity of £20 assigned upon the priory of Coventry but he lost 30 marks of the 40 marks he drew annually from the issues of his native county.24 SC8/86/4261; PROME, xii. 143.

Six months after the conclusion of his first Parliament, Skelton was pricked as sheriff of Cumberland for the third time despite the exemption he had secured three years earlier. According to his own petition, he initially refused to serve, ‘for certaine causes resounable’ declared by him before the royal council. His agreement was only brought with the promise that he might account by oath, in other words, for what he could raise rather than for the full charge of the county. Later he won an additional privilege with the pardon of account in the sum of £70 granted to him on 14 Feb. 1451.25 E28/87/21. Indeed, it is clear that he remained in royal favour at this date. During the Parliament of 1450-1 a more comprehensive Act of Resumption was forced upon an unwilling King, and yet our MP was quickly able to regain his losses. On 19 Feb. 1452, again described as a royal esquire, he had a new grant of a life annuity of 40 marks. Later in the same year, on 21 Oct., the King’s patronage was once more exercised in his favour when the treasurer and barons of the Exchequer were ordered to accept his account by oath for his last shrievalty in accordance with the earlier promise.26 CPR, 1446-52, p. 518; E159/229, brevia Mich. rot. 14. In the meantime he had secured a grant of spiritual rather than financial value from a very different source: on 13 July he had a papal indult to have a portable altar and mass celebrated before daybreak. This was supplemented a year later with an indult to have divine offices celebrated in places under interdict.27 CPL, x. 605, 629.

Skelton’s second election for Cumberland was conducted in an atmosphere of tension and division as relations between the two great northern families of Percy and Neville drifted towards open hostility. The indenture suggests that it may have been contested. It names no fewer than 154 attestors, far more than in any other surviving fifteenth-century indenture for the county. The election was not held until 13 Mar., a week after the Parliament had begun. This delay was an inevitable corollary of the unusually short interval allowed between summons and meeting, particularly in the northern counties when county courts were held only every six weeks rather than four, and is not in itself evidence of any irregularity. Of greater significance is the dominance of the Neville interest among the attestors, who were headed by one of the earl of Salisbury’s younger sons, Sir Thomas Neville. Further, the election was conducted by a sheriff, Thomas de la More*, who also numbered among the family’s supporters. In these circumstances, it is not surprising that both of those elected can themselves be connected to the Nevilles, although by no reference pre-dating the election.28 C219/16/2. In fact the first evidence to connect the MPs, Skelton and Roland Vaux*, comes at the very end of the Parliament. When the earl of Salisbury became chancellor in April 1454, he extended to some of his servants the Chancery officers’ customary privilege of suing their debtors in the court of Chancery: among the privileged were both the Cumberland MPs.29 C244/77/6; R.L. Storey, End of House of Lancaster, 123. I have assumed that the Skelton referred to was our MP and not his less prominent namesake of Branthwaite. Clearly, if Skelton was high enough in Salisbury’s favour to be so singled out, his election some months earlier had been acceptable to the earl, although it should not be assumed that he was returned as a Neville client alone. As a long-serving royal esquire his election must also have been welcome to the Crown, and, in this sense, he is to be seen as just another of the Household men in a Parliament to which an unusual number of such men were elected. Skelton himself may have put a high premium on securing his own return, if one may draw an inference from the number of his kinsmen present at the hustings: John, Nicholas, Clement, Thomas and Robert Skelton, one or more of whom may have been his sons, all troubled to attend.

If, however, Skelton was elected as a Household esquire in the service of the Nevilles, who had yet to alienate themselves from the royal court, it was in support of neither that he acted in the assembly. Almost nothing is known of the actions of individual MPs in medieval Parliaments; Skelton’s conduct in this assembly is a very rare exception thanks to the chronicle of John Whethamstede, abbot of St. Albans. The abbot’s comments provide a valuable insight into the workings of the Lower House, and, incidentally, into our MP’s character and his effectiveness there. The abbot’s interest arose out of the threat to his abbey posed by a bill introduced into the Commons by Henry VI’s half-brother, Jasper Tudor, newly created earl of Pembroke, who asked for a grant in fee of the lands of the earldom, including ‘per expressa verba’ the alien priory of St. Nicholas of Pembroke. This had been granted to the abbey by the late duke of Gloucester in return for prayers for his soul, and thus the bill endangered both the material interests of the abbey and the spiritual needs of the duke. It would, in Whethamstede’s account, have passed without amendment, save for the intervention of a friend of the abbey, Bartholomew Halley*, a royal esquire sitting for Hertfordshire. Halley secretly solicited the assistance of Skelton, who, as a former servant of the duke, had reason to oppose the grant. This he did so energetically (‘ac tam perseveranter in materia laboravit’) that he secured a suitable amendment, protecting the grant to the abbey. Halley, as usher of the royal chamber, had probably been reluctant to oppose the bill publicly for fear of giving offence to the Crown. Our MP’s willingness to act, although he too was a royal annuitant (albeit one less intimately connected to the King than Halley), implies that he did not share that fear.30 Reg. Whethamstede ed. Riley, i. 92-94; CPR, 1436-41, p. 567; W. Dugdale, Monasticon, ii. 243-4; A.R. Myers, Crown, Household and Parl. 57-58.

After his service in this Parliament, Skelton appears to have scaled down his activities. Advancing age may be the main reason, but the increasing divisiveness of both northern and national politics may have been another. Even if, in the early 1450s, he was not as close to the Crown as he had once been, the support of the Nevilles for the duke of York may still have faced him with an uncomfortable conflict of loyalty.31 At least as late as 1444 he was receiving from the duke of York the annuity assigned on the Hull customs some 30 years before: Egerton Roll 8782. This, outweighed by his royal annuities, is unlikely to have informed his political sympathies. That conflict may have been the greater for it is clear that he retained at least a measure of royal favour. He successfully petitioned to have his annuity of 40 marks saved from the Act of Resumption passed at the end of the Parliament of 1455-6, and on 13 May 1457 he was re-granted his leases of the royal purpresture in Armanthwaite and close in Southwaite for a term of 40 years.32 SC8/141/7011A and B; PROME, xii. 424; CFR, xix. 189. His long career ended soon after with nomination as one of the conservators of the Anglo-Scottish truce, a role he had discharged since soon after his probable capture at the battle of Sark, and to a commission charged with preparing for the raising of 74 archers in his native county. Death saved him from choosing between the King he had long served and the family whose service he had much more recently entered. He died on 16 Jan. 1458, leaving responsibility for the execution of his will to his widow and his son and heir, also named John.33 CPR, 1452-61, p. 407; C139/167/11; CP40/793, rot. 56d; 797, rot. 43d. The latter appears to have committed himself to the Yorkist cause. On 15 Dec. 1461, after Edward IV had taken the throne, he had a royal grant in tail-male of the property in Armathwaite (where his father appears to have made his home), presumably as a reward for his active support during the civil war of 1459-61. Soon after, on 28 Feb. 1462, Robert Skelton, described as ‘of Carlisle’, was paid £100 by the new King for the capture of the Lancastrian, (Sir) William Leigh*, and it may be that he was our MP’s younger son.34 CPR, 1461-7, p. 109; E404/72/1/113.