STAPLETON, William

William Stapleton represented the junior branch of a family anciently established at Stapleton near the Scottish border. By the early fifteenth century this branch had far outstripped the senior one in wealth and importance, the result of acquisitions made by marriage in the three generations of the family preceding our MP. The maternal inheritance of his grandfather, another William† (d.1380), had included a moiety of the manor of Edenhall in the south-east of the county, and the grandfather had acquired the other moiety by exchange with his maternal and paternal first cousin, John Stapleton. This William’s wife, Mary Ritson, brought the family further property, although in the opposite corner of the county, centred on the manor of Thurstonfield near Carlisle.4 Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. xiii. 212-15; CIPM, xix. 114.

This combined inheritance was sufficient to ensure the family an important part in Cumberland affairs: Stapleton’s grandfather represented the county in three Parliaments and served as sheriff there; and his father had a yet more impressive record, sitting in five Parliaments and holding the shrievalty twice. Even the family heir could play a part in local affairs before entering the patrimony. On 3 Mar. 1416 William was at Carlisle to attest his father’s fifth election to Parliament, and he appeared as an attestor on five further occasions before his father’s death. He also served regularly on inquisition post mortem juries sitting at Penrith, near the family home at Edenhall, including that taken on 3 Dec. 1425 after the death of Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland.5 C219/11/8; 12/2, 3; 13/2; 14/1, 2; Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. x. 207; CIPM, xxii. 305, 653; xxiii. 4, 345. Most significantly of all, by the following spring he had been appointed as constable of the lordship of Penrith by this lord’s son, Richard, earl of Salisbury, the beginning of a relationship that was to last until the end of our MP’s career.6 Hope-Wallace (Featherstone) mss, ZHW/1/72.

The Stapletons were clearly among the richest gentry in the county, but their wealth is hard to measure accurately. A Chancery petition of the late 1430s made the extravagant claim that our MP’s father had left goods worth 2,000 marks (after the execution of his will) and lands with an annual value of 240 marks. This was a gross exaggeration, but so too, at the opposite extreme, was the income of £20 p.a. returned against our MP by the subsidy commissioners of 1435-6.7 C1/70/85 (printed in Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. xi. 303-6); E179/90/26. However, the important point is that, even though Stapleton had an income very much greater than £20 p.a., several factors combined to undermine his financial position. Chief among these was the survival of his stepmother into the 1440s, and their dispute over her interest in the family estates was (if the surviving records are an accurate guide) the dominant factor in his career. Of secondary importance was the seizure by the Crown of the lands that had come into the family through Mary Ritson. She had died in 1406 with a debt to the King of £75 as arrears of rent for the custody of royal demesne lands near the city of Carlisle, and the sheriff was accounting for the issues of her lands as late as 1441.8 E199/7/36. Since these lands had suffered heavily from Scottish raids they represented less of an annual loss to our MP than they might otherwise have done, but he had other property that suffered in the same way. His inquisition post mortem records devastation in his property much further to the south at Blencarn and in the Eden Valley at Crindledyke near Kirkoswald.9 C139/170/48; H. Summerson, Med. Carlisle, ii. 437.

To be balanced against these losses was Stapleton’s acquisition through his wife, Margaret Vipont, of title to the manor of Alston, a few miles to the north-east of Edenhall, and other neighbouring property. Even here, however, there were difficulties. The marriage seems to have taken place as early as about 1413 (the couple’s eldest daughter was said to be 55 years old on her mother’s death in 1468) and to have been a double one. The pedigree of the last generations of the Viponts is uncertain, although it is clear that our MP’s father took, as his second wife, the widow of the last male member of that ancient line. At about the same time the younger William was married to the heiress of that family (although not the daughter of his father’s wife) and was thus in the curious position of having a stepmother who was also stepmother to his wife.10 C140/29/40; CIPM, xiii. 54, 135; Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. xi. 259-60. He was also related to his wife, probably as a third cousin, through his own mother, a daughter of Thomas Blencow. His acquisition of his wife’s inheritance was complicated both by the rival claim of the baronial family of Clifford and, more problematically, by his stepmother’s claim to a life interest. In the late thirteenth century the Cliffords had inherited the lands of the senior branch of the Viponts and they now appear to have advanced a claim to the lands that should have fallen to the Stapletons. This at least is one interpretation of the events following the death of John, Lord Clifford, at the siege of Meaux on 13 Mar. 1422. Two months later the Crown entrusted the keeping of his lands to his mother and his widow during the minority of his son and heir. Since Stapleton stood as one of the mainpernors for the widows in this grant, it seems that the potential rivals for the Vipont lands were on good terms.11 CFR, xiv. 433. On 21 Sept. 1424 our MP was one of the jurors in the inq. post mortem of John, Lord Clifford’s mother: CIPM, xxii. 305. And yet, when Lord Clifford’s inquisition post mortem was taken in the following July, he was returned as having died seised of the Vipont manors of Alston, Elrington and Garrigill. The Stapletons were quick to traverse these findings, but, again mysteriously, the plaintiffs were not our MP and his wife but his father and stepmother. They claimed to have been seised in fee of the manors until disseised as a result of the inquisition’s findings, and a verdict was duly returned in their favour by a jury before the justices of assize in August 1424. Much about this episode remains obscure: it may, for example, represent not a dispute between the Stapletons and Cliffords over the Vipont lands, but rather a failed attempt by the Crown to prove (as it had tried to do before) that these lands were held in chief rather than of the barony of Tyndale. Nevertheless, it has an obvious significance: the dispute between our MP and his stepmother was not just over her dower rights in the Stapleton lands but also involved her claim to a life interest in the Vipont lands of his wife.12 C44/25/17; KB27/663, rex rot. 10d; Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. xi. 293-302.

Our knowledge of this quarrel depends largely on the ex parte statements of Mary, the stepmother, and her third husband, Thomas Bethom*, in three petitions presented to the chancellor, although there seems no reason to doubt their testimony, at least in outline. Stapleton certainly seems to have been the aggressor. According to one of the petitions his father on his deathbed, ‘dredyng gret debate and hevynes to fall after his decesse’, had taken an oath from his son that Mary would be allowed her legitimate rights.13 C1/70/85. If one may judge from the findings of the inquisitions taken after the elder William died, our MP immediately disregarded his promise, intervening to ensure that the jurors did not list his father’s properties in their entirety. On 25 Sept. 1432 a jury at Appleby, headed by Stapleton’s friend, Sir Henry Threlkeld*, and his brother-in-law, Hugh Lowther*, claimed that his father died seised of only four messuages and 40 acres of land in Kescliff and a messuage and six acres of land in Yanwath. A week later a Cumberland jury, headed by another of his brothers-in-law, Thomas Salkeld, gave a limited picture of the family’s lands in that county, although they did return the manor of Edenhall.14 CIPM, xxiv. 85-86. Our MP had been a feoffee for Threlkeld in 1425: CP25(1)/35/14/2. For Lowther and Salkeld as his brothers-in-law: C1/9/68, 307. These findings are not the only evidence of Stapleton’s corrupt intervention. His opponents later alleged that he had caused the writs ordering these inquisitions ‘to be servet after his own entent agayn the saide Mary wrongwisly’.15 C1/70/85. Initially his tactics were effective. On 25 Nov. the escheator of the two counties was ordered to give him seisin of the lands detailed in the inquisitions subject to the assignment of dower to his stepmother. Since her dower could only be measured on the basis of the findings of the inquisitions, she faced having to accept much less than her entitlement.16 CFR, xvi. 128; CCR, 1429-35, p. 207.

Stapleton enjoyed another success in November 1433: he was named as escheator in the two counties, an unattractive office in normal circumstances but one which gave him an opportunity to increase his stepmother’s discomfiture. Thus, when writs of que plura were issued (on 30 Nov. 1433 for Westmorland and 20 Feb. 1434 for Cumberland) for further inquiry into his father’s lands (either at the suit of his stepmother or because the Crown suspected the earlier findings), it was he who received them. He was understandably slow to act. Not until the following October, just as he was about to relinquish office, did he hold further inquisitions, which predictably confirmed the original findings.17 CIPM, xxiv. 390-1. He seems to have had similar success in resisting informal methods of dispute resolution. If we accept the testimony of a later Chancery petition, the dispute was put, while his father’s writs of diem clausit extremum were awaiting execution, to the arbitration of his four brothers-in-law, Henry Fenwick*, Hugh Lowther, Robert Claxton and Thomas Salkeld. Stapleton exploited his opponent’s passivity while the arbiters were deliberating to execute the writs to her disadvantage, and then refused to abide the terms of the award.18 C1/70/85.

By this date, however, Mary had made some progress against her stepson’s systematic attempts to conceal the truth. On 10 May and 12 June 1434 the Crown issued powerful commissions designed to circumvent his authority as escheator: Thomas, Lord Dacre, William, Lord Harington, Sir Richard Musgrave*, Sir Thomas Strickland*, two local lawyers, John Urswyk and Robert Rodes*, and the sheriffs of the two counties were ordered to inquire into the lands omitted from the inquisitions. Even though the findings of these commissions did not, in the end, help her cause, it is probable that she was responsible for securing them.19 CPR, 1429-36, p. 356. It was also at about this time that she sought to strengthen her position by marrying Bethom, a prominent member of the Westmorland gentry.20 In Trin. term 1435 the couple had several actions pending in the ct. of c.p., and since some of these had passed beyond the initial stages of process the marriage must have taken place some time before: CP40/698, rots. 39d, 49, 150d, 254d. Mary, however, was still sole in Easter term 1434: CP40/693, rot. 282.

Soon after this marriage the dispute was again put to the arbitration of the four brothers-in-law with the assistance of two local lawyers, Urswyk and Thomas Burgham*. None the less, Stapleton’s star was still very much in the ascendant and he again refused to abide the terms of the award.21 C1/9/68, 307. His opponents must have viewed without enthusiasm his appointment to the Cumberland bench soon after he had relinquished the office of escheator. Further, on 18 Feb. 1436, at an inquiry held at Kirkby in Kendal in Westmorland, the commissioners, headed by Lord Harington, did Mary’s cause no good by finding that her late husband had held no more land than detailed in the earlier inquisitions. Equally damaging to her was Stapleton’s election to Parliament at hustings held on 8 Jan. 1437 (and attended by his brothers-in-law, Lowther and Salkeld).22 CIPM, xxiv. 88; C219/15/1. His aim in standing was perhaps to prevent his opponents petitioning against him in the Commons as they had already done in Chancery. However this may be, while Parliament was in session he made their task more difficult by levying a final concord giving his wife, Margaret, a joint estate in the manor of Edenhall and other neighbouring lands. Nor can there be any doubt about the aggressive intent of his resort to litigation on the Parliament’s conclusion. In Easter term 1437 he brought an action of waste against his stepmother and Bethom with respect to 12 messuages, 300 acres of land and two acres of wood at Stainton near Carlisle. On the following 12 Jan. an inquiry at Stainton awarded him, at least according to the official record, triple damages totalling £108 and seisin of the allegedly wasted lands.23 CP25(1)/35/14/12; CP40/705, rot. 380; KB27/732, rot. 47.

To this point Stapleton had enjoyed palpable success in manipulating in his own interest the Crown’s administrative machine in the two counties in which his lands lay. Before the action of waste had gone against him and Mary, Bethom had struck back by the same method. His lands lay not only in Westmorland but also in Lancashire, where Stapleton was without influence, and it was here that Bethom acted against him. On 31 May 1437, before Lord Harington and Robert Brokholes, sitting as Lancashire j.p.s at Cliderowe, Stapleton was indicted for felonious theft from Bethom of livestock worth as much as 100 marks. This may have precipitated his removal from the Cumberland bench in the following July, and on 5 Aug. he was duly arrested as a felon.24 CP40/726, rot. 470d; 727, rot. 618d. Clearly he was not to have things all his own way. Although his position quickly recovered – on 16 Sept. he was acquitted before the justices of assize at Lancaster – his opponents maintained the pressure. Soon after the verdict was returned against them in the waste action, Mary and Bethom presented a long and detailed petition to the chancellor. After reciting the terms of the second award returned by the two lawyers and the four brothers-in-law and his refusal to abide by it, they cited a third referral to arbitration, on this occasion to two powerful arbiters, Humphrey Stafford, earl of Stafford, and Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland. They claimed that, while this award was pending, Stapleton had ‘sewet pryvely’ his action of waste, taking advantage of the shrievalty of his brother-in-law, Henry Fenwick, to secure a writ of inquiry without having the defendants summoned or warned. He then allegedly resorted to yet greater corruption by securing the writ and record of the inquisition from the under sheriff, and returned them himself having added over £100 to the sum awarded by the jury in damages.25 C1/70/85.

This petition brought direct royal intervention. On 28 Nov. 1438 Stapleton was obliged to enter into a bond in £40 to appear in Chancery at three weeks after Easter unless, before then the earl of Salisbury should return an award in the dispute. On the same day the parties entered into mutual bonds in as much as 1,000 marks to abide by the earl’s decision.26 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 235, 237-8. Given his place in the earl’s service, Stapleton probably welcomed his involvement. Unfortunately no record of the award survives, although it seems to have brought a temporary end to the dispute. If the earl’s decision entailed the loss of landed property to Stapleton, it also seems to have restored him to his proper place in local affairs. This, at least, is the implication of his return to the county bench in 1439 and his nomination to the shrievalty two years later.27 CPR, 1436-41, p. 580; CFR, xvii. 204-5. Another expression of his high standing at this time is the marriages of his daughters, Mary and Joan (b.c.1414). As heiresses-presumptive to the inheritances of both their father and mother, they were desirable matches and were contracted accordingly. Their husbands came from two of the leading gentry families of the far north. In about January 1439 Mary married William Hilton, son and heir-apparent of Sir Robert Hilton (d.1447) of Hilton in county Durham; and Joan was then already the wife of Thomas, son and heir-apparent of Sir Richard Musgrave.28 CP, vii. 29; ix. 435. In the subsidy returns of 1435-6 Thomas Musgrave was assessed at £10 p.a., probably in respect of lands settled upon him by his father at the time of the marriage: E179/195/32. The marriage had produced a son old enough to enter into an indenture of retainer in 1456: Cam. Misc. xxxii. 132.

Even so, Stapleton’s dispute with his stepmother would not go away. No Chancery petition survives to illuminate its later stages; there are, however, firm indications that the Crown’s intervention through Neville had not been decisive. On 22 Apr. 1441 the commissioners named seven years earlier decided very belatedly to act on their commission: Sir Richard Musgrave and others sat at Penrith to hear a jury return that Stapleton’s father had died seised only of those lands specified in his inquisition post mortem.29 CIPM, xxiv. 89. This verdict was so obviously in our MP’s favour as to raise the strong suspicion that the commissioners’ intervention was a partial one, particularly since Musgrave’s eldest son was by now Stapleton’s son-in-law. Stapleton also reopened litigation against Bethom and his stepmother. In Trinity term 1442, while he was in office as sheriff, he had them attached on a plea of conspiracy, claiming damages of 40 marks for his indictment before the Lancashire j.p.s. He also brought a further action of waste, on this occasion in respect of property at Botcherby near Carlisle.30 CP40/725, rot. 197; 726, rot. 470d; 727, rot. 618d. It may be that, while these actions were pending, there was a further attempt at compromise. This, at least, is the inference to be drawn from the assignment of dower to Mary made in Cumberland on 24 May 1443 and in Westmorland a week later. Significantly these were made, not on the basis of the findings of the original inquisitions post mortem of her late husband, but rather on a more accurate enumeration of the Stapleton properties in a return that is now lost.31 CCR, 1441-7, p. 89; C139/109/28.

Again, however, the dispute would not die. On 29 Apr. 1444 the Bethoms appeared in the court of King’s bench to pursue a writ of error against the judgement obtained against them for waste at Stainton.32 KB27/732, rot. 47. This may represent no more than a tying up of loose ends in a concluded quarrel, but it is less easy to dismiss the commission for Stapleton’s arrest issued on the following 11 May. The King’s serjeant-at-arms, Thomas Belgrave, was ordered to bring him before the royal council to answer for unspecified matters, almost certainly connected with the dispute. Belgrave was, not surprisingly, unable to apprehend him, and on 8 June another commission was issued to make proclamation for his appearance before the council at the quindene of Midsummer. One of the commissioners was Bethom’s son and heir-apparent, Edward, and he was one of those who caused proclamation to be made at the markets at Penrith and Carlisle, but there is no evidence that they secured Stapleton’s attendance.33 CPR, 1441-6, pp. 287, 290. The commrs. returned that our MP had been present to hear the proclamation at Penrith: C47/7/6/10.

At this point all references disappear to a quarrel that had dominated Stapleton’s career since his father’s death. The reason was probably his stepmother’s death, although its precise date is unknown. This removed one of his rivals for his wife’s Vipont inheritance and another had surrendered shortly before. In June 1443 Thomas, Lord Clifford, quitclaimed to Stapleton and his wife all his right in the manors of Alston, Garrigill, Kirkhaugh and Elrington; and in the same year, a lesser man, Thomas Whitlawe, a descendant of Robert Vipont (d.1371) in the female line, made a similar surrender.34 CCR, 1441-7, p. 142; S. Jefferson, Cumb. i. 111 The title of Stapleton and his wife was thus finally secure, and it may be that they had the earl of Salisbury’s intervention to thank for this happy state of affairs. It was in the earl’s castle of Middleham (Yorkshire), in the presence of the earl himself, that, on 30 June, the Clifford deed of quitclaim was delivered to the couple’s hands.35 Cumbria RO, Carlisle, Musgrave of Edenhall mss, D/Mus/E172.

The clear narrative of Stapleton’s career ends with the resolution of his disputes with Bethom and Clifford, and only incidental references to his activities survive thereafter. In August 1445, for example, he was one of an influential group of local gentry, headed by Sir Thomas Strickland and Fenwick, who arbitrated a dispute between Sir Henry Threlkeld and Threlkeld’s daughter-in-law.36 JUST1/1544, rot. 44; Cumbria RO, Kendal, Le Fleming of Rydal mss, WDRY/92/91-92. Yet it would be wrong to confuse this lack of references to him with a decline in his importance. He continued to attest parliamentary elections, as he had regularly done since 1416 and to serve as a j.p. in Cumberland. Most importantly of all, he won promotion within the Neville retinue. By the end of the 1440s he was serving as the earl’s steward in the lordship of Penrith, the effective leader of the Neville affinity in Westmorland.37 C219/15/4, 6, 7; 16/1, 2; CPR, 1452-61, p. 663; Lonsdale mss, D/Lons/5/1/48/9.

Stapleton did not enjoy his new importance for long. He last appears in the records on 27 Jan. 1456 when he sued out a general pardon in company with his wife, and he died on 26 Aug. in the following year.38 C67/41, m. 10; CFR, xix. 194; C139/170/48. His memorial brass mistakenly dates his death to 26 Aug. 1458: Jefferson, i. 398. His death brought to an end the senior male line of an ancient family. His estates were to be divided between his two daughters. By the time his inquisition post mortem was taken at Penrith on 20 Oct. both of them were widows. Joan’s husband, Thomas Musgrave, had died some years before; Mary’s husband, William Hilton, died a week before the inquisition was taken.39 Our MP’s inquisition post mortem erroneously names Mary as Musgrave’s wid. and Joan as Hilton’s: C139/170/48; Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. xxix. 340-2. The heirs had to wait some time for their inheritance. Not only did the Vipont part of it belong to their mother in her own right, but she also had jointure in a very large part of the Stapleton patrimony, including the manor of Edenhall.40 C139/170/48. She survived for more than ten years and not until 20 Mar. 1469 was the sheriff ordered to partition the Stapleton and Vipont estates between her two daughters.41 CFR, xx. 216, 257; C140/29/40. At this date Joan remained sole, but her sister had married Richard Musgrave, younger brother of Joan’s late husband. The division duly took place in the following January. The two moieties of the Stapleton inheritance thus became absorbed into greater inheritances: one part passed to the Durham Hiltons, and the other to the senior line of the Musgraves. In the division of the estates the manor of Edenhall was assigned to Joan, descending to her son, Richard Musgrave the younger (d.1491), and eventually becoming the residence of the senior branch of the Musgraves. The other moiety, principally the manor of Alston and the Stapleton lands in the vicinity of Carlisle, passed temporarily into the hands of the Musgraves before descending to Mary’s son by her first marriage, William Hilton.42 C140/33/38B; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 695; Jefferson, i. 111.

The only memorial of the Stapletons that remains is the brass of our MP and his wife in the church of Edenhall, one of the very few surviving brasses in Cumberland. The male figure bears the arms of Vipont (or, six annulets gules, three, two, one) on the right shoulder and those of Stapleton (argent, three swords conjoined at the pomel gules) on the left. Unusually, the female figure is significantly smaller than the male, although the monumental inscription takes care to remind the observer of her status as an heiress.43 Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. xiii. facing p. 230; Add. 32490 K7; Jefferson, i. 397-8.