WELTDEN, Richard

The Weltdens belonged to a long-established gentry family which had been involved in the affairs of Newcastle-upon-Tyne since at least the late fourteenth century. The precise identification of the MP and the reconstruction of his career poses some difficulties, but he was almost certainly the son of another Richard Weltden and thus a nephew of Simon Weltden*, who had sat for Newcastle in 1426, and first cousin of Thomas Weltden*, who represented Northumberland in the Parliament of 1460.8 The ped. in Hist. Northumb. x. 329 errs in conflating the careers of the MP and his putative father. His putative father was a lawyer and servant of the Neville family and rose to be one of the most important figures in the administration of the Neville estates and north of England more generally.9 He is to be distinguished from the namesake who was frequently appointed as a justice of assize and to commissions of gaol delivery in E. Anglia from 1425 until 1441: C66/416-49. It was probably this individual who served as one of the filacers in the ct. of c.p. from 1420 until 1442: CP40/645-724. During the episcopate of Robert Neville, bishop of Durham (1438-1457), he was very active in the administration of the palatinate;10 e.g. DURH3/42, mm. 1, 16; 43, mm. 14, 18; 44, mm. 5, 24. and in August 1443 he acted alongside Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, when the earl settled his long-running feud with his half-brother Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland, over the Neville patrimony.11 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 150-1, 198.

By this date it is difficult entirely to disentangle the MP’s career from that of his putative son, who was also a lawyer. It is possible that it was the younger man who was active in Westminster in the mid 1440s (perhaps because he was then studying at one of the inns of court), receiving assignments at the Exchequer on behalf of the earl of Salisbury, William Neville, Lord Fauconberg, Sir Ralph Gray and Sir Robert Ogle II*, as well as Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland.12 E403/755, m. 5; 757, m. 6; 759, mm. 6, 7, 12, 13; 762, mm. 3, 5; 765, mm. 3, 10, 11. If, however, there is doubt about the MP’s identification with this attorney, there can be none that it was the future MP who, on 10 Nov. 1444, took the farm of the alnage in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Northumberland for a term of 12 years (he is described in the grant as ‘the younger’) and who, by the following October, was acting as clerk of the peace in the North Riding of Yorkshire (too junior an appointment for one of the elder Richard’s age).13 CFR, xvii. 307; E101/598/14. By the end of the decade he was established as a resident of Newcastle. In October 1449 he was appointed to a gaol delivery commission there; and he was among those who assessed the 1450 parliamentary subsidy in the town, returning for himself an income from lands of £10 p.a.14 C66/470, m. 10d; E179/158/54, m. 3.

Weltden’s residence in Newcastle explains his election on 30 Sept. 1450 to represent the borough in Parliament, an election attested either by his putative father (the MP is styled ‘junior’ in the return) or else by the MP himself. On the following 21 Nov., two weeks after this Parliament assembled, he sued out a writ of dedimus potestatem to receive the oath of his cousin, Thomas, as controller of customs in the port of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and on 22 Dec., four days after the end of the first parliamentary session, he was himself granted the local office of tronager and pesager.15 C219/16/1; C254/156/74; CPR, 1446-52, p. 418. He seems to have effectively employed his position as an MP to secure this and other appointments. On the following 30 Mar., a day after the end of the assembly’s second session, he was one of those commissioned to assess the recent parliamentary subsidy on the earl of Westmorland, and his brothers, Sir Thomas and Sir John Neville; and a month later, just six days before the final session convened at Westminster, he and his putative father were commissioned to arrest two local shipmen and bring them before the King’s council. This latter undertaking may have kept Weltden away from Parliament’s final session, for in July 1451 he was rewarded at the Exchequer with 40 marks for a month’s service which had seen him apprehend one of the men, a notorious ‘plunderer and robber at sea’, and bring him from Newcastle to appear before the council at Westminster.16 CPR, 1446-52, p. 445; E403/785, m. 8; Issues of the Exchequer ed. Devon, 470.

Weltden continued to be active in Newcastle throughout the remainder of the decade, and in March 1453 he was appointed as one of the collectors of customs there.17 CFR, xix. 3. His father also continued to be active in the early 1450s but probably died in the middle years of the decade as his last appointment as one of the justices in the palatinate of Durham fell on 10 July 1454.18 DURH3/44, m. 24. Our MP then continued the family tradition of service to the Middleham branch of the Neville family. A fragment of the account of the earl’s receiver at Middleham dating to the late 1450s describes him as the under steward of the honour of Richmond, and he received an annual fee of 66s. 8d. as one of Salisbury’s retained legal counsel. Just as this connexion explains his appointment to the Northumberland bench in December 1455, it also explains his removal in June 1460 as the Lancastrian government stepped up its effort to resist the Yorkist lords. 19 Northern Hist, xi. 56, 68; CPR, 1452-61, p. 673.

The later part of Weltden’s career was to be dominated by a long dispute over the property of his wife, Elizabeth, the daughter and heiress of William Southcotes of Southwark and widow of the Suffolk landowner, Richard Langham. This marriage, made at some date before the spring of 1454, was a potentially lucrative one for Weltden, for in addition to her Langham jointure and dower lands in Essex and Suffolk Elizabeth had a claim, as the heiress of her grandfather, John Oliver, to a valuable property in the parish of St. Olave’s, Southwark.20 For litigation over her jointure: C1/26/351. Unfortunately for Weltden, this claim faced a formidable obstacle: in the mid-1440s Sir John Fastolf had purchased this property from Oliver’s feoffees and from Elizabeth’s father, receiving quitclaims from, among others, Elizabeth herself.21 Ric. III, Crown and People ed. Petre, 44-47. Weltden, unwisely as it transpired, attempted to challenge the legality of this sale. His campaign began before Fastolf’s death: in July 1459 the elderly knight wrote to William Worcestre complaining that ‘one Well Deen makyth moch a-doo for the clayme of my beerehouses purchased of W. Southcotes’.22 Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 180. It was, however, only after Fastolf’s death that he began his campaign in earnest. In the autumn of 1460 he secured a victory in Chancery: the chancellor ruled that part of Fastolf’s purchase had been enfeoffed by Elizabeth’s uncle, William Oliver, once vicar of Croydon, and that the feoffees were now bound to convey to Elizabeth as heir. Accordingly, on 10 Oct. 1460, these feoffees conveyed the messuage and two mills to her and her husband. Weltden was careful to get the conveyance put on record and paid for the deed to be enrolled in Chancery.23 C1/28/410-18; Magdalen Coll., Southwark deeds 75; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 492-3.

Weltden was here taking advantage of his connexion with the Nevilles, then in the political ascendant after the Yorkist victory at the battle of Northampton in July 1460. Indeed, the chancellor who gave this verdict in his favour was the earl of Salisbury’s brother, George Neville, bishop of Exeter. After Salisbury’s death at Wakefield in the following December, Weltden further strengthened his position in the dispute by entering the service of the bishop himself and presenting further petitions against Fastolf’s executors and feoffees.24 For Weltden as a servant of the bp.: C1/67/134. He claimed, amongst other things, that Fastolf had declared to him his intention to restore the properties to Elizabeth if it could be shown that she had a proper title to them, and that part of the property was entailed to Elizabeth. Fastolf’s executors, led by John Paston*, mounted a robust defence. They replied that Elizabeth’s father and former husband had sold the property to Fastolf for 400 marks because of Southcotes’s ‘gret trouble for oder landes in London and grete nede of money’, and that when she had reached her majority Elizabeth herself had quitclaimed her interest in the property to Fastolf. Their defence was, however, unavailing, and the court of Chancery returned a second verdict in favour of the Weltdens.25 Fastolf pprs. 82; C1/29/277; C4/6/54. Accordingly, on 29 Oct. 1462 Fastolf’s feoffees quitclaimed their interest in the 16 acres in St. Olave’s parish to them.26 CCR, 1461-8, p. 327. Clearly, though, Paston did not let the matter lie: in May 1463 he requested that William Worcestre come to London for ‘Weldens mater’: Paston Letters, ii. 293.

Whatever the legal rights of this case, the victories Weltden achieved in Neville’s Chancery in 1460 and 1462 can be seen, in part, as reward for his long service to the Nevilles. Yet, beyond the grant of the corrody mentioned below, it was to be the only benefit he received from the change of regime. Curiously, he was not restored to the quorum of the peace in Northumberland, and one can only speculate on the reasons for his near exclusion from local government in the 1460s. Further, the apparent vindication of his wife’s rights in the Southwark property was quickly and effectively challenged. On 21 Nov. 1466 he joined Richard George†, one of the King’s serjeants-at-arms, in entering a recognizance to Fastolf’s executors, Sir William Yelverton* and Thomas Howes, clerk, to abide the arbitration of Richard Quatermayns*, Hugh atte Fenne*, Thomas Ripplingham and Roger Townshend† in a dispute over a part of the Southwark property.27 Southwark deeds 54c.

Clearly the executors were not ready to accept defeat, and it is tempting to link Weltden’s second election to represent Newcastle-upon-Tyne with this attempt to bring the dispute to a conclusion. On 15 Apr. 1467 he was returned alongside the royal servant, John Wood†. It is uncertain whether the return of two men from outside the town’s governing elite was unusual at this date, as no other election indentures survive from the 1460s, but it probably was.28 C219/17/1. More speculatively, it may be that the election of two other carpet-baggers, Richard George for Carlisle and Roger Townshend for Bramber, was also connected, in part, with the proposed arbitration. None the less, the tide in the dispute now began to run strongly and decisively against Weltden. At the beginning of the Parliament, George Neville, then archbishop of York, lost the chancellorship. Worse still, in February 1469 Howes and the remainder of Fastolf’s surviving executors sold ‘Fastolf Place’ to Bishop Waynflete who intended to use it for his foundation at Magdalen College, Oxford. Faced with so powerful a rival, in the spring of 1472 Weltden was forced to accept another arbitration, on this occasion that of the chief baron of the Exchequer, (Sir) Thomas Urswyk II*, Quatermayns and Humphrey Starky. The final settlement of the dispute is not recorded, but it is clear it went against Weltden. In 1484 Waynflete exchanged the property with William Berkeley, earl of Nottingham, for advowsons in Gloucestershire and Sussex for the benefit of Magdalen.29 Southwark deeds 37; Ric. III, Crown and People, 45-46.

Weltden survived into the late 1470s. The last reference to him comes in a Chancery petition presented to Bishop Rotherham of Lincoln soon after June 1476. Augustine, abbot of Thame in Oxfordshire, complained of Weltden’s conduct in respect of a corrody worth £4 p.a. granted to him by Edward IV. He claimed that his house had refused to allow Weltden to take up the corrody until its then incumbent, John Hardwick, had surrendered his letters of appointment. This reasonable stipulation had occasioned ‘grete displeasur’ to Weltden’s master, George Neville, archbishop of York, and, fearing his indignation, the monks had allowed Weltden to enjoy the grant provided he indemnify the abbey against Hardwick and his heirs. But, when Hardwick’s executors sued the abbey for £18 as the corrody’s value over four-and-a-half years, Weltden had refused to pay the debt as he had promised.30 C1/67/134.

The precise date of Weltden’s death is not recorded, but it occurred before Hilary term 1477 when his widow was the plaintiff in a minor plea of debt in Suffolk.31 CP40/861, rot. 169d. With the evidence of the petition above, it is nearly certain that he died at some point in 1476. He seems to have died without living issue.