IPSTONES, Sir John (d.1394), of Blymhill, Staffs.

The Ipstones family was well known in 14th-century Staffordshire, as much for the notoriety of its members as for their social position in the county. Sir John’s paternal grandfather was a violent man, whose feud with his neighbours, the Brumptons, was kept up by his descendants.Sir Robert Corbet’s eldest son, Thomas, Ipstone’s wife, Elizabeth, was prevented from inheriting her grandfather’s extensive Midland and marcher estates by a series of entails in favour of her uncles, Sir Fulk and Sir Roger. In the Easter term of 1374, not long after their marriage, the young couple began a protracted suit in the court of common pleas for the Leicestershire manor of Braunstone which they claimed as part of the Corbet estates, but this remained in the hands of Sir Robert Corbet’s grandson, Thomas Erdington. Indeed, it seems that Sir John’s acquisitions through marriage were confined to property in Shawbury, Shropshire, and Bausley, Montgomeryshire. He also owned land in Northamptonshire which he held by knight service of the Bassets of Weldon.Sir Walter Blount, who, as a j.p. for Derbyshire, had extracted a bond for good behaviour from one of his tenants. On receiving the latter’s appeal for help, Ipstones promptly mobilized a large following of ruffians, attacked Sir Walter’s manor of Barton Blount, and forced him to surrender the offending document.Sir Richard Peshale, arraigned an assize of novel disseisin at Stafford in September 1381.Sir Philip Okeover, an old comrade-in-arms who had campaigned with him in Spain) abducted the young heiress, forced her to marry his son, William, and, as she later asserted, made her sign away her title to the contested manors. Meanwhile, measures were put in hand for the seizure of Peshale’s own estates so that his obligations might be made good.Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xvi. 28; CPR, 1388-92, p. 339; CCR, 1389-92, p. 181; CPL, iv. 372." style="color:red;" class="drupal_footnote

Comparatively little evidence has survived of Ipstones’s other affairs. He does not appear to have been active as a feoffee-to-uses, and only rarely stood surety for neighbouring landowners. He and his wife were members of the influential guild of the Holy Trinity at Coventry, a fact which suggests that they had either land or connexions in Warwickshire.Sir Baldwin Raddington, the controller of the King’s wardrobe, who obtained a pardon for him in June 1397.CCR, 1396-9, p. 19; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. iv. 74-76; xi. 212; xv. 86, 87, 114-15; xvii. 75-89. The dispute between the Savages and the Peshales is rendered all the more complex by the fact that Elizabeth, Sir John’s widow, herself married into the Peshale family before 1400. She lived on, a widow for the second time, until after 1432 (ibid. xvii. 138)." style="color:red;" class="drupal_footnote