BLENKINSOP, Thomas, of Hillbeck, Westmld.

Long established at Hillbeck near Brough as tenants of the Cliffords, the Westmorland Blenkinsops were a junior branch of the Blenkinsops of Blenkinsopp in Northumberland. R. Nicolson and R. Burn, Westmld. and Cumb. i. 582. The MP has to be distinguished from his namesake of Blenkinsopp (Northumb.). It was this Thomas who left a widow named Elizabeth (d.1479): C67/46, m. 4; CFR, xxi. 513; J. Hodgson, Hist. Northumb. iii (2), 130. In 1380 our MP’s grandfather, Thomas†, was appointed hereditary constable of Brough castle, near Hillbeck, by Roger, Lord Clifford (d.1389), and it is probable that it was he, rather than his more important kinsman, Sir Thomas Blenkinsop† of Blenkinsopp, who represented Westmorland in the Parliament of 1388 (Feb.). The biographies of Sir Thomas Blenkinsop (d.1388) and William Blenkinsop in The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 250-2, fail to distinguish between the two branches of the family. It was Sir Thomas of Blenkinsopp who married the coheiress of Strother of Crookdean (in Kirkwhelpington) Northumb., and represented Cumb. in 1383 (Oct.), but it is more likely to have been his namesake of Hillbeck who sat for Westmld. Nearly all the facts cited in the biography of Sir Thomas relate to the Blenkinsopp man, although it was the Hillbeck one who was constable of Brough castle and a tax collector in Westmld. The constableship was held only briefly by the Blenkinsops, being granted by the new Lord Clifford to John Crackenthorpe† in 1390: CPR, 1388-92, p. 254. Our MP’s father had only a modest career: its highpoint was election to the Parliament of 1421 (Dec.) and he played very little recorded part in local government. The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 251-2. However, he survived into old age, and this had significant implications for our MP. If, as seems likely, it is he rather than his namesake of Blenkinsopp who appears in the records of military service, he pursued a lengthy military career. When still a very young man, in 1417 he mustered in the retinue of Sir John Neville (d.1420), eldest son of Ralph, earl of Westmorland. Thereafter he served intermittently until the fall of Lancastrian France more than 30 years later. In 1426 he was in the retinue of Sir John Popham* at the siege of St. Suzanne in Maine, and in 1432 he was serving in the field under Robert, Lord Willoughby of Eresby. E101/51/2; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, Clairambault 186/45-47; 207/111-20. Most of his time, however, was spent in the garrison at Verneuil. There is no record of that service before 1429, but it is probable that his first service there had been some ten years earlier when Sir John Neville was captain. He then continued in the garrison throughout the 1430s and 1440s under a succession of captains, most notably William Neville, Lord Fauconberg, captain from 1439. Bibliothèque Nationale, Fr 25768/440; 25770/638; 25772/948, 989; 25775/1421; 25778/1834, 1838.

None the less, Blenkinsop’s lengthy sojourns in France did not preclude his occasional involvement in affairs at home. He assisted his father in at least one notable incident of local disorder. At an unknown date between April 1426 and February 1432 William Hoton, in a petition to the chancellor, claimed that the Blenkinsops, father and son, had driven him from his property at Brampton (near Appleby), advancing their purpose by summoning together great assemblies ‘per arsure dez Bekyns’ and other pre-arranged signals. C1/7/256; Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. liii. 74-75. Such activities might be expected of a soldier but is more surprising to find that Thomas, in his youth, was twice elected to Parliament. The explanation lies, in part, in a disinclination of his father to repeat his election of 1421, and a difficulty of finding suitable candidates in an impoverished county. The timing of his returns, however, was probably determined by the family’s long connexion with their feudal overlords, the Cliffords. John, Lord Clifford, was killed at the siege of Meaux on 13 Mar. 1422, and on the following 3 July our MP was one of several associates of the family who sat as a juror at his inquisition post mortem at Kirkoswald in Cumberland. The Clifford heir was a boy, and Blenkinsop’s election later in the same year may reflect the interest of the Clifford retinue in the arrangements the Crown intended to make for this minority. In 1415 Henry V had licensed Lord Clifford’s feoffees to hold his principal estates for two years after his death in such an eventuality, and there may thus be significance in the appearance of two of these feoffees – Sir Christopher Moresby† and John Crackenthorpe† – among the attestors to Blenkinsop’s election. C138/64/37; C219/13/1, CPR, 1413-16, p. 320.

Blenkinsop’s second election on 7 Feb. 1426, which like his first was attested by his father, can, a little less speculatively, be explained in related terms. At the time of the election negotiations for the marriage of Lord Clifford’s widow to the young Ralph, earl of Westmorland (d.1484), must have been well advanced, for the marriage took place on the following 7 May. Hence it is relevant to Blenkinsop’s election that a petition was presented in the Parliament by the executors of the earl’s grandfather, Ralph, earl of Westmorland (d.1425), for financial redress from the Crown. No doubt its principal promoters were the two Cumberland MPs – Sir Peter Tilliol*, as one of the executors, and Hugh Lowther*, the son of another – but Blenkinsop and his fellow Westmorland Member, Nicholas Leybourne*, who was also connected with the Cliffords, must also have lent their support. C219/13/4; Test. Ebor. iii (Surtees Soc. xlv), 325; RP, iv. 469 (cf. PROME, x. 315).

There is little else to say about Blenkinsop’s domestic career. He is not recorded as holding local office, although in 1434 and 1437 he joined his father as a juror at the gaol delivery sessions at Appleby. JUST1/70/8, mm. 4, 5; 10, m. 2. Between his periods of service in France he occasionally appears as a litigant in the central courts. In 1424, for example, he claimed to have been dishonestly sold a lame horse at Kirkby in Kendale, and in 1432 he sued an action for close-breaking at Carlisle, perhaps in respect of property settled on him by his father. Such a settlement would explain why he was assessed on an income of £6 to the 1436 subsidy, compared with his father’s assessment of £26 and his uncle Richard Blenkinsop’s £10. CP40/655, rot. 413d; 686, rot. 39d; E179/195/32. Later, in 1446 or 1447, he acquired new property interests that acknowledged his place as effective head of the family: his elderly father leased to him the family’s principal property, the manor of Hillbeck, at an annual rent of ten marks. Nicolson and Burn, i. 583.

The date of Blenkinsop’s death is unknown, but he survived the loss of Lancastrian France and seems to have outlived his father. His father last appears in the records in Trin. term 1451: CP40/762, rot. 89. In 1451 he was sued for a debt of £20 by his feudal overlord, Thomas, Lord Clifford, and in 1452 he was again a gaol delivery juror at Appleby. By then he had a son old enough to take a part in local affairs. A ‘Thomas Blenkinsop of Hillbeck, junior’ was sued with him by Clifford and also appears among the jurors of 1452. Either this younger man or our MP was again a gaol delivery juror in 1454, but the probability is that our MP died at about this time for no longer do the records distinguish between ‘senior’ and ‘junior’. CP40/761, rot. 156d; JUST3/70/22, 24. If this is the case, then it was the son who in the civil war of 1459-61 followed the Cliffords in actively supporting the Lancastrian cause, then reconciled himself to the new regime. In Michaelmas term 1461, described as ‘of Hillbeck, gentleman’, he was among those sued by Alice, widow of Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, and other executors of the earl, for taking livestock worth £600 from the park at Plumpton, near Penrith, before the earl’s death at the battle of Wakefield. His fellow defendants were headed by a prominent Lancastrian, Humphrey Dacre, and there can be no doubt that the alleged offence was political rather than merely criminal. In view of this hostility to the Nevilles on Blenkinsop’s part, it was probably his cousin of Blenkinsopp who was retained for life by Alice’s son, Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, on 27 Apr. 1462. On the other hand, the indenture may mark a reconciliation between the earl and the Hillbeck Blenkinsops with our MP’s own military service to Warwick’s uncle, Lord Fauconberg, in the 1440s serving as its basis. CP40/802, rot. 442; 803, rot. 150d; Private Indentures (Cam. Misc. xxxii), 145; M.A. Hicks, Warwick, 241. For the later history of the fam.: Nicolson and Burn, i. 583-6; The Commons 1509-58, i. 442-3.