BOTELER, Sir John (1429-63), of Bewsey and Warrington, Lancs.

In March 1431, after the death of Boteler’s father during the coronation campaign in France, the Crown sold his marriage to the famous Lancashire soldier, Sir John Radcliffe*, seneschal of Aquitaine, for as much as 500 marks. The physical custody of the boy remained with his mother, while the bulk of the Boteler inheritance was divided between her, her elderly mother-in-law and her late husband’s feoffees. It was presumably Radcliffe who, before his death in 1441, was responsible for contracting the young John in marriage to the boy’s second cousin, Margaret Gerard, although it is hard to imagine that such a bride would have commanded a large enough portion to compensate Radcliffe for his outlay. The youth of the couple meant that the marriage was not formally made until the summer of 1444, when the groom’s uncle, Thomas Haryngton I*, as a feoffee in the Boteler estate, conveyed his interest to a new group of feoffees headed by the bride’s father. CPR, 1429-36, p. 116; Annals of Warrington, ii. 263.

Boteler’s prominence at a young age, even before he reached his majority, is probably to be explained by his close connexion with Haryngton and through him with the leading figure in Lancashire, (Sir) Thomas Stanley II, from 1439 the controller of the royal household. Boteler had been knighted as early as 20 July 1447, when he was granted view of frankpledge in various parcels of his extensive manor of Bewsey, and further minor grants of royal patronage followed. On the following 16 Jan. 1448 he was granted, from the previous Michaelmas, the issues of that part of his lands that were in royal wardship; and on the following 2 Aug. he was granted a compensatory payment of £100 in respect of any damage to his property in ward. DKR, xxxvii (2), 69; xl. 539; DL37/16/59. By this latter date, although still three years short of his majority, he had formal seisin of his inheritance, which, after the deaths of his grandmother and Elizabeth Ferrers in the early 1440s, was now unburdened with other interests. CP, v. 355-6; PL1/6/2; CIPM, xxv. 602. On 2 July 1448 he conveyed the entirety of his inheritance to feoffees again headed by Haryngton and including the parson of Warrington, Thomas Mascy. Warrington Lib. Beamont mss, 571; Annals of Warrington, ii. 264.

In the grant made to Boteler on 2 Aug. 1448 he is styled the king’s ‘servitor’ and this implies that he had a place in the royal household. It is tempting to identify the MP with the esquire of the hall and chamber present in the Household by 1441, but this esquire continues to appear in the Household accts. as an esquire after our MP had become a knight: E101/409/9, f. 36d; 410/9, f. 42v. It this is the case, it was as a Household man that on 10 Nov. 1449 (four days after Parliament assembled), he was elected, alongside Stanley, as MP for Lancashire. Interestingly, not only were the attestors headed by Haryngton but they included another of Boteler’s feoffees, John Holcroft. Further, it was the latter and William Mascy, from a family closely associated with the Botelers, who offered mainprise for the attendance of the MPs. Lancs. Knights of the Shire (Chetham Soc. xcvi), 224. It thus appears that Boteler exerted himself to secure election, and he was able to put his attendance at this troubled assembly (which saw the fall of the duke of Suffolk) to his advantage. He secured a clause of exemption, in respect of his grant of frankpledge, from the Act of Resumption passed in the spring of 1450 during the assembly’s third session. PROME, xii. 124. Boteler continued in the King’s service into the 1450s. In the autumn of 1451 a royal messenger travelled from the court to Lancashire with letters for him, and on the following l8 Mar. he was rewarded for his services with the grant of a life annuity of £20, drawn from the revenues of the shrievalty of Lancashire. E404/68/176; DL37/20/13-14.

The early 1450s was an important period in Boteler’s life. On 12 Aug. 1452, shortly after the death of his first wife, he entered into an agreement for the marriage of their infant son, John, to Anne, daughter of the Yorkshire knight, Sir John Saville*. The match was no doubt mediated by the ubiquitous Haryngton, whose daughter Joan had already married Saville’s son and heir. The terms of the contract, any ambiguities in which were to be referred to Haryngton’s determination, demonstrate the wealth of the contracting families. Boteler agreed to settle a jointure worth 40 marks p.a. on the couple with the significant concession that Saville was to have the custody of the couple until the groom reached the age of 17, taking £20 p.a. from the issues of the jointure until the groom was 14 and the whole sum thereafter. Since the groom appears to have been only seven, Saville would receive as much as 330 marks from this arrangement. This explains why the Yorkshire knight undertook to pay as much as 700 marks for the marriage with the whole sum to be paid within four years of the marriage and half to be repayable if Anne died without living issue before the age of 17. As it transpired the groom’s death as a child meant that the marriage was never made. Annals of Warrington, ii (Chetham Soc. lxxxvii), 270-4.

Another marriage, however, did take effect, although it lasted only briefly, and marked a change in Boteler’s private and public affairs. On 4 and 5 Aug. 1453 there were lavish celebrations within the household of Queen Margaret to mark the marriages of our MP to one of her ladies-in-waiting, Isabel, daughter of Thomas, Lord Dacre, and of her esquire, Giles St. Lo, to another of her ladies, Elizabeth Burgh. Myers, 182, 202-3. The queen warranted expenditure of £16 1s. 10d., beyond the normal daily costs of her household, to ensure that the marriages were fittingly celebrated. Boteler’s marriage did not last for it was annulled in November 1458 on the grounds of the bride’s pre-contract to Thomas, Lord Clifford, but none the less it is significant as the first indication that he had transferred from the King’s to the queen’s household. Little is known of his activities in the mid-1450s, but by July 1458 he had succeeded (Sir) Edmund Hampden* as her carver, a senior position within a royal household. Annals of Warrington, ii. 281; DL37/26/21. In that month, describing himself the queen’s carver, Boteler petitioned the Crown on behalf of his tenants and servants who ‘by procuryng of their aduersaries’ had been falsely indicted before the county j.p.s.of various felonies and robberies and were ‘like to be sore vexed and put in Jouperdie’ of their lives and goods. He successfully requested that the process being held against them at the assize court at Lancaster be suspended. DL37/26/21. What lay behind this is unknown, but this use of influence to interfere with common-law process is unlikely to have endeared him to those who saw themselves as the victims of his servants. However this may be, the declining national political situation raised new and greater difficulties for him. Although proof is lacking, it is very likely that, as a senior servant of the queen, he fought in the Lancastrian ranks at the battle of Blore Heath in Staffordshire on 23 Sept. 1459, a battle notable for the number of gentry of Cheshire and Lancashire who fought there. His appointment to a major commission of oyer and terminer in Wales implies his continued Lancastrian sympathies, and these must have served to alienate him from his uncle, Haryngton, one of the principal commanders in the ranks of the Yorkist Nevilles at Blore Heath, and, more significantly, from the Stanleys, now headed by Sir Thomas’s son, Thomas, 2nd Lord Stanley, son-in-law of the earl of Salisbury. CPR, 1452-61, p. 562.

Boteler’s rift with the latter was seemingly exacerbated by two developments in the aftermath of the campaign of 1459 which, although the forces of Lancaster were defeated at Blore Heath, resulted in humiliating defeat for the Yorkists. First, it is likely that he was appointed to the constableship of Beaumaris in the aftermath of the battle, and, as Beaumaris was an area of Stanley influence, Lord Stanley is likely to have resented an appointment which was probably designed to diminish his family’s influence in north Wales. C67/45, m. 37. Second, Stanley may have disapproved of Boteler’s marriage to his sister Margaret which took place in the spring of 1460. She was the widow of Sir William Troutbeck, who had been one of the Cheshire contingent recruited by the queen to fight at Blore Heath. It is likely that, after his death at that battle, the queen promoted his widow’s marriage to Boteler, at a time when Stanley was anxious to distance himself further from the house of Lancaster. The couple were second cousins, and a dispensation for their marriage was issued on 23 Jan. 1460. Sir John made a settlement in Margaret’s favour on 12 Apr. and they married soon afterwards: Annals of Warrington, ii. 285, 288; Lancs. Inqs. ii (Chetham Soc. xcix), 74.

While the Lancastrians remained in power, Boteler probably had little to fear from the potential enmities that surrounded him, but the Yorkist victory at the battle of Northampton in July 1460 left him vulnerable. The decline in his local position is interestingly reflected in the correspondence of the prior of Durham concerning his priory’s cell at Lytham in Lancashire, of which our MP had, from the late 1440s, been steward. On 19 Oct. 1460, some three months after the Yorkists assumed control of the government, the prior wrote to him concerning dissension which had broken out within the cell. Boteler’s help was sought in ensuring that the prior’s intervention was effective, and in the more general matter of patronage, ‘that oure said place be nott ourechargett othrewise þan was wountt, ne hurt in no maner of ryghttis ne libertis pertenyng therto’. The prior was aware enough of the uncertainties Boteler faced with the new regime, in which Stanley authority in Cheshire and Lancashire was pre-eminent, to depart from his usual postscript, adding ‘and our Lord Jhesu protect you from adversities’. It soon, however, became clear that Boteler could no longer exercise effective patronage within the region, and on the following 30 Nov. the prior wrote instead to Haryngton, asking him to be ‘a good maistre and frende’ to the brethren at Lytham. With the decisive Yorkist victory at the battle of Towton, he went further and removed Boteler from the stewardship, replacing him, in the autumn of 1461, with Lord Stanley’s younger brother, Sir William. On 6 Sept. he wrote to Boteler, informing him that he was to be discharged, a decision ‘at ye stirryng of diverse of my good lordis that hath so advised me’, a reference to Lord Stanley and the Neville brothers, the earl of Warwick and the bishop of Exeter. Annals of Warrington, ii. 288-93; Durham Univ. Lib., cathedral muns., reg. parva 3, f. 96.

Yet although Boteler’s political sympathies must have lain firmly with Lancaster, he did not commit himself so far in the civil war of 1459-61 as to preclude hope of re-establishing himself. He sued out a general pardon on 20 Feb. 1462, and at the end of that year participated in Edward IV’s northern campaign. His good service was rewarded on 8 Jan. 1463 when the new King re-granted to him and his wife Margaret the wardship and marriage of her young son, William Troutbeck, as a husband for Joan, Boteler’s daughter by his first wife Margaret Gerard. C67/45, m.37; Three 15th Cent. Chrons. (Cam. Soc. n.s. xxviii), 157; CPR, 1461-7, p. 209; Annals of Warrington, ii. 294. Margaret had originally been granted her son’s wardship and marriage on 26 Apr. 1460: CPR, 1452-61, p. 582. Local antagonism proved much more difficult to escape from, and soon proved fatal. On 26 Feb. 1463 he met a violent death. Valuable information about the manner of his death is preserved in a sixteenth-century literary source, ‘The Ballad of Bewsey’. The ballad survives in a collection of Lancashire material that draws on earlier oral tradition, and the broad outline of its account is confirmed by the surviving historical evidence. It tells of a night attack on Boteler’s chief residence at Bewsey Hall by members of the Stanley family and their affinity: ‘When they came to Busye hall/ it was the merke midnight’. Boteler’s daughter is summoned to bring down her father by ‘your uncle Standlye’. A faithful servant, ‘Holcroft’, is slain guarding his master’s door, and Boteler is done to death by the ‘false Peter Lee’ and William Savage, who remarks: ‘He shall have no other priest/ but my bright sword and me’. The ballad ends with Boteler’s widow attempting to seek redress for the murder at the royal court. Annals of Warrington, ii. 303-23; Bp. Percy’s Folio MS, ed. Hales and Furnivall, iii. 211-14. The incidental detail of the ballad is significant. The Holcroft family was closely connected with the Botelers, and a John Holcroft had one of Sir John’s feoffees; the Leghs and the Savages were strongly linked with the Stanleys. The tenor of its account is confirmed by a royal letter sent to the justices of the assize in Lancaster, on 5 Mar. 1463. The justices were warned of likely trouble if the sessions were to be held, ‘by occasion of a riotte as it is said late committed in our Countie of Lancaster wherin Sir John Botiller knight was slain’. The sessions were thus to be ‘putte over’. A list of those suspected of being involved in the affray, including Lord Stanley, was appended, with the King instructing that they ‘be personally before us’ within eight days of receiving the letters, so that ‘we may hire and examine the said matier and mynistre according to that the caas shal require’. A month later, on 17 Apr., a powerful commission was issued for the arrest of all those who had killed Boteler, and among those named were Peter Legh and William, son of Sir John Savage, in further confirmation of the ballad’s narrative. E28/89/22; DL37/32/36.

Boteler’s murder marked the third successive violent death for a head of the family after both his grandfather and father had been killed in the war against the French. It also marked the beginning of the third successive minority suffered by the Botelers. Sir John’s eldest son, William, was only 12 at his father’s death. Remarkably he too seems to have died violently and young – of wounds received on the Lancastrian side at the battle of Tewkesbury. Lancs. Inqs. ii. 74; Annals of Warrington, ii. 328. Thereafter the long career of his brother, Sir Thomas (d.1522), returned stability to the fortunes of one of Lancashire’s leading families. For Sir Thomas’s career: Annals of Warrington, ii. 333-421.

The magnificent double tomb that survives in the Boteler chantry in St. Elphin’s church, Warrington, is commonly thought to represent Sir John and his third wife. Ibid. 298-300; N. Pevsner, Buildings of Eng.: Lancashire: Liverpool and the South-West, 605. She married, as her third husband, Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor. C67/46, m. 28. This match was unknown to the editors of CP, vi. 131.