COLT, Thomas (d.1467) of Essex.

Colt’s humble origins did not prevent him enjoying a brilliant career. The Yorkist victory in 1461 raised him to heights that would, in normal circumstances, have been unattainable to a man of his birth, and the fruits of his success are still visible at Nether Hall in Essex where he built a fortified manor house. His parentage is unknown. He is, almost certainly, to be distinguished from his namesake, one the bailiffs of the impoverished borough of Bamburgh, Northumb.: CPR, 1441-6, p. 403. Two petitions presented to the chancellor by the Bamburgh Colt in the late 1460s militate against such an identification: C1/20/114, 33/145. One complains that the petitioner was disadvantaged by the favour enjoyed by a local saddler, whom he had employed as a feoffee, in litigation before the mayor and sheriffs of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. It is hard to believe that our MP, then a leading royal servant, would have either pleaded such a disadvantage or employed a saddler as a feoffee. It is, however, likely that he was a native of Carlisle, for later pedigrees describe him as the son and heir of Thomas Colt of that city, and he is known to have had property there by 1456. Vis. Essex (Harl. Soc. xiv), 566; CP40/781, rot. 62. His wid. died seised of three tofts and some 11 acres in the city: C140/44/28. What is certain is that he was one of several lawyers of obscure background who owed their advancement to the Nevilles of Middleham. Nothing is known of his legal education; yet it may be inferred from the description of him in the early 1460s as an apprentice-at-law, that he had attended an inn of court and progressed as far as reading. Nor is it known how he came to the attention of the Nevilles, although, on the assumption that he came from Carlisle, it can hardly be coincidental that Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, as warden of the west march, was captain of the castle there.

Colt was in the service of the earl by Trinity term 1445, when he is described as a gentleman resident at Middleham as the defendant in an action on a bond, and on 27 Nov. 1446 he was paid £20 for discharging certain unspecified matters on the earl’s behalf. He soon had further reward for his service. In March 1447 the earl surrendered his royal grant of the custody of part of the barony of Kendal in Westmorland in favour of our MP and John Tunstall*. CP40/738, rot. 549d; SC6/1122/3, m. 4d; CFR, xviii. 69. This interest was enough to justify Colt’s nomination as escheator of Cumberland and Westmorland in the following November, but his addition to the bench in the former county three months later suggests that he already had property there and gives further support to the conclusion that he was from Carlisle. As escheator he performed a particular service for both the Crown and the earl: on 16 July 1448 he was paid £20 by the Crown for his labours in executing a writ of diem clausit extremum related to the castle and lordship of Barnard Castle on the death of the earl of Salisbury’s son-in-law, Henry Beauchamp, duke of Warwick. The findings of the inquisition taken on this writ served the King’s interest, in that the lordship was returned (on questionable grounds) as lying outside the liberty of the bishopric of Durham, and also the earl’s, in that the jurors recited the letters by which the duke named the earl as governor of the castle for the latter’s life. E403/771, m. 10; C139/123/43; CPR, 1441-6, p. 458. Colt also acted for the earl in the Exchequer, receiving assignments there on his behalf on several occasions between Feb. 1448 and Nov. 1453: E403/769, m. 13; 773, m. 16; 791, m. 2; 793, m. 7; 796, m. 3. To be seen in the same context is our MP’s earlier nomination, on 23 June 1447, as administrator of the goods of the duke, who had died intestate. Since he had no other known connexion with the duke, he can only have owed this appointment to the earl’s influence. CP40/785, rot. 76d.

In April 1449 Colt stood mainprise when the earl’s eldest son, Sir Richard Neville, who was just about to reach his majority, received his first royal grant. From this point he became much more closely connected with the son than the father, with important consequences for his later career. In the following June, when the duke of Warwick’s infant daughter died, Sir Richard’s fortunes were transformed, for his wife, the duke’s only sister of the whole blood, fell heiress to the great Beauchamp inheritance. CFR, xviii. 131; M.A. Hicks, Warwick the Kingmaker, 30. Her rights, however, were not uncontested – the new earl of Warwick had powerful opponents in his wife’s three half-sisters and their husbands, most notably Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset – and our MP was immediately drawn into the defence of his master’s rights. Late in June 1449, in company with another northern lawyer, Henry Sotehill, he acted as the earl’s agent in the levying of a final concord designed to secure the earl a life interest in part of the Beauchamp lands. His election to represent Carlisle in the Parliament of the following November (in company with another Neville man, John Bere III*) was probably also intended to forward the earl’s claims: on 22 May 1450, during the last session of this Parliament, he stood surety for Warwick in a potentially contentious grant as it involved lands to which the half-sisters had a claim. Hicks, 39; C219/15/7; CFR, xviii. 157-8.

Soon after, Colt was to be drawn much more directly into the quarrel. One of the hereditary chamberlainships of the Exchequer, with its wages of 8d. a day, was part of the Beauchamp inheritance; in late 1450, the dispute between Warwick and the rival claimants came to centre upon this office. On 5 Dec. 1450 John Brome II*, who had been appointed by the late duke, was confirmed in the office by Warwick’s rivals; two days later, he was forcibly removed by the servants of the earl and our MP appointed in his place. Subsequent events were a rebuff both to Colt and his master. On 24 Jan. 1451 Ralph, Lord Cromwell, and the treasurer, John, Lord Beauchamp of Powick, were appointed to hold the chamberlainship jointly pending settlement of the dispute. Warwick was then adjudged to have acted improperly by not obtaining Exchequer consent for his actions, in ‘grete derogacion’ of the King’s right. Brome was restored. E159/227, brevia Hil. rot. 33; E404/67/226; Hicks, 77.

This setback did nothing to weaken Colt’s attachment to the new earl. On 12 Mar. 1451, at Cardiff castle, he witnessed a charter of the earl and countess of Warwick to the corporation of Cardiff, a charter which was itself a further assertion of Warwick’s right to his wife’s lands. Soon after, on 26 June, he shared with another lawyer retained by the Nevilles, Robert Danby, a lease of demesne lands appurtenant to the castle of Carlisle; and on 26 Mar. 1452 he was twice mainpernor for Warwick in important grants made in the wake of the duke of York’s discomfiture at Dartford. Cardiff Recs. ed. Matthews, i. 38-40; CFR, xviii. 268. Colt’s removal from the Cumberland bench two months later has no obvious explanation – it was part of a reduction in numbers from 19 to 13 – and he was quickly restored. More significantly, in July 1452, he stood bail for another servant of the earl, Henry Somerlane, bailiff of Warwick, in a matter in which he had a personal interest: Somerlane had been implicated in a series of attacks against our MP’s rival as deputy chamberlain and he was now required to find surety of the peace. KB27/765, rex rot. 4d; Hicks, 51. Early in the following year Somerlane returned the favour, attesting Colt’s election to represent the earl’s borough of Warwick in the Parliament summoned to meet at Reading. Clearly the earl was responsible for Colt’s return. On 4 Apr. 1453, a week after the end of the first session, our MP again offered mainprise for Warwick in another contentious grant, that of the keeping of a moiety of the castle of Ewyas Lacy in the march of Wales, another part of the disputed Beauchamp inheritance. C219/16/2; CFR, xix. 28; Hicks, 78.

Shortly thereafter the pattern of Colt’s career was to change as a result of the Nevilles’ growing alienation from the court. While he remained among the earl of Warwick’s most intimate servants, he also found a new patron in the duke of York, with whom the Nevilles were becoming increasingly closely identified. Indeed, this alliance between Neville and York is exemplified in the trust the duke was so quickly prepared to place in Colt. According to a parliamentary petition of 1485, it was our MP, ‘nigh of councell’ with York, who instigated the duke to bring a bill in the Exchequer against Thomas Thorpe*, then Speaker, and who then, by his ‘speciall labour and untrue means’, caused the defendant to be condemned in £1,010 and to be imprisoned in the Fleet. PROME, xv. 146-9. This bill was brought in Michaelmas term 1453 during the second prorogation of the long Parliament of 1453-4. The story is inherently probable both because of the later feud between the Colts and Thorpes and our MP’s Membership of this Parliament. One can only speculate upon the origin of Colt’s antipathy to Thorpe. An obvious possibility is rivalry in the Exchequer with Thorpe, as a baron there, supporting Brome’s title as deputy chamberlain. However this may be, the recovery of the duke of York’s fortunes resulted in our MP regaining the office. On 15 Feb. 1454, four days after Parliament had reassembled, Warwick secured a judgement in his favour in respect of the Beauchamp chamberlainship, and it is probable that Colt immediately supplanted Brome. He was certainly back in office by the following 12 Apr. when he petitioned the royal council for livery of clothing as deputy chamberlain for the previous Christmas and thereafter, ‘as good clothe and as large mesure’ as Brome had received. This was duly granted a month later in the presence of York, now Protector, and the earl of Salisbury, now chancellor. Hicks, 96; PPC, vi. 171-2; E28/84/12.

Colt was soon again acting for the duke. Between May and November 1454 he received assignments on his behalf in the Exchequer; and, in the intervening July, he offered mainprise when York took the keeping of the royal mines in Devon and Cornwall. E403/798, mm. 1, 2, 8; 800, m. 4; CPR, 1452-61, p. 158; CFR, xix. 86. He also acted for the duke in more personal matters. At an unknown date he entered into a bond of £100 to Lord Cromwell in respect of money borrowed by the duke, and he also advanced his master money on his own account. By October 1457, when he was assigned repayment on the wool customs at Kingston-upon-Hull (part of the royal endowment of the duchy of York), the duke owed him, as the sum of a series of loans, as much as £602 9s. Magdalen Coll. Oxf. Cromwell pprs. 127/31; E159/234, commissiones etc. Mich. rot. 1. It is remarkable that our MP had such funds and they must largely have been derived from his service to his baronial masters. Indeed, York’s generosity to his servants was one reason why he needed to borrow money from them. His protectorate offered them further rewards and Colt benefited beyond his recovery of office in the Exchequer. On 26 Feb. 1455 he had assignment of 40 marks in reward for his labours in attending at Westminster as deputy chamberlain and in making journeys to the King’s council to expedite urgent royal business. E403/800, m. 14. He had still not been paid by 1458: E403/817, m. 5.

Although only a few days later the abrupt termination of his new master’s powers brought an end, for the time being at least, to Colt’s hope of further gains, he did not waver in his loyalty. In all probability he took up arms on behalf of what had become the united cause of the York and the Nevilles at the first battle of St. Albans on 22 May 1455. His presence there is strongly implied by the later accusation that he advised the duke to deprive Sir William Skipwith of a valuable stewardship for failure to accompany their lord to the battle. Soon after, he rendered his masters service of another sort. On the following 1 July he was elected to Parliament to represent Cumberland with another Neville retainer, Thomas de la More*. His return could not be justified on his landholdings in that county, and it is a measure of his importance that the Nevilles should have found him a county seat rather than have him elected again for Warwick or Carlisle. CPR, 1452-61, pp. 552-3; C219/16/3.

Disappointingly little else is known of Colt’s activities during the period of York’s second protectorate. On 27 Oct. 1455 he received reassignment in the Exchequer on behalf of the earl of Warwick; and on the following 23 Feb., only two days before York resigned, he stood surety for the duke in another grant of the keeping of the royal mines. E403/805, m. 2; CFR, xix. 150. He himself received no reward, and thereafter the growing political isolation of his masters threatened him with difficult times. On 21 Oct. 1456 a writ of proclamation was issued for his appearance before the King. Nothing is known of the reasons for this summons, but similar writs were issued against three other Yorkists, Sir James Pickering* (another of those later accused of advising York to punish Skipwith), Simon Mountfort† and William Herbert*. None the less, nothing worse followed for Colt. On 10 Jan. 1458 he sued out a general pardon as ‘late of Middleham, gentleman, alias late of Sandal’; the one a Neville castle, the other a castle of the duke of York. E403/809, m. 2; C67/42, m. 43. He also retained the deputy chamberlainship, although probably only after resisting competing claims. This is implied by his appearance in that department on 20 June 1458, asking to be admitted to the office under the earl of Warwick’s letters of December 1450; his request was duly granted when another Neville man, Thomas Witham, chancellor of the Exchequer, testified that it was the will of the earl, then absent in Calais, that he should have the office. It is hard to know what underlies this admission, but it may have been intended as a settlement of the dispute over the office in the wake of the ‘love-day’ of the previous March. E368/230, recorda Trin. rot. 18.

Further evidence that Colt was not seriously disadvantaged in these years, when his masters were in the political wilderness, is provided by his domestic affairs. The exact circumstances of his marriage are unknown, but it seems to have taken place in the late 1450s and, since the Trussbuts were tenants of the duke of York’s honour of Clare, it probably owed something to his service to the duke. The first indication that Colt had any interests in E. Anglia dates from 31 July 1454 when John Corbet of Assington, Suff., alias of London, included him alongside two E. Anglian magnates, John, earl of Oxford, and Henry, Viscount Bourgchier, in a gift of all his goods: CCR, 1447-54, p. 514. His wife was the heiress of an ancient, although minor, Norfolk family (her brass describes her as ‘of illustrious descent’), and she brought him an interest in property at Runcton Holme, Shouldham and nearby. Whether the couple ever enjoyed these lands is, however, a moot point, for they long remained in the hands of feoffees seised to the use of the will of Laurence Trussbut, her great-grandfather. F. Blomefield, Norf. vii. 403-6. In the early 1460s they petitioned in Chancery against these feoffees, claiming that they were bound to add new feoffees to their number under the terms of the will: C1/28/28. Joan, however, did die seised of Laurence’s manor of Shingham, valued at £2 p.a.: C140/52/34. Later their son, John, sued for the return of deeds as seised of the manor of Runcton Holme and other Trussbut lands: C1/298/32. Colt relied instead upon purchase to acquire a landed estate his new prominence demanded, and he began this process of acquisition in the late 1450s. He turned away from his native north, choosing rather to build an estate in the vicinity of London and particularly in Essex. There were probably three reasons for this preference: the territorial strength of the duchy of York in that county, the value of proximity to the capital to a lawyer and office-holder, and the vibrancy of the land market in the shires around London as compared with the far-northern counties. Only one of his early purchases is documented: by a final concord in Michaelams term 1458 he acquired a manor at Enfield in Middlesex (valued at £4 p.a. in an inquisition of 1475), together with a few acres across the border in Essex at nearby Waltham Holy Cross, where he was later to acquire further property. His agents were other lawyers in the Neville service, including Sotehill and Nicholas Girlington*: CP25(1)/293/73/434. It was also at about this time that he purchased the property he was later to make his home, the manor of Nether Hall in Roydon, on the border between these two counties and only three miles from Hunsdon, where the duke of York built a great tower-house in the 1440s. The duke seems to have supported him in settling in this vicinity. On 8 Jan. 1459 our MP purchased from him, for an unknown sum, the wardship and marriage of Robert Trace of Moulton (Suffolk). CP40/804, rot. 136d; 805, rot. 347.

The uneasy truce of the late 1450s was not destined to last, and, as a trusted supporter of both York and Neville, Colt could hardly avoid an active involvement in the civil war of 1459-61. He was present at the rout of the Yorkist lords at Ludford Bridge on 12 Oct. 1459, and he then followed the duke into exile in Ireland rather than the earl of Warwick to Calais, an indication perhaps of where his principal loyalty now lay. He was in Ireland on 5 Nov. when the King summoned him to appear as deputy chamberlain in the Exchequer; his understandable failure to do so was presumably made the pretext for his removal from the office even though there is no record of the appointment of a successor. E368/232, recorda Mich. rot. 3. Worse was to follow for him. When Parliament met at Coventry later in the same month, he lost the rest of his possessions when the leading supporters of York were attainted; on 3 Feb. 1460, a price of 500 marks was put on his head, testimony to his prominence among the enemies of Lancaster; and on 26 Apr. his manors of Nether Hall and Enfield were granted for life to the keeper of the great wardrobe, Henry Filongley*. PROME, xii. 458-64; Letters and Pprs. Illus. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, ii (2), [771]; Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, iii. 199; E404/71/4; CPR, 1452-61, p. 583. As compensation for the loss of his land and office, he had only an affirmation that he was among the most trusted of York’s retainers. On arrival in Ireland, the duke had named him as clerk of the rolls in the Irish chancery, and when the Irish parliament met at Drogheda in February 1460 he was exempted from its act of resumption in respect of this and other grants (of which no record survives). P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 199n.; Statute Rolls Ire. ed. Berry, 725-7.

Colt remained with York in Ireland until September 1460, when both returned in the wake of the Neville victory at the battle of Northampton. He accompanied the duke and the earl of Salisbury on their disastrous march north at the end of the year, and was present when they met their deaths at the battle of Wakefield on its penultimate day. It was believed in some quarters that he too had died there: a letter written more than three weeks later lists him among the casualties. Paston Letters, ed. Davis, i. 197. Another source provides more accurate information of our MP’s personal experiences during the battle. If his own later bill is to be believed, his enemy, Roger Thorpe*, son of Thomas, chose the battle as the opportunity to avenge his part in Thomas’s imprisonment in 1454. The bill follows the conventional legal language of such petitions, only the numbers it cites were a departure from the norm: Colt claimed that, on the day before the battle, his adversary had vi et armis collected 20,000 malefactors arrayed in warlike manner and lay in wait to murder him at Wakefield, where he beat and wounded him. Clearly this was not a literal description of events, although there is no reason to doubt a personal clash between the two men. KB27/803, rot. 16d; PROME, xv. 146-9.

The events of the early months of 1461 vindicated Colt’s strong adherence to the cause of York, transforming him into one of the most important and best-rewarded royal servants of gentry rank. Conspicuous benefits came his way in the wake of Edward IV’s victory at Towton at which he was almost certainly present. By 30 Oct. 1461, when rewarded with 100 marks for unspecified matters he had laboured on the new King’s behalf, he was acting as keeper of the hanaper, an office he was formally granted for life on the following 3 Dec. Since he had also regained his Exchequer office (probably after the Neville victory at Northampton), this grant of Chancery office marked a unique duplication of responsibilities. He was again in office as chamberlain by 23 July 1461, when rewarded for his attendance at Westminster during the vacation: E403/823, m. 6. No previous keeper of the hanaper had ever held another office while serving in Chancery; and Colt’s appointment, aside from being a signal mark of favour and trust, stood at the beginning of a new policy of naming as senior Chancery officials men who had no previous experience in the department rather than relying upon internal promotion. E403/824, m. 2; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 85, 137; C.W. Smith, ‘Trends in Chancery’, Med. Prosopography, vi. 82. Yet further responsibilities soon came his way. By Michaelmas 1462 he was serving both as chancellor of the earldom of March, with a fee of £20 p.a., and as a royal councillor with a fee of twice that sum. SC6/1305/15; E404/72/4/18, 67; E405/46, rot. 2. Equally importantly, on 15 Dec. 1461 Thomas Bourgchier, archbishop of Canterbury, had committed to him the task of administering the will of the King’s father after the executors (of whom our MP was probably one) had refused to act. It was presumably the King who nominated him, as a trusted confidant of the late duke, to undertake this complex and difficult task. On 26 Feb. 1462 the King gave him the means to do it, granting him the duke’s lands in Yorkshire, Essex and Dorset together with £700 p.a. from customs for the payment of the duke’s considerable debts, ‘that his soul may rise to Paradise’. Reg. Bourgchier (Canterbury and York Soc. liv), 200; CPR, 1461-7, p. 107. The duke had enfeoffed Colt and others of his lands in Yorks. for the implementation of his will: CPR, 1467-77, p. 261. For Colt the task had a positive benefit in that it gave him another weapon to employ against Roger Thorpe. On 6 Feb. 1462 he came into King’s bench to bring two bills against Thorpe: one of these he brought in a personal capacity, alleging assault at Wakefield, but he brought the other as the duke’s administrator. He alleged that, on 29 Dec. 1460, again at Wakefield, Thorpe and another Lancastrian, Nicholas Rigby, had plundered from the duke goods worth £5,000, cash to the value of £1,000, and horses worth £200. At the assize session at York on the following 30 July the defendants defaulted and a jury awarded Colt, who appeared in person, the impossible sum of £8,000 that he had demanded on this count, together with a further £2,000 against Thorpe alone for the supposed assault. KB27/803, rot. 16d: PROME, xv. 146-9.

The offices entrusted to Colt by Edward IV were only a part of his reward. His new status was underpinned by grants of property. On 19 May 1461 he shared with John Smith, another servant of the King’s father, a grant of the keeping of forfeited manors in Bury St. Edmunds and Bradfield Combust in Suffolk, rendering the extent. Much more profitably, on 17 Feb. 1462 he was granted in tail-male the forfeited manor of Chingford, ideally placed to supplement his existing holdings at nearby Roydon, with that of Acton in Suffolk and the reversion of three manors in Theydon Garnon, again near Roydon, expectant on the death of Margaret, duchess of Somerset. Additionally, while he waited for the duchess to die, he was to have an annual rent of 50 marks from the lordship of Welles in Lincolnshire, once the property of her last husband, Leo, Lord Welles. CFR, xx. 12; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 85, 116, 137. Lesser grants followed. On 22 June 1463, as deputy chamberlain, he was rewarded with 50 marks for undertaking unspecified tasks at the treasurer’s behest; and on 10 Sept. 1464 he had a life grant of the office of clerk and keeper of the rolls of the Irish chancery. The latter was more in the nature of a confirmation than a new grant, but it extended his term to life and secured payment of the fee attached to the office upon the issues of the royal manor of Esker in County Dublin. Colt himself was to have the keeping of the manor, accounting for the issues beyond his fee to the Irish exchequer. E403/829, m. 5; CPR, 1461-7, p. 329. A few months later he received a grant of another sort, although one even more indicative of his standing with the new King: in the spring of 1465 he was one of a small group of royal intimates who, as wardens of the fraternity of the Virgin in the cemetery of Barking church, London, were granted a manor in Surrey to support a chantry to pray for those who shed their blood in the Yorkist cause. CPR, 1461-7, p. 428.

Colt justified these rewards by devoting himself to the establishment of the fledging regime on which his prosperity depended. Although direct proof is lacking it is likely that he accompanied the new King and the earl of Warwick on the campaign in the winter of 1462-3 to reduce the Lancastrian fortresses in the north; on 28 Dec. 1462, when the King was at Durham, he committed the keeping of the temporalities of the bishopric of Durham, confiscated from Laurence Booth, to Colt and two others who are known to have participated in the campaign, Sir John Fogg† and Sir John Scott†, treasurer and controller of the royal household respectively. CPR, 1461-7, p. 215; A.J.Pollard, North-Eastern Eng. 294. In general, however, Colt’s services were financial rather than military. In February 1462 he delivered £1,000 to the King at Stamford, and a year later he again acted alongside Fogg and Scott when they were among those entrusted with applying, for a period of three years, the revenues from royal wardships to the expenses of the Household. E403/824, m. 8; CPR, 1461-7, p. 217. He was particularly close to Fogg, who named him on the bede roll of the chantry he founded at Ashford in Kent in 1462: CPR, 1461-7, p. 76; 1467-77, pp. 42-43. Later he joined Scott in a more controversial undertaking: they were named as receivers of a clerical subsidy intended for payment to the Pope for a crusade against the Turk. The avowed justification of the appointment of receivers was the Church’s reluctance to account directly with the Exchequer, but the real purpose was probably to enable the King to divert the proceeds to his own use. CPR, 1461-7, p. 370; Reg. Bourgchier, 118; C.D. Ross, Edw. IV, 377. More prosaically, Colt made loans to the Crown from his own resources – early in 1462, for example, he lent £100 – and he offered sureties for the raising of other loans. On 25 June 1463, with (Sir) Walter Blount*, he entered into a bond in £500 to William Dere, a London draper, undertaking to repay Dere the £500 the draper had advanced to the Crown. He also used his money to make purchases on the King’s behalf: some time before 13 Apr. 1464 he paid £96 for 24 fothers of lead to the King’s use. E403/824, m. 13; 832, m. 1; E404/72/4/18, 73/3/86.

It might appear that Colt was now exclusively a royal servant, joining that group of royal retainers independent of the earl of Warwick. This, however, was far from being the case. He continued to be very closely involved in the earl’s affairs. In the summer of 1462, for example, while the earl was absent in the north with the King, Richard Penpons* made representations to Colt and Henry Sotehill in London as the earl’s learned counsel, seeking redress for offences committed against him in the earl’s name. In the following year our MP was named among the earl’s feoffees. C1/28/1b; CPR, 1461-7, p. 270. Further, the earl, as chief steward of the duchy of Lancaster, was probably responsible for Colt’s nomination to the duchy council and his consequent appearance among the duchy apprentices-at-law. E210/2617; R. Somerville, Duchy, i. 454.

Colt’s new wealth enabled him to extend his landed base in Essex, establishing himself and his descendants among the leading gentry families of that county. His naming to the quorum of the bench there at the beginning of the new reign, together with the failure to reappoint him in Cumberland, was a clear indication of where his new interests lay, and direct royal grants, particularly that of Chingford, helped him further to establish himself there. For the most part, however, he had to rely upon his own efforts. Not all of these were legitimate: if a petition presented to the Parliament of 1485 is to be credited, he employed the judgement of heavy damages he had won against Roger Thorpe to extort from him the manor of ‘Colly Halle’ in Barking and Ilford. P. Morant, Essex, i. 6. In 1493 Thorpe released and quitclaimed the property to our MP’s son and heir, John, presumably allowing his title to be bought out: CCR, 1485-1500, no. 767. To this acquisition he added a series of purchases. In July 1461 he bought land in Waltham Holy Cross. In August 1463 Henry and Robert Harleston† conveyed their manor of ‘Dounhall’ in Roydon to his feoffees, headed by Sir Robert Danby and Sir Walter Blount. Harl. Chs. 77 D 33, 80 G 33; VCH Essex, v. 161; CCR, 1461-8, p. 406; Morant, ii. 491. He also extended his interests, albeit temporarily, by leasing. In the autumn of 1463 he farmed from the duchy of Lancaster the toll of the bridge at Ware in Hertfordshire for three years at £26 p.a. Two years later, on 23 Nov. 1465, he leased the nearby manor of Bennington from Sir John Benstede for the term of eight years (from Easter 1466) at an annual rent of £30 p.a. The property was a desirable one in that it had a park, the lease reserving Benstede’s right to ‘take his disport’ there, and, in return, giving Colt licence to take wood from the park to provide for his household should he ever come to live at Bennington. E210/2617, 4043. Through Benstede, who was probably in financial difficulties, he also acquired another significant addition to his property in Essex. In Trinity term 1466 Benstede and his wife quitclaimed their manor of Little Parndon (valued at 24 marks in an inquisition of 1475) to feoffees, including Sir Thomas Burgh†; at the death of Colt’s widow in 1473, the manor was in her hands, and it was later claimed he had paid Burgh a large sum for the manor. Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 62; VCH Essex, viii. 224. A Chancery petition of 1516 claimed that he purchased the manor of ‘Paryngton Hall’ in Essex from the executors of Humphrey, duke of Buckingham (d.1460), taking title from Burgh as the last surviving feoffee: C1/357/96. This manor is to be identified with Little Parndon, and it looks rather that it was purchased from Benstede after the duke’s death and sold on to Colt. For lesser purchases in Essex: Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 60; VCH Essex, viii. 244.

Another manor came to Colt by a similarly circuitous route – that of ‘Greys’ in Cavendish on the Suffolk side of the border between that county and Essex and not far from the manor of Acton, which he held by royal grant. ‘Greys’ was the subject of a dispute between the King and the treasurer, Henry Bourgchier, earl of Essex, who claimed to have been disseised by the King’s father. On 15 Feb. 1462 a commission was issued to investigate this complaint, and the King later agreed to deliver the manor to the earl. There was, however, a condition: the earl had to find a bond in as much as 1,000 marks that he would abide the chancellor’s award should it be later shown that the manor was the King’s rightful property. On 29 May 1463 Colt joined two other Exchequer men, Thomas Witham and Ralph Wolseley*, in providing the requisite sureties. Shortly thereafter our MP himself owned the manor, presumably by purchase from the earl: late in 1464 it was settled on him and his wife Joan and their issue. By the time of his death Colt had added other small manors in the same parish, making a Suffolk estate valued at 40 marks p.a. in 1476. CPR, 1461-7, p. 134; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 142-3; CP25(1)/224/120/6; W.A. Copinger, Suff. Manors, i. 64. The striking thing about this series of acquisitions is their geographical concentration; Cavendish formed a secondary focus to an estate largely confined to the Essex side of that county’s border with Middlesex. There were two exceptions. In 1462 he bought the manor of Bulmarsh in Sonning, Berks., worth only a modest £2 p.a.: CP25(1)/13/87/1; C1/71/28; VCH Berks. iii. 218. Shortly before his death he acquired a manor at Paglesham near the Essex coast, probably from the King’s sister, Anne, duchess of Exeter, for whom he was a feoffee: C140/52/34; CPR, 1461-7, p. 533. Their total annual value was comfortably in excess of £100 p.a.: the inquisitions taken on the deaths of his widow and son agree in valuing the Essex lands, all of them purchased by our MP, at about £80 p.a., to which is to be added his purchases in other counties, valued in his widow’s inquisitions at £32 p.a. E150/307/14; C140/44/28, 52/34. The building he undertook at Nether Hall was designed as a more visible manifestation of this new landed wealth. His fortified brick manor-house there with its impressive gatehouse (which partly survives) was of ‘extremely high quality workmanship’ and had architectural similarities with the contemporary Someries Castle and, more strongly, with Burgh’s Gainsborough Old Hall. The heraldic decoration, now lost, advertised his connexions, including Warwick’s bear and ragged staff and the irradiated rose of Edward IV. A. Emery, Greater Med. Houses, ii. 128-9; P. Ryan, Brick in Essex, 59-61; RCHM Essex, ii. 208.

Colt did not add to either his offices or his royal grants during the last few years of his life. This is not evidence of a loss of royal favour; only of a marked decline in the fund of royal patronage. It is a measure of his continuing influence, or, at least, the influence he was thought to exercise, that, early in March 1465, Margaret, duchess of Somerset, Sir Thomas Montgomery†, a knight of the royal body, John Newburgh II*, the dean and chapter of the royal chapel of St. Stephen, Westminster, and Louis Galet, all entrusted him with the task of delivering to the Crown their provisos of exemption to the Act of Resumption passed two months before. C49/55, no. 5; 60, nos. 1, 11, 13, 16. In this context it is surprising that his own enrolled exemption from this Act extended no further than his fee as chancellor of the earldom of March. The answer is that, in practical terms, his exemption was more generous. As recently as the previous November, his grant of the manors of Chingford and Acton with the reversion of the manors in Theydon Garnon had been remade on more generous terms – in tail-general rather than in tail-male – and there is indirect evidence that he retained Chingford and Acton. They were not re-granted by the Crown until 28 Aug. 1467, a few days after his death. The resumption probably just served to extinguish his hereditary interest in them. PROME, xiii. 164; C49/60, no. 52; CPR, 1461-7, p. 356; 1467-77, p. 38.

Colt’s employment by the Crown took on a different character in the late 1460s for he was then heavily involved in diplomatic affairs. As early as June 1462 he had numbered among an embassy, led by the earl of Warwick, to negotiate with the Scots, but he had not attended the meeting at Carlisle. It was not until three years later that his intense, although brief, diplomatic career began. Arch. Jnl. xvii. 51-53; C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, i. 248. On 9 May 1465, in company with Warwick, he set out to Calais on a wide-ranging mission to negotiate with France, Burgundy and Brittany; its purpose was to discover what each of these princes might offer for an English alliance. After negotiations at Calais and Boulogne, he returned to England on 22 July. C76/149, m. 15; Cat. des Rolles Gascons, Normans et Francois ed. Carte, ii. 355; Scofield, i. 378; E405/43, rot. 2; E404/73/1/124B. The following year proved more favourable to diplomatic negotiations. On 22 Mar. 1466 he was named to another important commission, again headed by Warwick. This had a more precise brief: with Charles, count of Charolais, son and heir of the ailing duke of Burgundy, the embassy was to discuss marriages between the count and Edward IV’s sister, Margaret, and the count’s daughter, Mary, and the duke of Clarence; with the King of France the embassy was to treat for a truce. C76/150, mm. 6, 7, 9; Cat. des Rolles Gascons, Normans et Francois, ii. 357. These negotiations threw into greater relief differences between Warwick and Edward IV over the direction of foreign policy, with the former favouring alliance with France and the latter, alliance with Burgundy. In this context it is interesting to find Colt named to a commission, headed not by Warwick but by Richard Wydeville, Earl Rivers, to negotiate with the Burgundians early in 1467. C76/150, m. 5. Perhaps our MP was thought to favour the King’s policy over that of his old master. However this may, a few months later he was part of an embassy headed by Warwick sent to France to negotiate for peace. On 28 May this embassy sailed from Sandwich to Honfleur in company with returning French ambassadors. They were lavishly received by Louis XI. C76/151, m. 17; Hicks, 254; Scofield, i. 412-13. In its absence there was a major change in politics at home: the earl’s brother, George, archbishop of York, was dismissed as chancellor and a pro-Burgundian foreign policy firmly adopted. On his return on 1 July (prematurely, as the embassy was cut short by the death of Philip the Good) Colt was faced with making a potential choice between two masters. His expenses of £40 were paid posthumously on 31 Oct. 1467: E403/839, m. 5. Death saved him from having to make so difficult a decision. He died on 22 Aug. 1467 when probably still short of 50 years of age. The monumental inscription dates his death to 22 Aug. 1471, but the year is clearly an error. He died before 28 Aug. 1467 when his office of chancellor of the earldom of March was granted to Thomas Herbert†: CPR, 1467-77, p. 24.

Colt was buried in the church at Roydon where he is commemorated by a fine brass and a Latin inscription which does not underestimate his personal gifts: careful to note his position as a councillor of Edward IV, it describes him as ‘Prudent, discreet, brave as well in council as in arms, scarcely can any one find his equal’. Trans. Essex Arch. Soc. n.s. xiv. 177. Since he had married relatively late in life, he left an heir – a son named John – who was still an infant. No inquisitions post mortem were held, probably because his widow had a life interest in all his lands. She brought this property to another royal servant, Sir William Parr†, whom she married very shortly after Colt’s death. Not until her death in 1473, when John was nine years old, did his wardship and marriage come into royal hands. On 4 Mar. 1475 the boy was committed to Parr. CPR, 1467-77, p. 504. She married Parr bef. 20 July 1468: ibid. 106. Curiously, in the immediate aftermath of Joan’s death an inquisition was held only in Cumberland; not until the autumn of 1475 did jurors return their findings in Norfolk, Berkshire, Essex and Middlesex. CFR, xxi. nos. 160, 311; C140/44/28, 52/34. These were singular in that Joan was baldly said to have died seised of all the specified lands, with no reference to our MP or the jointure settlements on which her rights must have depended. Their return into Chancery was soon followed by the cancellation of Parr’s grant: on 21 Feb. 1476 the wardship and marriage of the heir was entrusted to John Elrington†, treasurer of the royal household, who married John to one of his daughters. CPR, 1467-77, p. 568. Joan, a child of this marriage, provided the Colts with another claim to historical remembrance: by 1505 she was the wife of Thomas More†, one of the great figures of Tudor history. By the early seventeenth century the Colts were deeply mired in financial difficulties, and the estate our MP had so painstakingly built up was largely dismembered by Sir Henry Colt (d.1635). The marriage of Sir Henry’s son, George, ‘the great cheat’, to an heiress promised recovery, but he lost her inheritance through his support for Charles I. The Commons 1509-1558, ii. 620; 1660-90, ii. 111-12.