The Cursons were an ancient family, established in Derbyshire from shortly after the Conquest. Early in the thirteenh century they divided into two branches: the one living at Croxall in the southern extremity of the county; the other at Kedleston, a few miles to the north-west of Derby. The latter came to prominence during the career of our MP’s father, who greatly benefited from the usurpation of 1399 and rose to hold office as steward of the duchy of Lancaster honour of Tutbury. He died at the height of his influence, leaving our MP as a minor. The heir, however, escaped royal wardship because all the family estates, the bulk of which were held of the duchy, were in the hands of feoffees headed by the Cursons’ neighbour and cousin, Robert Twyford of Kirk Langley.
It is impossible accurately to assess the value of the Curson patrimony at this date, but it seems that, among the gentry, only a small group of ancient knightly families, of which the Montgomerys were one, had greater estates in Derbyshire. In the tax returns of 1435-6, when his lands were no longer burdened by his mother’s jointure, our MP was assessed on an annual income of as much as £60.
Soon after his marriage Curson made his first recorded appearance in public affairs in what was to be a lengthy and active career.
One so closely connected with the Greys was a likely candidate for both election to represent Derbyshire in Parliament and appointment to local administrative office. Curson duly sat for the county in both 1423 and 1429, on the second occasion with another retainer of Lord Grey, Gerard Meynell*.
During the early 1430s the peace of north Derbyshire was disturbed by a violent conflict between Sir Henry Pierrepont and a rising esquire, Thomas Foljambe, culminating in the maiming of Pierrepont and the murder of his supporters, Henry Longford and William Bradshaw, on New Year’s Day 1434 in Chesterfield parish church. Curson had an earlier connexion with Pierrepont (late in 1433 they had acted together in a fine by which the Montgomerys resettled the manor of Cubley) and on the following 1 Apr., when a powerful commission of oyer and terminer sat at Derby, our MP and his brother, Thomas, sat on the same grand jury as the maimed man. None the less, there is no evidence that Curson was opposed to the Foljambes. Indeed, there is some evidence to the contrary: in the following Michaelmas term he acted as a mainpernor in the court of King’s bench for some of those appealed of murder by Bradshaw’s widow, and a year later he acted in the same capacity for persons allegedly involved in the attack on Pierrepont himself.
On 15 Sept. 1435 Curson was once again elected to Parliament in company with Meynell. While this assembly was in session he was once more named as escheator, and as soon as this term was over he was pricked as sheriff. So onerous an administrative burden was deserving of reward, but when it came it was a disappointing one. In May 1439 he was appointed keeper of the duchy of Lancaster park at Shottle in Duffield Frith, but he did not enjoy the office for long. On the following 8 Nov. he was summoned to appear in the duchy chancery, bringing with him his letters patent of appointment. This summons explains the loss of the office to the influential Household man, Bartholomew Halley*, who was probably able to show a prior grant.
When Curson lost his duchy office he was once more an MP, for he sat in the Parliament which met between November 1439 and February 1440. Soon after the end of this assembly he was called upon to arbitrate a property dispute between Sir Thomas Erdington* and Robert Arderne*. The importance attached to the settlement of this dispute is reflected in the status of the arbiters: Sir Richard Vernon*, Sir William Mountfort* and two lawyers, John Bowes* and John Harper*, were to act for Erdington; and John Hampton II*, our MP and two other lawyers, John Vampage* and William Comberford*, for his rival. More interestingly, the presence of several of these arbiters in the immediately preceding Parliament implies that some initiative towards settlement had been taken during the course of the assembly. Curson probably owed his nomination to the fact that he was one of the volatile Arderne’s few friends among the MPs. His connexion with the Ardernes appears to have been long standing. In 1419 he and Robert’s father, Sir Ralph Arderne†, had been among those to whom his wife’s grandfather, Sir Nicholas Montgomery, granted all his goods. Moreover, after the award had been returned at Warwick on 25 May 1440, he is found acting in Robert Arderne’s interest. In one of the suits to which the award gave rise, Arderne claimed that on 30 Sept. 1442 Erdington released to him all actions by a deed dated at Kedleston, and some time after this he conveyed his lands in Cheshire to our MP and others.
Curson had maintained his close connexion with the Greys throughout the 1430s. In 1434 he was one of those to whom Henry, brother and successor of John, Lord Grey, conveyed the manor of Denby (Derbyshire), and in 1438 he was employed by him in collusive litigation. Indeed, in an undated deed of the 1430s, Grey describes him, along with Peter de la Pole† and Henry Booth, as ‘de consilio meo’.
Grey’s discredited lordship was replaced by that of a much greater man, namely Stafford, steward of the honour of Tutbury (an office our MP’s father had once held). Curson, as the most important of Grey’s affinity, was the first to whom Stafford turned in the creation of his own Derbyshire connexion. On 31 Oct. 1440, by an instrument dated at London, he retained our MP at an annual fee of £10 assigned on the manor of Naseby in Northamptonshire. In return Curson undertook to serve in England only, with two yeomen, a page and four horses or such lesser number as the earl ‘liste to assigne or commaunde’.
Stafford was not the only powerful man to whom the enterprising Curson offered his service. In the same month as he indented with the earl he is first found acting in the interest of Lord Cromwell. On 18 Oct. 1440 he was one of those commissioned by the Crown to take an assize of novel disseisin sued against Cromwell’s feoffees by Sir Henry Pierrepont for the former Heriz manors of South Wingfield and Tibshelf. Despite his earlier brief association with the plaintiff, there can be no doubt that Curson was appointed as a friend of Cromwell.
It may be that Curson’s entry into the royal household was a product of his new connexions with Stafford and Cromwell or else that an existing place there recommended him to their service. He appears in the list of those in receipt of robes as a Household esquire from the autumn of 1441, but, in the absence of such lists for an earlier date, it is possible that he was established there before then (perhaps in the expansion of the royal household at Henry VI’s majority). However this may be, he remained in receipt of robes until the lists fail in 1452.
While for the earlier part of Curson’s career there is no record of his involvement in local disorder, the same cannot be said for its later part. If an indictment taken before Robert Strelley* as sheriff and Fulk Vernon* as j.p., sitting on 27 Sept. 1446 at Rosliston, is to be credited, Curson and his eldest son John had led an insurrection of some 80 armed men at Monyash 13 days before. They had allegedly broken into two houses and violently assaulted the unfortunate householders. There is nothing to place this apparently isolated episode in context. Monyash lies some 20 miles to the north-west of Kedleston in a part of the county in which Curson held no property, and it is both puzzling and suspicious that the indictment was taken many miles from the alleged offence. Moreover, although Strelley and Vernon were clearly acting under powers conferred by the statute of riots (13 Hen. IV, c. 7), the indictment makes no mention of the fact. In any event, the legal process caused our MP little inconvenience. In Easter term 1447 the indictment was ruled insufficient by the justices of the King’s bench because it was taken before one j.p. rather than the two demanded by statute.
Curson appears in a more positive light at the end of the decade. On 30 Oct. 1449, in company with Richard Bagot, his second wife’s brother, and the husband of one of Bagot’s sisters, Henry Bradbourne (another former Grey retainer now in the service of Stafford), he intervened to end a riot at Blore. According to a petition presented to the Commons by Ralph Basset, a gang, headed by John Cockayne and Thurstan Vernon, had come to his manor of Blore, and, but for this timely intervention, they would have burned the manor-house.
One week before Curson had come to Basset’s aid he had headed the list of attestors to the Derbyshire election to the Parliament summoned to meet at Westminster on 6 Nov. 1449. Here he may have been acting in the interest of his other master, Lord Cromwell, for one of those elected, John Sacheverell*, was among Cromwell’s intimates.
The continuing close connexion between Duke Humphrey and several leading Derbyshire gentry was a factor in the serious disturbances which overtook the county between 1453 and 1455, chief among which was a violent campaign against Walter Blount* led by Sir Nicholas Longford, who numbered among Stafford’s retainers. Indeed, it was a common link with Stafford that unites the prominent local gentry who supported Longford, although there is no direct evidence that they were acting at Buckingham’s behest. Our MP was himself implicated. He was indicted on three counts before the powerful commission of oyer and terminer which came to investigate the disorders in the summer of 1454: in company with Longford, he is said to have instigated an assault on Thomas Blount* by Ralph Twyford on 31 July 1453; he is named among those who attacked the servants and tenants of Sir Thomas Blount† and Walter Blount at Sutton on 17 May 1454; and, albeit not among the many indicted for the famous sack of Elvaston eleven days later, he was one of three indicted as an accessory.
None the less, Curson’s involvement in these serious disturbances had no impact on his standing. Although, after 1451, he no longer farmed the duchy herd in Postern, in September 1454 his lease of agistment there was extended for a further term of 21 years and he added to this a lease of herbage and pasture in the neighbouring park of Ravensdale. On the following 16 Apr., five days after Roland Blount’s murder, the King summoned him to represent Derbyshire in the great council due to assemble in the following month, the meeting of which was prevented by the violent intervention of the Yorkist lords. This summons is a sure indication that he was opposed to the cause of York, with whom Walter Blount was closely identified. Such a stance accorded with his place in the royal household, which he may have lost at the reorganization of the Household during the duke of York’s protectorate, and he is unlikely to have welcomed the outcome of the first battle of St. Albans. It is thus understandable that, on the following 2 Oct., when York was in control of government, he sued out a general pardon.
No writs of diem clausit extremum were issued on Curson’s death and there has been considerable confusion over its date. He is generally said to have lived until 1460,
Curson’s career was a remarkable one. Few fifteenth-century gentry could match his record of administrative service. In addition to his seven recorded appearances as an MP (including six of the nine Parliaments which met between 1429 and 1445), and his four terms as either sheriff or escheator, Curson was very active as a j.p. despite the fact that he was never appointed to the quorum. Between 1431 and his death he was paid for sitting on at least 59 days, and from the late 1430s he appears to have attended most of the sessions.