ELMDEN, Sir William (c.1393-1448), of Tursdale, co. Dur.

The Elmdens had been established in Northumberland and the county palatine of Durham since at least the thirteenth century, as substantial tenants of the bishopric of Durham. From the mid 1370s until his death in 1406 William Elmden, our MP’s grandfather, served as chancellor, receiver and constable of Durham under Bishops Hatfield and Skirlaw. His son, our MP’s father, Thomas, added to these historic ties with the bishops by finding a place in the service of another leading northern figure, John, Lord Neville (d.1388). C. Liddy, Bishopric of Durham, 89-92, 108, 129-31. The family had landholdings to match their connexions. Thomas held the manors of Tursdale, Moreton, Embleton and Pelawe in Chester-le-Street with property at Brumtoft, Preston-on-Tees and Gateshead in county Durham, and further holdings at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Byker, Jesmouth, Shelfield and Bamburgh in the county of Northumberland. He died in 1416 (an inquisition post mortem being taken into his lands in Durham on 24 Aug. that year), and on 22 Feb. 1417 Bishop Langley granted William livery of his lands in the county palatine. On the following 18 Apr. Elmden was present in the episcopal chancery to take his oath of fealty. DURH3/35, m. 12; 46, m. 8; Surtees, i. 76-78; iii. 54.

During his father’s lifetime Elmden, perhaps through the family’s connexion with the Nevilles, had made a very good marriage to Elizabeth, eldest daughter of the Northumberland and Lincolnshire landowner Sir Thomas Umfraville. The Umfravilles were an important and well-connected family: Sir Thomas had represented Northumberland in the Merciless Parliament of February 1388 and again in 1390, while his nephew, Sir Robert (d.1437), had been a knight of the Garter since 1408. Elmden’s brother-in-law, Sir Gilbert Umfraville, was the son-in-law of Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland, and one of the leading military commanders of Henry V’s French campaigns. Oxf. DNB; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 686-8. It is possible that Elmden followed him to France in 1415, and he was certainly present in the King’s second expedition to France two years later. In July 1417 he mustered as a mounted man-at-arms with a retinue of nine archers (including his kinsman, John), and between October and December that year he was serving as part of the garrison of the border castle of Verneuil. He was knighted while overseas on campaign. E101/51/2, m. 24.

It is unclear when Elmden returned to England, but he had done so shortly before March 1419 when he was named to a commission of array in Northumberland. On the previous 14 Feb., by letters patent dated at Rouen (it is likely that Elmden had been present, alongside his Umfraville brother-in-law, at the siege of the Norman capital which had ended only a month earlier), he had been appointed constable of the strategic castle of Bamburgh on the Anglo-Scottish march with an annuity of £40. This was at a crucial time in Anglo-Scottish relations. In the autumn of 1417 the Scots, taking advantage of the King’s absence in France, had launched the so-called ‘Foul Raid’ on the English-held town of Berwick-upon-Tweed. On his return to England, Bamburgh’s new constable immediately set about repairing the fabric of the castle’s north wall and the drawbridge, laying out 100 marks of his own money, and, again at his own cost, increasing the garrison by six men-at-arms and 12 archers. E. Bateson, Hist. Northumb. i. 43; SC6/950/9. On 15 Nov. 1419 he was granted the office of receiver-general of the lordship of Bamburgh, thus securing its revenues for the defence of the castle. A little less than two weeks later, in a move perhaps designed to secure further revenue for the defence of Bamburgh, Elmden was pricked as sheriff of Northumberland. Despite the tensions on the border, he continued to exercise the normal duties of the shrievalty, serving writs and, on 12 Nov. 1420, presiding over the parliamentary election at Morpeth. Nevertheless, it was clearly a difficult year and when he rendered his shrieval account at Westminster he was pardoned of all his debts in consideration of the depredations of the Scots. C219/12/4; E159/199, brevia Mich. rot. 19.

Once calm had been restored to the border, Elmden’s thoughts turned once again to France. On 22 Mar. 1421 his brother-in-law, Sir Gilbert Umfraville, was killed at the duke of Clarence’s disastrous defeat at the battle of Baugé. Umfraville’s five sisters, including Elmden’s wife, Elizabeth, succeeded to his unentailed lands, and on 26 July livery of seisin was granted to the Elmdens of the manor of Fawns and property in Whelpington and Ingoe, parcel of the barony of Ovingham, Northumberland. By then Sir William was back in France: on 16 June he had taken out letters of protection and attorney and three days later he mustered (again with a personal company of nine archers) to cross the Channel in the King’s retinue. DKR, xlviii. 629; E101/50/1. His motives in going were probably mixed: to avenge his brother-in-law’s death and help secure the English possessions in Normandy, but also to gain temporary respite from the litigation that would inevitably follow Umfraville’s untimely death. In Easter term 1422, for instance, he was a plaintiff, alongside his co-feoffees of Sir Gilbert’s estates (Sir Robert Umfraville, Sir William Tempest* and Robert Swinburne*) in a suit regarding feudal services at Welton, Northumberland. Bateson, xii. 215.

Elmden probably returned to England with Henry V’s body in September 1422, and he was present at Newcastle-upon-Tyne on 2 Oct. to be elected, in company with Sir John Bertram*, the experienced parliamentarian and borderer, to represent Northumberland in Henry VI’s first Parliament. C219/13/1. On his return home after the dissolution, he resumed his duties as constable of Bamburgh castle and in July 1423 he was appointed to the commission of the peace in Northumberland. The problems of maintaining Bamburgh castle continued to exercise him throughout the early and mid 1420s. On 3 May 1425 he secured an inspeximus and confirmation of Henry V’s grant of the constableship and the annuity of £40; 13 days later the council ordered that he be discharged of all debts still outstanding from his shrievalty and instructed the barons of the Exchequer to allow the payment of his annuity. CPR, 1422-9, p. 273; E159/204, brevia Mich. rot. 14. This, however, was not the end of the matter and Elmden clearly continued to have difficulties in meeting the costs of defending Bamburgh. In September 1427 he was again elected as one of the knights of the shire for Northumberland. C219/13/5. His reasons for seeking election on this occasion are clear. Once at Westminster he presented a petition to the Commons outlining his inability to secure allowance from the Exchequer for the repairs he had made to the castle since his appointment in 1419 and for the reinforcements he had made to the garrison. The Commons supported the petition, asking the King to direct the barons to allow the expenses in Elmden’s account. The council responded by appointing a commission, led by Bishop Langley of Durham and the earl of Northumberland, to corroborate the truth of Elmden’s claims. Yet the commissioners were not appointed until 25 Apr. 1429, and it was not until the following 31 Oct. that a writ of privy seal was directed to the barons instructing them to allow him all ‘reasonable payments’. SC8/109/5423; CPR, 1422-9, p. 552; E159/206, brevia Mich. rot. 16.

Seeking allowance for the expenses incurred in defending Bamburgh castle was not the only problem Elmden faced in the wake of the Parliament. Both he and his fellow MP, William Strother*, were forced to go to law to receive payment of their parliamentary wages from the sheriff of Northumberland, Henry Fenwick*. In Easter term 1429 both men appeared by their attorney in the Exchequer and claimed that they had a writ de expensis for £58 16s., representing their wages for 147 days each spent at and travelling to and from Parliament. Fenwick allegedly refused to pay the sums due; both men thus claimed £20 damages. The case was respited until the octave of Trinity, but the final outcome is not known. Parliamentarians at Law ed. Kleineke, 368.

During this time Elmden continued his local responsibilities. In 1426, along with the earl of Northumberland and Sir Robert Ogle I*, he had been appointed to raise a loan in Northumberland, and two years later he repeated this task. CPR, 1422-9, pp. 354, 481. He was also involved in the settling of the violent feuds and disorder that characterized the border society of Northumberland and the Anglo-Scottish marches. During the second session of the Parliament of 1427 he was one of the commissioners instructed to inquire into the circumstances of the murder of William Heron of Ford and one of his servants by John Manners† of Etal. This proved a long-running dispute, and in 1430 Elmden acted as a mainpernor for Heron’s widow, Isabel, to abide by an arbitration award to settle the matter. Durham Univ. Lib. cathedral muns. locelli, Loc.V:44-53; J.W. Armstrong, ‘Violence and Peacemaking in the English Marches towards Scotland’, The Fifteenth Cent VI ed. Clark, 65-66. Most importantly, in October 1429 he was one of those named to inquire into violations of the Anglo-Scottish truce at a day of march held at Reddenburn on the Scottish east march. C.J. Neville, Violence, Custom and Law, 133-4, 148. Elmden himself was not above such feuds. On 9 June 1425 he and Sir Robert Ogle I (then sitting in the Commons as knight of the shire for Northumberland) had both entered recognizances of £200 to settle their own dispute. The subject of their quarrel is unknown, but Elmden named two Durham men, Sir William Bowes of Streatlam and Bishop Langley’s chancellor, William Chancellor, as his arbiters. The committee was to meet in the chapel on the Tyne bridge at Newcastle before 1 Jan. 1426, and if no agreement could be reached the matter was to be settled by the earl of Northumberland, John, Lord Greystoke, and Elmden’s kinsman, Sir Robert Umfraville. CCR, 1422-9, p. 210.

Elmden remained active in local affairs until the late 1430s, but he was appointed to his last ad hoc commission in the summer of 1436 and removed from the bench in March 1439. CFR, xvi. 258; CPR, 1436-41, p. 587. Further, on 7 Feb. 1438 he surrendered the patents granting him the offices at Bamburgh and these were then reissued to him jointly with William Heron’s son, John Heron of Ford. It is unlikely that changes in the politics of the north-east were behind these developments; Elmden’s declining health is a more likely explanation. By 1 Nov. 1440 he appears to have resigned his position at Bamburgh completely; and on 21 Nov. 1442, in return for relinquishing his claim to nearly £300 owed to him by the Crown, he secured a pardon of all his arrears as receiver-general of Bamburgh. In his petition for this pardon, Elmden recalled his years of active service in France and Normandy, as well as against the Scots, and cited the negligence of his deputies (whom he had been forced to appoint six years earlier because of ill-health resulting from wounds suffered in royal service), for his failure to render proper accounts. Five days later a writ of non molestatis directed to the barons of the Exchequer finally brought the curtain down on Elmden’s long and troublesome involvement with Bamburgh. CPR, 1436-41, p. 179; Kalendars and Inventories ed. Palgrave, ii. 194; CAD, iv. A6257; E159/219, brevia Hil. rot. 16.

Late in his life Elmden was troubled by a dispute with the prior of Durham. Earlier relations between them had been generally cordial. In 1430 he had been a dinner guest of Prior John Wessington on at least two occasions; and on 26 Sept. 1433, with Sir William Euer*, he had written to Wessington asking him, vainly as it transpired, to intervene in the dispute between Euer and the men of the county palatine, on the one hand, and Bishop Langley, on the other. Durham Acct. Rolls, i (Surtees Soc. xcix), 61; cathedral muns. locelli, Loc.XXV:7; Liddy, 220-1. There had, however, been occasional differences. Matters, unspecified in the surviving documents, pending between them had been put to arbitration in the summers of 1431 and 1433; Cathedral muns. reg. parva ii. f. 71v; priory reg. iii. ff. 140v-41v. and by the early 1440s all cordiality seems to have passed. Elmden and the prior were then in dispute over a watercourse between the vills of Hett and Tursdale and rights of common pasture in nearby Quarrington. The dispute over the watercourse was settled, in Elmden’s favour, by arbitration, but in August 1443 Wessington brought a successful action regarding the rights of common pasture against him and his feoffees before the bishop of Durham’s justices. Cathedral. muns., priory reg. iii. f. 288; locelli, Loc.V:24; Durham Acct. Rolls, i. 144-5; Hist. Dunelmensis Scriptores Tres (Surtees Soc. ix), 269; DURH3/43, mm. 9, 10.

The ailing Elmden did not long survive these difficulties. He died between April and July 1448, leaving a widow named Lucy (whose family is unknown). A writ of diem clausit extremum was issued by the Durham chancery on 24 Oct. and an inquisition post mortem held at Bishop’s Auckland four days later. His heir was his eldest son, also named William and aged only 11. This raised immediate difficulties, already foreshadowed during our MP’s lifetime. In November 1440, without securing the necessary licence from the bishop, he had settled his lands in the county palatine on feoffees, headed by Sir William Bowes. He no doubt anticipated that he would leave a minor as his heir, and it is not surprising that Robert Neville, the bishop of Durham, threatened with the potential loss of a valuable wardship, should have objected. The matter was put to arbitration in August 1445, but remained unresolved at Elmden’s death. The bishop then asserted his rights. In August 1449 the feoffees were arraigned before the bishop’s justices and fined; and in the following March they agreed to surrender the disputed manors and three false evidences relating to Elmden’s tenure of them. The bishop then marked his victory by selling the wardship to another county Durham landholder, Sir Robert Claxton, before, in May 1451, acknowledging the Elmdens’ long tenure of the manors, by re-granting them to our MP’s son, William, with remainder to the second son, Ganther. DURH3/44, m. 15; 46, mm. 8, 17d; 47, mm. 13-15; CPR, 1446-52, p. 165.