The Erdingtons were a family of ancient prominence established at Erdington in the parish of Aston near Birmingham since the mid twelfth century. Sir Thomas Erdington (d.1218) elevated the family through service to King John, and his grandson, Sir Henry (d.1282), maintained the family’s rise by his marriage to one of the four daughters and coheiresses of Nichole, sister and coheir of Hugh d’Aubigny, earl of Arundel (d.1243). Their son, another Sir Henry†, MP for Leicestershire in 1309, received a personal writ of summons to the Parliament of January 1336; and, although the honour of parliamentary summons was not accorded to his descendants, this detracted little from their importance in the affairs of Warwickshire and Leicestershire, the counties in which the bulk of their estates lay. The second Sir Henry’s grandson, Sir Thomas† (d.1395), represented both counties in Parliament early in the reign of Richard II, and our MP’s father sat for the former county in 1411.
The wealth and standing of the Erdingtons were reflected in the marriage contracted for our MP when he was no more than about seven years old and his bride a few years his senior. At the time of the marriage the bride stood coheiress-presumptive to the inheritance of the elderly Lord Burnell, and the death of her father soon afterwards transformed her into a coheiress-apparent. Her expectations were, however, not to be realized. After his only son’s death Lord Burnell contracted marriages for her two half-sisters on the understanding that they would be his heirs, selling the hand of one to Sir Walter Hungerford† for as much as £1,000, and effectively disinherited our MP’s wife by settlements made in the summer of 1416. Whether in doing so he defrauded the Erdingtons is difficult to say. It is at least as likely that Joyce was married to our MP on the condition that she would not inherit and that, in return, other concessions were made. One of these was Lord Burnell’s surrender of the Shropshire manor of Wellington, which the Erdingtons had long claimed against his family. By a final concord levied on the quindene of Michaelmas 1411 the manor was settled Lord Burnell and his son, Sir Edmund, for successive life terms, with remainder to our MP and his wife and his male issue, then, in successive tail male, to his four brothers, with a final remainder to him and his issue. Perhaps this was intended to stand in compensatory place for the bride’s potential share of the Burnell lands. In any event, the Erdingtons had to be content with what the marriage represented in social rather than material terms.
As was so often with the case with greater gentry families, the heir-apparent had established himself as a man of account in local affairs before coming into his patrimony. As early as 1428 Erdington was a plaintiff in the court of common pleas, but he was more enthusiastically involved on the other side of the law.
Erdington’s part in this violence and the legal actions attendant upon it did nothing to damage his prospects. The deaths of his father and stepmother in quick succession brought an unburdened patrimony.
All this is rather speculative, but there is a much clearer narrative in respect of two major disputes in which he was involved in the late 1430s and early 1440s. The first of these – with the Shirleys over the valuable manor of Barrow upon Soar in Leicestershire – was of long standing. It had been very actively pursued in the 1380s and 1390s, but by the time our MP came into his inheritance his family had been in peaceful possession for some time. Concern that this might not long remain the case may explain why, on 16 Sept. 1435, Erdington leased the manor to his kinsman, Richard Harcourt*, and others to hold for 20 years at an annual rent of £40. Less than two years later, on 29 July 1437, he granted it to a group of feoffees headed by his wife’s uncle, Richard, Lord Strange of Knockin, and including three of the lessees.
Meanwhile Shirley’s action proceeded. On 10 July 1444, three days after the granting of this licence, a writ to distrain the jurors summoned to try this action before justices of assize at Leicester on the following 20 July was delivered to the sheriff, Laurence Sherard, at Warwick. Shirley can now have had little real hope of success: matters had progressed too far. By conveyances made on 23 and 26 July the disputed manor was settled on our MP and his wife and their issue, with remainders to him in tail and then to Beaumont and his feoffees in fee.
While Sir Thomas was successfully engaged in this dispute he was also involved in a quarrel with Robert Arderne*, the son of his late stepmother, Sibyl, by her first husband, Sir Ralph Arderne†. Until her death in 1435 the two men seem to have been on cordial terms; thereafter, enmity was quick to develop. Judging from a later award, our MP had retained some muniments relating to the Arderne property she had held in jointure and dower as surety for the performance of financial undertakings Arderne had made to him. These undertakings probably arose from either money the indebted Arderne had raised on his surety or else compensation due upon the apparent reduction of Sibyl’s entitlement. Whatever lay behind it, the dispute was an important one. This is reflected in the high standing of those chosen to arbitrate it in 1440: Sir Richard Vernon*, Sir William Mountfort*, two of the wealthiest gentry of the Midlands, and two senior lawyers, John Bowes* and John Harper*, were those nominated by our MP; and John Hampton II*, John Curson* and two other lawyers, John Vampage* and William Cumberford*, were the equally important group chosen by his rival. At Warwick, on 25 May 1440, they awarded that Erdington should deliver all evidences concerning the manors to Arderne, who should in return surrender all relevant bonds and pay him 100 marks in four payments of 25 marks spread over four years. This seemingly balanced settlement faltered on Arderne’s intransigence. Despite a verdict in our MP’s favour at the Derbyshire assizes of February 1444, Arderne continually refused to pay. In a final attempt to secure payment, Erdington sued Hampton for detinue of charters, a collusive action designed to secure the enrolment of the terms of the award in a court of record, and the recalcitrant Arderne for a debt of £50 on broken bonds. His appointment as sheriff in the same law term as he brought these actions might have been considered an advantage in the pursuance of these actions, but it proved the opposite. Arderne resorted to some ingenious obstructive pleading. In Trinity term 1446 he contested the suits against him on the grounds that, contrary to the terms of the award, Erdington had demanded payment for the surrender of one of the charters. Here he was relying on the fact that our MP, as sheriff and plaintiff, could not impanel the jury and that the task therefore fell to the coroners. On 17 July 1447, before the Warwickshire justices of assize, he prevented the return of verdicts by claiming that only two of the four coroners had endorsed the writ summoning the jurors. A repeat of this effective delaying tactic led to an extraordinary confrontation at the assizes held at Coventry on 20 Apr. 1450. Although the relevant writ had, on this occasion, been endorsed by all four coroners, Arderne suborned one of them, John Upton, into denying he had been party to its execution. Despite the insistence of the other coroners that their colleague was lying, Upton stubbornly maintained his denial, provoking the justices to threaten him with a heavy fine for contempt. Arderne then foolishly, in the hearing of the justices, promised Upton indemnity against any fine, even one as large as £100. Upton’s committal to gaol led him to even rasher behaviour: in the words of the record, ‘adtunc insania et furore repletus’, he made ready to draw his dagger but settled instead for launching a verbal assault on our MP, telling him ‘inter alia verba contumeliosa “tu false mentiris in capud tuum”’. The thwarting of Upton may not, however, have been the only provocation offered to him. He claimed that Erdington, out of hearing of the justices, had told him he was false in word and deed. When the case returned to the court of common pleas for judgement in the following June this indiscretion cost Erdington a fine of 40s., but Arderne was fined the hefty sum of £40. Worse was soon to follow for the latter. Five months later a jury, returning a verdict in the debt action our MP had sued against him, awarded the plaintiff damages of £20 and costs of a further 100 marks (reduced to a total of £40 by the court on the technicality that our MP had claimed only this lesser sum). No doubt this victory was gratifying to Erdington, but Arderne’s execution for treason in 1452 probably meant that he recovered none of the money owed to him. Indeed, as late as 1457 he was pursuing his adversary’s son and heir for the debt and damages he had won in 1450.
Aside from these disputes little else is known of Erdington’s career in these years. In July 1437 he and his wife had sued out a general pardon in which she was described as a coheiress of Sir Edward Burnell, an indication, perhaps, that they were not entirely reconciled to her disinheritance.
The political context of Erdington’s appointment is uncertain. It has been suggested that it was a manifestation of the influence of the new head of the Beauchamps, Henry, the recently-created duke of Warwick,
Whatever the reasons for his pricking, Erdington’s term as sheriff was not a profitable one. It did nothing to forward his dispute with Arderne and led him into some troublesome litigation in the Exchequer of pleas. On 27 May 1446 men of the neighbouring Warwickshire vills of Upton and Haselor sued him there for the wrongful taking of distraints. He defended himself on the grounds that the vill of Upton owed one mark and that of Haselor 15s. known as ‘schryffyeld’ in ‘aid’ of the sheriff and that distraint had been lawfully taken in payment. Not surprisingly this defence was not endorsed by a local jury, which awarded costs and damages totalling 26s. 8d. against him, and the barons of the Exchequer were similarly unimpressed, more than trebling this sum when the case came back to them in the following Michaelmas term. It seems likely that our MP had been guilty of levying too much as ‘schryffyeld’ – the men of Upton had asserted that they owed only 2s. p.a. – perhaps because he was having difficulty raising the shrieval farm.
At about this date Erdington was also confronting a far more serious personal difficulty. The sale of the reversion of the valuable manor of Barrow in 1444 seems to imply that he had given up hope of an heir, at least during the lifetime of his present wife. If his ancient line was to end with him, however, he could at least provide a lasting memorial for the family. To this end, on 7 July 1447, he sued out a royal licence to found a chantry in the church of Bilston near Wolverhampton with a landed endowment worth a modest £2 p.a., and on 28 Mar. 1449 he did the same for a larger chantry in the church of Aston near Birmingham. The latter foundation was to have an endowment of £4 p.a. and it may be that he intended to make further settlements on both chantries as the opportunity arose.
During the early 1450s Warwickshire politics was in a period of transition. Richard Neville, the new earl of Warwick, was in the process of establishing himself in the county’s affairs and his rivalry with the other leading local lord, the duke of Buckingham, was yet to develop. This is reflected in Erdington’s own career. He was yet to form the close connexion with the new earl which was to have such a significant impact on his career later in the decade. Indeed, in February 1452 he was named alongside Buckingham among the feoffees of Sir William Birmingham.
Given his activity in local administration in the late 1430s and 1440s, Erdington’s exclusion from 1453 is striking. It may have been his own choice: he had after all secured an exemption from office as early as ten years earlier. None the less, the exemption had prevented neither his service as sheriff in 1445-6 nor his appointments to loan and inquiry commissions. Another possibility is that he was excluded because of his growing attachment to the new earl of Warwick. By 1453 he was in receipt of an annuity of £10 from Neville and is soon to be found acting in his interest. He was one of the leaders of the jury which gave a verdict in favour of another of the earl’s annuitants, Baldwin Mountfort, in the dispute over that family’s valuable inheritance. Since Baldwin’s opponent, his half-brother, Edmund Mountfort*, who sued the jurors for embracery in Michaelmas term 1454, was supported by the duke of Buckingham, the quarrel was one of a defining importance in the politics of 1450s Warwickshire.
After the attainders of the Coventry Parliament late in 1459 the time, however, for equivocation had passed, and, in any event, the death of Viscount Beaumont at the battle of Northampton in the following July removed Erdington’s last ties with the house of Lancaster. His appointment to the Warwickshire bench in December 1460 when the Yorkists were in control of royal government is a clear sign of his loyalties.
Thereafter Erdington’s advancing years made him an increasingly peripheral figure. Only a handful of references survive for his last years. In June 1462 he joined with his cousins, the Harcourts, in large bonds to the King, perhaps as a loan for the campaigns in the north, and in February 1466 he was pardoned by the Crown of the sums due under these bonds. More interestingly, in August 1464 he took advantage of the death and attainder of Viscount Beaumont to make another alienation, presumably a sale, of the reversion of the manor of Barrow on Soar to the advantage of the Yorkist peer, William, Lord Hastings.
Erdington’s death between June, when he was exempted from the Act of Resumption in respect of the grant of Bordesley, and 31 Oct. 1467, when his wife was pardoned as a widow, marked the end of an ancient line.
Joyce survived Erdington by only a few years. In October 1467 she secured a pardon for all grants and alienations made without licence, but this is her last appearance in the records. She was dead by Trinity term 1471 when her executors had a plea of account pending against one of her late husband’s servants, Thomas Holden of Erdington, gentleman. Since he is said to have been her receiver from 10 Dec. 1468 to 25 Dec. 1470, it is probable that that latter date is that of her death. Tantalizingly, among the sums he is said to have received were 300 marks from the late earl of Warwick at Coventry. How the earl had contracted so large a debt to our MP’s widow is a matter for speculation. Perhaps Joyce had lent him financial support in his campaign against Edward IV.
After his widow’s death, Erdington’s estates were treated as though he died without an heir in common law.
Sir Thomas does not appear in the transactions of his neighbours as one might expect in the case of one of his status and longevity, although this probably reflects only the vagaries of the surviving evidence. His closest associates were his cousins, the Harcourts. Even before he had come into his inheritance he had been named among the feoffees of Robert Harcourt’s lands in Staffordshire and, in 1435, he returned the compliment by conveying all his lands to feoffees headed by Robert, Richard Harcourt and their stepfather, Sir Robert Strelley. This attachment lost none of its strength with the passing of the years and he was later an executor of Eleanor, widow of Richard Harcourt of Saredon (Staffordshire), the uncle of the Harcourt brothers.