Eyton hailed from a gentry family long-established at Eyton-on-the-Weald-Moors, a few miles to the east of Shrewsbury. He was one of at least four brothers who enjoyed successful careers: the eldest, Nicholas was a prominent figure in Shropshire from the late 1430s until his death in 1466; Fulk was a famous soldier, serving as lieutenant of Caudebec under the captaincy of John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury; and Richard was warden of the college of Tong founded by Fulk’s godfather, Sir Fulk Pembridge†.
Eyton became a significant figure in Shrewsbury through marriage to Agnes, daughter and heiress-presumptive of one of the leading townsmen, William Burley II, by Isabel, the heiress of the old Shrewsbury families of Tour and Pride. This promised inheritance seems never to have come into his hands. His wife died in her father’s lifetime and the inheritance passed to Thomas Mytton†, her son by her first husband. None the less, the marriage, aside from giving him important connexions in the town, brought him the property she held in dower there. In Hilary term 1445, in what was probably a collusive action, the couple sued her father for this dower, and soon after Eyton emerges as one of the leading burgesses.
In the autumn of 1448 Eyton extended his holdings in Shrewsbury by leasing a parcel of common moor from the community of the town at a annual rent of 6s. 8d. p.a.; and he also appears to have had property just outside the town for he is sometimes styled ‘of Coton’.
Yet Eyton’s family and baronial connexions made him much more than a simple merchant and townsman. On 20 Dec. 1449 he was considered important enough to be named as the county sheriff, although it is unlikely that he had the landed income usually associated with that post. Since he had been elected as bailiff of Shrewsbury three months before, he is probably unique in holding the two offices simultaneously. They put him in an important position in respect of the parliamentary elections held in the wake of the duke of York’s return from Ireland in the following year. His nomination as sheriff and his later career imply that he was already attached to the duke’s interest, but, despite the evidence of the duke’s active electioneering in other shires, there is none that he took advantage of our MP’s shrievalty to influence elections in Shropshire. York’s councillor, William Burley I*, was returned at the county hustings convened by Eyton on 15 Oct. 1450, but since Burley had long had a virtual monopoly of one of the shire’s seats, his election hardly required external intervention. The three others returned by our MP as sheriff and bailiff were all professional lawyers with no apparent connexion with the duke. Nor is there anything particularly irregular in the return itself; it differs from others only in the respect that several prominent Shrewsbury burgesses, including John Colle* and Robert Thornes*, are named among the county attestors. This raises the possibility that, because our MP was both sheriff and bailiff, the county and borough election were held together in the county court, dispensing with the separate borough election in the guildhall.
As the duke of York moved further into opposition to the court, Eyton’s sympathies became manifest. Although there is every reason to be sceptical about the precise truth of the bills drawn up against those allegedly involved in the duke’s Dartford rising, our MP’s active participation is consistent with all else that is known of his career. According to a bill endorsed by a Shropshire jury sitting before royal commissioners at Bridgnorth on 17 Aug. 1452, he was among those men of Shrewsbury who, between the previous 10 Feb. and 3 Mar., had raised war against Henry VI at Ludlow and elsewhere in Shropshire (presumably in response to the letter the duke of York had addressed to the townsmen on 3 Feb., asking for their support against Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset). Indictments unconnected with Eyton’s alleged part in the rising were also laid against him at earlier sessions held at Ludlow and Shrewsbury on 12 and 16 Aug. respectively. On the basis of the alleged extortion of 40s. from a clerk during his time as sheriff, he was described, in the exaggerated language standard in indictments, as a common extortioner and oppressor of the King’s people. To this were added two further true bills for felony: it was claimed that, on 26 Sept. 1451, he had joined his brother, Fulk, and others to raid the rectory of John Homme, rector of the free chapel of Shrawardine, taking household goods, livestock and coins worth £17 18s. 4d.; on the following 20 Dec. he allegedly broke into the house at Shrewsbury of Sir John Talbot, son and heir-apparent of the Talbot earl, and took 200lbs. of lead worth 40s. and other goods worth a further £6. To add colour to the first of these charges, Homme came before the commissioners to ask surety of the peace against him and Fulk and other soldiers dwelling with the latter.
By the time that these indictments were laid Eyton could afford to view them with equanimity. A fortnight before the commissioners arrived he had secured a general pardon. Although writs of arrest were issued for his trial for high treason, to be held at Ludlow on 29 Sept., he had a writ of non molestetis six days before this date and faced no further difficulties on the indictments. Indeed, instead of facing trial when the commission sat again at Ludlow, he and Fulk found themselves as among the jurors who acquitted several of the indicted for felony.
After the troubles of 1452, Roger resumed his activities in county and borough. On 1 Mar. 1453 he attested the county parliamentary election for the only recorded time in his career. On the following 24 July he unwisely offered surety on behalf of Thomas Banaster of Hadnall, a few miles north of Shrewsbury, only to find himself summoned into King’s bench a year later to answer for Banaster’s breach of the peace.
Eyton seems to have discharged these tasks while labouring under the disability of outlawry for failing to answer the shire knights of 1450, Burley and William Lacon I*, for a debt of 40 marks, perhaps because he had failed to pay them their parliamentary wages. This was pardoned by the Crown on 1 May 1455, and was the prelude to his own election to the Parliament which met in the wake of the Yorkist victory at the battle of St. Albans.
The strength of Eyton’s attachment to the duke of York is attested by his few appearances in the records of the late 1450s. In May 1457 he twice acted with a group of York’s retainers, including (Sir) Walter Devereux I*, to offer bail in King’s bench for other Yorkists indicted before commissioners of oyer and terminer at Hereford. In the following November the duke’s son, Edward, earl of March, named him and John Horde*, his fellow Shrewsbury MP in 1455, as his attorneys to deliver property in the town to another leading burgess, Degory Water. Early in 1459 the duke intervened to secure the arrest of two Lancashire men who had committed offences against the townsmen, and our MP rode with 30 others to witness their hanging at Wenlock.
Eyton’s commitment to the Yorkist cause was sufficient for him to take up arms when war broke out later in that year: he was with the Yorkist army which ignominiously fled from Ludford Bridge on 12 Oct. and he was then one of a select band which accompanied the duke into exile in Ireland. He was duly attainted in the Coventry Parliament at the end of the year and, more interestingly, he was also the subject of an action in King’s bench. In Hilary term 1460 Edward, prince of Wales, Humphrey, duke of Buckingham, James, earl of Wiltshire, John Ormond and William Holand, all committed Lancastrians, sued an action of trespass against him, John Horde, four other leading Shrewsbury burgesses (John Grafton†, Roger Pontesbury†, Adam Goldsmith and Degory Water) and other lesser townsmen. The subject of the action is unknown – not surprisingly it disappears from the plea rolls with the change of regime – but there is every reason to suppose that the defendants represented a strong Yorkist faction in Shrewsbury and that the action arose out of some event in the Ludford campaign.
Eyton was rewarded by York during their exile. As compensation for the confiscation of his lands in England, the duke appointed him to the office of chief engrosser of the Irish exchequer, a grant exempted from the act of resumption passed by the parliament York summoned to Drogheda in February 1460. He was not, however, destined to enjoy his new office for long. During the last session of this parliament, which opened on 21 July (11 days after the Yorkist cause had been resurrected in England by the earl of Warwick’s victory at Northampton), he was among the servants of the duke licensed by the parliament to return to England for one year, and it is unlikely he ever came back to resume the office.
Eyton, predictably, benefited from the Yorkist eventual victory in that campaign. On 1 June 1461, described as ‘King’s servitor’, he was granted the constableship of Shrewsbury castle with the custody of the gaol there; and at the end of the year he was pardoned of the sum of £100 forfeited by Browe’s failure to appear in Chancery in the previous Easter. Later he secured exemption from the Act of Resumption of 1465 and was granted a pardon of account in £100 for his second term as sheriff of Shropshire in 1465-6.
Even in his home town, however, Eyton’s influence seems to have been less than it was. In the early 1460s he presented a curious petition to the chancellor: he complained that one William Lytley, better acquainted than himself with the local jurors, proposed by ‘grete imbracyng’ to secure a verdict against him in the borough court on a feigned action of trespass and false imprisonment.
Little else is known of Eyton, although an interesting possibility is raised by the timing of his death. On 26 Apr. 1471, soon after Queen Margaret had landed at Weymouth to threaten Edward IV, he was named to a commission of array in Shropshire. He was dead by the following 23 Oct. 1471, when a yeoman of the Crown, John Punche, replaced him as constable of Shrewsbury castle.