HALTON, John, of Stagsden, Beds. and Castle Bromwich, Warws.

Halton’s career is a tantalizing one. What is certainly known of it stamps him as a lawyer: his occasional appearances as an attorney in the central courts together with the inclusion ‘of London’ in the general pardon granted to him in 1446 leave little room for doubt. CP40/739, rot. 526; C67/39, m. 12. He seems to have come originally from Staffordshire: in July 1439 he was described as resident in that county when, in company with John Andrew I*, he stood surety when a royal grant was made to Thomas Arblaster*. Since these two men were annuitants of Humphrey, earl of Stafford, it is probable that Halton was, at this early stage in his career, a servant of that great earl. This would explain his election to represent Stafford’s borough of Bletchingley in Surrey in 1442. CFR, xvii. 95; C219/15/2.

The earl’s patronage is probably also, in part at least, the explanation for the good marriage Halton made shortly before his election for Bletchingley. His wife was a minor heiress with claims to property at Flore in Northamptonshire and at Stagsden in Bedfordshire. There can be no doubt that it was the MP rather than a namesake who married this heiress. The pardon of 1446 describes the London and Castle Bromwich lawyer as alias ‘of Stagsden and Flore’: C67/39, m. 12. Stafford was a feoffee, and probably also a creditor, of the bride’s parents, and it is likely he had an influence over the marriages of their daughters. C1/29/68-70; 38/137. But, as a later Chancery petition suggests, John also had his legal skills to thank for a better marriage than a man of his obscure birth could otherwise have expected. In answer to a petition sued against him in 1463, Walter Mauntell, a Northamptonshire esquire, recalled a conversation he had had with the bride’s father: Bosom told him that Halton’s ‘diligent labur’ had enabled him to secure possession of the manor of Flore. He thus wanted Mauntell, as one of his feoffees, to settle lands in Bedfordshire with an annual value of five marks on our MP after his death. C1/29/67. Whether Halton was then the husband of one of his daughters does not appear, but such a marriage had certainly taken place before Bosom’s death.

However, if Halton hoped that this marriage would form the basis of further advancement, he was to be disappointed. One reason was rival claims to his wife’s inheritance, and it is probable that he was able to make good her claim to only a part of it; but he was more directly handicapped by the close relationship he had formed with the wealthy Warwickshire esquire, Robert Arderne*. He certainly never gained a share of the manor of Flore: C1/29/69. Why he should have been so unwise to abandon Stafford’s service for that of the unstable Arderne is not known. We know only that, from about 1443, he was Arderne’s principal legal agent, acting for him in several of the conveyances by which his master dismantled a valuable inheritance. In Trinity term 1443, described as ‘of Stagsden’, he offered surety for Arderne, who was facing an indictment as accessory to murder; in May 1445 he swore upon the Bible that a Northamptonshire manor, sold by his master to Robert Danvers*, was not entailed; and on 10 Mar. 1447 he entered into a bond in 200 marks to one of Arderne’s creditors, the King’s attorney-general, John Vampage*. KB27/729, rex rot. 20; 737, rot. 100; CCR, 1441-7, p. 475. He was also involved in some of the offences for which Arderne was charged: on 10 Jan. 1446 was indicted before the Leicestershire j.p.s. for the felonious theft of a horse. KB27/741, rex rot. 8d. In this indictment he is described as ‘John Hawton, once of Castle Bromwich, gentleman, alias John Jakson, once of same’, aliases which also appear in the pardon he secured in 1446: C67/39, m. 12. Castle Bromwich was Arderne’s residence.

Halton’s second election to Parliament, for the borough of Warwick to the Parliament of 1450, may primarily have been the result of this service to Arderne, although it is possible that he had his own connexions in the borough. During the Parliament he stood surety for the appearance of his fellow Warwick MP, John Poers*, in the court of common pleas, describing himself ‘of Warwick, gentleman’. CP40/759, rot. 129d; C219/16/1. There is, however, no other evidence to justify that description, and the probability is that he was elected as an outsider. His anomalous return probably arose out of the tense state of national politics. The duke of York had recently returned from Ireland, anxious to secure the election of his supporters to Parliament. Although there is nothing to suggest any personal association between the duke and either Halton or Arderne, their later conduct shows that they were supporters of his cause. That support was soon to be made evident. On 13 May 1452, before royal commissioners of oyer and terminer sitting at Dartford in Kent, Halton and his master were among those indicted for involvement in the rising of John Wilkins, a pedlar of Stratford-on-Avon. Halton seems to have been one of the prime movers: in the attainder of Sir William Oldhall* in 1453 he was named alongside Wilkins and Jack Cade as the ‘grete traytours’ whom Sir William had aided. There is no reason to doubt this identification of the rebel with our MP: not only is his earlier association with Arderne sufficient proof, but the rebel is described, as one might expect for a lawyer, as ‘of the parish of St. Andrew in Holborn outside the bar of the Old Temple, gentleman’. R. Virgoe, ‘Ancient Indictments in K.B.’, in Med. Kentish Soc. (Kent Rec. Soc. xviii), 260; PROME, xii. 307-8.

This, however, is where the certainty ends. The fate of Halton’s master is known – Arderne was executed for treason in August 1452 – and there is reason to suspect, but no proof, that our MP suffered the same fate a few years later. On 2 Dec. 1452 John Styvecle* was paid 6s. 8d. for the safe custody at Westminster of John Halton, arrested for treason. Halton is given no style, hence, it must remain only a possibility, albeit a strong one, that this was our MP. If it was, then he was presumably still in custody when, as a feoffee of the ill-fated Arderne, he quitclaimed the manor of Dorfold in Cheshire to the attorney-general’s son, another John Vampage, on the following 5 Feb. E403/791, mm. 4, 6; CCR, 1447-54, p. 419. Very soon after this, the imprisoned man appealed one Robert Norris of high treason before the duke of Somerset as constable of England. On 23 May 1453 the sheriffs of London were ordered to erect barriers at West Smithfield so that the consequent battle could take place on 25 June (it was later postponed until 23 July). Excerpta Historica ed. Bentley, 391; E364/87, rot. 2. For the preparations for the battle: Issues of the Exchequer ed. Devon, 477; PPC, vi. 132-40 (where Halton has been wrongly rendered ‘Lyalton’). The result of the conflict is lost, but if the appellor was the MP he survived the encounter. In Michaelmas term 1454 he appeared in the court of King’s bench to plead not guilty to his indictment for involvement in Wilkins’s rising, and after a period of imprisonment in the Marshalsea he was acquitted in the following Trinity term. Soon after, on 11 Dec. 1455, described as ‘of London, gentleman’, he joined another of those implicated in that rising, a yeoman of Rochester, in entering a bond in £17 to two lawyers, William Lacon I* and Humphrey Starky. KB27/774, rex rot. 35d; Virgoe, 261; CCR, 1454-61, p. 106.

Here, however, Halton’s luck may have run out. The last of the doubtful references to him is the most interesting. According to the chronicle written by John Benet, on 23 Feb. 1456 an apprentice ‘de curia’ of Gray’s Inn, called John ‘Helton’, was hanged, drawn and quartered for making bills saying that the King’s son ‘non fuit filius regine’ but, before dying, ‘omnia hic recusavit’. John Benet’s Chron. (Cam. Misc. xxiv), 216. Given his support for the duke of York in 1452, this unwise apprentice may have been our MP. One other piece of evidence could be cited in support of the identification: on the previous 10 Feb. Halton, described as ‘of the parish of St. Andrew in Holborn outside the bar of the Old Temple, gentleman’, had found surety of the peace of £100 in King’s bench on an unknown matter. That sum was declared forfeit when he defaulted in the following term, and, since no later references to him have been traced, his execution is an obvious reason for this default. KB29/86, rot. 12. On the other hand, the surname ‘Halton’ or ‘Helton’ is not sufficiently rare to allow for certainty. Our MP did not, in any event, suffer attainder. He left as his son and heir, Thomas, who was still a minor in 1463 and was thereafter involved in a struggle to secure his maternal inheritance. G. Baker, Northants. i. 154; CP40/794, rot. 350; 813, rots. 110, 350; 818, rot. 132; C1/29/67-70. He left his two sisters as his coheiresses: C1/38/137.