HARDYNG, William, of Beadnell and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumb.

Hardyng’s father Sampson was an important gentry figure in Northumberland, the palatinate of Durham and Newcastle-upon-Tyne from the 1370s until his death in around 1427. He served on numerous royal commissions and as a collector of customs in Newcastle, and, remarkably, he represented the county of Northumberland in five Parliaments and the borough of Newcastle in six. He almost certainly had some legal training and was frequently called upon to act in his neighbours’ property transactions and to settle their disputes. The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 288-90. William, the eldest of his two sons from his second marriage (contracted before 1402), followed, albeit in a much lesser key, in his father’s footsteps and soon became involved in the administration of both Newcastle and Northumberland. In January 1426 he attested the county parliamentary election; and in July 1428 he served as one of the jurors before the justices of gaol delivery in Newcastle, a duty he repeated the next two years running. C219/13/4; JUST3/54/4, 6, 9. By this time he was almost certainly resident in the town along with his younger brother, Roger, who later married the daughter of one of the leading townsmen, Roger Booth*. The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 293; iii. 290. On 7 Jan. 1433 he witnessed a deed in the town’s guildhall, and on the following 1 July he was elected to represent the town in Parliament. Early Newcastle Deeds, 190; C219/14/4.

Little is known of him for the rest of the 1430s, although, interestingly, on 8 Nov. 1435 he secured letters of protection as in the retinue of Sir Ralph Gray (d.1443), captain of Roxburgh. CP40/699, rot. 454d. Thereafter, throughout the 1440s and into the early 1450s he was, if one may judge from his elections to office, the most important man in Newcastle. Between 1441 and 1453 he served no fewer than five terms as mayor and represented the town in three further Parliaments. Interestingly, there was a correlation between the two. On 1 Feb. 1447, during his third term as mayor, he was elected to the Commons, attesting his own election; and on 20 Jan. 1449 he was elected again and, within weeks of his return home, he was chosen as mayor for the fourth time. He was again named mayor in September 1452 and while in office was returned to the Commons for a fourth and final time. C219/15/4, 6; 16/2. In his last Parliament he may have been jointly responsible for the petition presented on behalf of the inhabitants of the marcher counties and Newcastle concerning corrupt practice in the wardens’ courts. Welford, i. 331; PROME xii. 311-12.

None the less, despite his near continual involvement in Newcastle’s administration, Hardyng was more than a mere townsman. This is implicit in the designation as ‘esquire’ generally given to him in the records, as, for example, when he sat as a gaol delivery juror in 1440 and defended an action of debt against William Neville, Lord Fauconberg, in 1450. JUST3/54/17; CP40/758, rot. 120d. His landholdings are poorly undocumented, but he inherited his father’s property at Beadnell, nearly 50 miles north of Newcastle, and nearby Howick, and in right of his wife (whose family is unknown), he had further property at Newbiggin (in Newburn), seven miles from Newcastle. This helps to explain why, in the midst of a series of terms as mayor of Newcastle in the 1440s, he was pricked as sheriff of Northumberland. Feudal Aids, iv. 78, 79, 83; CFR, xviii. 9.

Yet, despite his obvious importance there is little to be discovered about Hardyng’s career beyond this rather bland list of offices and Parliaments. His connexions were much less extensive than those of his father, although he did act as a feoffee for Alan Bird*. C1/64/466. This obscurity extends to his date of death. His last recorded public duty was his appointment as a commissioner for gaol delivery in December 1454, and on 1 Dec. 1455, describing himself as an esquire, he purchased a royal pardon. C67/41, m. 10. No later references to him have been traced, and he may have died soon after he sued out this pardon. He was succeeded by his son, Roger, and it is possible that another William – retained in November 1472 by Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, as his feodary of the Sussex lordship of Petworth – was his younger son. Robert Hardyng, thrice sheriff of Newcastle between 1474 and 1491 and its mayor in 1497, may have been his grandson. Petworth House, Suss. mss, receivers’ accts. 7227 (MAC/20); Welford, i. 366, 382, 398, 407.