HETON, William, of Oakham, Rutland.

Heton is an excellent example of a man of obscure origins whose energies and abilities enabled him to enjoy a long and successful career in baronial administration. No evidence survives of his parentage, but he was probably a northerner by birth. When he first appears in the records in October 1403, as a mainpernor in a grant to William Lasingby, he is described as ‘of Yorkshire’. By then, as very young man, he was probably already in the service of an important Yorkshire magnate, William, Lord Roos, for both Lasingby and the other surety, Thomas Gower, are known to have been that lord’s servants. In 1408 Roos named him as one of his feoffees in the lordship of Belvoir (Leicestershire) and later appointed him as his receiver. CFR, xii. 229; CPR, 1408-13, p. 25; Miscellany of Notts. Recs. (Thoroton Soc. xi), 170-5. He is to be distinguished from the merchant of Kingston-upon-Hull who was named as a customs collector there in 1408: CFR, xiii. 86, 115; CP40/629, rot. 199. He was generously rewarded for his service. At some date before February 1412 Roos granted him for life a messuage at Water Fulford near York, a grant that was extended, under the terms of Roos’s will of 22 Feb. 1413, to the whole manor there. CPR, 1408-13, p. 365; Reg. Chichele, ii. 24-26.

The death of Lord Roos on 1 Sept. 1414 enhanced rather than diminished Heton’s importance to the family. CIPM, xx. 237-43. Lord William bequeathed him £20 as reward for acting as one of his executors: Reg. Chichele, ii. 24-26. Between 1414 and 1446 the family endured three minorities, broken by only two brief periods when the lord was of full age. It was important to both the Crown, as guardian, and the family, that some continuity be preserved in the administration of the estates. Hence, on 17 May 1421, two months after the death of Lord William’s son John at the battle of Baugé, the Crown appointed Heton steward and receiver of the family estates, in its hands by virtue of the minority of John’s 14-year-old brother and heir, Thomas. CPR, 1416-22, p. 341; SC6/1121/12-17; PPC, iii. 88-89; HMC Rutland, iv. 88. During his brief majority, Lord John granted Heton an annuity of £10 assigned on the Leics. manor of Redmile: CCR, 1419-22, p. 187. This led to Heton taking a more prominent part in local affairs. In the time of Lord William, the Roos family had moved their principal residence from Helmsley in north Yorkshire to Belvoir, and Heton moved with them. In a pardon of 1415 he is styled ‘of Leicestershire’, and it was in that county that he was appointed to the bench in July 1424. S.J. Payling. Political Society in Lancastrian Eng. 93; C67/37, m. 43; CPR, 1422-9, p. 565. When the new lord was awarded livery of his inheritance in December 1427, he entered his service, acting for him as feoffee and attorney. Unfortunately, however, Thomas did not long enjoy his inheritance. On 18 Aug. 1430 he, like his brother before him, fell fighting for the English cause in France, thus condemning the family to a third minority. Since his son and heir was only two years old, this had more serious consequences for the family and obliged Heton to seek new masters. CPR, 1429-36, p. 62; CIPM, xxiii. 531-48; Reg. Fleming, i (Canterbury and York Soc. lxxiii), 368; CP, xi. 104-5.

Although in the tax returns of 1436 Heton was assessed – in Leicestershire, the county in which he himself was an assessor – on an annual income of as much as £40, he lacked an independent local standing. E179/192/59. The bulk of this income must have been derived from fees and annuities, for there is no evidence, at this date or later, that he had acquired a significant landed estate of his own. He may, however, have purchased property at Heckington near Sleaford in Lincolnshire. He first appears in connexion with that county as early as 1417, when, styled as ‘of Lincolnshire’, he acted as a mainpernor in Chancery for his fellow Roos retainer, Geoffrey Paynell*. More significantly, he is named as high as fifth of the 61 attestors to the Lincolnshire election of 31 Mar. 1432, when, no doubt more than coincidentally, Paynell was returned. CCR, 1413-19, p. 445; C219/14/3. On the following 3 Dec. he witnessed the important Lincolnshire deed by which Sir Robert Moton* confirmed the title of the abbey of Vaudey to land in Little Bytham, and in 1434 he was sworn to the peace in Lincolnshire rather than Leicestershire. CP40/691, cart. rot.; CPR, 1429-36, p. 382. The location of his property in the county appears from slightly later evidence: in 1436 he brought an action for an offence against his property at Heckington and, in a pardon he sued out in July 1446, he gave ‘of Heckington’ as one of his aliases. CP40/700, rot. 48d; C67/39, m. 44.

Heton’s association with Lincolnshire may explain why, during the third Roos minority, he found an outlet for his talents in the employment of the county’s leading magnate, Ralph, Lord Cromwell. The two men probably became known to each other when, in July 1425, the King had committed to Cromwell the keeping of the Roos lands, for which Heton was then acting as receiver, but not until nearly ten years later is there any evidence that our MP numbered among his servants. In Michaelmas term 1434 Heton was one of those Cromwell employed in his acquisition of the Leicestershire manor of Thrussington, and, although he did not thereafter become one of his principal agents, over the next 15 years they were frequently enough connected to demonstrate that their association was more than a passing one. Indeed,

Heton’s appointment, in 1438, as escheator in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, counties in which Cromwell was a considerable landholder, is likely to have been another product of his service. CFR, xv. 102-3; xvii. 54; CP25(1)/126/75/36. He was soon rewarded. On 14 Nov. 1439, only days after surrendering this office and while Cromwell was treasurer, he, together with one of Cromwell’s leading servants, Willam Stanlowe*, was granted the keeping of the valuable royal lordship of Mansfield in Nottinghamshire. A month later, on 10 Dec., he was also granted the keeping of three Roos manors in the same county and Leicestershire to hold at an annual rent of £57 during the minority of the 12-year-old heir. While this latter grant must have arisen in part out of his long service to the Roos family, Cromwell, as treasurer, was influential in making it. CFR, xvii. 117, 120.

Heton’s election to Parliament in 1442 is probably also to be seen in terms of his service to Cromwell. It may be more than coincidence that his only appearance as an MP came in a Parliament in which Cromwell faced pressure from Sir John Gra* to surrender a disputed manor, and for which he is known from other evidence to have mobilized his electoral influence. Whatever the truth of this, Heton continued to act as one of his agents, even holding office in Cromwell’s estate administration, for, by 1444, he was the steward of his lands in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire. C219/15/2; Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, Penshurst mss, U1475/M215, roll 5, m. 2d; SC11/822, m. 2.

Nevertheless, despite this close connexion, perhaps more important in shaping Heton’s career was his simultaneous association with another influential magnate, Humphrey Stafford, earl of Stafford and (from 1444) duke of Buckingham. This probably began soon after the death of Humphrey’s mother, Anne, in October 1438 had put her son in control of her extensive inheritance, including the lordship of Oakham. It is his service to the earl that explains why he became so involved in the affairs of the county of Rutland, dominated territorially by that lordship. The first indication that the two men were connected dates from Hilary term 1439, when Heton was joint-plaintiff with the earl in a suit against a merchant for taking their goods worth £40 from Grimsby. A year later, on 12 Jan. 1440, he was appointed steward of the earl’s estates in Nottinghamshire and Rutland, an office which must have significantly extended his local influence. CP40/712, rot. 454; C. Rawcliffe, Staffords, 204-5. It is worth noting here that, when, on 4 Jan. 1442, he was elected to represent Rutland in Parliament, he was styled as ‘of Oakham’ in the return, and what is known of the latter years of his career suggests he then lived in that county. He attested three county elections there between 1449 and 1453, heading the list on the first and last occasion, and, more significantly, he served a term as sheriff there in 1451-2. C219/15/2, 6; 16/1, 2; CFR, xviii. 251. Just as the first part of his long career had been shaped by his service to William, Lord Roos, its latter part was determined by his service to Cromwell and Stafford.

This association with Stafford raises the question of Heton’s relationship with John Heton, MP for Buckinghamshire in the Parliaments of February 1449 and 1450, who was in the employment of the Staffords as early as 1437, and with John’s brother, Richard, a lawyer of Gray’s Inn, who, by the mid 1450s, was also in their service. Their mutual connexion with the Staffords makes it likely that they were all related. Further, in 1439, John offered surety for our MP as keeper of three Roos manors. Rawcliffe, 222, 224, 239; CFR, xvii. 117. If, however, there must still be doubt about their precise relationship, there can be none that George Heton, MP for the Dorset borough of Bridport in 1447, was our MP’s son. In a will made in October 1433 Thomas Ricard of Harlaxton (Lincolnshire) bequeathed ten marks and a gold collar to his godson, George, son of William Heton, and in 1451 George is said to have been resident at Heckington. Lincs. AO, Reg. Gray, f. 164; CFR, xviii. 212. This filial relationship helps to explain why George, in about 1440, found a place in the royal household as clerk of the larderer’s office. To promote one of his sons, our MP had probably called upon the patronage of either Lord Cromwell, then treasurer of England, or of Sir Robert Roos, a younger son of Lord William and then one of the King’s carvers. At some date between 1432 and 1443 Sir Robert brought a case against Heton as his father’s last surviving feoffee and executor, but this was probably a collusive suit designed to clarify the will’s terms: C1/39/143.

Heton’s career demonstrates how important a successful administrator could become even when he had no significant landholdings of his own. At the height of his career, in the early 1440s, he wielded considerable influence as the steward of two powerful peers and as the farmer of part of the Roos estate. On the other hand, his career also reveals the limitations of such a position. His influence was almost entirely dependent on the patronage of others; unlike the successful lawyer who rose to high office in that profession, an able administrator like Heton rarely profited sufficiently to purchase a worthwhile landed estate of his own. Further, because he was seen exclusively as a creature of greater men, he never found a place in a county community. It is no coincidence that it was Rutland, a county without a dominating gentry elite, that he represented in Parliament and in which he served a term as sheriff.

The date of Heton’s death is unknown. The last reference to him dates from July 1456 (more than 50 years after he first appeared in the records) when he was reappointed to the Leicestershire bench for the last time. He was probably dead by November 1457, when he was omitted from the bench, and almost certainly so by 24 June 1459 when a writ was issued to the sheriff of Lincolnshire to inquire if he was still tenant of the Roos lordship of Belvoir. In June 1463 he was described as one of the deceased feoffees of Thomas, Lord Roos (d.1430). CPR, 1452-61, pp. 668-9; 1461-7, p. 286; E199/23/32.