Illingworth’s origins are as obscure as his career was successful. It may be that he was a Nottinghamshire man by birth, for he first occurs in the records in connexion with that county. In Easter term 1431 he appeared in person in the court of King’s bench to sue a wheelwright for assaulting him at Kirkby-in-Ashfield in the west of the county.
As his formal legal training came to an end Illingworth made the first of his many property acquisitions. In the early 1440s he acquired from John Clogh, a yeoman from Codnor, a small estate in Unstone and Apperknowle in north Derbyshire.
Nevertheless, even though Illingworth was almost certainly a manorial lord by the mid 1440s, his landed stake in Nottinghamshire, a county with a dominant gentry elite, was insufficient to justify his election to represent the county in Parliament on 16 Jan. 1447. There can be no doubt that he owed his return to the powerful patronage of Ralph, Lord Cromwell. In 1446 he acted as an arbiter with Cromwell’s councillor, William Stanlowe*, in a Kentish dispute, and although this is the first direct evidence of his association with Lord Ralph it is probable that it does not mark its beginning. It is unlikely to have been coincidence that one of his earliest acquisitions was of land situated in the immediate neighbourhood of Cromwell’s manor of Dronfield. The closeness of their association is testified by Illingworth’s appointment as Cromwell’s deputy steward of the north parts of the duchy of Lancaster in March 1451 and his nomination as one of the feoffees for the execution of his will in November 1454. Of his four returns to Parliament, all of which occurred during Cromwell’s lifetime, the most significant was that of 30 June 1455 to an assembly in which his lord was politically vulnerable, having lost the office of King’s chamberlain and become the object of the enmity of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick.
After Cromwell’s death in January 1456 Illingworth took no further part in the administrative affairs of what was probably his native county. Indeed, even before this date his legal practice and involvement with the running of his Inn must have meant he was more frequently in London than on his new Nottinghamshire estate.
So great a windfall explains why Illingworth was able to acquire further property, adding lands in the south to those he held in the Midlands. By Michaelmas term 1455, when he sued two local men for close-breaking, he was in possession of land at Clapham near Bedford held of the Augustinian priory of Newnham. He also held of the priory a messuage called Le George and four shops in Bedford High Street, probably acquired with his Clapham lands. More important was the property he held at Mitcham in Surrey. Described in his inquisition post mortem as comprising a chief messuage, four tofts and 200 acres, and valued at £4 p.a., he had acquired it by Easter 1456 when he was involved in successful litigation for its protection. The acquisition explains his appointment to the Surrey bench in the following January.
By the time this purchase was complete, Illingworth’s career had taken a further significant step forward. While there is no direct evidence of where his political sympathies lay during the civil war of 1459-61, there are good grounds for believing he favoured York: in October 1456 he was a feoffee of the duke of York’s notorious henchman Sir William Oldhall*; he was removed from the Surrey bench in January 1459 only to be restored after the Yorkist victory at the battle of Northampton; and in February 1459 he was named by the Yorkist Sir Henry Pierrepont† to act as an arbiter in his violent dispute with the Lancastrian Sir William Plumpton*.
These indications of Yorkist sympathies take on added substance in the light of Illingworth’s rapid advancement once Edward IV had ascended the throne. For the first time he became the recipient of valuable grants of royal patronage. On 15 July 1461 he was regranted in fee the 200 acres of wasteland in Kirkby Hardwick he had held since 1446, to which were added small parcels of forfeited land in neighbouring Kirkby Woodhouse and nearby Awsworth. Far more valuable was the grant made to him eight days later of a life annuity of £40 from the fee farm of Nottingham. These grants of patronage were soon followed by one of office: in September 1462 he was appointed chief baron of the Exchequer with a fee of 150 marks p.a.
The considerable increase in income occasioned by this promotion enabled Illingworth to complete, in Trinity term 1463, the purchase of the manor of Bunny and the other former Cromwell manors. The price must have been a considerable one. The manor of Bunny alone, albeit the most valuable of the manors, had a capital value, reckoned at 20 years’ purchase, of nearly £800, and in November 1466 he still owed £500.
The explanation probably lies in Illingworth’s desire to carve out, in the country of his birth, a country estate for his elder son, Ralph, who, born seemingly in the late 1440s, may have been the godson of our MP’s former master, Lord Cromwell. The sale of so much of Cromwell’s property enabled Illingworth to do so with greater facility than would have been possible under the normal operation of the land market for, as one of Cromwell’s feoffees, he was ideally placed to negotiate with the executors. Having provided in this way for his elder son, his later purchases were driven by the need to make adequate provision for his younger son, Richard. Here he was able to take advantage of the financial difficulties of the Greys of Codnor, a midlands baronial family with significant landholdings in the south. Ironically their difficulties were largely due to a punitive settlement imposed upon them by Cromwell in 1441. In 1467 Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor (d.1496) sold to Illingworth the Hampshire manors of Upton Grey and Tunworth near Basingstoke and these were then settled on the younger Richard in reversion after his father’s death.
During the mid 1460s, when his career was at its height, Illingworth also assured the future financial security of his daughter Ellen: in 1465 he contracted with William Babington* and William’s nephew, another William, for her marriage to the latter. This match arose from legal and local Nottinghamshire connexions – the elder William was a lawyer from Chilwell not far from Kirkby Hardwick – but the younger branch of the Babingtons into which Ellen was marrying were settled in Oxfordshire. Her father was able to drive a hard bargain: for a portion of £200 he secured her a jointure of as much as 50 marks p.a.
Illingworth’s extended landholdings together with his Exchequer office were enough to justify the bestowal of knighthood upon him at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in May 1465. Less welcome to him may have been another manifestation of his enhanced status, namely the King’s recourse to him for loans. During his years as chief baron he advanced a total of £618, although he does seem to have successfully secured repayment.
Illingworth died on 26 Apr. 1476 without having updated his will of five years before. Its terms mirror the breadth of his geographical interests. He left small bequests to eight religious houses, including £10 to the Nottinghamshire priory of Beauvale and five marks to the Surrey priory of Merton, and he remembered the parish churches of Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Bunny, Stanton-on-the-Wolds, Stanford-upon-Soar, Breadsall, Upton Grey, Tunworth and Dorking. But it was in the London church of St. Alban Wood Street, where his second wife was interred, that he wished to be buried, and his largest single religious bequest was to the warden and convent of the Friars Minor in the City to keep the anniversary of his death for ten years. Given the success of his career his legacies were comparatively modest: 40 marks to be distributed on the day of his death between prisoners and other poor in the City; 20 marks to be distributed between the poor tenants of his estates; 50 marks to his elder son’s wife; 50 marks each to his three grandchildren; and smaller sums to various kinsmen and servants. He appointed his two sons, Ralph and Richard, as his executors.
The bulk of Illingworth’s estates passed to Ralph, but Richard inherited his two Hampshire manors and his lands at Mitcham. Ralph singularly failed to advance the fortunes of the family. A lawyer trained at the Inner Temple, his career began promisingly. Indeed, in May 1473, no doubt supported by his father’s wealth, he entered into a major undertaking, farming from Robert Wroth the keepership of the Fleet prison and the palace of Westminster at an annual rent of as much as 100 marks.