This MP poses a problem of identification. He could be either the obscure husband of a minor Yorkshire heiress, or their much more prominent son. The former was alive in Michaelmas term 1448, when he and his wife brought an action to recover the right of presentation to the church of Thornton Dale in north Yorkshire.
Nothing is known of Ingleton’s origins beyond the identification of his parents. There can, however, be no doubt that early in his career he lived at Warton in north Lancashire – in a bond of 1437 he was described as resident there and, in a pardon of 1455, ‘late of Warton’ appeared among his aliases – and little doubt that his family originated from Ingleton in north Yorkshire, a few miles to the east of Warton.
It was probably through Parr that Ingleton was able to attach himself to greater masters, namely, the powerful junior branch of the Nevilles. His entry into their service may have predated his return to represent Appleby in the Parliament of 1442, but it is more likely that he was elected as the nominee of Parr, who as the deputy sheriff of Westmorland was well placed to influence the election.
The geographical focus of Ingleton’s career changed in the early 1450s. The explanation may lie in the opportunity for employment consequent upon the grant to Salisbury’s son, Richard, earl of Warwick, of the chamberlainship of the Exchequer on 6 Dec. 1450. Only nine days after this appointment was made he was named, alongside Thomas Stockdale†, one of Warwick’s tellers as chamberlain and another former Appleby MP, to take testimony on a petition pending in Chancery, and it may be that he was already employed in the Exchequer at this date.
Not, however, until 12 July 1454 did Ingleton acquire formal Exchequer office when the chancellor there, the Neville servant Thomas Witham, named him as comptroller of the Pipe at an annual fee of £6. Significantly, this promotion came during the first protectorate of the duke of York, who numbered the Nevilles among his most valuable allies, and in these circumstances it is not surprising that further rewards should have come our MP’s way. On the following 29 Nov., while the duke was still Protector, he was granted the wardship and marriage of Emmota, grand-daughter and coheir of Nicholas Wotton II*, at a farm to be negotiated. This brought him the custody of property in Wiltshire and Somerset, and a welcome augmentation of his income.
The duke of York’s loss of the protectorate early in 1455 marked the first reverse in Ingleton’s career. Although, on 1 Feb. 1455, he was able to secure the re-grant of the Wotton wardship at an annual farm of 20 marks, a month later he was replaced as London customs collector by a nominee of Queen Margaret.
In the meantime, however, Ingleton could console himself with the profit his career had already made him, and, ironically, it was while the prospect of further advance was closed to him that he made his first substantial recorded investment in real property. Here again it was the Nevilles who provided him with the opportunity. By a final concord levied in Trinity term 1457 he acquired in fee the manors at Whiston and Woodford in Northamptonshire from Lord Fauconberg. Later evidence shows that he numbered among Fauconberg’s most trusted servants, and it may be that the grant was an act of patronage on the lord’s part. More likely, Fauconberg was relieving financial difficulties by selling an outlying estate to a favoured retainer.
Ingleton’s public career was resurrected by the Yorkist victory at the battle of Northampton and the accession of Edward IV in the following spring. Now established as a country gentleman, his newly-acquired lands justified his appointment late in 1460 as both j.p. and escheator in his adopted county. He also maintained his place in the Exchequer, receiving assignments there in November 1460 and January 1461 for the fee of the newly-appointed chancellor, George Neville, bishop of Exeter.
More immediately valuable to Ingleton was the grant made to him and two others on 22 July 1462 of the keeping of the alien priory of Cowick in Exeter and the prebend of Hayes in the free chapel of Exeter castle at the no doubt favourable farm of £50 p.a. This grant is to be seen in the context of another much more important one made a few days later to the former Lord Fauconberg, elevated to the earldom of Kent in 1461. He was endowed in tail-male with extensive forfeited estates in the West Country, and, since he was the Neville with whom Ingleton was most closely associated (in March 1462 their names had been joined in a pardon of account), this probably also explains the grant to our MP. His intimate concern in the affairs of the new earl is made apparent in this endowment: if the earl died without male issue our MP and other of his men were to hold the property for 12 years for the implementation of his will. This eventuality was soon realized. The earl died on 9 Jan. 1463, leaving only daughters. His will is lost, but a later pardon shows that Ingleton was one of its executors.
Ingleton’s new-found importance was soon translated into further property purchases. In 1462 he bought another Northamptonshire manor at Horton from Thomas Reynes of Clifton Reygnes (Buckinghamshire), adding to the lands he had acquired there in the late 1450s from Isabel, widow of Sir Henry Pleasington*.
It was, however, some years before Ingleton could make his title secure. He was troubled by his neighbour, William Garnon of Leckhampstead, as residual heir of Chastillon. After Garnon had sued a writ of formedon against Prysote’s feoffees, the matter was, in January 1466, put into the hands of arbiters headed by two justices of King’s bench, Thomas Billing* and William Lacon I*. The award they made in London on 4 Feb. has one interesting feature. Although they ruled against Garnon’s claim, they also sought to reconcile the two men by providing for the marriage of Garnon’s son and heir, John, to Ingleton’s daughter, ‘Jaket’. Her father was to pay Garnon 200 marks for the match, and Garnon, in return, was to spend this sum on lands to be settled on the couple and, of his own property, to grant them lands worth £12 p.a. Whether this marriage ever took place, however, must be doubtful, and the award did not bring an immediate end to our MP’s difficulties. He sued Garnon for failure to convey the manor to his nominees, George Neville, now archbishop of York, and the archbishop’s brother, John, earl of Northumberland, and in Hilary term 1467 a jury found for him and he had judgement against his rival in respect of the bond in 1,000 marks that Garnon had given him to abide the award. This brought Garnon to a realization of the difficulties of his position, and on the following 20 June he quitclaimed the manor and advowson to our MP and the archbishop of York.
Thus seemingly free of rival claims Ingleton set about making his new purchase a suitable residence for a family newly-established among the county gentry. To this end he resumed an earlier project for the foundation of a chantry in the church there. On 8 July 1468, as an assign of the feoffees of John Barton’s widow, he paid £50 for a royal licence to complete the foundation.
Purchase was not, however, the only method Ingleton employed to extend the landholdings of his family. In the late 1460s, when his influence was at its height, he contracted a potentially lucrative marriage for George, then probably his eldest surviving son. The bride Sibyl (b.c.1463), was the only daughter of Thomas Billing the younger by Margery, daughter and heiress of Robert Fitzellis of Waterperry in Oxfordshire. She not only brought a valuable connexion – her paternal grandfather, Thomas Billing, employed as an arbiter by our MP over Thornton, became c.j.KB in January 1469 – but, leaving aside the distant and eventually-unrealized prospect of inheriting a share of the judge’s property, she had much to look forward to by way of her maternal inheritance. At about the time the marriage took place Ingleton stood pledge in the court of Chancery for the prosecution of a petition by the bride’s father. This complained that Fitzellis’s feoffees had refused to implement the settlement made on the marriage of the bride’s parents, and it may be that the satisfactory resolution of this dispute was one of the conditions upon which Ingleton contracted the match. However, this may be, the match was certainly in agitation by May 1467, when our MP entered into a bond to the Billings, the bride’s father and grandfather.
Ingleton’s change of fortune gave an opportunity to his rival for the manor of Thornton to reassert his claim. On 2 May 1470, after the earl of Warwick had fled into exile, Thomas Garnon, presumably a near kinsman (although not the son) of the releasee of 1467, broke his close and houses there, taking goods worth as much as £40 and assaulting his servants. Significantly, among Garnon’s companions in this raid was the queen’s brother, Sir Richard Wydeville, and our MP must have feared he would lose the manor. His removal from the Buckinghamshire bench in the following July can have done nothing to diminish this fear. The Readeption barely three months later gave him the opportunity to re-establish his position. On 14 Oct. he sued Wydeville, Garnon and others in the court of King’s bench for damages of 100 marks, and his appointment in the same month to commissions of inquiry and oyer and terminer in the county offered him the chance to seek further redress.
In the following spring, however, political circumstances changed once more with Edward IV’s victorious return. Ingleton found himself once again compromised, although he had probably been wise enough not to commit himself too far in his support of the Nevilles. Further, he was not without associations with those who had remained loyal to Edward IV. He had long been closely connected with one of the victims of the Readeption regime, John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, who had, in January 1459, named him as one of his attorneys in England during his absence in Italy and later chose him as one of the feoffees for the execution of his will.
It was probably in anticipation that his death would not be long delayed that, on 8 Dec. 1472, Ingleton gave all his goods to Billing, now c.j.KB, Richard Pygot, serjeant-at-law (a northern lawyer who, like Ingleton, had served the Nevilles), Robert Tanfeld, an old friend, and his two young sons, George and John. These trustees were to perform the undertakings he had made at George’s betrothal to Billing’s grand-daughter (although the precise undertakings are not detailed in the grant) and to marry his ward, John Cheyne of Drayton Beauchamp (Buckinghamshire), to one of his daughters. The last recorded act of his life was his appearance in King’s bench on the following 12 July to acknowledge this grant for enrolment.
Ingleton’s determination to advertise the establishment of his family among the gentry is made evident in the fine altar tomb and brass he commissioned for his body in the church of Thornton. The former, decorated with the figures of 18 saints and bedesmen, was demolished with the chancel in the late eighteenth century, but was recovered from the grounds of the manor-house at Thornton and rebuilt in the nave in the 1940s. The latter is a rare example of a quadruple canopy depicted on a brass, and bears the images of Ingleton, in full plate armour, his three wives and, at the foot, small figures presumably intended for his children. The latter are in three distinct groupings, and on the natural assumption that this is to distinguish the issue of one wife from another, then by his first wife he had three sons and five daughters, by his second, two sons and three daughters, and by his third, a son and two daughters. Few of these can have survived to adulthood.