LUCY, Sir William (d.1460), of Cublington, Bucks. and Dallington, Northants. and Richard’s Castle, Herefs.

Lucy had a notable career. His early knighthood makes his career easy to distinguish from that of his contemporary, William Lucy (d.1466) of Charlecote, Warws., s. and h. of Sir Thomas Lucy† and father of another William†. The combination of his paternal and maternal inheritance made him potentially one of the richest English gentry, yet the longevity of his parents meant he had a long wait before these considerable expectations were realized. As he waited, he spent two periods of sustained campaigning in France and contracted two notable marriages. On belatedly coming into his inheritance, he made a career at Henry VI’s court, finding a place on the royal council in the early 1450s. Even though he gained very little reward from the Crown and had no close ties with the Lancastrian nobility, he remained impressively loyal to that King until killed, in mysterious circumstances, on the field of Northampton in 1460.

As a descendant of Richard de Lucy (d.1179), justiciar of Henry II, Lucy had an ancestry of ancient distinction. The family’s high standing is exemplified by the marriages of his grandfather, Sir Reynold Lucy, to a sister of Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk (d.1399) and of his father to a substantial heiress. Another facet of the family history of relevance to his career is the great longevity of the recent heads of the family. His great-grandfather, Sir Geoffrey Lucy†, who represented Buckinghamshire in seven Parliaments between 1352 and 1372, lived into his mid seventies; his grandfather was about 80 when he died in 1437; and his father died at the age of about 70 in 1444. CP, viii. 257-63; T.B. Pugh, Southampton Plot, 114. The fact that their family lands spent so long in the hands of old men may explain why the Lucys appear less prominent than their wealth entitled them to be. Even before the marriage of our MP’s parents, the family had lands in four counties – Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire – with their principal properties lying at Cublington in Buckinghamshire and Dallington in Northamptonshire. This estate alone was sufficient to place the head of the family among the leading county gentry. Indeed, his grandfather, Sir Reynold, was assessed at as much as £92 p.a. to the subsidy of 1436. CIPM, xviii. 64-67; E179/238/90. But our MP’s expectations were much greater. His mother was one of the heiresses of two knightly families, the Talbots of Richard’s Castle and the Archdeacons of Ruan Lanihorne. She had probably married our MP’s father before the death of her own father in late 1400 and had certainly done so by Feb. 1402: CIPM, xviii. 446; CPR, 1399-1401, p. 434; CP, i. 187-8; CAD, iv. A8655. The couple were closely-enough related to require a papal dispensation to marry, and this was granted by Boniface IX (that is, by 1 Oct. 1404). Some doubt about the legality of the match must have persisted, for, in 1421, probably at about the time our MP came of age, the couple successfully petitioned Martin V to grant a confirmation for the ‘tranquillity of their conscience’: CPL, vii. 197. Although these inheritances were subject to division – her aunt, Philippa, took a moiety of the Talbot inheritance, and the other moiety of that inheritance and the Archdeacon lands were initially divided with her three sisters – a series of childless deaths united a substantial part in her hands. The Talbot inheritance is set out in the inq. post mortem of her uncle: CIPM, xvi. 771-8. Philippa’s death in 1417 united it in the hands of the Archdeacon daughters: CIPM, xx. 762-4. With the death of Sir Thomas Arundell*, once husband of our MP’s aunt, Margery (d.1420), in 1443, the combined Talbot and Archdeacon inheritance was divided only in two, half in the hands of our MP’s mother, the other half in that of her niece, Joan, wife of Sir Nicholas Carew (d.1447) and later of Sir Robert Vere*: CFR, xiii. 86; xv. 148; xvii. 272-3. Only a relatively small part of the Archdeacon inheritance passed to the heir male, Thomas Archdeacon†, nephew of Sir Warin: The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 45. When, much later, her lands descended to our MP, she held the valuable lordship of Richard’s Castle in Herefordshire, and the manors of Woodham Mortimer in Essex, Cotheridge in Worcestershire and Elerky in Cornwall.

Lucy’s father was notable for something other than his profitable marriage: he was one of the most trusted servants of Edmund Mortimer, earl of March. As such, in 1415 he had been fortunate to avoid trial for misprision of treason when the plot against Henry V, headed by the earl’s brother-in-law, Richard, earl of Cambridge, was revealed on the eve of the King’s departure for France. Like Earl Edmund, he redeemed himself by fighting in the campaigns of 1415 and 1417. Pugh, 131, 162; DKR, xliv. 575, 593; E101/51/2, m. 7. Our MP’s own military career began later, for he was not knighted until the summer of 1425 or shortly before (no details of his early military service are known). His first appearance in the records is, however, in the context of his family’s service to the earl of March. On 20 Feb. 1424 the earl, readying himself to depart for Ireland to take up the position of King’s lieutenant there, made a settlement with Sir Walter that was quite remarkable in its generosity, even for a man as notoriously open-handed as the earl. For a marriage between our MP and the earl’s orphaned first cousin, Margaret Neville, he agreed to settle on the couple and their issue (saving the reversion) lands worth as much as £100 p.a. with the promise of lands worth a further 50 marks p.a. if he died without issue or a further £100 p.a. if he died childless. In return, Sir Walter was obliged to offer nothing, at least in the terms of the surviving contract. The earl quickly honoured what appears to have been a reckless promise: on 1 Mar. he gave the couple, to hold for the term of ten years, the lordships of Narberth (Pembrokeshire) and St. Clears (Carmarthen) and the manors of Eardisland (HHHHerefordshire) and Wyke Dyve (in Wicken, Northamptonshire), a few miles to the north of Cublington; and, on 24 Mar., he alienated these lands to the couple not in fee tail as he had undertaken but yet more generously in fee simple. Bodl. Earls of Craven mss, Box 63; CIPM, xxii. 481; CPR, 1422-9, pp. 322, 342; SC6/1113/1. So striking and seemingly one-sided a settlement is hard to explain, but part of that explanation undoubtedly lies in the earl’s indebtedness. His finances had not recovered from the swingeing and unjustified fine of 10,000 marks that Henry V had imposed upon him for his unlicensed marriage to Anne, daughter of Edmund Stafford, earl of Stafford. This left him dependant on his leading servants for loans, and Sir Walter advanced him 500 marks for the fine’s payment. Pugh, 80-81, 162. The marriage settlement of 1424 may thus have been connected with the repayment of this and perhaps other loans. Yet this can only be part of the reason. Sir Walter, wealthy though he was, was not rich enough to lend a sum sufficient to justify so extensive a grant. An additional or alternative explanation may lie in the earl’s affection for the bride. As the grand-daughter of Margaret Stafford, countess of Westmorland, she was not only his first cousin but also that of his wife, Anne Stafford. He may thus have taken a particular pleasure in arranging the marriage of the orphan to the son of one of his principal retainers, and seen kinship as justification for the settlement.

Speculation aside, the grant was too unusual to escape challenge in the wake of the earl’s death of the plague at Trim on 18 Jan. 1425. The Crown asserted its right of wardship during the minority of March’s nephew and heir, Richard, duke of York. On 2 May the custody of the lordship of Narberth and a third of that of St. Clears were committed to Bishop Beaufort’s son-in-law, Sir Edward Stradling. Our MP and his wife were left to sue for recovery, first securing, in March 1426, a pardon for March’s unlicensed alienation of the property and then, in the following June, the revocation of Stradling’s letters patent. CPR, 1422-9, pp. 322, 342. A new and more serious threat emerged soon after: in 1428 the young duke of York sued him for waste at Narberth and St. Clears. Clearly York did not accept his uncle’s alienation – perhaps because our MP’s marriage to Margaret had not taken effect – and later evidence makes it clear that he regained the Welsh property and only the manor of Wyke Dyve remained to Lucy and then only for life. CP40/671, rot. 325; 672, rot. 126; P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 62. This disagreement, if such it was, may explain why neither our MP nor his father followed other leading Mortimer servants into the duke’s retinue.

Lucy soon found a new lord. On 26 Feb. 1430 he sued out letters of protection as departing on the King’s coronation expedition in the retinue of Humphrey, earl of Stafford. His father was tenant of the earl in respect of the manor of Cublington; but the most important factor in this new connexion was Stafford’s kinship with the earl of March’s widow (he was her brother) and, if she has been correctly identified, with our MP’s own wife. DKR, xlviii. 268. Lucy no doubt landed with the King and Stafford at Calais in late April, and this proved to be the beginning of a long period of active service. He remained in France, albeit not continuously, for five years or so. On 27 Mar. 1431 Stafford appointed him as his lieutenant at Vernon. In the following autumn he was with Stafford at Rouen, and soon after he was sharing the duties of lieutenant there under the captaincy of the earl of Arundel. By the end of 1432 he was back at Vernon, again under Arundel, who had succeeded Stafford in that captaincy. Archives Nationales, Paris, K 63/10/37; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, fr 25770/653, 738; DKR, xlviii. 285. Thereafter he shared the duties of lieutenant with James Bolron before succeeding to the captaincy in the autumn of 1434. When, however, the garrison was mustered there on 1 Nov. 1435, he was noted as being absent in England, and the trail of his military career then goes cold until the early 1440s. Add. Chs. 11740, 11878; Bibliothèque Nationale, fr 25770/764, 25771/808; Archives Nationales, K 63/34/20.

In the early 1430s Lucy made a second marriage that greatly improved his material prosperity. The date his first marriage ended is not known, but, by 5 May 1434, he had married the young widow of another soldier, Thomas Burgh. CPR, 1429-36, p. 340. Burgh died between 15 Dec. 1432 and 30 Jan. 1433: CIPM, xxiv. 58-61c. As the grand-daughter of Elizabeth, daughter and coheiress of David Strathbogie, earl of Atholl (d.1369), she was a worthwhile heiress. On the death of her father, Sir Henry Percy, in 1432, the valuable manors of Gainsborough (Lincolnshire), Dunham (Nottinghamshire), and Mitford and Ponteland (Northumberland) with annual rents of £30 in Yorkshire, descended to her and her sister, Margaret, wife of Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor. CP, i. 308-9; CIPM, xxiv. 58-61c. Since two lives – those of his elderly grandfather and father – still stood between our MP and his patrimony, this inheritance was vital to his short-term future. Although as a widow with a son Elizabeth brought only the possibility of a further addition to the Lucy inheritance, this was of little concern to him: he needed present income and she was in possession of a substantial estate. No record of a formal division of her lands survives, yet it is clear that Lucy was assigned the manor of Gainsborough, the rents in Yorkshire and a moiety of the castle and manor of Mitford. His mother-in-law survived until Jan. 1440, but it appears that her interest in Sir Henry Percy’s lands was confined to those he held in tail-male with remainder to the main Percy line: CIPM, xxv. 399-400, 402. There is no obvious English context in which this marriage is to be explained, and it probably arose out of relationships forged in France. Not only had the bride’s first husband been a noted soldier, but her half-brother, Thomas, Lord Scales, was one of the leading English commanders in Normandy. CP, xi. 503-7.

The first occasion on which Lucy is known to have played a part in English domestic affairs is the Northamptonshire parliamentary election on 3 Jan. 1437. His father attested the Bucks. election: C219/15/1. Yet, without his parental lands (indeed, his paternal grandfather did not die until as late as November 1437), he was not well placed to establish any firm place locally, and it is not surprising that he should have taken advantage of his new association with Scales to resume his military career. He spent a sustained period in France in the early 1440s, serving under Scales in the field in the spring of 1443 and then, in the autumn of 1444, as lieutenant of Scales’s castle of Vire. Chron. du Mont-St.-Michel, ed. Luce, ii. 153, 174-5; Archives Nationales, fr 25777/1662. In 1445 Scales employed him as a feoffee in Norf., suggesting that their connexion was a personal one: Norf. RO, Felbrigg Hall mss, WKC1/336, 392. This new flowering of his military career, however, was not destined to last. The truce at Tours in May 1444 curtailed, in the short term, opportunities for further service, but more personally significant for Lucy was his father’s death in the following October. CIPM, xxvi. 276-81.

The terms of Sir Walter’s will, drawn up on the previous 18 July, raise the possibility that he and his son were not on the closest of terms. His son was to have no share of his goods nor of his purchased lands (save for the manor of Stewkley, probably because of its proximity to Cublington, which he was to have after his mother’s death): they were be divided between his widow and works of charity. Nor was Sir William named among the executors, who were headed by Richard Caudray, dean of the collegiate church of St. Martin le Grand, London. PCC 29 Luffenam (PROB11/3, f. 233). This omission may simply be explained by his absence abroad, but his own later attitude to his father’s charitable grants also argues to the same conclusion, that there was little personal warmth between them.

The death of his father prompted Lucy’s return from France and the end of his military career. He was back in England by 30 Jan. 1445, when he sued out a writ of non molestetis on a pardon of 1437. On the following 30 Oct. he secured the small reward that came the way of many soldiers of his rank at the termination of their war service, namely, an exemption from appointment to local office against his will. E159/221, brevia Hil. rot 8; C67/38, m. 9; CPR, 1441-6, p. 376. This, of course, did not mean that he wished to avoid all office, only that which was burdensome, and, in August 1446, he was appointed to the Buckinghamshire bench, a mark of his arrival as a manorial landholder there. Intriguingly, a few months later, he demised his two manors in that county (Cublington and nearby Chelmscote, in Soulbury) together with property at Gladley Wood in Bedfordshire to Thomas Walton, rector of Leighton Buzzard, Thomas Rokes II*, and two others for the term of 30 years at a nominal rent of a rose. Salop Archs. Corbet of Acton Reynald mss, 322/2/256. One interpretation of this arrangement is that his inheritance had allowed him to restructure the payment of debts acquired during his time abroad. Some support for this idea is provided by his default on an earlier statute staple: on 30 Apr. 1440 he had acknowledged a debt of 250 marks to John Flete, a gentleman of Gainsborough, and Thomas Dounton, a London mercer, execution on which was awarded against him in July 1443, while he was absent in France. Similarly indicative of indebtedness is his outlawry, at some date shortly before January 1439, for a debt due to a London draper, a humiliation that men of his rank generally avoided, and his alienation, in July 1445, to Ralph Ingoldesby, an Exchequer clerk, of his interest in a manor at Little Marlow. C241/230/23; C131/231/14; CPR, 1436-41, p. 460; CCR, 1441-7, p. 310; VCH Bucks. iii. 82. Together this might be taken to suggest that his military career had not been profitable. If, however, he did have any lingering financial troubles these were finally dispelled by the death of his mother at Richard’s Castle in July 1447. CP40/753, rot. 115; C139/130/13. Like her husband, she did not name our MP among her executors, but she did make a personal bequest to him of, among other things, a black bed embroidered with luces (pikes) and a gold cup: Lambeth Palace Lib. Reg. Stafford, ff. 156-7. Her extensive estates, when added to those of his father and second wife, numbered him among the wealthiest of English gentry with an income of probably some £300 p.a. On the following 18 Aug. the Crown, ‘for his good service in France and Normandy at his own costs’, accorded him the privilege of entering her lands without suing livery. This was one of the few marks of royal favour that came his way, and even then he was required to pay £40 for the licence. CPR, 1446-52, p. 86.

In January 1448, soon after he had his inheritance entirely at his own disposal, Lucy conveyed to feoffees those lands that his father had purchased, nearly all of which had been set aside in his parents’ wills for sale to charitable purposes. Corbet of Acton Reynald mss, 322/2/258. His father and mother had both made careful provision to this end. Sir Walter had instructed that the land he had bought in Richard’s Castle and neighbouring Ashford Bowdler be put in perpetual feoffment to discharge the tenants of his wife’s lordship of Richard’s Castle from contributions to parliamentary fifteenths and to fund a priest in the chapel of the ‘pole house’ there; and his mother had extended her late husband’s plans, providing for the alienation of property in Buckinghamshire and Richard’s Castle to the master of the ‘pole house’ to support two priests and three poor men or women. PCC 29 Luffenam; Reg. Stafford, ff. 156-7. Under the terms of the wills their son should have had no interest in the lands he enfeoffed in 1448, and it looks as though he intended to frustrate his parents’ wishes. Indeed, the fact that these lands later descended to his heirs suggests that he carried this intention through.

With the death of his parents, the focus of Lucy’s career shifted from France to the royal court. In the licence for entry into his mother’s lands without suing livery, Lucy is described as ‘King’s knight’, and it is clear that, almost as soon as he returned from France, he had found himself a place at court, then dominated by William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk. An early sign of this new affiliation dates from June 1448, when he joined two senior household men, Sir Robert Shotesbrooke* and Edmund Hampden*, in offering surety of the peace for the royal esquire, William Tailboys*, guilty of a string of serious offences in Lincolnshire. Lucy’s readiness to support Tailboys identifies him with an increasingly unpopular court clique, for the case was a politically sensitive one. Suffolk had interfered in the judicial process to protect Tailboys in blatant defiance of the leading Lincolnshire magnate, Ralph, Lord Cromwell. One aspect of this interference benefited Lucy: on 8 Nov., after Tailboys had defaulted on the recognizance, the Crown pardoned him and the other sureties of the large sums they should have forfeited. KB27/749, rex rot. 16d; 750, fines rot. 1d; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 201-2.

Other evidence from this time also connects Lucy with the inner circle of the court. He was employed as a feoffee, alongside Suffolk and other courtiers, by the young master of the King’s harriers, Richard Strickland*, in the manor of Haversham (Buckinghamshire), probably as part of arrangements for Strickland’s marriage to the daughter of another courtier, Thomas Thorpe*. He also acted for another ‘King’s knight’, Sir Thomas Grey, younger brother of Edmund, Lord Grey of Ruthin, in a final concord designed to secure for Sir Thomas, quite improperly, a life interest in a substantial rent from the manor of Water Eaton (Buckinghamshire) and other lands of his wife’s first husband, Richard, Lord Grey of Wilton. E326/4220; CP25(1)/22/123/4. While, however, these two associations owed something to mutual service at court, they also had a local context: the properties concerned all lay in the vicinity of Lucy’s own lands at Wicken and Cublington.

These overlapping connexions are also evident in the impressive group to whom Lucy conveyed his father’s purchased lands: they comprised his brother-in-law, William Vaux*, Thorpe, Grey, Grey’s elder brother, Lord Grey of Ruthin, Sir Richard Wydeville (very shortly to be created Lord Rivers), Lord Scales, Sir Thomas Green*, two lawyers, Thomas Billing* and John Dyve*, and his servant, Roger Wynter. Corbet of Acton Reynald mss, 322/2/258. Most interesting, however, is the inclusion of Richard, duke of York, at their head. This implies that any lingering disagreements over the earl of March’s alienation of 1424 had been resolved, although, if so, that resolution had been almost entirely in the duke’s favour. Lucy had seemingly, since the duke came of age, retained only the manor of Wyke Dyve, and by final concord of Easter term 1449, when the duke conveyed the reversion to Lord Rivers, it was made clear that his family’s interest there was to end with his death. CP25(1)/179/95/122. One can only speculate as to whether this new assertion of the duke’s inheritance reopened old wounds. It may be, of course, that the duke compensated Lucy for this loss; yet the possibility remains that, despite his readiness to trust the duke as a feoffee in 1448, Lucy’s final defeat over March’s extravagant gift helped to inform his political choices when national politics became more polarized in the 1450s.

On 29 Oct. 1449, the same day as the English surrendered Rouen, Lucy was elected to represent Buckinghamshire in Parliament. C219/15/7. He was, therefore, present in the Commons to witness, presumably with disquiet, Suffolk’s impeachment in the following January. There is, however, no reason to suppose his court connexions were based on any close personal tie with the fallen minister. His later appointment by the duke’s widow as the steward of Leighton Buzzard was probably an expression of neighbourhood – Cublington lay nearby – rather than of old friendship. In any event, whatever his personal feelings, he was not compromised in the eyes of others by his relationship with Suffolk. This was made clear at the end of the Parliament when his fellow Members of the Commons named him, along with (Sir) Thomas Tyrell*, Sir James Strangeways* and Richard Waller, as special treasurers of the income tax they granted at the end of the Parliament. PROME, xii. 84-87; CPR, 1446-52, p. 377.

Two matters of personal concern were forwarded during the course of the Parliament. Just before the MPs assembled for its second session, which was to see Suffolk’s impeachment, Lucy levied a final concord designed to ensure that, should his wife predecease him, he would continue to hold her lands, principally the manor of Gainsborough, for the term of his life (an arrangement potentially to the significant disadvantage of his young stepson, Thomas Burgh†). CP25(1)/293/72/351. At the same time he seems to have tried to secure his father’s contested acquisition of the Northamptonshire manor of Netherbury in Sulgrave from Robert Arderne*, who was also an MP in this Parliament. Arderne, with his accustomed rashness, had first sold the manor to the lawyer, Robert Danvers*, and then, frustrated that Danvers was slow to pay, had undertaken to sell it to our MP’s father. In July 1447 Danvers had sued a writ of entry against Lucy for the manor, and the action was still pending when, on 12 Feb. 1450, during the second session, Arderne made a formal declaration asserting the validity of the lawyer’s title and explicitly repudiating our MP’s claim. He perhaps did so in response to an attempt by Lucy to make him do the opposite. CP40/753, rot. 115; 756, cart. rot. 1d. In Hil. term 1452 Lucy conceded Danvers’s title: CP40/785, cart. rot. 1d.

The great changes wrought in this Parliament did not prompt Lucy to distance himself from the court. Indeed, he quickly won a trusted place for himself there, and was given a series of important tasks. In the spring of 1451 he was commissioned to take the muster at Plymouth of the relief force to be sent to Gascony under Rivers, an expedition that, after numerous delays, was destined never to sail. CPR, 1446-52, p. 444; M.G.A. Vale, English Gascony, 136-7. In the following summer the Crown paid him £40 to travel to Newcastle-upon-Tyne with the King’s secretary, Master Richard Andrew, to meet Scottish envoys, and he was one of those who put their name to the indenture, sealed there on 14 Aug., extending the existing truce between the two countries to 1454. E404/67/140, 209; E403/785, m. 8; Rot. Scot. ed. Macpherson etc. ii. 345, 347, 349-54; A.J. Pollard, North-Eastern Eng. 222. He also began to play a part in the affairs of Northamptonshire, where he probably had his main residence: in July 1452 the Crown named him to the bench there, and, when he sued out a general pardon, he was described as ‘of Dallington alias of Buckinghamshire’. C67/40, m. 19. The impression that he resided in Northants. is strengthened by the references to him sitting as a j.p. at Northampton and Kettering: e.g. KB9/276/8; 283/80, 90; KB27/776, rex rot. 4d; 799, rex rot. 2. More controversially, on 28 Oct. 1452 he headed the Northamptonshire grand jury which, before a powerful royal commission of inquiry, laid indictments against those who had been involved in the duke of York’s Dartford rising in the previous February. KB9/94/1/12d. This might be taken to mark him out, for the first time, as a likely opponent of the duke’s later pretensions.

A more important task came to him in the summer of 1453 in what was to prove, aside from the strange circumstances of his death, the most curious and controversial episode of his career. Violent clashes in the north between the younger sons of the earls of Salisbury and Northumberland had made royal intervention a necessity, and, on 12 July 1453, a powerful oyer and terminer commission, headed by the two earls themselves, was issued to investigate these disturbances. The government, however, quickly had a change of heart, perhaps fearing that the earls, having failed thus far to curb their sons, were ill-qualified to serve as commissioners. Thus, two weeks later, a new commission of inquiry was issued to our MP, described as the King’s ‘trusty and welbeloved counsailler’, and three judges with strong local connexions. On 30 July Lucy was assigned 40 marks to cover his expenses in discharging this onerous task. Yet it was a sum that he did nothing to earn. Ironically, although his appointment was intended to avoid the partisanship and division inherent in the first commission, the evidence suggests that he showed himself an energetic supporter of the Percys. According to indictments taken in June 1454, Lucy, far from discharging his commission, joined the Percys in their attack on the Nevilles at Heworth Moor near York on 24 Aug. 1453. What possessed him to behave in this extraordinary way can only be guessed: his wife’s kinship with the main line of the Percys was perhaps a factor, although the want of other evidence of his association with that great northern family renders this an unsatisfactory explanation. Another possibility is that he was unwillingly in the Percy retinue at Heworth: this is suggested by the indictment of another of the commissioners, the judge John Portington, for presence there, and it is possible that the Percys had forcibly detained the commissioners. CPR, 1452-61, p. 122; PPC, vi. 148-50, 154; R.A. Griffiths, King and Country, 326-8, 332-3; E404/69/214.

Whatever the reason for this puzzling episode, it had no discernible impact on Lucy’s career. On 20 Oct. 1453 he joined the treasurer, John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, Thorpe, (Sir) Thomas Brown II*, and the under treasurer John Wood III* in advancing the Crown 2,000 marks; and, on the following 30 Nov., as the government struggled to come to terms with the problems occasioned by the King’s mental collapse, he was among those who assembled in Star Chamber and bound themselves by oath to ensure that the orders of the royal council were obeyed. It is a measure of his importance that, of the 53 oath-takers, he was one of only five who were not lords spiritual or temporal. E403/796, m. 1; Griffiths, 316. Although there is no reason to suppose that he was identified as a partisan of Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, any more than he had been of Suffolk, his court connexions gave him no reason to welcome York’s appointment as Protector in the following March. Although he appears to have maintained his place on the royal council – on 29 May he was one of only four non-peers summoned to a great council to meet at Westminster on 25 June – he probably had cause to feel that under the new dispensation his position was insecure. In mid June, at judicial sessions held at York before the Protector himself, he was indicted for his alleged role in the battle of Heworth, and, although the indictment only cost him the minor inconvenience of a small fine, he is likely to have been gladdened by the King’s apparent recovery at the end of the year. PPC, vi. 184-6; KB9/149/38.

New times quickly arrived, but they proved dangerous. The King’s apparent recovery at Christmas 1454 and the end of York’s protectorate threatened civil war. On 16 Apr. 1455 the new regime, led by Somerset, summoned Lucy, as a Northamptonshire representative, to the great council scheduled to meet on the following 21 May. PPC, vi. 341. Instead, however, Lucy probably found himself, on 22 May, in the royal army defeated at St. Albans by the Yorkist lords, prompted to rebellion by their exclusion from the call to that council. Given his probable participation it is interesting to find him, in company with another senior household man, (Sir) William Catesby*, at the Northamptonshire hustings held on 6 June to return MPs to the Parliament summoned by the Yorkists in the wake of their victory. Their presence did not prevent the return of two MPs sympathetic to York – William Zouche* and John Dyve – but, since neither of the MPs could be described as Yorkist partisans, it may have had an effect. Indeed, Dyve was one of Lucy’s feoffees and probably a friend. C219/16/3. Dyve had also been party to the fine of 1450 which secured Lucy a life interest in the Burgh lands: CP25(1)/293/72/351. Further, it seems that York, despite the earlier differences between them, was still ready to see our MP not as an opponent but a man of experience whose co-operation might be won. This, at least, is the implication of the important task with which he was entrusted. In company with one of the duke’s senior advisors, Sir Edmund Mulsho*, he was sent to Dover (at about the time this Parliament assembled) to meet to discuss with representatives of the Calais garrison the subject of the garrison’s unpaid wages. Given the political sensitivity of this subject, at a time when York was attempting to secure control of the garrison, it is clear that York did not view our MP as a partisan of his opponents. E403/801, m. 7; G.L. Harriss, ‘Struggle for Calais’, EHR, lxxv. 40-41.

None the less, there can be no doubt that the Yorkist victory at St. Albans was a political reverse for Lucy, and he soon after received a more personal blow when his second wife died in the autumn of 1455. This threatened his tenure of her estates. Although he was able to retain the manor of Gainsborough, in which he had a life interest under the terms of the final concord of 1450, he lost to his stepson, Thomas Burgh, his wife’s moiety of the castle and manor of Mitford and, more gallingly, her rents in Yorkshire, in which he also had a life interest under that fine. C139/192/16; CFR, xix. 155, 282. This division may reflect a compromise between stepfather and stepson, but it is more likely that the two men were at odds. They certainly appear to have been so over a related matter. In January 1456 Thomas Burgh’s kinsman, Master Roger Burgh, a clerk, complained to the chancellor that, as long before as 1437, Lucy had entered into his lands at Calais worth as much as 40 marks p.a., and that, after the clerk had re-entered on the previous 20 Aug., Lucy refused to repay the issues, said to amount now to an impressive 700 marks. Unfortunately, it is not known how the matter was resolved, but, significantly, Thomas Burgh stood as one of the pledges for the petition’s prosecution. Indeed, the lands may have been his: his uncle, John Burgh of Cowthorpe, in a will of 1434, had instructed that his Calais property be settled on Thomas in fee tail, and, on his mother’s death a writ of diem clausit extremum had been issued for Calais. C1/17/106; CPR, 1441-6, p. 113; C253/35/524; C4/1/64. Curiously, the disputed property is described, in the petition, as once of Richard Buckland*, former treasurer of Calais. This would explain the length of time between Lucy’s entry and Master Roger’s re-entry, with Lucy claiming to hold the property during Thomas’s minority. All in all, it seems fair to conclude that, in both this affair and that of his mother’s inquisitions post mortem, Thomas was exploiting the eclipse of our MP’s influence to right what he saw as the wrongs of a resented stepfather. If so, their rivalry may have disposed Burgh to support York in opposition to our MP’s support for Lancaster.

Few references survive to Lucy in the period of uneasy calm that followed the end of York’s second protectorate. He appears to have been less active than he had been earlier in the decade, but this is probably a trick of the sources, which, due to the removal of the royal court to the Lancastrian stronghold of Coventry, are less full for the late 1450s. Whether he remained a royal councillor is not known. His service to the regime, so far as it is reflected in the surviving records, was confined to service on local commissions. His removal from the Bucks. bench in July 1459 is not to be explained in political terms; rather, it was a result of a drastic reduction in the size of the bench there: CPR, 1452-61, p. 661. Only a very minor grant made to him in January 1459 stands as direct evidence that he was held in any special favour: he regained the keeping of the hundred of Wolphy, in which his lordship of Richard’s Castle lay, a grant lost with the resumption of the Parliament of 1449 (Nov.). E150/224, brevia Hil. rot. 9d; CPR, 1452-61, p. 66; CFR, xix. 227. None the less, indirect evidence suggests that he was still very much part of the Lancastrian establishment. In 1457 he had been named as a feoffee by another leading Lancastrian, Thomas Tresham*, and, more importantly, he married his third wife, Margaret John. Socially this was an excellent match for him – the bride, among her other attractions, was the grand-daughter of John Montagu, earl of Salisbury (d.1400) – but of much more importance was its immediate political context. The bride’s paternal half-brother and maternal half-sister had married into leading Lancastrian families: the one, Henry Fitzlewis, had as his wife a sister of Henry Beaufort, duke of Somerset; and the other, Anne Hankford, was married to Thomas Ormond, brother of James, earl of Wiltshire. CIMisc. viii. 457; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 498; C139/170/41; S.J. Payling, ‘Widows and the Wars of the Roses’, in The Fifteenth Cent. XIV ed. Clark, 104. Lucy’s own marriage served to add a further bond of kinship within this group of Lancastrian loyalists, just as did that, shortly before, of his nephew, William Vaux, to an attendant of Queen Margaret, and that, soon afterwards, of the daughter of his Northamptonshire neighbour Henry Green* (for whom he was a feoffee) to a younger son of the duke of Buckingham. The number of such matches implies that they arose out of deliberate policy. Payling, 105; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 802-3.

Lucy’s marriage is interesting from the personal as well as the political perspective. The great disparity in the ages of the couple may have offended even contemporary sensibilities. The bride was only about 19, some 40 years the groom’s junior. In one sense, however, the marriage had obvious mutual benefits. Her youth offered Lucy, still childless (or, at least, with no legitimate child living) the chance of issue; for her, it promised a wealthy widowhood. With no living issue to disappoint, Lucy could afford to be generous, and he made her an extensive jointure settlement. On 10 May 1457 the Crown, for the payment of £20, licensed his feoffees to settle five scattered manors upon the couple in fee tail, and, by his death, he had added seven further manors, including, most significantly, that of Dallington, his principal residence. Precise valuations are hard to assign, but it would be surprising if these dozen manors were not worth approaching £200, a jointure more fitting to an earl’s daughter than an earl’s grand-daughter. CPR, 1452-61, p. 352; C140/20/29.

The troubled peace of the late 1450s ended when, in the autumn of 1459, the Yorkist lords, prompted by a growing feeling of insecurity, resorted to arms. On 12 Oct. they were routed at Ludford Bridge, and it is probable that our MP was in the royalist army that opposed them there. The Lancastrians were now decisively in the ascendant and the shrieval appointments of the following month were designed to demonstrate the fact. Significantly, on 7 Nov. Lucy was pricked for Herefordshire in succession to another courtier, Sir William Catesby. He was qualified for the office as tenant of the valuable manor of Richard’s Castle, but he had played no previous part in Herefordshire affairs. His nomination was, like that of Catesby a year before, an attempt by the government, through the agency of a trusted courtier, to assert control in a shire in which the Yorkists were strong. He may also have served in another context: Parliament met 13 days after this appointment, and there is indirect evidence that, even though he was technically disqualified as a sheriff, he was one of the assembled Commons. On 20 Dec. 1459, at the end of the assembly, he was one of a select group of Lancastrian loyalists commissioned to hold revenues from the duke of York’s estates to the use of his duchess and her younger children. One of the four gentry named to this commission, Sir John Barre*, was certainly an MP in this assembly, and, in view of the considerable gaps in the surviving returns, it is likely that the other three – Lucy, Catesby and Sir Richard Tunstall† – were also Members. CFR, xix. 251; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 542-3. The returns for both Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire are among those lost, either of which Lucy may have represented; and he may even have been returned for another county with lost returns, namely Worcestershire, in which he had inherited the manor of Cotheridge and other property from his mother. Interestingly, on 21 Dec., the day after the end of the Parliament, he was named to the commission of array for that county as well as for Northamptonshire, as he was to be again in the following spring in respect of the commissions for resistance to the anticipated Yorkist invasion. CPR, 1452-61, pp. 558, 559, 603, 604. Unless the custodianship of valuable York lands is to be interpreted as a reward, Lucy gained nothing from the forfeitures of the Coventry Parliament, and his enduring loyalty to Lancaster is noteworthy.

The circumstances of Lucy’s death, at the battle of Northampton on 10 July 1460, were so remarkable as to attract the notice of at least two contemporary chroniclers. The London chronicle generally attributed to William Gregory provides the best account:

And that goode knyght Syr Wylliam Lucy that dwellyd be-syde Northehampton hyrde the goone schotte, and come unto the fylde to have holpen [th]e kynge, but the fylde was done or that he come; an one of the Staffordys was ware of hys comynge, and lovyd that knyght ys wyffe and hatyd hym, and a-non causyd hys dethe. Hist. Collns. Citizen London (Cam. Soc. n.s. xvii), 207.

This Stafford is identified by the other chronicler as ‘John’: ‘In fine belli servientes Johannis Stafforde, armigeri, occiderunt Wyllelmum Lucy, militem, cijus uxorem idem Johannes sibi maritavit cito postea.’ Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, ii (2), 773. These stories find some indirect support from a later suit in the court of common pleas: in 1466 Lucy’s widow was described as the widow of John Stafford II*. CP40/820, rot. 488d. How John had come to know and covet Lucy’s young wife can only be a matter of speculation, but he was from a family which, like our MP, had property in Worcestershire and Herefordshire. The other noteworthy feature of the London chronicler’s account is his statement that Lucy came to the field only when he heard gunshot from his house at Dallington to the west of the town. This begs the question of why he was not arrayed with the royalist army, assembled to the south of the town in readiness to confront the Yorkist army coming from London. In any event, his dramatic death set a trend for Margaret’s widowhood. A marriage that began with death in battle quickly ended in the same way: Stafford was killed fighting for the Yorkists at the battle of Towton in March 1461. She then lost little time in embarking on another marital adventure. Thomas Danvers*, an Oxfordshire lawyer with strong Lancastrian connexions, claimed that, in 1463, she had undertaken to marry him before, under pressure from her half-brother Sir Henry Fitzlewis, espousing instead the Northamptonshire esquire, Thomas, son of Thomas Wake*. C1/31/298; C4/2/6. Her failure to answer before George Neville, bishop of Exeter, for this alleged breach of promise led to her excommunication for contumacy. CPR, 1461-7, p. 491; CPL, xii. 405. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the case, death spared her further trouble. Her eventful life ended on 4 Aug. 1466, hopefully after she had succeeded in having the sentence of excommunication lifted. Although she had had three husbands, she was only about 28 at her death and the probability is that she died of complications arising from childbirth. A son, John, had been born to her and Thomas Wake only three months before she died. Interestingly, as far as it can be reconstructed, the memorial inscription of her brass, which survives in the church of Ingrave in Essex, remembered none of her husbands (although her three marriages were reflected in armorial bearings). Instead, she was described only in terms of her parentage and, in a contrived way of asserting her rank to posterity, her mother’s second marriage to John Holand, duke of Exeter (d.1447). C140/20/29; Trans. Essex Arch. Soc. n.s. vii. 39-43. For a more detailed account of her marital adventures: Payling, 105-15.

The infant son Margaret left was not, of course, destined to benefit from the extensive settlement Lucy had made upon her. The unsettled part of Sir William’s inheritance had already passed to his heirs, Walter Hopton and William Vaux, the sons of his late sisters: on 26 Aug. 1460, with the Yorkists in control of government after their victory at Northampton, they had been granted licence to take seisin without suing livery or paying relief. CPR, 1452-61, pp. 597-8. This was a mark of favour to Hopton, who was a servant of the house of York, and the matter was soon complicated by Vaux’s adherence to the opposite cause and attainder in the first Parliament of Edward IV’s reign. His share of the Lucy lands thus passed into the hands of three prominent Yorkists, Alfred Corneburgh†, Walter Devereux II*, Lord Ferrers, and Ralph Hastings†, as royal grantees, before its eventual restoration to Vaux’s son, Nicholas†, in 1485. CPR, 1461-7, pp. 35, 153, 195, 220, 369, 486-7; PROME, xv. 162-4; CP, xii (2), 216-19. The other half of the Lucy inheritance also remained only a short time in the hands of the original heir. Walter Hopton died in February 1461, and his lands passed to his sister, Elizabeth, wife of Roger Corbet II*. On Corbet’s death in 1467 she married (as his third wife) a prominent Yorkist servant, John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, having first taken the precaution of settling her lands on her issue by her first husband. CPR, 1461-7, p. 551; Corbet of Acton Reynald mss, 322/2/266, 268-9.