MANSTON, Robert (d.c.1459), of Whitkirk and Manston, Yorks.

The survival of a series of deeds relating to the Manstons, a Yorkshire gentry family of minor rank (although the MP’s elder brother, John, had resources enough to be distrained for knighthood in 1458), E159/233, recorda Trin. rot. 27. saves Robert Manston from near total obscurity. Even then these deeds reveal more about his widow and daughter than they do about him. Indeed, from other sources, almost all that is known of him is that he was one of the Yorkshire coroners in the 1450s (and perhaps before) and that he was elected to represent Appleby in the Parliament of 1450. This lack of evidence means that it is impossible to say confidently why he should have been returned for a borough with which he had no other documented connexion. His fellow Appleby MP was William Watyr*, a servant of the important Westmorland knight, (Sir) Thomas Parr*, who was returned to represent that county in the same Parliament, but there is no evidence that our MP stood in the same case. Only a very tentative suggestion can be made as to the reason for his election. The Manstons were very closely associated with their much more important neighbours, the Gascoignes of Gawthorpe, who were in turn connected with the Percys. In 1439 Sir William Gascoigne was named as supervisor of the will of our MP’s father, who may have been buried in the Gascoigne church at Harewood: Test. Ebor. ii (Surtees Soc. xxx), 73n, 74. It is, therefore, possible that Robert was elected through the patronage of Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland. However this may be, some slight irregularity attached to his return in that the Appelby MPs were not, as they generally were, named in the county’s electoral indenture, appearing only as an endorsement of the electoral writ. C219/16/1.

Manston first appears in the records in his father’s will made on 6 June 1439. His father had had a legal career of modest success. He was retained as apprentice-at-law by the duchy of Lancaster from 1415 to 1422 and served a term as escheator of Yorkshire in 1419-20. Yet, although he was a manorial lord, he was not rich enough to make any significant provision for our MP as one of his three younger sons. They had to content themselves with bequests of a silver cup and 40s. each. C.E. Arnold, ‘Political Study of the W. Riding, 1437-1509’ (Manchester Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1984), ii. 9; J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), i. 1057; Test. Ebor. ii. 73. Yet Robert did find resources enough to marry, and it may be that his father alienated the manor of Manston to him. This at least is the implication of a Chancery petition of 1475, which claims that our MP conveyed that manor to feoffees, William Darley and William Simpson, both yeomen, with the intention that they should transfer it to his daughter, Alice. C1/54/235. This, however, may be special pleading. All that is certain is that, on the death of his elder brother, John, in 1464, Alice fell heir to the Manston patrimony. John was buried in the church of Coxwold, where his brass survives: Yorks. Arch. Jnl. xvii. 273-4.

By this date Manston had been dead for at least five years. In 1459 his widow, Joan, entered into an agreement to marry John Burton of Kinsley, some miles to the south of Manston, who promised to settle on her a jointure of £20 p.a. if he should fall heir to his family lands. The promise, albeit only provisional, of so large a jointure implies that her hand was a desirable one within the lesser gentry world of which she was part. Yorks. Deeds, i (Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. xxxix), 191. By 1476 she was the wife of William Mauleverer: Yorks. Deeds, ii (Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. l), 105. But her daughter Alice’s was more so and she was to have a colourful marital career. Her first husband was her cousin, Robert, probably a younger son of Sir William Gascoigne* and, like her grandfather, a member of Lincoln’s Inn. By Robert she had three sons. Arnold, ii. 15. In Mar. 1468 they petitioned for a dispensation for marrying within the prohibited degrees of kinship: Supplications from Eng and Wales, ii (Canterbury and York Soc. civ), 1263. On his death before May 1474 she married Arthur, younger brother of Sir John Pilkington† of Pilkington (Lancashire) and Sowerby (Yorkshire). The marriage was brief but it did produce a daughter, and on his brother’s death in 1475 the powerful Sir John Pilkington acted to secure the Manston inheritance for his infant niece. On 23 Oct. 1475 Alice bound herself to him in £400, undertaking to settle her inheritance on her daughter in fee tail. By a final concord levied in the following Easter term this settlement was made. The whole Manston inheritance, that is, the manor of Manston with parcels of land in surrounding vills, including Whitkirk, and some 100 acres in nearby Garforth which were still in the hands of our MP’s widow, were settled on Alice for her life, with successive remainders to her daughter in tail and the three Gascoigne brothers, presumably in order of their age, in tail male. Sheffield Archs., Bacon Frank mss, BFM/855; CP25(1)/281/164/22. So irregular a settlement was unlikely to go without challenge, and it was revised on more equitable lines in 1488, after Alice had taken a third husband in another of her neighbours, Roger Dyneley, who had been marshal of the hall in the household of Richard III. They were to have the manor of Manston for their lives with successive remainders to her son, George Gascoigne, in tail, and Alice’s issue. Either Alice’s daughter by Pilkington had died childless, or the settlement was changed to give her half-brothers preference in accordance with the rules of common law. After Dyneley’s death Alice took the veil in 1513 and died in 1527. Yorks. Deeds, ii. 105-8, 200; Test. Ebor. ii. 367. For Dyneley: Arnold, ii. 53-4; R. Horrox, Ric. III, 246-7.