The Melton family owed its position to the career of William Melton, who, from modest origins, rose to become a prominent royal administrator and a long-serving archbishop of York. On his death in 1340 he left to his nephew, Sir William Melton (d.1362), manorial property at Aston and Towton in the West Riding, Kilham and Owstwick in the East Riding and at Kingsclere and Bentworth in Hampshire.
None the less, even with this disappointment, the archbishop had successfully established the Meltons among Yorkshire’s leading gentry families. His great-nephew, Sir William, served in France under both Edward III and John of Gaunt, was a prominent local administrator, and sat as shire knight for Yorkshire in both 1385 and 1388 (Feb.). His son, Sir John, the father of our MP, maintained the family’s military tradition, taking part in the conquest of Normandy under Henry V, but played little traceable part in public affairs thereafter.
The subject of this biography was probably born in 1407.
Aside from these issues over his wife’s inheritance, Melton appears only occasionally throughout the 1430s and 1440s, and mainly in conjunction with his wife’s Constable relations and his new neighbours in the East Riding. Indeed, despite the potential for confusion caused by the longevity of Melton’s father, the spheres of the two men rarely seem to have overlapped. In 1436 Melton was again involved with aspects of the Hilton inheritance, when he, Elizabeth and Isabel combined to bring a suit against the abbot of Louth Park over the advowson of the church of Fulstow in Lincolnshire, which the abbot claimed had been granted to the abbey by the women’s grandfather in 1383.
Melton’s activities were not, however, confined to his native county. In 1442-3 he was in receipt of robes as an esquire of the royal household, although he did not maintain a place there because of a prolonged period of absence in France in the 1440s.
Melton may have had the misfortune to be a prisoner for more than five years. He was not certainly back in England until the spring of 1449 when, on 12 Mar., he witnessed a deed for Anthony Nuthill of Long Riston.
Melton’s election to the Parliament of November 1450, alongside Sir John Saville* was perhaps a little surprising given his relative lack of experience, but many of the men elected to that gathering were both former soldiers and supporters of Richard, duke of York, and Melton clearly fell into both categories. The Melton family seat at Aston lay close to the duchy of York estates in south Yorkshire, and these familial ties may well have been strengthened during Melton’s service with Talbot and York in the defence of Normandy. His election was also undoubtedly another step on his path to rehabilitation, both in terms of his personal career and in strengthening his family’s position, and both continued to improve over the next few years. In 1451 he again witnessed a series of property transactions in the East Riding for Lord Fitzhugh, and it was probably around this time that his son’s marriage to Fitzhugh’s daughter took place.
In November 1453, in a natural progression, Melton was appointed as sheriff of Yorkshire. It was an unfortunate time to be appointed as it followed upon major clashes between the Percys and the Nevilles in the previous summer and autumn. Further, his term of office coincided with a rising in the county, supported by the Percys and led by Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, against the authority of the duke of York, as Protector. No doubt Melton took an active part in its suppression, and on 24 July 1454 he was appointed, along with Sir Brian Stapleton* and Sir Thomas Rempston† to guard the captured duke of Exeter as a prisoner in Pontefract castle. His role here, together with what else is known of his political affiliations, marks him out as a supporter of York and the Nevilles. It is, therefore, rather surprising that, in the May following the end of his shrievalty, he should have been summoned to the great council that was to provoke the Yorkist rising which ended at the first battle of St. Albans.
In August 1455, when the Yorkists were in control of government, Melton petitioned for protection from the debts arising out of his troubled shrievalty. He complained that he could not raise the moneys due to the Crown because of the ‘exilite and desolacion’ of various unspecified places in Yorkshire and that, for every pound he did succeed in levying, he had had to contribute 2s. of his own to make up the shortfall. Further, additional charges had been placed upon him by the commission, headed by York, sent to suppress and investigate Exeter’s rising, for not only had he to attend continually on the commissioners but he also had had to retain additional men. Such pleas were routinely made by sheriffs at the end of their terms, and the government recognized Melton’s particular difficulties only to the extent of pardoning him an extra ten marks ‘by way of reward’ over and above the pardon of account in £240 then generally awarded to Yorkshire sheriffs. This may partly explain why he troubled to secure the additional protection of a general pardon in the following November.
By this date Melton had finally inherited the family patrimony with his father’s death on 24 May 1455 (only two days after the battle of St. Albans although there is no evidence that either father or son fought there). This brought a very significant augmentation of his resources, although the family’s principal manor, that of Aston, remained in the hands of his father’s feoffees, including Thomas Everingham*. The elder Sir John’s view of his heir’s character may be reflected in the codicil to his will, drawn up on 1 Apr. 1455, where he felt it necessary to specify that, should his son interfere in any way with the duties of his feoffees in Aston, then the manor should be sold and any remaining proceeds spent on alms and on masses for his soul. Only if the feoffees were left to their task was the younger Sir John to receive the manor on completion of their duties. This apparent distrust did not, however, deter the father from naming the son among his executors.
Despite this, Melton seems to have moved back to Aston soon after his father’s death, and was generally described as ‘of Aston’ for the rest of his life. The family’s outlying manor of Radstone in Northamptonshire seems to have passed to his younger brother and fellow executor, Anthony, possibly in 1443 when the elder Sir John granted the manor to Everingham and others, presumably as feoffees.
In the late 1450s Melton’s family connexions drew him into a violent local quarrel. In 1457, his brother-in-law, Henry Pierrepont, husband of his sister Thomasina, was murdered on Papplewick Moor in Sherwood Forest by John Green, steward and brother-in-law of Sir William Plumpton*, with whom the Pierreponts were in a long-running dispute. Green himself was then murdered by Henry’s brother, John, prompting a string of legal cases, and in 1459 Melton, together with John Stanhope and Richard Illingworth*, stood as arbiter for the Pierreponts in an attempt to resolve the matter. Henry Pierrepont had probably married Melton’s sister back in the late 1420s or early 1430s, and in 1434 either our MP or his father was involved in transactions relating to the sale by his sister’s father-in-law, the financially troubled Sir Henry Pierrepont*, of the manors of North and South Anston in Yorkshire and Rolleston in Nottinghamshire. Melton’s arbitration apparently failed, and his relations with his sister’s family may not have remained entirely cordial, since in February 1465 and July 1467 he was required to enter recognizances that he would keep the peace towards another Henry Pierrepont, presumably his nephew.
Melton’s increasing profile may explain his involvement in Northamptonshire affairs in September 1458, when he was a party to various conveyances in connexion with the disputed manor of Woodcroft. This was alongside a number of local notables, including the staunch Lancastrians, Lionel, Lord Welles, and (Sir) Edmund Hampden*, and others such as Henry Green*, William Aldewyncle* and Richard Quatermayns*, but precisely why Melton should have become involved in this matter, far from his Yorkshire home, is unclear.
Despite his close connexions with the duke of York, Melton appears to have been relatively successful in keeping himself out of trouble during the disturbances which preceded the outbreak of civil war. On 25 Jan. 1458 he secured another general pardon, perhaps significantly on the same day as, and immediately following, a pardon to Duke Richard, and he clearly had the duke’s trust. A week later he was one of many of the duke’s adherents who entered bonds to Alice, dowager-duchess of Suffolk, for the payment of the portion of York’s daughter on her marriage to the young duke of Suffolk.
Melton’s term as sheriff was to be abbreviated. On 6 Mar. 1461, two days after Edward IV had taken the throne, he was replaced by Sir John Saville, the new government probably seeing Saville as a more forceful local presence. As the effective lord of the manor of Towton (technically held by his young grandson) our MP presumably suffered losses at the time of the battle there, but there is no evidence to suggest that he himself was present. He continued to play a full part in local affairs. On 8 May he was appointed to arrest rebels in the East Riding together with three of his relatives, Sir John and Sir Robert Constable and Robert Hildyard, and around this time the same four men were working together to provision royal ships in the port of Kingston-upon-Hull. On 10 May he was included on the commission of array; he was restored to the East Riding bench at the end of the month, and continued to be appointed to commissions to arrest rebels over the next two years.
Melton’s later years appear to have been relatively uneventful, and although he remained on the East Riding bench until 1472, his election to the Parliament of 1467 would effectively be his last major office. In 1465 he had secured confirmation of the letters patent of 1344 by which he received his £50 annuity as the Lucy heir, and he pursued a number of suits against local men in the central courts, mainly for small debts and trespasses, including an alleged attack on his house at Kilham.