The Motons were a knightly family of antiquity and distinction. Since the mid twelfth century they had been established as tenants of the honour of Leicester at Peckleton, eight miles to the west of Leicester. They adopted arms closely resembling those of the earls of Leicester, and one of our MP’s direct ancestors, another Sir Robert Moton, died fighting for his feudal overlord, Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, at the battle of Evesham in 1265.
Sir William’s brief tenure of these lands and his son’s minority rendered his property liable, on his death on 8 Sept. 1391, to royal wardship. On the following 28 June the King duly granted the wardship of the lands and the marriage of our MP to the Lancastrian retainer Sir Walter Blount† for a payment of 200 marks. This grant was successfully contested by Sir William’s feoffees: Alan de Kereby, parson of Kirkby Mallory, and two others claimed seisin of the Moton lands in Leicestershire and Blount’s letters patent were revoked in February 1394.
Moton’s naval service enabled him to delay process in an important suit, an action of formedon brought against him by William, Lord Zouche of Harringworth, for a moiety of the manor of Oldbury in Stoke Mandeville in Buckinghamshire. Their competing claims derived from the marriage of his great-grandfather, Sir William Moton, to Joan Inge, who had been granted the moiety on her earlier marriage to Eon la Zouche. As a descendant of this first marriage, Lord Zouche’s claim appears superior, but the descent of the Inge lands was complicated by Eon’s forfeiture for involvement in the murder of Sir Roger Bellers. In 1380 Lord Zouche’s father had unsuccessfully sued Moton’s grandmother, Alice, for the manor, but our MP was able only to delay not to defeat the renewal of the Zouche claim. He did, however, manage to retain the manor of ‘Clare’ in Pyrton in Oxfordshire, the only other Inge manor the Motons held.
Moton’s career for the next ten years or so is obscure. His service at sea earned him knighthood, a rank he had assumed by Hilary term 1403, and it may be that he then campaigned under Lord Grey in the subjugation of the Welsh.
Henry V’s ambitions in France gave Moton the opportunity to resume his military career. In the campaign of 1415 he served in the retinue of Thomas Fitzalan, earl of Arundel; in the Norman campaign of 1417 he followed Lord Grey; and he was then, perhaps only briefly, in the garrison at Harfleur under Thomas Beaufort, duke of Exeter.
For some reason, despite this election to Parliament, the end of Moton’s military service did not prove to be the prelude to an active career in local administration. Although, from 1433 at the latest, he held a minor office in the duchy of Lancaster as bailiff of Desford in the immediate vicinity of his residence at Peckleton, he never sat on the Leicestershire bench and was rarely appointed to ad hoc commissions of local government. His apparent lack of interest in administration did not extend to the other facets of gentry life. Unusually for a man of his rank, he regularly appeared at parliamentary elections. After attending two elections early in his career, he witnessed as many as 11 of the 15 documented Leicestershire elections between 1423 and 1455.
Despite his lack of administrative involvement, Moton was clearly an important local figure. His son, Reynold, found a place in the service of Joan, (d.1435), widow of William Beauchamp, Lord Abergavenny, and sister of the earl of Arundel under whom our MP had servd in 1415.
The date of Moton’s first wife’s death is unknown.
The last years of Moton’s life were largely concerned with his efforts to disinherit his grand-daughters of the bulk of his inheritance in favour of his son by this second marriage. Soon after the death of his son and heir in March 1445, Sir Robert presented a petition to the chancellor. He asserted that, on Reynold’s marriage to the Bugge heiress, he had bound himself to her cousin, the ubiquitous Bartholomew Brokesby*, in the large sum of 400 marks to settle lands worth £20 p.a. in jointure on the couple and Reynold’s issue. He had now learned that Margaret and her new husband, Thomas Everingham*, intended to sue him on the bond, claiming that it was made to some other purpose than the settlement of jointure. There can be no doubt that this was a disingenuous description of events. Everingham’s reply reveals the complexity of our MP’s affairs: he made the plausible counter-claim that the disputed obligation also included the proviso that Sir Robert should not alienate any of his inheritance from Reynold’s issue, but that he had nevertheless alienated the Moton caput of Peckleton and other lands to the use of William, his son by his second wife, to the disinheritance of Reynold’s two young daughters, Anne and Elizabeth.
The same tensions lie behind two further petitions presented to the chancellor by Sir Robert, similarly designed to forestall potential future trouble. In both, he described how he had conveyed his manor of Peckleton and other lands to his brother, Alan, his first wife’s brother-in-law, Sir John Bagot†, and others to the intent that they should reconvey the property to him and his second wife in fee. This the feoffees had done, and yet ‘open langage and noyse is spedde and dilate’ in Leicestershire that Alan had, between the two conveyances, made estate or release to Sir Robert’s now-deceased son, Reynold, or feoffees to his use with the purpose of excluding Elizabeth from her jointure. To lay these potentially damaging rumours to rest, our MP asked, in the first petition, that his ailing brother should be examined by Justice William Aiscough, and, in the second, that Alan’s confessor, John, prior of the Augustinian friars in Leicester, be summoned into Chancery to give a true account. The prior testified that the only lands Alan had conveyed to Reynold or feoffees to his use lay in Stoney Stanton and Countesthorpe in Leicestershire and in Pyrton in Oxfordshire, assigned to him at his marriage, and that it was Alan’s intention that this should be made public to lay the ‘noysefull esclaundre’. He also added that Reynold had forged an obligation in a large sum under Sir Robert’s seal with the intention of troubling him if he alienated any part of the Moton inheritance, clearly the bond mentioned in the other Chancery petition.
These petitions were part of a well-organized campaign on Sir Robert’s part to secure his inheritance for his younger son, a plot hatched even before Reynold’s death, and it is interesting that both refer not to wrongs he had suffered but to those that he might suffer. He supplemented these actions in Chancery by a series of conveyances. On 14 Sept. 1446 he granted all his lands to Thomas Boughton, Thomas Billing* and others. The importance of this conveyance was attested not only by the standing of those who witnessed it – the wealthy knights, Sir Robert Harcourt*, Sir William Trussell†, and Sir John Griffith – but also by the fact that Moton took the trouble to have it enrolled on the close roll.
The story of his grand-daughters’ defence of their rights against these conveyances is not told in the surviving records, but, according to Nichols, the dispute was eventually settled by the arbitration of John, Viscount Beaumont. What Nichols preserves of the award demonstrates that the grand-daughters or their representatives had claimed the manor of Peckleton as entailed on the issue of Sir Robert by his first wife. Beaumont awarded that this false deed be surrendered to William Moton. Other evidence shows that William was also to inherit the other property settled in the 1452 fine. But Beaumont’s award was not entirely in Sir Robert’s favour. The fine of 1452 shows that it had been Moton’s intention that Peckleton should pass to his issue by Elizabeth; Beaumont decreed that this descent should be limited to the male issue with remainder to the descendants of his first marriage.
Little else is known of the later years of Moton’s lengthy career. A plea pending in 1451 provides a diverting insight into his domestic arrangements: he claimed that a husbandman had killed his pet deer at Peckleton. His appointment as sheriff in the same year, when in his mid 70s, must have been as unexpected as it was unwelcome. He petitioned that ‘his greet age feblenesse and long seruice’ to the Crown both at home and abroad, ‘to his gret and sumptuose charges’, meant he was ‘so empouerisshed in his goodes and enfebled in his persone’ that he was incapable of exercising the office. A compromise was reached whereby he accepted the appointment and, in return, the Crown granted him the privilege of accounting by deputy and, more importantly, of being discharged on oath of those parts of the farm that were difficult to collect. On 10 Feb. 1452 the king sent the necessary instructions to the treasurer and barons of the Exchequer.
Sir Robert died between Hilary term 1456, when he suffered the recoveries attendant on Beaumont’s award, and Easter term 1457, when his widow sued a plea of trespass in her own account. His will has not been traced, but, according to Nichols, it reflected his concern that his grand-daughters would attempt to recover the manor of Peckleton. In an effort to forestall this eventuality, he left them certain lands (which Nichols unfortunately does not specify) on condition they allowed his wife and son to hold the manor in peace. He was buried in the church of Peckleton, for many generations the family mausoleum. His tomb chest is now lost but the brass that adorned it was discovered in digging a grave in the chancel.