NEWTON, John II (d.1488), of Wyke in Yatton, Som.

John was the eldest son of a successful lawyer, Richard Newton, who rose through the ranks of his profession to become recorder of Bristol, a King’s serjeant, justice, and ultimately chief justice of the common bench at Westminster. His mother was probably an unidentified first wife of his father’s, rather than the justice’s later spouse, Emmota, daughter of the Pembrokeshire landowner Sir Thomas Perrot, who survived him until the mid 1470s. CCR, 1476-85, no. 14; Regs. Stillington and Fox (Som. Rec. Soc. lii), 78, 615. Although the chief justice’s parents hailed from Montgomery, by the second quarter of the fifteenth century the family’s focus lay firmly in England, and it was not until the Tudor period that the Newtons were once more prepared to use their Welsh name of Cradock (or Caradoc) as an alternative appellation. The MP needs to be distinguished from several namesakes who were simultaneously active in the west. They included a Bristol merchant, the s. and h. of the former mayor John Newton† (who had represented Bristol in the Commons of 1407), who was probably the man who served as searcher of ships in that port jointly with John Wych* from 1450 to 1452: CP40/756, rot. cart. 1d; CFR, xviii. 147, 242.

Although his landholdings were not substantial, the chief justice’s social standing enabled his son and heir to contract a valuable marriage to Isabel, one of the daughters and heiresses of the wealthy Somerset landowner Thomas Cheddar. The marriage was probably made chiefly with a view to its economic benefits, for at the time the far more important social connexions that it would eventually produce were not yet apparent. Isabel’s sister, Joan, with whom any inheritance would have to be shared, had married the comparatively unimportant esquire Richard Stafford, who never came to enjoy her inheritance, as he predeceased his father-in-law. It was only after Cheddar’s death in 1443, when the title to a moiety of his lands was firmly hers, that Joan took as her second husband John Talbot, Viscount Lisle, a younger son of the earl of Shrewsbury. CP, viii. 57.

While Cheddar held his son-in-law in sufficient regard to leave him a murrey-coloured gown furred with marten in his will, it took rather more of an effort to secure Isabel’s share of her father’s estates, for while large parts of the Cheddar lands were subject to an entail in the male line and consequently passed to a distant kinsman, William Seward, Cheddar had consciously alienated other parts by a series of settlements. Som. Med. Wills (Som. Rec. Soc. xvi), 151; E326/8864. In addition, Cheddar’s widow survived him for several years, and retained a share of his lands in dower into Edward IV’s reign. Fortunately for Cheddar’s daughters, Thomas had made his settlements without royal licence. The Crown consequently seized the property in question, and in June 1449 granted custody of the manors of Ubley and Midsomer Norton jointly to Newton and Viscount Lisle. CFR, xviii. 114-15. In the two decades that followed, the Talbots were twice struck by dynastic disaster, when in 1453 the earl of Shrewsbury and his son Lisle fell at the battle of Castillon, and again in 1470, when Lisle’s heir, barely of age, fell victim to Black Will’s arrow at Nibley Green. As a result the lion’s share of the Cheddar estates eventually came to be reunited in Newton’s hands. The Cheddar manors in Somerset that had found their way into the possession of John’s wife before her death in 1498 included Aldwick, Midsomer Norton, Alstone (in Huntspill), Thorne Falcon, Babington, and Ubley, which together with lands in North Cory and Christon were then said to be worth in excess of £62 (probably an underestimate, since essentially the same holdings were valued at more than twice that sum when her son Richard died just two years later). CCR, 1441-7, pp. 107-9; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 9, 421; Reg. Bekynton, i (Som. Rec. Soc. xlix), 258; Regs. Stillington and Fox, 99, 198, 428, 521; Some Som. Manors (Som. Rec. Soc. extra ser. 1931), 356; VCH Som. viii. 8; Bristol RO, Ashton Court mss, AC/D/10/2; Som. Archs., Aldwick deeds, DD\X\BDN/6.

Other problems beset the passage of Newton’s paternal inheritance into his hands. Sir Richard’s second wife, Emmota, whom he made his sole executor, was some years his junior, and although (as far as is known) she did not remarry, she did retain control of a share of her husband’s estate, including the Somerset manor of Walton in Gordano until her death in 1475-6. In 1461 Newton apparently attempted to take the law into his own hands, for on 30 Sept. that year he and a number of associates were said to have invaded the manor and expelled its tenant, John Harley. KB9/300/58A.

The protracted process of securing both his own and his wife’s inheritance seems to have caused Newton very real financial difficulties and may go some way to explain why he failed to play any part in local administration prior to his sole return to Parliament in 1453. As, by virtue of the death of his wife’s brother-in-law (on 17 July, after the end of the second session), he was more directly affected by events in Gascony than many other Members of the Commons, it is tempting to speculate what part he played in Parliament’s proceedings, at least in the final session in 1454. What is certain is that – like his fellow knights of the shire – he was commissioned to distribute in his county the rebate to the tax granted by the Commons. It was probably around this time that he found himself in dispute with the wealthy Gloucestershire esquire Nicholas Poyntz*, from whom he had borrowed the sum of £9. For surety of repayment, Newton had enfeoffed him of lands worth 12 marks, but, so he complained to the chancellor, Poyntz had promptly used the title the enfeoffment gave him as a pretext to attempt to extort an annuity of 40s. for life or a lump payment of £20. C1/73/8.

It was not until the autumn of 1458 that Newton finally secured Crown office in the form of membership of two minor royal commissions, and he displayed little interest in parliamentary affairs, although he did attend the Somerset elections to the Parliament summoned in the aftermath of the battle of Northampton in 1460. It is unclear what motivated Newton’s politics in these years, or, for that matter, what these politics were. It is possible that his connexion by marriage with the Talbots drew him into the outer circle of the new earl of Shrewsbury (the first Viscount Lisle’s half-brother), and that, like him, he opted for a policy of loyalty to King Henry’s person. Certainly, there is no suggestion of a close relationship with the duke of York’s party (to whom Shrewsbury fell victim at Northampton), especially in the light of the complete absence of any appointment to Crown office in the first years after Edward IV’s accession.

In the interim, the need to provide for his growing family had involved Newton in other disputes. In October 1460 he had purchased custody of the lands and heir of the Somerset landowner Robert Kenne from the earl of Wiltshire, and Edward IV had confirmed the grant of custody the following June. Little over a month later, however, the King granted the revenues of the Kenne lands to Richard Arthur, and forced Newton to pay the farm for the wardship of which he had originally been acquitted. In the event, the investment proved worthwhile, as Newton married the heir to his own daughter, Elizabeth. CFR, xx. 17; C1/27/193. In the second half of the 1460s, Newton’s fortunes began to improve, so much so that in the autumn of 1466 he was pricked sheriff of Gloucestershire. His term of office was an unexceptional one, which gave rise to the usual subsequent litigation over unpaid fees and annuities. E13/153, rots. 84d, 85d, 103; 154, Easter rot. 6d; 158, rot. 21. By contrast, his movements during the crisis of 1469 to 1471 are unclear. It is possible that he maintained ties with the next earl of Shrewsbury, who, after first declaring for Henry VI in the late summer of 1470, rapidly followed the duke of Clarence back into Edward IV’s camp a few months later. Certainly, he appears to have seen some martial activity, perhaps at Tewkesbury, for by the summer of 1471 he had been knighted, and at the end of August he sued out a general pardon. CPR, 1467-77, pp. 280-1. Earlier in the same month, he had sealed a bond for £600 to Thomas Vaughan*, newly-appointed chamberlain to the infant prince of Wales, guaranteeing payment of the lesser sum of 600 marks within a year: it is not certain whether this sum represented a private transaction, or a fine to secure Newton’s readmission to King Edward’s favour. CCR, 1468-76, no. 722. His appointments to Crown office while Edward remained on the throne were restricted to a single local commission in the summer of 1473, and in the absence of such appointments, Newton led the life of a respected country gentleman, who occasionally attested his neighbours’ deeds and property transactions. CCR, 1461-8, pp. 159, 373; 1476-85, no. 79; C147/155; Ashton Court mss, AC/D/11/27, 29, 31-33; Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xxii), 132; Regs. Stillington and Fox, 475. He maintained ties with his father’s old associates among the legal profession and in September 1483 was named principal executor of the will of the widow of the justice Sir Richard Chokke, who had previously assisted him in the process of securing the Cheddar inheritance. Som. Med. Wills, 245; Som. Feet of Fines, 111.

The early days of Edward V’s short reign saw Newton added to the Somerset bench, only to be removed again by Richard III within a few months. His relations with the new King’s regime were complex. By the following spring he was sufficiently trusted to be included in local commissions of array, but his restoration to the bench by Henry VII within less than a month of Bosworth indicates where his true loyalties lay, and the conspicuous display of the Lancastrian livery collar of ‘esses’ on his tomb effigy may provide further confirmation of his allegiance. Newton’s failure to secure any subsequent appointments from the new monarch probably owed something to his advancing years. He made his will on 26 Jan. 1488 and died on the same day. He was succeeded by his 30-year-old son, Richard. CIPM Hen. VII, i. 435; ii. 9; CFR, xxii. 153, 592-4. In accordance with his wishes, Newton was buried in the church of St. Mary at Yatton, where his tomb survives, and left bequests to this church, as well as to Wells cathedral and the four friaries at Bristol. A small bequest of 6s. 8d. was assigned to the prisoners in Bristol’s Newgate prison. Two of his sons, Richard and Thomas, and his daughter Elizabeth received legacies of plate, while a third son, Nicholas, received a landed endowment. PCC 8 Milles (PROB11/8, f. 69); Procs. Som. Arch. Soc. xliv. 59-60.

In her will on 18 Mar. 1498, Newton’s widow, who had been appointed her husband’s sole executor, asked to be buried in the newly-built chapel of St. John the Baptist at Yatton. Bequests of money and plate went to her children and grandchildren, her son Nicholas being singled out for a grant of a Gloucestershire manor, and as well as assigning lands to provide for the schooling of her grandson Thomas Kenne, she provided £4 to send the priest Thomas Hakluyt to Oxford university. She died on the following 14 May. Som. Med. Wills, 374-5; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 9; CFR, xxii. 592-4.