PICKERING, Sir James (1413-60), of Ellerton, Yorks. and Killington, Westmld.

Despite bearing a surname with strong Yorkshire connotations, and presumably from a family originally hailing from the town of that name, the immediate heritage of the Pickerings of Ellerton (in the East Riding) lay in Westmorland, where they had held the manor of Killington, a few miles to the east of Kendal, since 1259. Recs. Kendale ed. Farrer and Curwen, ii. 416, 422. The family had no obvious connexion with their N. Riding namesakes, the Pickerings of Oswaldkirk, with whom their members are often confused, but the two may well have had similar if not shared roots. It was our MP’s great-grandfather and namesake who shifted the family’s main interests back to Yorkshire. This earlier Sir James Pickering† sat in the Commons in 12 Parliaments, serving as Speaker on at least two occasions, in 1378 and 1383 (Feb.), the first Westmorland MP to do so, but his later administrative appointments were predominantly in Yorkshire, and his final five elections to Parliament were for that county. Roskell, 1-25, esp. pp. 4-5. However, contrary to Roskell’s assertions, the Pickerings’ interests at Ellerton clearly pre-dated the Speaker, since in 1352 Sir Robert Pickering sued various local men for an attack on his property there. Sir Robert was the 2nd s. and eventual h. of Thomas Pickering (his er. bro. John dying without issue), and details recorded during 14th-century disputes over the family property in Westmld. clearly show that it was Sir Robert, not Thomas, who was the Speaker’s father: CP40/370, rot. 118; 418, rot. 197d; C241/117/159, 359, 369. The Speaker’s son and heir, Thomas, although far less prominent than his father, maintained this shift of activity, and died while in office as escheator of Yorkshire on 25 Aug. 1406. CIPM, xix. 61-63.

Thomas’s son, John, did not live long enough to make much impact in local affairs. Although according to his father’s inquisition post mortem, he was 21 at his father’s death, in 1409 Ralph, Lord Greystoke, feudal overlord of the family in respect of their lands at Ellerton and Bielby, sued Sir John Beetham†, from whom the family held the manor of Meathop with Ulpha in Westmorland, and James Pickering, who was probably John’s uncle, for abducting John from his wardship at Ellerton. Later, in 1416, Greystoke sued John himself, for entering his inheritance and refusing to satisfy him of the money due for his marriage. The claim is puzzling, for not only does it appear that John inherited when of age, but, if he did not, his wardship belonged to the Crown (the Pickerings were tenants-in-chief, in respect of property at Thorganby in Yorkshire). CP40/594, rot. 165d; 623, rot. 83. John fought in the retinue of John, Lord Clifford, in 1417 and it may be that he died in France: E101/51/2, m. 21. However this may be, the matter was resolved by John’s death on 23 Mar. 1420. Then a minority did follow, for our MP was only a six year old. The young James inherited estates spread over three counties, most of which were in the hands of feoffees at the time of his father’s death. In Yorkshire, these comprised, aside from relatively modest lands in Ellerton, Thorganby and Bielby, further property at Aughton and Laytham, all to the south-east of York. The more substantial Westmorland estates included, aside from the manors of Killington and Meathorp, the hamlets of Firbank and Old Hutton and the Blean, worth a total of £30 a year, and in Cumberland the family held a moiety of the manor of Birkby, the inheritance of his paternal grandmother, Katherine. CIPM, xxi. 550-2; CCR, 1422-9, pp. 169-70; CFR, xviii. 44. The jointure of James’s mother, Ellen, in this Cumberland property and, more significantly, the feoffment of the greater part of the Pickering property meant that there was little property to come into wardship. On this occasion the wardship was claimed not by Greystoke but rather, as law required, by the Crown. In July 1420, Ellen, in company with Thomas Holden* and John Molyneux, was permitted to buy both wardship and marriage for the modest sum of £100. CPR, 1416-22, p. 298. Soon after, James was married to Mary, daughter of his family’s Westmorland neighbour Sir Robert Lowther.

Very little is known of the early years of James’s career. He first appears in the records as an adult when, in July 1436, he was named as an executor of John Carlton, canon of York and the godfather of his daughter, Margaret. Soon afterwards he was a knight, for when he brought an action in the following Trinity term as one of Carlton’s executors he is styled ‘miles nuper armiger’. His promotion as such a young man can only be explained by military service, but unfortunately no evidence of that service has come to light. Test. Ebor. ii. 14-15; Borthwick Inst., York registry wills, prob. reg. 3, f. 473; CP40/706, rot. 265. Absence in France probably also explains why the beginning of his administrative career was delayed until the early 1440s. Once active, however, he quickly took a prominent role. He was elected to represent Yorkshire in the 1447 Parliament, and in the following year he was on the pricked list for the shrievalty of that county. C47/34/2/5. On this occasion he was not selected, but he did take the office in December 1449. He was an unfortunate choice. Nominated three days after the end of the first session of the Parliament of 1449 (Nov.), of which he was a Member, he had to combine the work of sheriff and MP until Parliament ended in the following June. Further, his term of office was a disturbed one. In the petition he presented for a pardon of account, he complained that he had been obliged to keep about him a ‘grete noumbre of people defensibly arrayed … to subdue the hedy and ragiouse people’, presumably a reference to disturbances in Yorkshire connected with Cade’s rising. E159/227, brevia Hil. rot. 3.

Pickering’s elections to Parliament in 1447 and 1449 may reflect the growing polarization of politics in Yorkshire and across the north of England. On both occasions he was elected alongside Sir William Normanvile*, a prominent retainer of the Percy earls of Northumberland, while he himself was becoming increasingly associated with their opponents, the Nevilles of Middleham. The indentures of return for both elections were dominated by supporters of the two factions, and the returns marked a compromise, perhaps an uneasy one, between these rival groups. It would, however, be wrong to postulate too clear a division between them at this date. Our MP was one of several Neville men who remained on easy terms with adherents of the Percys. On 1 Sept. 1450 Pickering witnessed the confirmation of a grant by Sir John Salvin, a prominent Percy supporter, to Margaret, wife of Henry Gascoigne, from another family connected with the Percys. His connexion with the Gascoignes was further shown a month later, when he was involved in a transaction by Henry Gascoigne relating to a manor in Ottringham near Kingston-upon-Hull. Yorks. Deeds, ix (Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. cxi), 96; CP25(1)/281/160/22. In 1453 he also attested the election of Henry’s nephew Sir William Gascoigne* to Parliament, the only election he is recorded as having attested. C219/16/2.

The early 1450s saw Sir James’s reputation grow. In January 1450, alongside various local notables including Sir John Conyers and Sir Thomas Mountfort*, he witnessed a quitclaim by his neighbour Robert Roos of Ingmanthorpe of property in Redmire, Roos sealing the deed with the seals of Sir James and the abbot of St Mary’s, York ‘because my seal is to most persons unknown’. Yorks. Deeds, iii (Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. lxiii), 97. About the same time, Archbishop John Kemp granted him the office of surveyor-general of the temporalities of his archbishopric, which brought with it an annual fee of £20. Abp.’s Reg. 19 (Kemp), f. 175. He also continued to be appointed to most of the more important commissions in Yorkshire, often alongside both Neville and Percy supporters. However, the divisions among the northern elite were not to remain dormant for long, and when violence finally broke out, Pickering appears to have been at the forefront. As relations between the Percy and Neville camps deteriorated in the summer of 1453, he was among a group of northern notables appointed to two commissions of oyer and terminer in the North Riding in July, with special orders to investigate abuses of the rules on liveries of badges, gowns and caps. But the inclusion of Pickering and several other Neville supporters (doubtless a reflection of the influence of the earl of Salisbury who, unlike the earl of Northumberland, sat on the royal council), was never likely to achieve a satisfactory outcome, and on 27 July a new commission was set up under the royal councillor Sir William Lucy* to attempt to resolve a rapidly-deteriorating situation. This commission was accompanied by an order to many of the prominent rioters, including Pickering and his associates Conyers and Mountfort, to cease their activities and submit to Lucy’s jurisdiction. CPR, 1452-61, pp. 121-3; R.A. Griffiths, ‘Local Rivalries and National Politics’, Speculum, xliii. 589-632, esp. p. 595; PPC, vi. 147-9. But this too failed. Whether Pickering himself was present at the pitched battle between Percy and Neville supporters at Heworth near York on 24 Aug. is unknown. The Neville entourage, returning from Tattershall in Lincolnshire after the marriage of Sir Thomas Neville to Maud Stanhope, niece and co-heir of Ralph, Lord Cromwell, would undoubtedly have been significant and considerable, but even if he had attended the nuptials, Pickering may already have left the company south of York to return home to Ellerton. Even so, it seems likely that he would have been with the Neville force on 20 Oct., when both sides converged on the Percy stronghold of Topcliffe, and it seems that he was one of the men, on both sides, whose armed bands brought such disruption and insecurity to the northern counties at this time. Griffiths, 597, 604-5.

With the seizure of the government by the Yorkist and Neville faction in March 1454, Pickering’s fortunes rose still further and he used his connexion with the Nevilles to enter the duke of York’s service. He may have accompanied the duke on his judicial attack on the Percys and their supporters in Yorkshire in the early summer of that year; and in September he was named on a commission to raise the inhabitants of the East Riding and march against the men of Lancashire, who ‘congregate to enter other counties to spoil and plunder and destroy the political regime’, clearly a reaction to further attacks upon the Yorkist government. It is probable that he was involved in the second ‘battle’ between the Nevilles and the Percys, at Stamford Bridge that autumn, where the leaders of the Percys were finally captured, leaving the Nevilles victorious. C66/478, m. 12d; CPR, 1452-61, p. 220; Griffiths, 611-24. His appointment to the bench in the East Riding in the following February came just at the time that the Yorkist hold on government was failing and the ground was being laid for a far more serious confrontation. By this time he seems to have been a councillor of the duke of York, and when relations between the duke and the King finally broke down into armed conflict at the first battle of St. Albans in the following May he was almost certainly at the duke’s side, probably part of a large northern contingent. His loyalty was rewarded at the expense of another of the duke’s men, Sir William Skipwith. Skipwith failed to fight for the duke at the battle and was deprived of the stewardship of the duke’s manors of Hatfield and Conisbrough in favour of our MP and Salisbury’s son, Sir John Neville. CPR, 1452-61, pp. 552-3; C.A.J. Armstrong, ‘Politics and the Battle of St. Albans’, Bull. IHR, xxxiii. 27.

The following three years were to prove the apogee of Sir James’s career. He was again elected for Yorkshire to the Yorkist-dominated Parliament of July 1455, following an election administered by a Yorkist sheriff, Sir John Saville*, and attested by an electorate composed largely of York and Neville supporters. This time there was no semblance of a ‘balanced ticket’, his colleague being (Sir) Thomas Haryngton I*, a kinsman of Pickering’s mother and a leading retainer of the earl of Salisbury. Both men, conscious of the prevailing political situation, wisely secured general pardons during the course of the Parliament. A.J. Pollard, North-Eastern Eng. 157; C67/41, mm. 16, 24. On the day it was dissolved, 12 Mar. 1456, Pickering was granted the keeping of the former Percy castle, manor and lordship of Wressle, in royal hands following the Act of Resumption just passed. He was clearly a key member of the duke of York’s affinity in the latter part of the decade, and in February 1458 he was one of the duke’s servants who acted as parties to financial agreements with Alice, dowager duchess of Suffolk, over the marriage of her son, John de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, to York’s daughter, Elizabeth. CFR, xix, 159; CPR, 1452-61, p. 408; CAD, iv, A6337-43. On the following 10 July, at Greenwich, Sir James himself married for a second time, his new wife Margaret apparently coming from the Kentish family of Northwode, a marriage doubtless secured through his rising status and growing connexions with the political elite outside his native region. CP40/821, rot. 426. She is identified as a Northwode in a later ped.: Vis. Yorks. ed. Foster, 630.

Yet as the influence of the Yorkist lords at court waned, so did the fortunes of their supporters. On 21 Oct. 1456 a writ of proclamation was issued for Pickering’s appearance before the King, and, since two other prominent Yorkists, Thomas Colt* and William Herbert*, were summoned with him, it is probable that he was summoned to answer for some offence committed in York’s support. No punishment is recorded, but in January 1458 he sought security in another general pardon, and in the following November he was removed from the East Riding peace commission. E403/809, m. 2; C67/42, m. 41. When open warfare resumed, he remained at the heart of the Yorkist establishment, and was present at most if not all the major engagements of this phase of the wars. It is unclear whether he was with the earl of Salisbury at Blore Heath in September, but he was certainly at Ludford Bridge in October, and fled to Ireland with the duke of York and other prominent supporters in the aftermath of the rout. Lancastrian revenge was swift: Pickering was among the Yorkists attainted at the Coventry Parliament, and he lost his office as joint steward of Conisbrough, to which Skipwith was restored. Royal contracts for the defence of the coasts, such as that agreed with (Sir) Baldwin Fulford* in February 1460, specifically named Pickering as one of the rebels for whom a bounty would be paid, the prize of 500 marks showing the importance placed upon his capture by the Lancastrians, and in March receivers were appointed to administer his forfeited lands, the issues of Ellerton already being used to repay loans to the Crown. PROME, xii. 457-62; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 552-3, 572, 582, 597; Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, ii. 512-15; CCR, 1454-61, p. 409.

Throughout this period, Pickering presumably remained with York in Ireland. He was explicitly exempted from the act of resumption passed by the Irish parliament held by the duke in the spring of 1460, and he and another of York’s servants, Henry Cartmel, were granted permission in that parliament to bring an appeal on behalf of the invalid wife of his kinsman, John Higham, murdered in Gibbstown, Co. Meath on 4 Apr. Statute Rolls Ire. ed. Berry, ii. 729, 787. Precisely when Sir James returned to England is unclear, although he probably did not remain in Ireland until York’s eventual return in September. In a lawsuit brought a few years later, his widow Margaret claimed to have received money for her husband in London between 12 Oct. 1459 (the date of the Yorkist flight from Ludford) and 20 Apr. 1460, suggesting that he may have returned by the latter date. If so, he may well have been with the Yorkist and Neville army at the battle of Northampton in July. Present or not, he certainly benefited from his party’s success. In late August he was restored to the East Riding bench, and he was also named on commissions to arrest the new regime’s enemies in Yorkshire. CP40/817, rot. 331; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 608, 610. He also seems to have been expanding his interests further south, including the purchase of property in Stepney. CP25(1)/152/95/196A. Presumably news of Pickering’s death had not reached the court when this fine was drawn up in Jan. 1461. However, this resurgence was to be short-lived. Sir James was part of the duke of York’s party which reached Sandal Castle on 21 Dec., and spent Christmas with the duke, the earl of Salisbury and other Yorkist leaders. On 30 Dec. he was a member of the army which was routed outside the castle’s walls, falling alongside his lords. His corpse was among those decapitated the following day, and his head, together with those of the other slain leaders, was set up on the walls of the city of York. Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English, ii (2), [775].

Thankfully for his family, the subsequent Yorkist victory at Towton meant that the Pickerings avoided the disastrous repercussions Sir James’s death would have brought the family had the Lancastrians won that battle. Rather than suffering forfeiture, on 3 Dec. 1461 Ellerton was placed in the hands of Margaret, widow of Sir James’s eldest son, another James, who had sought custody in order to support herself and her seven children. Given that her eldest son, Sir James’s grandson and heir, yet another James, was only six years old, it seems likely that her husband had died only recently, perhaps falling alongside his father at Wakefield or at one of the other battles of this phase of the wars. CPR, 1461-7, p. 60. By the time of the heir’s majority in 1476 his mother Margaret had married Thomas Middleton: C140/59/88. Sir James’s inq. post mortem was ordered on 10 Oct. 1461 and held four days later. The inq., presumably in error, gave the date of his death as 29 Dec.: CFR, xx. 1; E149/207/5.

Despite lasting for barely two years (at least part of which he spent in exile), Sir James’s second marriage produced two children, a daughter Ellen (doubtless named after Sir James’s own mother), and a son, Edward, probably the man knighted after the battle of Stoke in 1487. W.A. Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 24. Sir James’s widow Margaret re-married around 1467, this time to a Wiltshire landowner and retainer of Edward IV, William Collingbourne (son of Robert*), and in a Chancery petition presented shortly after their marriage the couple sought protection against a London goldsmith, Robert Botiller, who had been pursuing Margaret in the common pleas seeking payment of a debt of £30. The common law case, framed as a debt of account, alleged that Margaret had received money directly from Botiller during Sir James’s absence, but in their petition the couple claimed that the money, since repaid, had been loaned directly to Pickering while he was ‘in service with the high and mighty prince Richard, late duke of York, at Ludlow’, suggesting cash raised in a hurry for his flight to Ireland. C1/31/469; CP40/814, rot. 450d; 817, rot. 331; 821, rot. 426. She was still pleading as Margaret Pickering in Mich. term 1466, while her subsequent petition with Collingbourne, addressed to the abp. of York as chancellor, was presumably presented before Abp. Neville was dismissed from office in June 1467. The outcome of this dispute is unrecorded, but Margaret’s second marriage was to prove no less tragic than the first. Collingbourne was to become a prominent critic of Richard III, the author of the famous doggerel ‘The Catte, the Ratte and Lovell our dogge rulyth all Englande under a hogge’, and was executed in December 1484. Ric. III, Crown and People, ed. Petre, 101-6.