POLE, John (d.1484), of Chalke and Wilton, Wilts. and Shaftesbury, Dorset.

According to a seventeenth-century visitation, this MP was a younger brother of ‘Poole in Chester’, whose family had been established in the hundred of Wirral for over 200 years. Vis. Glos. (Harl. Soc. xxi), 125. The ped. in Miscellanea Geneaologica et Heraldica, ser. 5, iii. 205-6 divides his parlty. career between two men. For the fam. of Poole settled at Nether Poole, Chester, from the 13th cent. see G. Ormerod, Palatine and City of Chester ed. Helsby, ii. 419-23. Yet this would seem to be mistaken, and in fact his connexion with the Cheshire family was more remote, for in April 1479, towards the end of his life and by then styled ‘of Wilton, esquire’, he secured possession of messuages and some 230 acres of land at Preston, Grimesargh and Brockholes in Lancashire, which as ‘son and heir’ of the late Henry Pole he had recently recovered from two of his kinsmen at the assizes at Lancaster. Fitzherbert-Brockholes mss, DDFZ 22. The Poles are recorded having an interest in the Brockholes estate in the 1370s, and the particular properties which John recovered in 1479 had been in the possession of Henry and Joan Pole over 50 years earlier, in 1425. At that date the couple had made a conveyance involving a John Pole ‘senior’. Presumably our John was a younger son, and it was perhaps he who in the mid 1450s reached an agreement with a neighbour as to the bounds of their adjoining plots of land in Brockholes. Ibid. DDFZ 13; VCH Lancs. vii. 111, n. 33, 113, n. 49.

What prompted Pole to move south is not known. He had done so by May 1439, when together with Hugh Wyche*, the London mercer who also came from the north-west, he acquired property in several London parishes including those of St. Benedict Fynke and St. Michael Cornhill. By that date too he had also obtained interests in land at Chalke in Wiltshire, to which he apparently added more within the next few years at Swallowfield and Dinton in the same county. CCR, 1435-41, pp. 267-9 (Henry Pole was also involved in these transactions); C67/39, m. 10. The estate in Chalke seems to have previously belonged to the Alwyne family, from whom he may have purchased it, unless it came to him by marriage (the name of his wife’s father is not recorded). VCH Wilts. xiii. 42. Situated some five miles south-west of Wilton, it was a considerable distance from Marlborough, the borough which he represented in the Parliament of 1442, and how he came to be elected there is obscure. Yet in view of his documented connexion with the important Stourtons of Stourton (whose service he entered), the presence of both (Sir) John Stourton II* (afterwards Lord Stourton) and his son William at the shire elections conducted at Wilton may be significant. C219/15/2. Pole probably also acquired property not far away at Shaftesbury, in Dorset, which he represented nine years later, and there the Stourtons exerted some influence on the burgesses’ choice of MPs on other occasions in the middle years of the century. Pole’s fellow MP for Shaftesbury in 1453 was Giles Dacre*, like him a sometime feoffee of the Stourton estates who also represented Wilton in the course of his career.

Since Pole was to be employed by the Stourtons as a receiver-general, it looks as if he made his career in estate management. While his second Parliament, that of 1453, was in progress he was party to a final concord regarding lands in Dorset on behalf of Robert and Eleanor Hymerford, perhaps the parents of John Hymerford* who was sitting in the same Parliament as an MP for Wells. Intriguingly, John Hymerford took up the post of receiver-general of the estates inherited by Katherine, the daughter and coheiress of Sir John Chideock* (d.1450), while Pole exercised the same office for her sister’s husband William Stourton. Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 374-5; Arundell mss, AR2/656. Other gentry of the region engaged his services, so that in the autumn of 1460 he acted as a feoffee for John, son and heir of John Paulet*, for the settlement in jointure of Paulet’s manor of Fisherton Delamare, Wiltshire. CIPM Hen. VII, i. 823. Yet although he was accorded the status of a gentleman or esquire, and was not a townsman, he was twice chosen as mayor of Shaftesbury in the late 1450s, and called ‘formerly of Shaftesbury’ in a royal pardon he sued out in March 1458. C67/42, m. 28.

Pole attended the shire court at Dorchester for the elections to the Parliament summoned to meet on 7 Oct. 1460, and set his seal to the sheriff’s indenture returning (Sir) William Stourton. During the first parliamentary session the duke of York laid claim to the throne, and after his death at Wakefield the Stourtons showed themselves ready to support the acclamation of his son Edward as King. Pole may well have followed their lead. He secured election to the first Parliament of Edward IV’s reign, which met on 4 Nov. 1461, on this occasion representing another Wiltshire borough, Wilton. According to the later visitation he had been retained as steward by Wilton abbey (from whom he held his land at Chalke), and although this cannot now be verified, such a position would have given him standing in the town. The Parliament was prorogued on 21 Dec., and when it reassembled on 6 May following it was promptly dissolved. During the recess Pole took out two more pardons (dated 5 Feb. and 12 Mar.), in which besides being called ‘of Shaftesbury, gentleman’, he was also styled ‘late of Salisbury, yeoman’, and ‘late of Hooke, Dorset’. C67/45, mm. 31, 38. The latter description points to links with the wealthy and influential Staffords, the family of Katherine Chideock’s first husband, or else with James, earl of Wiltshire and Ormond, who had established himself at Hooke after his marriage to the daughter and heiress of her brother-in-law Sir Richard Stafford*. The earl, a committed Lancastrian, had been executed after the battle of Towton and attainted in the Parliament; Pole would have sensibly disassociated himself from the traitor.

Pole’s appointments in December 1464 to serve concurrently as collector of customs and searcher of shipping at Bridgwater, took him to a different locality. CFR, xx. 129, 140, 181. Although he ceased to officiate as customer after a few weeks, he continued as searcher for 15 months. His association with William Stourton, Lord Stourton since the death of his father in 1462 and one of the most important landowners in Wiltshire, also advanced his career. He was put in overall charge of Stourton’s estate administration, and became his co-feoffee of the lands of a Somerset esquire, Alexander de la Lynde. C1/31/128; Reg. Stillington (Som. Rec. Soc. lii), 169, 190, 299. The connexion led Pole into trouble in 1470, for Lord William’s brother Sir Reynold Stourton actively supported Warwick and Clarence in their rebellion against Edward IV, and Pole himself fell under suspicion of following their lead. He found it necessary to sue for yet another pardon, on 10 May that year. Also as ‘formerly of Lopen, Som.’: C67/47, m. 8. Even so, he prudently held back from displaying overt support for the government of the Readeption.

Although Pole had sat in Parliament for Wilton at the beginning of Edward IV’s reign, it was not until 1468 that, called ‘esquire’, he gained formal admittance to the borough’s liberty, on payment of a fee of one mark and sureties offered by Robert atte Fenne*, who had accompanied him to the Commons on that occasion. Wilton gen. entry bk. G25/1/21, f. 26. Having been chosen as one of the borough council of 12 at Michaelmas 1471, in the following year he was again returned to Parliament for Wilton, with atte Fenne once more as his fellow MP. When, on 4 Dec. 1477, the burgesses elected him for a third time (to the Parliament summoned to meet on 16 Jan. following), it was recorded that he had been chosen on the recommendation of John Cheyne†, one of the esquires for the King’s body, while his companion had been picked from three nominees by the mayor and 18 named burgesses, who included Pole himself. The background to Pole’s personal connexion with Cheyne has not been discovered, although it is undoubtedly significant that two days earlier he had attested Cheyne’s own election to the Parliament as a knight of the shire at the county court held at Wilton. Ibid. f. 600; C219/17/3. It may be speculated, too, that Cheyne was another retainer of William, Lord Stourton, who was currently in poor health and in fact died a week before the Parliament’s dissolution. Cheyne promptly married his widow. Pole’s continued links with Lord Stourton until the end are evidenced from his inclusion among the feoffees acting for Stourton’s uncle, John Carent the elder, who died in April that same year. C1/505/60-67; C140/63/55; 65/5. More crucially, when Lord William was settling his affairs in January 1478 he had named Pole among the trustees of his estates. The trustees hurried to obtain pardons for making alienations without royal licence in July following, and two months later made settlements on John, the new Lord Stourton, and his wife Katherine. C140/63/55; CPR, 1476-85, p. 141; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 4, 334, 1123, 1126.

Pole paid the sum of 20s. to be exonerated from the office of portreeve of Wilton at Michaelmas 1482, but he was willing to serve in the Commons again, and was elected on the following 30 Nov. to represent the borough in what turned out to be Edward IV’s final Parliament. Furthermore, on 5 June 1483 he was re-elected to the Parliament summoned in the name of the young King Edward V, only to be revoked a few days later, Wilton gen. entry bk. G25/1/21, ff. 43, 45. when the duke of Gloucester seized the throne. In his final years regularly appeared as a juror at inquisitions post mortem in Wiltshire, doing so at Wilton following the deaths of Charles Bulkeley’s widow, Richard West, Lord de la Warre, and Richard Warre* (the brother-in-law of the late Lord Stourton), and at Salisbury (in November 1484) after the deaths of Isabel, widow of (Sir) John Lisle II* and Sir Edmund Hungerford*. C140/56/49; 57/62; 84/37; C141/6/17, 25. It is curious that he was not appointed to any ad hoc commissions of royal administration until after Edward IV’s reign had ended. However, this state of affairs changed after his eldest son, Richard, was made an esquire for the body to Richard III. John was named on a commission of array in Wiltshire in December 1484, and a few weeks later he shared with his son a royal grant in tail of the manor or lordship of North Houghton and lands elsewhere in Hampshire, formerly belonging to the lawyer Michael Skilling†, as well as property in Dorset which Skilling had held in right of his wife. Skilling had been attainted for his part in the duke of Buckingham’s rebellion, and although he obtained a pardon on the same day as the grant to the s was authorized, his lands had remained forfeit. Pole was appointed to another commission in May 1485, this time to investigate riots at Wilton. CPR, 1476-85, pp. 491, 504, 545. There, he had ceased to be a member of the borough council not long after his last election to Parliament. Although the reference to him as ‘mort’ in 1483 was premature: G25/1/21, ff. 43, 44. He may have stepped aside in favour of a putative younger son, William , who was admitted as a burgess of Wilton on 14 Sept. 1484 without paying an entry fee in return for his service in Parliament (presumably the one which had assembled earlier in the year). Wilton gen. entry bk. G25/1/21, f. 47. The Parl. of 1484 had met from 23 Jan. to 23 Feb., and no other Parl. was summoned in the remainder of Ric. III’s reign. Pole died before 9 Nov. 1485, the precise date not recorded. CFR, xxii. no. 3. No inq. post mortem survives. In view of his age it is unlikely that he had lent support to Richard III at the field of Bosworth and had been killed there. He was survived by his wife, Elizabeth. Together with her in 1472 he had taken on a lease for 19 years of the manor of Ugford St. James near Wilton, for which they agreed to pay an annual rent of £4. Wilts. Misc. Deeds, 492/215. In her will made on 20 Nov. 1487, Elizabeth requested burial in the church of St. Mary and St. Edith in Wilton, to which she left 12 ewes, while another gift of livestock was destined for Bulbridge church, not far away. To three of her daughters, ‘lady’ Juliana, Sibyl and Edith, she bequeathed gowns, while Leonard Pole, who also figured among the beneficiaries was perhaps her grandson of that name. Her executors were her son Richard Pole (d.1517) and a fourth daughter, Elizabeth Bonham. Probate was granted on 21 Nov. 1488. PCC 21 Milles.