PIERREPONT, Sir Henry

More may be added to the earlier biography.3 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 80-82.

The Pierreponts were among a dozen Nottinghamshire gentry families with an income in excess of £100 p.a. In 1436 Sir Henry was assessed on an annual income of £107 on lands in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire.4 E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14(xi)d.

Early in his career, Pierrepont was involved in a dispute, which, although seemingly a minor one, was brought to the attention of Parliament. In 1401 an elderly widow, Margery Adderley, complained in a petition to the royal council that he and his father had violently disseised her of Sneinton, a couple of miles from Holme Pierrepont, and intimidated her attorney, William Whatton. The inquiry ordered by the council failed to secure her redress, and she petitioned the Lords in the Parliament of 1406, asking, among other things, that Henry be required to find surety of the peace to Whatton. Her death soon after, however, led to the final resolution of the dispute in favour of the Pierreponts.5 CPR, 1401-5, p. 66; SC8/23/1111-13; KB27/570, rots. 20d, 77; CCR, 1402-5, p. 15; RP, iii. 565 (cf. PROME, viii. 416); JUST1/1514, rot. 83.

Sir Henry’s father did not die until shortly before 20 May 1425, when administration of his goods was entrusted to the rector of Holme Pierrepont and others in virtue of his intestacy. Sir Edmund’s longevity, together with our MP’s own marriage to a Derbyshire bride, may explain why Sir Henry spent part of his early career in that county. He served on the grand jury there when commissioners of inquiry visited the Midlands in June 1414; he first saw service as a j.p. in that county; and he attested three parliamentary elections held there between 1417 and 1425. On all three occasions he was returned to represent Nottinghamshire and was thus in breach of the statutes governing residence.6 Borthwick Inst. Univ. of York, Abps. Regs. 5A (sede vacante), f. 387d; C219/12/2; 13/3.

In the first half of his career, Pierrepont acted as an arbiter in three important disputes. In 1411 he was nominated to arbitrate on behalf of John Tuxford in an abortive attempt to end a dispute that threatened the peace of north Nottinghamshire, and in October 1425 he was one of an influential panel of arbiters that brought to a peaceful end a quarrel between Hugh Willoughby* and Sir Nicholas Strelley†. More interesting is his role in concluding the quarrel between the priory of Blyth and its troublesome tenants. On 20 Apr. 1428, as a j.p. acting under powers bestowed by the statute of riots of 1411, he took an indictment against those who had raided the priory’s property, and he was soon after appointed to a royal commission to arrest the rioters. In the following July, however, he was nominated to act as arbiter on their behalf in what appears to have been a successful attempt to reconcile the two parties.7 S.J. Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian Eng. 192, 203; idem, ‘Law and Arbitration’, in People, Politics and Community ed. Rosenthal and Richmond, 149; CCR, 1422-9, pp. 409-10. These early years of Sir Henry’s career, before he had inherited his extensive patrimony and for a short period thereafter, were the most successful. Within a few years of his father’s death he was drawn into two very serious quarrels: the one, a violent conflict with Thomas Foljambe which left him with a maimed hand; the other, an enervating and fruitless legal battle over the substantial Heriz inheritance with Ralph, Lord Cromwell, which deprived him of his natural place in local affairs. By 1434 his mounting indebtedness, in part, at least, the product of his struggle with Cromwell, had forced him into the sale of land. In that year he sold his manor of Rolleston to the wealthy Nottinghamshire esquire, Thomas Neville, who held the principal manor there; and in the following year he sold over 100 acres of farmland in Cotgrave and Tollerton, a few miles to the south-east of Nottingham, to Willoughby, to whom he also sold several items of silver plate.8 CP25(1)/292/68/156; Leics. RO, Peake mss, DE220/54; CP40/696, cart. rot.; Nottingham Univ. Lib., Middleton mss, Mi D 415, F 6/ 14. Such sales did not prevent difficulties in court. On 19 June 1438 he appeared in the Northamptonshire county court to forestall the proclamation of outlawry against him at the suit of William, Lord Lovell, the husband of Cromwell’s sister-in-law, for a debt of £40. Later he did not meet the same success and, on 6 Feb. 1449 he was outlawed in the Hertfordshire county court at the suit of Thomas Nicoll.9 CP40/710, rot. 477d; 718, rot. 128; 753, rot. 402d; 754, rot. 101.

Pierrepont’s debts may also have been exacerbated by his part in raising the ransom of Sir Thomas Rempston†: in May 1437 he joined with Sir Thomas in a bond for the repayment of £180 to a London draper, a loan that had presumably been put to securing the captive’s release in the previous year.10 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 133-4. Our MP had a family connexion with Sir Thomas. His late stepmother, Margaret, had been the widow of Sir Thomas’s uncle, William Rempston of Woodborough, Notts.: Test. Ebor. i (Surtees Soc. iv), 319; CP40/598, rot. 68d. Margaret’s date of death is unknown, but she does not appear to have survived Sir Edmund. This was not the only ransom Pierrepont had helped to raise. In November 1429, after John, Lord Talbot’s capture at the battle of Patay, he stood as surety for the repayment of 250 marks to be advanced by Sir John Popham* to the captive Talbot. Since the two others who stood with him as guarantors, Hugh Burgh* and Richard Leget, were among Talbot’s most intimate servants, it is probable that our MP had close links with their lord, who had significant landed interests in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Such ties did not, however, avail him in his troubles.11 A.J. Pollard, John Talbot, 114; C54/280, m. 22d (calendared in CCR, 1429-35, p. 27).

The administrators of Sir Henry’s goods were his widow, Ellen, and his younger son, John, on whom, just a month before his death, he had settled the manor of Radmanthwaite in Mansfield in tail.12 CP40/769, rot. 36d; Add. 70512, f. 291. Long before his death he contracted his eldest son, Henry, in marriage to Thomasia, daughter of Sir John Melton (d.1455) of Aston in Yorkshire, and sister of Sir John Melton*, the MP for Yorkshire in 1450. This was a good match and hence is likely to have taken place before his fortunes began to decline in the early 1430s.