POLE, John de la

More may be added to the earlier biography.4 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 99-100. It is in error, however, in suggesting that this MP might have been the soldier who was granted the French lordships of Moyon and Maynasseron. The grantee was, in fact, a greater man, namely Sir John de la Pole, a younger brother of William, earl of Suffolk. There is no evidence that the MP fought in France.5 R.A. Massey, ‘Lancastrian Land Settlement in Normandy’ (Liverpool Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1987), 60.

On 20 July 1425 de la Pole entered into an indenture with the rising Derbyshire lawyer, Gerard Meynell*, for Gerard’s marriage to his daughter, Cecily. He offered the groom generous terms, namely a portion of as much as 200 marks for a modest jointure of £10 p.a.6 Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, Sackville mss, U269/T82. These terms, unfavourable from de la Pole’s point of view, are to be seen as an investment in Meynell’s advancement.

Contrary to the statements in the earlier biography, de la Pole did serve on one of the two grand juries when a powerful commission of oyer and terminer came to Derby in April 1434. The commission’s visitation had been provoked by the violent quarrel between Sir Henry Pierrepont* and Thomas Foljambe, and it is significant that our MP should have served on the grand jury favourable to the former (and on which Pierrepont himself sat). Both he and Pierrepont had married sisters of Henry Longford, who had been murdered by the Foljambes three months before the arrival of the commission, and it thus not surprising that de la Pole was ready to support his kinsmen.7 KB9/11/5. He had recently acted in a fine with Pierrepont and Sir Nicholas Montgomery†, husband of another of the Longford daughters: Derbys. Feet of Fines (Derbys. Rec. Soc. xi), 1086. Montgomery had been his fellow Derbys. MP in the Parl. of Mar. 1416 and also served on the pro-Pierrepont jury.

A petition was presented against de la Pole in Chancery, probably in the late 1430s: Richard Cademan of Hartington, by his own account an old soldier, complained of unjust exactions at our MP’s hands for which he could have no remedy because of his ‘grete myth and power’.8 C1/39/48. This may be no more than the conventional language of such petitions, but de la Pole was clearly an influential figure. The fact that he was omitted from the peace commission of April 1439 (he is not in fact recorded as sitting after 1 Oct. 1437) strongly implies that he was dead by that date, and this conclusion is consistent with the evidence of the electoral returns. Our MP is thus unlikely to have been the sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in 1442-3. It is improbable that a man who had so long successfully avoided that office would be appointed to it in his twilight years, and it is more probable his son and heir took up the appointment.

In Hilary term 1448 our MP’s executors, Thomas, William and Richard de la Pole, his three younger sons, had a suit pending in the court of common pleas.9 CP40/748, rot. 275.