STYUECLE, Sir Nicholas

More may be added to the earlier biography.4 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 527-9.

A muster roll of Henry V’s reign indicates that Styuecle saw military service across the Channel in the earlier part of his career and reveals that he had a far more long-standing association with Sir John Tiptoft† than hitherto realised. Drawn up when the royal army assembled at Southampton prior to crossing for France in the summer of 1417, the roll lists Styuecle as a member of the retinue that Tiptoft contributed to the expedition.5 E101/51/2. Whether the MP had earned his knighthood on Henry V’s previous expedition to France is impossible to say, although his Membership of the Parliament of 1415 would appear to preclude participation at Agincourt.

The records of the common pleas reveal that Styuecle married before 1423. Alice Styuecle was one of the executors of her previous husband, Thomas Montgomery, and at the beginning of that year a couple of lawsuits that she and her co-executors were pursuing in that court reached pleadings. Styuecle was also named as a plaintiff in these actions, in his capacity as her spouse. In these suits, Alice and her associates claimed that each of the defendants, two husbandmen from Keyston in Huntingdonshire, owed £15 to Montgomery’s estate, debts arising from bonds entered into with the draper in 1419.6 CP40/648, rots. 218, 219d. Styuecle was likewise associated with Montgomery’s executors in a third suit in the same court. The defendant was the Herefordshire esquire, John Brugge†, another Member of the Parliament of 1420, and the action concerned a bond for 70s. that Brugge had entered into with Montgomery in London in 1412. In pleadings of Hilary term 1424, Brugge denied still owing that sum, asserting that he had satisfied Montgomery in full in 1414, receiving an acquittance from the draper in return.7 CP40/652, rot. 294.

Styuecle encountered difficulty in securing his wages as an MP for at least two of his Parliaments. In February 1425 he filed a bill in the court of the Exchequer against Sir Walter de la Pole*, sheriff of Huntingdonshire in 1423-4, seeking the £22 12s. he was owed for the Parliament of 1423. The case lasted for just over a year, at the end of which the court found for Styuecle and awarded him damages of 20s., but this was not the end of the matter. In February 1427 he was obliged to file a bill in the same court against one of de la Pole’s successors as sheriff, John Hore* (whose term had finished a few weeks earlier), for the still unpaid wages and damages. At the same time he also filed another bill against him for failing to pay him his wages (£14 4s. for 71 days) as a knight of the shire in the Parliament of 1426, but the outcome of both the suits against Hore is not known.8 E13/136, rot. 19; 137, rots. 16d, 18. Perhaps because of the difficulties he had experienced, Styuecle would sell his manor in Madingley to five feoffees acting on behalf of the electorate of Cambridge for £200 in 1448. Thereafter it was leased out to provide an income with which to pay the wages of the county’s parliamentary knights of the shire, and became known as the ‘Shire manor’.9 VCH Cambs. ix. 167.

During the early 1440s, Styuecle supported Sir John Tiptoft, now Lord Tiptoft, in a quarrel apparently connected with that peer’s feud with Sir James Butler, son of the earl of Ormond. On 22 Feb. 1441, a jury indicted Henry Brokesby, a tenant of Butler’s manor at Fulbourn, Cambridgeshire, of murder before Styuecle and other j.p.s. According to the jury, Brokesby had killed one John Paxton at Hilton in Huntingdonshire in March the previous year, but Brokesby immediately claimed that the indictment had arisen from a conspiracy at Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, among Tipftoft and his adherents, including Styuecle. Duly acquitted before a special commission of gaol delivery on 6 Apr. 1441, Brokesby subsequently sued Tiptoft and his ‘coterie’ in the common pleas for conspiracy. Tiptoft’s death in January 1443 undermined the chance of a successful defence and, in the following summer, the plaintiff won damages totalling 1,300 marks. Yet this was not the end of the matter, for the justices reserved judgement while they debated various issues of law arising from the case. There followed numerous adjournments, and it is possible that the unfortunate Brokesby never achieved the justice he sought, since he was still awaiting judgement in 1449.10 CP40/727, rot. 600; Year Bks. Hil. 21 Hen. VI (Reports del Cases en Ley, 1679), pl. 12; Mich. 22 Hen. VI (ibid.), pl. 5.

In 1453 Styuecle was one of those who conveyed the manor of Great Raveley to the abbey of Ramsey, but he was acting on behalf of the Hore family rather than as a personal benefactor. In his will the recently deceased Gilbert Hore* had instructed his feoffees, of whom Styuecle was one, to transfer the manor to the abbey in return for £200 and a perpetual chantry for prayers for his soul.11 C139/148/2; Add. Ch. 34004; VCH Hunts. ii. 200.