STANLEY, John I

John belonged to a branch of the Stanley family of Staffordshire which had acquired substantial landed holdings on the Wirral peninsula, including the manors of Great and Little Storeton. One of his ancestors successfully claimed the hereditary forester-ship of Wirral forest, and all these possessions, together with estates that came by marriage to the heiress Margery Hooton, were held by his father, Sir William Stanley. John boasted among his influential relations his uncle Sir John Stanley KG (d.1414), lord of the Isle of Man and founder of a baronial dynasty, and his cousin Sir John Stanley† (d.1437), the steward of Macclesfield,5 CP, xii (1), 247-50; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 455-8. who with other members of their thrusting and ambitious clan may well have helped to further his career. Even so, as a younger son he was expected to make his own fortune. He is first recorded in April 1415, when together with his father and brothers William and Edmund he was bound over to keep the peace towards one Thomas Sparkes of Chester. The eldest brother, William, departed soon afterwards on Henry V’s major expedition to France and was knighted at Agincourt,6 DKR, xxxvii (2), 666-7. only to die a few years later and within the lifetime of their father. Perhaps as a fail-safe to prevent the family estates falling to the Crown should Sir William’s grandson and heir still be under age when he died, or else as an extraordinary sign of favour to John himself, in 1426 Sir William spent ten marks on purchasing a royal licence to settle the manors of Great and Little Storeton, 30 messuages, 12 tofts and some 1,200 acres of land, along with the bailiwick of the forest of Wirral, on John and his heirs. Yet, for whatever reason, he never put the grant into effect, and when he died in February 1428 an earlier settlement (whereby he had conveyed these holdings in trust to Gilbert Clegge) was found to be legally binding. The properties concerned came shortly afterwards into the possession of John’s nephew.7 Ormerod, 415-16, 445-8; DKR, xxxvi (2), 306, 669-70; CHES 2/96, m. 2d; CHES 3/34/9.

Well before his father’s death, John had embarked on a career as an esquire in royal service, initially under Henry V, and it was the latter’s widowed queen, Katherine, who appointed him to his first office, that of sheriff of Anglesey. This post he held on a permanent basis from 1425, and by confirmation of her son Henry VI until the end of the latter’s reign 36 years later.8 SC6/1153/2, m. 7; CPR, 1436-41, p. 33. To it was added the constableship of Carnarvon castle, which, like the shrievalty, Stanley was permitted to discharge by deputy.9 CPR, 1422-9, p. 398. Evidently, he preferred to spend time at Court rather than performing his official duties in north Wales. As a member of the royal household he crossed to France in the spring of 1430 on Henry’s coronation expedition,10 DKR, xlvii. 270; E403/693, m. 16; 695, m. 4. He installed his relative, Roland Stanley, in Carnarvon castle: Add. Ch. 26597, m. 5. and shortly before their return home in 1432 he was appointed serjeant of the royal armoury in the Tower of London, with responsibility for taking care of the King’s personal armour.11 CPR, 1429-36, p. 182. Although on occasion Stanley was sent to Wales on the business of government,12 CPR, 1429-36, p. 266; E403/712, m. 11. The suit which Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, brought against him in 1436 for a debt of over £108, was probably related to revenues from Wales for which he was responsible: CP40/701, rot. 261d. for the most part he remained close to King Henry and in 1437 when the latter came of age he obtained confirmation of all his offices for his lifetime. Accordingly, Stanley received fees amounting to as much as £78 p.a.13 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 50, 64, 67, 153. Further marks of royal favour followed, such as the grant in 1438 of custody of lands worth 26 marks a year in Flint and Carnarvon during the minority of the son and heir of Nicholas Saxton (the former sheriff of Carnarvon), which he duly held for six years,14 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 156-7, 194, 299; DKR, xxxvii (2), 647, 672. and to his constableship was added the captaincy of the town of Carnarvon, with a daily wage of 8d.15 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 238-9. In spite of all the Welsh grants and appointments, Stanley was never away from the Household for long. By the summer of 1438 he had been promoted to be an usher of the chamber, and his role as serjeant of the armoury also kept him busy: in September 1439 he was empowered to search for and examine all harness and weapons of war made in England or imported for sale, with the provision that he might keep as forfeited any considered defective.16 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 194, 344, 429. Naturally, he received fees and robes at the Household: E101/409/9, 11, 16; 410/1, 3, 6, 9.

A mark of how highly Stanley was placed in the trust of the King and his council was the role he was given when Eleanor Cobham, duchess of Gloucester, was accused of witchcraft and sorcery in 1441. While her activities were under investigation during the autumn and winter of that year, Stanley assisted the constable of Leeds castle, Kent, to keep her in safe-custody, until in January 1442 she was handed over to his kinsman (Sir) Thomas Stanley II*, the controller of the Household, for conveyance under guard to Chester.17 E403/743, m. 10; 745, m. 10; R.A. Griffiths, King and Country, 241, 243, 244 n. 2. Furthermore, during that same period he was granted the confiscated goods of Master Roger Bolingbroke, the Oxford priest and associate of Eleanor who had been executed for his part in the affair.18 CPR, 1441-6, p. 40. Royal grants made to Stanley in the next two years included one of a tun of red wine every year for the rest of his life, and another to him and his heirs of the lordship and manor of ‘Gaffrogwy’, in Anglesey.19 CPR, 1441-6, pp. 167, 254, 272, 296.

Such was Stanley’s status in the Household when, in 1445, he was returned to Parliament as a knight of the shire for Surrey. He had started to acquire property in the county only relatively recently, by becoming a tenant of Westminster abbey, from which he farmed the tithes of the rectory at Battersea for £10 p.a., and in the same neighbourhood he also took on a 40-year lease of the site of the manor of Bridge Court. As well as this, he held of the abbey eight houses and some 150 acres of land with rights of common for a specified number of livestock on Westheath and Eastheath in Battersea and Wandsworth, for which he paid a rent of 30s. p.a.,20 VCH Surr. iv. 12; Westminster abbey muns. 27515; C145/325/8. and to these holdings he later added yet more property and land.21 CP25(1)/232/73/2; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 274-5; 1461-8, p. 58; VCH Surr. iv. 114. Nevertheless, although Stanley’s term as sheriff of Surrey and Sussex in 1442-3 had probably made him quite well known to the shire gentry prior to his election, he never became closely involved in local affairs. Fellow members of the Household may have played a part in his election: he was on good terms with Ralph Legh*, who like him had come to Surrey from Cheshire,22 CCR, 1435-41, p. 380. He was prob. acting on Legh’s behalf when he became a feoffee of the manor of Levehurst, Surr. in 1449: CCR, 1447-54, pp. 130-2. and his amicable relations with the treasurer of the Household, Sir Roger Fiennes* (for whom he acted as a feoffee of property neighbouring his own, and an agent to receive assignments at the Exchequer), may also have proved useful. Sir Roger and his brother James Fiennes* both joined him in the Commons of 1445-6, sitting respectively for Sussex and Kent.23 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 378, 460, 462; E403/741, m. 6. While the Parliament was still in progress, in Hilary term 1446, Stanley brought a suit in the court of common pleas against John Sturmyn, a draper from Guildford, and a tiler from Sende, for a debt of £40, but on the whole his dealings in the locality are poorly documented.24 CP40/740, rot. 93. After Parliament was over he took out a pardon, in which he was styled ‘of Battersea, esquire and usher of the chamber’.25 C67/39, m. 28. Stanley was re-elected to the Parliament summoned to Bury St. Edmunds in 1447, as one of many MPs associated with the royal court. They bore witness to the events surrounding the mysterious death of the duke of Gloucester. Subsequently, he appeared at the elections held at Guildford for the consecutive Parliament of February 1449, taking part in the election of a fellow Household man, John Penycoke*.26 C219/15/6.

Although not elected to the Parliament of November 1449, Stanley was present while it was in session both at London in March 1450 and at Leicester subsequently. His presence is not, of course, established by the fact that on 4 Mar. he was assigned at the Exchequer the sum of £107 11s. 3d. to cover his costs as a serjeant-at-arms for the past 19 years,27 E403/777, mm. 13, 14. but rather by what happened five days later, when William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, was escorted from the Tower before the assembled King and Lords in the parliament chamber to hear the impeachments and accusations of treason made against him by the Commons. For after the duke had been given time to consider his response to the charges the King committed him to the ward of Stanley and two other ushers of the chamber, who were instructed to keep him safe in a tower in the palace of Westminster. Thus, Stanley helped to protect the duke from his enemies until, despite the Lords’ protests, he was permitted by the King to go into exile, by a decree of 17 Mar.; the three esquires were discharged two days later.28 PROME, xii. 104-6; CPR, 1446-52, p. 311. When the Act of Resumption was passed at Leicester in the following May, Stanley and his fellow ushers of the chamber all gained exemption from its effects for themselves and their sons (in ‘Jenkyn’ Stanley’s case his two sons, John and William). Yet half of an annuity of £40 he received from the chamberlain of north Wales was resumed nevertheless, and he was only permitted to keep fees worth just £38 7s. 8d. p.a., so in certain respects he was less privileged than other of the King’s men. Parliament had set the date of the dissolution (towards the end of May) as the final day for admitting exemptions from the Act, but Stanley later testified that Thomas Pope*, whose petition probably dated from August, had originally asked for exemption while the Parliament was still in progress.29 PROME, xii. 123, 136; E163/8/14; B.P. Wolffe, R. Demesne, 126n.

Stanley was also in attendance on the King when Parliament met again at Westminster on 6 Nov. 1450. In the aftermath of Cade’s rebellion and the return of the duke of York to England to express his dissatisfaction with the government of the kingdom, many courtiers came under attack, and the Commons presented a petition for the removal from the King’s presence of certain named persons whom they held responsible for the ills which had befallen the realm. The list, headed by the duke of Somerset and the dowager duchess of Suffolk, included Stanley among other Household men deemed culpable. However, although the King granted the petition, he insisted that those in continual attendance on him, of whom Stanley was one, should remain at his side.30 PROME, xii. 184-6. The rebellion had severely hampered the collection of Crown revenues, and this affected Stanley personally with regard to his income from north Wales. He was given an opportunity to redress the matter in August 1451 when appointed to a commission to examine the officers and tenants in Merioneth to compel them to render their accounts.31 CPR, 1446-52, p. 480.

It was probably during this period, when Stanley was a figure of note about the royal court, that he commissioned a handsome manuscript full of the latest Chaucerian verse. This volume, containing the shorter poems of Geoffrey Chaucer† and works by John Lydgate and Charles of Orléans, is revealing of his tastes, and a reminder that life at court was not always subsumed by politics.32 Bodl. Lib. MS Fairfax 16 [Facsimile] intro. Norton-Smith, pp. vii, viii, xiii. A date of 1450 is suggested by an annotation on f. 1. The illumination on f. 14v shows Stanley’s coat of arms and crest. All this inevitably changed following Henry VI’s mental collapse in the summer of 1453, yet when reforms to the Household were introduced under York’s protectorate in November 1454 Stanley was promoted to be one of the four esquires for the King’s body, while his son John numbered among the 12 ‘squiers of attendaunce’.33 PPC, vi. 223, 224. Furthermore, Stanley had continued all this while in his post as serjeant of the armoury, which he continued to occupy after the King regained his sanity. Significantly, on 20 May 1455, just two days before the battle of St. Albans, he was given a full royal pardon of all offences, debts due and penalties incurred, in particular exonerating him from responsibility for items which had been removed from the armoury in his time as serjeant, as specified in a schedule itself formally enrolled on the patent roll. These items consisted of arms and armour released by royal command, and included two ‘lytill cote armurs’ made for the King when he was seven years old, which had been given to Stanley as his fee.34 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 247-8. It may be that an inventory of the armoury had been undertaken in preparation for military action against York and his allies, and it seems very likely that Stanley was with the royal entourage when it entered St. Albans. Although the Yorkists won the day, no overt proscription of the King’s esquires followed. Indeed, Stanley was able to obtain exemption from the Act of Resumption passed in the next Parliament, with regard to his office for life as sheriff of Anglesey and to his wages and those of the soldiers in his ‘crue’ safeguarding Carnarvon. He was also granted another pardon, on 12 Nov.35 PROME, xii. 416; C67/41, m. 13.

Thereafter, he continued to be in close proximity to the King: in June 1456 he received assignments at the Exchequer for the royal chamber, and in the following summer his office at the armoury was granted to him and his son John in survivorship. Although Stanley was described in a pardon of 12 Feb. 1458 as ‘former’ esquire for the body, there is no reason to believe that he resigned from that position within the next 18 months.36 E403/807, m. 4; CPR, 1452-61, p. 363; C67/42, m. 27. In the Parliament which met at Coventry in November 1459 the Commons petitioned against the government’s practice of appointing absentees to the offices of sheriffs and escheators in Chester, Flint and north Wales for term of their lives, asking that all those so appointed should have their letters patent cancelled. Stanley was undoubtedly one of those criticised – a contemporary clerk lamented the lack of ‘ii gode shirreffs a bidyng opon thair offys in Caern’shir and Anglesey’ – yet he was still protected by the King’s favour. Thus, although the petition was granted in general terms, it was expressly stated that the ruling should not extend to ‘Jenkyn’ Stanley, the esquire for the body, nor to his son John, who was now one of the sewers of the chamber.37 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 344-5; E28/76/19; PROME, xii. 498-9. Similarly, Stanley’s colleague Ralph Legh was exempted with regard to his escheatorships of Chester and Merioneth.

Having survived unscathed thus far, Stanley could not escape removal from his place in the Household following the Yorkist victory at Northampton in July 1460, after the King came under the control of the victors. That he was nevertheless reinstated on the Surrey bench in December that year may have been because of his links with Sir Henry Retford, one of the duke of York’s staunchest supporters. Retford, destined to be killed at Wakefield like his lord, had formerly been married to Stanley’s sister Eleanor, and in Edward IV’s first Parliament Stanley was to be granted exemption from the Act of Resumption with regard to any lands in Carnarvonshire and Anglesey of which he was possessed or to which he had any title, following her death.38 PROME, xiii. 36. What happened to Stanley himself at the change of regime is less clear. There is no definite evidence that he went into exile with Henry VI, whom he had served for nearly 40 years. In the spring of 1461 deeds relating to property he had acquired in Wandsworth six years earlier were enrolled in Chancery, perhaps in order to protect his interests at a time of crisis.39 CCR, 1461-8, p. 58. Even so, although the date of his death is unknown, he seems not to have survived for much longer.40 The assertion that he died before 1469, made in HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, Biogs. 797-9, is based on the identification of Stanley as the man who was a feoffee of property in East Grinstead, Suss. for Richard* and John Alfray II* (CAD, vi. C3775, 4407, 4408), but this must surely be a misidentification, for had John Stanley the King’s esquire been the feoffee of 1457-8 he would have been accorded his proper status in the deeds. An undated brass once in Battersea church and remembering a John Stanley and his wife Katherine in English verse, may have marked this MP’s tomb: J. Stow, Surv. London, extended to 1633 by J. Strype (1720), ii. app. 1, p. 77. Some of his property in Battersea and Wandsworth (the eight houses and some 150 acres of land with rights of common on Westheath and Eastheath in Battersea and Wandsworth) fell to his son, John, only to be forfeited to the Crown after the latter was found in an escheator’s inquisition to have conveyed it to Westminster abbey on 1 Sept. 1469, this conveyance being seen as an illegal attempt to make an alienation in mortmain. In July 1471 Edward IV granted these particular holdings to Laurence Booth, bishop of Durham, who had already (in November 1460) acquired properties in the same neighbourhood from the feoffees of Thomas, second Lord Stanley (who may have himself acquired them from our MP). As archbishop of York Booth subsequently bequeathed part of his estate in Battersea to the see of York for the maintenance of chantries he had himself founded.41 CPR, 1467-77, p. 276; CCR, 1454-61, p. 479; C145/325/8; VCH Surr. iv. 12. Yet this bequest did not include the estate said to have been unlawfully granted in mortmain, which the King had removed from Booth and granted instead, on 7 Jan. 1472, to his aunt the duchess of Buckingham and her husband Walter Blount*, Lord Mountjoy. John Stanley the son, who had purchased a pardon the previous September, challenged both the escheator’s inquisition and the grant to the duchess in 1473, and eventually recovered the whole estate by judgement in Chancery.42 CPR, 1467-77, p. 308; E159/252, recorda Mich. rot. 16. In 1461 he had been fortunate enough to marry an heiress, Elizabeth Beelsby, the widow of John Pygot* and William Vaux*, but the estates in Lincolnshire which she brought to him in marriage were lost on her death in 1473.43 CPR, 1467-77, p. 322; C140/47/62.