CALTHORPE, William

A man whose career spanned most of the fifteenth century, Calthorpe proved adept at surviving the political turmoil of his times and living to an advanced age. Born into an old Norfolk family at Burnham Thorpe, he was a minor when his father died from dysentery, contracted while campaigning with Henry V in Normandy, and still under age at the death of his grandfather, Sir William Calthorpe, in December 1420. Sir William had held at least ten manors in Norfolk and Suffolk, besides property in Essex, so he left his grandson a substantial inheritance. The younger William was also the heir apparent of the estate of his maternal grandfather, John Wythe, consisting of over half a dozen manors in East Anglia. His wardship was therefore a valuable one, and in May 1421 his mother, Anne, and her second husband, Sir William Bowet (acting in association with Robert, Lord Willoughby), paid the Crown 700 marks for it.19 CChR, ii. 174; CIPM, xxi. 824; xxiii. 591-2; CPR, 1416-22, p. 340; 1446-52, p. 269; Richmond, 215; W.A. Copinger, Suff. Manors, i. 272, 306-7; iii. 209, 236; v. 52; vi. 36-37; F. Blomefield, Norf. xi. 66, 87, 131; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 976; C1/19/40. Bowet, a Suffolk knight of Cumbrian origin, died soon afterwards, and before the end of 1423 Anne had married Sir Henry Inglose*. Inglose profited from his stepson, for he afterwards sold the wardship for 800 marks to Reynold, Lord Grey of Ruthin, who duly married William to his daughter, Elizabeth.20 KB27/650, rot. 121; Richmond, 216.

While still a minor, William became a retainer of John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk (whose family was connected to the Greys by marriage), and he was in London with the duke in November 1428, when the latter’s barge sank on the river Thames. Mowbray and 11 members of his entourage survived, but 16 others drowned: Calthorpe escaped the accident only because the duke had sent him on an errand to his duchess just before the barge departed.21 CP, ix. 605; William of Worcestre, Itins. ed. Harvey, 361. Worcestre refers to Calthorpe as a ‘King’s esquire’ (as, indeed, he later became) when describing this incident, but there is no evidence that the MP was in the Household at this date. He also states that ‘Sir William Calthorpe (esq.?)’ (sic) was a member of the household of Thomas Beaufort, duke of Exeter (Itins. 355). This was probably the MP’s grandfather and namesake, since the younger William was still under the age of 17 when Beaufort died in December 1426, and was certainly not a knight at that date. Following Norfolk’s death in 1432, the young man gravitated towards the affinity of William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, although he was again to be associated with the Mowbrays later in his career. He is likely to have maintained close links with the Greys in the meantime, since he served his brother-in-law, Edmund Grey, earl of Kent, as a counsellor and steward in the late 1460s.

Calthorpe first became active in local politics while technically under age, for he was only 19 when he attested the return of Norfolk’s knights of the shire (one of whom was his stepfather, Sir Henry Inglose) to the Parliament of 1429. He was still just short of his majority when he took part in the county’s election to the following Parliament but proved his age in February 1431. Calthorpe took seisin of his grandfather’s estate a few months later, although he was obliged to wait until his mother’s death to succeed to the Wythe inheritance. Yet he did not gain full control of his lands before the death in 1451 of Sir Henry Inglose, who would appear illegally to have retained his stepson’s manors at South Creake and Stalham in Norfolk. This must have caused resentment on the part of Calthorpe, who expressed other grievances against Sir Henry in the 1430s, soon after attaining his majority. Not long after coming of age, the young man wrote a letter from Great Yarmouth, where he was then residing, to Inglose’s confessor, Master Peter of the Benedictine priory at Horsham St. Faith, to complain about the knight’s conduct. First, he claimed that his stepfather had broken a promise to pay him a sum of money upon his marriage to Elizabeth Grey; secondly he objected to the way that Inglose had managed the Wythe properties at Smallburgh in east Norfolk. Despite these grievances, Calthorpe was to act as a feoffee for Inglose in subsequent years, and to attest the knight’s return to the Parliaments of 1432 and February 1449.22 CIPM, xxiii. 591-2; CCR, 1429-35, p. 84; CAD, iv. no. A7907; Norf. RO, Le Strange mss, P. 20, no. 10; CP25(1)/169/188/140.

Calthorpe’s participation, at an early age, in previous parliamentary elections and his distraint for knighthood in 1439 indicate the prominent place that his substantial landholdings gave him in the hierarchy of Norfolk. Among those in the county required to swear the oath to keep the peace administered throughout the kingdom in 1434, he began his long career as a local administrator less than two years later. An active servant of the Crown, he was one of the East Anglian gentry whom the council thanked in 1443 for their ‘labours devoirs and diligences’ in helping to bring to justice those involved in serious riots at Norwich, and he served four terms as sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk. During the first of these terms, he was distrained over his part in collecting a clerical tenth, with the Crown seizing and holding his manor of Calthorpe for several months because he had failed properly to render his account. At the end of the same term, he was the subject of no fewer than seven suits filed against him in the Exchequer court. Six of these were brought by those to whom the Crown had assigned tallies chargeable on the issues of Calthorpe’s bailiwick, and the plaintiffs included men as prominent as John Beaufort, earl of Somerset, Marmaduke Lumley, bishop of Carlisle, and (Sir) Thomas Stanley II*, formerly the King’s lieutenant in Ireland. At least three of these suits, including Stanley’s action, ended in judgements against Calthorpe, and the court ordered the latter to repay the debts (nearly £33 in Stanley’s case) plus damages.23 CPR, 1429-36, p. 404; PPC, v. 235; Sel. Cases in Exchequer Chamber, i. (Selden Soc. li), 84-91, 95; E364/90, rot. E; E13/142, rots. 8d, 12d, 15d, 16d, 17d, 38. It was also during his first term as sheriff that Calthorpe presided over the election of Norfolk and Suffolk’s knights of the shire to the Parliament of 1442. By this date, he had links with William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, and for the county of Norfolk he returned Sir Thomas Tuddenham* and Miles Stapleton, both closely associated with the earl. (It is also possible that John Harleston II*, one of the men elected for Suffolk, was another de la Pole man.)24 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 335; H.R. Castor, ‘Duchy of Lancaster’ (Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1994), 113; C.F. Richmond, John Hopton, 108. Calthorpe is likely to have remained associated with de la Pole until the duke’s death, for in 1449 he was serving as a deputy admiral of the peer, then admiral of England. Suffolk became the most important member of the King’s government during the early 1440s, when the Crown retained several of his followers, although Calthorpe had already become an esquire of Henry VI’s household by Michaelmas 1438.25 E101/408/25, f. 7. He continued to receive the King’s livery until at least 1452: E101/410/9. It was alongside another de la Pole follower, John Heydon*, that Calthorpe gained election as a knight of the shire for Norfolk to the Parliament of 1445. One of the statutes of this Parliament laid down that would-be knights of the shire should be notable knights of the county they were representing, or else gentry from that county capable of supporting the status of knighthood. Calthorpe fitted these criteria admirably, but there is no evidence that he ever again sat as an MP.

Political circumstances changed dramatically within a few years of Calthorpe’s time in the Commons, as witnessed by the downfall and death of William de la Pole and the rebellion led by Jack Cade. By 1450 Richard, duke of York, had assumed the leadership of the opposition to the court, and he busily ‘laboured’ to ensure the election to the Parliament of that year of men sympathetic to his views. Among those whom he contacted in East Anglia was Calthorpe, despite his de la Pole associations. In October 1450, shortly before the Parliament opened, John Paston* was informed that the duke had written to ‘Maister Calthorp’, ordering him to wait upon him when he visited Norfolk, and requesting him to become one of his men. There were also rumours that York intended Calthorpe to sit in Parliament as one of the county’s MPs or to serve again as its sheriff.26 Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 51. In the event Calthorpe filled neither position, but the fact that the greatest duke in England should see fit to write to him (he was apparently the only gentleman in Norfolk to receive such a letter), provides further proof of his status among the county’s upper gentry. According to one authority, Calthorpe had become a ‘dependable client’ of York by 1452,27 Griffiths, 336. Griffiths cites a letter which York wrote to John Paston, Calthorpe and other gentlemen that year (Paston Letters, ii. 77-78), but this does not prove that any of them had become his clients. but this is unlikely. (The circumstances in which he received a bond in statute staple for 100 marks from Edmund Blake*, clerk of the King’s works, a few months after the Yorkist victory at St. Albans in May 1455, are unknown.)28 C241/244/24; CP40/802, rot. 129d. Later that decade he purchased a royal pardon,29 C67/42, m. 25 (20 Apr. 1458). and presided as sheriff over the elections of the knights of the shire for Norfolk and Suffolk to the Parliament of 1459. This was the partisan assembly that attainted York and his supporters, and Calthorpe featured on several anti-Yorkist commissions in Norfolk during the first half of 1460. Moreover, Osbert Mountfort, the Lancastrian commander executed by the Yorkists at Calais in June that year, counted him among his ‘maistres et amis’,30 Paston Letters, ii. 77-78. further evidence of his association with the Lancastrian regime.

Yet Calthorpe suffered no adverse consequences following the accession of Edward IV, perhaps because he was prompt to switch loyalties. (It was also probably to his advantage that his brother-in-law, Edmund Grey, was one of the new King’s supporters among the peerage.) Shortly after Edward had seized the throne, Calthorpe was among those East Anglian gentry who agreed to supply men for his army, and in June 1461 Thomas Playter reported (wrongly as it turned out) that he was to receive a knighthood on the eve of the forthcoming coronation. In the event he gained the honour four years later, at the coronation of the queen, Elizabeth Wydeville, but it is possible that the government had indeed considered him for knighthood on the earlier occasion. If so, it was probably because the King was seeking his support, rather than rewarding a totally committed adherent. Not all were convinced of his loyalty in the first few months of the new reign, for in July 1461 he was reputed one of ‘the Kynges enmez’, and he took the precaution of obtaining a royal pardon the following February. He nevertheless remained a j.p. and soon won the trust of the new regime. In late 1462, he campaigned against the Lancastrians in northern England with the King and the duke of Norfolk;31 Ibid. i. 520, 523; ii. 236, 240; C67/45 m. 46. a year later, he began a third term as sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk; and he had become bailiff and feodary of the duchy of Lancaster in Norfolk and Suffolk by mid 1464. Upon becoming sheriff in 1463, he stepped down as a j.p. but he rejoined the bench within two years of relinquishing the shrievalty. As was the case following his first term as sheriff, he subsequently faced a clutch of suits in the Exchequer for his conduct in office. Some plaintiffs accused him of having refused to act upon royal writs that they had obtained; some of having failed to pay them monies that the Crown had assigned to them from the issues of his bailiwick; others of having wrongfully distrained their livestock. The plaintiffs in the second category included none other than John de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, John Kendale, controller of the King’s works, and Sir George Darell, former keeper of the great wardrobe.32 E13/150, rots. 45d, 76d, 96d; 151, rots. 12, 97; 152, rot. 54. He nevertheless retained the trust of the Yorkist government, and it is possible that the duke of Gloucester recruited him to campaign with the King in northern England again at the end of the decade.33 In June 1469 Calthorpe was said to have become one of Gloucester’s men, but the latter was probably recruiting for the royal army, rather than trying to create a personal following in East Anglia. Although the MP witnessed a conveyance of lands to the duke later in the same year, there is no definite evidence linking him with Gloucester in the 1470s: Paston Letters, i. 545; R. Horrox, Ric. III, 31; CCR, 1468-76, no. 409.

In the midst of the political turbulence of the mid fifteenth century, Calthorpe found plenty of time for his own affairs. In the early 1440s, he joined with Edward and Thomas Mautby to fight a Chancery suit over the Mautby estate, a cause in which he had an interest because his paternal grandmother, Eleanor, had come from that family.34 C1/72/107. He also participated in the disputes that broke out after the death of Sir Henry Inglose in 1451. Given his past treatment at the hands of the knight, it was perhaps inevitable that he should quarrel with Inglose’s heir over their neighbouring properties at Smallburgh and Dilham in east Norfolk. They tried to come to terms but fell out, and in September 1459 Calthorpe destroyed his opponent’s fishery at Smallburgh and raided the younger Henry Inglose’s property elsewhere in Norfolk. Later, in 1464, Calthorpe began legal proceedings over a bond in statute staple for £60 that Inglose had made over to him in 1456. The bond had evidently been a preliminary to an abortive attempt to settle their differences, since Inglose subsequently sued Calthorpe in Chancery, complaining that his opponent had regarded it as a justification for the raids.35 Richmond, Paston Fam. 216; C1/31/509; C241/249/7. If Calthorpe had good reason to resent the behaviour of Inglose’s father, Sir Henry, towards him, his grievances paled by comparison with those of the knight’s other stepchildren, Elizabeth (Sir William Bowet’s daughter by his first wife, Joan Ufford) and Sibyl (Calthorpe’s half-sister and Bowet’s daughter by his second marriage). Sir Henry had illegally retained part of Elizabeth’s maternal inheritance in East Anglia for himself, planning to satisfy the demands of Sibyl, who was due 500 marks from her father’s estate, with the profits of one of Elizabeth’s manors. The result was a bitter dispute between Elizabeth, who had married Sir Thomas Dacre (son and heir apparent of Thomas, Lord Dacre of Gisland), and Sibyl after their stepfather died. During the quarrel Sibyl and her own husband, Robert Osbern, appealed to Calthorpe for support and sued him in Chancery in his capacity as one of Elizabeth’s feoffees.36 Richmond, Paston Fam. 216-24; C1/19/40; 21/44-49; 22/157; HMC 11th Rep. VII, 95. Calthorpe also faced a suit in the same court in about 1461, after the deaths of Elizabeth and Sir Thomas Dacre. The plaintiffs were the Dacres’ daughter and heir, Joan, and her husband, Richard Fiennes, jure uxoris Lord Dacre, who complained that the MP and other feoffees of the late Elizabeth were denying them their rightful possession of the Norfolk manors of Horsford, Great Hautbois and Burgh St. Margaret.37 C1/29/355. In the later 1460s or early 1470s, Calthorpe was a defendant in yet another Chancery suit, brought by Sir Henry Inglose’s daughter Margaret and her then husband, Thomas Beaupre, in association with John Groos and Robert Ashfield, respectively the heirs male and general of her previous husband, Simon Groos. It concerned the Norfolk manor of Sloley, in which both John Groos and Ashfield claimed an interest and from which Margaret claimed an annuity of £20 by virtue of her marriage to Simon. The plaintiffs, having come to an agreement over the manor, complained that Calthorpe and his former opponent, Henry Inglose junior, both feoffees of Sloley, were refusing to comply with the instructions issued to them.38 C1/38/102.

Less controversially, Calthorpe was also a feoffee for other East Anglian gentry, among them Sir Simon Felbrigg, (Sir) Thomas Brewes*, who had married his sister Margaret, the Hopton family and the lawyer, Roger Townshend†.39 Procs. Chancery Eliz. ed. Caley and Bayley, ii. p. xxiii; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 648, 1143; ii. 200; C.E. Moreton, Townshends, 96; CCR, 1476-85, no. 492; CPR, 1476-85, pp. 142-3. Other regional associates included William Gurney and Sir Miles Stapleton. Gurney married Amy, one of Calthorpe’s daughters by his first wife. In the later 1460s or early 1470s, he and the MP featured in a petition that the parson of Harpley in west Norfolk submitted to the Crown. Both Calthorpe and Gurney held manors at Harpley and the cleric alleged that the latter, the patron of his living, was trying with Calthorpe’s assistance to force him to resign his position through a campaign of harassment and intimidation.40 SC8/336/15894. Stapleton, with whom the MP occasionally served on local commissions, was another family connexion, for he was the father of Calthorpe’s second wife.41 CCR, 1447-54, p. 343; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 167, 609. Calthorpe was also generally on good terms with the well-known Pastons (even though his eldest son John Calthorpe was one of the young men who associated with their enemy, (Sir) Philip Wentworth*, in the mid 1450s),42 Paston Letters, ii. 104. but they could not count him as the most reliable of friends. During his third term as sheriff he said that he would help John Paston avoid outlawry at the suit of William Jenney*, for although Jenney was his legal counsellor and ‘goode frende’, he would rather ‘lose the lessere frende than the greete frende’, but he failed to fulfil this promise and Paston was subsequently outlawed.43 Ibid. 299. Paston’s eldest son nevertheless referred to Calthorpe as a ‘good felaw’ in January 1467 and suggested he would make a suitable commissioner to investigate the activities of the servants of their opponent, (Sir) William Yelverton*, on the grounds that he hated John Grey, one of Yelverton’s ‘captains’.44 Ibid. i. 532-3.

In the late summer of 1469, however, Calthorpe was a member of the force with which the duke of Norfolk besieged and took the Pastons’ castle at Caister. Yet he may have had little choice but to participate in the siege. By now, he was steward of the ducal household and a Mowbray feoffee and, earlier in the same year, he was among those to whom the duke had made illegal grants of his livery at Framlingham.45 M. Sayer, ‘Norf. Involvement in Dynastic Conflict’, Norf. Archaeology, xxxvi. 309; Moye, 423, 448, 450; HMC 11th Rep. VII, 94; CPR, 1485-94, p. 307; KB27/839, rex rots. 31, 31d. On the other hand, his connexion with Mowbray was by no means exclusive. A few months earlier, he had turned down the duke’s request to wait upon him when Edward IV visited Norfolk, having agreed to attend Anthony Wydeville, Lord Rivers, instead. Furthermore, in subsequent years he was again associated with the de la Poles, perhaps through the influence of his second wife, a grand-daughter of Michael de la Pole, 2nd earl of Suffolk.46 CAD, ii. A3355; CCR, 1476-85, no. 283. HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 149, states that Calthorpe was a de la Pole councillor in the 1470s, but there is no firm evidence for this (see Sayer, 315). Even so, relations with the de la Poles were not always smooth, for John de la Pole sued him at Westminster in the early 1470s. De la Pole alleged that Calthorpe had acted against his interests by abducting the young Henry Inglose (grandson of Sir Henry and son and heir of Calthorpe’s erstwhile adversary) from Heigham near Norwich, because Henry’s wardship pertained to him as duke.47 KB27/846, rot. 42.

A few months after the attack on Caister, Margaret Paston was surprised to receive a letter from Calthorpe informing her that he could no longer afford to maintain her daughter, Anne Paston, in his household, where the Pastons had sent her for her upbringing. Pleading financial hardship (he claimed that his declining income from rents obliged him to reduce the size of his household), he suggested that it was high time she was married, but Margaret assumed that Anne had ‘displeased hym or ell he hath takyn here wyth summe diffaught [default]’.48 Paston Letters, i. 348. By the end of the decade, however, he and the Pastons were again on good terms. Ironically, Sir John Paston† made him the heir to Caister in his will of 1479, in the event of the extinction of his more immediate family.49 Sayer, 309. Perhaps the Pastons’ affection for Calthorpe’s second wife (despite their previous enmity towards her father, Sir Miles Stapleton) helped to smooth over any differences between them.50 Paston Letters, i. 371, 554.

The duke of Norfolk besieged Caister at a time when Edward IV, soon to flee the realm, was in no position to restrain him. During the Readeption of Henry VI, Calthorpe remained on the Norfolk bench and continued to serve on ad hoc local commissions, although he took the precaution of securing a royal pardon from the restored Lancastrian monarch in February 1471.51 C67/44, m. 4. His career as a local administrator was similarly uninterrupted by the return two months later of Edward IV and the usurpation of Richard III in 1483. He obtained another pardon from Edward in early 1473,52 C67/49, m. 13. and served a fourth term as sheriff of Norfolk in Suffolk in 1475-6. While sheriff, he received a bond for £200 from Richard Felawe* and several associates in December 1475 and another for £100 from the prior of Ipswich, Gilbert Debenham I* and others in August 1476. He subsequently won lawsuits in the Exchequer on the strength of the bonds but the reason for these securities is unknown.53 E13/162, rots. 2d, 3d, 4d. Having left the bench upon this final appointment to the shrievalty, Calthorpe was once again a j.p. in Richard III’s reign. An illustration of his status in Norfolk during the 1480s is the return for the controversial Norfolk election to the Parliament of January 1483, for he headed the list of attestors.54 R. Virgoe, ‘Election Dispute of 1483’, Historical Research, lx. 41. Advanced age rather than political considerations probably explain why he did not receive any fresh appointments after Henry VII took the throne.

Given that he lived for another nine years after Henry’s accession, Calthorpe had plenty of time for family affairs in his later years. As he outlived his eldest son, John,55 John, who had come of age by 1451, was still alive in Feb. 1470: CPR, 1446-52, p. 479; CP25(1)/224/120/23. his heir was his grandson, Philip† (John’s son by his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Roger Wentworth of Suffolk).56 Blomefield, vi. 518. Finding a suitable wife for Philip, who was born in about 1464, was an important concern, and a matter in which Elizabeth’s mother, Margery, Lady Roos, took a keen interest.57 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 975-6; Le Strange mss, P20 no. 9. Roger Wentworth was Margery’s 2nd husband: she had married him, to the King’s displeasure, after the death of her previous spouse, John, Lord Roos, in 1421: CP, xi. 104. At some stage in the 1470s Elizabeth negotiated a match for her son with one of the daughters of Sir John Wingfield†, a member of Edward IV’s household, but she died before the parties could draw up a formal settlement. Following Elizabeth’s death, Lady Roos agreed with Wingfield that the proposed marriage should proceed but it was reported that the MP, evidently resenting her interference, was neither ‘welwilled nor agreable’ about this arrangement and that he intended to alienate a greater part of Philip’s inheritance. In an effort to save the match, Wingfield appealed to the King for help, and Edward IV wrote to Calthorpe, ordering him to allow the marriage to go ahead and not to disinherit his grandson. Despite this pressure, the match never took place, and by 1484 Philip had married Mary, daughter of (Sir) John Say II*.58 HMC 11th Rep. VII, 93-94; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1157; CPR, 1476-85, p. 381. In the meantime, the MP maintained good relations with Sir John Wingfield’s sister-in-law, Anne, wife of (Sir) Robert Wingfield*. Within a year of Sir Robert’s death in the latter half of 1481, she alienated a couple of manors to Rushworth College in south-west Norfolk, a transaction in which Calthorpe participated as one of her feoffees.59 C143/455/4; CPR, 1476-85, p. 308.

Calthorpe died on 15 Nov. 1494, at his townhouse in the parish of St. Martin-at-Palace, Norwich.60 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 975-6; Lee-Warner, 10-11. He was buried in the Carmelites’ church in Norwich, where his first wife lay and where he had prepared a tomb for himself. In his will, dated the previous 31 May, he left the Carmelites ten marks and asked one of them, Thomas Waterpipe, to sing for his soul for a period of three years after his death. He also made cash bequests to other local religious orders and churches, and to the guild of St. George at Norwich, of which he, like other important gentry of the county, was a member.61 PCC 23 Vox (PROB11/10, ff. 22v-23); Blomefield, iv. 417. As for Elizabeth, his ‘right derely beloued wif’, he directed that she should keep her wardrobe, and he left her almost all his plate, as well as his jewels and goods at Norwich and Ludham. He also entrusted to her care the governance of his daughter, Elizabeth, and her husband, Francis Hasilden, a minor presumably residing in the Calthorpe household. To his grandson, Philip, he left all his household ‘stuff’ at Burnham, as well as 300 ewes, but he also threatened him with ecclesiastical sanction, should he try to obstruct the performance of the will. He was a substantial sheep-farmer, and he made like gifts of sheep to each of his sons by his second marriage, to his sons-in-law and to his servant and relative, Walter Aslak.62 Calthorpe’s sis. Margaret m. Walter Aslak of Creake, probably Aslak’s father rather than the man mentioned in the will: Lee-Warner, ped. Apart from William Gurney, Calthorpe had three other sons-in-law, Robert Drury†, Francis Hasilden and (Sir) Robert Clere†, each of whom had married one of his daughters by his second wife. Calthorpe appointed five executors: Robert Bury, the above-mentioned Gurney, Clere and Aslak, and his wife, Elizabeth. (Elizabeth survived him by ten years, afterwards marrying Sir John Fortescue† and then Sir Edward Howard, whom she also outlived.)63 CP, vii. 64; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 392, 890.

The lord of no fewer than 26 manors spread across Norfolk and Suffolk when he died, Calthorpe was evidently a wealthy man, notwithstanding his protestations of economic hardship to Margaret Paston in 1470, and he probably derived much of his wealth from his sheep. His lands were valued at some £140 (undoubtedly a considerable underestimate) by the inquisitions post mortem held after his death,64 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 975-6. and he had lent money to both Edward IV and Richard III (£73 to Edward in 1474 and 100 marks to Richard 11 years later).65 C.L.S. Linnell, ‘Commonplace Bk. of Robert Reynys’, Norf. Archaeology, xxxii. 126; Horrox, 306-7. He settled six of his manors on his wife, Elizabeth, for life, so obliging his grandson to wait for over a decade before fully coming into his own. In the event, Philip succeeded to the bulk of the Calthorpe lands, although Francis, Calthorpe’s eldest son by his second wife, received ample provision, mainly from his mother’s substantial estates.66 Blomefield, ix. 328; Copinger, iv. 98; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 890. Upon Elizabeth’s marriage to the MP, her father, Sir Miles Stapleton, had settled his manors in Hempstead, Norfolk, and Cratfield, Suffolk, on the couple.67 Blomefield, ix. 310; Copinger, ii. 44. She inherited a share of his lands in Wiltshire and Berkshire immediately after his death in 1466, as well as a reversionary interest in his estates in Norfolk, Suffolk, Berkshire and Essex that vested upon the death of her mother, Katherine, in 1488.68 CFR, xx. 192-3; C140/19/19; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 397, 518, 1096. For some reason, the inq. held for Katherine in Suff., six years after her death, incorrectly stated that she had died in 1490: ibid. 1096. In the event, it appears that Calthorpe and Elizabeth received actual possession of Ingham, the chief Stapleton manor in north-east Norfolk, long before that date, for in January 1468 they paid Katherine and her new husband (Sir) Richard Harcourt* £80, the profits of the manor for the past two years.69 Blomefield, ix. 321. In due course Francis Calthorpe inherited Ingham and other former Stapleton manors, as well as ‘Wythes’ in Reedham, a manor which the MP had alienated from his heirs by his first wife.70 Ibid. ix. 328; xi. 131; Copinger, iv. 98.