ROOS, John

John Roos presents an interesting contrast to those younger sons of prominent gentry families who rose to influence through the generosity of their fathers. For every younger son who gained more than his due there was a son and heir whose expectations were disappointed. Roos’s father had been the victim of a particularly extreme act of partiality to a younger son on the part of his own father, Sir Robert Roos† (d.1393) of Ingmanthorpe in the West Riding. In 1384 he was disinherited of the bulk, if not all, of the family patrimony in favour of his younger brother, Thomas (d.1399). It seems that Sir Robert intended this disinheritance to be complete, but in 1396 his eldest son sued successfully for the manors of Steeton and North Deighton in the West Riding on the grounds that they were entailed to the main line of the family. Nevertheless, the family’s caput honoris, the manor of Ingmanthorpe, and other lands remained in the hands of the junior branch.5 W.T. Lancaster, Early Hist. Ripley, 47-48.

Roos gained some compensation for his father’s loss by marriage to an heiress, but here again his expectations were frustrated, albeit only in part. Although his wife was the common-law coheiress of both her grandfather and grandmother, most of her grandfather’s Yorkshire lands, including the castle and manor of Gilling, were bound by entails which excluded her and her sisters. Moreover, her father had improperly settled her mother’s manor of Kirkburn in the East Riding on his second wife, Elizabeth, mother of John Pygot*. Isabel and her sisters had to be content with their mother’s inheritance – the manors of Laxton, Egmanton and North Leverton in north Nottinghamshire, that of Kipling Cotes and the reversion of the manor of Kirkburn – and the small manor of Cawton in Gilling which her father appears to have purchased. In July 1433 the escheators of Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire were ordered to partition these lands into four parts, allowing reasonable dower to their stepmother. It is not known how the division was achieved, only that, as the eldest of the four coheiresses, Isabel was assigned the largest of the manors, that of Laxton. Until 1439 this property was charged with an annuity of 22 marks in favour of Joan, widow of her great-uncle, Sir Reynold Everingham (d.1398), but this was a small price to pay for more than a fair share of the inheritance.6 Yorks. Arch. Jnl. xix. 118, 121-3; CCR, 1409-13, pp. 337, 347-9; VCH Yorks. (N. Riding), i. 481-2; CFR, xvi. 157-8; CIPM, xxiv. 42-44; CP25(1)/186/37/7. In an inq. of 1399 Laxton had been valued at £26 p.a.: Notts. IPM, 136.

Isabel’s lands probably brought Roos a greater income than his own, and this probably explains why the couple settled at Laxton rather than on his Yorkshire estates. In the tax returns of 1451 he was assessed on an annual income of only £30, and this low estimate of his income is supported by the exclusion of his name from the comprehensive list of those distrained to take knighthood in 1457-8.7 Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, ser. 5, v. 294; E179/159/84. It would, however, be a mistake to accept this evidence at face value. Not only was the tax of 1451 characterized by general under-assessment, but in our MP’s case an independent assessment of his income survives. When, at York on 14 Apr. 1440, he entered into an indenture with William Middleton (d.1474) of Stockeld near Wetherby for the marriage of his son and heir, Robert, to William’s daughter, Elizabeth, he undertook to leave to Robert lands worth as much as 100 marks p.a. Unless this was an inflated assessment of his income, designed to secure a larger portion from the gullibility of the bride’s father, Roos was considerably richer than his later tax assessment suggests.8 The portion was 145 marks, and the jointure 15 marks p.a. (with ten marks to be settled on the couple in immediate possession and the remaining five on the death of Elizabeth, widow of Sir John Etton): W. Yorks. Archive Service, Leeds, Ingilby mss, WYL230/114, 117, 120.

While the survival of a collection of deeds relating to the family allows something to be said of Roos’s private concerns, his career is not well documented. It is possible that he fought in France. A John Roos is found serving there between about 1417, when in the garrison at Harfleur under Thomas Beaufort, duke of Exeter, and the summer of 1441, when in the retinue of William Neville, Lord Fauconberg, at Pontoise.9 E101/48/17; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, fr 25776/1528. Our MP was probably too young to be in arms as early as 1417, but, if these references relate to more than one man, some or all of the later references may refer to him. He may thus have been in the garrison at Neufchatel in the spring of 1431 and then gone on to act as lieutenant of Cherbourg in 1436 before serving in the field under Thomas, Lord Scales, in the following year.10 Archives Nationales, Paris, K63/10/36; CPR, 1429-36, p. 533; E404/52/197; Bibliothèque Nationale, fr 25774/1226. One piece of evidence, however, implies that all these references between 1417 to 1441 relate to one career. A John Roos was in the garrison at Pontoise as early as 1422and thus may well be the man who was there at the time of its fall in 1441: E101/50/19. However this may be, his administrative career began shortly after his putative military one ended. In 1443 he was appointed to the escheatorship of his adopted county.11 CFR, xvii. 285.

Roos’s return to Parliament in company with Richard Illingworth* on 13 Jan. 1449 and the fact that the only two elections he attested, those of 1447 and 1450, also saw his companion’s return, raise the possibility that he, like Illingworth, was a servant of Ralph, Lord Cromwell. Such an association would explain why Roos, a man of lesser rank than most of those who represented Nottinghamshire during the fifteenth century, was returned, but more direct evidence of that association is hard to find. In several pleas of debt pending in 1453 and 1454 he was Cromwell’s co-plaintiff, but this is suggestive rather than conclusive.12 C219/15/4, 6; 16/1; CP40/771, rot. 366d; 772, rot. 99d; 773, rot. 191d.

Cromwell was not the only powerful man with whom Roos could claim at least a passing connexion. In Easter term 1450 he was a co-plaintiff with Sir John Talbot, son and heir-apparent of the earl of Shrewsbury, and Sir Thomas Percy, the notorious younger son of the earl of Northumberland, in an action against William Meryng and many other men for depredations against their property at Darlton. It is probable that it was these offences that had, on the previous 16 Feb., prompted the issue of a royal commission – to which Roos himself was appointed – to inquire into Meryng’s offences and to arrest him and his confederates.13 CP40/757, rot. 422; 760, rot. 206; CPR, 1446-52, p. 319.

There is little evidence of firm associations with the gentry of either Roos’s adopted or native shire, although, in 1449, he was named as one of the many feoffees of the famous Nottinghamshire soldier, Sir Thomas Rempston†, and, as such, found himself the recipient of a writ to appear in Chancery when, in 1453, the feoffees became drawn into the dispute between the feoffor and his mother.14 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 258-9; C1/21/9a-c; S.J. Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian Eng. 60n, 203. There is some evidence to suggest he was on good terms with his cousins of Ingmanthorpe. In 1438 his aunt, Eleanor, daughter of Sir Robert Roos (d.1393), named him as one of her executors and bequeathed him a gold ring, and in 1443 and 1446 Sir Robert Roos (d.1451) acted as a witness to two of his deeds.15 Test. Ebor. ii. 65-66; Ingilby mss, WYL230/117, 120. Nevertheless, this did not prevent John from attempting to reverse his father’s disinheritance. In a case heard at the York assizes on 27 July 1447 he claimed that the settlement on his Ingmanthorpe cousins contravened an entail made by his great-great-great-grandfather, William Roos. The plaintiffs, Sir Robert Roos, his son, another Robert, and their wives, replied that the grant was in fee simple. The verdict went against John, and two days later a detailed award was returned with the purpose of making the existing division of the estates secure against further legal challenge.16 Lancaster, 53-54; JUST1/1544, rot. 31; CP40/748, rot. 135; Ingilby mss, WYL230/121-2. For other litigation between the two branches of the fam.: CP40/741, rots. 139d, 339, 340; 742, rot. 128.

Little is known of the last years of Roos’s career. The last certain reference to him in an active role dates from July 1458 when he was appointed to only his fifth ad hoc commission of local government, and he may have been dead by 11 Nov. 1459, when a writ of diem clausit extremum in respect of his Nottinghamshire lands issued out of Chancery. No inquisition survives, and it is possible that the writ was issued prematurely, for it was not until 20 Oct. 1461 that administration of his goods was granted to his younger son, William, a chantry chaplain.17 CPR, 1452-61, p. 440; CFR, xix. 245; Borthwick Inst. , Univ. of York, Abps. Reg. 20 (Booth), f. 282. Interestingly, a list of those exempted from the Act of Resumption passed by the Irish Parliament in February 1460 names a John Roos as one of the duke of York’s companions in the flight from Ludford Bridge, and, if this John is to be identified with our MP – despite the lack of any other evidence to connect him with the Yorkist cause – then it is probable that it was he who was appointed to a commission of array in the West Riding in May 1461. This can, however, be only a speculative suggestion.18 P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 199n.; Statute Rolls Ire. ed. Berry, ii. 729; CPR, 1461-7, p. 577.

The later history of the family is undistinguished. The career of Roos’s son, Robert, did not even attain to the modest success of his own. One reason was the long survival of his widow in whose right our MP had held a significant proportion of his estates. She was alive at least as late as 1484 and this no doubt contributed to the crippling financial difficulties under which Robert appears to have laboured.19 Her widowhood appears to have been eventful. She became involved in several disputes, including with her yr. s., Richard, over the advowson of Laxton: CP40/848, rot. 109; KB27/852, rot. 78. By 1479 she had married Roland Sutton of Averham, Notts.: Ingilby mss, WYL230/139; CP25(1)/186/41/3. In 1478 he sold the manor of Steeton to the royal justice Sir Guy Fairfax, and in 1481 he mortgaged his other Yorkshire manor, that of North Deighton, to Thomas Rotherham, archbishop of York, for 100 marks. Three years later, the archbishop also acquired the manor of Laxton in what may have been a mortgage not fully redeemed. He appropriated the advowson of the church to his collegiate foundation in Rotherham, but, providentially for the Roos family, he stopped short of making his acquisition of the manor permanent. In his will of 1498 he provided that it should be settled on Robert’s grandson, Humphrey, and Humphrey’s intended wife, Anne Restwold, the archbishop’s great-niece. According to a Chancery petition dating from very soon after his death in 1500, he was moved to make this restoration by the old entail which bound the manor to the Roos family.20 Lancaster, 55, 79; Ingilby mss, WYL230/139, 145-7; CP25(1)/186/41/3; VCH Yorks. iii. 373; Test. Ebor. iv (Surtees Soc. liii), 144; C1/255/22.

Later the two branches of the family, divided in the late fourteenth century, were reunited on the marriage of Bridget, daughter and heir of Robert Roos† (d.1583) of Ingmanthorpe, to Peter Roos of Laxton. Unfortunately, however, this did not prove the prelude to a new period of prosperity for the family but rather ended in its dissolution. The Nottinghamshire antiquarian, Robert Thoroton (d.1678), provides an interesting account: Bridget ‘by her own misfortunes and the wicked unthriftiness of her son, Gilbert, the last lord of Laxton of this noble race, was reduced to so great poverty that she gleaned corn among other poor people in Laxton field’.21 The Commons 1509-58, iii. 213; R. Thoroton, Notts. ed. Throsby, iii. 209; Lancaster, 82. Peter Roos’s nephew, John†, the representative of a junior branch of the fam., sat for East Retford in the Parl. of 1597: The Commons 1558-1603, iii. 304.