SACHEVERELL, John

The Sacheverells were an ancient but not a wealthy family. They had been established at Hopwell, a few miles to the east of Derby, since at least the late twelfth century, and later added by marriage property at Aston upon Trent near Hopwell and further afield at Snitterton near Matlock.1 Bk. of Fees, ii. 984, 992; Derbys. Chs. ed. Jeayes, 1554; Feudal Aids, i. 247, 249, 257. The best available ped. of the fam. is printed in J. Nichols, Leics. iii (1), 394. By the late fourteenth century, however, they appear to have fallen on hard times. In 1384 our MP’s grandfather, another John Sacheverell, mortgaged his property at Quarndon, about six miles to the west of Hopwell, to a group of his neighbours. Some years later, according to a Chancery petition of the 1460s, he took more drastic action, selling the manor of Hopwell itself to Sir Thomas Rempston† (d.1406). That such a sale took place is consistent with the findings of an assize of novel disseisin taken at Derby in 1424. Cristofora, John’s widow, and her second husband, Auker Burton, were said to have disseised Rempston’s feoffees of the manor shortly after Rempston’s death. Since the manor was charged with a life annuity of £10 to Cristofora and was worth only little more than this sum, it is easy to see why the feoffees had not troubled to re-enter. What happened after this verdict is not clear, but seven years later the manor was in the hands of Rempston’s widow, Margaret.2 Derbys. Chs. 1914; C1/31/158; JUST1/1537, rot. 24; Feudal Aids, i. 302. While the Sacheverells were eventually able to make good their title – perhaps because the manor was bound by an entail – it is unknown whether they did so during the lifetime of our MP. At any event the Rempston claim was not finally laid to rest until 1467, when the feoffees of Rempston’s son and heir quitclaimed the manor to Sacheverell’s son Ralph.3 CCR, 1461-8, p. 432. In 1393 the manor had been settled on John Sacheverell and Cristofora for their lives with remainder to our MP’s father and the heirs of his body: Derbys. RO, Okeover mss, D231M/T374.

Sacheverell’s father was alive as late as 1414, when named on a jury panel from the wapentake of Wirksworth, but was presumably dead by April 1425, when our MP attested the Derbyshire parliamentary election.4 KB9/204/1/40; C219/13/3. The difficulties over the manor of Hopwell explain why he followed his father in making his residence at Snitterton. He is described as living there in 1431 when returned as seised of property in Derby, Spondon and Aston on Trent.5 Feudal Aids, i. 278, 306-7. Even in the early years of his career he was more active in local affairs than either his father and grandfather had been. He attested the elections of December 1430 and December 1436, and in April 1434 he sat on one of the two grand juries called before royal commissioners investigating the violent dispute between the Pierreponts and the Foljambes.6 C219/14/2, 15/1; KB9/11/5. This jury included several men associated with Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor, and Sacheverell was probably also of their number. He was a tenant of the Greys in respect of property at Boulton near Hopwell; in 1427, before Henry Grey had inherited the family estates, Sacheverell was named with him as the only other feoffee in land near Derby; and in 1434 he witnessed a deed by which Henry was granted a reversionary interest of property in the same vicinity.7 S.M. Wright, Derbys. Gentry (Derbys. Rec. Soc. viii), 129; Derbys. RO, Harrington mss, D518M/E7, T66, 66B, 68. For the tenure of the Sacheverells’ long-held property at Boulton: CIPM Hen. VII, i. 423; Derbys. Chs. 326-8, 330.

By 1440, however, Sacheverell had distanced himself from Grey, whose violent behaviour had rendered him a liability to his associates. Instead, he established a connexion with Grey’s local rival, the much more powerful Ralph, Lord Cromwell. The latter had recently acquired the manors of South Wingfield and Crich in the locality of our MP’s property at Snitterton, and it was thus natural that he should have sought to find supporters among the local gentry and that they provided a responsive constituency. Sacheverell seems to have entered his service just as Cromwell was reaching a final conclusion to his dispute with Sir Henry Pierrepont over the Heriz inheritance, of which South Wingfield and Crich were a part. Indeed, on 25 Feb. 1441 at Derby, Sacheverell sat on the grand jury in an action of attaint sued by Pierrepont against jurors who had given a verdict in Cromwell’s favour. By Michaelmas 1442 he was acting as Cromwell’s receiver in Derbyshire, and although he soon surrendered the office he remained close to his lord.8 C260/144/18/14; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, i. 215-16. His appearance in 1445, alongside John Tailboys* and other of Cromwell’s intimates in conveyances concerning their lord’s acquisition of a manor in Breadsall near Hopwell, raises the possibility that he was a member of his council. Such a conclusion is consistent with the payment to him soon after of over 8s. for expediting Cromwell’s business at Leicester.9 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 288-9; Derbys. Feet of Fines (Derbys. Rec. Soc. xi), 1103; SC11/822, m. 2.

In view of this evidence, there can be no doubt that Sacheverell owed his election to the two Parliaments of 1449 to Cromwell’s patronage. He himself was not of enough consequence to command such a place in local affairs. His income was modest: it was assessed at £10 p.a. in the subsidy returns of 1435-6, and at £20 p.a. in those of 1450-1. He never held an office of county administration, and his only appearance on an ad hoc commission was consequent upon his election to Parliament. Such a man was an unlikely MP and it is thus significant that his first election appears to have been contested. The indenture of 16 Jan. 1449 was attested by no fewer than 61 witnesses, none of whom numbered among the county’s leading gentry and who, most irregularly, were not listed in order of rank. It is also noteworthy that two of Cromwell’s servants, John Roos* and Richard Illingworth*, had been returned in the Nottinghamshire election held three days before. Clearly Cromwell was determined to secure the election of his own men. Later in the year his dispute with William Tailboys* gave him a particular reason to do the same again, and it is thus not surprising that Sacheverell was returned at the election held on 23 Oct. 1449. This return did not share the irregularities of its immediate predecessor, but his successor as Cromwell’s receiver in Derbyshire, John Statham, was among the attestors.10 C219/15/6, 7.

When Cromwell drew up his will on 18 Dec. 1451, he named Sacheverell as one of his executors and bequeathed him a silver cup worth £10 for his reward.11 Our MP was named as executor in the copy enrolled in Borthwick Inst., Univ. of York, Apb. Reg. 20 (Booth), ff. 264-5v, but not in that in the reg. of the bpric. of Lincoln: Lincs. AO, Reg. Chedworth, ff. 36v-38. Thereafter our MP was regularly named in the series of feoffments designed by Cromwell to insure that his will could be effectively implemented; and he was one of a small group of the lord’s intimates employed to convey property to the collegiate church at Tattershall, the foundation of which was the main concern of Cromwell’s later years.12 C139/149/27; C143/451/38; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, i. 17; Lincs. AO, Holywell mss, H71/26-27; Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Misc. 250; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 161, 199-200. After Cromwell’s death in January 1456, he received, as one of the executors, a release of all actions from William Tailboys, and, as both an executor and a feoffee, a royal pardon.13 CCR, 1454-61, pp. 197-8; CPR, 1452-61, p. 341.

Aside from Cromwell, little evidence survives of Sacheverell’s relations with his neighbours. In 1436 he had been a feoffee for Henry Booth*, and in 1450 he acted in the same capacity for Sir Sampson Meverel, the husband of his wife’s sister. In the meantime he appeared as a joint-defendant with Sir Thomas Chaworth* and, on more than one occasion, as a joint-plaintiff with John Curson* in the court of common pleas.14 Derbys. RO, Every of Egginton mss, D5236/3/71; Add. Chs. 27510-11; CP40/716, rots. 51d, 87d, 394; 732, rot. 266. His connexion with Curson supports the identification, made in many of the family pedigrees, of the wife of his eldest son Ralph as Curson’s daughter Joan. There is, however, no proof of this. Indeed, in June 1456 our MP settled property in Aston upon Trent on Ralph and his wife Elizabeth, suggesting either that the pedigrees are mistaken at least in respect of her first name or that Joan was dead by 1456.15 Okeover mss, D231M/E5123 (calendared in Derbys. Chs. 129). Better documented is a less amicable aspect of our MP’s relations with his neighbours: his protracted dispute with William Middleton of Girton in Nottinghamshire, an esquire of the royal household. The two men were neighbours, in that Middleton had an interest in a moiety of a manor at Wensley near Snitterton. Middleton was also a newcomer into the locality – his family were prominent Northumbrian landowners and he, as a younger son, had been granted an interest in their outlying estates – and it may be that he was the aggressor.16 S.J. Payling, ‘Political Society in Notts.’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1987), 296. Sacheverell sued an assize of novel disseisin against him for land at Stanton in the Peak near Snitterton, and in 1441 the matter was referred to the arbitration of John Tunstead, a j.p. of the Derbyshire quorum. No award was made, and the dispute was successively put into the hands of Sir Richard Vernon*, steward of High Peak, and then those of Ralph Pole, a leading local lawyer about to be created j.KB, and Walter Blount*. It was presumably as a result of their verdict that, on 27 July 1453, Middleton quitclaimed the disputed lands to our MP.17 Wright, 124; CCR, 1447-54, p. 481.

Sacheverell was dead by 1 Feb. 1459, when he is described as such in a list of Cromwell’s feoffees, but a writ of diem clausit extremum was not issued until the following 22 Apr. and there is no record that it was acted upon.18 Magdalen Coll., Misc. 323; CFR, xix. 213. After his death the Sacheverells were advanced by the marriage of his grandson, another John, to Joan, daughter and heiress of Henry Statham (d.1481) of Morley near Hopwell. The younger John’s brother, Sir Richard Sacheverell†, made an even better match. The reward for his service to Edward, Lord Hastings (d.1506), was marriage to his widow, Mary, heiress of the baronies of Hungerford, Moleyns and Botreaux.19 The Commons 1509-1558, iii. 242.