TUNSTALL, John

Tunstall, the younger son of a prominent Lancashire family, enjoyed a long career, but, despite his place in the retinue of Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, he never won prominence. It may that he is be identified with the Lancashire esquire who, probably in the autumn of 1414, committed offences in support of Roger Frank in Frank’s famous dispute with John Ripon over the abbacy of Fountains, but the first certain reference to him dates from several years later. On 1 May 1428 he indented to serve for six months in the retinue of Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury, with ten archers.1 Mems. Fountains Abbey, i (Surtees Soc. xlii), 213-14; E.F. Jacob, Essays in Later Med. Hist. 89; E101/71/2/844. Presumably it was through Montagu that he came into the service of Neville, the husband of Montagu’s daughter.

No more is known of Tunstall until November 1437: described as resident at his family’s home at Thurland, he stood surety when the keeping of the Yorkshire priory of Allerton Mauleverer was entrusted to John Mauleverer and two chaplains. Later, on 31 Oct. 1440 he joined his nephew, John Pennington*, in offering heavy security for the appearance of his maternal first cousin, Thomas Haryngton II*, before the King.2 CFR, xvii. 17; CCR, 1435-41, p. 449. Whether he was acting in these two instances as part of the Neville earl’s affinity is uncertain, but he was a well-established member of that affinity by the spring of 1447, when the earl surrendered his royal grant of the custody of part of the barony of Kendal in Westmorland in favour of our MP and another of his men, Thomas Colt*. Tunstall’s place in the Neville retinue must also be taken to explain his presence at the Yorkshire election to the Parliament of February 1449 when a more senior Neville servant, Sir James Strangeways*, was one of those returned. Later, in June 1450, he was described as resident at the earl’s castle of Middleham when he stood surety for his nephew, Richard Tunstall, granted the keeping of royal lands in Westmorland and Lancashire.3 CFR, xviii. 69; C219/15/6; CPR, 1446-52, p. 335.

Tunstall’s residence at Middleham was probably in part determined by the lack of a suitable home of his own. He was, however, not entirely landless. Before 1443, and perhaps some years before, he married a widow, Katherine Basset.4 The marriage can be dated by a tantalising action, pending in the ct. of c.p. in 1443, by which William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, sued the couple for detinue of charters: CP40/730, rot. 263. There were two likely contexts for this marriage. Her family, that of Stanhope, although a Nottinghamshire one, had strong links with Tunstall’s native county of Lancashire and the bride’s mother was from that county. The royal household provides another connexion in that both the bride’s nephew, John Stanhope*, and the groom’s nephew, Richard Tunstall, were household esquires. The match, theoretically at least, brought the MP the property he lacked. Katherine’s first husband, William Basset, lord of the manor of Fledborough near the Stanhope residence at Rampton, had been a ward of her father and had surrendered his inheritance into his guardian’s hands in return for an annual rent charge of £12. In June 1433 Sir Richard Stanhope instructed his feoffees in these lands to convey them on his death to Katherine, seemingly already widowed, for the term of her life. Only if she was allowed undisturbed possession was the legal remainder to be settled on the right heirs of the Bassets, otherwise Katherine was to have the property in fee simple. Thus Tunstall seemingly had at his disposal the manor of Fledborough (together with a small estate in Warwickshire) and surrounding lands, but, judging by his lack of recorded involvement in Nottinghamshire affairs, he never resided there.5 S.J. Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian Eng. 82; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 163-4; Add. Ch. 15741.

There is no record that, when elected for Westmorland in 1453, Tunstall held property in the county he represented. His joint grant of the barony of Kendal was resumed in 1451, and, although his family held property at Holme, near the family’s residence at Tunstall but on the Westmorland side of that county’s border with Lancashire, there is nothing to suggest it was settled on him (it is known to have been in the hands of his nephew in 1461).6 CIMisc. viii. 364. His election is thus only explicable by his connexions. (Sir) Thomas Parr*, a prominent Westmorland knight, was the husband of his sister, Alice, and, significantly, Parr troubled to attest the Westmorland indenture of 1453, the only occasion on which he is known to have witnessed a parliamentary election. But more important in determining our MP’s return was his place in the Neville retinue, and there is indirect evidence that he was the earl of Salisbury’s nominee. In the return, dated 15 Mar. 1453, Tunstall’s name was added in a different hand and ink in gaps left in the original draft of both the indenture and the dorse of the writ. One might infer from this that, at the county court, only one MP, namely John Crackenthorpe*, who did not number among the earl of Salisbury’s adherents, was elected and the other seat left vacant, either because no other willing candidate could be found or because the electors were waiting upon the earl to make a nomination. One further possibility is that Tunstall’s election also owed something to his nephew, already an influential member of the Household.7 C219/16/2. However this may be, while an MP Tunstall successfully forwarded a matter of his own. The Exchequer was attempting to secure payment from him and Colt, then sitting as MP for Warwick, of the farm they owed for the part of Kendal that they had held between 1447 and 1451, even though the farm had been assigned as an annuity payable to the earl of Salisbury. On 15 July 1453, 13 days after the second prorogation of the assembly, the King ordered the Exchequer to cease these demands and pardoned the pair of all sums that might be due.8 E159/230, brevia Mich. rot 17.

Tunstall’s later appearances in the records are few. On 25 Feb. 1457 he secured a papal indult to have a portable altar, and since similar licences were awarded on the same day to others connected with the Nevilles, it may be that the Nevilles had petitioned the Pope on behalf of their men. His nomination in the following year to commissions of inquiry in respect of the estates of Thomas, Lord Dacre, were also a product of his place in the Neville retinue, for the commissions were dominated by Neville adherents.9 CPL, xi. 130-1; CPR, 1452-61, p. 435. None the less, despite a close connexion with the earl of Salisbury that might have been expected to draw him to the cause of the house of York, the polarization of national politics in the 1450s raised a conflict of loyalties for him. His nephew, the head of the family, was thriving mightily in royal service, reaching the rank of King’s carver, and was to prove himself a fierce Lancastrian loyalist. Perhaps because John was thus torn two ways, he took no traceable part in the civil war of 1459-61 and did not become a more significant figure after the change of regime. Indeed, after 1461, he makes only incidental appearances in the records. In 1462 his brother-in-law, Thomas Stanhope, bequeathed him a horse and named him as one of his executors. More interestingly, on 15 Nov. 1465 he was granted in tail-male part of the family’s forfeited lands in Lancashire, namely the manor of Leck and a moiety of the manor of Cantsfield with other lands valued, in an inquisition taken shortly before, at nearly £20 p.a.10 Borthwick Inst., Univ. of York, Abps. Regs. 20 (Booth), f. 283; CPR, 1461-7, p. 422; CIMisc. viii. 366. This grant is open to two interpretations. Either he was receiving a belated reward for his service to the Nevilles, or, much more likely, the grant was a concession to his family, part of a process of rapprochement that had already produced a pardon, in the previous February, for his nephew, Thomas Tunstall, who had been attainted with Sir Richard in 1461. Sir Richard was himself to be pardoned in the autumn of 1468, after he had been taken at the fall of Harlech castle, and his attainder was reversed in the Parliament of 1472.11 CPR, 1461-7, p. 381; 1467-77, p. 97; PROME, xiv. 103-4. Our MP probably did not live to see this restoration. He last appears when his grant of 1465 was exempted from the Act of Resumption of 1467-8.12 PROME, xiii. 326.