ACTON, Thomas

Acton was a member of a Shropshire family which, during the fourteenth century, acquired lands at Acton Burnell and at nearby Longnor. Their pedigree is obscure. Our MP was a direct descendant, probably the great-grandson, of Edward Acton†, who represented the county in as many as six Parliaments from 1378 to 1388 and may be the same man who was murdered by his neighbours, the Stapletons, on 24 Nov. 1414.6 For the murder: C1/69/293; KB27/620, rot. 40. There is no evidence that our MP was related to Sir Roger Acton, executed in 1414 for complicity in Oldcastle’s rising. Sir Roger is said, in the admittedly hostile testimony of Adam of Usk, to have been the son of a tiler, whereas our MP’s family were of established gentry stock: Chron. Adam of Usk ed. Given-Wilson, 246. It is very likely that he was the son and heir of another Thomas, who, in July 1437, sued out a general pardon as Edward’s executor and the tenant of his lands.7 C67/38, m. 6. Little is known of this Thomas, and it was our MP who was to build on the foundations of social advance laid by Edward, to whose career his own bore many parallels. A later reference shows that our MP had a formal legal training – in 1465 he is described as ‘of Inner Temple’ – and all that is known of Edward suggests that he too was a lawyer.8 CCR, 1461-8, p. 313. Both contracted advantageous marriages and, curiously, our MP’s marriage seems to have been connected in some way with the circumstances of Edward’s death. His bride was one of the five daughters of John Stapleton, lord of the manors of Stapleton, Armgrove and Felhampton, and the head of a branch of that family in dispute with the Stapletons allegedly responsible for Edward’s murder.

The match was probably intended to be of material profit to Acton for it appears to have taken place soon after the bride had fallen coheiress. As late as 1443 her elderly father had expected to maintain his patrimony in the male line through a male collateral, although he set aside some 100 acres of land and a substantial annual rent of £9 4s. in Stapleton as provision for two of his daughters, our MP’s future wife and Joyce, who, by 1446, was the wife of another young Shropshire lawyer, Thomas Horde*.9 CP25(1)/195/22/26, 27, 31. The male collateral, seemingly soon afterwards, died without issue, and Acton had married Mary by the autumn of 1448. His feoffees, headed by Horde (with whom he was to maintain very close links throughout their long careers), then settled the family estates in Longnor and Betton Strange on the couple, whose elder son, Thomas, was born in about 1454.10 Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 2, i. 383-4; C140/76/55. Curiously, the Stapleton inheritance was not formally divided between the coheirs until as late as 1470: CP40/835, rot. 343.

Acton’s public career began a few years before he married Mary Stapleton. In the early 1440s, perhaps while in residence at the Inner Temple, he acted as bailiff for the bishop of London in London and Middlesex. His nomination to a commission of inquiry into concealments in his native county in February 1448 probably reflected the increase in local status that went with his marriage. Much less predictably, he was elected to represent the Surrey borough of Bletchingley in the Parliament that met a year later.11 CPR, 1446-52, p. 140; C219/15/6. He already had a small landed interest in that county, probably acquired while he was in London training as a lawyer. On 30 Sept. 1448 he demised a messuage and some 100 acres of land in Peckham and Camberwell to a local esquire, John Maynell, for seven years at a rent £6 6s. 8d. p.a., but this interest alone hardly seems enough to explain his return.12 CP40/791, rot. 638. He acquired these lands from Henry Appleton, a gentleman of Camberwell, who, a month before the lease, had entered into a statute staple in £40 to him: C241/235/27. His interest was probably that of mortgagee, for the property seems later to have returned to Appleton: VCH Surr. iv. 31. More likely it arose from a connexion with the borough’s lord, Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, who had a large estate in Shropshire, although he does not appear among the lawyers retained by the duke either in the 1440s or thereafter. Another ill-documented baronial connexion explains his election for Arundel to the Parliament of 1450. There William Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, was lord. In 1446 our MP had acted as attorney for him in the court of common pleas and, more significantly, just a few months before the Parliament assembled, the earl had been nominated as a feoffee of the manor of Stapleton by all its tenants, including Acton and his wife.13 C219/16/1; CP40/743, att. rot. 2; Salop Archs., Deeds 6000/2838.

By the early 1450s Acton was well established as a local lawyer. His rise occasioned tensions with another lawyer, John Lawley*, whose career bore many similarities to his own: in 1451-2 the Shrewsbury authorities spent 16d. on wine for the bailiffs and others who had gathered to preserve the peace between the two men.14 Salop Archs., Shrewsbury recs., bailiffs’ accts. 3365/380, m. 1d. By contrast, he was on terms of friendship with William Burley I*, the most important of Shropshire’s men of law, acting for him in 1453 in the settlement of an excessive jointure on Burley’s second wife, Margaret, daughter of Lord Grey of Wilton, and attesting his election to Parliament in 1455.15 CP25(1)/195/22/41; C219/16/3. He was an obvious candidate to join Burley and Horde on the quorum of the county’s bench, and he was duly appointed in March 1454. Connexions outside Shropshire are reflected two years later in his nomination, alongside John Pemberton*, one of the masters in Chancery, and John Gaynesford II*, as keepers of the manor of Stanwell in Middlesex, which was in the hands of the Crown during the minority of Thomas Windsor†.16 C66/478, m. 27d; CFR, xix. 151. More important, however, it was at this period that he established a connexion with John Talbot, second earl of Shrewsbury (d.1460), which was to be far closer than the passing link he enjoyed with Buckingham and Arundel. The first evidence of their association dates from the feoffment of the manor of Stapleton in 1450 when the future second earl and his half-brother, John Talbot, Lord Lisle, were named as feoffees alongside Arundel. Later, on 3 Dec. 1453, Acton received an assignment in the Exchequer in respect of a bad tally allotted to the earl’s late father, and from then on he acted frequently for him. In the mid 1450s he was one of the Talbot men who made a jointure settlement on Earl John and his wife, Elizabeth Ormond, that disregarded the dower interest of the earl’s stepmother, Margaret Beauchamp; and, on at least three occasions between February 1457 and April 1458, he received assignments at the Exchequer in respect of the fee that the earl enjoyed as treasurer.17 Salop Archs., Deeds 6000/2838; C139/179/58; E403/796, m. 5; 809, m. 6; 810, m. 3; 814, m. 2.

Acton’s legal practice was, however, not restricted to the greater baronage. More demanding of his energies, at least in the late 1450s, was his role as retained legal counsel to the borough of Shrewsbury. The borough was then seriously threatened by a series of assaults on its leading burgesses by a group of Lancashire men, and, as a consequence, he was called upon to perform more than his routine duties. The borough accounts for the year September 1457-8 record several payments to him and his friend, Horde, whom the borough also retained. They shared food and wine worth 3s. 10d. when drawing up bills of indictment against the assailants; and they were soon after provided with breakfasts and wine worth as much as 7s. 2d. and 8s. 5d. when the borough authorities found themselves at a loss as to how to reply to their powerful neighbour, Richard, duke of York, who, seemingly in connexion with the same matter, had demanded surety of the peace from them. Later in the same accounting year they were entertained to a breakfast worth 5s. 4d. when the justices of assize came to the town, and, no doubt, their attendance on such occasions was routine over many years.18 Shrewsbury bailiffs’ accts. 3365/387, mm. 1-2.

Acton’s connexion with the earl of Shrewsbury and perhaps also, although more tenuously, with the duke of Buckingham ensured that he was employed by the Lancastrians during the civil war of 1459-61. He was named late in 1459 to two local commissions aimed against the Yorkists, and it is not surprising that he should have been elected for Shropshire (with his brother-in-law, Horde) to the Parliament summoned to Coventry to attaint the Yorkist lords.19 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 557, 559; C219/16/5. The following year, however, brought a very different situation with the Yorkist victory in July 1460 at the battle of Northampton, where both Shrewsbury and Buckingham were killed. Yet the change of regime occasioned only a brief interruption to Acton’s administrative career. Removed from the Shropshire bench in the following September, he was restored in February 1462. Indeed, the 1460s proved a prosperous period for him. He made a significant addition to his estates: in February 1465 he acquired the manor of Aldenham, near Bridgnorth, and the hereditary office of chief forester of Shirlett from John Ellingbridge*, another who had represented Bletchingley as a servant of Humphrey Stafford in the 1440s.20 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 675-6; 1461-7, p. 570; Salop Archs., Acton mss, 1093/2/170.

He also continued to play an important part in the affairs of the Talbots. On 20 Nov. 1460 he had delivered into Chancery the inquisitions taken in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire on the death of the earl, and it is likely that he took a hand in the drafting of these inquisitions in those and other counties.21 C139/179/58. He then supported the earl’s widow. On 13 Jan. 1466 he joined her in a series of bonds, registered before the Shrewsbury bailiffs, to Sir William Chaworth of Wiverton (Nottinghamshire), probably in connexion with the marriage of her daughter, Margaret, to Chaworth’s son and heir-apparent, Thomas. Soon after, he acted for the new earl, who, despite still being a minor, had had livery of his estates in 1464. As one of the earl’s feoffees, he granted an annual rent of £19 to one of the leading townsmen of Shrewsbury, Nicholas Stafford, in discharge of certain agreements made between Stafford and the earl.22 Shrewsbury assembly bk. 3365/67, f. 57v; CP40/852, rot. 521d; C1/54/121.

Acton also found employment with the baronial family of Lovell, who lived in Northamptonshire but, as heirs of the Burnells, owned extensive property in Shropshire. Edward Acton had been a servant of his neighbour, Hugh, Lord Burnell (d.1420), and it was natural that our MP should have served his successors. On 1 Dec. 1464 he was one of the Lovell feoffees who settled the family’s Shropshire lands in jointure on John, Lord Lovell, and his wife, Joan Beaumont. By this date he was probably also serving as steward of the manor of Condover, only a few miles from Longnor, although he is not known to have been in office before June 1466, when, following John’s death in January 1465, Joan was lady of the manor. She died two months later, and it is likely that he continued to hold the office when the Lovell lands were in the wardship of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, during the minority of Lovell’s son, Francis. He was, in any event, again steward after Francis came of age.23 C140/13/27, 19/20; Thornes mss, 867/94, 124; CPR, 1467-77, p. 51.

During the Readeption Acton probably followed the lead of the new earl of Shrewsbury, who himself followed that of George, duke of Clarence.24 A.J. Pollard, ‘The Talbots’ (Bristol Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1968), 99-101. He was appointed to two local commissions by the brief Readeption government; and he clearly remained active as a local lawyer, delivering into Chancery, on 7 Feb. 1471, the inquisition post mortem taken in Shropshire on the death of the widow of Richard Blike*. Twelve days later, he joined the Shrewsbury merchant, Thomas Stone†, who had earlier acted as one of his feoffees in the acquisition of the manor of Aldenham, in a Westminster statute staple to Thomas Frowyk II* in £248.25 C140/33/41; C131/243/2; C241/254/132.

None the less, Acton’s place in local affairs was unaffected by Edward IV’s return. On 17 Sept. 1472 he was named second among the attestors to the election for Shropshire of Horde and their nephew, John Leighton†.26 C219/17/2. A few months later he was a member of a strikingly unusual jury that assembled before the county’s j.p.s. at Shrewsbury on 31 May 1473. Such was the rank of those who presided over the session, headed by Henry Stafford, duke of Buckingham, and the earl of Shrewsbury, that those who normally presided as j.p.s in the county were reduced to the rank of jurors. Our MP and five other current members of the Shropshire bench sat on a jury that included no one below the rank of esquire. This curious inversion of roles was part of a drive by the restored King to reduce lawlessness in the marches, in part through the council established at Ludlow for his son and heir, Edward, prince of Wales. Three of the j.p.s. – Shrewsbury, Richard Fiennes, Lord Dacre, and William Allington†, Speaker in the Parliament then in prorogation – were drawn from that council. For Acton, his service on this notable jury may have had a particular personal interest. Among the indictments it laid was one concerning the forcible abduction and rape of William Burley’s widow, Margaret Grey, by the Staffordshire esquire, Humphrey Cotes. His old friendship with Burley gave our MP reason to view this offence with dismay, and he may also have had another. At some date in the 1470s he took as his second wife a daughter of another of the jurors, Fulk Sprenghose, whose marriage to Margaret, contracted after Burley’s death, had either recently been annulled or was about to be.27 KB9/334/87; KB27/852, rex rot. 6; 870, rot. 72.

Acton’s career in the 1470s followed the same course as it had done in the previous two decades. He continued to offer legal advice to the borough authorities in Shrewsbury. In 1476, for example, he and his old friend, Horde, were given wine when they mediated an agreement between the town community and Isabel, widow of Nicholas Fitzherbert*; and in July 1477 the two men were provided with a breakfast worth as much as 10s. 3d. when they came to the town on the day of the assizes.28 Shrewsbury bailiffs’ accts. 3365/410, mm. 1-1d. He also remained active in the affairs of the local nobility. The death of the third earl of Shrewsbury in June 1473, leaving a boy as his heir, deprived him of a patron, but he continued to serve the family as administrator of the goods of the intestate earl.29 CP40/864, rot. 527d; 868, rot. 384d.

In any event, he had other connexions to compensate. His stewardship of Condover became a post of greater significance after Francis, Lord Lovell, came of age in 1477, and the presence of the prince’s council at Ludlow brought him into the orbit of other prominent men. On 9 Apr. 1478 he sat as a j.p. at Shrewsbury in company with two of these councillors, John, bishop of Worcester, and Anthony Wydeville, Earl Rivers.30 KB9/353/26.

By this date, however, Acton was an old man with little time left for new horizons. He died on 8 Feb. 1480 and his inquisition post mortem was taken at Much Wenlock before his old friend Horde as escheator in the following June. The jurors described his manorial property as the manors of Aldenham, Norton and Betton Strange with a moiety of the manor of Longnor, a remarkably compact estate to the south and south-east of Shrewsbury. Curiously no mention was made of his courtesy interest in the lands of his late wife Mary Stapleton. Like Aldenham, the manor of Norton seems to have come to him by purchase (probably from John, Lord Lovell), a testament to the success of his career, as is the major rebuilding work he undertook in the 1460s at his still-surviving manor house at Longnor.31 VCH Salop viii. 41; A. Emery, Greater Med. Houses, ii. 557-8. The Actons had a long and distinguished later history: Sir Edward Acton† was raised to a baronetcy in 1644 for his support for Charles I, and Sir John Dalberg-Acton† became a peer, as Baron Acton of Aldenham, in 1869.32 CP, i. 55.