ALDSTAYNMORE, John

A merchant of the staple, Aldstaynmore rose to be one of the wealthiest men in late medieval York. His origins, beyond his mother’s name, are obscure, but in 1411-12 both he and his brother, Thomas (d.1435), entered the freedom of the city by redemption. Both were described as merchants.4 Freemen of York (Surtees Soc. xcvi), 115. John’s subsequent rise to prominence was rapid, and probably owed much to his marriage to the daughter of one of York’s leading citizens, the mercer Richard Thoresby (chamberlain in 1362-3 and sheriff the following year). The match had taken place by 1416, when John and his new wife, Agnes, entered the city’s prestigious guild of Corpus Christi,5 J. Kermode, ‘Merchants of York, Hull and Beverley’ (Sheffield Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1990), app. 4; Reg. Guild Corpus Christi, 18. and the following March Agnes’s brother, William, demised a capital messuage in Mickelgate to the couple for term of her life.6 York Memoranda Bk. ii. 68. By this stage of his career Aldstaynmore was already active in the wool export trade. In 1410 he had been accused of smuggling 40 sacks of wool from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to the Low Countries with the connivance of Nicholas Blackburn (d.1432).7 Bronnen tot de Geschiedenis van den Handel Met Engeland, Schotland en Ierland ed. Smit, i. 543.

Aldstaynmore soon became involved in civic government and in February 1418 he was chosen as one of the chamberlains. It was this in this capacity that, in April, he witnessed an arbitration settlement of an accusation of slander made before the mayor.8 York Memoranda Bk. ii. 67. His cursus honorum followed the familiar path of York’s mercantile elite, and on 21 Sept. 1421 he was elected one of the sheriffs. By this time he may already have been a member of the council of 24, and it was probably as such that he had witnessed a local deed enrolled in the council chamber in July 1421. By April 1424 he had become of the city’s 12 aldermen, an office he retained until his death. On 4 Apr. the following year he was returned to his first Parliament. No evidence survives of the circumstances of his election, his business there or the duration of his stay, but he was elected alongside a fellow alderman, the experienced parliamentarian Richard Russell I*.9 C219/13/3. Both men were staplers and as a number of common petitions were presented to the Parliament relating to mercantile issues (and to the Calais staple in particular), it may be that the two were chosen to represent the city elite’s interest in the wool trade. Aldstaynmore may have delayed his departure for the Parliament’s second session, as he took part in York’s annual pageant of Corpus Christi in June 1425.10 York Memoranda Bk. ii. 157. In February 1427 Aldstaynmore reached the pinnacle of his career in civic government when he was elected mayor. Little evidence survives of his mayoral year, but in May he was appointed to a commission to deliver York gaol; he witnessed the parliamentary elections in September; and later in the year he arbitrated in a dispute between the guilds of minstrels and smiths.11 Ibid. 179; C219/13/5.

In September 1429 Aldstaynmore was once again elected as one of the MPs for York. Once more, the concerns of the Calais staple may have been foremost in the minds of the York electors, as they returned John Bolton*, another stapler, alongside Aldstaynmore. The Parliament which assembled at Westminster on 22 Sept. was notable not only for the series of petitions which resulted in the so-called Partition and Ordinance of the Staple (which concerned the use of foreign currency in Calais in an attempt to regulate the bullion supply), but also for a long discussion over the internal government of the company of the staple, which resulted in the election of John Reynwell* as mayor of the staple for three years. The importance of this business to York’s mercantile elite may explain why the city’s electors returned two men both of whom had previous parliamentary experience, a unique occurrence during Henry VI’s reign.12 C219/14/1. Little evidence survives of the nature of Aldstaynmore’s involvement in local affairs during the remainder of his career. In June 1431 and February the following year he was appointed to commissions to deliver York gaol, while in 1431, 1432 and 1433 he was among those councillors present to witness the parliamentary elections. He also appears to have regularly attended council meetings, frequently witnessing deeds and other matters presented before the mayor and his brethren.13 C219/14/2-4; York Memoranda Bk. ii. 174, 183.

In his commercial dealings, as well as his career of office holding, Aldstaynmore interacted closely with some of York’s leading citizens. His marriage to Agnes Thoresby was perhaps the best example of the importance of such connexions, providing him with an entrée into the governing elite: while John held civic office within six years of entering the freedom, his brother, Thomas, had to wait nearly 20 before being chosen as one of the chamberlains in February 1432. By kinship and trade Aldstaynmore was related to the families of Blackburn, Bolton, Gare, Gascoigne, Holbeck, Kirkeby, Louth and Ormshead.14 J. Kermode, Med. Merchants, 43, 81-82. As such he was one of a group of wool merchants who dominated the political and commercial life of the city in the first decades of the fifteenth century. He acted as a feoffee for his old trading partner, Nicholas Blackburn senior, although Blackburn’s son, Nicholas*, later alleged in a petition to the chancellor of England that Aldstaynmore, along with William Bedale*, John Bolton and others, had made ‘false suggestions’ to his father resulting in his disinheritance.15 C1/11/80. In October 1424 Aldstaynmore served as an arbiter on behalf of Bolton in his dispute with another stapler, William Bowes I*.16 York Memoranda Bk. iii. 76-77.

Aldstaynmore made his will on 28 Jan. 1435. He asked to be buried beside his wife in the choir of his parish church of St. John the Evangelist by Ouse Bridge. Agnes had made her will on the previous 7 Dec. and probate had been granted to her husband on 2 Jan. 1435. It is possible that both were victims of the plague then prevalent in the city.17 York registry wills, prob. reg. 3, f. 402. Aldstaynmore made generous provision for his soul, including bequests to the city’s friaries, leper hospitals and maisons dieu. For his funeral expenses, he set aside £10, the same sum as he asked to have distributed among the poor and bedridden of York. He had only one surviving child, a daughter named Agnes (who had already married the local mercer, William Holbeck*), but he made extensive bequests of cash, jewels, plate and clothing to his brother, Thomas, and the latter’s children (including £40 for the marriage of his niece), and to his kinsman, Henry Aldstaynmore. In all over 20 named individuals, members of his extended family, servants and business associates, were remembered, while his cash bequests totalled over £300. The bulk of his property, spread throughout the city, was settled on his brother with remainder to his niece, his half-brother, Robert, and then to his kinsman, Henry. Aldstaynmore gave a tenement in Mickelgate and the moiety of a garden upon Bishophill to his daughter, with remainder to her daughter, Joan Holbeck. Other property outside the city was left to this grand-daughter, with successive remainders to the testator’s elderly mother, Margaret, and brother. As his executors, Aldstaynmore appointed his brother, his son-in-law Holbeck, his kinsman Henry, and the merchant, William Stocton II*. He may have anticipated problems with the execution of his will, as he appointed another merchant, Thomas Warde, to give counsel to his executors, and (despite their earlier disagreement) he also called upon the senior alderman, Nicholas Blackburn, to oversee them.18 Ibid. ff. 406-8; Kermode, Med. Merchants, 114, 301.

Probate was granted on 18 Feb. 1435, but it was not long before his family and executors began to quarrel. Thomas Aldstaynmore followed his brother to the grave within a short time, effectively leaving the execution of John’s will in the hands of Holbeck and Stocton.19 York registry wills, prob. reg. 3, f. 414. During the course of the next decade or so Henry Aldstaynmore and the testator’s niece, Agnes, attempted to recover what they felt to be their inheritance from the executors’ clutches. In May 1438 Henry petitioned the chancellor, accusing his fellow executors (along with John Bolton and William Bedale, who had been appointed by the mayor of York to arbitrate in the dispute) of bringing vexatious suits before the mayor and aldermen. He claimed that he had been persuaded to be bound in £1,000 to abide by the arbiters’ award, and a further £600 to account for 30 sarplers of wool which the deceased owned at Calais. Unfortunately for Henry, the arbiters he had appointed (Thomas Bracebrigg and William Ormshead*) had since died, and Bolton and Bedale had brought a vexatious action of account against him. In another petition, Henry alleged that Bolton and Bedale had conspired with Holbeck and Stocton to gain control of the majority of Aldstaynmore’s considerable fortune and estate (valued at over £1,600) and, because of their ‘grett powere and reulle and as þe insufficience of the seid suppliant’, he had been committed to the city gaol.20 C1/9/168; 10/296. In 1446-7 Aldstaynmore’s niece, Agnes, and her husband, William Brund, also sued William Stocton, then mayor, in the court of Chancery. They alleged that Holbeck had forcibly entered the property bequeathed to Agnes in Aldstaynmore’s will. In a resulting assize of novel disseisin Holbeck had presented forged title deeds which disinherited Agnes. They called for Stocton, who ‘was present with þe forsaid John day & nyght lang afore his diyng and atte his diyng & atte all tymes was moste priue in knawelege in the premysses & all other thynges pertenyng to the said John’, to be summoned into Chancery to declare the truth of the matter. It appears that Agnes and her husband regained possession of the property, but a new assize of novel disseisin was brought by Henry Gascoigne, a local lawyer, and others, acting as Holbeck’s feoffees. Faced once more with Holbeck’s forged deeds, Agnes and her husband again petitioned the chancellor for redress.21 CP40/717, rot. 449; C1/14/25; 15/87.