ANDERBY, William

Anderby enjoyed a curious career. He was clearly a man of some account, but almost all that is known of him derives from his relationship to others. Indeed, aside from his role as an executor of Lucy Visconti, widow of Edmund Holand, earl of Kent (d.1408), and of Sir Henry Pleasington*, his long career can be very briefly summarized.1 There is a danger in what follows that more than one career has been conflated. All that can be said is that all the references to Anderby can be fashioned into a single coherent account. Of a family of no distinction, he hailed from Anderby near the Lincolnshire coast between Mablethorpe and Skegness.2 In 1439 he and his wife Joan conveyed a messuage, garden and seven acres of pasture in Anderby to the parson of nearby Cumberworth and others: CP25(1)/145/158/41. It is tempting to identify him as the s. and h. of Thomas Enderby of Bag Enderby, a Lindsey j.p. until 1422, but he was succeeded by a daughter: Lincs. Peds. ed. Maddison, 396. Before 1420, and perhaps some years before, he entered Lincoln’s Inn, with which he remained connected for the rest of his life, serving as the Inn’s steward at some point before 1456.3 L.Inn Adm. i. 1; L.Inn Black Bks. i. 28, 31. He first appears in the records in Mar. 1414 when he was required to find surety of the peace to one Robert Mohaut, and in 1417 he was sued in Chancery by Sir Edward Hastings of Elsing, Norf. for the return of a valuable chalice once belonging to Hen. IV: E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 1; C1/6/90; CPR, 1416-22, p. 141. By 1419, he was well enough established as a lawyer to hold office as under sheriff of London. Unfortunately, his term of office was an unhappy one and he was dismissed for bribery at the beginning of that year.4 Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 209-10.

Anderby’s association with the Inn serves to explain his election in 1427 to represent the Westmorland borough of Appleby, with which he had no personal connexion.5 The return is irregular in that the two MPs’ names have been added in a gap in a different hand and ink from the rest of the document: C219/13/5. His fellow MP, Thomas Pety*, a local man, was one of his contemporaries at the Inn, and it is a fair speculation that, as an attestor to the return, he played an important part in securing Anderby’s election as a carpet-bagger. Furthermore, one of those elected for Westmorland to this assembly, Robert Crackenthorpe*, was also a Lincoln’s Inn man; and our MP’s return had a recent parallel in that of another of the same Inn, Nicholas Stanshawe* of Gloucestershire, who had sat for Appleby on four successive occasions between 1420 and 1422.

After this experience of Parliament, Anderby appears to have taken up residence, periodically at least, in Middlesex. When, in March 1430, he stood as mainpernor in a grant of the guardianship of the temporalities of the Irish bishopric of Meath, he was described as resident at West Twyford in the parish of Willesden, and he attested three successive parliamentary elections in that county between 1429 and 1432.6 C219/14/1-3; CFR, xv. 323. He remained involved, however, in Lincolnshire affairs and his career reached a brief highpoint with his appointment, in July 1435, to the quorum of the peace in Lindsey. In this period he was briefly involved in litigation on his own account. In Easter term 1437 his Lincolnshire neighbour, William Asfordby, claimed damages of £200 against him for the forcible taking of his charters relating to the manor of Aswardby, not far from Anderby.7 CP40/705, rot. 325d. Significantly, in this action our MP was described as ‘of Clerkenwell’, proving that the Lincs. William Anderby was the same as the Mdx. one. He might thereafter have looked forward to taking a more active role in local affairs. For some unknown reason, however, these hopes went unrealized. His term as a j.p. was a short one and almost nothing is known of him, aside from his very active role as a litigant on behalf of others, for the remainder of his life.

None the less, although Anderby is a shadowy figure, he is highly visible in the records as an agent of others, principal among whom was Lucy Visconti. It is not known how he came into her service, but by Michaelmas 1421 he was acting as her attorney in the court of common pleas.8 CP40/643, rot. 323. Although she held important property in Lincolnshire – at Bourne in the south of the county – it was not in the near vicinity of Anderby, and it is perhaps more likely that our MP came to her attention through his connexions in London. In her will of 11 Apr. 1424, three days before her death, she bequeathed him (described as an esquire) £20, his wife, her ‘domicella’, 200 crowns and their son, Robert, ten marks. Less happily, in view of the tangled state of her affairs, she named him as one of her executors.9 Reg. Chichele, ii. 281-3. For her career: Med. London Widows ed. Barron and Sutton, 77-84. The execution of her will’s lavish terms, including the discharge of her late husband’s considerable debts, depended upon the recovery of an unrecoverable debt, namely her unpaid dowry from the community of Milan, and this explains why our MP, for the remaining 40 years of his life, was to find himself so frequently involved in litigation as her executor. Indeed, it may be that these problems explain why he sought a seat in the 1427 Parliament. The countess had petitioned the Commons in the Parliament of May 1421 for relief against her husband’s creditors, and it may be that Anderby contemplated a similar attempt six years later (although no petition survives).10 PROME, ix. 297-302.

However this may be, Anderby soon found himself in court over debts that were not his own. On 23 Nov. 1430 he was dismissed from Chancery at the suit of the executors of a London brewer, John Staunton, for a debt of over £70 incurred by the late earl, having apparently agreed to pay £40 to clear it. More troublesome were the claims of a London goldsmith, William Rus. On 31 Jan. 1429 our MP had pledged two great items of jewelry, each worth £50, to Rus as surety for a loan of £100 repayable a year later. Since he himself was the unlikely owner of two such precious items (one was a great gold collar set with precious stones and a ruby mounted in a pendant gold cross), there is no reason to doubt that this was a part of his ongoing efforts to resolve the countess’s affairs, and it led to litigation. After Rus had secured a judgement against him in the London sheriff’s court, Anderby appeared personally in the court of common pleas in 1434 to claim that the debt was extinguished when Rus rejected an offer of £100 made to him for the jewels by Anthony Fraunceys, a servant of Queen Katherine, and his own proffer of the sum owed.11 C1/8/15; CP40/693, rot. 326.

The result of the action has not been found, but in face of such annoyances it is not surprising that Anderby should have sought letters of protection. On 17 June 1434 he was granted such letters as about to depart for the General Council of the Church at Basel in the retinue of Edmund Beaufort, count of Mortain, one of the royal ambassadors to the Council and son of Lucy Visconti’s sister-in-law, Margaret Holand.12 DKR, xlviii. 299. His service to the countess, despite the difficulties it had brought him, had left him well connected. He was employed not only by the count of Mortain but also the count’s sister-in-law, Margaret, widow of John Beaufort, duke of Somerset (d.1444). This, however, like almost everything else to which he turned his hand, led to litigation. In Hilary term 1449 Margaret claimed that he owed her nearly 60 marks that he had received to her use at Alton (Hampshire), and he replied that he had delivered the money to her at London but that she had returned it to him in part payment of a debt.13 CP40/751, rot. 602; 752, rot. 429.

In the following term Anderby brought a remarkable action of his own. He claimed that John Kemp, cardinal-archbishop of York, was illegally withholding from him goods worth as much as 5,000 marks, which, as long before as 16 Aug. 1425, had been delivered to Cardinal Beaufort for safe-keeping. As Beaufort’s executor, Kemp now refused to surrender them. Unfortunately, the action was never pleaded, but it is fairly clear that the goods – a costly array of jewels, plate and luxurious garments – had once been the property of Lucy Visconti (for they included two decorated gold dishes which Henry IV had given her as a wedding present). More difficult to determine is why Anderby should have entrusted them to Beaufort. The best guess is that he had pledged them to raise money for the implementation of his late mistress’s will, with the hope that he could redeem them on the never-realized payment of her Milanese portion.14 J. Mackman, ‘Hidden Gems’, in The Fifteenth Century VIII ed. Clark, 62-72.

As Anderby continued to struggle with the problems arising from an old will, he found new difficulties as executor of Sir Henry Pleasington, a wealthy knight with property in the north, the Midlands and London.15 PCC 17 Rous (PROB11/1, f. 135v). There was later a disagreement as to whether Anderby was sole or joint executor: Year Bk. Mich. 33 Hen. VI (Reports del Cases en Ley, 1679), pl. 25. They were both tenants of the hospital of St. Mary without Bishopsgate in the parish of St. Leonard Shoreditch (the testator was buried in the chapel of the hospital), and this may explain their friendship.16 SC11/974. Further, Pleasington owned the manor of Toynton, not far from Anderby: CP40/775, rot. 41. Unfortunately, however, that friendship did not preserve him from dispute with Sir Henry’s widow. In 1456 she sued him in the court of common pleas for forging a deed to defraud her of the manor of Ilkley and other property in Yorkshire in which she claimed to have a life interest by grant of her late husband’s feoffees. She supported this action with a detailed petition in Chancery, to which our MP replied that this grant was invalid at law and contrary to the knight’s intention that the manor should be sold. He produced a detailed and convincing argument to this effect, and there can be little doubt that the claim was a frivolous one on the part of the widow, for whom adequate provision had already been made.17 CP40/780, rot. 188d; C1/16/647a-c. More troublesome to Anderby was Alan Caterall, who, in Easter term 1454, claimed that, as long before as 1427, Pleasington had retained him as the supervisor of his lands at an annual fee of £5 and that this fee had been £20 in arrears at the knight’s death. This seemingly simple matter quickly escalated as Anderby mounted a spirited defence: not only did he counter-claim against Caterall for account as Pleasington’s testator but he also brought an action of maintenance against Caterall’s friends. This, in turned, spurred another action as a London brewer, John Rokley, one of the alleged maintainers, claimed that Anderby had assaulted and imprisoned him at Edmonton on 16 June 1455 (a month after the alleged maintenance). The result was a thorough defeat for our long-suffering MP. Between them Caterall and Rokley won costs and damages of nearly 100 marks against him.18 CP40/773, rot. 91; 776, rot. 334; 778, rot. 338d; 779, rot. 348d, 402; 780, rot. 507; KB27/784, rot. 63.

On 4 June 1457, after these judgements against him, Anderby took the precaution of granting his goods to a powerful group, headed by the chancellor, William Waynflete, bishop of Winchester, and Sir John Neville, brother of Ralph, earl of Westmorland, and including his own daughter, Margaret. The standing of these grantees provides another indication that our MP was probably a more important figure than the surviving references imply.19 KB27/794, cart. rot. 1d; CCR, 1454-61, p. 221. The presence of Waynflete reflects our MP’s Lincs. origins. Neville was one of Pleasington’s feoffees. He did not long survive this grant, making his will on 25 Feb. 1462. Only two of its provisions are known: he directed burial in St. Augustine’s church by St. Paul’s Gate, London, and he named as his executors his wife, Joan, and John Wody*, a lawyer from Sussex. He may also have provided for the sale of some of his property. In any event, according to a Chancery petition, in 1465 his widow sold a messuage and garden at Ratcliffe (in Stepney, Middlesex) to Sir Laurence Raynford for £20; the knight later claimed that he had been defrauded as the property belonged to John Montagu, earl of Northumberland.20 C1/33/1. In his will Pleasington had instructed that his ‘domus’ at Ratcliffe be sold to provide for four chaplains to pray for his soul; Anderby must have purchased it: PCC 17 Rous. It was not, however, Anderby’s own affairs that principally concerned his other executor, who continued the long-running efforts to secure payment of the countess of Kent’s dowry of 70,000 florins (about 14,000 marks) from the duke of Milan. This was a hopeless task – the dowry had been promised as early as 1406 – and there is no evidence to show what attempts our MP had made to gain payment. Wody seems to have been more energetic. On 21 Nov. 1473 he appointed a merchant, Richard Heyron or Heron, to collect the money. It is likely that the executor had sold the debt to Heyron, no doubt very cheaply, for eight days later he gave Heyron (described in a hostile source as ‘a man of ill condition and worse report’) a release of all actions.21 CSP Milan, nos. 431, 434; CCR, 1468-76, no. 1205. The efforts of Heyron (d.1485) and his own executors to realize this investment ended in failure in 1491.22 CSP Milan, nos. 377-8, 380-1, 383-90, 393, 413, 420-37.