ARCHER, John II

The survival of letters of Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, to John Archer as his receiver-general, among the surviving papers of the Warwickshire gentry family of Archer leave no doubt that our MP is to be identified with the eldest son of Richard Archer. The Archers had been established at Tanworth in Arden since the reign of Henry II; and, while they did not number among the greatest gentry of that county, they were one of the principal families of the Arden plateau on its western edge.3 W. Dugdale, Warws. ii. 780; C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 124-5, 166, 305-6. Further, in the early fifteenth century their status was inflated both by their place in the retinue of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, and by the marriage of our MP’s father to a wealthy heiress, Alice Hugford (a match that he may have owed to the earl). Her landed inheritance in Shropshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire was worth about £80 p.a., far more than the ancestral lands of the Archers. Although she died relatively young, she lived long enough to provide Richard with an heir and the consequent right to courtesy in her estates.4 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 648; CCR, 1419-22, pp. 84-85. She had also brought him a considerable jointure in the Lucy lands in Glos. and Warws. but he lost this with her death in 1420: CIPM, xx. 296-7; Carpenter, 109. This explains why our MP’s father was a more prominent man than his predecessors, serving terms as sheriff in Shropshire in 1430-1 and Staffordshire (where he held lands in the right of his third wife) 11 years later. Unfortunately, however, for the long term prospects of the family, John Archer was not heir-apparent to his mother’s lands. By her first husband she had a son, William Lucy, and it was to the Lucys that the estates passed on the death of our MP’s father in 1471.5 CFR, xxi. no. 72; Carpenter, 109. Perhaps it was the fragility of the family’s new prosperity, together with his father’s longevity, that led John into a career of baronial service at a time when such careers could have fatal consequences.

Archer’s early career can only be very speculatively reconstructed. He may have been born as early as 1416;6 His parents married between 28 June and 24 Sept. 1415: CIPM, xx. 296. and, if so, it is possible that he was the servant of Sir Henry Norbury*, who, in 1434, received at the Exchequer the wages due to his master as captain of Le Crotoy, and, in 1435, sued out letters of protection as about to depart for France in Norbury’s retinue. On 26 Oct. 1440 this same man, as master of the balinger called Mighel, was sent to France with royal letters addressed to Edmund Beaufort, earl of Dorset. The case for identifying him with our MP is strengthened by the fact that this balinger was owned by Norbury’s lord, John Holand, earl of Huntingdon, into the service of whose son our MP was later to enter.7 E403/712, m. 8; 740, m. 2; DKR, xlviii. 308. If, however, the young Archer enjoyed a brief military career, his future lay in a different sphere. A later reference shows that he was a member of the Inner Temple, although one can only speculate as to when he began his residence there. The first certain reference to him dates from 1437, when, described as ‘of Tanworth, yeoman’, he joined his father in breaking the close of one of their gentry neighbours, Richard Merbrook, and assaulting him. The matter at issue appears to have been one of tenure: the Archers claimed that they were merely taking a distraint for arrears of rent and a jury before the j.p.s found in their favour.8 Archer mss, DR37/2/Box 83/10.

Archer began to make regular appearances in the records from the early 1440s. He was probably generally resident in London. In October 1443, for example, he offered mainprise in the court of King’s bench, a common recourse for young lawyers, and soon after, styled as ‘of London, gentleman’, he was sued for the fabrication of false deeds as retained legal counsel of William Charnels of Snarestone (Leicestershire).9 KB27/730, rex rot. 6; C1/14/24; 15/18. None the less, although his developing practice as a lawyer must often have kept him in London, he had time for local affairs. In July 1443, when he agreed to abide arbitration over a disputed wardship, he was styled as ‘of Statfold’, a Staffordshire manor belonging to his stepmother; and, in February 1446 he was described as of that county when he stood surety for another lawyer, Thomas Greswold, in a royal lease of property in Warwick and Solihull.10 Archer mss, DR37/2/Box 73/30; CFR, xviii. 15. It was also in Staffordshire that he enjoyed a brief career in local administration, being nominated to a commission of inquiry in 1448 and holding office as escheator there in 1448-9. His father’s association with two of the leading Staffordshire knights, Sir William Ferrers of Chartley and Sir Richard Vernon*, may explain these nominations, but Archer was not destined to become one of the workhorses of local government.11 CPR, 1446-52, p. 140; Carpenter, 424-5. In July 1448 Ferrers and Vernon headed Richard Archer’s feoffees in disputed property at Eastcote and Longdon: Archer mss, DR37/1/Box 42/2503. By this date his London interests had been reinforced by marriage to a wealthy widow, the sort of match so often made by a rising young lawyer. His bride had much to recommend her: not only did she have rents and property in London as dower from her first husband, the grocer Henry Sewale, but she also stood as heiress-apparent to the lands of her maternal grandfather in Kent and London. Further, she was childless and thus any issue she might have by Archer would succeed to her maternal inheritance. Such a bride demanded a jointure settlement to match her own expectations, a sacrifice John’s father was ready to make. On 19 Sept. 1446 he settled upon the couple two small manors at Mawley (Shropshire) and Orton Saucy in Coleorton (Leicestershire), and it was later claimed that he also gave them an annuity of 20 marks assigned upon the manor of Wilden in Bedfordshire for the term of his life.12 Archer mss, DR503, f. 62; 37/2/Box 83/14.

Archer was now a man of property and he was soon involved in a dispute over his wife’s dower, one which he settled with scant regard for her interests. The couple sued actions in the court of common pleas and the London court of hustings against her first husband’s heirs, the Astells. Compromise was reached in April 1450 when that family agreed that Archer should have, for the term of 12 years, an annual rent of £4 charged upon Sewale’s property in Cheap in the parish of St. Vedast. A more important agreement followed soon after: on 3 June our MP leased to Anthony Astell, a London fishmonger (and husband of Sewale’s sister, Elizabeth), one third of 24 messuages, eight shops and four gardens in the parishes of St. Vedast and St. Botolph without Aldersgate for 12 years at an annual rent of £13 14s.13 Archer mss, DR37/1/Box 53/3137; Corp. London RO, husting bks. 1, ff. 6v, 8, 23; CP40/768, rot. 480. In entering into these arrangements Archer was speculating upon his wife’s life expectancy: if she survived much beyond 12 years he had made a bad bargain; if she died much before he had secured to himself rents that he would not otherwise have enjoyed. His wife probably took a dim view of speculations that would seriously compromise her should she become a widow once more.14 Nor did these arrangements resolve the dispute. In 1453 our MP sued the Astells for close-breaking, debt and arrears of rent, and they replied by claiming assault and detinue of charters against him: CP40/768, rots. 123, 297d, 388d, 480, 480d; 771, rot. 60d.

Much more difficult to interpret is a conveyance Archer entered into soon afterwards. On 18 July 1450 he conveyed his estate in all his lands in London as elsewhere to feoffees headed by his ‘honorabilibus dominis’ the Neville earls of Salisbury and Warwick. This grant appears not to have taken effect, for, on 10 Jan. 1452, it was made again, on this occasion jointly by him and his wife to precisely the same grantees.15 Archer mss, DR37/1/Box 53/3138, 3140. These grants have been interpreted in the context of the domestic politics of Warwickshire, as indicating that the new earl of Warwick was prepared to support the Archers in their long-running dispute with the Porter family over property at Eastcote and Longdon in Warwickshire.16 Carpenter, 452. There is, however, something curious about the identity of the grantees: one might expect the lesser feoffees to be drawn from Archer’s friends and neighbours, but they were largely Neville men with no local interests in Warwickshire, headed by Warwick’s brother, Sir Thomas Neville, and Sir Christopher Conyers. This raises the possibility that the feoffees were intended to hold to the use of the new earl, perhaps as surety for Archer’s good behaviour. If so, the transaction may represent not a declaration by Warwick in favour of our MP and his father but rather an attempt on his part to bring the Archers to order and resolve the quarrel. Such an interpretation is certainly consistent with John Archer’s decision to seek lordship outside his native county. By June that year he was in the service of Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, and as such was implicated in the duke’s notorious entry into Ralph, Lord Cromwell’s lordship of Ampthill. Why he should have chosen such a lord can only be a matter of speculation, although it may have had something to do with Norbury, who had long been in the service of the Holands. The choice was to determine the course of much of his later life and gave him a parliamentary career that he might not otherwise have enjoyed. His election for the Cornish borough of Helston in 1453 is explicable only in terms of the trust placed in him by the duke, who secured the return of several of his men (including the other MP for Helston, Thomas Baron II*), to rally support in the Commons in his great dispute with Cromwell.17 KB27/775, rot. 46; S.J. Payling, ‘Ampthill Dispute’, EHR, civ. 895-6.

A servant of so rash a master as Henry Holand would be wise to maintain other connexions, especially in political waters as troubled as those of the 1450s. Archer appears to have done so until near the end of the decade. On 14 July 1453, during the first prorogation of the Parliament of which he was a Member, he was granted by the Crown a 20-year lease of a tenement and garden in the London parish of St. Giles without Cripplegate. Significantly, one of his sureties in this grant was a fellow MP, Roland Vaux* of Cumberland, a servant of the earl of Salisbury, an indication that his relationship with the Nevilles remained cordial despite what appears to have been their even-handed intervention in the dispute over Eastcote and Longdon. Further evidence of this relationship is provided by a draft feoffment, surviving among the Archer papers. This is dated 5 Jan. 1454, in other words during the second prorogation of the Parliament. The name of the feoffor has been left blank but reference to property in London leaves no doubt that our MP rather than his father was intended. No fewer than 23 feoffees are named, headed by ‘domino meo Reverendo’, the earl of Warwick. Archer also called upon the services of at least five of his fellow MPs: (Sir) Thomas Charlton*, who was to be elected Speaker when Parliament reassembled; Norbury and Thomas Wychard*, sitting for Bedfordshire in the interest of the duke of Exeter; Robert Manfeld*, an esquire of the royal household; and the lawyer John Jenney*. The rest of this impressive group of feoffees were other lawyers, such as William Lacon I*, Robert Ingleton* and Thomas Horde*, and London merchants, like Richard Needham* and John Harowe*.18 CFR, xix. 34; Archer mss, DR37/1/Box 53/3141. The aim of the feoffment, which was probably never executed, can only be a matter of speculation, but it is likely that the feoffees were intended to protect the estates against the consequences of Archer’s allegiance to the duke of Exeter. The resurgence in the political fortunes of the duke of York in the wake of the King’s mental collapse of the previous summer had created a new political dispensation acutely unfavourable to our MP’s master. Archer may therefore have feared that Cromwell would pursue him, as he had already pursued others, for his part in the entry into Ampthill. Moreover, he may already have had an inkling of the desperate measures to which his unstable master was about to resort. It was only two weeks after the proposed feoffment that the duke of Exeter made his pact with Thomas Percy, Lord Egremont, that was the prelude to their rising in the following May.19 T.B. Pugh, ‘Rebellion of Henry Holand’, Historical Research, lxiii. 248-62.

Archer wisely chose this time to distance himself from Holand. There is nothing to suggest he played any part in the abortive rising, and, while Holand was imprisoned in Pontefract castle, our MP is found associated with other lords. This is implied by a feoffment of the property in London and Kent which came to his wife on the death of her father, Ralph Blakelowe. On 19 Aug. 1454 Ralph’s brother, Robert, a clerk, granted these lands to Archer and his wife together with Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, the duke’s son, Humphrey, earl of Stafford, and Edward Neville, Lord Abergavenny, and other lesser men.20 CCR, 1447-54, p. 515. While there is nothing to connect him with the Staffords later in his career, he was subsequently to form a more direct relationship with Lord Abergavenny, a younger brother of the earl of Salisbury. The origin of this connexion probably lay in Edward’s lands in Kent and Warwickshire, and it is likely that all three lords were chosen as feoffees by Archer because of their influence in the former county. Nevertheless, his new associations were not to supersede the old. His mounting difficulties in the late 1450s coincided with a recovery in the duke of Exeter’s influence, and it was perhaps natural that he should have returned to his service.

Archer’s problems in the late 1450s took several forms. In Hilary term 1455 Lord Cromwell brought an action of trespass against a large number of Holand’s servants and adherents, including our MP (described as ‘of London, gentleman’), for forcibly taking 11 horses and £1,000-worth of goods from Ampthill on 5 June 1452. The threat posed by these actions was a serious one: in the following June heavy damages were awarded against some of those Cromwell had sued in 1453 for the seizure of Ampthill. Archer was more fortunate in that the plaintiff’s death brought the action against him to an end.21 KB27/775, rot. 46; 776, rots. 47d, 82. More serious for him was the declining position of his family in Warwickshire. In late 1454 a jury of that county awarded damages of £80 against his father in an action sued by the rival claimant to Eastcote and Longdon, Baldwin Porter, and in June 1455 John saved his father from outlawry only by fraudulently suing a writ of supersedeas out of Chancery.22 CP40/771, rot. 137; KB27/778, rex rot. 44; C1/25/218. Two years later, Richard was obliged to surrender the disputed property, and father and son found themselves on the wrong side in another local dispute when again sued for fabricating false deeds concerning the manor of Bramcote.23 CCR, 1454-61, p. 253; KB27/786, rot. 114d; Carpenter, 477. But the worst of John’s problems was a domestic one which very directly threatened his prosperity. On 31 Aug. 1457 Pope Calixtus III ordered the bishop of London to summon him to answer the petition presented against him by his wife: she had accused him of inhuman treatment, including beating her during pregnancy so that she miscarried on two occasions, and was seeking a divorce a mensa et thoro and the restoration of her property. Since the bulk of Archer’s wealth was drawn from lands he held in her right, he could ill-afford a separation and he seems already to have taken steps to protect his interests. On the previous 6 June Thomas Norris*, the last surviving feoffee of his wife’s father, surrendered his right in the Blakelowe lands in Kent to Lord Abergavenny and our MP in fee. This may have been intended to give Archer a title to the land separate from that of his wife.24 CPL, xi. 319; Archer mss, DR37/1/Box 53/3095.

It is not known whether Christine was successful in winning a separation, but, beset by difficulties, it is not surprising that Archer should have exploited his connexion with Exeter, now one of leading supporters of the increasingly-militant Lancastrian regime. In so doing he reached the height of his personal influence despite his family’s loss of standing in their native shire. On 1 June 1459, as legis peritus, he was given letters of confraternity by the abbot of St. Mary’s, York, perhaps as a reward for his counsel. By the following Michaelmas he was in office as Lord Abergavenny’s feodary and surveyor-general; and, by the following April (and probably for some time before), he was Holand’s receiver-general.25 Archer mss, DR37/1/2007; 2/Box 72/9; Box 91/3. Indeed, it is likely that he was the duke’s receiver when he sat in Parliament for the second time. He represented Old Sarum, a borough whose representation was almost entirely given over to carpet-baggers, in the Parliament of November 1459 which saw the attainder of the Yorkist lords. Again his constituency colleague was Thomas Baron and there can be no doubt that they were returned at the duke’s behest as active supporters of the Lancastrian cause.26 C219/16/5.

Archer’s intimate service to Exeter made it inevitable that he would be drawn into the crisis that followed the attainder. In April 1460, when ordered by the duke to pay 20 marks to four of his minstrels, he was probably with his master, then resident in the Tower of London as its constable. This is implied by a payment he made shortly before 4 Apr. to the clerk of the Tower on behalf of Lord Abergavenny.27 Archer mss, DR37/2/Box 72/9; Box 91/4. Soon after the duke departed the capital to lead an ineffectual naval expedition against the Yorkist lords, and Archer remained behind. He was in London when the Yorkists entered the city on the following 2 July. Here he was faced by a conflict of loyalties. Whatever the nature of his earlier relations with the Neville earl of Warwick, his service to the earl’s uncle, Abergavenny, gave him a vital link to the invaders. Abergavenny quickly declared for his kinsmen, fighting in the Yorkist colours at the battle of Northampton, and Archer could presumably have followed him.28 English Chron. (Cam. Soc. lxiv), 95. Unwisely, as it transpired, he chose to remain loyal to the duke of Exeter, taking an active part in the defence of the Tower, the last Lancastrian stronghold in the capital. If a later indictment is to be taken at face value, he was one of a hard-line group among the Tower’s defenders, headed by (Sir) Thomas Brown II*, who were responsible for bombarding the city before the final capitulation on 19 July. This group was singled out for punishment: on 23 July they were tried in the guildhall before the earls of Warwick and Salisbury and duly convicted of treason by a jury of citizens. Most of the defenders of the Tower escaped punishment. According to Benet’s chronicle, our MP, ‘qui fuit de consilio ducis Excestrie’, was executed on 2 Aug. With the exception of Brown, those who suffered execution were servants of Exeter and it was probably this that sealed their fate when many other of the Tower’s defenders escaped punishment.29 KB9/75, mm. 2-7; John Benet’ s Chron. 227; Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, ii (2), [773]; EHR, xxviii. 126; C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, i. 93.

It was fortunate for the future of the Archers that John had not yet inherited the family patrimony for it may then have been lost to them, temporarily at least, by attainder. He did, however, leave his father a problem of another sort, that of his estranged wife. She and her new husband, Henry Beche of London, made every effort to prove title to the two manors Richard Archer had settled at the time of his son’s marriage together with an annuity of 20 marks which they claimed, apparently falsely, had also been settled. Litigation continued into the mid 1460s: on 29 July 1465 the couple were convicted before the justices of assize at Shrewsbury of forging deeds concerning the manors of Mawley and Orton Saucy, and it may be that this marks the final defeat of their claims.30 Archer mss, DR37/2/Box 83/13-14; CP40/810, rots. 327, 329, 337. By this date our MP’s son and heir by Christine, another John, was reaching full age; and in 1467 Richard Archer sought to mend the family fortunes by contracting him in marriage (on unfavourable terms) to the branch of the Mountforts that had prospered by the accession of Edward IV.31 Carpenter, 108; Archer mss, DR503, ff. 66v-68. Members of the family came to prominence in the eighteenth century. A direct descendant of our MP, Sir Thomas Archer†, who sat in the Commons for Warwick and Bramber, was raised to the peerage as Lord Archer of Umberslade in 1747. An ancient family ended in the male line with the death of Lord Thomas’s son and heir, Andrew, in 1778.32 The Commons 1660-90, i. 543; 1715-54, i. 418-19; 1754-90, ii. 26-27; CP, i. 188; VCH Warws. v. 168.