ASSHETON, Sir William

Sir William Assheton had an unusual career, played out not only in his native Lancashire but in France and, for a brief but important period in its latter part, in East Anglia. His family may have been a junior branch of the Asshetons of Ashton-under-Lyme, one of the leading gentry families of Lancashire, although the heraldic evidence is against such an identification.5 Our MP’s family bore the arms argent a chevron between three chaplets gules in contrast to the Ashton branches’ argent a pierced mullet sable: VCH Lancs. iv. 341; vi. 93. Whatever his more distant antecedents, it was the marriage of his father, Thomas, to the heiress of a compact estate largely confined to the hundred of Leyland (with its principal holding at Croston) in central Lancashire, that gave our MP his place in local affairs.6 VCH Lancs. vi. 93. This marriage took place in or shortly before the spring of 1392 when the bride’s mother and her husband, Sir Robert Standish, granted her life interest in a fourth part of the manor of Down Litherland (near Liverpool) to Master William Assheton and John Assheton, who were no doubt near-kinsmen of Thomas.7 Lancs. Final Concords (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. l), 40. On 1 Feb. 1390 the heiress was still the wife of Fulk Standish when, with Sir Thomas Fleming, who held the other moiety of the manor of Croston, she sued out a confirmation of royal letters patent of 1283 granting her ancestor, William de la Mare, a weekly market, annual fair and free warren in Croston, Mawdesley and Longton: CPR, 1388-92, p. 184. Like Master William, Thomas was a servant of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, fighting under him in Spain in 1386, and it is likely that the duke’s patronage had a part to play in the making of the marriage.8 S.K. Walker, Lancastrian Affinity, 110; C76/70, m. 28. Thomas continued in Lancastrian service after Gaunt’s death. He fought in the Scottish campaign of 1400 and his lost tomb, formerly in Lincoln cathedral, described him as an esquire of Henry IV.9 E101/42/16, m. 19; Desiderata Curiosa ed. Peck, 313.

At the time of his father’s death William must have been a minor. Since the manor of Croston was held of the wealthy Lancastrian knight, Sir Robert Neville† of Hornby (Lancashire), he may have come into that knight’s wardship, yet the survival of his mother, the heiress to these lands, probably meant either that he did not or else did not do so immediately. She was alive in 1409 but, if she did die soon afterwards, it is possible that Sir Robert was responsible for his first marriage to an unknown bride. However this may be, our MP seems to have been of age by 8 May 1412 when he made a lease of property at Mawdesley to a wheelwright named Thomas Rotour.10 Lancs. Inqs. i (Chetham Soc. xcv), 100-1; Chetham’s Lib., Manchester, Raines mss, 25, pp. 264-5; Lancs. RO, Finch, Johnson and Lynn mss, DDL 441. Sir Robert’s own death a year later gave the young William a new tenurial lord in one of the great men of the realm, namely Thomas Beaufort, earl of Dorset and (from 1416) duke of Exeter, the husband of Sir Robert’s grand-daughter and heiress. In the Agincourt campaign of 1415, however, he took service not under Beaufort but under a wealthy Lancashire knight, Sir William Boteler† of Warrington. Boteler died at the siege of Harfleur in late September but there is no reason to suppose that our MP did not go on to fight at the great battle.11 Annals of Warrington, ii (Chetham Soc. lxxxvii), 233.

No record survives of Assheton’s service on the 1417 campaign, but in February 1420 he enlisted again for war service.12 C76/102, m. 1. The anticipated dangers of campaigning prompted him into contracting an early marriage for his young son and heir, Thomas, who cannot have been born much before 1412. On 29 Mar. 1420 he entered into an indenture with Thomas Urswyk I*, a prominent figure in the north of the county, for his heir’s marriage to Urwsyk’s daughter Ellen.13 Brynmor Jones Lib. Hull Univ., Palmes mss, DD PA/14/1. The contract poses a problem of dating. It is dated ‘Friday in the 5th week of Lent 7 Henry V’, that is, at first sight, 7 Apr. 1419. Yet the bond Assheton entered into for the performance of the contract is dated on ‘Friday in the 5th week of Lent 8 Henry V’, which could be either 29 Mar. 1420 or 14 Mar. 1421: PL15/35, rot. 13. Since 29 Mar. 1420 was the first day of the 8th year of the reign of Hen. V, the most likely resolution is that the contract is misdated by a year. Its terms were reasonably favourable to our MP, probably because the bride’s father had yet to inherit his family lands (although he was very soon to do so). Assheton was to receive a portion of 160 marks in return for settling on the couple a modest jointure of ten marks p.a. and agreeing not to alienate his estates from his heir. A few days later, on 2 Apr., he conveyed his lands, in compliance with one of the terms of the contract, to feoffees headed by Thomas Langley, bishop of Durham, and Sir Richard Molyneux of Sefton, a leading member of the Lancashire gentry. These preparations made, he mustered at Southampton on the following 6 May with a retinue of nine men-at-arms and 33 archers, a large one for an esquire.14 E101/49/36, m. 8. Just six months earlier, in Nov. 1419, he had been described as a mere ‘gentleman’ when required to find surety of the peace to his neighbour, Alice, wid. of Sir William Houghton: DKR, xxxiii. 17. Fittingly, he was knighted during the course of the campaign.

Assheton returned with Henry V to England in February 1421 and, in the first evidence of his involvement in domestic affairs, he then took a prominent part in the Lancashire election of 2 Apr. to the Parliament summoned to meet on 2 May. Not only did he head the attestors but the election was convened, not, as was generally the case, at Lancaster, but at Croston. The return of his son’s father-in-law Urswyk additionally implies that he had a particular interest in the identity of the elected, with the election’s other dynamic involving the sheriff Sir Richard Radcliffe, whose son, Sir Thomas*, was the other man elected.15 C219/12/5; Lancs. Knights of the Shire (Chetham Soc. xcvi), 212. The election of 23 Oct. 1423 was also held at Croston, but there is nothing to suggest that Assheton had a particular interest on that occasion. Soon thereafter our MP returned to France. In May 1423 he had letters of general attorney as departing in the retinue of John Mowbray, earl (and, from 1425, duke) of Norfolk (d.1432). He already numbered among the earl’s annuitants: at an unknown date before 1422 Norfolk had granted him a generous fee of £20 p.a. There can be little doubt that he was retained for his military prowess and that the relationship between the two men had been forged in mutual service in Henry V’s campaigns. His service to the Mowbays was to outlast the French war and have a major significance for his career in the early 1450s.16 C76/106, m. 16; L.E. Moye, ‘Estates and Finances of the Mowbray Fam.’ (Duke Univ. Ph. D. thesis, 1985), 444.

There is no further record of Assheton’s service in France for the remainder of the 1420s, but his lack of much recorded activity in Lancashire implies that he remained intermittently involved in the French war throughout that decade as he was certainly to be in the 1430s. He did, however, find time in about 1425 to contract in the Yorkshire church of Giggleswick what proved to be an ill-advised second marriage.17 Raines mss, 24, p. 404. His new wife, of the West Riding family of Gateforth, was the widow of Sir Robert Tempest, a younger son of the famous soldier, Sir Richard Tempest† (d.1428) of Bracewell; and it is probable that the match came about through a friendship made during the 1420 campaign in France, in the course of which both our MP and Robert Tempest were knighted. The marriage was later to end in divorce but it may have been contentious even when it was made. Assheton was certainly on bad terms with some of his new wife’s extended family. On 4 June 1428, before the justices of the palatinate at Lancaster, he and Richard Shirburne† of Aighton were obliged to find mutual bonds in as much as £1,000 each to appear before the royal council. The cause of their quarrel is unknown, but it may be relevant that Shirburne’s daughter was the wife of Sir John Tempest, the nephew of Alice Lacy’s first husband. Whatever its cause, the dispute’s importance is evidenced not only by the involvement of the royal council but also by the high standing of the sureties who each endangered £500 that the disputants would comply with their bonds. Shirburne called upon four of the county’s principal gentry, namely Sir John Stanley†, Sir William Haryngton, Sir John Pilkington and Richard Haryngton*; and our MP upon a slightly lesser group headed by his feoffee, Sir Richard Molyneux, and Henry Halsall*. As it transpired, however, the dispute ended tamely. Assheton and Shirburne duly appeared before the council at Westminster a year to the day after they posted their bonds and were dismissed on their promise to keep the peace towards one another. On the same day they entered into new bonds, in minor sums, each binding himself for the other’s good behaviour.18 PL15/2, rot. 26d; PPC, iii. 327; CCR, 1422-9, pp. 456-7.

In the early 1430s Assheton’s career briefly prospered. On 7 Apr. 1432 he was elected to Parliament by a high-ranking group of attestors, headed by five of the county’s knights (including, in Sir William Haryngton and Pilkington, two of those who had earlier offered surety for Shirburne). He made good use of his time at Westminster. On 5 June, in the midst of the parliamentary session, he secured a grant from the duchy of Lancaster feoffees of the stewardship and master-forestership of Bowland in north-east Lancashire.19 Lancs. Knights of the Shire, 217; DL42/18, f. 20v; Somerville, i. 507. On 1 and 9 June 1432, during the parliamentary session, he is recorded as witnessing deeds at Orell (Lancs.), but this is probably mere form and not indicative of his presence there rather than at Westminster: Lancs. RO, Blundell mss, DDBl 22/11, 12. Suggestively, these deeds name precisely the same witnesses as that of another Orell deed dated on 29 July 1431: ibid. DD Bl 22/10. Yet this promising new beginning was not to be sustained. His grant of the Bowland offices was only during pleasure, and on 18 Feb. 1434 he was replaced by a much more important man, Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury. He had some compensation in the following year: on 21 May 1435 the Crown farmed to him the duchy of Lancaster manor of Littlewood (in Ulnes Walton near Croston) for a term of 20 years at £20 p.a.20 Somerville, i. 507; DL42/18, rot. 33. Yet he was entitled to view this as only a modest substitute for a stewardship that, for a man of his rank, was prestigious.

Domestic difficulties provided Assheton with another cause for discontent. On 6 Sept. 1434 his second wife secured an ecclesiastical commission, seeking a divorce on the grounds that her husband had been pre-contracted to one Joan Brackley. Their divorce was eventually proclaimed in the church of Warrington on 16 July 1438.21 Raines mss, 25, pp. 274-5. Alice’s survival placed a charge on the Assheton lands, although it was probably restricted to her jointure settlement. She was alive as late as May 1465 when she surrendered her interest in lands in Longton to our MP’s heir, Thomas: ibid. 276.

The story of the pre-contract provides further evidence of Assheton’s connexion with the Mowbrays. He is said to have contracted the promise of marriage with Joan in the summer of 1422 at a hospitium called ‘le Brokyn Wharff’, a Mowbray property in London.22 Raines mss, 24, p. 404. Why this commonplace indiscretion should have led his second wife to repudiate him is not apparent, and it may have been the pretext rather than the cause. The divorce did not deter him from a third marriage, probably contracted soon after. His new bride was from a Cheshire family resident at Millington, more than 30 miles from Croston.23 Ibid. 25, pp. 272-3.

While his divorce proceedings were pending, Assheton embarked on another military adventure. Early in 1436 he was one of six knights who undertook to serve in an army of 2,000 to be led by Edmund Beaufort, count of Mortain, on a campaign in Anjou and Maine. The Burgundian threat to Calais, however, led to the expedition’s diversion to the defence of that town, where it arrived soon after Easter. According to a celebratory contemporary account of the siege’s failure, the expedition’s leaders, of whom our MP was named as one, distinguished themselves in a series of raids into Burgundian territory that impeded the laying of the siege. A contemporary poem, ‘On the Siege of Calais’, praises Assheton and another of Mortain’s captains, Sir Geoffrey Warburton, as responsible for guarding the Milkgate and setting the watch during the siege itself.24 M.K. Jones, ‘The Beaufort Fam. and the War in France, 1421-50’ (Bristol Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1982), 89-94; D. Grummit, The Calais Garrison, 25, 34, 36-37; The Brut (EETS, cxxxvi), 574-6; Political Poems and Songs ed. Wright, 153 (where he is mistakenly called ‘John’). Clearly by this date Assheton was a soldier of repute and there can be no doubt that his military experience was far greater than revealed in the surviving sources. The next reference to his service in France is more routine, but it is significant in showing that his link to the Mowbrays extended beyond the death of the duke who had retained him. On 3 June 1439 he sued out letters of protection as in the retinue of the new duke, another John Mowbray, about to depart to Calais as part of a high-ranking embassy in search of a truce with France.25 C76/121, m. 10. This, as far as the surviving records go, was our MP’s last period in France.

In the 1440s Assheton, now apparently permanently returned to England, became involved in two disputes. The one involved the sort of contradictory grant that was not uncommon under the majority government of Henry VI. On 13 July 1444 the Crown, disregarding the earlier grant to our MP, farmed the manor of Littlewood to another soldier, Sir Bertrand Entwhistle, from the following Michaelmas on the same terms as it was held by Assheton. Understandably he resisted his removal. His farm of Littlewood, even leaving aside any financial advantage it may have had, was an important one for him as he had established a residence there.26 He is frequently styled, in the palatinate records and elsewhere, as ‘of Ulnes Walton’: e.g. C76/121, m. 10; PL15/6, rot. 5d; 11, rots. 1, 2d. He thus kept Entwhistle out. The new grantee responded by petitioning the chancellor, claiming the invalidity of the 1435 grant on the grounds that it had been made by the King when the manor was among the duchy lands in the hands of Henry V’s feoffees.27 C1/14/10. Unfortunately it is not known whether this petition made Entwhistle’s grant effective, but it is possible that it did. The petition was presented in the late 1440s (before Archbishop Kemp became chancellor on 31 Jan. 1450), and no reference to our MP as resident at Ulnes Walton has been traced after the spring of 1448.28 PL15/11, rots. 1d, 2. If he was ousted it would help to explain his later hostility to the Lancastrian government.

The legal difficulties occasioned for Assheton by another dispute – a violent clash with his neighbour Sir Richard Radcliffe of Smithills – provide another reason for the view that he was deprived of his farm of Littlewood in the late 1440s. On 5 Nov. 1446 his eldest son, Thomas, and a group of Assheton servants, including our MP’s old tenant, Thomas Rotour, besieged Radcliffe’s mansum at Eccleston and assaulted him; on the following day, presumably in connexion with the same dispute, Sir William himself allegedly collected 100 malefactors at his house at Ulnes Walton; and a day later he and his men assaulted one of Radcliffe’s servants, John Draper, at Eccleston.29 PL15/10, rots. 15, 17d, 43. The cause of the quarrel does not appear but, given that Eccleston was one of Croston’s neighbouring parishes and that Radcliffe also owned property in Croston, it may have been a simple boundary dispute. Our MP appears to have been the aggressor, and this was certainly the view taken by the palatinate authorities. The sheriff was ordered to arrest him for 24 Apr. 1447 and produce him before the duchy chancellor at Wigan to reply to the King for raising men at Ulnes Walton, an offence that may have been viewed with particular seriousness because it occurred on duchy property. When the sheriff failed to make the arrest more extreme measures were taken. That official was ordered to make proclamation for Sir William’s appearance, on pain of summary conviction, before the justices at Lancaster on 16 Aug.30 PL15/10, rots. 34, 43. He duly appeared and, six days later, found four sureties, each in 40 marks, for his good behaviour and endangered a further 80 marks on his own account. Further measures followed. On 12 Feb. 1448 he, his son, Thomas, and kinsman, Hugh Assheton, were summoned, on pain of £1,000 each, to appear before the council of the duchy of Lancaster at Westminster at the following quindene of Easter. Radcliffe was also summoned on the same penalty, and no doubt these summonses represented an attempt by the council to bring a serious dispute to an end. Since no more is heard of the quarrel that attempt was probably successful.31 DL37/16/74. Further summonses were issued against Radcliffe and Hugh Assheton: DL37/16/77, 79.

Yet for Assheton this was not the end of his troubles. At the Lent assizes of 1448, that is, about a month before his appearance before the duchy council, he pleaded not guilty and was committed for a trial.32 The Lent sessions of 1448 were notable for the number of sureties of the peace entered on the plea roll with our MP himself offering surety for Sir Edmund Trafford and other lesser men: PL15/10, rots. 32, 32d, 33d, 34. At the next sessions, held in August, the King’s attorney, Christopher Hilton, challenged the array of the jury panel returned by the sheriff, Nicholas Byron, and thereafter the palatinate justices postponed the trial from session to session. Not until 4 Apr. 1457 was our MP finally tried and acquitted.33 PL15/10, rot. 43. The Crown also sought execution against him and his sureties on the grounds that Hugh Assheton had, with his aid, committed an assault at Ulnes Walton. Just as in respect of his trial, process continued on this matter for many years.34 PL15/11, rot. 36d. The probability is that there was a deliberate tactic on the part of the palatinate authorities to hang suspended penalties against him as a restraint on his lawless behaviour. If he also lost his farm of Littlewood in a more tangible punishment, it would not have been surprising.

The next significant reference to Assheton is a striking and unexpected one. According to indictments laid before royal justices at Ipswich on 17 Feb. 1453, he and Hugh Assheton were among those, including the duke of York’s chamberlain, Sir William Oldhall*, guilty of various acts of treason in the spring and early summer of 1450. Our MP was said to have conspired with other traitors at Bury St. Edmunds on 6 Mar. 1450 to depose the King in favour of the duke of York and to have disseminated treasonable ballads to foment rebellion in Sussex and Surrey; on 12 Apr. he was one of those who had proclaimed the rebel Jack Cade their leader and then gone to Blackheath with other rebels; on 26 May he and others sent letters from Bury urging the men of Kent to rebel; and, finally, on 10 June he was among those who made insurrection at East Bergholt and other places in Suffolk. These charges were, very probably, fabrications, but Assheton’s inclusion among the indicted throws an interesting light upon his career. In the indictments he is described as resident at Earl Soham, a Suffolk manor of the duke of Norfolk, and Hugh Assheton as living at the Mowbray castle of Framlingham. Clearly they were indicted, just like others of those charged, as Mowbray servants. The indicting jury, headed by (Sir) Miles Stapleton*, Gilbert Debenham I*, Edward Grimston and John Ulveston*, was hostile to duke and anxious to discredit him and his followers. Little value can thus be placed on the detail of the indictments.35 KB27/776, rex rots. 2, 27: I.M.W. Harvey, Jack Cade, 116-17; R.L. Storey, End of House of Lancaster, 79. None the less, even if they are entirely untrue, they suggest that Assheton, despite the geographical divide between their main landed interests, had maintained a close connexion with the Mowbrays even after the end of his military career. Further, even though it is difficult to believe that our MP was active in rebellion in 1450, he may have shared the Mowbray duke’s sympathy with the cause of the duke of York in 1450. His probable loss of the manor of Littlewood and a feeling that he had not been treated fairly over his dispute with Radcliffe may have provided particular personal reasons for opposing the Lancastrian court.

Assheton’s service to Mowbray was to have another manifestation at the Suffolk election of 1453. According to the complaint of the sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, Thomas Sharneburne*, our MP and other of the duke’s leading men had violently subverted the election, intimidating his under sheriff and his clerk, bringing 600 men (among whom were at least three of Assheton’s own intimates, that is, Nicholas and Laurence Millington, kinsmen of his third wife, and Hugh Assheton) to the county court on election day (12 Feb.) and forcing the unlawful election of Thomas Daniell* and John Wingfield†. Since this election was held only five days before the more serious charges were laid against our MP by a jury that Sharneburne himself had empanelled, it is not improbable that the two events were linked, with the treason indictments intended to deter the violence of Assheton and other of the duke’s men. However this may be, neither the indictments nor Sharneburne’s accusations about the election occasioned Assheton any long-term difficulty. In Hilary term 1455 he personally appeared in King’s bench to have the latter dismissed on a technicality.36 R. Virgoe, E. Anglian Soc. ed. Barron, Rawcliffe and Rosenthal, 55-57, 59-62. More significantly, on 6 Apr. 1453 he had been able to sue out a general pardon, and on the quindene of Easter 1455 he appeared in person in the court of King’s bench and successfully pleaded the pardon against the indictments.37 CPR, 1452-61, p. 70; KB27/776, rex rot. 2. Two weeks later Hugh Assheton successfully pleaded a pardon of the same date: KB27/776, rex rot. 27.

Whether Assheton then went on to fight a month later at the first battle of St. Albans (where Entwhistle met his death ex parte Regis) must be doubtful. His place in Norfolk’s retinue was the only reason for his presence, and the duke, according to the best source, did not arrive at the site of the battle until the day after it was fought.38 Paston Letters ed. Davis, Beadle and Richmond, iii. 155. It is very likely, however, that our MP was among the 6,000 men that the duke is said to have had with him. If he was, a conveyance made by his feoffees and dated at Croston on 20 May was probably part of the arrangements he made prior to departure to join his lord. His three feoffees, headed by Sir John Boteler* (a Household servant and grandson of the Boteler under whom Assheton had begun his military career 40 years before), settled either all or the bulk of the lands they had of his feoffment on him for life with remainder of specified lands in Croston and Mawdesley to his third wife Anne for life. On Anne’s death all the settled lands were to come to our MP’s eldest son to hold in tail-male with remainders over in tail-male to his other sons and daughters.39 Raines mss, 25, pp. 272-3. This settlement names four sons and five daughters. Two of these sons, Ralph and William, were the issue of his third marriage and they were given preference over their elder half-brother, John, who was the issue of either his first or second marriage. The maternity of his daughters is unknown.

Little is known of the last years of Assheton’s long career. His support for the Yorkist cause appears to have continued through the agency of his eldest son. On 20 Dec. 1459 Thomas had a pardon for treasons enrolled on the patent roll, and it is a fair inference that he had been in the Yorkist ranks at the battle of Blore Heath and perhaps also at the rout at Ludford Bridge. Sir William’s own requirement for a pardon was much less pressing. On 12 Oct. 1460, when the Yorkists were in control of government, he sued out a routine one for a minor outlawry for debt.40 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 537, 620. Given the apparent support both Sir William and his son Thomas gave to the Yorkist cause, it is a little surprising that they did not enjoy greater prominence in the early years of Edward IV’s reign. The reason, in our MP’s case, was probably his advanced age for he must have been nearly 70 years old in 1461. Nothing is known of his last years beyond the occasional appearance as a witness to local deeds.41 In Apr. 1464 and July 1466 he witnessed deeds for William Fleming, lord of the other moiety of the manor of Croston: Lancs. RO, Hesketh deeds, DDHe 26/18; PL15/30, rot. 9. He was alive as late as 25 Oct. 1466, when Nicholas Millington demised lands in Longton to him, but he was dead by the following 28 June, when his heir secured confirmation of the charter of 1283 on which the weekly market and annual fair at Croston depended.42 Raines mss, 25, no. 277; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 16-17. His family survived there in the male line until the late seventeenth century. None of his male descendants are recorded as representing their native county in Parliament, although two, neither of whom was the head of the family, sat for the borough of Newton-in-Makerfeld, between 1601 and 1614.43 VCH Lancs. vi 94; The Commons 1604-29, iii. 62-63.