ASTLEY, Ralph

Ralph’s place in the pedigree of the Astleys, an old Warwickshire family, is uncertain. His will shows that he was a lawyer with roots at Hillmorton, but he did not hold any manorial property there and most of his estate was situated in south-east England.2 VCH Warws. vi. 109-10; R.M. Jeffs, ‘The Later Med. Sheriff’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1960), 274b; Reg. Stafford, ff. 135-6. Given that he purchased all or almost all of his lands and pursued a career away from Warwickshire, it is likely that he was a younger son. Possibly the Ralph Astley of that county who stood surety for Walter Clerke of Coventry in 1407,3 CCR, 1405-9, pp. 290-1. he had formed links with London by 1413,4 Corp. London RO, hr 141/55. and Hertfordshire by the early 1420s.5 CP40/647, rot. 38. Near the city of London, he acquired a house in Aldersgate Street as well as holdings at Clerkenwell and near West Smithfield.6 Reg. Stafford, ff. 135-6; CCR, 1435-41, p. 163; CPR, 1441-6, p. 276. The chief English preceptory of the Knights Hospitallers was at Clerkenwell and it is possible that he served the order as a legal adviser. Standon became his main residence outside London. At Standon he bought the manors of Chyldes and Bartrams (the latter from Thomas Torell* in 1436), and obtained a long term lease of the rectory manor, a property which belonged to the Hospitallers.7 VCH Herts. iii. 361, 362; iv. 444; Trans. E. Herts. Arch. Soc. ix. 159; CP25(1)/91/113/81. By the mid 1430s, he owned real property worth at least £20 p.a., the value given to his holdings in Hertfordshire and Middlesex for the purposes of taxation in 1436.8 E179/238/90. He added to his estates in the following decade, by buying lands in and around Knightcote in Warwickshire from Sir William Peyto‡. A soldier captured by the French outside Dieppe in 1443, Peyto borrowed large sums to pay off a ransom of some £500 and he ended up mortgaging his estates. Astley, an attorney for the knight while he was in France, helped to raise the ransom, while at the same time (as his purchase shows) taking advantage of his predicament.9 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 68; C1/11/232; C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 121, 127; CPR, 1446-52, p. 257. It was possibly in connexion with a mortgage that several sureties for Peyto entered a bond in June 1445, to guarantee that he would release his manor at Wolfhampcote, Warws. to a group of men including Astley and his fellow lawyer, Drew Barantyn: Warws. RO, Peyto of Wolfhampcote mss, L 4/36.

In spite of his purchase of lands from Peyto and family links with Warwickshire, Astley did not serve the Crown as an office-holder in that county. It was for Hertfordshire that he was appointed an ad hoc commissioner, j.p. and sheriff, and by the later 1430s he was sufficiently established there to gain election to the Commons as one of its knights of the shire. He was made a j.p. for his adopted county a day after the dissolution of the Parliament of 1437, but was no longer on the bench when pricked as sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire in November 1441. During his term as sheriff several prisoners broke out of Hertford gaol, although the King afterwards pardoned him for these escapes,10 CPR, 1441-6, p. 250. and not long after relinquishing the shrievalty he was sued in the Exchequer by John Beche* of Colchester. In his bill, Beche alleged that he had won a suit for debt against a clerk from Tolleshunt, Essex, only for Astley to allow the man to go at liberty before he had repaid the money.11 E13/142, rot. 54. A Ralph Astley was an esquire of the King’s Household while the MP was sheriff, but it is likely that he was a namesake from a senior branch of the Astley family.12 E101/409/9.

Astley served his term as sheriff late in his career, for he died on 28 Feb. 1446.13 CIPM, xxvi. no. 471. His will, consisting of a will for his lands dated 20 Mar. 1444 and a testament of 20 Nov. 1445, suggests that he was living at Clerkenwell at the end of his life, for he requested burial in the nave of the Hospitallers’ church there. The testament shows that he owned an impressive collection of plate, some of which he divided between his wife, Agnes, who was also to have six silver chests of ‘Paris work’ (‘operis parisiensis’), children and John Ellingbridge*, one of his executors, and some of which he instructed his executors to sell. He also provided for each of his sons to have a sword and armour, and left money to the Charterhouse in London and the master and society of the ‘Temple’, almost certainly his inn of court. As for his lands, Astley awarded Agnes a life interest in most of his properties in London and Middlesex. These consisted of his residence in Aldersgate Street (which he had bought from the executors of the recorder of London, Thomas Cokayn*), an inn called the Jorge of the Hope and various other tenements, shops and properties situated in Clerkenwell and outside the bar of West Smithfield. He also gave her a like interest – for as long as she did not remarry – in much of his holdings in Hertfordshire, namely his manor of Chyldes, the lands in Standon and the neighbouring parishes of Braughing and Munden which he had bought from Thomas Hakeborne and an inn in Puckeridge called the Fawcon Hope. Astley’s eldest son Philip, still a minor, was the heir to the bulk of his estates, but he also provided for his younger sons, William and Thomas, and their male heirs. Each was to have a moiety of the rectory manor farm at Standon when he reached his majority, although the executors were to use the issues of the manor to provide for their upkeep and schooling while they were still minors. In addition, he allotted both of them a share in his holdings in Clerkenwell, ordering that Thomas was to have the Jorge of the Hope and neighbouring tenements and shops after Agnes’s death and William several tenements and a pub, known as The Swan, in St. John’s Road. Astley also used his real property to safeguard his soul. First, he assigned the income from the properties in Clerkenwell that he had set aside for William for the support of a chaplain in the church at the Hospitallers’ chief preceptory. Secondly, he ordered his executors to sell the lands that he had bought from Sir William Peyto and to use the money raised from the sale to assist the poor of Hillmorton and to maintain another chaplain in the parish church there for three years. Finally, he assigned a croft and land at Hillmorton towards the upkeep of a perpetual obit for himself, his ancestors and benefactors in the church there, asked its vicar to remember him in his prayers every Sunday and instructed his executors to buy a chalice for the parish. He appointed three other executors apart from Ellingbridge, his wife Agnes, William Freman and Drew Barantyn*.14 Reg. Stafford, ff. 135-6.

Astley was succeeded by his son Philip.15 In the MP’s damaged inquisition post mortem, the name of his heir is not properly visible. The calendar version of the inquisition suggests ‘John Astley’ (CIPM, xxvi. 471) but either this is a misreading or the jury was wrong. Philip came of age in the late 1450s and became a servant of Richard, duke of York,16 H. Chauncy, Herts. i. 436. who had inherited the chief lordship at Standon from his uncle, Edmund, earl of March.17 VCH Herts. iii. 352-3. In the late 1460s and early 1470s Philip’s possession of certain properties in Standon and neighbouring parishes was challenged in the Chancery, first by William Curson and Elizabeth his wife and then by Harry Snowe of London, Elizabeth’s son and heir by her previous marriage. The plaintiffs asserted that Elizabeth’s father, Thomas Caleys of Glemsford, Suffolk, had conveyed the properties to the MP and others to hold in trust, but that after Caleys’s death Ralph (acting out of ‘gret obstinace and untrought’) had retained them for himself. In due course, the Chancery found in their favour, but they had problems in trying to make Philip’s own feoffees comply with such an outcome, leading to further proceedings in the same court.18 C1/32/291, 38/216-20, 39/249. It is not clear when Philip died, although he outlived at least one of his younger brothers. William Astley died in December 1465 without any surviving sons, meaning that his properties in Middlesex passed to Philip after his death. Philip’s heir was his son Nicholas.19 CPR, 1476-85, p. 314; 1494-1509, p. 122; CAD, iii. A5507. According to Chauncy, i. 136, Philip’s brass in Standon church (now lost) recorded that he died on 22 July 1467. This cannot be correct, because the Chancery decree directing him to convey the disputed properties to Elizabeth bears the date 23 May 1470: C1/38/218.