BABINGTON, Thomas I

A family tradition, preserved in a sixteenth-century visitation of Oxfordshire, maintains that Thomas, as a prelude to service at the battle of Agincourt, sold his inheritance to his younger brother, William, a distinguished lawyer who later rose to be chief justice of the common pleas.1 Collectanea Topographia et Geneaologica ed. Nichols, viii. 322. There are grounds, beyond its intrinsic unlikelihood, for questioning this tradition. The surviving evidence implies that our MP was William’s junior by several years: while William began his legal career as early as 1395, nothing is known of Thomas until 1420. Nevertheless, other traditions preserved in the visitation can be substantiated, in part at least, from contemporary sources, and it would thus be unwise to dismiss this one out of hand. For example, the visitation also claims that Thomas did not marry the Dethick heiress until he was 61 years of age, and, while he may not have been quite as old as that, it is clear that he was well advanced in years when this marriage took place.

Babington first appears in the records in a fine levied in 1420, through which he and his brother William’s servant, John Walker, parson of East Bridgford, acquired a small estate at Calow near Chesterfield. Since his brother, who had recently been promoted to the judicial bench, was then actively acquiring property in that vicinity, he was probably acting in his interest. Soon after, his brother rewarded him with a small grant. On 24 Mar. 1421 Justice Babington conveyed to him in tail-male two messuages and six bovates in Kneeton near East Bridgford, where the family had one of its principal estates.2 Derbys. Feet of Fines (Derbys. Rec. Soc. xi), 1054; C140/21/39. This very modest settlement may have been supplemented by an interest in that part of the manor of Oxton (Nottinghamshire) which his brother had purchased in 1417, for, in 1431, he is described as ‘of Oxton’.3 CP25(1)/186/38/4; Feudal Aids, i. 294.

None the less, even with Oxton, Thomas would not have possessed lands sufficient to support an independent place in local affairs. That, relatively late in life, he embarked on a public career was entirely the result of his marriage to a coheiress of the Dethick family. This unlikely union may have been brought about through the influence his brother enjoyed as c.j.c.p., but the tenure of the manor of Dethick suggests an additional explanation. It was held of the lordship of Crich, which, although its ownership was subject to dispute, had come into the hands of Ralph, Lord Cromwell, on the death of Margaret, wife of Sir John Gra*, in October 1429. Cromwell had close links with the Babingtons, and, on the assumption that the marriage is to be dated to as late as 1430, his patronage is likely to have played a part in bringing it about. It had certainly taken place by January 1431, when our MP was already seised of the manors of Dethick near Matlock and Litchurch near Derby. By a fine levied later in the same year, to which his brother was a party, these two manors were settled in joint tail-general on Thomas and his wife with remainder over to his wife’s right heirs. The purpose of this conveyance was to ensure that he would have a life interest in his wife’s estates even if she should predecease him without issue.4 Feudal Aids, i. 294, 300, 303; Derbys. Feet of Fines, 1079. The wardship of the Dethick coheiresses was the subject of litigation in 1416, and it is curious that Isabel should have remained unmarried as late as 1430: CP40/621, rot. 136. It may be that she had a first husband who has escaped record. These two manors, together with over 100 acres in Mattersey in north Nottinghamshire, which were also part of her inheritance, were valuable enough to support a place among the second rank of county society: in the Derbyshire subsidy returns of both 1435-6 and 1450-1 Babington was assessed on a respectable annual income of £20.5 E179/91/73; 240/266.

Babington’s first office was that of escheator. While in office he attested the Derbyshire parliamentary election held on 25 June 1433, at which there appears to have been a confrontation between the supporters of Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor, and Sir Richard Vernon*, who was returned.6 C219/14/4: S.M. Wright, Derbys. Gentry (Derbys. Rec. Soc. viii), 114. There is some slight evidence that Thomas was a supporter of Vernon. On the following 1 Apr., when the county was visited by commissioners of oyer and terminer, he sat on the grand jury headed by Vernon, while the other grand jury contained several men connected with Grey. Further, in Hilary term 1435 Vernon was his joint plaintiff in an action sued for close-breaking at Matlock.7 KB9/11/11; Wright, 129-30; CP40/696, rot. 259. Nor was Vernon his only influential friend. Even if Cromwell was not the sponsor of his marriage, a connexion between the two men was established by the late 1430s. This is implied by his reappointment as escheator in December 1437, when Cromwell was in office as treasurer of England. The original appointee, John Statham of Morley, was a servant of the treasurer, and, on his failure to act, Cromwell appears simply to have employed another of his followers to fill the vacancy. Further evidence of an association between our MP and the treasurer is provided by the former’s presence in February 1441 on a grand jury to determine a writ of attaint sued by Sir Henry Pierrepont* in his dispute with Cromwell over the Heriz inheritance.8 CFR, xvii. 10, 33; C260/144/18/14. Also consistent with his service to this lord is his election to the Parliament which met in February 1445, during the third session of which he was appointed to his third term as escheator. His fellow Derbyshire MP, John Curson*, was one of the most important of Cromwell’s Derbyshire adherents, and several other Members also had connexions with Cromwell, including Babington’s nephew, William. Moreover, on 23 Mar. 1446, during the last session of this long assembly, Babington and another MP, Thomas Flore*, acted as mainpernors when Lord Ralph was granted the keeping of valuable lands in Norfolk.9 CFR, xviii. 25. Later our MP attested both the Derbyshire parliamentary elections of 1449, when John Sacheverell*, formerly Cromwell’s receiver in the county and later one of his executors, was successively returned. Judging from the irregular nature of the return, the first of these elections was contested, and thus Babington’s attendance with other associates of Cromwell takes on added significance.10 C219/15/6, 7. Later our MP is again found acting in Sacheverell’s interest, witnessing a quitclaim in July 1453 which marked the latter’s victory in a land dispute: CCR, 1447-54, p. 481.

In the late 1450s Babington was troubled by a claim to his wife’s estates by the heir-male of the Dethicks. The timing of this claim suggests that he had earlier been protected against it by Cromwell’s lordship. Once this protection was removed by the lord’s death in January 1456, Isabel’s cousin, Thomas Dethick of Uttoxeter in Staffordshire, lost little time in attempting to unite his family’s inheritance. If an action sued by Babington is to be taken literally, on 13 Oct. 1456 Dethick and others forcibly entered his close at Dethick. At the Derbyshire assize session of February 1458 he won damages of 40s. with costs of 26s. 8d., but this did not conclude the matter. The defendant replied by suing a writ of formedon against him, claiming that the manor of Dethick was bound by an ancient settlement in tail-male. No verdict is recorded, but it is clear that the lands remained in our MP’s hands. Indeed, Dethick’s death a few years later without male issue brought property at Radbourne, Derbyshire, to Babington’s son as one of the heirs-general of the Dethicks.11 CP40/783, rots. 356, 472; 784, rot. 338d; 787, rot. 531; 789, rot. 121; Peds. Plea Rolls ed. Wrottesley, 419.

Babington died on 4 Jan. 1466. The findings of his inquisition post mortem imply that he had made a series of small purchases during the course of his long career. In addition to his late wife’s estates, which he was returned as holding by the courtesy, and the small estate in Kneeton granted to him by his late brother, he also died seised of a messuage and ten acres in Stanley in Teversal, Nottinghamshire, two fulling mills in Wirksworth, and messuages in Hollington, Tansley and Etwall. Moreover, the will of Sir Thomas Chaworth*, drawn up on 16 Jan. 1459, indicates that he also had a life interest in that wealthy knight’s lands at Easenhall in Warwickshire.12 C140/21/39; Derbys. Feet of Fines, 1107; Test. Ebor. ii (Surtees Soc. xxx), 223. On the other hand, a suit presented in Chancery in the late 1480s and early 1490s claims that Babington sold land in Chesterfield to Thomas Foljambe (d.1467) for 40 marks. In payment the purchaser is said to have granted him an annual rent of 20s., which he in turn willed to the maintenance of his grandson, Arnold Babington. Arnold complained of fraud on the grounds that the rent had been assigned on entailed land and was thus determined by Foljambe’s death.13 C1/115/65.

Babington was buried in the church of Ashover near Dethick. His son, John, died fighting for Richard III at the battle of Bosworth. A curious family tradition has it that he was killed by Sir James Blount, youngest son of Walter Blount*, Lord Mountjoy, who ‘putabat se occidisse Johannem Babington militem uxoris suae avunculum ut ita esset haeres ejus Avunculi’. Blount was married to the niece and coheiress-presumptive of John’s cousin and namesake, head of the main branch of the Babington family.14 Vis. Oxon. (Harl. Soc. v), 146; Coronation of Ric. III ed. Sutton and Hammond, 306. The family was significantly advanced in 1498 when our MP’s great-grandson, Anthony† (d.1536), was contracted in marriage to Elizabeth, one of the coheiresses of the Chaworth family. The contract reveals how wealthy the family had become by the end of the century: its estates, which by then included the manor of Kingston-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire, were valued at over £100 p.a. and Anthony’s father, another Thomas, was able to raise 400 marks to purchase Elizabeth’s hand.15 C146/6405.