ARDERNE, Robert

Robert was born into an ancient and wealthy gentry family with estates in Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Northamptonshire and Cheshire. These widespread holdings are reflected in the circumstances of his birth. Although Warwickshire was the principal focus of the family’s interests, his mother was confined at their manor house at Dorfold in the Cheshire parish of Acton, the inheritance of his paternal grandmother; and it was a gentleman of that county, Robert Needham (father of the future judge, John Needham*), who stood as his godfather on his baptism in Acton church.1 CHES3/37/1; G. Ormerod, Palatine and City of Chester ed. Helsby, iii (1), 344. His father, a servant of the Beauchamp earls of Warwick, as his own father had been, did not survive to his son’s majority, dying on 30 Aug. 1420 while serving Richard, earl of Warwick, in France. The young Robert spent a few months in the household of the countess of Warwick, but on 11 Nov. the King granted his wardship and marriage to Joan, Lady Beauchamp of Abergavenny, the widow of the earl’s uncle, for a modest £100.2 Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. lxx. 94; CPR, 1416-22, p. 306; CHES2/93, rot. 9d. It has been claimed that he was in the countess’s household after the grant to Lady Abergavenny: C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 101. The latter was, however, certainly his guardian on his coming of age: VCH Warws. v. 5; CHES2/105, m. 1d.

This relatively low valuation reflects the fact that Arderne’s wardship was then of greater potential than actual value. By settlements made in 1400, probably at the time of his parents’ marriage, and in 1414, nearly the whole of the Arderne inheritance had been settled in jointure, and his mother thus held the lands (or, at least, was entitled to do so) until her death early in 1435.3 C138/50/85; Warws. Feet of Fines (Dugdale Soc. xviii), 128; CIPM, xxiv. 315-17. Significantly, one of the few properties in which she did not have jointure, the manor of Little Inkberrow, was held of Lady Abergavenny. It was therefore fortunate from the point of view of the young Robert’s finances that her death closely coincided with his own coming of age. Conversely, this also meant that Lady Beauchamp can have profited little from the Arderne estate during his minority, and she seems also to have forgone the profitable sale of his marriage. The date of the marriage is unknown, but it is very likely that his wife Elizabeth was already an heiress and tenant of her patrimony when the marriage was contracted and hence that she brought no cash portion. Her father’s will, made on 7 May 1428, makes no mention of her or her husband, and it is probable that she, like her husband, fell into wardship. The only clues to the date of the marriage are provided by an inquisition taken in 1454, which claims that their son and heir, Walter, was born in 1431, and the subsidy return of the same year in which our MP is returned as holding land once of the Clodeshales in Stockton-on-Teme.4 PCC 10 Luffenham (PROB11/3, f. 75); C139/153/21, Feudal Aids, v. 329. Elizabeth’s inheritance was well worth having: it comprised the manors of Pedmore and Stockton-on-Teme in Worcestershire with those of Saltley, Oreton and Langley in Warwickshire, and, to judge from a lease of the 1450s, was worth about £35 p.a.5 C139/153/21; CFR, xix. 72-73.

With the family estate thus further augmented by marriage, all seemed set fair for the young Robert to enjoy a prosperous and successful career. On coming of age, he was able to obtain livery of his estates with extraordinary expedition. On 5 Nov. 1433 writs for his proof of age were issued to the escheator of the county of his birth; the relevant inquisition was held two days later; and on 9 Nov. the escheator was ordered to give him livery. On 26 May 1435 another writ gave him seisin of his mother’s dower in that county, and his patrimony was united in his hands.6 CHES2/105, mm. 1d, 2; 106, m. 7d. This, handsomely supplemented by his wife’s smaller estate, gave him a more than respectable income. In the Warwickshire subsidy returns of 1435-6 he was assessed at £113 p.a., putting him in a small elite of only seven landholders with over £100.7 E179/192/59. Such wealth and his family’s longstanding Beauchamp connexion should have assured him a prominent place in local affairs. For a short time, it appeared that he would assume such a place: on 7 Nov. 1437, despite his youth and inexperience, he was pricked as sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire. This, however, marked the high point of his career, and its subsequent course is difficult to reconcile with its early and seemingly assured promise.

Yet even during this early period of apparent promise there were signs that all was not quite as it should have been. Arderne seems to have run up debts before coming of age. As early as about 1433, a wealthy Northamptonshire knight, Sir Walter Lucy, advanced him ‘in his gret necessite’ the sum of 100 marks, on the security of his manor of Upper Wick in Worcestershire. This mortgage was never redeemed. Further, on 6 Sept. 1434 Arderne entered into a statute merchant with his mother’s stepson, (Sir) Thomas Erdington*, for the payment of over 114 marks to Richard Michell of Worcester, administrator of the goods of Thomas Lygon, no doubt another of his creditors. Later, in May 1435 he quitclaimed property at Fladbury in Worcestershire to the prominent lawyer, John Throckmorton I*, and this perhaps marks the first of the land sales that were to characterize his disastrous career.8 C1/26/139; CP40/710, rot. 250; 713, rot. 311d; 733, rot. 304; Warws. RO, Throckmorton mss, CR1998/KK3/5, 10.

A feoffment made in the following December may represent an attempt by the friends and connexions of an irresponsible young man to prevent him ruining the fortunes of an ancient family. Arderne conveyed his Warwickshire manors to a very powerful group of feoffees, headed by the earl of Warwick and James Tuchet, Lord Audley, and including not only leading members of the Midlands gentry, such as Sir Richard Vernon*, Sir William Mountfort*, (Sir) Humphrey Stafford I* of Grafton and John Curson*, but others from further afield, like Sir Maurice Berkeley I* and the Herefordshire knight, Sir John Baskerville, Lord Audley’s brother-in-law.9 C139/153/21. So grand a group of feoffees is unlikely to have been employed for some routine transaction, such as the settling of a jointure, and it is a reasonable speculation that the feoffees were intended to protect the feoffor’s principal estates against his creditors.

However this may be, the first unmistakable signs of trouble are to be dated to a few years later. On 7 Oct. 1438, while he was still in office as sheriff, Arderne was indicted before the Staffordshire j.p.s as an accessory to the murder of a gentleman, Thomas Etton, at Hints, a few miles to the north of Castle Bromwich, in the previous July. There is no evidence to give context to this allegation, but such indictments were rarely laid against men whose affairs were prospering.10 KB9/232/1/79-80. The indictment was called into King’s bench on 28 Jan. 1440. Our MP pleaded not guilty in 1443, and was dismissed to the mainprise of two prominent gentry, Sir William Trussell† and Nicholas Fitzherbert*. He was acquitted before the justices of assize at Tamworth on 3 Dec. 1444: KB27/729, rex rot. 20; 734, rex rot. 32d. More alarmingly, he was also obliged to divest himself of manorial property. In May 1439 he undertook to sell his Northamptonshire manor of Netherbury in Sulgrave (purchased by his grandfather Sir Henry Arderne†) to the rising lawyer, Robert Danvers*, for 140 marks; and by a final concord levied a year later he surrendered his nearby manor of Wappenham to his creditor Sir Walter Lucy and others in what was probably also a sale or, if not, a mortgage.11 J. Bridges, Northants. i. 128; CP40/715, cart. rot. 1d; CP25(1)/179/94/96; CPR, 1441-6, p. 66. He also seems to have been raising money in London: on 12 July 1440, before the mayor of the Westminster staple, he entered into a recognizance in £100 to Matthew Philip, a London goldsmith, and John Egremont.12 He defaulted on this bond: C131/66/1, 3, 5; C241/229/15; CP40/746, rot. 411d; 748, rot. 492d.

The acquisition of the Clodeshale lands had promised to raise the Ardernes to the front rank of Warwickshire society, but now the integrity of the expanded estate was seriously threatened. One factor in this reverse may have been Robert’s dispute with Erdington, which probably arose, at least in part, out of the marriage of Arderne’s mother, Sibyl, to Erdington’s father. Until her death in 1435 the two men seem to have been on cordial terms; thereafter, enmity was quick to develop. Judging from a later award, Sir Thomas retained some muniments relating to the Arderne property she had held in jointure and dower as surety for the performance of financial undertakings our MP had made to him. These undertakings probably arose from either money our MP had raised on his surety, such as the 114 marks paid to Lygon’s administrator, or else compensation due upon the apparent reduction of Sibyl’s entitlement. By 1440 the dispute was a serious one if an inference may be drawn from the standing of the arbiters named to conclude it: Sir Richard Vernon, Sir William Mountfort (two of the wealthiest gentry of the Midlands and both among our MP’s feoffees), and two senior lawyers, John Bowes* and John Harper*, were chosen by Erdington; and John Hampton II*, John Curson (another of his feoffees), and two other lawyers, John Vampage*, the King’s attorney-general, and William Cumberford*, were the equally important group nominated by Arderne. At Warwick on 25 May 1440 they awarded that Erdington should deliver all evidences concerning the manors to Arderne, who should in return surrender all relevant bonds and pay him 100 marks in four instalments of 25 marks spread over four years. This seemingly balanced settlement was later to falter on Arderne’s intransigence.13 CP40/742, rot. 314.

In the meantime, Arderne turned to royal letters of protection to stem the rising tide of litigation against him. On 7 May 1443 he obtained a protection for one year as staying in the Scottish marches in the company of Sir Henry Percy, captain of Berwick, but this served him only until 11 July when it was revoked on a certification that he tarried at Westminster. Undeterred, five days later he secured further letters as serving under Sir William Bonville*, seneschal of Aquitaine, but again this was revoked in the following November on the grounds that he remained at Castle Bromwich.14 C71/90, m. 6; CPR, 1441-6, pp. 181, 220; KB27/740, rot. 77d. No doubt he had never had any intention of performing the service he had undertaken and the government’s patience was exhausted with the revocation of the second letters. Thereafter he was quickly overtaken by the consequences of his earlier actions. On 9 Feb. 1444 a loveday was held at Westminster to resolve his dispute with one of his feoffees, Sir Maurice Berkeley, his feudal overlord in respect of unspecified property, over homage demanded of him. Five days later the sheriff of Warwickshire was ordered to arrest him and make execution on his goods and lands in discharge of the statute staple he had entered into with Philip and Egremont. Further, in the same month Erdington won a verdict against him before the Derbyshire justices of assize in their ongoing dispute.15 CP40/754, rot. 345; C131/66/1; KB27/740, rot. 77d.

As if such troubles were not enough, Arderne added to his problems by both a refusal to honour the property sales he had already made and by vain attempts to pursue the most dubious (or, at least, ill-judged) of property claims. In May 1445 he was obliged to appear before (Sir) John Fortescue* to acknowledge for enrolment the indenture he had made with Danvers over the sale of Netherbury. Apparently frustrated by Danvers’s failure to pay the last 100 marks due for the manor, he had had a ‘spekynge’ with one of his creditors, Sir Walter Lucy, who was also anxious to purchase the manor. Danvers was understandably anxious to lay to rest any potential rival claim.16 KB27/737, rot. 100. On 12 Feb. 1450, while an MP, Arderne made a formal declaration asserting the validity of Danvers’s title and explicitly repudiating Lucy’s: CP40/756, cart. rot. 1. At the same time Arderne was trying to win back the manor of Barcheston from Thomas Duraunt. This had been purchased by his grandfather Sir Henry Arderne in 1375, but then alienated by our MP’s father 20 years later. Our MP sought to undo this alienation on the grounds that it had been made when his father was under age. Early in 1445 he entered on Duraunt’s possession, and later in the same year he claimed damages of £200 against the county sheriff, Sir Robert Harcourt*, for maintaining his rival in an assize of novel disseisin, heard at Warwick in the summer, and for good measure added an action of embracery against the jurors. His efforts came to nothing: in 1450 a jury called into King’s bench to rule on the legality of his entry awarded Duraunt costs and damages of 14 marks.17 VCH Warws. v. 5; KB27/738, rots. 66d, 81d; 754, rot. 99.

More ambitious, but with even less hope of success, was Arderne’s attempt to win the very considerable patrimony of the Golafres. In 1442 he sued the feoffees of the recently-deceased John Golafre*, headed by Thomas Brown, bishop of Norwich, claiming that his wife was heiress to these estates as John’s distant cousin and that the feoffees were bound to convey to her under the terms of his will, namely that the lands should pass to his next heirs. The claim was dubious, if not entirely spurious, for his wife was only one among several claimants as next heir. The chancellor dismissed the case and remitted Arderne to the common law, where he could hope to make little progress. Later, he supported the efforts of his wife’s cousin Mary and her husband John Spechesley, to make good Mary’s claim as heir, one that was superior to that of his own wife. He stood surety for a petition sued in Chancery by the couple, but this too failed and the bulk of Golafre’s property was sold to William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, in 1448.18 C1/11/295; 13/36b; 16/713. Nonetheless, as a lone exception to a dismal trend, later conveyances show that Arderne and the Spechesleys did at least make good their claim to the Golafre manor of Nafford in Worcestershire.

Arderne’s last effort to secure what he imagined to be his wife’s inheritance had much more damaging consequences. On 12 Nov. 1445, on the basis of a final concord levied 100 years before, he claimed the manors of Lark Stoke in Admington (Gloucestershire) and Woodcote in Bromsgrove (Worcestershire) against the two daughters and coheiresses of the soldier Sir William Byshoppeston*, who had died in the previous year, and their husbands, Thomas Palmer* and William Catesby*. Such men were formidable rivals – Palmer was a well-connected lawyer and Catesby a wealthy esquire of the royal household – but even in the most favourable circumstances it is unlikely that Elizabeth Arderne’s claim could have been made good. She was a descendant of Alice, daughter of Sir William’s grandfather Roger Byshoppeston by his first wife, while the coheiresses were the descendants of his son by his second, and the onus thus lay on the Ardernes to prove that part of the Byshoppeston estate had been settled away from the male line. They alleged that the two manors had been settled on Alice on her marriage to Elizabeth’s grandfather, Walter Clodeshale, but repeated and predictable failure of successive sheriffs to return the writs summoning the defendants prevented the weighing of the claim before a jury. All Arderne acquired by his claim was two more undesirable enemies.19 CP40/739, rot. 526; CP25(1)/77/65/246; 260/21/31; Shakespeare Centre Archs., Archer mss, DR37/113/5; Warws. RO, Ettington and Bishopton mss, CR1911/17. Indeed, Palmer responded immediately: on 10 Jan. 1446 he presided over the j.p.s at Leicester who took an indictment against Arderne for feloniously stealing a horse worth ten marks from William Lowe, who, curiously, had been one of our MP’s sureties in his Chancery petition against the Golafre feoffees.20 KB27/741, rex rot. 8d; KB9/253/10-11. In 1446 our MP was also in dispute with Sir William Ferrers of Chartley, Staffs., against whom he sued a petition in Chancery. Unfortunately this petition is too badly damaged to be deciphered, but it seems to concern land at Castle Bromwich purchased by his paternal gdfa. from an ancestor of Ferrers: C1/114/48.

At this date Arderne still had influence enough to secure a general pardon as protection against such indictments, and duly appeared in King’s bench on 8 July 1446 to plead his pardon. More interestingly, his connexions with the Beauchamp retinue remained strong enough for his inclusion among the jurors for the Warwickshire inquisition post mortem of Henry Beauchamp, duke of Warwick, held at the county town on the following 23 Jan.21 C67/39, m. 42; CIPM, xxvi. 592. Yet the sense of crisis surrounding his affairs continued to mount. One reason for this may have been a dangerous instability of character, so clearly illustrated in his quarrel with Erdington. As his rival continued his efforts to force him to abide by the award of 1440 and the verdict of 1444, Arderne resorted first to some ingenious obstructive pleading and then to an absurd outburst that cost him a heavy fine. With an action pending against him in Warwickshire in 1446 he exploited the fact that Erdington, as the serving sheriff, could not impanel juries in actions in which he was plaintiff and that the task must fall to the four county coroners. On 17 July 1447, before the justices of assize, he prevented the return of verdicts by claiming that only two of the four coroners had endorsed the writ summoning the jurors. A repeat of this effective delaying tactic led to an extraordinary confrontation at the assizes held at Coventry on 20 Apr. 1450 (during the prorogation of the Parliament of which he was a Member). Although the relevant writ had on this occasion been endorsed by all four coroners, Arderne suborned one of them, John Upton, into denying he had been party to its execution. Despite the insistence of the other coroners that their colleague was lying, Upton stubbornly maintained his denial, provoking the justices to threaten him with a heavy fine for contempt. Arderne then, in the hearing of the justices, foolishly promised Upton indemnity against any fine, even one as large as £100. Upton’s committal to gaol led him to even rasher behaviour: in the words of the record, ‘adtunc insania et furore repletus’, he made ready to draw his dagger but settled instead for launching a verbal assault on Erdington, telling him ‘inter alia verba contumeliosa “tu false mentiris in capud tuum”’. The thwarting of Upton may not, however, have been the only provocation offered to him. He claimed that Erdington, out of hearing of the justices, had told him he was false in word and deed. When the case returned to the court of common pleas for judgement in the following June this indiscretion cost Erdington a fine of 40s., but Arderne was fined the hefty sum of £40. Worse was soon to follow. Five months later a jury, returning a verdict in the debt action our MP had sued against him, awarded the plaintiff damages of £20 and costs of a further 100 marks (reduced to a total of £40 by the court on a technicality).22. KB27/740, rot. 77; CP40/742, rots. 314, 318.

By then Arderne’s escalating difficulties had led to the further dismemberment of his estate, on this occasion to the benefit of the King’s attorney-general. On 10 Mar. 1447 Vampage, who had acted as an arbiter for him in 1440, took a bond from him in 200 marks; and a little under two years later, on 1 Jan. 1449, our MP granted him the manor of Nafford, once of the Golafres. In March 1450 (incidentally while the Parliament of which he was a Member was in session) he entered into a further bond in as much as £400, undertaking not only to assure the Vampages’ title to Nafford but also to purchase for them, within the term of seven years, lands worth another 20 marks p.a.23 CP40/748, rot. 152d; CCR, 1441-7, p. 475; 1447-54, pp. 189, 197-8. It is a reasonable inference that the latter were intended to stand in place of the former and that Nafford had been mortgaged rather than sold. A little over a year later Arderne was obliged to make another surrender to Vampage. By a final concord levied in the Cheshire county court, he granted the manor of Dorfold and other lands in that county to Vampage and others. As two of these others were Arderne’s friends, John Curson and John Halton*, this looks like another mortgage. His affairs, however, were so desperate that Vampage had every reason to hope the pledged property would not be redeemed.24 CHES31/32, 28 Hen. VI, no. 1.

In this context of apparently accelerating decline, it is astonishing to find that, on 20 Oct. 1449, Arderne was elected to represent Warwickshire in company with one of his rivals for the Byshoppeston lands, William Catesby. On the available evidence, this episode is beyond convincing explanation. The indenture is irregular in that none of the 19 attestors were drawn from the higher ranks of the county gentry (indeed, they were headed by a burgess of Warwick, Nicholas Rody*), but it is hard to imagine that Arderne had influence enough to engineer his own return in face of opposition. The best available explanation is a reluctance on the part of others better qualified to sit in an assembly which met in an atmosphere of crisis, both military and financial, and one, moreover, summoned only two months after the dissolution of the last.25 C219/15/7; Carpenter, 433. Later events also imply that Arderne’s readiness to attend was an expression of his support for the opposition to the government, perhaps prompted, in part, by Suffolk’s acquisition of the bulk of the Golafre inheritance. He may have come to see the victory of that opposition as a way out of his difficulties. If he did, he was to be very badly mistaken.

The last act of Arderne’s life was a tragic and puzzling one. He was implicated in the duke of York’s rising of 1452 and was the only man of rank to pay for his treason with his life. If later indictments are to be accepted he was guilty of a fourfold treason in the aftermath of the duke’s capitulation at Dartford: on 6 Mar. 1452 he joined with Sir William Oldhall*, the duke’s chamberlain, and others in plotting at Baynards Castle to raise insurrection in Wales, Shropshire, Kent and other unspecified counties to depose the King; on the following 12 Apr. he plotted rebellion at Westminster and elsewhere; eight days later at Ludlow he and others levied war against the King and procured the murder of Richard Fazakerley, a yeoman of the royal chamber; and early in May he was involved in the Kentish rising of John Wilkins, a saddler from Stratford-upon-Avon. He was indicted for the last of these offences before commissioners of oyer and terminer at Dartford on 13 May; and six days later a presentment was laid against him in the court of King’s bench for the alleged plot of 12 Apr.26 R. Virgoe, ‘Ancient Indictments in K.B.’, in Med. Kentish Soc. (Kent Rec. Soc. xviii), 260; Archaeologia, xxix. 326; KB27/768, rex rot. 7.

What happened immediately afterwards is unknown, but it appears that Arderne was arrested at his home in Warwickshire. This, at least, is a reasonable inference from the later Exchequer assignment to two servants of the royal household for their expenses about the custody of our MP in Kenilworth castle, the conveyance of the prisoners from there to Hereford, and the purchase of fetters.27 Issues of the Exchequer ed. Devon, 475; E404/69/89; E403/791, m. 12. He was presumably at Hereford when the King and his commissioners were there on their judicial tour in the wake of the troubles. From there he was brought to the King’s next stop at Ludlow, where the duke of York was lord. There, on 10 Aug. 1452, true bills were laid against him for the offences of 6 Mar. and 20 Apr.; on the following day he was tried and found guilty; and on 12 Aug. he was executed.28 KB9/103/1/15; 270/34. Why he should have been singled out in this way can only be a matter for speculation. Perhaps a closer connexion with the duke of York would have saved him in that, like Oldhall and other of the duke’s men, he would have been seen as acting merely in his lord’s support. Equally speculatively, it might be that he was held to have a particular responsibility for the rising of Wilkins, another Warwickshire man.

Arderne’s execution and the consequent forfeiture of his estates left the family’s affairs in disarray. The prospects for his son and heir, Walter, were not, however, as bleak as they would first appear. The bulk of his patrimony remained in the hands of the survivors of those his father had enfeoffed in 1435, and this may explain why it was not until late in 1453 that the Crown made any grants of the Arderne lands. On 29 Nov. the Clodeshale lands, which our MP had held by courtesy, were committed to two Warwickshire lawyers, Thomas Greswold and John Gamell, and the Arderne lands in Castle Bromwich, Curdworth and Minworth to Gamell and a much more prominent local man, Thomas Lyttleton, serjeant-at-law. Both leases were to run for seven years, but neither ran its course. On the following 4 Feb. annual rents were fixed, but only two days later writs issued out of Chancery for inquiry into the Arderne lands. If one may judge by the result, the purpose of these writs was to secure the restoration of our MP’s son and heir.29 CP40/768, rot. 344d; CFR, xix. 67, 70-71. On 4 Mar., between the issue of the writs and the holding of inqs., the keeping of Arderne’s Worcs. lands was granted to Fulk Stafford* and Thomas Young II* in contradiction of the grant to Greswold and Gamell: CFR, xix. 82-83. These grantees, Stafford, a servant of the earl of Warwick, and Young, of the duke of York, were probably intended to act in Walter’s interest. There is nothing to support, and much to contradict, the contention that Warwick sponsored the grants to Lyttleton and Greswold: Carpenter, 469-71. Inquisitions held in April before the escheators of Warwickshire and Worcestershire found that Robert died seised of the Clodeshale lands in the two counties, and, more significantly, that at his death seisin of the family’s caput honoris, the manor of ‘La Logge’ or Parkhall and lands in Curdworth and Minworth, lay in the hands of the surviving feoffees of 1435. As a result of these findings, on 18 May the escheators were ordered to remove the King’s hands from the Clodeshale inheritance in favour of Walter. Later, probably during the Parliament of 1455-6, he successfully petitioned the King for permission to enter his father’s lands as though they had not been forfeit.30 C139/153/21; E159/234, brevia Mich. rot. 2d; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 459-60; SC8/89/4403. The petition was presented between 1 Sept. and 25 Mar., but no year is given. Significantly, however, Walter attested the Warws. election to the Parliament of 1455, and it is highly probable that he presented his petition in either the second or third session of that assembly: C219/16/3. Thereafter the family gradually recovered its position in local affairs, although, by one of the curious coincidences of family history, our MP was not the last of his line to suffer execution for treason. His great-great-grandson, Edward Arderne, suffered the same fate in 1585, allegedly through the enmity of Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester.31 W. Dugdale, Warws. ii. 931.