CATESBY, John

The Catesbys rose to prominence in the mid fourteenth century, acquiring by piecemeal purchase an estate concentrated in south-east Warwickshire. Our MP’s grandfather and father represented that county in Parliament on many occasions from 1339 to 1393. The latter’s marriage occasioned both an extension and a slight realignment of the family’s interests: his wife was heiress of the valuable manor of Ashby St. Ledgers on the Northamptonshire side of that county’s border with Warwickshire. He abandoned Ladbroke as his principal residence in favour of Ashby, some ten miles to the north-east, and it was in the church there that he was buried.5 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 501-3; Catesby Fam. and Their Brasses, pp. xv, 1-3, 37-43. His greater wealth also enabled him to arrange generous provision for his two younger sons. On 20 May 1405 the family’s manor of Hopsford in Warwickshire was settled on Robert, the youngest of them, and, on the following day, the family feoffees, headed by John Southam, archdeacon of Oxford, endowed our MP with several small parcels of land on either side of the county border with Northamptonshire.6 CAD, iii. A4363; Cott. Ch. xii. 8. These settlements were no doubt made in conformity with the instructions of their father, who seems to have died during the course of the previous winter. The rest of the family lands, subject to the interest of their mother, passed to William as the eldest, but his tenure was brief. He was dead by 20 Apr. 1408 when our MP appears in a deed as his brother and heir.7 CAD, v. A10458. William was still alive in Mar. 1407: ibid. iii. A4309.

From the material point of view, his elder brother’s childless demise was fortunate for the young John. Less so was the long survival of their heiress mother. In the subsidy returns of 1412 she was assessed on a clear annual income of £90, while John had to make do with a comparatively modest £30.8 Feudal Aids, vi. 492. A valor of the family estates, including the Cranford lands, drawn up in 1386, put their annual value at about £125: Miscellany (Dugdale Soc. xxxi), 23-24. Since she lived until as late as 1433, her rights as heiress and widow threatened a severe diminution of her son’s resources. However, it seems that she surrendered effective control of her lands to him long before her death, something she was free to do because she did not remarry. In the assessments made to the subsidy on knight’s fees in 1428, our MP was returned as seised of Ashby St. Ledgers.9 Catesby Fam. and Their Brasses, 40; Feudal Aids, iv. 38. In short, her long life did not prevent John from taking the full part in local affairs to which the family’s wealth entitled him. To these material resources he, like his father before him, added the additional advantage of a legal education. There is no evidence of an early residence in London which might imply attendance at an inn of court or of chancery, but the fact that both his putative younger son, John, and grandson, William†, were later educated at the Inner Temple, at least raises the possibility that they were following in his footsteps.10 Readings and Moots, i (Selden Soc. lxxi), p. lvii; ii (Selden Soc. cv), p. cxxiv.

Catesby began his career in local government with nomination as a commissioner in Northamptonshire to assess the subsidy of 1412, and later in the same year he joined his mother in securing from the Crown a grant indicative of the family’s rising status, namely one of free warren in their demesne lands in Warwickshire and Northamptonshire.11 CPR, 1413-16, p. 379; CChR., v. 447. He also began to play a part in the affairs of his neighbours, most notably those of Richard Knightley* of Fawsley, a few miles to the south of Ashby St. Ledgers.12 CPR, 1413-16, p. 391; C139/110/44; Northants. RO, Knightley ch. 153; CP25(1)/179/92/22. The influential Knightley, one of the tellers in the Exchequer, may have been instrumental in introducing him to the service of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, although his father’s service to the earl’s father may have been introduction enough. In any event, by 1417, at the same time as he was so actively involved in Knightley’s affairs, he was in receipt of a fee from the earl, and this in turn probably explains his addition to the quorum of the peace in Warwickshire at the end of the year.13 A.F.J. Sinclair, ‘Beauchamp earls of Warwick’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1987), 332.

Beauchamp may also have aided him in making an advantageous marriage to a young widow and heiress. The earl’s involvement is implied by the fact that the marriage took place at about the time Catesby entered his service and that the bride hailed from a family closely connected with the earl. The match had been made by 11 Oct. 1418 when the bride’s paternal grandmother, Rose Montfort, surrendered her manor of Lapworth in west Warwickshire to our MP and other feoffees, who then granted her a life interest.14 E42/124. An action in the ct. of c.p. indentifies her first husband: in 1422 Marmaduke Lumley and John Campion, as the executors of Marmaduke’s mother, Margaret, sued Catesby and his wife, as the wid. of John Lumley, for a debt of ten marks: CP40/644, rot. 359. This action has another interest for it suggests that the later bp. of Carlisle was of the Lumleys of Harlestone not of the baronial family. Rose was one of the two daughters and coheiresses of Hugh Brandeston (d.1362), and her inheritance also included the manor of Grandborough, better placed than the more distant Lapworth to supplement our MP’s existing estates, as well as other properties destined to descend to her other grand-daughter, Ellen, wife of Richard Merbrook. She was too aged to keep her coheirs out of these lands for long, and, even before her death, Catesby had gained control of some of the Brandeston property. In November 1418 John Buckmore† of Coventry, widower of Rose’s sister, Agnes, conveyed to him his estate in a moiety of the manor of Lapworth, subject to an annual payment of 12 marks.15 CAD, v. A10828, 10831, 11105. Settlements related to Catesby’s marriage are the probable explanation for the feoffment he made in August 1420. He conveyed his Warwickshire estates, including his moiety of Lapworth and the reversion of Grandborough, to an influential group of feoffess, headed by William Babington, chief baron of the Exchequer, and John Weston†, apprentice-at-law. Besides their legal expertise, these two men had the recommendation of a connexion with the Beauchamp earl. The other feoffees were drawn from those more intimately associated with our MP, principally his friend, Knightley, and his brother, Robert Catesby.16 E40/10934; CAD, iii. A4361, 4573.

Important though his connexion with the Beauchamp earl undoubtedly was, it would be a mistake to view Catesby’s career as entirely governed by that service. He was, throughout his career, most closely concerned with the administrative affairs of Northamptonshire, where he attested a parliamentary election as early as 1416. Since the earl’s interests there were minimal, he was never a central member of that great affinity. Indeed, it is noticeable how little part he played in the government of Warwickshire, despite the addition to his lands there by marriage. Although it was in that county that he was first commissioned as a j.p. he was named to only one such commission, and he served on only two ad hoc commissions there, one of array in 1419 and another of gaol delivery in 1421.17 C219/11/8; CPR, 1416-22, pp. 212, 326, 461. By 9 Sept. 1420, when he sat as a j.p. at Rothwell, he was of the quorum in the neighbouring county, and from that date the pace of his administrative activity increased. On 28 Nov. he and his brother offered surety for Knightley, elected as MP for Northamptonshire; he attested both elections there in the following year; and in 1423 he was named as the county escheator.18 KB9/93/60; C66/186, m. 35; C219/12/4-6; CFR, xvi. 54. He also had baronial connexions in that county: in March 1419 he was named as a feoffee by Maud, widow of John, Lord Lovell (d.1408), as she made arrangements for death.19 CCR, 1419-22, pp. 105, 107, 125-6.

The enterprise which characterised the Catesby family is apparent in John Catesby’s dealings in the early 1420s. In November 1420 he purchased from Rose Montfort all the wood and underwood in her park of Lapworth, and in the following September she surrendered some other of her interests by granting him the advowson of the chantry of Tonworth together with the lands pertaining to that chantry. In the same month he renewed a lease his father had once enjoyed, agreeing with the abbot and convent of Lilleshall (Staffordshire) to farm the site of the manor of Braunstonbury near Ashby for a term of 20 years at an annual farm of £4.20 CAD, iii. A4360, 4579; iv. A6190, 6926, 8351. Soon afterwards his resources were augmented by Rose’s death. Its precise date is unknown, but it occurred between August 1424, when our MP’s feoffees were seised of her manor of Grandborough only in reversion, and the autumn of 1425 when Catesby embarked on an ambitious action to regain lands that he claimed should have been hers. On 22 Oct. 1425 he sued out a special commission, headed by Sir Edmund Ferrers of Chartley, to try the assize of novel disseisin he and his wife had brought against a formidable opponent, Sir William Mountfort*, for the manors of Kingshurst near Coleshill and Kingford near Solihull and other property. Mountfort and our MP’s wife shared a common descent from Piers, Lord Montfort (d.c.1369), through Piers’s two illegitimate sons, Sir John and Sir Richard†. Sir William claimed that the disputed property had been settled on Piers for life with successive remainders in tail general to his paternal grandparents, Sir John Mountfort and Joan, his wife, and then to the paternal grandparents of our MP’s wife, Sir Richard and Rose. On 19 July 1426 a jury accepted Sir William’s claim as heir-in-tail to the two manors but asserted that the entail did not include the other property claimed by the plaintiffs, who were awarded damages of £40 for the disseisin committed against them by Sir William. The other property was extensive, comprising 24 messuages, 15 tofts and over 2,000 acres of land, meadow, wood and pasture in Coleshill, Solihull and several other scattered vills. If three deeds dated between 1363 and 1365, which Catesby had copied under the seal of the mayor of Northampton three days before the jurors met, are accepted as genuine, then the verdict was a correct one in that it reflected the division Lord Montfort had made between his illegitimate sons. None the less, the division was rather an impractical one, and it is likely that a compromise was reached with Sir William buying out the claims of Catesby’s wife and the Merbrooks.21 CAD, iii. A4573; v. A13635; C66/418, m. 11d; JUST1/978/5; KB138/127.

Rose’s death also occasioned the partition of her inheritance. In April 1427 a moiety of the manor of Lapworth was settled on Catesby and his wife in tail general, with successive remainders to Richard Merbrook for his life, Merbrook’s son William in tail and then William’s sister Alice in fee. Although the deed does not survive, it is probable that, at the same time as this settlement, Rose’s manors at Codbarow and Yattendon in Berkshire were settled on the Merbrooks with remainder to the Catesbys.22 E40/4359; CP40/613, rot. 131; VCH Berks. iii. 126-7.

While Catesby was pursuing his wife’s claim to a share of the Montfort inheritance he was at the height of his influence. On 12 Apr. 1425 he had been elected to Parliament in company with the influential Richard Buckland*, and, in the following January, he had been named as the Northamptonshire sheriff.23 C219/13/3; CFR, xvi. 117. He was thus in office when winning his partial victory over Sir William, a victory that seems to have done nothing to compromise his relationship with their mutual lord, the Beauchamp earl. By Michaelmas term 1426 he was acting as the earl’s attorney in the Exchequer at a fee of 20s. p.a., and by the early 1430s was in receipt of an annuity of five marks assigned on the manor of Kibworth Beauchamp in Leicestershire.24 Egerton Roll 8773, m. 1d; SC12/18/45, f. 13. Less happily, on 24 Apr. 1427 he was peremptorily summoned to appear before the King and council to reply to some unspecified matters, perhaps arising out of misconduct during his shrievalty.25 E36/178, f. 80. In the previous Nov. he had been sued in the Exchequer of pleas by Ralph Beauchamp for making a false return to a common law writ: E13/137, rot. 5d. A year later his second cousin, John Aylesbury, then a minor, brought a writ of formedon against him for a moiety of the manor of Lapworth, a claim that was later to recur.26 CP40/669, rot. 105d.

On 25 Aug. 1429 the county’s electors again chose Catesby as their MP, on this occasion with another lawyer, William Tresham*. He used his time at Westminster to pursue some personal matters. He levied a fine completing his purchase of the manor of Althorp, a few miles from Ashby; and, more interestingly, he sued a Leicester bellmaker, William Nobulle, in the court of common pleas, claiming that the defendant had defaulted in a contract to make three bells, weighing a total of 6,000 lbs., ‘concordes et bene sonantes’, for the church of Ashby.27 C219/14/1; CP40/675, cart. rot. 1; CP25(1)/179/94/52; J. Bridges, Northants. i. 479; KB27/674, rot. 26. During the Christmas recess both he and Tresham returned to their home county, both sitting at a meeting of the county bench at Northampton on 10 Jan. 1430. When Parliament reassembled six days later Catesby may have been instrumental in securing the appointment of his brother, Robert, as escheator in Northamptonshire and Rutland.28 KB27/678, rex rot. 1d; CFR, xv. 305.

Little interest attaches to the last years of Catesby’s career. In July 1430 he witnessed a deed for the Northamptonshire peer, William, Lord Zouche, and he remained active in local administration. His brief omission from the county bench in 1432 is hard to explain save in terms of a government oversight. Curiously, in that year he attended parliamentary elections in both Warwickshire, his only recorded appearance at the hustings there, and Northamptonshire, where he routinely attended. In so doing he was in breach of the statutes, although the infringement was only a technical one, and it is hard to discern any sinister motive to his appearance at two elections held only three days apart.29 CCR, 1429-35, p. 69; C219/14/3. Late in 1434 Catesby committed a minor breach of another sort: he was present at the clandestine marriage of Sir Thomas Green* and Marina, sister of the wealthy Leicestershire esquire, John Bellers*. This took place at night in the private chapel of our MP’s friend, Richard Knightley, at Fawsley, and, since the couple had dispensed with the reading of the appropriate banns, was in contravention of the canon Humana concupiscentia (1342).30 Lincs. AO, Reg. Gray, f. 119v.

More difficult from Catesby’s point of view were the continued difficulties related to his tenure of his wife’s estates. In 1433 he successfully sued Richard Merbrook for a debt of as much as 100 marks, and, two years later, he was called upon to defend a writ of formedon against Aylesbury, who now claimed the manor of Grandborough as well as that of Lapworth.31 CP40/688, rot. 252d; 701, rot. 101; 703, rot. 111d. It was no doubt partly as a defence against such claims that, on 5 Mar. 1437, he granted both properties to feoffees, headed by his brother, Robert, and two lawyers in the Beauchamp service, Nicholas Metley* (who was also our MP’s cousin of the half blood) and John Cotes*.32 CAD, iii. A4377. After our MP’s death Aylesbury unsuccessfully sued the feoffees for both Grandborough and Lapworth: CP40/708, rots. 457d, 481d. This feoffment may also have had a more pressing motive. Catesby died on the following 4 July and, perhaps already ailing in the spring, his aim may have been to protect his estates from the burden of wardship, for his son and heir, William, was still short of full age.

Catesby was commemorated in the church of Ashby St. Ledgers by a brass (now surviving only in a fragment) for which his son and heir paid 37s. 4d. in 1447-8.33 Catesby Fam. and Their Brasses, pp. xvi, 44. He had continued the promotion of the family begun by his grandfather. His wife’s inheritance was his principal acquisition, but he also made at least two manorial purchases. Close to home he bought a subsidiary manor in Ashby St. Ledgers from John Stokes I* to add to the nearby manor of Althorp he had secured earlier.34 CAD, iv. A7131-2. But if our MP had proved a successful head of the family, his son and heir and his grandson, another William, accelerated the family’s relentless advance.