ESTHOPE, Edward

Esthope had no known connexion with Shrewsbury almost to the moment of his election to the Coventry Parliament of 1459. He hailed from a minor gentry family established since the twelfth century at Easthope, some ten miles to the south of the town. His father was the younger brother of John Esthope; the two brothers served together as tax collectors in 1434 but otherwise played little traceable part in local affairs.5 VCH Salop, x. 130; Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 3, v. 97; Salop Archs., Deeds 6000/12891; KB27/618, rex rot. 19; CFR, xvi. 194. Richard, however, may have come to have wider connexions late in his life: in 1453 and 1456 he or a namesake is found acting for the prominent courtier and Exchequer official, Thomas Thorpe*.6 CCR, 1447-54, p. 484; CFR, xix. 147. If this was our MP’s father then the connexion would explain how Edward came to begin his career as a minor official in the royal household. On 28 Jan. 1446, described as ‘King’s serjeant’, he won a royal grant which turned to his advantage a misfortune that had befallen his uncle, John. As early as 1422 John had offered surety for a Shropshire esquire, Richard Peshale, forfeiting 100 marks to the Crown on Peshale’s default, and in 1433 his messuage in Presthope and tenement in Bradley had been seized to secure payment. Our MP was now granted an annuity of five marks from this property to be held for eight years from Michaelmas 1444.7 E199/38/41; CPR, 1441-6, pp. 401-2.

Esthope was later able to save this grant from the resumptions of 1450-1, and on 2 Apr. 1451 he added a grant of the forfeited goods of one Geoffrey Kechyn, executed for rising with Cade, a reward subsequently commuted to a payment from the Exchequer of six marks in cash.8 CPR, 1446-52, p. 417; E163/8/14, m. 5; E404/67/165. It is probable that he was present in the royal retinue at the confrontation with the rebels in the previous June. Thereafter he won some minor promotion within the household; that, at least, is the conclusion to be drawn if the designation ‘King’s serjeant of the buttery’, as which he is first described in November 1451, represented a superior rank to that of plain ‘King’s serjeant’. On 22 May 1452 he received another minor grant when the King requested the abbot of Battle to admit him to a corrody there. He retained his place in the Household after its reorganization during the first protectorate of the duke of York: in the household ordinances of 13 Nov. 1454 he is described as ‘page of the buttery’. By this date his kinsman, and probable first cousin, John Esthope, had also found a place there for he is described as ‘page aletaker’. Later both were part of the large contingent of household men who were with the King at the abbey of St. Albans in May 1458.9 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 502-3; CCR, 1447-54, p. 347; PPC, vi. 227; Cott. Nero DVII, ff. 75v, 76v.

With these household connexions, it is not surprising that Esthope was anxious to secure a seat in the Parliament summoned just before the rout of the Yorkist lords at Ludford Bridge. Writs calling this assembly were dated at Leominster on 9 Oct. 1459 as the royalists prepared to face the Yorkists at Ludlow. Esthope may have been in their ranks and, perhaps forewarned of the summons, he had the previous day secured admission to the guild merchant of Shrewsbury on payment of 46s. 8d.10 Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 3, v. 97; Assembly bk. 3365/67, f. 99. This cleared the way for his election as one of the borough’s MPs. When the town’s electors gathered in the guildhall on the following 17 Nov. he was returned in company with one of the bailiffs, John Trentham*. Unusually, a separate indenture survives for this election – generally the borough’s return is subsumed within the county indenture – but there is nothing suspicious about it: eight attestors are named, headed by two of the leading burgesses, Nicholas Stafford and John Knight, whose widow our MP was later to marry.11 C219/16/5. Beyond his membership of this controversial assembly, nothing is known of the part he played in the civil war of 1459-61. It is a fair speculation that he was present at Ludford Bridge, but, if he did fight in the battles of 1460-1, he did not suffer as a result beyond the loss of his career in the Household.

Esthope resourcefully found a new career to replace the old, reinventing himself as a Shrewsbury burgess and draper. He quickly came to take a prominent part in the town’s administration. In Michaelmas term 1460, before the change of regime but probably after he had lost his household place, he was named as one of the auditors of the bailiffs; on 1 Oct. 1462 he headed the 25 who were entrusted with the task of choosing the town’s officers; and a year later he himself was elected as one of the coroners. With these administrative duties went commercial ones. In 1461 a guild of drapers was founded in the town and our MP is named at the head of the list of its first members, and it was through the guild that he found further advancement in the town. When its master, John Knight, died in about 1465, he married his widow. The acquisition of her lands explains why he advanced to the higher offices of bailiff (when he succeeded his stepson, Roger Knight) and alderman in the late 1460s.12 Assembly bk. 3365/67, ff. 21-22; Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 4, ix. 258; liv. 90-91. It is not known when he joined the ranks of the 12 aldermen; only that he replaced Thomas Stone†, who died soon after Aug. 1468: Assembly bk. 3365/67, f. 68v.

More interesting than Esthope’s role as a leading burgess was his involvement, albeit only peripheral, in the major dispute that disturbed the peace of Shropshire in the first reign of Edward IV.13 J.R. Lander, ‘Straunge versus Kynaston’, Albion, vii. 1-10, provides an incomplete account of this dispute. On 31 July 1467 Howell ap Morgan, a Welsh esquire in the service of the Shropshire peer, John, Lord Strange of Knockin, was murdered at Hillingdon in Middlesex by a gang led by Strange’s stepfather, Roger Kynaston. In the appeal brought by Howell’s widow, our MP and Roger Knight were named among the many accessories to the crime. Since two other prominent townsmen, John Colle and Richard Stury*, were also named in the same capacity, it seems that Kynaston’s campaign to deprive Lord Strange of a considerable part of his inheritance enjoyed significant support in the town. It may be that Esthope and Colle, as the town’s bailiffs at the time of the murder, were responsible for orchestrating that support. Revealing here is a letter that Lord Strange had earlier written to the townsmen requiring them ‘to ayde and helpe to the recouere of myne inheritaunce at my comyng into the contrey or else to let none be on either party’.14 KB27/827, rots. 65d, 103; F. Palgrave, Essay on Original Authority of the King’s Council, 140; H. Owen and J.B. Blakeway, Hist. Shrewsbury, i. 250. In Mich. term 1467 Lord Strange sued our MP and Colle for trespass, but the particular offence is unknown: KB27/826, rot. 58. Clearly his rival, with whom right certainly did not lie, had better success in rallying support. Unfortunately here the evidence fails. Indeed, but for the appeal of Howell’s widow nothing would be known of the involvement of our MP and the three other leading townsmen in the dispute. One other reference, however, may also have a bearing on the matter. At some unknown date in his year as bailiff the borough authorities authorized a payment of 6s. 10d. to him for riding to John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, on some unspecified business. That business might have been related to the dispute. On 28 Aug. the King commissioned the earl and Sir William Herbert*, Lord Herbert, to arrest Kynaston and bring him before the royal council; and the townsmen were perhaps seeking to make their excuses to the earl for their part in the dispute. However this may be, nothing came of the appeal against him and no more is heard of the town’s involvement.15 Shrewsbury recs., bailiffs’ accts. 3365/398, m. 1; CPR, 1467-77, p. 29.

Esthope’s administrative activities diminished in the 1470s, perhaps because of advanced age. He took measures to ensure himself a life interest in the property his wife had inherited: by a final concord levied in Michaelmas term 1473 five messuages and five gardens in Shrewsbury were settled on the couple for their lives with successive remainders to her three sons by John Knight in tail.16 CP25(1)/195/23/9; Assembly bk. 3365/67, f. 68v. He was attestor of the disputed Shrewsbury election held on 7 Jan. 1478. His date of death is unknown, but is likely to have been soon after this election. He last appears in the records in June 1479, when he witnessed a deed as master of the drapers’ guild. He had been replaced in that office by Easter 1485, and probably some years earlier. Richard Wantenoure†, who sat for the borough in 1484, took his place among the aldermen.17 Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. liv. 90-91; C219/17/3; Assembly bk. 3365/67, f. 69.