EVERINGHAM, Thomas

This MP presents a problem of identification. It is tempting to identify him with the servant of John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, who served his master as, among other things, steward of Sheffield and lieutenant of Harfleur, was appointed one of the executors of his will of September 1452, and then died with him at the battle of Castillon in the following July. Indeed, this Thomas and our MP are so difficult to distinguish that their careers are generally conflated. Nevertheless, it is fairly clear that our MP was not the servant of Shrewsbury. Two pardons of outlawry sued out in 1465 suggest that the latter had a son or grandson named Thomas, then living, whereas our MP is known to have died without issue four years earlier. Since the younger Thomas and his mother or grandmother are described here as ‘late of Sheffield’, one of the principal lordships of the Talbots, these pardons leave little doubt that the servant of Talbot was the Thomas Everingham who lived at Stainborough near Sheffield.6 A.J. Pollard, John Talbot, 76-77, 99; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 413, 420; Test. Ebor. ii (Surtees Soc. xxx), 168. For mistaken conflations of the two: C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 461; E. Acheson, Leics. in 15th Cent. 228-9; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 341; HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 307-8; R.M. Jeffs, ‘The Later Med. Sheriff’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1960), 287-9. For the Stainborough fam.: J. Hunter, S. Yorks. ii. 265. To add to the confusion, however, our MP was also a Yorkshireman by birth. His brother, Henry, is known, on the evidence of a pardon he sued out in 1456, to have originated from Birkin near Pontefract in the West Riding, and it is almost certain that he and our MP are to be numbered among the six younger sons of Sir John Everingham.7 According to the Yorks. visitation of 1563-4, Sir John had seven sons, all of whom were named in an entail of 1415: Vis. Yorks. (Harl. Soc. xvi), 115. The two Thomases were thus distantly related since both the Everinghams of Stainborough and those of Birkin were descendants of the ancient Yorkshire baronial family of Everingham, which failed in the main male line in the late fourteenth century.8 Clay, Extinct and Domant Peerages of Northern Counties, 61. Our MP’s early career is poorly documented. It is possible that he is to be identified with the namesake who served with Sir John Everingham in the Agincourt campaign and then under Henry, Lord Fitzhugh, in that of 1417, but, if so, he did so as a very young man. It was probably this soldider, whether to be identified with our MP or not, who went on to fight at the battle of Verneuil in 1424 and, in the mid 1430s, to serve as lieutenant of Alencon under Edmund Beaufort, count of Mortain.9N.H. Nicolas, Agincourt, 355; E101/51/2, m. 3; Letters and Pprs Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, ii (2), 394, 412; G.L. Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort, 282, 284; Alençon, Archives Départementales de l’Orne, Domaine Royale, Série A/411; Add. Ch. 6908; A.E. Curry, ‘Military Organization in Lancastrian Normandy’ (Council for National Academic Awards Ph.D., 1985), ii. p. xlii. This Thomas was a feoffee of Edmund Beaufort’s brother, John, duke of Somerset (d.1444): PROME, xiii. 27-31; HMC Hastings, i. 346; CPR, 1441-6, p. 349; E199/50/48. If our MP was this soldier he did not remain in France after the late 1430s, for by 1440 he had established himself in Beverley. In June 1440 he witnessed a deed there, and soon after he was elected by the townsmen to the first of his two terms as one of the town keepers.10 Yorks. Deeds, ix (Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. cxi), 24. Beverley is the only place where he is known to have held property in his own right, presumably as a result of a modest gift made by his father, and by marriage to a local widow. While serving as keeper, he was appointed by the Crown to the more important office of collector of customs in the port of Kingston-upon-Hull, and a year later he was granted licence to trade with his ship, the Grace de Dieu of Beverley, for as long as he should hold the office, an exemption from the prohibition that debarred customs officials from engaging in trade.11 CFR, xvii. 200, 203; CPR, 1441-6, p. 135. These benefits of royal patronage imply that he had an influential patron, as does the fact that, by 1441-2, he was in receipt of robes as an esquire of the Household.12 His name continues to appear on the Household lists down to their failure in 1452: E101/409/9; 409/11, f. 38; 409/16; 410/1, f. 30; 410/3; 410/6, f. 40; 410/9, f. 42v. It is reasonable to suppose that he also owed to this patron his second marriage, to a wealthy Leicestershire widow and heiress. Later evidence leaves little doubt that his patron was not one of the Beauforts, or at least not directly so, but rather John, Viscount Beaumont, and important figure at court and the leading baronial landholder int he country. It may be that the two men were related by blood, albeit distantly. Beaumont’s grandmother appears to have been of the baronial family of Everingham, and this remote tie of kinship may have been emphasized by their mutual service in France.13 She was probably an Everingham, for the heraldic evidence demonstrates that there was a Beaumont/Everingham marriage in the main Beaumont line: J. Nichols, Leics. iii (2), 898. But she was not, as given in CP, ii. 61, the da. and h. of one Thomas Everingham of Laxton, Notts.

Everingham’s marriage to the Bugge heiress reshaped his career. His first marriage to the widow of a Beverley merchant had reflected his roots; his second reflected and forwarded his ambition. This marriage curtailed his involvement in the affairs of his native county soon after his second election as one of the keepers of Beverley, and elevated him to a place among the leading gentry landholders of his new wife’s county. As heiress to the Bugge lands, she held the manor of Newhall in Thurlaston with extensive lands at Wigston Magna, Stoke Golding, Croft and Normanton Turville in Leicestershire, at Great Doddington and Collingtree in Northamptonshire, at West Leake in Nottinghamshire, and at Mackworth and Litchurch in Derbyshire. It is significant in this context that the greater part of this inheritance was held of the duchy of Lancaster honour of Leicester, of which Beaumont had been steward since 1437. In the absence of contemporary valuations, the annual yield of the lands is best judged from an inquisition post mortem of 1506, where they were assessed at as much as £70.14 CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 199, 339-40. Although the estate was burdened by the dower interest of Baldwin Bugge’s widow until 1468, this loss was more than compensated by the property Margaret held in dower from her first husband, Richard Turville, and in jointure from her second, Reynold Moton.

Not surprisingly the acquisition of so large an estate led Everingham into dispute. Soon after the marriage, Sir Robert Moton*, who was both Reynold’s father and the husband of Baldwin Bugge’s widow, presented a petition to the chancellor. He asserted that on his son’s marriage to Margaret he had bound himself to her uncle, the influential Leicestershire lawyer, Bartholomew Brokesby*, in the large sum of 400 marks to settle lands with an annual value of £20 in jointure on the couple and Reynold’s issue, and that he had now learned that Margaret and her new husband, Everingham, intended to sue him on the bond, claiming that it was made to some other purpose than the settlement of jointure. Our MP’s reply shows that this was a disingenuous description of events: he made the plausible counter-claim that the disputed obligation also included the proviso that Sir Robert should not alienate any of his inheritance from Reynold’s issue, but that he had now alienated the Moton caput of Peckleton and other lands to the use of William, his son by his second wife, to the disinheritance of Reynold’s two daughters, Anne and Elizabeth.15 C1/22/114. Everingham’s interest in protecting the rights of his stepdaughters lay not only in his wife’s obvious concern but also in the financial value of the children’s marriages. As common law heiresses to a knightly estate they were a valuable asset.

Despite Moton’s hostility, Everingham’s new lands and the combination of his place in the Household and his association with Beaumont quickly brought him into prominence in his adopted county. Indeed, at the first opportunity after he had entered his wife’s property, the Crown appointed him to the shrievalty. As sheriff he conducted the election to the controversial Parliament of 1447, to which he returned two of his fellow Household men: Thomas Staunton* for Leicestershire, and Edmund Mountfort* for Warwickshire.16 C219/15/4. He himself was returned at the next Leicestershire hustings on 6 Feb. 1449, probably through Beaumont’s patronage.17 It may be significant that the return is irregular in that no attestors are named: C219/15/6. During the third session of this Parliament, he took measures to protect his interest in his wife’s inheritance. By a fine levied on the quindene of Trinity the bulk of her lands was settled on her and Everingham and her issue, with remainder to her right heirs. Acting as querent in this fine was another Household man, Henry Filongley*, then sitting as a Warwickshire MP.18 CP25(1)/293/71/345. This settlement was to the potential disadvantage of Margaret’s descendants by her first husband.

At the next Leicestershire election, of 16 Oct. 1449, Everingham was named third on the list of attestors. More revealingly, on 10 May 1451 one William Haddon of Chilvers Coton in Warwickshire granted property in Nuneaton to him, his brother, Henry, and Viscount Beaumont. This tenuous connexion with Nuneaton is significant for it implies that our MP was a close relative of Maud Everingham, who had in 1448 been appointed prioress there at the recommendation of Queen Margaret. This implication is confirmed by a plea sued in the same year: our MP and the prioress, as administrators of the goods and chattels of John Perott, of Stoke Bardolph in Nottinghamshire sued Richard Haley, prior of Thurgarton, for a debt of £40. Since the manor of Stoke Bardolph had been part of the inheritance of Beaumont’s first wife, it is a fair speculation that Maud, through Thomas, was also associated with the viscount and that she owed the queen’s recommendation to this association.19 C219/15/7; Add. Ch. 48675; Letters Margaret of Anjou (Cam. Soc. lxxxvi), no. 134; VCH Warws. ii. 68; CP40/761, rot. 209d.

On 1 Mar. 1453 Everingham was again elected to represent his adopted county in Parliament. A week later, when Parliament was in session, he witnessed a grant by John Chiselden* (then sitting for Rutland) to Viscount Beaumont’s son and others of the keepership of Rutland forest.20 C219/16/2; CCR, 1447-54, p. 441. While there can be little doubt that his association with Beaumont stretched back to the early 1440s, the best evidence of the closeness of their relationship dates from the mid to late 1450s. At an unknown date between July 1455 and July 1459 the viscount wrote to his son-in-law, John, Lord Lovell, asking that his ‘wilbeloved’ Thomas Everingham be appointed to the stewardship of the manor of Bagworth in Leicestershire. Lovell, acknowledging Everingham to be ‘a good and a feithfull gentilman’, willingly acceded to the request.21 Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, i. 442-3. In the context of his association with Beaumont, Everingham’s reappointment as customs collector in Kingston-upon-Hull on 22 Mar. 1455 is also significant, for it came the day after another Beaumont servant, John Truthall*, had been appointed to the same office in Boston. At about this time Beaumont also appears to have come to Everingham’s assistance in local politics. Although the dispute is poorly documented, it is clear that since his marriage our MP had been defending his wife’s daughters against their grandfather Sir Robert Moton’s attempts to disinherit them. According to Nichols this dispute was settled in the mid 1450s by Beaumont’s arbitration, which secured the descent of a significant part of the Moton inheritance to the two girls.

The surviving evidence suggests that Everingham figured only infrequently in the transactions of his neighbours. In 1448 he was a feoffee in property in Leicester, acting either for Thomas Charite* or William Walesby, dean of Newarke College; six years later, with his brother Henry, he acted in a settlement made in favour of John Peyto and his wife, Eleanor, daughter of a senior member of the royal household, Robert Manfeld*; and in 1455 he was a feoffee of a minor figure, John Luffe of Wigston.22 Wyggeston Hosp. Recs. ed. Thompson, nos. 614, 1032-3, 1036; CPR, 1452-61, p. 159. Although in the early 1450s he acted in a series of fines through which his friend, Henry Filongley, purchased the manor of Barkby near Leicester, this was a reflection of their mutual Household service rather than his local standing.23 CP25(1)/126/76/72, 75, 77/82; Leics. Village Notes ed. Farnham, i. 121-2. Significantly his name does not appear in the transactions of the leading gentry of his adopted county. His comparative isolation perhaps reflected the fact that he was an import by marriage into his county of residence, or else it may have been a product of prolonged absences at the royal court.

What is known of Everingham’s last years demonstrates that he was as committed to the Lancastrian cause as was his master Beaumont. On 21 Apr. 1455 he was summoned, as one of the two Leicestershire representatives, to the Great Council scheduled to meet at Leicester on the following 21 May, and it is a fair speculation that he fought for the King at the first battle of St. Albans when the Yorkist lords violently intervened to prevent the meeting of that assembly. On 14 Oct. 1456 he was appointed for the third time to the office of customs collector at Kingston-upon-Hull, and while in office was commissioned in the following October to arrest all ships in the port to serve against the King’s enemies.24 PPC, vi. 341; CFR, xix. 105, 107, 108. In 1457 he was a joint-feoffee with a leading Lancastrian magnate, James Butler, earl of Wiltshire, in a manor in Dorset; in April 1458 he took the precaution of securing a general pardon as ‘late of Beverley, esquire, late of New Hall, customer of Hull’; and later in the same year he was belatedly appointed to the Leicestershire bench. It is alike a measure of his wealth, or, more accurately, his wife’s, and the strength of his political sympathies that, between March 1455 and November 1458, he made three loans totalling 400 marks to the increasingly impecunious King.25 CCR, 1454-61, p. 213; C67/42, m. 24; E401/843, m. 41; 853, m. 5; 864, m. 8.

At about this date Everingham’s Lancastrian associations were yet further strengthened by the marriage of his stepdaughter, Anne Moton, whose rights he had so energetically protected, to William Grimsby*, a high-ranking member of the Household and an MP with him in the Parliament of February 1449. Given his connexions it is surprising that he did not accompany his brother Henry and Grimsby to the Coventry Parliament of 1459. He did, however, gain from the attainder of the Yorkist lords in that assembly. On 10 May 1460 he was granted for life, ‘for good service to Henry V and the King in the wars beyond seas and against the rebels’, the stewardship of the duke of York’s soke of Cottingham with £10 p.a. for wages.26 CPR, 1452-61, p. 580.

So committed was Everingham to Henry VI that the death of Beaumont and the Yorkist victory at the battle of Northampton in the following July marked a complete and irreversible change in his fortunes. He was removed from the bench and was correctly seen by the new government as an irreconcilable supporter of the old. On 6 Mar. 1461 he was one of those specifically excluded from the pardon issued by Edward IV, and it is thus possible that he had fought at the battle of Wakefield. He is known to have been in arms at the decisive battle of Towton, and, as he is described as a knight in the Act of Attainder passed against him by the Yorkists, it appears that he was knighted there.27 PROME, xiii. 42-44, 49-51; CCR, 1461-8, p. 55. As he held very little property in his own right and had no issue, this attainder was largely a matter of academic importance. It is tempting to think that he died on the field of Towton, but, in July 1461, he and Robert Forster, as former customs collectors in Kingston-upon-Hull, were represented by attorney in the Exchequer of pleas when sued for debt.28 E13/147, rots. 7, 14. This may, however, be no more than legal inertia, and our MP does not appear as living in any later record. On 17 Nov. 1468 his forfeited property in Beverley – a messuage and garden, valued at no more than 20s. p.a. – was granted to its feudal overlord, George Neville, archbishop of York. Although his widow survived until as late as 1474 she did not take a fourth husband.29 CIMisc. viii. 395; CPR, 1467-77, p. 114; C140/49/21.