BLENNERHASSET, John

Blennerhasset was from a leading Carlisle family with a tradition of parliamentary service. Another John had sat for the city twice in the early 1380s, and Ralph Blennerhasset represented it in the Parliament of 1413 (May). The family pedigree cannot be accurately constructed, but it is likely that Alan Blennerhasset, mayor of the city for several terms between 1370 and 1390 and perhaps the elder brother of the MP of the early 1380s, had three sons, namely Ralph (the MP of 1413), Robert, who was one of Alan’s executors, and John, who was probably the eldest son.1 For Alan’s executors: CP40/592, rot. 187. Both Robert and Ralph enjoyed successful careers. Robert became a London mercer: CP40/682, rot. 117d. Ralph was the progenitor of the Blennerhassets of Frenze in Norf.: CP40/701, rot. 26; C.F. Richmond, Paston Fam., Endings, 210-12. By Easter term 1400 John had made an excellent marriage to one of the daughters and eventual coheiresses of Sir Clement Skelton, who held the manor of Orton just outside the city.2 Alan appears to have invested heavily in this marriage. In Easter term 1400 he had a significant estate, namely 11 messuages, 24 tofts, some 400 acres of land and an annual rent of 44s. 8d. in Carlisle and its surrounding vills, settled on himself for life with remainder to the couple: CP25(1)/35/13/1 The groom was dead by the autumn of 1409 when his widow had taken a husband more appropriate to her rank, the wealthy Northumbrian knight, Sir John Middleton*. The MP of 1442 was probably her eldest son, who, from the moment he came of age, played a very active part in the affairs of Carlisle. This identification cannot, however, be certain, for there was a contemporary namesake. They are usually distinguished in the records – the one (the son of the heiress), described as ‘esquire’ or ‘gentleman’, and the other as ‘merchant’ – but the election return of 1442 gives the MP no designation.3 C219/15/2 (misfiled between returns of Oxon./Berks. and Rutland). For this reason both careers, which ran rather in parallel, are outlined here, although the probability is that the MP was the more important of the two men, that is, the eldest son of the heiress, and the cursus above reflects this assumption.

This John first appears in the records in 1420, when, in company with his putative uncle, Robert, he served as bailiff of Carlisle. Three years later, despite his youth, he was elected mayor.4 C219/12/4; Cumbria RO, Carlisle, Musgrave of Edenhall mss, D/Mus/Carlisle. Interestingly, however, even at this early stage of his career and long before he inherited his mother’s lands, he had a standing outside his native city. In 1425 he attested the Cumberland county parliamentary election, a role he was to discharge intermittently for the rest of his career; and in 1429 he made the first of several appearances as a juror at the annual sessions of gaol delivery.5 C219/13/3; JUST3/11/3, m. 7. From 1438 until the records fail in 1451 he was a juror nearly every year: JUST3/11/10-21. Further, in 1434 he was among the Cumberland landholders nominated to take the parliamentary oath not to maintain peace-breakers, and in the county’s return for the subsidy of 1435-6 he was assessed at £5 p.a., a more significant income in Cumberland than in wealthier counties.6 E179/90/26; CPR, 1429-36, p. 383.

None of Blennerhasset’s fellow citizens could match this record, and it is not therefore surprising that his mayoralty of 1423-4 was the first of many. On this evidence, he was long the most important citizen of Carlisle, and this is reflected in his frequent elections as mayor. Between 1429 and 1444 he is known to have served eight terms in the office, five of them consecutively between 1429 and 1434, and, since not all the city’s mayors can be discovered, there can be little doubt that he served more frequently both within and on either side of these dates.7 Cumbria RO, Carlisle, Carlisle city recs. Ca4/128, 194; Aglionby of Nunnery mss, D/Ay1/129; Musgrave of Edenhall mss, D/Mus/E138; Cumbria RO, Whitehaven, Pennington-Ramsden mss, D/Pen/47/16; CPR, 1436-41, p. 502. On occasion he was able to turn the office to his advantage. On 26 Jan. 1431, for example, he joined two other citizens in leasing from the civic community all the ditches surrounding the city walls for 20 years, at a modest annual rent of 10s.8 Carlisle city recs. Ca5/1/21.

Such perquisites of office were no doubt considered legitimate, but there is some indirect evidence that the dominance of the office by Blennerhasset and another citizen, William Denton, led to tension. This, at least is one interpretation of the city ordinance issued on 26 Oct. 1445. This was designed both to place a restraint on the mayor’s power by imposing upon him a permanent council of 11 and to set a limit to involvement in the mayor’s election by confining the franchise to a self-perpetuating group of 36, comprising the mayor, his council and 24 of their nominees.9 Ibid. Ca2/15. Although Blennerhasset was among those appointed under this ordinance to the inaugural council, this does not exclude the possibility that his conduct as mayor, an office he held so frequently before 1444, was related to the perception that a council was required to limit mayoral influence.

The death of Blennerhasset’s mother, at a very advanced age, on 17 Mar. 1450 promised a further advancement in his status.10 Interestingly, Blennerhasset’s namesake, the merchant, was a juror in the inqs. post mortem taken on her death and on that of her sister, both of which returned Blennerhasset as one of the heirs: C139/137/5, 16. On 24 Oct. 1451 the escheator of Cumberland was ordered to deliver to him his share of her lands, principally a third of the manors of Great Stainton by Penrith and Orton (with a third of the advowson of the church of St. Giles in Orton).11 C139/137/5; CFR, xviii. 265. He now very much counted among the shire gentry, but, curiously, he appears to have become less active. The remaining references to him are few. One of these, however, is interesting, for it provides firmer evidence than the ordinance of 1445 of a tension between him and other of the leading men of Carlisle. At an unknown date in the early 1460s the mayor and citizens petitioned the chancellor. They complained that the other John Blennerhasset (the merchant), while mayor in 1455-6, had taken two bonds for the city’s benefit, one for £73 6s. from two merchant staplers of York, William Stocton II* and Richard Lematon*, and the other in £20 16s. from two merchants of Kingston-upon-Hull, John Day† and John Middleton, but on leaving office he had handed the bonds to his namesake (the esquire), his successor as mayor, who now refused to sue on them. This, according to the petition, was particularly damaging because the sums that might be raised upon them were necessary for the defence of Carlisle, which stood in ‘greet iuberte ... in this werre tyem’. This strongly suggests that the petition is to be dated to soon before or soon after June 1461, when the city had been unsuccessfully besieged by the Lancastrians.12 C1/27/194.

Another cause of potential conflict between Blennerhasset and the city were outstanding debts allegedly due by him and other members of his family. In August 1464, when the city’s accounts for the period 1458-63 were audited, he was found to owe 8s. as the arrears of the rent of a shop and a further £6 16s. 10d. on a bond he had entered into as long before as 1439. At the same time it was decreed in the city court that those refusing to render account to the corporation should be disenfranchised, probably an empty threat in the case of a family as prominent as his.13 Carlisle city recs. Ca2/16; Ca4/138. In any event, by this date he was an old man, and his son, another John, was already beginning to assume his role in the city’s affairs.14 The son was active by 1458, when he joined his father as a juror at the inq. post mortem of their kinsman, John Skelton II*: C139/167/11. He died on 7 Sept. 1471, when the son was said to be 30 years old.15 CFR, xx. 5; C140/38/51.

The other candidate as MP in 1442 was a merchant, at least so he is generally described in the records. The relationship between the two namesakes was a close one, and they were probably first cousins, although they may even have been brothers. They were of a similar age. When the two of them appeared as jurors in the proof of age taken at Carlisle in respect of another leading citizen, John Denton, on 19 June 1442, their ages were given as 52 and 50, although oddly the merchant, on this occasion styled ‘junior’ against the other’s ‘senior’, was erroneously said to be the elder.16 CIPM, xxv. 615. Other evidence confirms that the merchant was the younger man. He does not first appear in the records until 1432, some years after his namesake’s career had begun, when, as ‘of Carlisle, merchant’, he had pleas of debt totalling over £30 pending in the court of common pleas against several local men. Thereafter he appears regularly as a litigant. In June 1438, for example, he appeared, now described as ‘mercer’, in the Carlisle court to claim a small debt as the administrator of the goods of one Maud Bowcher.17 CP40/687, rot. 275; 688, rot. 229; Carlisle city recs. Ca3/1/11. This Blennerhasset’s mercantile interests were matched by property interests in the town. These are ill-documented, but on 11 Dec. 1438 he leased for 15 years from Thomas del Sandes a tenement in the ‘via piscatorum’, lying between his own barn there and a tenement of his namesake (here given the elevated description of ‘esquire’).18 Aglionby of Nunnery mss, D/Ay1/129. Like his namesake, he also played a part in county affairs, albeit a smaller one. In 1440, 1447 and perhaps also 1451 both men served on the annual gaol delivery jury.19 JUST3/11/12, 19, 21. Described as ‘mercer’ he was also on the panel in 1448: JUST3/11/20. More interestingly, both attested the county election of 1453, when the Neville interest predominated.20 C219/16/2. His role in civic affairs was a less prominent one than his namesake. Both were named to the mayor’s council established in 1445, and in 1455-6 the merchant served his only known term as mayor.21 Carlisle city recs. Ca2/15. This led him into litigation: one of Carlisle’s MPs of 1455, John Bere III*, sued him in the court of King’s bench for £13 2s. as unpaid parliamentary wages.22 KB27/784, rot. 50d; 785, rot. 48; 786, rot. 41. The suit was still pending in 1458, when the sheriff, Richard Salkeld, was fined for his failure to return a writ of outlawry against the defendant: KB27/790, fines rot. 1d.

The merchant’s next appearance in the records was also as a defendant: in 1463 Eleanor, widow of Ralph Dacre*, Lord Dacre, claimed £20 against him.23 Here he is described as haberdasher: CP40/808, rot. 92d. In the following year he was, like his namesake, in debt to the city authorities, allegedly owing them 49s. 8d., a modest sum perhaps reflecting the fact he was one of the citizens before whom the account was audited.24 Carlisle city recs. Ca4/138. By this date there is a danger in conflating the merchant not only with his elder namesake but also with that namesake’s son, but, given his long experience in trade, it was probably the merchant who, at the beginning of the Readeption, was named as both searcher of ships and tronager and pesager in the port of Kingston-upon-Hull.25 CFR, xx. 277; CPR, 1467-77, p. 229. These appointments raise the possibility that the Blennerhassets had a connexion with the Nevilles, perhaps mediated through Richard Salkeld†, who in the 1460s had been constable of Carlisle castle under the warden of the west march, Richard Neville, earl of Warwick. Significantly, on 22 July 1471, Alan Blennerhasset, then bailiff of Carlisle, was among those pardoned along with Salkeld, presumably for supporting the Readeption.26 Carlisle city recs. Ca5/1/28; CPR, 1467-77, p. 277. Such speculation aside, it is likely that the merchant died at about the same time as the other John Blennerhasset, for nothing is known of him after 1470.