GRA, Sir John

Gra hailed from a prosperous dynasty of York merchants with an outstanding record of parliamentary service: between 1343 and 1397 his grandfather and father represented the city of York on at least 26 occasions. It was as an executor of his father’s will that he first appeared in an active role, but he was not destined to succeed him as one of the leading men of York.5 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 218-20; Yorks. Arch. Jnl. xv. 186-7. His mother’s lands enabled him to complete the transformation from mercantile to landed family. Through her he inherited a valuable Lincolnshire estate, consisting principally of the manors of North Ingleby (Lindsey) and Multon Hall in Frampton (Holland), to add to his father’s much less valuable lands, lying mostly in the North Riding of Yorkshire.6 CIPM, xix. 138; P.R. Coss, Foundations of Gentry Life, 12-13; Feudal Aids, vi. 550; VCH Yorks. (N. Riding), ii. 94, 142-3. According to Feudal Aids, vi. 611, Gra was in the wardship of Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, in 1401-2, although his mother is not known to have held any property of the Percys.

By August 1411 Gra had augmented the advantages of respectable landed wealth with that of a well-connected bride in Margaret Swillington. Within a decade she was to become, most unexpectedly, a substantial heiress: on the death of her paternal half-brother, Sir Robert, at the siege of Melun in October 1420, she came into the great Swillington inheritance (she became the common-law heiress of the Swillingtons on the death of her full brother, Sir John, in April 1418, but it was Sir Robert who was heir-in-tail). Just what this apparent good fortune meant financially to her husband is illustrated by a valor of the mid 1420s. The total clear annual value of his lands, both his own and the more valuable ones he held in right of his wife, was put at as much as £327, exclusive of the reversions of the dower and jointure interests of two Swillington widows.7 Magdalen Coll., Misc. 325.

All thus seemed set fair for Gra to enjoy a highly successful career. Indeed, even leaving aside financial considerations, the foundations of such a career had already been well laid. He had fought with energy and distinction in Henry V’s French wars. Knighted during the Agincourt campaign, he served in the Harfleur garrison under Thomas Beaufort, earl of Dorset, in 1416, and then participated in the campaign for the reduction of Normandy between 1417 and 1420.8 DKR, xliv. 571, 592, 607, 614, 621; E101/47/39; 51/2, m. 40; 69/3/375; 70/3/624; C1/6/291. This had led naturally on to a role in local politics: election to Parliament for Lincolnshire in 1422 was followed by immediate royal recognition of his local weight in promotion to the judicial bench of Lindsey.9 C219/13/1; CPR, 1422-9, p. 566. Had normal expectations been realised he should have continued to prosper, but he did not.

One important reason for this reversal of fortune may have been Gra’s financial extravagance. As early as 1413 he was borrowing large sums: in that year he mortgaged his lands in Saltfleetby and Somercotes to the serjeant-at-law, Walter Askham, for £140. Although he successfully redeemed them, by the mid 1420s his debts had become onerous. According to the valor cited above nearly £200 of his annual income was committed to the repayment of debts. Such a burden meant that he was continually mortgaging one parcel of land after another, and being troubled by pleas of debt against him in the royal courts.10 Saltfleetby deeds, 10, 18, 33a, 35, 50; Durham RO, Salvin pprs. D/5a/D 1292, 1376, 1377. One such plea led to his outlawry in the London hustings in July 1415, and in the following autumn he sold his small Leicestershire manor of Hoby to the lawyer Bartholomew Brokesby*.11 KB27/646, rot. 30d; Bodl. Wood empt. 7, f. 142d. Although he continued to fight in France after Henry V’s death – he may have fought at the battle of Cravant in 1423 and was certainly at Verneuil in 1424 – it is too much to believe that this indebtedness was solely due to the costs of a military career.12 Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of Eng. in France ed. Stevenson, ii (2), 385, 394. But, whatever its cause, its consequences were destructive.

Just as fortune had dealt Gra what appeared to be a very good hand when his wife became a great heiress, it dealt him a very poor one when she died childless.13 ‘John Gra of Swillington, gentleman’, who was sued in 1435 by the King’s attorney in the ct. of c.p. for hunting without licence in the royal parks of Pontefract and Altofts, cannot have been the son of this marriage: CP40/698, rot. 407. Had he been, our MP could have claimed courtesy in Margaret’s estates, and he would have been spared his later difficulties. Her death in 1429 and his inability to secure a life interest in any part of her extensive estates left him with a burden of debt his own lands could hardly support. By the mid 1430s his income had fallen from above £300 p.a. to a modest £87 p.a.14 E179/240/269, m. 9. It was this imbalance between debt and income that brought him the great troubles under which he was to labour until very near the end of his life. The marriage to the Swillington heiress had not been a happy one. By October 1423 the couple were estranged and Margaret was living with her aunt, Margaret, the wife of Sir William Haryngton of Hornby. A little over a year later, on 7 Nov. 1424, Gra was obliged to enter into an undertaking in Chancery to keep the peace towards his wife, which was probably her condition for returning to him.15 CPR, 1446-52, p. 457; CCR, 1422-9, p. 189. He had strong reasons for wanting her back: it was vital to his prosperity that either she should bear him a child or alternative arrangements be made to allow him a life interest in her lands. Even before the estrangement some steps had been taken to avoid the disaster to his fortunes inherent in the possibility of her early death. In Trinity term 1421 final concords were levied which gave him a life interest in the Nottinghamshire manors of Gonalston and Widmerpool and the Derbyshire manors of South Wingfield and Tibshelf. This settlement was extended at about the time the couple were reunited: a further fine was levied in Michaelmas term 1424 giving Gra a life interest in the manors of Bunny (Nottinghamshire) and Crich (Derbyshire). Together these six manors were worth about £120 p.a. and would greatly have softened the blow of Margaret’s death.16 CP(25)/186/38/13; 292/66/70, 69/212; CPR, 1422-9, p. 270; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, i. 208.

These settlements, however, did not end the crisis in Gra’s finances. He resorted to further borrowing, and as a result he had his first dealings with his wealthy neighbour, Ralph, Lord Cromwell. On 4 Nov. 1424, only three days before he undertook to keep the peace to his wife, he entered into an agreement with that powerful lord, then a member of the minority council. Cromwell promised to use his influence to secure the estranged couple a pardon for their unlicensed alienation of the manors of Bunny and Crich, and to pay 100 marks to Gra and a further 200 marks to Gra’s creditors; in return, Gra undertook to assign lands worth £100 p.a. to Cromwell as surety for the repayment of the 300 marks.17 CP40/658, rot. 411.

Later, Gra’s dealings with the ruthless Cromwell were to bring him to ruin, but, ironically, they did so as a result of another piece of what appeared at first sight to have been a new piece of good fortune. As death beckoned Margaret, her attitude to her husband underwent a complete transformation. By the time she drew up her will on 5 Oct. 1429, only two days before her death, she had become either so devoted to or so dominated by her husband that she made an extraordinary bequest. She instructed her executors, of whom Gra was the principal, to sell all her lands and to put the proceeds to his use.18 York Memoranda Bk. iii (Surtees Soc. clxxxvi), 99-100. In other words, Gra was to have the cash value of the lands. But these great estates were not Margaret’s to will away. Very nearly the entire Swillington estate was entailed. Her husband was to pay dearly for her misplaced generosity. Disastrously for Gra, among those who stood to lose most by this settlement was Cromwell, who, with his characteristic efficiency, acted quickly to assert his claims. By manipulating the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire jurors at Margaret’s inquisition post mortem he secured from the Crown a grant of livery of seisin of the manors of Gonalston, Widmerpool, Tibshelf and South Wingfield, despite her husband’s claims to a life interest under the fines of 1421 and 1424.19 Cromwell’s claim to these manors was no better than Gra’s. The rightful heir was Sir Henry Pierrepont*: Nottingham Med. Studies, xxx. 67-96. Sir John could now hope to achieve little beyond a compromise. On 25 Feb. 1430 he and Cromwell entered mutual bonds in £1,000 to abide the arbitration of three councillors of John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk. Two days later, the award was returned: in exchange for releasing his claim to a life interest in the four manors, Gra was to have an annual rent charge of 40 marks for life and to sue out livery of the manors of Bunny and Crich. The latter was, however, an empty concession, for Cromwell had already initiated legal action against him for these manors, and judgement was given in his favour in the following July.20 E13/139, rot. 20; C241/226/4; Magdalen Coll., Cartae Regiae 91; Nottingham Med. Studies, xxx. 75; CCR, 1429-35, p. 10; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 290-4.

Gra made even less progress in his attempts to secure any other part of the Swillington estates. While Cromwell’s claim to a portion of them was contestable at law, that to the bulk of the estates by the Suffolk esquire, John Hopton, was not. Despite resorting to a blatant act of forgery, Gra could not prevent Hopton entering the Yorkshire and East Anglian properties to which he was entitled under entails made by Sir Roger Swillington.21 Richmond, 23-25. From his wife’s great inheritance Gra was thus left only with a few vague claims that he could never realistically hope to make good. Yet worse, he had incurred the enmity of Cromwell and was saddled with a burden of debt his now much reduced resources could hardly hope to bear.

Faced with such a desperate situation it is not surprising that Gra took the opportunity provided by Henry VI’s coronation expedition to make plans for resuming his military career. On 10 Apr. 1430 he conveyed his manors of North Ingleby and Multon Hall to a group of five feoffees, headed by John Haket, treasurer of the cathedral church of Lincoln and one of Margaret Gra’s executors, and on 1 May he took out letters of protection as about to embark for France in the retinue of the duke of Norfolk.22 Magdalen Coll., Multon Hall deeds, 90a, 71a, 101a; Estate Pprs. 179/1; DKR, xlviii. 271, 276. He then set about what was either a re-scheduling of his debts or else a raising of the money necessary for going to France. On 10 May his feoffees demised his manor of Multon Hall to the wealthy surgeon, Thomas Morstead, a money-lender on a considerable scale to whom Gra had been indebted in the past, on the condition that the feoffment be void if certain financial commitments were met. Before 28 Sept. 1440, Gra was to pay Morstead in the church of St. Paul’s, London, 400 marks plus £18 for each year that passed before payment was made. To set against this, he was to have an allowance of the annual value of the manor for each year before payment.23 Multon Hall deeds, 1; Estate Pprs. 179/1.

This new settlement failed to resolve Gra’s financial problems. He appears to have remained too impoverished to go to France, for he was still lingering in London as late as 9 Nov.24 CPR, 1429-36, p. 56. Instead, he devoted himself to the one obvious solution to his mounting difficulties, namely the finding of another rich wife. In this he was soon at least partially successful. Before 9 Apr. 1431 he had married Thomasina Fauconer, the daughter of a wealthy London mercer. She brought him her jointure interest in three small Kentish manors belonging to the Cobhams of Sterborough, and perhaps on the death of her father in 1434, his lands as well, although this must remain doubtful.25 There is some evidence that she was her father’s sole heiress and yet none that she ever enjoyed his lands. Moreover, the negotiations for her marriage to Stephen Scrope were conducted on the basis that she was not an heiress: Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, ii. 114-15. For her jointure: C140/51/19; Multon Hall deeds, 47. She also brought important social connexions, for one of her sisters-in-law was Eleanor Cobham, the wife of so great a man as Humphrey, duke of Gloucester.

Unfortunately, this augmentation of his financial and political resources did nothing to halt Gra’s decline, for he soon found himself once more at odds with Cromwell. On 1 June 1431 the latter sued out a writ seeking execution against Gra of the £1,000 recognizance of the previous year.26 C131/63/1. Since, as far as one can tell, Gra had discharged his responsibilities under this recognizance by accepting the award of Norfolk’s councillors, this action was probably unjustified and intended to harry him out of even his 40-mark annuity. He responded by suing out a writ of scire facias against Cromwell on the grounds that he had fulfilled the terms of the recognizance, and Cromwell was duly summoned to appear before the King in Chancery. But this availed Gra little. According to his later complaint, after he himself had delivered the writ summoning Cromwell to the Lincolnshire sheriff, Sir Thomas Cumberworth*, in Lincoln castle on 28 July 1431, Cumberworth made the fraudulent return that Cromwell, comfortably the richest man in Lincolnshire, had nothing in his bailiwick by which he might be warned.27 C245/36/50; E13/139, rot. 20. Cromwell himself was absent in France throughout these proceedings. Meanwhile Cromwell’s own action went on unimpeded and resulted in Gra’s loss of his annuity.

Matters were soon to become yet worse. Sir John’s growing indebtedness made it increasingly likely that he would either have to sell land or else mortgage it on terms so unfavourable as to put it beyond his resources to redeem. It was this that no doubt prompted Cromwell to take over his large debt to Morstead. That he should do so was part of a long and complex agreement he made with Gra on 14 Feb. 1434. Under its final article he undertook to pay Morstead the money due to him under the terms of the mortgage; in return, Gra’s feoffees were to convey Multon Hall to him under the same terms as Morstead had held it.28 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 304-5; Richmond, 19-20. This transfer was, however, only part of the agreement. Another involved what was probably a straight sale by Gra to Cromwell of his lands in Miningsby near Tattershall. The latter was also to have an option to buy any other lands which Gra might decide or be obliged to sell, subject only to Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and his wife Eleanor having first refusal. But by far the most interesting of the articles of agreement is that under which Sir John asked to be forgiven for slandering Cromwell. The nature of this slander is not revealed, but a later Chancery petition implies that Cromwell had been traduced as a usurer.29 Magdalen Coll., Misc. 317. For a similar accusation made by Gra against another creditor: C1/19/19.

Subsequently, Cromwell was to exploit the minor clauses of this 1434 agreement as tools with which to undermine the terms of the mortgage. In the court of common pleas in Trinity term 1437 he sued Gra for insignificant infringements of its terms.30 CP40/706, rot. 438. Gra replied by petitioning the King, early in the Parliament of November 1439, against what he claimed to be Cromwell’s unjust withholding of Multon Hall.31 Most of what follows is drawn from a petition presented in the last session of the Parl. of 1445-6, i.e. bet. 24 Jan. and 9 Apr. 1446: Estate Pprs. 128/1. The 1439 petition does not survive. There is good evidence to support his assertion that on 18 May 1437 he had laid down 269 marks 2s. 2d. in St. Paul’s to redeem his manor, but that the mortgagee had refused to accept the proffer.32 Multon Hall deeds, 10, is a declaration of a public notary that this proffer was witnessed by Reynold Kentwood, dean of St. Paul’s, and the two London sheriffs of 1436-7, William Gregory and, ironically, Thomas Morstead. At this point the dispute was put out to arbitration. According to a later petition of Gra, early in 1440, as Parliament reassembled at Reading, Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, and John, Lord Scrope of Masham, acted as mediators between the two parties at Caversham and persuaded them to submit to the award of the duke of Gloucester. It is difficult to see why Cromwell was prepared to accept such an arbiter, given his long-standing hostility to, and his rival’s connexion with, the King’s uncle. In addition to the family connection through their wives, Gra had served on the duke’s Calais expedition of August 1436, and at an unknown date before 27 Dec. 1443 the duke acted as one of his feoffees in the manor of North Ingleby.33 Saltfleetby deeds, 36a; CPR, 1446-52, p. 458. Further, it was probably as a servant of the duke that, on 17 July 1439, he was among those who offered surety for the appearance of Owen Tudor alias Owen ap Meridith, widower of Queen Katherine of Valois, before the King and council: CCR, 1435-41, pp. 284-5. What, however, Cromwell was not prepared to accept was the award itself, which was returned in Trinity term 1440 in Gra’s favour. Despite the indefensibility of his position in equity if not in common law, he refused to adhere to its terms.

Gra was back to square one and his position was soon to deteriorate further. On 26 July 1441, before the justices of assize at Lincoln, a jury returned a verdict in Cromwell’s favour over Sir John’s alleged failure to observe the 1434 agreement, and then added injustice to injustice by assessing damages at 500 marks (far more than was warranted by the alleged offence) and costs at a further 200 marks.34 CP40/720, rot. 324. But the persistent Gra was not to be deterred by such manipulation of the common law against him. At the beginning of the Parliament of 25 Jan. 1442 he presented two bills and a schedule to the King complaining of the wrongs he had suffered at Cromwell’s hands. The King responded favourably, commanding the chancellor, Bishop Stafford, to see, by the advice of the justices, that right was done. Hereafter the chronology of the dispute becomes slightly confused, but it is clear that, in either October 1443 or May 1444, the judges assembled in the Exchequer chamber declared Cromwell’s retention of Multon Hall unlawful, and Gra’s feoffees, who had been intimidated by Cromwell, were summoned into Chancery to explain why they would not re-enter the manor.35 C1/19/262; Estate Pprs. 128/1.

It is remarkable that Gra was able to make even this much progress, for he did so in absentia. He was represented in the Exchequer chamber by his able wife Thomasina because he himself had been outlawed at some date between 1 Sept. 1442 and 31 Aug. 1443. Again, it may be that he had Cromwell to thank for this, although this is nowhere explicitly stated in the surviving documents. In a petition of 1446 he claimed that he was outlawed on an action of debt by Christopher Warter of London, ironically one of those who had witnessed his proffer to Cromwell in May 1437, but that this was done both against the plaintiff’s intent and unjustly because the debt was extinct. If this is true, it is difficult to see why Gra could not have had the outlawry speedily revoked and why he should still have been suffering under it as late as 1446. In his petition of that year he complained that he had been put from his liberty, having taken up residence in the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey, and thus was unable to sue a writ of attaint against the jurors who had awarded heavy costs and damages against him in 1441 or to take other necessary common law action.

It was thus from sanctuary that Gra heard of the Exchequer chamber verdict in his favour. But even this verdict was insufficient to overcome his rival’s determined intransigence. The summons of Gra’s feoffees into Chancery proved to be no remedy, and the next we hear of the case involves a further petition to the King in Parliament presented by Gra from sanctuary in Michaelmas term 1445. This does not survive but it appears to have prompted the King himself to take a personal interest in what clearly had become something of a cause célèbre. After the prorogation on 15 Dec. 1445 Henry VI told Thomasina that she and her husband would have justice when Parliament came together on 24 Jan. Gra pressed the advantage by presenting a further petition on the reassembly, reciting a detailed history of the dispute and asking that Cromwell be ordered to deliver Multon Hall to his feoffees along with the profits taken since the mortgage should have terminated. He further asked that his own outlawry be declared void so releasing him to sue for additional redress at common law.

Yet again, however, seemingly bright hopes were to be disappointed, although Gra’s outlawry does appear to have been cancelled. His rival continued to hold Multon Hall despite the verdicts against him, and the pace of Gra’s attempts to regain it slackened. Four years elapsed before he took the trouble to petition again. Early in the chancellorship of John Kemp, archbishop of York, that is some time after January 1450, he complained that Cromwell had collected more than 1,000 marks, over and above the 280 marks due to him from the profits of Multon Hall, since the mortgage should have terminated.36 C1/19/262. But Cromwell was not the only target of the petition, and here Sir John, for the first time in the dispute, had recourse to what appears to have been real ingenuity. In the late 1440s he sought to make legal capital out of an old feoffment. On 17 Apr. 1424, to protect his lands from his first wife, from whom he was then living apart, he had conveyed Multon Hall and other manors to, among others, John Talbot, Lord Furnival, with the condition that the feoffees should reconvey to him when required or else perform his last will.37 This charter was enrolled in Chancery as late as 19 Feb. 1448 and survives amongst the archives of Magdalen College only as a paper copy: CCR, 1447-54, p. 44; Multon Hall deeds, 70d. This gives some prima facie support to the allegation, made by Nicholas Girlington*, one of Gra’s many mortgagees, that it was a forgery, but this allegation was found to be groundless at an inquiry held in Jan. 1449: CPR, 1446-52, p. 457. He now claimed that Talbot, then earl of Shrewsbury, as one of his feoffees in Multon Hall, should have appeared in Chancery in compliance with the Exchequer chamber judgement of 1443 or 1444, but had been prevented from doing so by absence abroad. When he returned (at a date not specified in the petition but December 1450, when Talbot came home from a pilgrimage to Rome, is probably intended), Gra, or so he claimed, made a will requiring his feoffees to re-enfeoff him and the heirs of his body of Multon Hall, but Talbot failed to comply. Gra concluded his petition by asking that both Shrewsbury and Cromwell be summoned into Chancery: Cromwell to declare why Shrewsbury should not perform the will and to explain why he himself should not pay 1,000 marks to Gra.38 C1/19/262; A.J. Pollard, John Talbot, 131.

It is difficult to know exactly what is going on here, but a plausible explanation is that Sir John was hoping that Shrewsbury, as a great earl and personal friend of his recalcitrant rival, would be able to persuade Cromwell to restore Multon Hall in accordance with the judgement in the Exchequer chamber. But if this was his hope, he was to be disappointed. His rival continued in uninterrupted possession of Multon Hall, and Gra’s final ploy was the hopeless one of suing a writ of attaint against the jurors who had awarded 700 marks in damages and costs against him a decade earlier.39 KB27/765, rex rot. 10; 768, rot. 72; 770, fines rot. 1.

Gra’s determined and lengthy struggle against the odds had ended in complete defeat: all avenues of potential redress had been thoroughly explored and all had come to a dead end. To make matters worse, in Hilary term 1454 Cromwell added to his troubles by suing him for the 700 marks which were still outstanding and having him outlawed in May 1455 on his failure to answer.40 CP40/772, rot. 190; 773, rot. 237d; 775, rot. 190d. This is, however, not the end of the story. What finally came to Gra’s aid was something of which the law could take no account: a man’s fear for his immortal soul. This led Cromwell to order his executors to make restitution to those he had wronged, and Gra could be forgiven if he allowed himself a moment of celebration on hearing of his oppressor’s death on 4 Jan. 1456. There was now nothing to stop him taking the initiative and entering the disputed manor, one that he had not held in his own hands for more than a quarter of a century. But he went further than this, demanding £1,000 in compensation from Cromwell’s executors. What he got was rather less: the executors remitted to him the 700 marks adjudged against him in 1441.41 Estate Pprs. 179/1; Misc. 357.

Gra did not long survive to enjoy his new wealth, for he died shortly before 5 Dec. 1459 and was buried in the church of St. Margaret, Westminster.42 CFR, xix. 245; Multon Hall deeds, 47. He died intestate and administration of his goods was entrusted to a yeoman of Westminster, Richard Brasier: CP40/799, rot. 206d. Since he left no surviving issue he was free to do as he wished with his lands, and he made sure that his widow, Thomasina, who had so ably aided him during his troubles, was well provided for. He left her a life interest in almost his entire estate. He also ensured that he himself was not troubled by debt in his last years, by selling most of his lands in remainder to the Lancastrian servant, (Sir) Gervase Clifton*, who was destined to enjoy a career even more ill-fated than his own.43 Saltfleetby deeds, 2, 3, 37a, 38a, 40; Multon Hall deeds, 62; CP25(1)/145/160/30, 31; 161/23.