HALSALL, Henry

The Halsalls had been established at Halsall near Ormskirk from the early thirteenth century. Otto Halsall† represented the county in the Parliament of 1351, but it was for military rather than parliamentary service that the family were most notable. Our MP’s grandfather, Sir Gilbert Halsall, was a renowned soldier, campaigning in Portugal, Ireland and on the Scottish border in the 1380s and 1390s.3 Biog. Sketches MPs of Lancs. (Chetham Soc. ser. 2, xciii), 41-42; CPR, 1388-92, p. 223; 1391-6, p. 549; E101/41/18, mm. 1, 4, 12; C71/68, m. 7; 72, m. 2; C76/89, m. 11. His career, however, ended unhappily. He had fought in the royalist ranks at the battle of Radcot Bridge in December 1387 and at the end of Richard II’s reign was one of the King’s bodyguard. Loyalty prevented him reconciling himself to the change of regime in 1399 and he fell on the rebel side at the battle of Shrewsbury on 21 July 1403.4 S.K. Walker, Political Culture in Late Med. Eng. ed. Braddick and Harriss, 27; E101/42/10, m. 1; M.J. Bennett, Community, Class and Careerism, 212-13, 218. Soon after, on 12 Aug., a Lancashire knight, Sir Nicholas Atherton†, who had fought there on the opposite side, was rewarded with a royal grant of £100 from Sir Gilbert’s forfeited lands and goods.5 CPR, 1401-5, p. 252. Yet this forfeiture proved temporary and the loss to the family limited. By the spring of 1405 the family lands were in the hands of Sir Gilbert’s eldest son, Henry, a cleric who was then rector of the family living of Halsall and, from 1413, archdeacon of Chester. On 28 Apr. 1405 he entered into a contract with his neighbour, Henry Scarisbrick, for the marriage of his brother and effective heir, Robert, to Scarisbrick’s daughter Ellen. In return for a jointure of lands worth £10 p.a., the bride’s father agreed to pay a portion of as much as 200 marks.6 Lancs. RO, Scarisbrick deeds DDSc 43A/141. Clearly the circumstances of Sir Gilbert’s death had not compromised the Halsalls in the eyes of their neighbours and they very quickly established themselves as loyal Lancastrians.

Although it was not until Archdeacon Halsall’s death in March 1423 that Robert Halsall inherited the family estates, he played a modest part in local affairs throughout his adult career. On 2 Sept. 1413 Henry V granted him an annuity of £10 from the issues of Lancashire, and from 1415 to 1420 he served as escheator in the county.7 VCH Lancs. iii. 194; DL42/18, f. 166v; Somerville, i. 465. He left to his younger brother, another Sir Gilbert, the task of maintaining the family’s military tradition. The latter fought at the battles of Cravant and Verneuil, was briefly captain of Dreux and served as a banneret at the siege of Orleans in 1429.8 A.E. Curry, ‘Military Organization in Lancastrian Normandy’ (Council for National Academic Awards Ph. D. thesis), i. 159, 160n; ii, p. lxxi; Add. Ch. 11612. Thomas Halsall served under Sir Richard Haryngton at Evreux in the early 1430s: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, fr. 25770/732, 754. The family had influence and standing enough to make a good marriage for Robert’s son and heir: in November 1426 our MP, then almost of age, married into a junior branch of one of the county’s leading families, the Haryngtons of Hornby.9 On 27 Nov. 1426 our MP’s father settled various parcels of land in Halsall and elsewhere on the couple: Lancs. Inqs. ii (Chetham Soc. xcix), 87. This marriage had a long-term effect on his career, throughout which he remained on close terms with his wife’s elder brother, Sir Richard Haryngton, a famous soldier, and her first cousin, (Sir) Thomas Haryngton I*.

On his father’s death in 1429 Halsall succeeded to an estate concentrated in the south-west of Lancashire. Aside from his principal manor of Halsall, he inherited lesser manorial properties at nearby Renacres, Barton and Lydiate with other property in Downholland, Liverpool and elsewhere in the vicinity.10 Ibid. 84-91, 109-10. This estate was sufficient to give him a place among the principal families of the second rank of Lancashire gentry society. When a list was certified into Chancery in 1434 of those Lancashire gentry of sufficient standing to qualify to take the parliamentary oath not to maintain peace breakers, he was named only 56th of 68.11 CPR, 1429-36, p. 379. Lancashire was a county with many significant gentry – at least 21 knights were resident there in that year – and our MP was in a broad group of gentry below this knightly elite.

None the less, although Halsall was not from one of the leading county families, he had sufficient lands to underpin a career in the routine business of local administration. Soon after inheriting he was named as escheator, an office previously held not only by his father but, more surprisingly, also by his martial grandfather. Although it was not uncommon for escheators to serve for extended periods (the escheators of the county were not subject to the annual replacement that prevailed in nearly all counties), his own service was brief. After relinquishing office in the spring of 1431, he served as a juror at the inquisitions post mortem of two local knights, Sir Ralph Langton and (Sir) Ralph Longford*, in September 1431 and March 1432, and on 11 Dec. 1431 he was one of the jurors from the wapentake of West Derbyshire (in which Halsall lay) that made assessments towards an abortive levy on knights’ fees.12 Lancs. Inqs. ii. 29, 31; Feudal Aids, iii. 94.

Such modest activity hardly marks Halsall out as a likely candidate for election to Parliament early in his career. It is possible that he had won additional prestige through a brief period of service in France. A man of his name was present as a man-at-arms in the garrison at St. Germain en Laye and Pont du Poissy under John, Lord Talbot, in May 1435.13 Bibliothèque Nationale de France, fr. 25772/946. Yet such service fits uneasily with all else that is known of the MP’s career, and a later muster of the garrison, dating from when Halsall was sitting as an MP, describes the same man as an archer. The soldier is thus very probably to be identified with a lesser man, an archer recorded as serving in France and Ireland from 1423 to 1443.14 Ibid. 25772/1023; Add. Ch. 89; Reg. Abp. Swayne of Armagh ed. Chart, 147; E101/54/5, m. 11. The explanation for Halsall’s successive elections must be sought elsewhere, and it may be that his first election, on 19 Sept. 1435, reflected a lack of willingness on the part of better-qualified men to accept election. His fellow MP, Thomas Laurence*, was a younger son, albeit of a knightly family, and was not to be elected again. Significantly, the hustings were presided over by Laurence’s father, Sir Robert†, the county sheriff. Two conclusions are possible: either the sheriff improperly manipulated the election to secure his son’s election or he returned his son and Halsall because candidiates were hard to find. The comparatively modest rank of the leading attestors – unusually none of the county’s knights were present (or, if they were, their presence has not been recorded) – may support the second explanation. At the next hustings, held on 24 Dec. 1436 with the same sheriff presiding, Halsall was again elected. On this occasion, however, his fellow MP was a much more substantial figure, namely Thomas Haryngton I. Haryngton was then but a younger son, but he was from a family second only to the Stanleys in importance in Lancashire and was already making a name for himself in local affairs. His father, Sir William, headed the attestors, and the probability is that our MP owed his second election to his connexion with this family.15 Lancs. Knights of the Shire, 218-21.

In the 1440s and 1450s the county’s representation was dominated by the Stanleys and Haryngtons, and Halsall’s further electoral opportunities were limited. Most of what is known of him in these decades relates to his service to the latter family. On 10 May 1441, for example, he joined Sir Richard Haryngton in acknowledging debt of 50 marks to Thomas Urswyk I*, but it was with Sir Richard’s cousin Thomas Haryngton I that he was most closely connected. In March 1442 he stood surety when Thomas was granted custody of a manor during the minority of (Sir) John Boteler*. Later, on 21 Aug. 1445 he appeared with him before the justices of assize to offer surety of the peace for Haryngton’s brother-in-law, Alexander Radcliffe*; and in the following March he was party to a final concord by which Haryngton acquired the manor of Elston (although here the two were acting as feoffees for Sir Richard).16 PL14/155/6/4; PL15/8, rot. 36; DKR, xl. 536; Lancs. Final Concords (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. l), 112; VCH Lancs. vii. 114. In this context it is not surprising that when our MP first appears as an election attestor it was to witness the return of a Haryngton. On 6 Feb. 1447 he headed the 53 attestors to the election of his brother-in-law, Thomas Haryngton II*. A year later, on 4 Mar. 1448, he joined both Thomas Haryngtons in offering mainprise for Sir Nicholas Longford, then involved in a violent dispute with another Lancashire knight, Sir Edmund Trafford.17 Lancs. Knights of the Shire, 221-2; PL15/11, rot. 33d.

This very close connexion with so powerful a family brought Halsall a measure of advancement beyond his own county. He found a place in the royal household at about the time that Sir Richard Haryngton became its controller. He appears in the list of esquires of the hall and chamber for 1450-1 and 1451-2, the last two years of Henry VI’s reign for which such lists survive.18 E101/410/6, f. 40v; 9, f. 44v. He may also have enjoyed a more material benefit. In the summer of 1451 the Crown granted Thomas Haryngton I, by now a knight, the custody of a significant part of the lordship of Kendal in Lancashire and Westmorland, and our MP was joined with him in part of this grant. On 5 July 1451 they, together with Halsall’s cousin Henry Bold of Bold, were granted the keeping of two-thirds of the lordship of Troutbeck with other Westmorland property to hold for 24 years at an annual rent of over £40.19 CFR, xviii. 211.

At the end of the 1450s Halsall was faced with a problem of loyalty. His own service in the royal household, albeit perhaps only brief and peripheral, together with Sir Richard Haryngton’s continued attachment to the house of Lancaster, came to conflict with the increasing militancy of (Sir) Thomas Haryngton I. As an adherent of Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, Sir Thomas was destined to take a significant part on the Yorkist side in the campaign of the autumn of 1459. How Halsall viewed the conflict can only be a matter of speculation. The only indication is a feoffment he made on 20 Sept. 1459, only three days before the battle of Blore Heath. Perhaps he made it as preparation for fighting in the campaign. However this may be, his choice of feoffees suggests a desire to hedge his bets on the outcome of the conflict. The feoffees were headed by the two Haryngton knights and Robert Molyneux, who was from a family that went on to fight for Lancaster in the impending battle. 20 This feoffment is known only from an inq. held in 1479: Lancs. Inqs. ii. 109-10.

Halsall’s election to the Parliament of 1459 is to be viewed in this same context of divided loyalties. The Yorkist victory at Blore Heath had been negated by their rout at Ludford Bridge three weeks later and the branch of the Haryngtons represented by Sir Thomas, who had been captured by the Lancastrians, was now faced with ruin. The principal purpose of the Parliament was to attaint the Yorkists, and it is likely that our MP joined Sir Richard Haryngton in seeking election with the intention of doing what they could to prevent Sir Thomas’s forfeiture. At the hustings held at Lancaster on 12 Nov. they were duly returned by attestors headed by the eldest sons of the two Haryngton knights.21 Lancs. Knights of the Shire, 225-6. Unsurprisingly their efforts were in vain, and, in any event, both Sir Thomas and his eldest son, Sir John, fell in the Yorkist ranks at the battle of Wakefield in December 1460.

The loss of the patronage of (Sir) Thomas Haryngton I might have had a detrimental impact on Halsall’s career, but it does not seem to have done. Indeed, he adapted effortlessly to the change of regime and the new political landscape of his native county. In the last decade of his life he appears to have been a more important man than he had previously been. On 22 June 1464 Edward IV granted him a life annuity of £10 charged upon the issues of Lancashire, a grant that was exempted from the Act of Resumption of 1465.22 DL37/33/35; PROME, xiii. 200. His long-delayed promotion to the county bench provides further evidence of enhanced status. He is first recorded sitting as a j.p. on 20 Apr. 1465, when he attended a session at Manchester, and thereafter he was one of the most active justices, attending sessions not only in the south of the county, where his lands lay, but also in the north of the county at Garstang and Clitheroe.23 PL15/28, rot. 25; 29, rot. 13d; 30, rots. 27, 28; 31, rots. 30, 31d; 33, rot. 25; 34, rot. 35; 36, rots. 14d, 35. H9e is last recorded sitting on 6 Mar. 1469, but it is probable that he maintained his place on the bench until his death. Only the most speculative explanation can be advanced for his new importance. It may be that he had followed Sir Thomas in taking an active part on the Yorkist side in the civil war of 1459-61. Alternatively, or additionally, he may have found a new patron in the Haryngtons’ cousin, Thomas, Lord Stanley. The evidence is admittedly slight: on 10 Jan. 1464 he and Stanley witnessed the will of Henry Scarisbrick, Halsall’s elderly maternal uncle, and on at least two occasions in the 1460s they sat together as j.p.s.24 Scarisbrick deeds DDSc 42/2; PL15/30, rot. 27; 31, m. 31d. More interesting is the indirect evidence. Stanley may have seen our MP, as an old servant of the Haryngtons, as a useful ally in his own dispute with (Sir) Thomas Haryngton I’s eldest surviving son, Sir James. As the family’s heir male Sir James was holding the family inheritance against the claims of the daughters of his dead elder brother, Sir John. These daughters became Stanley’s wards in 1466, and in the autumn of 1468 our MP was one of the commissioners before whom the rights of the daughters were vindicated.25 CPR, 1467-77, p. 103; Procs. Chancery Eliz. ed. Caley and Bayley, i, p. lxxxvi.

The precise date of Halsall’s death raises difficulties. According to inquisitions taken in 1472 and 1473 he died on 20 July 1471. Other evidence shows that this date is premature. He was still alive on the following 15 Aug. when a minor boundary dispute between him and his cousin, James Scarisbrick, was resolved by the arbitration of their neighbours, headed by Richard, prior of Burscough.26 Scarisbrick deeds DDSc 43A/172; VCH Lancs. iii. 267. An inquisition held in 1479 dates his death to three days later but a deed of 16 Aug. appears to contradict this date. His surviving feoffees of 1459, headed by Edmund Farrington, rector of Halsall, settled some of our MP’s lands on his daughter, Margaret, for her life, presumably because our MP was dead.27 Lancs. RO, Blundell deeds, DDIn 64/18.

Halsall’s death, leaving two adult daughters as his heirs, brought to an end the main male line of an ancient family. Both daughters had been married in his lifetime, the elder, Margaret, to Alan Bellingham, a junior member of the Bellinghams of Bellingham (Northumberland) and Burneside (Westmorland), and the younger, Elizabeth, to Lambert Stodagh of Stodday (near Lancaster), a minor Exchequer official in the 1450s. It is not known on what terms these marriages were made, and it may be that it was our MP’s intention that the bulk of his estate, including the manor of Halsall, so long in the name of Halsall, should descend to his heir male, namely Hugh, the son of his younger brother, Richard. There was obviously room here for the classic dispute between heir male and heir general, and the three inquisitions taken after our MP’s death imply that, if not a dispute, there was at least doubt as to whom the main part of the Halsall lands should properly descend. The first inquisition held at Warrington on 23 Mar. 1472, more than six months after our MP’s death, returned Hugh as the heir male without mentioning the two daughters. A second inquisition, held three months later, returned the daughters as the heirs and stated that some parcels of the Halsall estate were bound by entails in tail general, including the one made on our MP’s own marriage in 1426. These findings were then traversed by our MP’s surviving feoffees, and their seisin was later confirmed by a third inquisition held at Ormskirk on 15 June 1479.28 Lancs. Inqs. ii. 84-91, 109-10. It is certain that, in the end, all the family’s lands came to Hugh and his descendants, probably because both daughters died without issue.