DACRE, Ranulph

The Dacres were a family of great antiquity, who greatly augmented their patrimony by successive marriages to heiresses in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. In 1321 Ranulph Dacre (c.1290-1339) was the first of its members to receive a personal writ of summons to Parliament, probably because of his marriage a few years before to the sole daughter and heiress of Thomas, Lord Multon of Gilsland. Thereafter they made no further additions to their estates until the early sixteenth century when the barony of Greystoke came to them by marriage.1 CP, iv. 1-2, 20-21; vi. 199-201; ix. 407-8. The first lord’s putative uncle, Sir Edmund Dacre of Tatham (Lancs.), represented Lancs. in the Parl. of Mar. 1313: Chetham Soc. n.s. xciii. 28. During the lifetime of our MP their main estates lay in Cumberland, where they had a castle at Naworth with large manors at Brampton and Burgh-by-Sands, and these were supplemented by property in Westmorland, Lancashire and Lincolnshire. In the subsidy returns of 1435-6 our MP’s father was assessed on an annual income of £320, a poor income for a peer whose estates lay further south but enough to make him comfortably wealthier than even the richest gentry of the far north-west.2 C139/174/33; EHR, xlix. 618. The family’s prominence is reflected in the quality of its ties with the closely-related northern nobility. Our MP’s mother was a Neville of Raby; in 1424 his sister Joan married the young Thomas, Lord Clifford; and, at an unknown later date, another sister Margaret married John (d.1452), son and heir-apparent of John, Lord Scrope of Masham.3 CP, iii. 293; xi. 568-9.

As a younger son, Ralph’s expectations were modest. Some provision was, however, made for him. On 22 Apr. 1439, as part of a wider family settlement, he was granted the legal remainder of the manor and advowson of Halton in north Lancashire expectant on the death of his father.4 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 263, 342-3. By this date he was probably of age. In his father’s inquisitions post mortem of 1459 he was said, at the highest estimate, to be 35 years old and more, but 40 and more would have been more accurate. His eldest brother was already a knight by 1433, and another brother, Hugh, who may have been younger than our MP, was said to be about 19 in 1439 when granted papal licence to be ordained priest on coming of age.5 C219/14/4; CPL, ix. 58. If Ralph was, as seems probable, born before 1420, then it is likely that his marriage into the ancient north Yorkshire family of Fitzhugh came about long before he came into his family inheritance.6 CP, iv. 18. The armorial bearings on his tomb are the evidence for this match: Yorks. Arch. Jnl. x. 304-5.

Ralph’s return to Parliament is his first appearance in the records in an active role. He was elected at the county court held at Carlisle on 13 Jan. 1442. As many as 73 attestors were named, suggesting that the election was contested or at least contentious. The indenture was also unusual in another respect. The attestors were headed by his father, Lord Dacre, and Sir Christopher Curwen*, the father of the other MP, Thomas Curwen*, who also appears in the list together with Ralph’s elder brother, John.7 C219/15/2 (misfiled between the Oxon./Berks. and Rutland returns). Peers very rarely attested elections, but Lord Dacre had done so on a previous occasion. In 1433 he and his two eldest sons, Sir Thomas and John, had attested the Cumb. election: C219/14/4. Clearly both the Dacres and the Curwens were anxious to be represented, but the fount of their anxiety can only be a matter for speculation. It may be the return was related to Lord Dacre’s dispute with Marmaduke Lumley, bishop of Carlisle, over the wardenship of the west march. This dispute is poorly documented, but it is clear that the resignation of the office in 1435 by Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, had brought the two men into competition. Despite Lord Dacre’s offer to hold the wardenship on terms favourable to the Crown, in November 1436 the bishop was appointed for a term of seven years.8 H. Summerson, Med. Carlisle, ii. 410-12; BIHR, xli. 95-99. Our MP’s election in 1442 may thus have been part of an effort by his father to secure the office on the expiry of this term, although, if this was the case, the earl’s more powerful claims ensured that the effort was wasted.

In the following year Lord Dacre and Ralph were left in no doubt that the power in the west march lay in others’ hands. On 20 May 1443, in the presence of the royal council, Lord Dacre was obliged to enter into a bond to the earl and bishop in the large sum of 1,000 marks, promising that he and his sons (of whom our MP and Richard were mentioned by name) would abide their award in disputes pending between the Dacres and other local landholders, headed by the bishop himself.9 CCR, 1441-7, p. 138. Soon thereafter the earl assumed the wardenship. This raises the question of the state of relations between the Dacres and the earl, who was the half-brother of our MP’s mother. These had been troubled in the 1420s: in September 1428 the future earl and our MP’s father had been obliged to find mutual recognizances in £2,000 to keep the peace to each other. Yet in 1435 Ralph’s eldest brother, Sir Thomas, had entered into an indenture of retainer with the earl, and it would thus seem that relations had been repaired.10 CCR, 1422-9, p. 448; Private Indentures (Cam. Misc. xxxii), 150. If Lord Dacre believed that the earl had frustrated his ambitions for the wardenship in 1443, they may again have become compromised, but, if so, there is evidence to suggest that the breach was not a serious one. Interestingly, on 30 June 1443, Ralph was one of those gathered at the earl’s castle at Middleham (Yorkshire) to witness the settlement of a dispute between William Stapleton* and Thomas, Lord Clifford. Later he and another of his brothers, Humphrey, entered the service of the earl’s brother, Robert, bishop of Durham. In 1451 the bishop named Humphrey as his sub-chamberlain, and in August 1454 retained our MP at an annual fee of ten marks.11 Cumbria RO, Carlisle, Musgrave of Edenhall mss, D/Mus/E172; DURH3/44, mm. 13, 25.

Ralph’s position was transformed when he inherited the bulk of the family estates on his father’s death in January 1458. His succession was, however, complicated. Even as late as 1453 his prospects of succeeding had been very uncertain. By that date it was clear both that his eldest brother, Sir Thomas, would have no issue beyond his two daughters, and that his elderly father was ready to disinherit these daughters in favour of his heir male; but our MP’s nephew, Thomas, the only son of his late elder brother, Sir John, still stood between him and the inheritance. By a fine levied in the Trinity term of that year the bulk of this inheritance was settled on our MP’s parents for their lives, with successive remainders to Sir Thomas for life; the younger Thomas, also for life; and then to Lord Dacre’s male issue.12 CPR, 1446-52, p. 545; CP25(1)/35/14/17; 293/72/380; PROME, xiv. 93-98. By Lord Dacre’s death the two younger Thomases were dead and our MP was his heir male, but even then his entry into the family patrimony was unlikely to be without competition. In 1446 the two daughters and coheiresses-presumptive of his eldest brother, Sir Thomas (d.1455), had been married to Richard and Robert*, sons of Sir Roger Fiennes*, on the understanding that they would divide between them their extensive maternal inheritance in East Anglia and in the hope that they might inherit part of the Dacre barony. The younger daughter died without surviving issue, perhaps during her father’s lifetime, but the King’s knight, Sir Richard Fiennes, husband of the elder sister, remained as a threat to our MP’s tenure of his father’s lands.13 CFR, xix. 100; T. Barrett-Lennard, Acct. Fams. Lennard and Barrett, 61-62; C1/27/501. In Hilary term 1459, before Ralph had had formal seisin of his patrimony, Sir Richard and his wife sued a writ of formedon against him for the valuable manor of Holbeach in Lincolnshire. Their claim was undoubtedly good at law, for the manor had been settled in tail general on our MP’s parents at the time of their marriage in the 1390s.14 CP40/792, rot. 415 (no verdict is recorded). Even more worrying from Ralph’s point of view was the Crown’s readiness to recognize Fiennes’s claim to a parliamentary summons in right of his wife: by letters patent dated 7 Nov. 1458 the King recognized Fiennes ‘as Lord Dacre and one of the barons of our realm .. to have and enjoy all the pre-eminence pertaining to that estate’, not as a new creation but in right of his wife’s status as her grandfather’s heir.15 J.E. Powell and K. Wallis, House of Lords, 502-3. If Fiennes was now the baron of Dacre, what was our MP?

None the less, although these developments were no doubt unwelcome to Ralph, in other respects the tide was running in his favour. The last of his father’s inquisitions post mortem was delivered into Chancery on 19 Mar. 1459, and on the following day the escheators of Cumberland, Westmorland and Lincolnshire were ordered to deliver him seisin of the Dacre lands held in tail male.16 C139/174/33; CFR, xix. 231-6. Writs of diem clausit extremum were issued three times for his father: on 16 Dec. 1457, 13 Jan. and 14 Nov. 1458. The first were immediately revoked because Lord Dacre was still alive, but it is not known why the second were not enacted upon: CFR, xix. 194, 211. It is, however, a fair surmise that the dispute explains the long delay in holding the inquisitions. Moreover, when writs of summons were issued on the following 9 Oct. for the Parliament to meet at Coventry, he was included alongside his rival. Both men were summoned in the right of what was in effect one barony, and it is clear that the Lancastrian regime was ready to recognize the claim of both men to one title in fear of losing the loyalty of either. Both duly appeared among the lords who took the oath of allegiance to Henry VI on 11 Dec. (two days after Lord Ralph had been added to the Cumberland commission of the peace), but it appears that he was the most favoured of the two. Not only was he named among the triers of Gascon petitions in this Parliament, but on 19 Dec., the day before the dissolution, he was granted, ‘for good service’ against the Yorkist rebels, £40 p.a. from the lordship of Plumpton Wall near his manor of Lazonby, forfeited by the rebellion of his kinsman, the earl of Salisbury. This grant implies that he had been present at the rout of the Yorkists at Ludford Bridge in the previous October.17 PROME, xii. 453, 466; CPR, 1452-61, p. 570. The favour in which he was held is the probable explanation for the growing estrangement of the other Lord Dacre from the house of Lancaster, in whose service his family had made their fortune.

Ralph Dacre soon repaid the favour shown to him by the Lancastrian regime. The death of Robert Neville, bishop of Durham, in 1457 had weakened his connexion with the Yorkist Nevilles, and his new annuity assigned on forfeited Neville lands gave him reason to resist them. He demonstrated his loyalty to Lancaster by taking a prominent role in the campaigns following their victory at the battle of Northampton in July 1460. Although a few months later the new Yorkist government included him on commissions optimistically intended to bring the north to obedience, he and other northern lords included on these commissions were already active in opposition. Dacre was among those, headed by the Percy earl of Northumberland, who ravished the lands of the duke of York and the earl of Salisbury and held a council at York late in 1460. Although not named among those present at the battle of Wakefield in the 1461 Act of Attainder, it is hard to imagine that he was not there. On the following 20 Jan. he was again at York in company with Queen Margaret and other Lancastrian lords, who confirmed the agreement she had entered into with the Scots at Lincluden a fortnight before.18 A.J. Pollard, North-Eastern Eng. 280; Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, ii (2), 774; Northern Hist. xxxv. 221. Thereafter he does not seem to have travelled south with the Lancastrian army which was victorious at the second battle of St. Albans on 17 Feb., but he was, with fatal consequences, present at the decisive battle of Towton. In the meantime, on 6 Mar. the new King issued a proclamation that no man was to despoil Dacre’s lands. This was not because Ralph’s loyalties were perceived to be wavering; rather the King’s motive lay in a concern to protect Dacre’s property in the interests of one of his own supporters, namely Richard Fiennes. The two Lord Dacres fought on opposite sides in the great battle on 29 Mar.: only the Yorkist survived.19 CCR, 1461-8, p. 56; CSP Ven. 372, 375.

Ralph’s tomb remains in the churchyard of Saxton with an inscription describing him as ‘verus miles et strenuus’ and remembering his death fighting for Henry VI. It was highly unusual for a man of his rank to be buried anywhere other than in a church or monastery; and the explanation for this departure from tradition in his case probably lies in a hasty internment after death in battle on the losing side.20 Yorks. Arch. Jnl. x. 302-8. The family’s traditional burial place was Lanercost priory, and it is perhaps surprising that he was not reinterred there when the family’s fortunes had recovered. His attainder and that of his brother and heir, Humphrey, in the first Parliament of the new reign were not the disaster for the family that they first appeared. The initial auguries were bad. Fiennes was high in favour with the new King, and it seemed likely that he would exploit his advantage to the permanent disinheritance of the Dacres. Indeed, on 1 July 1461, even before the attainders had been carried through in Parliament, he and his wife were pardoned for their entry into Ralph’s lands, and on the following 20 Jan., with the attainders formally enacted, the couple had a royal grant of the bulk of the Dacre inheritance.21 PROME, xiii. 49-51; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 40, 140. Royal grants, however, were one thing, implementing them in the far north of England was quite another. The Dacres were not the Percys, but the influence they had long commanded in the west march was important to its defence. Once Humphrey had surrendered the family’s castle at Naworth in the summer of 1462, he was, attainder notwithstanding, readmitted to the royal grace. If a later inquisition is to be taken at face value he took the issues of the family’s valuable Cumberland estates from Martinmas 1463; and, even though he was outlawed in the following September for failure to answer appeals sued against him by two widows as the murderer of their husbands, it must be doubted whether Fiennes was able to secure what the King had given him for even the briefest period.22 Letters and Pprs. ii (2), 779; PROME, xiv. 93-98; C145/322; KB27/808, rot. 1d; 814, rot. 47.

None the less, the de jure as opposed to the de facto restoration of the Dacres was longer delayed, albeit only slightly. The first sign of a formal relaxation of the penalties of attainder came late in the summer of 1467: on 11 Aug. the King granted our MP’s widow, Eleanor, for life the manor of Fishwick in Lancashire, formerly granted to Fiennes, on the grounds that she had been ‘despoiled of her goods by the Scots and other rebels’. Much better quickly followed. On 19 May 1468 Eleanor was granted a life interest in the manor and advowson of Dacre in Cumberland, the manor of Barton in Westmorland and £40 p.a. from the family’s Lincolnshire lands; and a month later Humphrey was awarded a general pardon. His rehabilitation was almost complete in January 1470, when, as a royal kinsman, he was granted the master forestership of the King’s forest of Inglewood.23 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 90, 96, 183. His attainder was reversed in the first session of the Parliament of 1472; and, perhaps even better from his point of view, on 8 Apr. 1473, the last day of the second session, the King returned an award which assigned the bulk of the family inheritance to him, leaving the heir general, his niece, Joan Fiennes, with only two manors in Lancashire, which had been settled in tail general in 1311, and the more valuable manor of Holbeach in Lincolnshire.24 PROME, xiv. 93-98. The family’s other manor in Lancs., at Halton, also settled in tail general in 1311, was allocated to Humphrey. Only in this respect did the award depart from the entails. Thus restored to safe possession of the bulk of their ancient patrimony, the Dacres had a later parliamentary history in both Lords and Commons.25 The Commons 1509-58, ii. 1-3; 1558-1603, ii. 1-4.