HARYNGTON, Thomas I

The Haryngtons of Farleton in Lonsdale were a junior branch of another Lancashire family, the Haryngtons of Aldingham. Our MP’s great-grandfather, Sir John† (d.1359), was a younger son of another John (d.1347), who was summoned to the Lords in 1326.11 CP, vi. 314-15; CIPM, xi. 251; Oxf. DNB, ‘Harrington fam.’. To the manor of Farleton in Lonsdale, granted to him by his father, Sir John added considerably through his marriage to Katherine Basset, heiress to the manor of Farleton in Kendale and other property in Westmorland and Cumberland.12 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 306. Their son, Sir Nicholas† (d.1404), also married an heiress in Isabel, da. and h. of Sir William Lengleys† (d.1369) alias English of Little Strickland in Westmld., but she was largely disinherited in favour of her first cousin, William Restwold: CIPM, xii. 346. In The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 306 and iv. 198, Restwold is wrongly described as the s. of her elder sis. Juliana; Juliana was in fact Isabel’s paternal aunt. By the time of our MP his branch of the family was not only well endowed but also had a notable pedigree of service both in war and to the house of Lancaster. Our MP’s grandfather Sir Nicholas served in Ireland under Sir William Windsor from 1369 to 1371, in France under Henry, Lord Percy, in 1373 and in the garrison at Calais in the late 1370s.13 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 306; C76/56, mm. 11, 18; 61, m. 18. Our MP’s father Sir William, who began his military career fighting against Glendower in Wales from 1403 to 1406, became a knight of the Garter in August 1415 and then served as Henry V’s standard-bearer at Agincourt before wounds received at the siege of Rouen in 1419 brought his campaigning to an end.14 E101/404/24, f. 4; N.H. Nicolas, Agincourt, 362; CPR, 1422-9, p. 44; H.E.L. Collins, Order of Garter, 121-2. Both men also served the house of Lancaster at home, and that service was the probable context for a marriage that was to significantly advance the family. Sir William married within the Lancastrian retinue to a daughter of Sir Robert Neville of Hornby, who was his feudal overlord in respect of the manor of Farleton in Lonsdale. When the marriage was made the bride had not been an heiress, but she became so on the death in about 1424 of her niece, Margaret, wife of Thomas Beaufort, duke of Exeter. The duke surrendered his interest in her lands to Sir William and the other coheir, Sir John Langton† of Mowthorpe (Yorkshire). In the formal division of the inheritance in 1433 the Haryngtons were assigned the manor of Hornby and other Lancashire estates of the Nevilles with the south Yorkshire manor of Brierley, together probably worth about £140 p.a.15 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 561-2, 824; CIPM, xxii. 793-5; Yorks. Deeds, x (Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. lii), 61-63. When these were added to the Haryngtons’ existing estates in the county they became second only to the Stanleys among the gentry families of Lancashire.

Even before the unexpected windfall represented by the inheritance of Hornby, Sir William had exploited royal patronage in the furtherance of his family. In December 1419, no doubt as a reward for his military service, Henry V granted him the wardship of Elizabeth Dacre, the heiress of a junior branch of the baronial family of Dacre. He lost no time in marrying her to our MP, who was then but a younger son. This was an important moment in the career of the young Thomas, for it brought him the Lancashire manors of Tatham and Heysham and the Yorkshire manor of Sedbergh, a significant enough inheritance to ensure him an independent place in local affairs.16 Lancs. Inqs. i (Chetham Soc. xcv), 139-40; CP25(1)/280/56/13; 281/162/8.

Haryngton started his adult career by acting as steward of his mother’s manor of Hornby in 1427-8.17 VCH Lancs. viii. 194. Soon thereafter he may have fought in France, but the namesake who was active there between 1429 and 1433 is more likely to have been his older cousin, Thomas Haryngton II. The first definite evidence of his military service dates from some years later. What is certain is that, while still only a younger son, he sat for his native county in Parliament. On 7 Apr. 1432 he was elected in the county court at Lancaster by attestors headed by his father.18 Lancs. Knights of the Shire (Chetham Soc. xcvi), 217. No doubt he was elected as his family’s representative: his elder brother, Sir Robert, was probably absent in France and his father seems to have been disinclined to sit as an MP. None the less, Thomas was quickly becoming a man of influence in his own right. On 7 May 1436 he shared with Sir Thomas Radcliffe* a grant of the keeping of the valuable Lancashire manor of Nether Wyresdale, part of the lordship of Kendal which had come back into royal hands with the death of John, duke of Bedford. They were to hold the manor for 24 years at an annual farm of as much as 76 marks.19 CFR, xvi. 276-7. The grant was later amended to take account of the dower interest of Bedford’s wid., Jacquetta of Luxembourg, and the farm reduced to 50 marks 8s. 10d.: CCR, 1435-41, p. 156. Soon after, Haryngton embarked on a brief but active career in France. In the summer of 1436 he fought under Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, with whom he was to maintain a close connexion for the rest of his life, and was present at the relief of Calais at the head of a large retinue of six men-at-arms and 120 archers.20 These details are given in the petition Haryngton presented for exemption from resumption: PROME, xii. 124; DL37/19/27. He was rewarded for his efforts with a grant of land in the bailliage of Rouen.21 Archives Nationales, Paris, Dom Lenoir 26, f. 247. He may then have gone on to serve under Salisbury’s brother, William, Lord Fauconberg, in the garrison at Verneuil.22 Evreux, Archives Départementales de l’Eure, sous-série II F 4069. This may, however, have been his namesake, for on 14 Dec. 1436, four days before a Thomas Haryngton is recorded as present at Verneuil, our MP entered into a contract for the marriage of his daughter Margaret. Further, on 24 Dec., he was again elected to Parliament by attestors headed by his father.23 Lancs. RO, Parker fam. of Browsholme mss, DD B 12/1; Lancs. Knights of the Shire, 219-20. He could, of course, have both entered into an indenture for his daughter’s marriage and been returned to Parliament in absentia, but the odds are against it.

This contract for the marriage of Haryngton’s daughter presents an unusual feature, for, even though he still had the status of a younger son, it made provision for the eventuality of the bride falling heiress. Such clauses were not infrequently inserted into contracts when there was a strong possibility that the bride would eventually fall heir, but in this case her prospects were remote. None the less, the bride’s father, William Fleming, a Yorkshire esquire, undertook to pay 160 marks to our MP’s executors if the bride or her sisters should inherit the lands in Lancashire belonging to the inheritance of our MP’s heiress mother, Margaret Neville.24 Parker fam. of Browsholme mss, DD B 12/1. It might be inferred from this that it was already assumed that our MP’s elder brother, Sir Robert, would die without issue and perhaps also that that death would not be much longer delayed.

Such an inference is consistent with other evidence. Haryngton’s two elections to Parliament might be taken to imply that he was considered as his father’s effective heir. Further, on 26 Jan. 1437, just after the beginning of Thomas’s second Parliament, his ageing father surrendered his stewardship of the hundreds of Amounderness and Lonsdale so that Thomas rather than Sir Robert be joined with him in the office.25 Somerville, i. 499. With his father retired, our MP may have come to be seen locally as the effective head of his branch of the Haryngtons.

Haryngton returned to France in the autumn of 1437, when he equipped at his own expense from ‘his owne contree’ a retinue of three lances and 60 archers for the relief of Le Crotoy, which took place in November.26 DL37/19/27. His attention was, however, soon again occupied by affairs at home. In March 1439, alongside his elder brother, he was appointed to a powerful commission to investigate the complaint of Robert Crackenthorpe’s widow, Elizabeth, about the oppressions she had suffered at the hands of the Westmorland families of Lancaster and Thornburgh. The two brothers had an obvious interest in the matter, for Elizabeth was the sister of Sir Robert Haryngton’s wife, Christine. Both wives were coheiresses of Sir John Lancaster† and their rights to his inheritance were contested by Sir John’s heirs-male. The dispute had resulted in Crackenthorpe’s murder in August 1438, and the commission was probably issued to prevent further escalation of violence.27 CIPM, xxiv. 402-3; CPR, 1436-41, p. 273. Soon after, our MP was involved in the consequences of another violent death. In the following May one of the sons of his fellow farmer of Nether Wyresdale, Sir Thomas Radcliffe, was killed in a fracas with their lawless kinsman, William Radcliffe of Todmorden. The earl of Salisbury intervened to bring about a settlement. He delegated the matter to our MP and Thomas Urswick I*, who adjudged that William should pay Sir Thomas 11 marks for the killing of the younger Thomas in self-defence.28 CPR, 1441-6, p. 21; T.D. Whitaker, Craven ed. Morant, 519.

Not long afterwards Haryngton inherited the landed basis to support and extend his prominent local position. His elder brother, the obscure Sir Robert, died in 1439, and their father on 22 Feb. 1440.29 Sir Robert last appears in Apr. 1439 when, in company with our MP, he witnessed deeds for Thomas, Lord Dacre: CCR, 1435-41, pp. 263, 342-3. Although their heiress mother still lived, our MP now inherited a sizeable estate that extended from Lancashire into Westmorland and Cumberland. Further, his mother surrendered to him a part of her inheritance. His tenure of her West Riding manor of Brierley is implied by his appointment, in immediate succession to his father, to the West Riding bench.30 Arnold, i. 346.

An insight into Haryngton’s character is provided by his unwelcome intervention into the affairs of his recently-widowed sister-in-law, Christine Lancaster. For an unknown reason, he determined to marry her to the south Yorkshire knight, Sir Thomas Saville*. By Haryngton’s own account, he came to York on 28 Oct. 1441 to discuss with Saville and his son John*the possibility of a double marriage: that of Christine to Sir Thomas and that of his own daughter, Joan, to John’s young son, another John. Discussions concluded, he then went to see Christine in her town house in the parish of Bishophill and overcame her expressed reluctance to marry by threatening her with the loss of her jointure in the Haryngton lands. The match was thus made on the following day in the church of St. Mary Bishophill with the bride making her vows, ‘moaning and weeping, with tears on her face’. These facts were related when, on 31 July 1443, before the consistory court at York, Christine secured the annulment of the marriage.31 M. Habberjam, ‘Harrington v Saville’, The Ricardian, viii. 50-60. The other marriage was successfully made.

In the years immediately following his inheritance, Haryngton developed his existing ties with his cousin, (Sir) Thomas Stanley II*, and the earl of Salisbury. By December 1441 Stanley, who had recently been appointed controller of the royal household, had found him place at court as an esquire of the chamber.32 E101/409/9, f. 36v; 11, f. 38. His service in the Household ended at Mich. 1444. On 15 Jan. 1442 the two men were returned together to represent Lancashire in Parliament, and during the parliamentary session Haryngton was appointed a j.p. for the county.33 Lancs. Knights of the Shire, 221; DKR, xl. 537. His ties with Salisbury were equally close. In August 1443 he acted as a feoffee for the earl in the settlement of the famous dispute between the senior and junior branches of the great Neville family. By June 1445 he was acting as the earl’s deputy in the stewardship of the duchy of Lancaster manor of Ightenhill.34 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 150-1, 198; Lancs. Deeds, i. 107-8. These connexions no doubt aided him in contracting a favourable marriage for his son and heir, John, who married Maud, daughter of Thomas, Lord Clifford. This marriage probably coincided with our MP’s surrender, on 19 Oct. 1444, of his stewardships of Lonsdale and Amounderness and parkership of Quernmore so that they should be re-granted to him jointly with his son and heir, John, for term of their lives.35 CPR, 1441-6, p. 324; DL37/12/4.

Haryngton’s domestic activities were again interrupted soon after this marriage. Between November 1444 and early April 1445 he was in the great retinue that brought Margaret of Anjou from Rouen to England for her marriage to Henry VI, taking with him his own ‘following’ of four gentlemen and 12 yeomen for this ‘fecching home’.36 Add. 23938, ff. 5v, 14v; PROME, xii. 124; DL37/19/27. He was almost certainly knighted at the new queen’s coronation at Westminster Abbey on 30 May.37 Sir Thomas was called knight that August and described as ‘late esquire’ in a pardon of 4 July 1446: PL15/8, m. 11; C67/39, m. 25. His new rank may have been a factor in his nomination in September 1446 alongside Lord Clifford as an executor in the will of Sir John Talbot, son and heir of the earl of Shrewsbury. Talbot, who had drawn up his testament at Sheffield, in the heart of his Yorkshire properties, was recognizing Haryngton’s status within the Riding.38 Test. Ebor. ii (Surtees Soc. xxx), 253.

Haryngton appears to have taken more interest than his father had done in the family estates in Westmorland and Cumberland. On 24 Jan. 1447 he attested the Cumberland parliamentary election; later in the same year he acted as arbiter in the dispute between the Threlkelds and Thornburghs, two of the leading gentry families of Westmorland; and on 12 Feb. 1448 he was named to the bench in Cumberland.39 C219/15/4; Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. xxiii. 198-9. He also acted as a trusted third party in another dispute in Cumb. and Westmld. On 12 June 1448 he took delivery, to hold in escrow, of mutual bonds in £200 made between (Sir) Thomas Parr*, Sir Richard Musgrave*, Sir Thomas Strickland* and John Broughton*, on one part, and Sir John Pennington, Henry and Robert Bellingham, and William Lancaster, on the other: CP40/759, rot. 399d. This was probably related to the violent quarrel between Parr and the Bellinghams, which had led to the famous assault on Parr during the Parl. of 1445. Less happily, his new involvement in the politics of the far north-west coincided with a renewed period of tension on the Scottish border. Tasked by the earl of Salisbury, the warden of the West March, with pursuing Scottish raiders who had attacked Carlisle, an English army was ambushed by the Scots at Sark on the Solway Firth on 23 Oct. 1448. Haryngton was captured with Sir John Pennington* and other of the English leaders.40 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 409-10; John Benet’s Chron. (Cam. Miscellany xxiv), 194. He may have been quickly ransomed, albeit to his ‘grete hurte and losses’,41 PROME, xii. 124. but it was not he but rather his cousin Thomas Haryngton II who on 20 Jan. 1449 was returned to Parliament at the Lancashire county court in company with Sir Thomas Stanley, who had a virtual monopoly of one of the county’s seats. Furthermore, although the freed Sir Thomas Haryngton was an obvious candidate to accompany Stanley to the subsequent Parliament, summoned for 6 Nov. that year, on 10 Nov. he contented himself with heading the attestors to the election of his nephew Sir John Boteler* as Stanley’s fellow shire-knight.42 C219/15/7. No doubt he had faith that the two MPs would do what they could to protect his interests. He was, in any event, able to secure a partial exemption from the Act of Resumption passed during this assembly of 1449-50. Shortly before the Crown had leased to him, for the long term of 20 years, the herbages and pastures of Quernmore and other duchy of Lancaster parks in Lancashire as compensation for the ransom he had recently paid, and this grant was duly exempted from the Act.43 PROME, xii. 124.

Haryngton and Stanley combined in another context in the following summer. On 1 July 1450 they were commissioned to array the levies of Cheshire and Lancashire.44 PPC, vi. 95. This order was despatched at the height of Cade’s revolt, after the King had fled the capital for the safety of Kenilworth. It seems unlikely to have been put into effect, for the rebels were defeated on London Bridge on 5 July, but shows that Haryngton was now regarded as one of the chief royal officers in the palatinate.

Haryngton’s landed position within Lancashire was further strengthened on the death of his mother Margaret early in 1451, for he then inherited not only her jointure and dower in his patrimony, but also her castle of Hornby, which was to become his principal residence.45 VCH Lancs. vii. 194; Lancs. Knights of the Shire, 182. With his wife’s inheritance he was now richer than even his father had been, and royal grants were soon to extend his landed position yet further. A more comprehensive Act of Resumption had been passed in the Parliament of November 1450, and our MP gained significantly from the reordering of royal patronage that followed. By grants made on 1 June and 5 July 1451 he leased large tracts of land that had once formed part of the endowment of the duke of Bedford: the keeping of two-thirds of the manor of Nether Wyresdale, which he himself had lost by resumption, were recommitted to him, together with two-thirds of the manor of Thornton in Lonsdale (West Riding) and significant portions of the lordship of Kendal in Westmorland. He was to hold all these lands for 24 years, paying an annual rent of nearly £100.46 CFR, xviii. 200, 211; B.P. Wolffe, R. Demesne in English Hist. 252, 287. It is not clear how long he held these valuable leases. Some were lost when the lordship of Kendal was granted to the King’s half-brother, Edmund Tudor, earl of Richmond, in March 1453, although Haryngton did continue to farm Nether Wyresdale and Thornton at least until Michaelmas term 1454.47 DL29/644/10444. This loss, even though it appears to have been a limited one, may have helped inform his political loyalties in the later 1450s, but a much more important determinant was his attachment to the earl of Salisbury. While his friend Stanley only flirted with the cause of Richard, duke of York, Salisbury and Haryngton committed themselves fully.

After the duke of York had become Protector and the earl of Salisbury chancellor in the spring of 1454, Haryngton was called upon for his support. On 16 May the Council, realizing that a rebellion fomented by Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, and Thomas Percy, Lord Egremont, was spreading from Yorkshire into Lancashire, ordered our MP and Stanley to suppress any attempted uprising ‘in the contree where as ye be’. They successfully discharged their task. Haryngton fortified his own castle of Hornby against the rebels, and then, finding that they had seized Lancaster castle, successfully recaptured the fortress and garrisoned it with his own retainers. He then joined with Stanley’s forces to disperse the rebels at Wingates (near Bolton). It is a further measure of the importance of the two men that when, on 29 May, a great council was summoned to meet at Westminster on the following 25 June, they were among only four men of below baronial rank to receive a summons.48 DL37/23/26, 24/29; PPC. vi. 130-1, 186.

It is not known whether Haryngton was in the Neville ranks at the first battle of St. Albans on 22 May 1455, but the probability is that he was. He was certainly active in the support of the regime established in the wake of the Yorkist victory there. On 23 June he was elected with the duke of York’s retainer, Sir James Pickering*, to represent Yorkshire in Parliament at hustings conducted by his friend, Sir John Saville. He could presumably have equally been returned for Lancashire. The election for that county was held a week later when Stanley was elected with our MP’s brother-in-law, Alexander Radcliffe*.49 C219/16/3; Arnold, i. 229-30. It is a reasonable surmise that Haryngton took one of the Yorkshire seats to leave one free for Radcliffe in Lancashire. However this may be, on the following 5 Aug., during the first prorogation, the receiver of the duchy of Lancaster was ordered to pay him £75 8s. as compensation for the costs he had incurred in opposing the rebels in the previous year. He was soon afforded the opportunity to provide further service to the new regime when, just before the beginning of Parliament’s second session, he was pricked as sheriff of Yorkshire in succession to Saville. On 9 Dec., four days before the end of that session, he was rewarded with a grant of the custody of the lands of Lord Clifford, who had fallen in the Lancastrian side at St. Albans, during the minority of his son and heir, at a farm to be agreed. Since, however, the heir was only a few months short of his majority, the grant was largely of symbolic significance.50 DL37/23/26; CFR, xix. 142; CP, iii. 293.

In the uneasy peace that followed the end of York’s second protectorate early in 1456 Haryngton continued to play his part in local affairs. As sheriff of Yorkshire he was involved in defending the north against the Scots: at the end of his term, he petitioned for a pardon of account on the grounds, inter alia, that he had made ‘diuers Journeys with greet puissance’ to resist them. The Crown treated him generously: on 13 Dec. 1456 he was granted a pardon in the sum of £300, compared with 370 marks, the largest sum awarded to any of his predecessors.51 E159/233, brevia Hil. rot. 8; Arnold, ii. 104, 108. Shortly afterwards, by a duchy warrant of 12 Feb. 1457, he was instructed, ’in youre owne persone with youre owne power’, to bring an end to the intimidation of royal bailiffs in Amounderness and Lonsdale.52 DL37/25/20. He also continued to be appointed, alongside many other of the leading gentry of the north, as one of the conservators of the ill-kept truces on the Scottish border. Yet, much more significantly, his continued adherence to the earl of Salisbury was also apparent in these years of uneasy calm. Not only did he serve as the earl’s deputy in the administration of the duchy of Lancaster in the stewardship of Bowland, but a Middleham receiver’s account of 1457 reveals that the earl paid him an annuity of £13 6s. 8d.53 Northern Hist. xi. 52, 69; Arnold, ii. 42. On the evidence of some sixteenth-century depositions taken in the course of the dispute over the Haryngton lands that followed his death, Sir Thomas was well aware of the dangers to which his commitment to the earl exposed him. In November 1458, on returning to his home at Hornby castle from a meeting of the earl’s council at Middleham (at which it had been decided to make common cause with the duke of York), he made a feoffment of his estates, ‘remembryng hymselfe of the grete werres and trobles likelie to fall’. Tellingly, he chose his feoffees not from his Yorkist connexions but from those of kinsmen and friends who retained some influence with the Lancastrian government. He named at their head William Booth, archbishop of York, John, earl of Shrewsbury, and John, Lord Clifford, three committed Lancastrians, so that ‘if God fortuned the feld in the sayd werres to goo ageyne that partie that the seide Sir Thomas was opon’ they should save his lands from forfeiture. It may be that some of this story represents a later elaboration, but there is every reason to accept its essential outline.54 T.D. Whitaker, Richmondshire, ii. 261-2. The testimony has been doubted on the grounds that elsewhere in the same deposition the feoffment is dated to Feb. 1457: M. Hicks, Warwick, 155. Even, however, if the feoffment was made at the earlier date, it may still have been prompted by the motives attributed to it in the deposition.

The feoffment of 1458 shows that Haryngton kept friends among the Lancastrians. Further, it was a sign of the respect felt for him across the political community that in the convocation of the Order of the Garter held on 8 Feb. 1459 he received four nominations for the vacant stall.55 Reg. Order of the Garter ed. Anstis, i. 166-7. Yet there can have been little doubt in anyone’s mind that, when the crisis came, as it did in the following autumn, he would follow the earl of Salisbury’s lead. On 14 Sept., shortly before Salisbury and his retinue were to begin their march to join that of Richard, duke of York, at Ludlow, Haryngton drew up his will. Realizing that battle was imminent, he made special provision for his burial if he died in Lancashire, on the route of their march, where they were most likely to be intercepted by Henry VI’s forces. Unlike his choice of feoffees in the previous year, his choice of executors and supervisors reflected his Neville allegiance: he named Alice, countess of Salisbury, and her son Sir John Neville as supervisors of his will and the latter’s brother Sir Thomas as one of the executors.56 Test. Ebor. ii. 249-52. The will gives an indication of his wealth. He left as much as 300 marks to be paid to an abbey or priory in Lancs. to endow prayers for his soul, with a further £122 in charitable bequests. He went on to fight in the Neville ranks at the battle of Blore Heath nine days later. It was later charged that after the battle Lord Stanley, who had succeeded his father earlier in the year, had openly communicated with Salisbury, who had then shown a copy of the letter to Haryngton, saying ‘be mery, for yet we have moo frendis’.57 PROME, xii. 504-5. ‘Moo frendis’ were, however, not to do Haryngton much good, for he was soon captured by the Lancastrians. The chroniclers are divided as to the circumstances. One chronicle described him being taken prisoner in the battle itself and then imprisoned in Chester castle before being quickly released by the Yorkists; in another account he was overpowered in an ambush at Acton in Cheshire along with Salisbury’s two sons, Sir Thomas and Sir John, on the next day, 24 Sept.; and a third account dates his capture to after the rout of the Yorkist lords at Ludford on 12/13 Oct.58 English Chron. (Cam. Soc. lxiv), 80; Historical Collns. Citizen London (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xvii), 204; John Benet’s Chron. 224. A later petition from Sir Thomas indicates the last chronology is correct: that he was with Salisbury’s forces in the march to Ludford, and that he and the two Nevilles were captured a day later, in the Yorkist flight, on 14 Oct. They were subsequently imprisoned at Chester castle. The order for the confiscation of Haryngton’s estates was given at Ludlow on the same day.59 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 561, 636. Sir Thomas’s prospects now appeared bleak and his supporters made a desperate attempt to mitigate the proceedings at the Parliament summoned to meet at Coventry on 20 Nov. At the county election at Lancaster on 12 Nov., with Haryngton’s eldest son John being first to attest the indenture, they returned Sir Thomas’s cousins Sir Richard Haryngton and Henry Halsall*. It was to no avail. Haryngton was attainted and his estates declared forfeit.60 PROME, xii. 458, 463; Lancs. Knights of the Shire, 185; CPR, 1452-61, p. 572.

Haryngton’s release from Chester castle was secured by the victorious Yorkists in the immediate aftermath of the battle of Northampton. On 13 July 1460 the King, now virtually a captive himself, ordered his custodian, Sir John Mainwaring, to deliver him, his son James and the two Nevilles ‘unto oure right welbeloved the lord Stanley whom we have chargede to bryng hem in saufe to oure presence’.61 CHES 2/133, rot. 7d. He quickly took up important duties for the new regime which was now governing in the name of Henry VI. On 28 July he was appointed to a commission for the imprisonment of disaffected persons in Yorkshire, and on 24 Aug. another for the city of York itself.62 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 607-8. On 5 Sept. his cousin Sir Richard Haryngton, who had been closely connected with the Lancastrian cause, left him a fine gift of gold beads in his will, no doubt hoping for his good influence.63 Norris Deeds (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. cxiii), 182. This upsurge in Sir Thomas’s fortunes was to be short-lived. On 30 Nov. the prior of Durham wrote to him, ‘Thankyng God that ye are past the trouble that ye wer in, and praiyng God for your good prosperite’. The reference was to the reversal of Thomas’s attainder in Parliament earlier that month.64 Annals of Warrington, ii (Chetham Soc. lxxxvii), 291. However this well-intentioned enjoinder proved to be singularly ill-timed. On 9 Dec. he was a prominent member of the army led out of London by York and Salisbury to fight the Lancastrians in the north, and he fought in their company at the bloody battle of Wakefield at the end of the month. Both he and his eldest son, John, fell there.65 Historical Collns. Citizen London, 210; A.J. Pollard, North-Eastern Eng. 281-2.

Haryngton’s dispositions for his estates were incomplete at the time of his sudden death, and the descent of the castle and lordship of Hornby, a substantial part of his inheritance, was plunged into uncertainty. His eldest surviving son, Sir James, took advantage of the minority of his nieces, Anne and Elizabeth, the two daughters of his dead brother John and thus our MP’s heirs-general, to establish his own possession of the lordship. He was, however, soon faced with a powerful rival. In October 1466 Thomas, Lord Stanley, son and heir of his father’s friend, Sir Thomas Stanley, was granted custody of the two young girls and administration of their lands, and husbands were speedily found for them within the Stanley family. A violent feud with the Haryngtons ensued. Sir James, who was able to call on the support of Richard, duke of Gloucester, continued to hold Hornby castle, in defiance of both royal orders and the armed might of the Stanleys. He was only to surrender this part of his inheritance after Edward IV had personally intervened to impose a settlement on the eve of the French campaign of 1475.66 J. Hunter, Hist. Doncaster, ii. 402-3; Ric. III and the North ed. Horrox, 37-40; Pollard, 325-6.

Sir Thomas Haryngton’s career forms an important reminder of the strength of the bond that could exist between a retainer and his lord. A wealthy and successful figure in his own right, Haryngton never forsook his allegiance to the earl of Salisbury, and paid for it on the battlefield. He was an able and gifted soldier and administrator who won the respect of his contemporaries. That his younger son Sir James was able to illegally occupy Hornby for so long was proof of the considerable sympathy felt for the family in Yorkist circles.