BUTLER, John

A prominent member of the Gloucestershire gentry who enjoyed a respectable career as a parliamentarian and local office-holder, Butler had the misfortune to suffer a violent death on a London street, where he was waylaid and murdered. Intriguingly, his second wife and some of his servants were among those implicated in the crime, although she was to escape any serious consequences, as apparently did her co-accused.

Direct evidence for Butler’s parentage is lacking, but he was very probably the son of the Gloucestershire esquire Ralph Butler by Margaret Berwyk, since he succeeded to Ralph’s estates in Gloucestershire, and perhaps as many as seven manors that Margaret had inherited in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Somerset.8 VCH Glos. viii. 192; VCH Berks. iv. 71, 177; VCH Bucks. iii. 158, 160, 162; C140/61/25; Feudal Aids, iv. 374. Ralph Butler is an extremely obscure figure who played little or no part in public affairs. In the second decade of the fifteenth century he had dealings with Thomas Beckingham† of Oxfordshire, for whom he acted as a surety in October 1413, and to whom he and Nicholas Stanshawe* bound themselves in a statute staple in March 1416. By means of that security, they undertook to pay Beckingham the sum of £50 in April 1417, although for what reason is unknown.9 CFR, xiv. 33; C241/215/23. An extended period of soldiering across the Channel might explain Ralph’s apparent inactivity at home, as a man of that name received royal letters of protection in the spring of 1417, prior to accompanying the duke of Gloucester to France.10 DKR, xliii. 591. He died before the end of Henry V’s reign, and by the autumn of 1419 his widow had found a new husband in the Kentish esquire William Haute*.

It is not recorded when John Butler came of age, but it is possible that he spent his early adulthood following the example of his stepfather Haute, a participant in the Agincourt expedition, by campaigning in France.11 In the mid 1420s, for example, a John Butler of unknown identity served in Normandy and Maine under Sir John Harpley: Add. Ch. 1419; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, nouv. acq. fr. 62/11/19. Whatever the case, his career as an office-holder appears not to have begun before his election to the Commons of 1439. Given his inexperience, he is likely to have looked to the other knight of the shire for Gloucestershire, Thomas Mille*, whose second Parliament it was, for guidance. Butler’s first ad hoc commission arose from the same Parliament, since shortly after it was dissolved he and Mille were appointed to distribute allowances relating to a subsidy which they and the rest of the Commons had granted to the King. He was pricked as sheriff of Gloucestershire in the autumn of 1441 although he was not appointed a j.p. of his native county until much later in his career. A few months after sitting in his second Parliament, he began another term as sheriff of Gloucestershire, although it was as ‘former sheriff’ that he obtained a pardon from the Crown in late 1446.12 C67/39, m. 20 (20 Nov.). By virtue of his landed interests in Buckinghamshire, he served later as an administrator there as well. Butler was perhaps the John Butler who received a royal signet letter in the mid 1440s, since it was to Gloucestershire that a royal messenger delivered the letter. Yet it is impossible to tell whether he was the mid fifteenth-century esquire of the Household of that name, or the John Butler who appeared in the Exchequer on behalf of Richard, duke of York, in December 1446.13 E403/759, m. 14; 765, m. 10; 816, m. 1; E101/409/9, 11, 16; 410/1, 3, 6, 9.

It was certainly the subject of this biography who quarrelled with Robert Stanshawe of Alderley, the son and successor of Robert Stanshawe*, in the later 1450s. At the sessions of the peace held at Gloucester in June 1457, a jury presented that in the previous March Stanshawe and a large band of armed men had disseised Butler of his lands at Tresham and Kilcote in Hawkesbury, a parish just to the north of Badminton. As a result, Stanshawe had to appear in the court of King’s bench at Westminster in the spring of 1458, but he was dismissed sine die after producing a royal pardon dated 26 Jan. that year. Just four days later, Butler received a like pardon so it is unlikely that he was an entirely innocent party.14 KB27/788, rex rot. 19d; C67/42, m. 11. Stanshawe was a retainer of the Talbot family, and the disseisin at Hawkesbury is likely to have had a connexion with a quarrel over the same lands between Butler and Sir Lewis Talbot, a younger son of the late John Talbot, 1st earl of Shrewsbury. On 12 Feb. 1458, while the indictment against Stanshawe was still pending, the authorities took a formal statement from one Nicholas Alderley about the ‘veriaunces and trowblys’ which were setting Talbot and Butler at odds with each other. Alderley claimed that the lands had once belonged to him but that he had surrendered his ownership by conveying them to feoffees, who had then granted him a lease for life, with remainder to Butler and his eldest son William and their heirs. He added that he had subsequently surrendered his life tenancy to John Daunt, who had then conveyed it to Butler. Finally, he asserted that he had held deeds and evidences proving that this series of transactions had occurred exactly as he claimed, but he no longer possessed these documents because John Lypiate had forcibly taken them and various goods and chattels from him. Notwithstanding Alderley’s testimony, Butler was eventually obliged – whether willingly or not – to surrender the lands to the Talbots. In May 1463, he and William released their title to Margaret, dowager countess of Shrewsbury, and Sir Lewis’s brother, Humphrey Talbot†.15 A.J. Pollard, ‘The Talbots’ (Bristol Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1968), 419; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 269-70; 1461-8, p. 182. Butler enjoyed a much better relationship with Maurice Denys (son and successor of the Gloucestershire knight, Sir Gilbert Denys†), for whom he witnessed deeds in late 1461 and early 1467.16 CCR, 1461-8, pp. 196, 405-6. He likewise attested a conveyance of lands from John Cricklade* to John Twyneho† and his wife in June 1470.17 CCR, 1468-76, no. 525. Butler also had dealings with the lawyer Thomas Buckland* of Gloucester, whom he may have retained for his counsel and on whose behalf he witnessed a settlement of August 1473.18 Gloucester Corporation Recs. ed. Stevenson, 410.

The quarrels with Stanshawe and Talbot occurred during a particularly troubled time but there is no evidence that Butler was involved in the political and military conflicts of the later 1450s and early 1460s. Whatever the case, his career in local administration was not interrupted by the accession of Edward IV. The new Yorkist government appointed him to an anti-Lancastrian commission of array in August 1461, and in June the following year he became a j.p. in Buckinghamshire. Sheriff of that county and Bedfordshire in 1465-6, before the end of 1465 he had acquired a knighthood, but in what circumstances is not known. He gained election to his last Parliament two years later, this time as a knight of the shire for Buckinghamshire. Later in the same decade he witnessed the transactions by which the castle and lordship of Sudeley, Gloucestershire, wrested by the Crown from his unfortunate namesake, Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley, was made over to the King’s brother, Richard, duke of Gloucester.19 CCR, 1468-76, nos. 198, 409; C.D. Ross, Edw. IV, 15. In spite of thriving under the Yorkist regime, he was not so closely identified with it as to preclude his continuing to serve as a j.p. in Gloucestershire following the readeption of Henry VI.

By the early 1470s, Butler was an officer on the estates of the dowager duchess of Buckingham. Even if the positions he held under her were little more than sinecures, he was certainly active as an office-holder under the Crown in his later years, no more so than as a sheriff. Pardoned as ‘late sheriff’ of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire in January 1472,20 C67/48, m. 23. he began a second term as such later that year. Immediately after completing that term in the autumn of 1473, he began another as sheriff of Gloucestershire. During this final term in the shrievalty he was amerced for failing to recover a sum of money which one of his predecessors in that office, John Cassy*, owed the former treasurer of the Household, John Howard*. He faced trouble of a more serious nature shortly after completing the same term, for in late November 1474 the duke of Gloucester sued him in the Exchequer. The King had granted his brother an annuity of £40 from the issues of Gloucestershire, and the duke alleged that Butler had neglected to pay him this sum while sheriff. In response to Gloucester’s bill, Butler obtained licence to interplead and it would appear that he came to terms with his powerful opponent out of court.21 E13/160, rots. 10, 25d, 46.

In the meantime, Butler was also busy with his own personal affairs, for he married for a second time at some stage between mid 1474 and the autumn of 1476. Elizabeth Popham was of higher status than his first wife, Margaret Vampage, since she was the daughter and coheir of a substantial landowner in Hampshire and Wiltshire, while Margaret’s father was a lawyer (albeit a very successful one) of modest social origins. Yet what should have proved a very advantageous match was soon to end in disaster. Following their marriage, Butler and Elizabeth were associated with her sisters, Margery and Alice, their respective husbands, Thomas Hampden and Humphrey Forster, and her nephew, John Wadham, in submitting a petition to the Crown. The three women and Wadham were the coheirs of the late Sir John Popham, the childless cousin and male heir of Elizabeth’s father, Sir Stephen Popham, and presumably the petition, now badly damaged and largely illegible, related to the Popham estates.22 SC8/342/16101. It was perhaps in response to it that in December 1476 the same three couples and Wadham received royal licence to enter Sir John Popham’s estates.23 CPR, 1476-85, pp. 21-22. The circumstances in which the Crown granted these letters are unknown. Elizabeth had already succeeded to a share of these estates, including the Hampshire manor of Popham, following Sir John’s death in 1463, but possibly she and her coheirs had entered them without formal licence from the King.24 VCH Hants. iii. 398; iv. 522. Along with her own lands, Elizabeth also held a share of the estates of her previous husband, John Barantyn, in Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire and Berkshire for life, and after their marriage Butler involved himself in the affairs of his stepchildren, her offspring by Barantyn. John Barantyn’s heir was his son and namesake, who had yet to reach his majority in the autumn of 1476 but was at that date already the husband of Mary, the sister of William Stonor†.25 C140/50/36. By then Mary and the other sister of William, Elizabeth, were members of the household of Alice de la Pole, dowager duchess of Suffolk, at Ewelme in Oxfordshire, although it would appear that their place in Alice’s establishment was in jeopardy. In a letter of 22 Oct. that year William’s wife, another Elizabeth, informed him that the duchess was displeased because the two girls were badly ‘arayed’ and was questioning whether to retain them any longer if better provision were not made for them. Adding that she had also heard that Butler had spoken to the duchess ‘to have my Cyster Barantyne [Mary] with hyme’, Elizabeth Stonor questioned his motives for doing so: ‘what he menyth therin we wot nere, with oute that he wold have the rewle of hyr husbandys lyvelode be that meane’.26 Stonor Letters, ii. (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, xxx), 14-15.

Whatever his designs on his stepson’s livelihood, Butler had little time to fulfil them because he was murdered in London less than a year later. His eldest son William had predeceased him, so his heir was William’s son, another John Butler. Within months of the killing, the latter, a young man who had only just achieved his majority, brought an appeal in King’s bench against those whom he believed responsible for his grandfather’s death. According to him, on 15 June 1477 Richard Blewet, ‘gentleman’, and John Hawkys, ‘yeoman’, both described as of London, had killed Sir John in Castle Baynard, a ward in which their victim may have owned a townhouse. Not short of grisly detail, the appeal repeated the findings of a coroner’s inquest held on the day of the murder, namely that Blewet had stabbed Sir John in the front of the head with a ‘wodeknyffe’, so piercing his brain, and that Hawkys had run him through the chest and heart with a sword. He also asserted that the murder was a premeditated act carried out at the behest of the knight’s wife Elizabeth and three of his servants, Elizabeth Kelly, David Stowell and William Stedeman, all of whom had procured Blewet and Hawkys to commit the crime and afterwards had provided them with shelter. In Michaelmas term 1477, Elizabeth Butler, Kelly and Stowell came to King’s bench in person but their co-defendants failed to appear. The two women and Stowell asked to have the matter put before a jury and the court made arrangements for a trial in the following summer. In the meantime, they remained at liberty, having found sureties for their good behaviour. Elizabeth Butler’s mainpernors were her brother-in-law Thomas Hampden (the husband of her sister Margery) and his brother John, the two sons of John Hampden II* of Buckinghamshire. In the event, there was no trial, for not long afterwards the appellant reached an out of court settlement with the same three accused and the other alleged accessory to murder, Stedeman, but in what circumstances is not known. Before the end of 1477 Butler withdrew his appeal against the four defendants and all of them received letters of pardon from the King, to whom however they were obliged to provide sureties for their future good behaviour. Stedeman was formally discharged upon appearing again in King’s bench in Trinity term 1478, when Blewet and Hawkys, who had yet to answer the appeal and had also been indicted for murder, were outlawed. Of the two alleged principals, Blewet at least was also able to escape any consequences for the death of Sir John Butler. In the spring of 1480, he obtained a royal pardon (referring to him to as of Holcombe in Devon rather than of London) and he obtained a writ of error just over three years later. The case against him was then formally overturned, on the basis that he had been an inmate in the prison of the royal free chapel of St. Martin le Grand in London at the time of his outlawry and a ‘long time’ earlier. Not specifically stated was whether his term in custody had begun before the killing of Sir John Butler. In Hilary term 1484 he was dismissed by King’s bench sine die, having found sufficient sureties for his future good behaviour.27 KB27/865, rot. 34; 868, rot. 38; 885, rot. 65, rex rot. 4; 890, rot. 26d, rex rots. 2-2d; CPR, 1476-85, pp. 59, 61.

At his death, Butler had held estates in Gloucestershire, Buckinghamshire, Somerset, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire, although no longer in Berkshire, where he had sold the manors of Frilsham and Whatcombe, both former Berwyk properties, to John Norris*. According to inquisitions post mortem held in the summer and autumn of 1477 these estates, which included eight manors, were worth some £70 p.a., but it is worth noting that such inquiries commonly produced considerable underestimates. The inquisitions confirmed that his heir was his grandson and namesake.28 C140/61/25; CP25(1)/13/85/6; VCH Berks. iv. 177. A few weeks after the last of the inquisitions, the Crown took a bond for £100 from Butler’s widow, to guarantee that she would not remarry before Christmas 1477.29 CCR, 1476-85, no. 280. As it happened, she probably never did so, since it was as Elizabeth Butler that she received a royal pardon in March 1484. The pardon described her as the administrator of her late husband’s estate, revealing that the MP had yet to make a will when he died. Perhaps still of good health, he may not have had the slightest suspicion that he was in mortal danger.30 C67/51, m. 18.

It is now impossible to discern Elizabeth’s motives, assuming that she had indeed played a part in her husband’s murder. Whatever tensions may have marked her brief marriage with Butler, all was certainly not well between her and her stepchildren after his death. Either in the later 1470s or (more likely) at some point in Richard III’s reign, a younger son of Sir John, the chaplain Thomas Butler, complained to the chancellor that Elizabeth had ‘subtly laboured’ with Ralph Blewet and William Stedeman to have him indicted of felony at the sessions of the peace in Middlesex. Having failed to secure the desired indictment, they had then persuaded a clerk, Oliver Denham, to bring a wrongful lawsuit against him in London, where subsequently the sheriffs had arrested him. Thomas informed the chancellor that he could not hope to receive a fair trial, owing to the selection of a jury biased in favour of his opponent, and prayed that the Chancery might take the matter out of the hands of the London authorities. More generally, Thomas alleged that Elizabeth, ‘by hir straunge and ffroward disposicion contrary to lawe of kynd’, intended the ‘utter destruction’ of her stepchildren. The outcome of his suit is unrecorded.31 C1/66/221.