CARLISLE, Richard

Nothing is known of Carlisle’s origins. A pardon of 1472 shows that he was either educated at Gray’s Inn or was admitted there once established as a lawyer.3 C67/49, m. 33. His documented career began in May 1450, when he offered surety for a grant of property in Lancashire to Richard Tunstall† and Richard Strickland*. Significantly, he is here described as resident at Wymington in Bedfordshire. This was the home of Tunstall’s stepfather, Henry Brounflete, Lord Vessy. It may be inferred that our MP had found an early patron, perhaps in the person of the young Tunstall, who was at the beginning of what was to be a notable career in the household of Henry VI, and that his origins are to be sought in the north-west.4 CFR, xviii. 175-6. It was certainly there that he made his career. He must already have been a lawyer of some modest standing when, in December 1450, the Crown appointed him as its general attorney in the counties of Cheshire and Flint.5 CHES2/123, m. 4d. This, in turn, implies that Carlisle had another important association, for a few weeks earlier (Sir) Thomas Stanley II* had been named as royal justice in these two counties, and it is thus likely that our MP was his nominee, particularly in view of his later association with that powerful man. A friendship made at Gray’s Inn may also have aided him in securing this early advancement, for Stanley had chosen as his lieutenant a senior Gray’s Inn man, John Needham*. The same connexion probably explains the further promotion that soon followed. In the early summer of 1453 another Gray’s Inn man, Thomas Urswyk II*, newly chosen by the London authorities as their common serjeant, resigned his position as the King’s serjeant-at-law and attorney in the county palatinate of Lancaster, and Carlisle, perhaps in accord with a prior agreement with Urswyk, successfully petitioned to be named as his replacement.6 PL3/3, no. 3; DL37/20/2.

When this appointment was made, on 18 July 1453, Carlisle was sitting as MP for the borough of Appleby, with which he had no prior or later association. That borough routinely returned lawyers, but there is no obvious context for Carlisle’s election. Only the most tentative suggestion can be made, namely that he had sought a seat to further the interest of Stanley. The latter certainly concluded a matter of importance during the course of the Parliament, and one in which our MP played a part. On 11 Mar. 1454, during the last session of the assembly, John Hertcombe undertook to convey the castle and lordship of Mold to Sir James Strangways*, Robert Danby, j.c.p., Needham and Carlisle, as a prelude to the resettlement of Mold, together with the neighbouring lordship of Hawarden, on Stanley in tail male with reversion to Alice, wife of Richard, earl of Salisbury, and her heirs.7 CCR, 1447-54, pp. 494-5; CHES31/33, 32 Hen. VI, no. 4, 33 Hen. VI, no. 4. This marked the final resolution of a series of competing claims to these former Montagu lordships: Hertcombe claimed as heir of the last surviving feoffee of John Montagu, earl of Salisbury (d.1400); Alice was the daughter and heiress of John’s son, Thomas, earl of Salisbury (d.1428); and Stanley had been granted the lordships in tail male by the Crown, to which they had been forfeited on John’s execution in 1400. There is no evidence that the matter was discussed in Parliament, but as it was in agitation from before that assembly began it may help explain Carlisle’s otherwise inexplicable election.8 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 538-9; B.P. Wolffe, R. Demesne in English Hist. 261.

On 26 Mar. 1456, in further evidence of his connexion with the Stanleys, Carlisle stood surety when Sir Thomas’s son, Thomas, was granted the office of chamberlain of Middlewich, but little else is known of him until the 1460s.9 CHES2/129, m. 1. He was unaffected, or perhaps even advanced, by the change of regime. On 30 July 1461 he was reappointed to his offices in Cheshire and Flint, and five months later to his equivalent offices in the palatinate of Lancaster.10 CHES2/134, m. 2d; DL37/30/120; PL15/23, rot. 14d. More interestingly, between these two grants, on 1 Sept. he took a lease of the royal lordship and manor of Frodsham to hold for 20 years from the previous Michaelmas at an annual rent of £20. The lease was a lucrative one for the manor had earlier been valued in excess of £30 p.a.11 CHES2/134, m. 4d. Later grants extended the lease to Easter 1483: CHES2/137, m. 10d; 139, m. 8; 140, m. 4d. In the 1440s its farmer, Thomas Daniell*, had undertaken to answer for issues beyond £30 p.a. He appears to have made his residence there, for when he sued out a general pardon in May 1462 he described himself as ‘of Frodsham, gentleman’.12 C67/45, m. 21. His tenure of the lease meant he was a more important man in the 1460s than he had been in the 1450s. In the autumn of 1466 he was named alongside Thomas, Lord Stanley, the son of his early patron, to hold an eyre in the hundred of Macclesfield, and a year later, with Lord Stanley’s brother, Sir William Stanley, he was one of those royal commissioners before whom the community of Flint undertook to pay £1,000 to the Crown over ten years.13 CHES2/138, m. 8d; 139, m. 7d. He was as unaffected by the Readeption as he had been by Edward IV’s accession, although after that King’s restoration he took the precaution of suing out the general pardon in which he added ‘late of Gray’s Inn’ as an alias. By this date, however, his career was coming to an end, perhaps because of ill-health. On 9 Mar. 1473 he was replaced as King’s serjeant-at-law in the palatinate of Lancaster by John Hawarden, and he was probably dead by October 1474, when Lord Stanley took over his lease of Frodsham.14 C67/49, m. 33; R. Somerville, Duchy, i. 482; G. Ormerod, Palatine and City of Chester ed. Helsby, ii. 49.

Frustratingly little is known about Carlisle beyond this official life. In 1458-9 he was in receipt of fee of 13s. 4d. ‘pro consilio suo’ from the corporation of Chester, and in the summer of 1471 he acted as an arbiter in a dispute between two leading Cheshiremen, Sir John Savage† of Clifton and Robert Legh of Adlington, over a moiety of the manor of Acton. No doubt better evidence would provide other instances of his involvement in the affairs of the landholders in the north-west.15 HMC 8th Rep. 367; Derbys. RO, Every of Egginton mss, D5236/13/1, 3. The award was unsuccessful as the matter was later referred to Sir William Stanley. Yet of his own personal affairs almost nothing is known. Given his early apparent residence in Bedfordshire it is tempting to identify him with the MP for that county in 1478, but the temptation is to be resisted. A surviving brass in the church of Campton shows that the Bedfordshire MP died in 1490 and had a wife named Joan; while our MP died in about 1474 leaving a widow named Blanche.16 VCH Beds. ii. 269; W. Beamont, Ancient Town of Frodsham, 79. It is, however, likely that the two men were father and son, and that the success, albeit rather modest, of our MP’s legal career laid the foundation for the more prominent career of the putative son. The latter’s career had begun in the older Richard’s lifetime. By 1467 he was steward of the household to and receiver of Edmund Grey, earl of Kent, a leading landholder in Bedfordshire, and in 1472 he purchased from another of the earl’s men, Walter Stotfold, the manor of ‘Wodende’ in Roxton near Bedford.17 Grey of Ruthin Valor ed. Jack, 46, 65, 69, 78, 87, 91, 92, 100, 102, 103, 105, 110, 119, 125; CP25(1)/6/82/16.