HOTOFT, Richard

The Hotoft family had been settled at Humberstone on the outskirts of Leicester from before 1288, but, at least as far as the senior branch of the family was concerned, without aspiring to any significant distinction. The service of Richard Hotoft’s grandfather in the modest office of county coroner is testimony to their status as lesser gentry.8 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 429. Not until the career of our MP’s father did this begin to change. He twice represented Leicestershire in Parliament and served for a short period on the county bench. Our MP built on these foundations. In this he was assisted by his connexion with John Hotoft*, treasurer of the Household from 1423 to 1431 and chamberlain of the Exchequer from 1431 to his death in 1443. John’s place in the family pedigree is not clear, but there can be no doubt that he shared a common descent with our MP, for in his will of 21 Oct. 1438 he bequeathed to Richard his lands at Stretton in Leicestershire.9 PCC 15 Rous (PROB11/1, f. 119). It seems probable that John was of a younger branch of the Hotofts, established in Hertfordshire for a generation or two, and that, without male issue of his own, he was minded to advance the career of a kinsman, perhaps by restoring to the main line the original endowment of a junior one. Richard may also have owed a legal training John’s patronage, for he is perhaps to be identified with the ‘Hotoft’ admitted to Lincoln’s Inn before 1420. Whatever the truth of this, there can be no doubt that John was responsible for his young kinsman’s appointment as his deputy chamberlain in February 1431.10 PRO List ‘Exchequer Officers’, 169; J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), i. 901.

By the time of his father’s death in about 1434 Hotoft was combining his service in the Exchequer with an influential role as a lawyer in his native county. As with many young lawyers, government recognition of his abilities found expression in appointment as escheator. He was also quick to make himself useful to the local peerage. Very soon after becoming escheator, he was one of those to whom his feudal overlord, Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor, conveyed property in Leicestershire and Derbyshire.11 CIPM, xxvi. 232-3. Promotion to the bench in his native county in October 1436 was followed a month later by election to Parliament. Such prominence was out of proportion to his annual income, assessed at a relatively modest £24 p.a. in the tax returns of that year, but, for an able and ambitious man, the usual constraints did not apply.12 C219/15/1; E179/192/59. It may be that, even in these early years of his career, he had found a place in the service of the young Humphrey Stafford, earl of Stafford. Although he is not recorded among the earl’s annuitants until 1440, he may already have been in the earl’s service at, or shortly after, his marriage late in 1437 to the widow of another lawyer, Nicholas Metley. As discussed below, this is the implication of a complaint made against him by Robert, younger brother of John Catesby*, in the dispute over the Metley lands that followed the marriage.

It is easy to see why Hotoft and his bride should have seen their marriage as mutually advantageous: Richard needed a wife to bring him an income more commensurate with his status, and she needed a husband with the legal guile and social connexions to promote her interests in the disentanglement of her late husband’s complicated affairs. Trouble arose almost as soon as the marriage was made: in December 1438 John Cotes*, the half-brother of her late husband, allegedly assaulted her at Humberstone and stole as many as 380 sheep worth £40. This matter was quickly resolved as Cotes found himself outfaced: he was indicted before the Leicestershire j.ps., among whom was Hotoft himself, and the couple sued him for damages of £600.13 There is some doubt about the date of Cotes’ offence for its year is alternatively given as 1437 and 1438: KB27/713, rots. 18, 29, rex rot. 21; KB9/230B/191, 222. The earlier date is only a month after Metley’s death, and this consideration, with the delay of both indictment and civil action until 1439, strongly supports the later date. For related litigation: CP40/713, rot. 302; 714, rot. 278. Of much more long-term significance was the dispute arising out of the arrangements for the future descent of Metley’s extensive purchased estates. This is described in the extraordinary deposition of the Catesbys compiled in the reign of Henry VII.14 For what follows: E163/29/11, mm. 1-4. Metley had made a settlement which, from the point of view of his widow, was both generous and ungenerous: for her personally, ample provision was made, but the expectations of their daughter and heiress were greatly diminished. By his will he had instructed his feoffees to hold his recently-acquired manors of Wolston and neighbouring Marston to the use of his widow for her life, with remainder to their daughter, Margaret, in fee. But much of the rest of his property was to be sold for the benefit of his soul. Robert Catesby, as one of Metley’s executors, was quick to take advantage: he purchased the Metley moieties of the manors of Wappenbury and Woolsthorpe for 300 marks.

This was very much to the distaste of Metley’s widow, and the deposition gives her opponent’s side of the ensuing dispute. If this is to be believed, before settlement could be made of the manor of Woolsthorpe, Joan, described as ‘a stybourn and a gret-herted woman’, and Hotoft, said to be a servant of the duke of Buckingham (then still earl of Stafford) and ‘a grette doer in his countre’, threatened a priest, John Watson, one of Metley’s feoffees, into refusing to convey a moiety of the manor to the purchaser and made entry themselves. Catesby’s efforts at recovery enjoyed no success until he ‘opteigned the gode lordship’ of the future duke ‘in such fourme that he wasse agreable’ that the matter should be examined by certain of his council. The councillors reported that there was merit in his complaint, and Stafford referred the dispute to an influential body of arbiters: William, Lord Ferrers of Groby, William Catesby* (Robert Catesby’s nephew), Thomas Palmer*, Richard Knightley*, Richard Danet and Thomas Farnham. In an award, vaguely dated in the deposition to the 18th year of Henry VI’s reign (1439-40) and made at Lord Ferrers’s manor at Lutterworth (Leicestershire), the disputed property was awarded to Catesby. In return for the release of Joan’s claims he was to pay Hotoft £20 from Metley’s goods to be employed by the couple ‘for the sowle helth’ of Metley and ‘to non other use’, and Hotoft took an oath to this effect in the presence of the arbiters ‘and other worshipfull men’.

This proposed settlement did not bring the dispute to an end. The Hotofts and Joan’s daughter Margaret re-entered the property, disregarding the award ‘by cause it was not delyvered to the parties in writyng’. The unfortunate purchaser, ‘not beyng bolde to sue an accion ageynst theym’ without Stafford’s licence, again petitioned him for redress. The earl, taking displeasure at the ‘inconstant delyng of his seid servaunt’, promised the petitioner his good lordship in common-law action. Catesby then followed up his advantage by suing an assize of novel disseisin against the Hotofts and Margaret, but was thwarted once more. Our MP was ‘so bygge in his countre that by his labour at the first day’ no jurors appeared. Here one might suspect that the deposition hardly presents a disinterested view of the dispute. It offers no explanation for the further referral of the matter, while the assize was pending, to the arbitration of two of the former panel of arbiters, William Catesby and Palmer, who were unlikely to favour Hotoft’s cause. This implies that the impression conveyed by the deposition – that the odds were stacked against Robert Catesby – is false.

In any event, at the loveday held at Long Buckby, a Northamptonshire property of the Beauchamps, the award was tailored to the pending litigation. Catesby was to pursue the assize against Margaret alone but ‘that no disseisyn shulde be founden ageynst’ the Hotofts ‘to th’entent that the seid Richard shulde renne in no blame nor rebuke of the seid duke, than his maister’. He was also to pay £10 of Metley’s goods on condition that the Hotofts promised to find a priest to pray for Metley’s soul for a period of two years. This award was quickly implemented: on the second day of the assize Catesby recovered the property against Margaret, releasing the £10 damages adjudged to him, ‘to have the luffe and favour of the seid Richard Hotofft and of other knyghtes, esquyers and gentilman whech were bylongyng to the seid duke’. This final settlement is said to have taken place in the 21st year of the reign (1442-3) and to have marked the end of the dispute until after 1461 when it was resumed by Margaret’s husband, John Hugford†.

There was a curious hiatus in Hotoft’s career in the early 1440s. This is not to be explained by the offence he is supposed to have offered Stafford. Indeed, in 1442 the earl increased his annuity from £2 to £7, an indication that he had become one of his councillors.15 C. Rawcliffe, Staffords, 220, 234. There are also other signs that his star was still in the ascendant in the first two years of the decade. By 1440 he was in receipt of an annuity from Sir Edward Grey, soon to be summoned to Parliament in right of his wife as Lord Ferrers of Groby; and, more significantly, on 1 Aug. 1441 the Crown appointed him, ‘pro bono servicio’, as feodary of the duchy of Lancaster honour of Leicester and bailiff of the town of Leicester, offices surrendered by John Norris*.16 C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 694; DL37/8/47. Yet soon after he suffered what seems to have been a serious reverse. In the following April he was removed from the Leicestershire bench and, much worse, on 5 May 1442 Viscount Beaumont, as steward of the honour of Leicester, was ordered to remove him from his duchy offices for some alleged and unspecified offence. Although he was quickly exonerated, he thereafter shared the bailiwick of the town of Leicester until the late 1440s with Thomas Meryng, who had acted as the bailiff during his suspension.17 DL37/9/89, 100. Despite our MP’s restoration, new patents of appointment were issued in favour of Meryng in Oct. 1442 and Nov. 1443: DL37/9/35; 10/1; 11/16. These did not take effect: DL37/13/91; R. Somerville, Duchy, i. 569, 589. More significantly, he permanently lost his office as deputy chamberlain at the Exchequer on the death of his early patron and kinsman, John Hotoft, in April 1443. One can only speculate on the reasons for his difficulties in these years. It may be that he had been guilty of persistent abuses of his position: early in 1444 Sir Robert Harcourt* had a suit pending against him as imbraciator of an assize of novel disseisin. But, if this was so, it did not deter the Crown from adding him to the quorum of the peace when he was restored to the Leicestershire bench in the summer of that year.18 CP40/732, rot. 473.

In the mid 1440s Hotoft was involved in some important litigation. The Metley manor of Wolston was a potential bone of contention between him and his lord, Edward Grey, Lord Ferrers of Groby. The latter’s wife could claim the reversion of the manor under the terms of a fine levied as long before as 1326, and in Easter term 1446 she and her husband sued an action of scire facias in the court of common pleas against Hotoft and Joan on this basis. Their intent must, however, be doubted, and it may be that their action was the first stage in the collusive barring of the Ferrers claim. This, in any event, was the result, and served to strengthen our MP’s position in local affairs.19 Warws. Feet of Fines (Dugdale Soc. xv), 1629; CP40/741, rot. 139; 742, rot. 335; VCH Warws. vi. 275. He was also concerned with the more aggressive protection of his rights. In 1446 he resumed litigation begun by his father 30 years before to oblige the master of the hospital of St. John, Leicester, to honour an agreement concerning a chantry founded by his ancestor, Richard de Witeby. Later in the same year he sued William, Lord Zouche, for the sum of 20 marks as arrears of rent, a confident proceeding for a mere esquire.20 CP40/620, rot. 225; 741, rot. 297d; 743, rot. 375d.

By the late 1440s Hotoft had put the reverses of 1442 and 1443 behind him. On 12 Jan. 1447 he was elected to represent Leicestershire in company with one Household man, Thomas Staunton*, in an election conducted by another, Thomas Everingham*. At this stage of his career he was probably seen as a supporter of the duke of Suffolk’s regime then preparing to attack the duke of Gloucester in Parliament. This connexion is indirectly exemplified in the following year: on 6 May 1448 his brother, Thomas, who had been in receipt of Household robes since 1446, was joined in the office of serjeant of the King’s hall with its elderly holder.21 C219/15/4; E101/409/16; CPR, 1446-52, p. 151. Richard’s election to represent Warwickshire in the Parliament of February 1449 is perhaps to be explained by the same connexion, but was a controversial one. He held no lands in the county save in the right of his wife, not generally a strong recommendation in the eyes of county electors. Further, the election was itself irregular in that the hustings were convened only two days before Parliament was due to sit and the indenture named no attestors. Indeed, it may be that his return was set aside. In a commission of 8 Aug., three weeks after the dissolution, Thomas Bate*’s fellow Warwickshire MP is named as Edmund Mountfort*, who, as the son of the wealthy local knight, Sir William Mountfort*, was much better qualified to represent the county than Hotoft.22 C219/15/6; CFR, xviii. 122, 125; E179/192/74.

Hotoft had better qualifications for his third successive return to Parliament, for on the following 16 Oct. he was returned again for his native Leicestershire.23 C219/15/7. On this latter occasion the Household element was much less prominent than it had been in the preceding two assemblies, but there is nothing in Hotoft’s previous career to suggest that he was a supporter of the Commons’ proceedings against the duke of Suffolk. Nor is there anything to show if he took any part in the dramatic events of the following summer. He probably confined his attentions to his personal affairs. On 17 June 1450, as Cade’s rebels camped at Blackheath, he secured a papal indult to have a portable altar.24 CPL, x. 488.

Little is known of Hotoft’s career in the 1450s, but there can be little doubt that it was in this period that, counter to his earlier loyalties, he formed, or perhaps, further developed, an attachment to Richard Neville, earl of Warwick. It is a reasonable speculation that this came about through his wife’s kinship with the Hugfords, who were among the leading servants of the earl in Warwickshire. His stepdaughter had married John, son and heir of Thomas Hugford*, in the early 1440s. The first indication of his connexion with the earl is a very indirect one: on 23 Jan. 1447, 12 days after he had been elected to Parliament for Leicestershire, he was juror at the inquisition held at Warwick on the death of Henry Beauchamp, duke of Warwick, to whom the earl’s wife was heir.25 CIPM, xxvi. 592. While there is no reason to suppose that this nascent Neville connexion was a significant factor in his puzzling election for Warwickshire to the first Parliament of 1449, it certainly explains his election to represent the earl’s borough of Warwick, with which he had no previous association, in the Parliaments of 1453 and 1455. This second election, after the Nevilles had actively supported the duke of York at his victory at the first battle of St. Albans, suggests a realignment of Hotoft’s political sympathies.26 C219/16/2, 3. There may have been something irregular about his election in 1455. His name and that of his fellow MP, Thomas Portalyn*, have been added in a blank left in the original indenture, the former being written over an erasure. A further curiosity is provided by the endorsement of the writ: Portalyn’s name is a later addition in the same hand as added his name to the indenture, but Hotoft’s name is in the same hand as the rest of the endorsement. None the less, if so, he maintained his earlier ties with the Lancastrian regime. He added to his duchy offices a minor one in the administration of Queen Margaret: on 29 Jan. 1454 he presided over her court at Welton in Northamptonshire. More revealingly, late in 1455 he contracted his only child in marriage with the son and heir of the usher of the royal chamber, Thomas Staunton, his fellow MP in the 1447 Parliament and, as receiver of the honour of Leicester, his superior in the local duchy administration. Hotoft is unlikely to have contracted such a match if he had committed himself to the opposition cause.27 KB27/774, rot. 143d; CP25(1)/126/77/81, 83.

Hotoft’s main concerns at this date may have been the increasing polarization of national politics and the marriage of his only child, but his attention was diverted by politics of a more local variety. As the royal bailiff of Leicester he had, for some unknown reason, incurred the enmity of the town’s administration. In January 1448 he had sued one of the leading townsmen, William Wymondeswold*, for close-breaking at Humberstone, and this endows with added significance Wymondeswold’s presence on a jury of townsmen which, on the following 2 Apr., indicted Hotoft before royal commissioners of inquiry for the illegal giving of livery.28 KB27/749, rot. 9d; 751, rot. 28d; CIMisc. viii. 213. Clearly not all was well between the town and its bailiff, and by the early summer of 1455 very serious difficulties had arisen. On 27 June (coincidentally, four days after Hotoft’s election to Parliament) Thomas Dalton*, the mayor of Leicester, was required to find surety in the court of King’s bench to keep the peace towards him. In the following Michaelmas term Dalton replied with an action claiming that Hotoft had threatened him and matters advanced a stage further at a common hall held in the town on 7 Nov.29 KB27/777, rex rot. 21; CP40/779, rot. 625. Here Hotoft was said to have ‘ex maliuolo corde et malicia’ unjustly indicted the mayor and the community in divers courts of the King, and as a result it was decided that all these unjust actions should be defended ‘tanquam materie et querele tote communitati ville ... tangentes et pertinentes’. Not improbably one of the actions the town community had in mind was a bill sued against Dalton by the county sheriff, Thomas Berkeley*, very shortly before. Berkeley complained that on the previous 7 June at Sewstern in the north-east of the county, Dalton had collected as many as 500 malefactors with the intention of killing him, but had settled instead for assaulting him and then imprisoning him for two days. In the same Michaelmas term, Dalton appeared personally in the court of common pleas to sue our MP and three townsmen for threatening him at Leicester, suggesting that not all the leading townsmen were opposed to Hotoft.30 Leicester Bor. Recs. ed. Bateson, ii. 263-5; KB27/782, rot. 43d; CP40/779, rot. 625.

Hotoft’s political sympathies during the civil war of 1459-61 are unclear. His service to the queen, the duchy of Lancaster and the loyalist duke of Buckingham was balanced, perhaps more than balanced, by his more recent attachment to the earl of Warwick. His removal from the Leicestershire bench late in 1458 suggests he was suspected of Yorkist sympathies, but if so this did not prevent his nomination to the Lancastrian commission of array in the following year. None the less, soon after there are signs that he remained active in Neville’s service. On 30 Sept. 1460, at a time when he was, according to the enrolled commissions, not a member of the bench, he sat as a j.p. at Warwick in company with the earl himself to hear an indictment for an offence against one of the earl’s men, Thomas Hugford (his stepdaughter’s father-in-law).31 KB9/313/57. Moreover, during the winter of 1460-1 he was clearly trusted by the Yorkists. When, early in November 1460, John, Lord Lovell, politically compromised by his role in defending London in the Lancastrian cause in the previous summer, was obliged to surrender his manor of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Hotoft was among the feoffees alongside two prominent Yorkists, Edward, earl of March, and William Hastings. Six weeks later he made his first appearance on the enrolled peace commission for Warwickshire and was restored to the Leicestershire bench. On 20 Jan. 1461, he and the Leicestershire sheriff, Thomas Ferrers, were entrusted with the important task of arresting and imprisoning Henry Beaufort, duke of Somerset, and other Lancastrian leaders if they could be found in his native county.32 HMC Hastings, i. 2; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 657-8, 669, 680.

These marks of trust on the part of the new regime make it very surprising that Hotoft should have been removed from both his commissions of the peace in the following July. Further, at about the same time, he lost his duchy of Lancaster offices.33 Somerville, i. 569. If he was suspected of a lingering affection for Henry VI, it is curious that he should have been appointed to a commission to inquire into treasons in Coventry three months later. Even so, there can be little doubt that he was out of favour, and in view of his prominence in Leicestershire it is surprising that he did not gravitate to the service of the new Lord Hastings, the dominant magnate there in the wake of Edward IV’s accession. There are several indirect indications that his stock was low in the mid 1460s. Along with several former Lancastrians he was nominated to the onerous subsidy commission of July 1463; in Hilary term 1465 he was distrained to answer the King for trespass against the statute of malefactors in parks; and in July 1466 he sued out a general pardon.34 CFR, xx. 99; KB27/815, rex rot. 24d; C67/45, m. 2; C237/45/36. To be set against these signs of difficulty is his appointment to the bench in Rutland, a county in which he had no lands, in 1464, but this is scarcely sufficient to outweigh the impression conveyed by the other evidence. His reappearance on ad hoc commissions during the Readeption provides a further indication that he was politically suspect in the 1460s. His earlier connexion with the earl of Warwick may have been enough to compromise him in the eyes of Hastings in the 1460s without being strong enough to protect his place in local affairs.

Hotoft’s date of death poses considerable difficulties. According to a case in Chancery, after his death the feoffees for the execution of his will were examined there on 13 May 1468 in response to a petition sued against them by Thomas Kebell† in the previous Michaelmas.35 C1/42/89, 92; E.W. Ives, Common Lawyers: Thomas Kebell, 332-5. This date is clearly an error. Not only was Hotoft appointed to two commissions in October 1470 but he was also pursuing actions in the common law courts at that date. His death is therefore more reliably dated by the writ of diem clausit extremum issued in his name on 3 Mar. 1472. Since the damaged inscription on his now-lost tomb slab dated his death to April, it is therefore probable that he died in the spring of 1471.36 KB27/830, rot. 108d; CP40/832, rot. 384d; CFR, xxi. 6, 194; J. Nichols, Leics. iii (1), 276. Kebell’s petition was addressed to Bishop Stillington, who lost the office of chancellor on 20 Sept. 1472, and was probably presented at Michaelmas 1471. The examination of Hotoft’s feoffees is thus to be dated to 13 May 1472.

Hotoft’s death led to a prolonged dispute over his inheritance. His only child, Joan Staunton, had predeceased him without issue, and his common-law heir was his elderly and childless brother, Thomas.37 Joan Staunton was dead by 1468, the date of her husband’s 2nd marriage: CAD, v. A12183. But Thomas could expect to inherit little. Under the terms of two fines levied in 1455, at the time of Joan’s marriage to John Staunton (d.1476), our MP’s widow was ensured a life interest in the bulk of the lands, namely the manor of Humberstone and lands in Leicester, Belgrave and Syston, and John Staunton a life interest in property in Hathern, Birstall and Thurmaston, settled on the couple at marriage. Further, on his widow’s death, her interest was to pass to Staunton for life before passing to the right heirs of our MP.38 CP25(1)/126/77/81, 83. Shortly before his death Hotoft completed the arrangements for the future of his estates by conveying those not settled in 1455, namely his property in Great Stretton and other nearby vills, to two Leicestershire men, Richard Hewet of Humberstone and John Palmer of Hallaton, along with William Greenham of South Luffenham (Rutland) for the performance of his last will. This ‘will’ became the subject of dispute immediately after his death. The two surviving feoffees, Hewet and Greenham, faced two suits in Chancery. In the first Thomas Hotoft claimed that they were obliged under the terms of his brother’s will to make conveyance to him. In the second, the lawyer Thomas Kebell gave a very different story. He asserted that Richard had willed that these feoffees convey the lands to him in fee on condition that he employed the issues to find a priest to celebrate divine service in the church of Humberstone. At first it seemed that the disagreement centred on whether our MP had intended that the lands be amortized, but in an examination in Chancery the feoffees changed their story. They now claimed that, as he had made no will in writing to them, they were bound to enfeoff his right heir, Thomas Hotoft, but that they had not done so because of Kebell’s suit. As a result, Thomas Hotoft had since put them out and enfeoffed John Staunton’s father.39 C1/40/290; 42/89-92.

Later evidence shows that Kebell won this particular argument, although it lost its relevance with Thomas Hotoft’s death on 5 Apr. 1473. It is equally clear that, in return for the disputed property, Kebell discharged his obligations to his kinsman. In his will of 1500 he provided for the building of a house at Humberstone ‘for the Chauntry preste that shall serue my cousin Hotoftes Chauntrie perpetually’.40 Ives, 335, 429. With the childless death of our MP’s brother the debate focused on the Hotoft properties settled in 1455. Here Kebell had an interest of a different type. Since our MP’s daughter was dead without issue, Kebell’s elder brother, John, now stood as coheir-apparent to our MP as the great-grandson of his aunt, Isolda, formerly the wife of John Folville of Rearsby (Leicestershire). John Staunton, however, had a life interest in lands settled in 1455 and, if a later Chancery petition is to be taken at face value, he had purchased them in fee from Thomas Hotoft. Thomas Kebell had different ideas. In Hilary term 1475 John Kebell, in combination with the other coheir, Mary Folville, and her second husband, Thomas Lacy, sued a writ of formedon against Staunton for the bulk of the Hotofts’ ancestral lands, claiming that they had been entailed on the family in the reign of Edward II. There is no record of any such entail and it must be doubted if any existed. The purpose of the action was probably to deter the Stauntons from holding on to the property. In this it succeeded. When John Staunton died without issue in 1476 his younger brother and heir, another Thomas Staunton, immediately sold the property to Thomas Kebell for the bargain price of 400 marks, about half its market value reckoned at 20 years purchase, if a valuation in a contemporary Chancery petition is to be believed. Kebell thereafter made his residence at our MP’s manor house at Humberstone.41 Ibid. 336; CP40/853, rot. 151; C1/58/322.

Unless it was made in Hotoft’s lifetime, either Kebell or our MP’s feoffees were probably responsible for his tomb in Humberstone church. Despite the fact that he was a lawyer seemingly devoid of military experience, his incised slab portrays him in armour with sword and dagger at his side.42 F.A. Greenhill, Incised Slabs of Leics. and Rutland, 87-89 and pl. XI(a). This was probably no more than a conceit, although it is possible that he had taken up arms during the early campaigns of the Wars of the Roses.