ILDERTON, Thomas

The Ildertons of Ilderton, established in Northumberland since the twelfth century, failed in the male line two centuries later but their surname was perpetuated when a Yorkshire landowner, Thomas Wetewang, took the Ilderton name after his marriage to Alice, the heiress of Henry de Ilderton (fl.1328). In the second half of the fourteenth century this new incarnation of the Ildertons prospered. Sir Thomas Ilderton† had a long military career in France and Scotland, and held important military office on the borders: in July 1377 he was appointed as chancellor and chamberlain of Berwick-upon-Tweed under Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, the warden of the marches, and in April 1380 John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, named him as constable of the great castle of Dunstanborough. Thereafter he served both these lords, even after enmity grew between them in the 1380s. Our MP’s father, Edward, was probably Sir Thomas’s son. He too was employed on the Scottish borders, but appears to have died around 1404.2 Hist. Northumb. xiv. 268-71; A. Goodman and A. Tuck, War and Border Societies, 187; A. King, ‘War, Politics and Landed Society in Northumb.’ (Durham Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 2001), 207-8, 254.

Ilderton was to have a much less significant career than that of his putative grandfather. A minor at his father’s death, nothing is known of his minority. He was of age by 23 May 1420 when he headed a jury at an inquisition post mortem held at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Given his youth and relative poverty (he was assessed on an income of only £13 p.a. in the subsidy returns of 1436), it is very surprising that he should then have been elected to represent his native county in the successive Parliaments of 1423 and 1425. On both occasions he was elected alongside men in the service of Thomas Langley, bishop of Durham, the chancellor at the time of the first Parliament: in 1423 his fellow MP was the bishop’s steward, Thomas Holden*, and in 1425 it was another of Langley’s leading servants, Sir Robert Ogle I*.3 C138/45/20; E179/158/38; C219/13/2, 3. A Durham connexion may explain his elections. Shortly before the first of them, he had fallen heir to lands in the bishop’s lordship of Norhamshire in north Northumberland. In an inquisition held in January 1425 at Norham he was returned as heir to his great-uncle, Robert Clifford† (d.1422/3). Robert had owed his prominent career to his connexions – he was the brother of Richard, bishop of London – and the landholdings of his wife, an heiress and widow; his own landholdings were modest, principally consisting of ten burgages in Norham held of the bishop. In April 1427 Langley licensed Ilderton to take possession of these burgages with other insignificant holdings in the vicinity.4 DURH3/2, f. 219; 38, m. 13d. The inq. dates Clifford’s death to 7 Oct. 1422 rather than 9 Mar. as given in his monumental inscription in Canterbury cathedral: W. Somner, Antiqs. Canterbury, app. 33.

These two elections to Parliament show that Ilderton was a man of some significance, as does his marriage to a daughter of the important Westmorland family of Musgrave. In March 1435 Langley issued a licence for the Clifford land in Grindon, near Norham, to be settled on feoffees to the use of the couple.5 DURH3/36, m. 8. There are also other sporadic indications of his standing from early in his career. In June 1425, for example, he acted as surety for Ogle when the latter agreed to abide by the arbitration of Sir William Bowes and others in his dispute with Sir William Elmden*; and in April 1428 he was himself asked to arbitrate in the dispute between John Manners† and Isabel Heron over reparations for the murder of the latter’s husband.6 CCR, 1422-29, p. 210; Durham Univ. Lib. cathedral muns. locelli, Loc. V:51. According to one Ilderton ped. (Hist. Northumb. xiv. 270) John Manners married Edward Ilderton’s widow, but the source for this information is not given. Yet his connexions with leading local figures did not translate into any meaningful part in administrative affairs. Although he occasionally appeared as a juror at inquisitions post mortem, he is not recorded as holding local office and was named to only two ad hoc commissions of local government.7 CIPM, xxv. 188, 190; CPR, 1429-36, p. 361; 1446-52, p. 136. Further, well before the end of his life, his position in local societv was taken over by his son, also named Thomas, who must have been his issue by an unrecorded wife before Margaret Musgrave. As early as 1443 the young Thomas was acting as constable of the Percy castle of Alnwick, and he was among those knighted by the earl of Northumberland at the battle of Wakefield in December 1460.8 A.A. Cardew, ‘Society in the Anglo-Scottish Borders’ (St. Andrews Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1974), 163; CFR, xviii. 216; Hist. Northumb. xiv. 270.

During this period nothing is known of the former MP beyond the fact that he was still alive. It may be that he was plagued by debilitating ill-health, but, if so, he survived until 27 June 1467 when a writ of diem clausit extremum was issued. By then Sir Thomas was also dead (perhaps falling in the Percy ranks at the battle of Towton), and, although the details are obscure, there followed a dispute between Sir Thomas’s widow and their two daughters, on the one hand, and our MP’s heir-male, his nephew, yet another Thomas. By 1478 the manor of Ilderton was in the nephew’s hands.9 CFR, xx. 196; xxi. 449; C1/48/369; 53/309; C140/75/50; Hist. Northumb. xiv. 270; Arch. Aeliana, ser. 4, iii. 133; Plumpton Corresp. (Cam. Soc. iv), 27.