ILLINGWORTH, Richard

Illingworth’s origins are as obscure as his career was successful. It may be that he was a Nottinghamshire man by birth, for he first occurs in the records in connexion with that county. In Easter term 1431 he appeared in person in the court of King’s bench to sue a wheelwright for assaulting him at Kirkby-in-Ashfield in the west of the county.8 KB27/680, rots. 5, 38; 681, rot. 2. His personal appearance in court implies that he had already embarked on the legal training that was to take him to high office. Admitted to Lincoln’s Inn by Christmas 1435, in Easter term 1436 he acted as an attorney in King’s bench in a Yorkshire plea and in the following November he was one of 19 fellows of his Inn who undertook to keep learning vacations there for next four years. At the end of this period he was elected to serve a term as the Inn’s pensioner, the officer responsible for its financial affairs. He probably gave his first reading in the autumn of 1441, and soon after was elected as one of the Inn’s governors.9 L. Inn Adm. i. 7; KB27/700, att. rot. 1d; L. Inn Black Bks. i. 6, 9, 14; Readings and Moots, i (Selden Soc. lxxi), p. xii.

As his formal legal training came to an end Illingworth made the first of his many property acquisitions. In the early 1440s he acquired from John Clogh, a yeoman from Codnor, a small estate in Unstone and Apperknowle in north Derbyshire.10 Derbys. Chs. ed. Jeayes, 2467, 2470; KB27/739, rot. 10d; 740, rots. 9d, 76d. More significantly, it was probably at about the same time that he acquired the manor of Kirkby Hardwick (in Kirkby-in-Ashfield), from Margery, one of the coheiresses of the minor baronial house of Darcy and wife of Sir John Conyers of Hornby in Yorkshire. He soon set about extending the manor by making further acquisitions in the same parish. In February 1444 the feoffees of the financially-embarrassed Sir Henry Pierrepont* conveyed to him all the Pierrepont lands in Kirkby Hardwick, and in July 1446 the Crown granted him in fee 200 acres of wasteland bordering these lands at a nominal rent of 1d. p.a.11 S.J. Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian Eng. 144-5n. Clearly the bulk of the profits that funded these early forays on the land market came from his legal practice, but there is some evidence that he also profited from sheep-farming: in 1444 he sued a husbandman for selling him diseased sheep at Kirkby-in-Ashfield, and in 1446 he sued another husbandman of neighbouring Sutton-in-Ashfield for keeping a dog that worried his flocks.12 KB27/733, rot. 35d; 739, rot. 58.

Nevertheless, even though Illingworth was almost certainly a manorial lord by the mid 1440s, his landed stake in Nottinghamshire, a county with a dominant gentry elite, was insufficient to justify his election to represent the county in Parliament on 16 Jan. 1447. There can be no doubt that he owed his return to the powerful patronage of Ralph, Lord Cromwell. In 1446 he acted as an arbiter with Cromwell’s councillor, William Stanlowe*, in a Kentish dispute, and although this is the first direct evidence of his association with Lord Ralph it is probable that it does not mark its beginning. It is unlikely to have been coincidence that one of his earliest acquisitions was of land situated in the immediate neighbourhood of Cromwell’s manor of Dronfield. The closeness of their association is testified by Illingworth’s appointment as Cromwell’s deputy steward of the north parts of the duchy of Lancaster in March 1451 and his nomination as one of the feoffees for the execution of his will in November 1454. Of his four returns to Parliament, all of which occurred during Cromwell’s lifetime, the most significant was that of 30 June 1455 to an assembly in which his lord was politically vulnerable, having lost the office of King’s chamberlain and become the object of the enmity of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick.13 Payling, 144-5; M. Hicks, Warwick, 122.

After Cromwell’s death in January 1456 Illingworth took no further part in the administrative affairs of what was probably his native county. Indeed, even before this date his legal practice and involvement with the running of his Inn must have meant he was more frequently in London than on his new Nottinghamshire estate.14 For his clients in London, including the Grocers’ Co. which retained him of counsel in 1448: J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), i. 926. That his interests were becoming increasingly orientated to the south is reflected in his second marriage to a wealthy London widow, Alice Chalton. While she brought him some property in the City, which she had held jointly with her late husband, her chief attraction as a bride for an ambitious lawyer lay in her wealth in cash: in his will of 17 Dec. 1451 Thomas Chalton bequeathed her the massive sum of 1,000 marks in money and her personal jewels together with all the household goods in his mansion in the parish of St. Alban Wood Street.15 Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Kempe, ff.270v-271v, 286v-287. This marriage had taken place by 8 Apr. 1453 when Illingworth’s Notts. lands were settled on the couple for their lives with remainder, in fee tail, to his elder son Ralph and Alice’s kinswoman Agnes Nynne: Notts. Archs., Portland (of Welbeck) mss, 157DD/2P/1/4. Clearly a double marriage had taken place very shortly after Chalton’s death, with our MP finding a spouse for his heir from among the kin of his new wife.

So great a windfall explains why Illingworth was able to acquire further property, adding lands in the south to those he held in the Midlands. By Michaelmas term 1455, when he sued two local men for close-breaking, he was in possession of land at Clapham near Bedford held of the Augustinian priory of Newnham. He also held of the priory a messuage called Le George and four shops in Bedford High Street, probably acquired with his Clapham lands. More important was the property he held at Mitcham in Surrey. Described in his inquisition post mortem as comprising a chief messuage, four tofts and 200 acres, and valued at £4 p.a., he had acquired it by Easter 1456 when he was involved in successful litigation for its protection. The acquisition explains his appointment to the Surrey bench in the following January.16 CP40/779, rot. 397; C140/56/38; VCH Beds. iii. 6; VCH Surr. iv. 233. In Trin. term 1456 he won damages of over £100 against William Woodward for fabricating false deeds in respect of his property at Mitcham: KB27/780, rot. 52. It was, however, in the Midlands that he was to make by far the most important of his many land acquisitions. Here he was consulting not his own convenience but the future of his family. Between 1459 and 1463 he was in negotiation with the executors of his erstwhile master Lord Cromwell for the purchase of a south Nottinghamshire estate, centred on the valuable manor of Bunny, and the Derbyshire manor of Breadsall.17 Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, Penshurst mss, U1475/A85.

By the time this purchase was complete, Illingworth’s career had taken a further significant step forward. While there is no direct evidence of where his political sympathies lay during the civil war of 1459-61, there are good grounds for believing he favoured York: in October 1456 he was a feoffee of the duke of York’s notorious henchman Sir William Oldhall*; he was removed from the Surrey bench in January 1459 only to be restored after the Yorkist victory at the battle of Northampton; and in February 1459 he was named by the Yorkist Sir Henry Pierrepont† to act as an arbiter in his violent dispute with the Lancastrian Sir William Plumpton*.18 CAD, i. B1244 (too much should not, however, be made of this Oldhall feoffment, for while the feoffees included committed Yorkists like Sir Edmund Mulsho* they also included Sir Thomas Tuddenham* and John Heydon*); Payling, 201. Similarly suggestive is a raid on his property at Kirkby-in-Ashfield on 2 Jan. 1461, three days after the Yorkist defeat at the battle of Wakefield, when a group of local men plundered his household goods and livestock to the value of as much as 220 marks.19 KB9/299/121; KB27/808, rex rot. 29.

These indications of Yorkist sympathies take on added substance in the light of Illingworth’s rapid advancement once Edward IV had ascended the throne. For the first time he became the recipient of valuable grants of royal patronage. On 15 July 1461 he was regranted in fee the 200 acres of wasteland in Kirkby Hardwick he had held since 1446, to which were added small parcels of forfeited land in neighbouring Kirkby Woodhouse and nearby Awsworth. Far more valuable was the grant made to him eight days later of a life annuity of £40 from the fee farm of Nottingham. These grants of patronage were soon followed by one of office: in September 1462 he was appointed chief baron of the Exchequer with a fee of 150 marks p.a.20 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 22, 24, 298; E159/238, recorda Mich. rot. 7d. Although by this time he was a well established lawyer such marks of favour are unlikely to have come his way unless he had an influential patron. No surviving evidence places him in the service of any of the Yorkist lords before Henry VI’s deposition, but a passing reference in the Paston correspondence shows that by January 1462 he was serving on the earl of Warwick’s council. It is probable that their relationship was no more than a professional one – as a senior lawyer Illingworth no doubt served on other baronial councils and there is nothing to associate him more intimately with Warwick – but it can only have assisted his promotion in the early years of Yorkist rule.21 Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 270.

The considerable increase in income occasioned by this promotion enabled Illingworth to complete, in Trinity term 1463, the purchase of the manor of Bunny and the other former Cromwell manors. The price must have been a considerable one. The manor of Bunny alone, albeit the most valuable of the manors, had a capital value, reckoned at 20 years’ purchase, of nearly £800, and in November 1466 he still owed £500.22 CP25(1)/294/74/16; CP40/814, cart. rot.; Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Cromwell pprs. Misc. 355, 356(1); CCR, 1461-8, pp. 237-8, 251-2, 306; 1468-76, nos. 70, 75; Notts. IPM (Thoroton Soc. xvii), 74. Further acquisitions followed. In February 1466 he purchased from a local gentleman, David Preston, several hundred acres of land in Kirkby Woodhouse in the immediate vicinity of his initial purchase in the county at Kirkby Hardwick, and in November 1471 he completed the acquisition of further former Cromwell property in the same vicinity.23 CP25(1)/186/40/2; 294/76/79; Portland (of Welbeck) mss, 157DD/P/15/3; CP40/854, rots. 354, 358. These new purchases made him one of the leading landholders in south Nottinghamshire, but the focus of his activities continued to be London and Surrey, where his acquisitions were much more modest. Although, after his second wife’s death in 1467, he bought Chalton’s property in the parish of St. Alban Wood Street from her first husband’s feoffees, he showed no inclination to build a significant estate in the south-east.24 Corp. London RO, hr 197/21, 37; 198/5. Indeed, not the least singular aspect of his career is that he only played a part in Nottinghamshire affairs when his lands there were comparatively meagre, but that he continued to buy lands there and in Derbyshire when the centre of his interests had moved to the capital.

The explanation probably lies in Illingworth’s desire to carve out, in the country of his birth, a country estate for his elder son, Ralph, who, born seemingly in the late 1440s, may have been the godson of our MP’s former master, Lord Cromwell. The sale of so much of Cromwell’s property enabled Illingworth to do so with greater facility than would have been possible under the normal operation of the land market for, as one of Cromwell’s feoffees, he was ideally placed to negotiate with the executors. Having provided in this way for his elder son, his later purchases were driven by the need to make adequate provision for his younger son, Richard. Here he was able to take advantage of the financial difficulties of the Greys of Codnor, a midlands baronial family with significant landholdings in the south. Ironically their difficulties were largely due to a punitive settlement imposed upon them by Cromwell in 1441. In 1467 Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor (d.1496) sold to Illingworth the Hampshire manors of Upton Grey and Tunworth near Basingstoke and these were then settled on the younger Richard in reversion after his father’s death.25 CCR, 1461-8, p. 443; CP40/823, rot. 123d; CP25(1)/207/34/8; C140/56/38.

During the mid 1460s, when his career was at its height, Illingworth also assured the future financial security of his daughter Ellen: in 1465 he contracted with William Babington* and William’s nephew, another William, for her marriage to the latter. This match arose from legal and local Nottinghamshire connexions – the elder William was a lawyer from Chilwell not far from Kirkby Hardwick – but the younger branch of the Babingtons into which Ellen was marrying were settled in Oxfordshire. Her father was able to drive a hard bargain: for a portion of £200 he secured her a jointure of as much as 50 marks p.a.26 CCR, 1461-8, pp. 378-9; 1468-76, no. 751. Earlier, in 1461, his da. Agnes had married a young lawyer, William, son and heir-apparent of Thomas Assheby (d.1467) of Lowesby, Leics. The jointure was also a generous one: CP25(1)/294/74/4. To have made such ample provision for his children was a remarkable achievement for a man apparently landless at birth.

Illingworth’s extended landholdings together with his Exchequer office were enough to justify the bestowal of knighthood upon him at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in May 1465. Less welcome to him may have been another manifestation of his enhanced status, namely the King’s recourse to him for loans. During his years as chief baron he advanced a total of £618, although he does seem to have successfully secured repayment.27 Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English, ii (2), [783-4]; W.A. Shaw, Knights of Eng. i. 134; A. Steel, Receipt of Exchequer, 331; E404/72/4/53; 74/1/45; 73/3/2, 6. The Readeption of October 1470 may have posed problems of loyalty for Illingworth, but he retained his place as chief baron.28 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 226, 229. It has been mistakenly claimed that he was reappointed on 9 Oct. but replaced five days later by the second baron, John Clerk: E.W. Ives, Common Lawyers: Thomas Kebell, 486. In fact, on 14 Oct. Clerk was reappointed as second baron, as he was again on 22 Apr. 1471: E159/247, recorda Mich. rot. 1; CPR, 1467-77, p. 258. Illingworth had no patents of appointment after 9 Oct. 1470, but he was not replaced as chief baron until 22 May 1471 when Thomas Urswyk II* was appointed: CPR, 1467-77, p. 259. His loss of the office on Edward IV’s restoration in the following spring could be interpreted as a punishment for not offering that King his active support in the crisis of 1470-1, but it can equally be seen as marking a voluntary retirement. He must have been over 60 years old by this time, and his advanced age, and perhaps a breakdown in health, is reflected in the fact that he drew up his will on 5 July 1471. Further, he continued to be appointed to the Surrey bench and, despite his loss of the office of chief baron, to draw on the privileges of that department’s officers, bringing writs of trespass in the Exchequer of pleas.29 PCC 25 Wattys (PROB11/6, ff.192v-193); CPR, 1467-77, p. 632; E13/158, rots. 12, 52d. Another indication that he had not been assigned to the political wilderness is the royal exemplification he secured in October 1473 of the licence of 1454 for the enfeoffment of the Cromwell estates: this gave him surety in respect of his most important purchases. On the other hand, he was not granted exemption from the Act of Resumption of that year as he had been from the Acts of 1461, 1464 and 1467, but again this may reflect his retirement from public affairs.30 CPR, 1467-77, p. 399; PROME, xiii. 31-33, 160, 283.

Illingworth died on 26 Apr. 1476 without having updated his will of five years before. Its terms mirror the breadth of his geographical interests. He left small bequests to eight religious houses, including £10 to the Nottinghamshire priory of Beauvale and five marks to the Surrey priory of Merton, and he remembered the parish churches of Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Bunny, Stanton-on-the-Wolds, Stanford-upon-Soar, Breadsall, Upton Grey, Tunworth and Dorking. But it was in the London church of St. Alban Wood Street, where his second wife was interred, that he wished to be buried, and his largest single religious bequest was to the warden and convent of the Friars Minor in the City to keep the anniversary of his death for ten years. Given the success of his career his legacies were comparatively modest: 40 marks to be distributed on the day of his death between prisoners and other poor in the City; 20 marks to be distributed between the poor tenants of his estates; 50 marks to his elder son’s wife; 50 marks each to his three grandchildren; and smaller sums to various kinsmen and servants. He appointed his two sons, Ralph and Richard, as his executors.31 PCC 25 Wattys.

The bulk of Illingworth’s estates passed to Ralph, but Richard inherited his two Hampshire manors and his lands at Mitcham. Ralph singularly failed to advance the fortunes of the family. A lawyer trained at the Inner Temple, his career began promisingly. Indeed, in May 1473, no doubt supported by his father’s wealth, he entered into a major undertaking, farming from Robert Wroth the keepership of the Fleet prison and the palace of Westminster at an annual rent of as much as 100 marks.32 Baker, i, 925; CP40/846, cart. rots. 1d, 2. Yet his only public office was that of escheator in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in 1478-9, and, by his death in 1498, he had begun to diminish the estate his father had so painstakingly built up. It may be that the agreement of 1473 had proved to be an unfavourable one, but, however this may be, his son, Richard, continued the process of alienation, selling the manor of Kirkby Hardwick, the purchase of which had been so important in the family’s rise, back to the Conyers family. This Richard died in June 1504 leaving four daughters as his coheiresses, but the younger branch of the family, settled at Mitcham, fared a little better, holding on to their lands until the early seventeenth century.33 CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 123-4, 852; Readings and Moots, ii. 129n; Portland (of Welbeck) mss, 157DD/2P/1/7; 157DD/P/CD/28-30; Derbys. Chs. 2478; CP25(1)/186/39/18; 294/77/132; CP40/965, rot. 148; VCH Hants, iii. 383; iv. 175; O. Manning and W. Bray, Surr. ii. 503; Notts. IPM, 89.