KIRTON, William II

Like his father before him, Kirton was an active and prominent member of the Southwark borough community, representing the town in Parliament on no fewer than four occasions. No details of his early life or education have been discovered, but in the light of his later career it seems likely that he underwent some legal training, perhaps – like his son after him – at Lincoln’s Inn. 4 It seems improbable that the Southwark gentleman and esquire was the same as the William Kirton who by July 1424 had been apprenticed to the London mercer Robert Coventry. The payment of his issue fee was recorded in 1435-6, the same year in which he paid the first of three instalments of 6s. 8d. for his admission to the livery of the craft. This William went on to marry Joan, the da. of another mercer, Martin Kelom. H.J. Creaton, ‘Mercers’ Accts.’ (London Univ. M.Phil. thesis, 1977), i. 322; ii. 27, 29, 50, 66, 82; Studies in London Hist. ed. Hollaender and Kellaway, 158; Guildhall Lib. London, commissary ct. wills, 9171/3, ff. 290-1; Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 229; L, 273; Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, p. 43; CCR, 1454-61, p. 34.

At his father’s death in 1428 Kirton suceeded to his extensive landholdings: in 1436 his Surrey property alone was believed to give him an annual income of £20, and he apparently also had interests in the city of London and, by the time of his death, on its outskirts at St. Paul’s Cray in Kent.5 Surr. Hist. Centre, Woking, Loseley mss, LM/1719. A parishioner of St. George’s church in Southwark, his principal associates were the local lawyer Adam Levelord* (his more experienced parliamentary colleague on the occasion of his first return to the Commons), and the wealthy brewer William Kyng, who lived nearby. The three men not only acted together in each other’s and their neighbours’ property transactions, but periodically concerned themselves in the interests of their parish church.6 CP25(1)/232/71/66; 72/90, 105; C44/29/7; C145/312/3; CFR, xviii. 95 This appears to have been the case with regard to their role in a protracted dispute with the executors of Agnes, widow of John Salford, over a local inn called Le Cok. While Kirton and Levelord claimed to be acting on earlier instructions from Salford himself that the property should be enfeoffed to the use of St. George’s church, Agnes’s executors maintained that it had been her will that the inn should be sold for the settlement of her debts and bequests, and alleged that Kirton and Levelord had unlawfully prevented her from conveying it to other feoffees, and had even sought to coerce her on her deathbed into following her husband’s chosen course of action. Kirton, it was claimed, had arranged for a common recovery ‘pryvely to be tayled ayenst hym by hys awen knowlege in þe comyn place atte first day of apperaunce wher he myght have praied in eide in a formedon in þe descendre’ in favour of one John Whissh, and by these means had secured sole possession of the property. Kirton for his part maintained that Whissh, with the aid of friends, ‘as well of the kynges hous as other lordes men[ie]’ had challenged Salford’s title, and that he himself had acted in accordance with instructions given to him by Salford on his death bed when he effectively bought Whissh off with a sum of money, and that he had, moreoever, used the revenues to pay a priest as specified. The squabble continued in one form or another until the very eve of Kirton’s death, a period during which both Levelord and Agnes’s sister and executrix died, although it seems that throughout this time Kirton successfully frustrated the efforts of Agnes’s heirs to take possession of the property (which was still in the Kirtons’ hands in the time of William’s synonymous grandson).7 C1/18/193-202; 27/255-7; 28/261-3; C253/32/156-7; REQ2/3/280.

From the 1440s, Kirton increasingly began to play a part in public affairs. In April 1440, for instance, he was named among the jurors inquiring into a dispute involving Peter Saverey*, and two years later he represented his neighbours in the Commons for the first time. In 1443 he was appointed as part of a commission of sewers along the river Thames between Lambeth and Newington, but it was at the very end of the decade, in the crisis years of 1449-50 that he became most active. In January 1449 Kirton was present in the Surrey county court for the elections of the shire-knights to the forthcoming Parliament, while later that year he was himself elected as MP for Southwark for the second time. By then, England was in turmoil as news came of the fall of the Norman towns to the French. On 4 Nov., two days before Parliament assembled, Rouen itself surrendered. During the Christmas recess, the keeper of the privy seal, Bishop Moleyns of Chichester, was murdered, and when the Commons reassembled in late January 1450 they launched an all-out assault on the King’s principal minister, the duke of Suffolk. On 17 Mar. Suffolk was banished from the kingdom, and two weeks later, Parliament was prorogued. London and its hinterland were seen to be too restless for the Lords and Commons to meet there again in safety, so on 29 Apr. they gathered at Leicester. Three days later, Suffolk was killed on his way to the continent, and before the end of May the entire south of England was in upheaval, with a Kentish rebel army camped at Blackheath threatening the capital. Parliament was hastily dissolved in the first week of June. When Kirton returned to Southwark, he probably found the Kentishmen under their leader Jack Cade roaming the streets of the borough, from where they were admitted to London on 4 July. The depredations of Cade’s followers in the City spelled the end of the whole enterprise, for the citizens were galvanized into asserting control of their streets, and – crucially – of London Bridge. Kirton’s whereabouts during the rising are unknown, but within two days he had availed himself of the royal pardon offered to those implicated in the rising. Yet whatever his actions during the summer months, he did nothing to alienate his Southwark neighbours, who re-elected him to the Commons that September. Nor was he regarded with suspicion in other quarters, for by Michaelmas he had entered into the service of Thomas Kempe, bishop of London, who appointed him bailiff of his liberties in Surrey and Sussex.8 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 346, 532. Kirton was to occupy the bailiwick for nearly five years and by Michaelmas 1452 Kempe also gave him responsibility for the episcopal estates in London and Middlesex. While so engaged he again served as a commissioner of sewers along the Thames.

The later years of Kirton’s life were no less active, but in a somewhat different manner. While he continued to witness gifts and deeds in Southwark,9 CCR, 1454-61, pp. 46-47, 156; 1461-8, p. 151. he increasingly came into conflict with his fellow townsmen. Thus, in the autumn of 1455 he personally brought proceedings before the justices of common pleas against two groups of lesser Southwark men for assaulting him and a servant, and for stealing his crops,10 CP40/779, rots. 42, 46d. and on 6 Aug. 1456 he allegedly attacked the important royal servant Ralph Legh* at Newington. Edmund Horewell complained of a similar assault in Kent Street not long afterwards.11 CP40/784, rot. 496d; KB27/790, rot. 80d; 793, rot. 106d. It may have been as a consequence of these challenges at law that in October 1458 Kirton saw fit to place his goods and chattels for safekeeping in the hands of the Lincoln’s Inn lawyer William Gaynesford* and others.12 CCR, 1454-61, pp. 373-4.

There is no concrete evidence of Kirton’s political sympathies or affiliations as the kingdom slipped into open civil war. Nevertheless, his return to the Parliament summoned in the aftermath of the Lancastrian defeat at the battle of Northampton in July 1460 may indicate that he was at least not seen as hostile to the duke of York’s cause. Moreover, following the removal of John Gloucester III* from office in July 1461, he was chosen a county coroner for Surrey, a post in which he would serve until his death three years later.13 CCR, 1461-8, pp. 42, 217. On 19 Aug. 1464 Kirton made a will at St. Paul’s Cray, which was witnessed by several local men, including the rector of the parish church. It is possible that he had suddenly fallen ill, perhaps contracting the pestilence which, just weeks after his death, ravaged the prison population of the marshalsea of King’s bench in Southwark. He died before 1 Sept., when an order was issued for the election of a new county coroner. Under the terms of the will, Kirton – styling himself an esquire – was to be buried in the chapel of the Virgin in St. George’s, Southwark, next to his two unnamed wives, and two fraternities attached to the church reveived bequests. Kirton’s Surrey property was to fall to his son and heir, John, when he came of full age, or to John’s sister Margaret, if her brother should die childless. For reasons that remain unclear, Kirton’s will was not proved until two years later, on 22 Nov. 1466. By that date Dirton’s executrix, his widow Agnes, had married as her second husband Richard Tingleden†, a Southwark neighbour.14 PCC 15 Godyn; CP40/818, rot. 316d; 819, rot. 473.