LATON, William

The Latons had long been established at Dalemain near Penrith as feudal tenants of their baronial neighbours, the Greystokes, but they were a family of no great distinction and no reliable pedigree can be constructed for them. Our MP’s putative father, Thomas, played a minor part in local administration: in 1395 he served as a tax collector in Cumberland, and in 1401 he was appointed as alnager there. He was alive as late as 1415, when he sat as a juror at Penrith, and William succeeded him not long afterwards. William first appears in the records in 1423 when he attested the Cumberland parliamentary indenture at Carlisle.1 CFR, xi. 140; xii. 89; CPR, 1422-9, p. 440; C219/13/2. Thereafter he was a regular attestor, probably as constable of Carlisle castle. It is not known when he was appointed to this office, but there can be no doubt that he owed his appointment to the Nevilles. On 3 Dec. 1425 he was a juror at the inquisition taken at Penrith on the death of Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland, and his later career marks him out as a servant of the earl’s son, Richard, later earl of Salisbury. The likelihood is that he was nominated as constable in 1420 when Richard became warden of the west march.

Laton was certainly resident in Carlisle during the 1420s. In June 1428, in a pardon of outlawry for debt, he was described as ‘of Carlisle, esquire’; and, much more significantly, he was later involved in a serious fracas there. According to an action brought in the court of common pleas by the earl of Salisbury, on 14 Dec. 1429 Sir John Skelton*, one of the leading Cumberland gentry, and his servants assaulted the earl’s men, headed by our MP and his putative brother, John Laton. Skelton’s men replied with a different story, namely that they had been standing peacefully outside their master’s house in the town when assailed by the Latons and others; the mayor of Carlisle intervened, and, if any harm came to the earl’s men, they contended it was because they resisted the mayor’s efforts to arrest them. Whatever the truth of the matter, this case provides irrefutable evidence that our MP was a trusted Neville servant.2 CIPM, xxii. 653; CPR, 1422-9, p. 440; CP40/677, rot. 331. John Laton also made his career in the Neville service. In 1432 the earl of Salisbury nominated him to act as one of his attorneys in a conveyance of land: E326/474. By the late 1450s he was in receipt of an annuity of £4 assigned upon the Neville lordship of Middleham, and in 1460 he stood mainprise for the earl’s son, Sir Thomas: A.J. Pollard, ‘Northern Retainers’, Northern Hist. xi. 59, 68 (where the retainer is identified as John Layton of East Layton in Richmondshire, but it is more likely he was from Cumb.); CFR, xix. 285. In 1459, described as ‘of Carlisle, gentleman’, he was among the notorious criminals petitioned against by the Commons: PROME, xii. 502.

This service explains the brief period of prominence Laton enjoyed in the early 1430s. In 1430 he was named to a commission of array headed by Salisbury; on 30 June 1433, after attesting the three previous elections, he was himself elected to represent Cumberland in Parliament; and in the following year he was named as escheator.3 CPR, 1429-36, p. 71; C219/14/4; CFR, xvi. 222. This, however, marks the highpoint of his career. His standing may have been somewhat diminished when his master surrendered his wardenships in July 1435. It was probably at this date that he lost the constableship of Carlisle: he is described as the former constable in an action of debt he brought in the common pleas in the following Michaelmas term.4 H. Summerson, Carlisle, ii. 410; CP40/699, rot. 439. None the less, although no longer constable, Laton continued to play a part in local administration. His most important appointment came late in 1436 when he was named as one of the keepers of the west march pending the appointment of a new warden.5 Rot. Scot. ed. Macpherson etc., ii. 297. He was also very active as a juror. In 1435 and 1437 he sat on juries before the justices of gaol delivery at Penrith; in the autumn of 1436 he acted in the same capacity in the inquisition taken on the death of his feudal overlord, John, Lord Greystoke; and, as a further manifestation of his service to the Nevilles, he was a juror in both Cumberland and Westmorland when inquisitions were taken on the death of the earl of Salisbury’s mother, Joan, countess of Westmorland.6 JUST3/11/8, m. 17; 11/9, m. 16; CIPM, xxiv. 496; xxv. 517-18.

Laton last appears in the records on 14 May 1443, when he was a juror at the inquisition taken at Penrith on the death of Sir Christopher Moresby†. He was dead by Hilary term 1445 when his widow, Agnes, sued her putative brother-in-law, John Laton of Linstock (near Carlisle), for taking trees and underwood worth £20 and depasturing grass worth £10 at Dalemain.7 CIPM, xxvi. 132; CP40/736, rot. 284. She was still holding Dalemain in 1455: CP40/778, rot. 169d. Our MP’s son and heir was named Thomas, and he may have been one of very many children. There is a tradition that William had 30, 28 by his first wife, a daughter of the family of Tunstall, and two by his second wife, a daughter of the Threlkeld family.8 J. Nicolson and R. Burn, Westmld. and Cumb. ii. 383. There must be strong doubts about the Tunstall marriage. In the early 16th cent. our MP’s descendant, another William Laton†, married a da. of Thomas Tunstall: The Commons 1509-58, ii. 502. The tradition probably transposes this match to an earlier period. The surviving contemporary evidence shows only that our MP had a wife named Agnes who outlived him, but there is nothing intrinsically unlikely about her being a Threlkeld. In 1431 Sir Henry Threlkeld had entered an indenture of military service with the earl of Salisbury, and the marriage may have been made within that great retinue.9 Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. ix. 283-4; xxiii. 178.

However this may be, Thomas Laton was to pay a heavy price for his family’s service to Neville. On Christmas day 1452 a group of retainers of Thomas Percy, Lord Egremont, headed by Richard Bellingham*, assaulted him at Dalemain and allegedly imprisoned him until the following June. As a prisoner he petitioned Parliament for redress.10 KB27/769, rot. 106; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 467-8, 470. He died soon afterwards: in 1456 Ralph, Lord Greystoke, had an action pending against Nicholas Leybourne* for abducting Thomas’s son and heir, William, from his wardship at Greystoke.11 CP40/780, rot. 295; 782, rot. 172. In 1460 the young William was in dispute with our MP’s widow over possession of the family charters which, in 1448, the latter had given to Marmaduke Lumley, bp. of Carlisle, for safe-keeping: CP40/796, rot. 337. The family failed in the male line in 1675 after at least two other of its members had sat in the Commons.12 Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. xliv. 93-99; The Commons 1509-58, ii. 502-4; 1558-1603, ii. 446.