LEMATON, John

The Lematon brothers took their name from the small border settlement of Lemington in the parish of Edlingham in Northumberland, where their ancestors held land in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.8 J. Hodgson, Hist. Northumb. vii. 163-5. Their father, John Barker, had at least five sons, including Thomas, who was rector of Spofford in Yorkshire until his death in 1473/4.9 Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. vi. 104. Some of the family lands at various locations in and around Edlingham were apparently placed in John’s hands while his father was still alive,10 Swinburne (Capheaton) mss, ZSW/3/17, 18.and at some point before 1440 he also acquired a significant part of the coastal settlement of Alnmouth which had been virtually abandoned in the early fourteenth century. The township, together with its farm of £8 was then leased to his father for the term of Lematon’s life.11 Hodgson, ii. 473. No details of John’s education have come to light, but he evidently received some legal training, being later described as a ‘legis peritus’.12 St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, recs., XV.48.16, m. 4. In addition, he seems to have maintained trading interests, perhaps in partnership with his brother Richard, for in December 1446 a ship called the Grace Dieu was shipwrecked en route from Kingston-upon-Hull to Calais, with the loss of a large cargo of woollen cloth, some of it Lematon’s property.13 SC1/57/91-92.

The early parts of Lematon’s professional career were focused in the north. He is first heard of in July 1426 when he acted as a mainpernor for John Horsley, granted an Exchequer lease of land in Northumberland.14 CFR, xv. 131. Before long he attracted the attention of a powerful patron in the person of the Earl Marshal, John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk. It is unclear how their connexion first came about, but it is reasonable to suppose that it was forged during Mowbray’s three-year term as warden of the east march towards Scotland from 1437 to 1440.15 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 404. By the early 1440s Lematon was a member of the inner Mowbray circle, and it was unquestionably by virtue of Norfolk’s patronage that he was returned to Parliament by the duke’s borough of Reigate in Surrey. He may by this date already have been serving as the duke’s attorney-general, an office for which he was in receipt of an annual fee of £20, and before long he also held the post of steward of his widespread estates. By the latter part of the decade, he ranked alongside other leading Mowbray retainers, like John Timperley I* and II* (the duke’s joint stewards and constables at Reigate), as a feoffee for the duke’s lands in Essex, Surrey, Sussex and Wales,16 Moye, 437, 449; KB27/744, rot. 78d; Hooper, 38; E326/9091. and around the same time, and probably in order to safeguard their lord’s interests, he and one of the Timperleys were included among the feoffees of the extensive Fitzalan estates which had once belonged to the duke’s great-aunt, Margaret Fitzalan, and had since been held for life by her husband Sir Roland Lenthall.17 CCR, 1447-54, p. 312.

In the spring of 1440 Mowbray relinquished the wardenship of the east march, and on 1 Apr. Sir Henry Percy was appointed to the office which his father, the earl of Northumberland, had held until the mid 1430s.18 Griffiths, 404. Lematon may have had prior dealings with the Percys, who held property at Lemington, and he may, indeed, have served under Mowbray in a capacity similar to that of treasurer of the east march which he now took up under Sir Henry.19 Percy Cart. (Surtees Soc. cxvii.), 303, 468-9. Clearly, Percy already held him in some regard, for it was at the warden’s express request that on 4 May 1442 Lematon was granted the post of clerk of works at Roxburgh castle, and at the castles and towns of Berwick-upon-Tweed and Carlisle, an office which brought with it wages of 12d. a day, rising to 2s. when riding in fulfilment of his duties. The parlous state of the northern defences continued to be of at least nominal concern to the administration, even if the demands of the French wars meant that in practice little money was available for their upkeep. Thus, in February 1447 Lematon was part of a commission of inquiry set up to investigate the ever-increasing arrears of wages and other expenses incurred by the keeper of Roxburgh, Lord Fauconberg, for repairs made to the castle, and in the following summer, in the face of a growing threat from the Scots, he and Ralph Percy were commissioned to recruit labourers and assemble materials for repairs to the castles and towns of Berwick, Roxburgh and Carlisle.20 CPR, 1441-6, p. 33; 1446-52, pp. 138, 183; E159/225, brevia Hil. rot. 3; 226, brevia Hil. rot. 14d. On more than one occasion, Lematon himself had to advance loans towards these works, several of which were never repaid in his lifetime.21 J.M.W. Bean, Estates Percy Fam. 99-100; C1/19/350.

Perhaps by virtue of his duties in the duke of Norfolk’s service, Lematon began to acquire property in London and its hinterland, giving him easy access to the seat of the royal administration at Westminster. In the summer of 1432 he bought 11 tenements in the London parish of St. Giles without Cripplegate from the skinner Thomas Pomfret;22 CCR, 1429-35, p. 185; Cal. P and M. London, 1437-57, p. 41; Corp. London RO, hr 161/18, 19. and by the summer of 1434 he also possessed holdings in Kent.23 CCR, 1429-35, p. 316; 1435-41, p. 136; CP40/745, rot. 535. His professional activities provided him with ties in other counties too: in 1441 he served as an arbiter in a dispute over property at North Mimms in Hertfordshire, while in Sussex he was named among the feoffees of the former estates of Sir Hugh Halsham, which in 1442 fell to John Lewknor* in the right of his wife, Halsham’s niece.24 Suss. Feet of Fines (Suss. Rec. Soc. xxiii), 250-1; CCR, 1435-41, p. 466; CPR, 1441-6, p. 65; E159/220, brevia Mich. rot. 34d.

In the interim, and probably through his early ties to the Percys, Lematon had begun to forge important connexions at court, where William de la Pole, earl, marquess and eventually duke of Suffolk, was growing in influence. The first tangible reward of this association was the grant to Lematon in 1445 of the parkership of Liskeard, an office pertaining to the King’s duchy of Cornwall,25 CPR, 1441-6, p. 353; 1446-52, pp. 86-87. and it is probable that at the time of the appointment he may already have been acquainted with the steward of the duchy lands in Cornwall, the leading courtier John Trevelyan*, a fellow Member of the Parliament of 1442. In the years that followed their association was to deepen: by 1446 Lematon was one of Trevelyan’s feoffees, a service that drew him into a protracted dispute between Trevelyan and the Devon landowner Thomas Wyse*,26 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 375, 391-2, 401-2; 1447-54, pp. 69, 72; KB27/745, rot. 3d; 746, rot. 134. and by 1448 he had also formed links with Thomas Bodulgate*, a close associate of Trevelyan’s in the ranks of the King’s court.27 CCR, 1447-54, p. 93.

During much of the second half of the 1440s Lematon used the favour in which he was held by the ruling clique to acquire a string of official appointments. In May 1447 he was granted the office of warden of the exchange, mint and coinage, which had previously been held by the King’s physician, Master John Somerset*, and which brought with it wages of as much as 2s. 6d. a day. In addition, he was also assigned the reversion of the even more lucrative office of chancellor of the Exchequer, which Somerset in the first place continued to occupy.28 CPR, 1436-41, p. 418; 1446-52, p. 54. The means by which Lematon secured these grants illustrate the scramble for reward and position even within the ruling elite itself. He and two of his brothers, Thomas and Richard, so it was later asserted, had entered into a bond for 200 marks with Peter Caldecote, a London draper, and Robert Cawood of the Exchequer. In return, Caldecote undertook to procure royal letters granting John and his brothers, Thomas and Henry, the office of warden of the exchange as well as the reversion of the chancellorship of the Exchequer. The bond eventually found its way into the hands of Philip Malpas*, administrator of the goods of a deceased Lombard merchant. According to Malpas, Lematon had agreed to honour the bond, apparently even before receiving the desired grants, ‘seyng more over to me that he trusted and hoped verrily to have tailles out of the Kyngs receite of gretter sources wher thrugh the saide cc mark and all other detts by hym owyng shuld be content and paied by the feste of Cristemas’. Lematon had good reason to be confident of his eventual success, for he had bribed the duke of Suffolk himself with the large sum of 100 marks to support his cause. Somerset, as he would later claim, was already being pestered by a considerable number of suitors seeking to acquire his offices, when he was summoned to attend upon de la Pole. In the course of their brief and – for Somerset – uncomfortable interview (during which he was kept standing in the duke’s presence) Suffolk requested that ‘noman shuld be prefferrid afore the said Lemanton’, and Somerset was forced to agree as he ‘stode not gretely in hys luf and affeccion’ and ‘durst not say nay’ to the duke. For all his wounded pride, Somerset was not left empty handed: for relinquishing his offices, Lematon paid him the vast sum of 1,000 marks. All seemed well, but Lematon, in Somerset’s words, ‘sette not bi the counsel of wyse Caton [...] In morte alterius spem tu tibi ponere noli’ and had failed to account for the fickle nature of Suffolk’s support. If he had hoped to sell on the reversion of the chancellorship after his own death at a profit, or even to bestow it on his brother, he was to be disappointed since the duke arranged for the further remainder after Lematon’s death to be settled on Thomas Thorpe*. Having failed to persuade Suffolk to ‘have his brother in joynt patentys’, he then tried to secure the return of some of the 1,000 marks which he had paid for the reversion from Somerset, who understandably refused.29 C1/19/60-65; R.L. Storey, End of House of Lancaster, 50-51. In the event Thorpe was not granted the reversion until Nov. 1452: CPR, 1452-61, p. 43.

Lematon’s loss of the reversion of the chancellorship of the Exchequer represented at most a minor setback, and did not affect his relations with Suffolk, with whom in January 1449 he shared the exclusive privilege of mining gold, silver, lead and copper throughout the realm, except for Devon and Cornwall, for 50 years, paying a royalty of a fifteenth of gross output.30 CPR, 1446-52, p. 213. It is indicative of the wealth that Lematon amassed through his professional and trading activities, as well as his lucrative offices that in association with the wealthy London trader William Venour he was able to advance a sum as large as £3,000 to the cash-strapped government.31 E404/64/15.

By the second half of the 1440s Lematon was evidently spending at least part of his time around the court and capital in the south-east. In early 1447 he attested the Middlesex shire elections, and (while the backing of the court clearly played a part) became sufficiently established among the gentry of that county to secure election to the Parliament summoned to meet in February 1449. Beyond doubt, he played his part in securing the insertion into the wool subsidy bill of a clause safeguarding the sum of £400 p.a. assigned to him for the repair and maintenance of the Northumbrian castles.32 PROME, xii. 50-51. Following the dissolution, he was tasked with the distribution in his county of the rebate from the tax granted by the Commons, as was common for the knights of the shire.33 CFR, xviii. 122, 127. Now, however, Lematon’s career was suddenly cut short, perhaps by an accident or serious illness. On 7 Oct. 1449 he made a brief will, asking to be buried in a chapel in the west part of the priory church of St. Bartholomew, West Smithfield. He left bequests to the four orders of friars, but otherwise entrusted the settlement of his affairs to his executors, who included his brothers Thomas and Richard, Robert Forster, and William Venour. The appointment of the former treasurer Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley, to supervise the executors further testifies to the connexions at court established by Lematon during his lifetime. He probably died a few days before 25 Oct., when his office of warden of the exchange was granted to Thomas Montgomery† with effect from the (unspecified) date of his death. Probate of his will was granted on 7 Nov.34 PCC 18 Rous (PROB11/1, f. 140); CPR, 1446-52, p. 305. The family lands in Edlingham now fell to his brother Richard, while his properties in London and Middlesex in the first instance came into the hands of another brother, Robert, who, in October 1450, conveyed them to Richard Lematon and Forster.35 CCR, 1447-54, p. 166; Swinburne (Capheaton) mss, 3/17, 18. The administration of Lematon’s convoluted affairs, not least the settlement of his debts to the royal Exchequer, was to occupy his executors for more than a decade after his death.36 E101/294/4; 483/11; C67/45, m. 24.