CRESSETT, Hugh

The Cressets, settled at Garmston, were a long-established family of minor gentry who had played no significant part in Shropshire affairs before the time of Hugh Cresset. In part our MP owed his enhanced status to an acquisition made by his father. By a fine levied in 1384 the manor of Upton ‘iuxta le Cleo’ (later to be known as Upton Cresset), a few miles to the south of Garmston, was settled on Hugh Upton and Margaret his wife, for their lives, with remainder to Peter Saltford for his life, and then to Thomas Cresset and his issue.4 CP25(1)/195/18/22; Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. 4th ser. vi. 215. Thomas Cresset’s interest here was an hereditary one – his mother had been an Upton – and the manor duly passed to our MP early in his career. On 6 Nov. 1412, in the Shrewsbury borough court, Hugh, described as ‘of Garmston’, entered into a bond in £100 to Saltford, perhaps as part of an arrangement to buy out his life estate.5 Salop Archs., Shrewsbury recs., assembly bk. 3365/67, f. 52. By this date he had also added to his landholdings by marriage, albeit in a very modest fashion. On 2 Mar. 1402 land in Garmston, called ‘Dounctonesplace’ valued in an inquisition of 1400 at 21s. 11d. p.a., was settled upon him and his wife by a feoffee of her late father.6 Salop Archs., deeds 6000/12856; CIPM, xviii. 375.

Cresset thus had better prospects of making an impact on local affairs than his immediate ancestors, and it is significant that, when the family presented a pedigree to the heralds at the visitation of 1623, Hugh represents the first generation.7 Vis. Salop (Harl. Soc. xxviii), 157. None the less, even with the addition of the manor of Upton, his holdings remained attenuated. No reliable contemporary assessment of his landed income survives, but it is significant that he was not distrained to take up knighthood in 1439, when his career was at its peak. There can be no doubt that his prominence was disproportionate to his landed income. The explanation lies in a series of baronial connexions, first with Edmund Mortimer, earl of March; and then, concurrently, with John Holand, earl of Huntingdon and (from 1444) duke of Exeter, who married March’s widow, Humphrey Stafford, earl of Stafford, her brother, and, most significantly, with Richard, duke of York, March’s nephew and heir.

All these associations were, however, in the future when Cresset made a modest beginning to what was to be a long career. As a young man he regularly sat on presenting juries before the Shropshire j.p.s: between 1409 and 1412 he is known to have sat on such juries at Shrewsbury, Bridgnorth and Ludlow. It was also early in his career that he made the first of his 11 known appearances as an attestor of the county’s parliamentary elections, but very little else is known of him in these early years.8 Salop Peace Roll, ed. Kimball, 86, 96, 112; C219/11/2. There is nothing to suggest that he was involved in the disorders that overtook his native county late in the reign of Henry IV and early in that of Henry V, although, in Hilary term 1415, the abbot of Shrewsbury appeared personally in the court of King’s bench to sue him for trespass.9 KB27/615, rot. 61. Nor is there any firm evidence to date his entry into the service of the earl of March. At an unknown date the earl named him as his attorney to deliver seisin of the manor of Oddingley (Worcestershire) to Thomas Lygon; and, at the earl’s death, he was farming at £4 p.a. the demesme lands of the earl’s manor of Chelmarsh near Bridgnorth. The only other surviving evidence of the relationship between the two men dates from long after the earl’s death: in 1447 March’s administrators claimed damages of £5,000 against our MP for his failure to account as the earl’s receiver between Michaelmas 1424 and the earl’s death on 19 Jan. 1425. Clearly, by the time March’s life was prematurely terminated by plague, Cresset held an important place in his service.10 CIPM, xxii. 491; SC6/1113/1, mm. 2, 5; CP40/745, rot. 473.

Significant office in a baronial administration may have served to prepare Cresset for the part he soon took in the local administration of the Crown. A year after the earl’s death he was named as escheator in Shropshire, an office to which, rather curiously, he was reappointed less than a year after relinquishing it; and, in May 1426, he made his first appearance as a royal commissioner. In this period he also continued to serve on those fact-relating juries upon which efficient administration depended. On 14 Jan. 1429 he sat on a jury at Shrewsbury which testified to the Shropshire landholdings of a royal ward, and, on 10 Nov. 1431, he was at Bridgnorth to head the jury which listed the properties in the hundred of Stottesdon liable to contribute to a royal subsidy.11 CIPM, xxiii. 42; Feudal Aids, iv. 266. Our MP was a man who made himself useful, and his career was to take a further step forward after March’s heir, Richard, duke of York, came of age in 1432. By 20 Oct. 1434 he was holding office as constable of York’s castle at Montgomery with an annual fee of £6 1s. 4d., an office he retained to his death, and he probably served as the duke’s Shropshire receiver over the same period.12 Reg. Spofford, 146; SC11/818. In view of his earlier service to the previous lord of Montgomery, the earl of March, it is tempting to conclude that he had held the constableship since the earl’s time, but, at the earl’s death, the office had been in the hands of a life grantee, Thomas Chirby: CIPM, xxii. 507 (p. 463). The enhanced status that such office brought explains why he quickly came to be seen, despite his relative poverty, as a suitable appointee to the shrievalty and as a candidate for parliamentary service. In November 1434 he was pricked as sheriff, and, only a year after the end of his term, he was elected to Parliament for Shropshire in company with William Burley I*, who was probably then serving as York’s steward of Montgomery.13 C219/15/1. These marks of standing make it surprising that he was not, either at this time or later, appointed to the county bench. Perhaps his exclusion was an example of the operation of statute, in other words, he was excluded as a baronial officer whose importance depended on service not landed wealth.

Cresset’s service to others besides York makes this a more attractive explanation. He was also employed by Humphrey, earl of Stafford, although seemingly only briefly, and by John Holand, earl of Huntingdon. Holand had married March’s widow, Anne Stafford, who was Humphrey’s sister, and it is likely that he came to their notice through her. None the less, there is no evidence of his service to them until after her death in 1432. By Michaelmas 1438 he was Stafford’s receiver of Caus, but he had lost the office by 1441.14 Rawcliffe, 207. His connexion with Holand may have been longer lasting. In 1437 the Shrewsbury borough authorities spent 6d. in providing wine for Cresset, John Wynnesbury* and other unnamed men ‘de consilio’ of the earl for their advice concerning ‘weres’ and prisoners at Holt. Later, after promotion to the dukedom of Exeter in 1444, Holand employed our MP and Wynnesbury to negotiate with Griffin Kynaston and other ‘misdoers’ of the march of Wales concerning the death of the duke’s parker at Ryton. This matter, if a Chancery petition is to be taken at face value, led the duke to fall out with his councillors. He complained that, although the alleged assailants had agreed to pay 40 marks (20 marks in hand and 20 marks in a bond), Cresset and Wynnesbury were withholding from him both the money and the bond.15 Shrewsbury bailiffs’ accts. 373; C1/71/102.

This dispute had no impact on Cresset’s career. His connexion with the duke of York was far more significant than his counsel to Exeter, and, despite advanced age, he remained active in Shropshire administration until his death. On 4 Nov. 1445 he was named to his second term as sheriff, and, on 12 Jan. 1447, almost as soon as his term was over, he was again elected to Parliament. This assembly, summoned first to Cambridge and then to Bury St. Edmunds, was the stage selected by the royal court to bring about the fall of the King’s uncle, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. Cresset was returned as a servant of York, who presumably (although the evidence is not entirely clear) viewed the court’s machinations with disapproval. There must, however, be a doubt as to whether either Cresset or his fellow Shropshire MP, Roger Corbet II*, even troubled to travel to distant Bury. Both men served on an inquisition post mortem jury at Shrewsbury on 20 Feb., ten days after the Parliament began and 11 days before it concluded.16 C219/15/4; P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 65-66; CIPM, xxvi. 490.

Soon after this Parliament Cresset was faced with a very personal difficulty. It was in the following Easter term that he was sued for damages of £5,000 by the administrators of his indebted former master, the earl of March. His death prevented this suit proceeding. He last appears in the records in an active role on 14 Sept. 1447, when, by a deed dated at Bridgnorth, he quitclaimed his right in a tenement there to two chaplains, William and Hugh Cardmaker. He must have died shortly afterwards, perhaps before 30 Jan. 1449 when his son and heir-apparent, Robert Cresset, attested the county’s parliamentary election.17 Salop Archs., Acton mss, 1093/2/58; C219/15/6. Robert, kept out of the family estates for long enough by his father’s longevity, was to be kept out of a part of them even longer by his mother’s survival. She was still alive in 1463, busily suing our MP’s creditors as his administratrix and a local tradesman for close-breaking at Criddon, neighbouring Upton Cresset.18 CP40/773, rots. 71d, 171; 775, rot. 98; 776, rot. 149; 810, att. rot. 1d. However, by this time Robert had been provided for in another way, marrying Christine, one of the two daughters and coheiresses of Margaret, herself one of the five daughters and coheiresses of John Stapleton† (d.c.1446) of Stapleton. The match had taken place by 22 Apr. 1450 when the couple together with the many others with an interest in the Stapleton estates conveyed the manor of Stapleton to feoffees, headed by William Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, and Sir John Talbot.19 Salop Archs., deeds, 6000/2838. Robert may have followed his father into the service of the duke of York. This, at least, is the implication to be drawn from the pardon of all treasons he sued out on 16 Dec. 1459, two months after the routing of the duke at Ludford Bridge. Later he emulated his father by serving two terms as sheriff.20 CPR, 1452-61, p. 548.

Hugh Cresset’s office-holding is testimony to the new prominence he brought to a long-established family, but the success of his career has left a more permanent monument. There can be no doubt that he was responsible for the building of the hall of the still-surviving manor house at Upton Cresset. The hall, ‘of a structural form only matched in Shropshire by the Palmer’s Guildhall in Ludlow’, can, on the basis of dendrochronolgy, be confidently dated to the 1430s.21 A. Emery, Greater Med. Houses, ii. 588.