ETWELL, John

The Etwells had interests in Nottingham as early as the reign of Edward I, and our MP’s father held office as one of the town’s bailiffs in 1379-80.1 Nottingham Recs. ed Stevenson, i. 369; CAD, vi. C5265. The extent of their property there is uncertain. In William Etwell’s will of 24 Jan. 1394 there is no mention of any land held in his own right in Nottingham, only of his lease of a messuage and four cottages in Great Smith Gate (now Pelham Street). The will is more informative about the property the family held just outside the town. William provided for the settlement of three bovates at ‘Luddale Forhte’ in the meadows of Sneinton on our MP, who appears to have been the elder of his two sons, in fee tail general with successive remainders to John’s brother, Richard, and then jointly to his sisters, Katherine and Agnes. While it is not easy to derive an accurate picture of the family’s wealth from this will, the provision William made for his widow Joan suggests that its resources were only modest: she was to have the property in Great Smith Gate for the remainder of the lease’s term (subject to an annual payment of 40d. to their daughter Margaret), together with an annual dole of 13s. 4d. and a cartload of hay from his lands at Sneinton. Joan was his second wife and it is likely that our MP was the issue of his first, Katherine, beside whom William wished to be buried in the church of St. Mary.2 Borthwick Inst. Univ. of York, York registry wills, prob. reg. 1, f. 62v; Notts. Archs. Nottingham recs., ct. rolls CA1302, rot. 15d.

It is not known when William’s will was proved, but he was almost certainly dead by April 1396 when his two sons were among those indicted by the Mickletorn jury for blocking up the common cavern and the ditch on the northern side of the town with ordure, weeds and cinders. John’s next appearance in the records is far more striking for it shows that, as a young man, he pursued a brief military career. On 8 Feb. 1400 he was granted letters of protection for one year as staying in the company of the recently-appointed lieutenant of Ireland, Sir John Stanley. He was again awarded protection in November 1406 as about to return to the lordship in the service of Thomas of Lancaster.3 Nottingham Recs. i. 320, 322; CPR, 1399-1401, pp. 181, 268. If a later indictment is to be credited, it was also at this early stage of his career that he murdered one John Lexham. This offence allegedly took place in Nottingham on 28 Oct. 1401 but it was not until royal commissioners of inquiry came to the town in June 1414 that an indictment was laid against him (interestingly by the grand jury rather than that drawn from townsmen). Although the victim’s wife had lodged an appeal against Etwell immediately after her husband’s murder, this was quickly abandoned. By the time of the indictment he had already insured himself against possible consequences by suing out a pardon, awarded on 14 Jan. 1404 at the request of Queen Joan, who, since Nottingham castle formed part of her dower, had an interest in the town’s affairs. On 4 July 1414 he appeared in the court of King’s bench at Wolverhampton to plead the pardon and he was discharged in the following Michaelmas term.4 KB27/566, rex rot. 9d; 613, rex rot. 22d; KB9/204/2/6. In the appeal the victim is named as William Lexham.

At about this time John began extending his modest property holdings. On 30 Apr. 1414 Nicholas Esmond and Joan, his wife, granted him in fee a tenement on the corner of Plumtre Lane, and on 13 Nov. 1419 while he was in office as bailiff, John Bothall and Emma, his wife, added to this a messuage in nearby Lister Gate. By 1433 he also had a tenement on the Long Row on the north side of the Market Place.5 Nottingham ct. rolls CA1308, rot. 18d; 1315, m. 4d; Nottingham Recs. ii. 406. More important, however, was an acquisition outside the town. In May 1430 Katherine, widow of William Sutton of Kegworth, resettled three messuages, 80 acres of land and four acres of meadow in Kingston-on-Soar, Costock, Sutton Bonington and Leake in the south-western corner of the county on herself and her issue with successive remainders to Etwell in tail and to his son Henry in fee. Since Katherine was elderly and childless, John can have had little doubt that her lands would shortly fall into his hands, and this they duly did on her death in the following March. His will shows that he also acquired land at Gotham in the same vicinity, and this series of acquisitions explains why his income was assessed at as much as £10 p.a. in the subsidy returns of 1435-6.6 CIPM, xxiii. 625; CIMisc. viii. 49; CPR, 1429-36, p. 191; E179/240/266.

The acquisition of property outside the borough suggest that Etwell intended to establish himself among the county gentry, but, throughout his career, Nottingham remained the centre of his interests. In 1429, the same year as he represented the borough in Parliament, he took a four-year lease of the meadows of Nottingham castle at the considerable annual farm of £17 p.a. from Queen Joan. He attested his first and only parliamentary election in June 1433 and a few months later he was elected to the mayoralty.7 C219/14/1, 4; SC6/1093/6; Nottingham Recs. ii. 428. Little evidence survives of his commercial activities, but he certainly traded in metal. In 1423 a brazier of Leicester had been pardoned for failure to answer him for a debt of over £12, and in 1432 he had a plea pending in the borough court against one John Dalahyde who owed him money for some Spanish iron. This may have been the family trade. His father refers in his will to the ‘lezmuldus et instrumentia artis mei’, which he left to his younger son Richard.8 CPR, 1422-9, p.28; Nottingham ct. rolls CA1322/II, rot. 16d; York registry wills, prob. reg. 1, f. 62v.

Etwell drew up his will on 3 Oct. 1440, when he must have been well into his sixties. Although his parents had been buried in the church of St. Mary, he was content to leave his burial place to the will of God. The largest of his charitable bequests was £4 in money and coal worth £2 to be distributed to the poor over a period of four years, replicating a similar bequest in his father’s will. His widow was to have all his property in Nottingham for term of her life or for as long as she remained single. If she remarried she was to have only her dower entitlement. His lands in Kingston on Soar were to remain in the hands of unnamed feoffees for three years after his death to find a chaplain to pray for his soul in the parish church of St. Mary, and were then to pass to his son Henry. Curiously, his lands in neighbouring Gotham were to go to William, the son of his former servant Margery, for a period of 14 years before passing to Henry, and there is little reason to doubt that William was his bastard son. His younger legitimate son, also called William, was bequeathed ‘togam taliarum de blodio cum penula de citre’. Etwell named as his executors Margaret, his wife, and his son Henry, together with William Clifton, rector of Wilford. He did not long survive the making of his will for it was proved only 11 days later.9 York registry wills, prob. reg. 2, f. 678.

Henry Etwell completed the family’s transformation to gentility. As early as 1423 he had been admitted to Lincoln’s Inn, a further indication that it was his father’s ambition to establish the family outside the borough. By a deed dated at Nottingham on 24 Aug. 1426 and witnessed by his father, he acquired property at Clifton in Cheshire from Nicholas Lawe of Chesterfield; and on 6 July 1428 the King granted him the custody of the wasted manor of Bolsover in Derbyshire, a grant of patronage which may have arisen from our MP’s connexion with Queen Joan.10 L. Inn Adm. i. 4; Cheshire and Chester Archs. Cholmondeley of Cholmondeley mss, DCH/E/285; CFR, xv. 232-3. The grant of Bolsover was, however, almost immediately lost to Ralph, Lord Cromwell: CFR, xv. 272. Soon after his father’s death, he acquired lands in that county in his own right: by a fine levied in Easter term 1443 Ralph de la Pole surrendered to him nearly 250 acres of land in Etwall near Derby. Less happily, on 17 Sept. 1446 Thomas Staunton* headed a group of men who allegedly assaulted him and others at Nottingham, and on the following 20 Nov., according to an indictment taken before the county j.p.s and an appeal, Henry and others murdered John Chedell at Sutton Bonington. These two incidents were probably linked: Sutton Bonington was Staunton’s home and Henry’s neighbour, Richard Leverton, a yeoman, was named among both the victims of Staunton and the murderers of Chedell. However this may be, these incidents had no adverse impact on Henry’s career. In 1449 he was named as one of the governors of Lincoln’s Inn, serving further terms in 1450-1 and 1454-5; and on 18 May 1451 he was pardoned, as ‘late of Kingston on Soar, gentleman’, for the death of Chedell and any consequent outlawries.11 Derbys. Feet of Fines (Derbys. Rec. Soc. xi), 1096; KB9/254/44; KB27/743, rex rot. 4d; 744, rots. 76, 77; L. Inn Black Bks. i. 19, 20, 25; CPR, 1452-61, p. 423; J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), 647-8.