GIRLINGTON, Nicholas

Girlington hailed from an ancient family of lesser gentry established at Girlington in Richmondshire since the reign of King John. The pedigree of the family is unclear, but Nicholas was either a younger son or the representative of a junior branch.2 Collectanea Topographia et Genealogica ed. Nichols, vi. 189-90; VCH Yorks. (N. Riding), i. 140. He had to make his own way in the world and he turned to the law for his advancement. His later prominence leaves little doubt that he attended an inn of court. He first appears in the records in the early 1430s: before October 1432 he was a feoffee in property in York, where his kinsman, William Girlington*, was a prominent draper.3 York Memoranda Bk. iii (Surtees Soc. clxxxvi), 104. More significantly, on 21 Dec. 1433 he acted as attorney for George Neville, Lord Latimer, son of Ralph, earl of Westmorland, at an assize of novel disseisin at Penrith.4 JUST1/143/3, m. 7. In view of this early reference, it is tempting to include him among the group of northern lawyers, including Thomas Colt* and Robert Danby, c.j.c.p., who began their careers in the service of the Nevilles of Middleham, but, at least before the late 1440s, his own association with the Nevilles appears to have been rather tenuous.

By 1440 Girlington appears to have had a flourishing practice. In Trinity term of that year he was one of seven lawyers paid for their counsel by William, Lord Lovell; and on 8 Oct. he was retained by Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor, at an annual fee of 20s.5 Northants. RO, Finch Hatton mss, 3152; CIPM, xxvi. 237. Later he was paid 6s. 8d. by the corporation of York for aiding the city’s MPs, one of whom was his kinsman, William, in securing confirmation and augmentation of the city’s charter in the Parliament of 1442.6 York Memoranda Bk. iii. 130. If the success of his practice was expressed in the purchase of property at this date, this has left no trace on the records. His only known acquisition came as a result of the death of William, who in his will of 1444 bequeathed him a tenement in Little St. Andrewgate, York, in fee, together with the reversion of a nearby tenement and garden, which William held on a lease of 90 years, expectant on the death of William’s widow.7 Test. Ebor. (Surtees Soc. xxx), ii. 94-95. In 1451 the MP was assessed in York on an income of £20 p.a.: E179/217/56. No doubt some of the property from which this income derived lay outside the city, but it is not known where. At the end of the 15th cent. his family held the manors of Hutton Magna (N. Riding) and Bassingham (Kesteven, Lincs.), and it may be that these were our MP’s acquisition: C1/137/39; VCH Yorks. (N. Riding), i. 84-85.

There is certainly no evidence to suggest that Girlington ever acquired any property in Westmorland, the county he represented in the Parliament of 1447. Neither he nor his fellow MP, George Dacre*, were obvious candidates. The hustings were presided over by the latter’s putative elder brother, John, and this is sufficient to explain George’s election; but no such clear reason presents itself for Girlington. For want of a better answer, it is perhaps most likely that he was returned as a legal servant of the Nevilles. Early in 1449 he witnessed a quitclaim of two Yorkshire manors to the earl of Salisbury, and he may have been more closely connected with that great family than the surviving evidence shows.8 C219/15/4; CCR, 1447-54, p. 111.

As puzzling as Girlington’s election for Westmorland is his nomination to a commission of sewers in Essex in 1448. He makes no other appearance on commissions in that county, and if he had acquired property there, perhaps by marriage, this has left no trace on the records. Two years later he was named to a commission of inquiry into the taking of weapons from the Tower of London in the aftermath of Cade’s rebellion, presumably as a lawyer generally resident in London.9 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 189, 388. In these years he is generally styled as ‘of London, gentleman’, as, for example, when offering mainprise in the court of King’s bench for Alice, widow of Thomas Makworth*, and Joan, wife of Nicholas Morley*, in 1448.10 KB27/746, rex rot. 1d; 748, rex rot. 33d. In the 1450s, however, if one may judge from his appointments, his principal energies were concentrated on his native north. In 1451 he was added to the quorum of the peace in the North Riding; in 1453 he was commissioned to inquire into the negligence of customers in Newcastle-upon-Tyne; and, most importantly, in 1454 Salisbury’s brother, Robert, bishop of Durham, nominated him as deputy justice (with an annual fee of five marks) and justice of assize in his palatinate.11 CPR, 1452-61, p. 123; DURH3/44, m. 24; N.L. Ramsey, ‘The English Legal Profession’ (Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), p. xc. He sat as an assize justice at Durham on 17 Dec. 1455: DURH13/227, m. 1. He also became more involved in the affairs of his northern neighbours. In 1448 he had been named as a feoffee of William, Lord Harington, in his Cumberland estates, and in June 1458 he delivered Harington’s inquisition post mortem into Chancery. In the same month he secured a pardon as an executor of Sir Geoffrey Fitzhugh, uncle of Henry, Lord Fitzhugh.12 CCR, 1446-52, p. 211; CP25(1)/35/14/16; C139/168/20; HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 377. Between 1455 and 1458 he was the lawyer most often employed by Fountains abbey, and he was retained ‘de consilio’ by the corporation of York.13 Mems. Fountains Abbey, iii (Surtees Soc. cxxx), 17-19, 31, 59-60, 66-67, 70-71, 74, 147, 151, 153-4; York City Chamberlains’ Acct. Rolls, 1396-1500 (Surtees Soc. cxcii), 92, 96, 109; E.W. Ives, Common Lawyers: Thomas Kebell, 293, 300-1, 304.

Girlington also formed a very close friendship with another northern lawyer, Thomas Colt. Late in 1458 he acted for him in the purchase of the manor of ‘Suffolkes’ in Enfield, and he was to do so again on several occasions in the early 1460s.14 CP25(1)/293/73/434; Harl. Chs. 76 B 7, 77 D 33, 80 G 33; CCR, 1461-8, p. 406. Their friendship presumably came about through a mutual association with the Nevilles, but, more importantly for what remained of his career, it led Girlington into the service of Colt’s other patron, Richard, duke of York. There can be no doubt that Girlington, like his friend, was an active supporter of the Yorkists during the civil war of 1459-61. The evidence comes from a grant made to his widow, citing the ‘grauamina dampna pericula custus et expensa’ he had sustained in the cause of the duke and Edward IV and, intriguingly, the hastening of his death by the effects of a cruel imprisonment.15 C66/509, m. 8.

This incarceration is most likely to have occurred in the aftermath of the defeat and death of the duke of York at the battle of Wakefield on 30 Dec. 1460. Indeed, it may be that Girlington was detained in Lancastrian custody until after Edward IV’s accession: this would explain his curious omission from the North Riding commission of the peace issued in May 1461. However this may be, he was free by the following November when he was reappointed. In February 1462, ‘for his good service to the King and the duke of York’ and perhaps as compensation for his captivity, he was granted for life an annual rent of £20 from the confiscated Percy manor of Spofforth (Yorkshire). Soon afterwards he was restored to his place in the judicial administration of the bishopric of Durham, then in royal hands.16 CPR, 1461-7, p. 108; DURH3/48, mm. 12, 13. His career looked set to enter its most prosperous phase, but he did not survive long enough to enjoy his new position. He made his will on 17 Sept. 1464 and it was proved only five days later. On the following 14 Feb. his widow was given, in tail-male, the forfeited lands of an attainted tailor of York, in recognition not only of her husband’s sufferings but also for the relief of herself and their two sons and one daughter.17 C66/509, m. 8.

Girlington’s will is unrevealing. He wanted to be buried in St. Mary’s abbey or in the priory of Holy Trinity in York. He bequeathed £40 to the community of the city according to the terms of certain indentures (now lost); and the considerable sum of 140 marks for the provision (for the term of 20 years) of a chaplain to pray for his soul and those of William and another Nicholas Girlington, in a place to be chosen by his widow and executrix. She was to have the disposition of his goods and the governance of their children. His friend, Thomas Colt, was named as supervisor.18 Borthwick Inst., Univ. of York, York registry wills, prob. reg. 3, f. 295.