LANCASTER, Christopher

This MP cannot be certainly identified. The Lancasters were a numerous clan: no fewer than 11 of them appear among the attestors to parliamentary elections in Westmorland between 1407 and 1455. The careers of two separate Christophers can be fairly clearly delineated: one was the younger son of William Lancaster of Yanwath and thus the nephew of Sir John Lancaster† of Rydal, a leading local figure: the other was the son of a lesser John Lancaster and a close kinsman of the William Lancaster of Hartsop who was assessed on an income of £20 p.a. in the subsidy returns of 1436.1 E179/195/32.

Sir John’s nephew first appears in the records in 1425 when named as a remainderman in a very important fine levied by his uncle. Sir John was prompted by the death of his only son to resettle his considerable inheritance to the disinheritance of his four daughters and coheiresses-presumptive. Christopher was to have these lands on the failure of the male issue of Sir John (an immediate prospect) and of his own elder brother, John.2 CP25(1)/291/65/34; CIPM, xxiv. 403; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 455-6. In these circumstances it is not surprising that he should have been drawn into the violent dispute that followed Sir John’s death in 1434. A prominent local lawyer, Robert Crackenthorpe*, husband of one of Sir John’s daughters, made a concerted effort to defeat the settlement of 1425, and won damages for disseisin against several of the Lancasters. On 26 June 1438 Christopher, described as an esquire, and others were outlawed for their failure to pay.3 CIPM, xxiv. 402-3; KB27/703, rot. 78; KB29/71, rot. 2. This was the prelude to a fatal escalation in the dispute. Two months later, on 25 Aug., the Lancasters ambushed and murdered Crackenthorpe at their manor of Brampton near Appleby. In the following Hilary term the victim’s widow, Elizabeth, appealed her cousin Christopher as an accessory to this crime, naming his elder brother, John, the heir under the settlement, as one of the principals.4 KB27/711, rot. 36d; 714, rot. 36; R. Nicolson and R. Burn, Westmld. and Cumb. i. 362-3. An indictment was also laid before j.p.s, but it does not survive: CPR, 1441-6, p. 191. She also secured a commission of inquiry, complaining that both brothers had engaged in a systematic campaign of robbery against her and her tenants.5 CPR, 1436-41, p. 273.

It was perhaps to escape these legal difficulties that Christopher went briefly to serve in France. In the summer of 1441 either he or a namesake enlisted in the retinue of the Yorkshire knight, Sir William Buckton, and in the following autumn the same man was in the garrison at Rouen castle under Buckton as its captain.6 E101/53/33, m. 8; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, fr. mss, 25766/734. Little is known of him after this. In Elizabeth’s appeal he is described as ‘once of Carlisle, gentleman’, and he appears to have lived there in his later years. In his last appearance in the records, a general pardon issued on 10 Nov. 1446, he is described as ‘late of Carlisle, esquire’.7 C67/39, m. 4.

The other Christopher, sometimes described in the records as ‘of Hartsop’, was a more obscure figure. On 28 May 1432, 16 days after the beginning of a Parliament in which he may have been an MP, he offered mainprise when a local lawyer, Thomas Pety*, took the farm of the town of Appleby; and the two men frequently appeared as joint plaintiffs in minor actions of debt.8 CFR, xvi. 88; CP40/680, rot. 247; 682, rot. 195; 685, rot. 37. This connexion with Pety suggests that this Christopher is to be identified with the attorney who was fitfully active in the court of common pleas from the late 1420s. Interestingly, in Easter term 1432, for part of which Parliament was in session, he acted in this capacity for Sir John Lancaster.9 CP40/677, rot. 99d; 680, rot. 21; 682, rots. 225, 226d.; 685, rot. 204. In a county like Westmorland, where competition for seats was not intense, a lawyer with a practice at Westminster was a plausible candidate in a way he would not have been in most shires. Even so, this Christopher may have been too insignificant even to represent Westmorland, and very little else can be discovered about him. In 1425, described as ‘son of John Lancaster’, he made a conveyance as a feoffee of William Lancaster of Hartsop; in 1447 he headed the feoffees to a grant made to the same William; and in 1458 he was described as ‘senior’ when nominated as an attorney to deliver seisin in a grant made by William.10 Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. x. 472-5. By the latter date there was yet another Christopher, the nephew and h. of William Lancaster of Hartsop. In 1462 he was retained by the earl of Warwick and in the following year he married Eleanor, a gdda. of Sir Richard Musgrave*: EHR, xxix. 720; Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. x. 476-8.

On balance, Sir John Lancaster’s nephew was the more important man and thus is more likely to have been the MP. It may be he was returned as the proxy of his father, who had represented either Westmorland or Cumberland in four Parliaments between 1397 and 1421; and it is perhaps relevant that Sir John witnessed the election of 13 Sept. 1429, when a Christopher Lancaster was first returned.11 C219/14/1.