LISLE, Robert

The manors of Pulborough in Sussex and Great Rissington and Sapperton in Gloucestershire had followed the same descent since the first half of the twelfth century, when they had been held by Alard le Fleming. Shortly before 1263 they were divided into moieties between the two Fleming coheiresses, one share going to the Hussey family (and thus eventually passing to Sir Henry Hussey*), the other to the Lisles.3 VCH Glos. vi. 100; xi. 90-91; Suss. Arch. Collns. lxxii. 261-3. Robert Lisle’s grandmother died in possession of the three moieties together with the advowsons of Great Rissington and Sapperton in 1375, and his father did likewise on Christmas Day 1384, when Robert was only 11 years old. While his widowed mother kept the Pulborough moiety as her jointure,4 CIPM, xiv. 150; xvi. 122-3. in January 1385, at the request of Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford, Richard II granted the earl’s esquire John Routh† custody of other of the ward’s lands, up to the value of 20 marks a year, while keeping the right of presentation to the churches of Great Rissington and Sapperton to himself. The King duly exercised his patronage of the latter in 1393.5 CPR, 1381-5, pp. 516, 519; 1385-9, p. 16; Reg. Wakefeld (Worcs. Historical Soc. n.s. vii), 760. Meanwhile, Routh, a Yorkshireman, had assigned Lisle’s wardship to Robert Lewknor†, a landowner from Oxfordshire, who passed it on to one Thomas Keys before the heir made proof of age in Gloucestershire in February 1395. Although Lisle then received seisin of his inheritance in that county, and was patron of Great Rissington church in 1401,6 CIPM, xvii. 575; CCR, 1392-6, p. 330; Reg. Sede Vacante (Worcs. Historical Soc. 1887), 379. several years were to elapse before he entered his estate in Sussex. This was because Lewknor kept the property at Pulborough until 1412 or later, apparently by virtue of marrying the heir’s mother.7 Feudal Aids, vi. 523. The marriage is not noted in The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 597-8.

Lisle, styled ‘of Gloucestershire’, stood surety for his putative stepfather in Chancery in March 1403, and in July 1412 he was made a feoffee of Lewknor’s manor of Dean and lands in Chalford, Oxfordshire, with the intention that he and his co-feoffees would hold them to Lewknor’s use during his lifetime, and convey them to Thomas Walwyn† of Much Marcle after he died. Lewknor is not recorded alive after May 1415,8 CCR, 1402-5, p. 151; Dean and Chalford (Oxon. Rec. Soc. xvii), 104, 106-7. but still it remains uncertain when Lisle secured possession of his Sussex inheritance. His appointments to the relatively lowly positions of tax collector and escheator in Gloucestershire indicate that the focus of his activities continued to be in that county for the rest of Henry V’s reign. In April 1419 when his seal was used to authenticate a deed of a local widow, he was called ‘of Sapperton, esquire’,9 CAD, ii. C2380. and in the following winter he appeared on the list of Gloucestershire men sent to the Council as being suitable for military service in defence of the realm.10 E28/97/11.

Lisle’s move to Sussex is first marked by his election to Parliament in 1426; before that date there is no indication from the surviving records of any association with the gentry of that county. There is no ready explanation as to why he was selected as a knight of the shire in the Commons summoned to Leicester. Thereafter, however, he was usually resident in the locality, and he attested the election indentures at Chichester for all but one of the Parliaments held between 1427 and 1439, the exception being that of 1431.11 C219/13/5; 14/1, 3, 4, 5; 15/1. During this period Lisle became involved in the affairs of one of the leading landowners of west Sussex, John, Lord Mautravers and de jure earl of Arundel, who in a will made in April 1430 before his embarkation for France referred to a bond in £77 which Lisle had made on his behalf to William Ryman* and which was due for re-payment the following Michaelmas. Arundel stipulated that if he should die before Lisle and his other creditors had received satisfaction, then before any other provisions in the will were performed these creditors should be reimbursed from the issues of his estates.12 Reg. Chichele, ii. 543. The nature of Lisle’s association with the earl, and whether it predated his election to Parliament, remains obscure, although at the date the Parliament assembled Mautravers was still a minor, in the guardianship of Ryman and Lord Fanhope.

Nevertheless, we may speculate that the commitments which Lisle had unwisely accepted on Arundel’s behalf exacerbated the difficulties with his own finances that he was already experiencing. Hints of these difficulties emerge from his outlawry for failing to appear in the court of common pleas to answer the suit of a London draper for a debt of 61s. He purchased a pardon enabling his restoration in law on 9 May 1432.13 CPR, 1429-36, p. 164. Lisle was among the members of the Sussex gentry who witnessed the settlement of dower on the widow of Thomas Poynings, Lord St. John, in 1433;14 Cat. Goodwood Estate Archs. ed. Steer and Venables, i. 36 (E274). it was in Sussex, too, that in the following year he was required to take the generally-administered oath not to maintain malefactors, and there that he was distrained for refusing to take up knighthood in 1439.15 CPR, 1429-36, p. 372. Yet it would appear from his second term as an escheator in Gloucestershire, in 1441-2, that in the 1440s he was more often resident there than in Sussex. He attested the Gloucestershire elections to the Parliament summoned during his term of office, and appears to have been diligent enough in the performance of his duties. Nevertheless, although he was named as sheriff of the county in November 1444, he declined to officiate: his predecessor, William Tracy*, made both the proffers for 1445 at the Exchequer.16 E403/743, m. 15; PRO List ‘Sheriffs’, 50.

By then Lisle was over 70 years old and seriously in debt. In May 1447 he mortgaged his property at Pulborough, together with most of his other holdings in Sussex, to Sir Thomas Lewknor*, Thomas Hoo II* and John Michelgrove*, thereby raising the sum of £200, which he agreed to repay in instalments of 40 marks a year. His son and heir John formally agreed to the arrangement.17 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 471-3, 477. Even so, his situation failed to improve. In February 1449 he acknowledged a debt of £30 to Henry Lok, a London tailor, but failed to satisfy his creditor on the appointed day. Writs went out for his arrest in Gloucestershire in May 1450 and again a year later, and in the autumn of 1451 the sheriff (the same William Tracy as had taken over his responsibilities in 1445) confiscated his manor at Sapperton together with any valuable goods in the manor-house.18 C241/235/84; C131/67/14; 234/3. Lisle also encountered a setback over the marriage he had planned for his son John. By an agreement made at Bristol he put Great Rissington into the hands of feoffees, including Thomas Wykes and Edmund Blount, for settlement in jointure on John and his intended bride, Wykes’s daughter Willelma. But Willelma married Henry Honsum esquire instead, and the feoffees refused to return the manor to him. At the same time that he petitioned the chancellor for redress, the Honsums complained that Wykes had refused to settle Great Rissington on them, or else to give them land worth ten marks p.a. in lieu. Curiously, the case went to the arbitration of Blount, and by the time that it returned before the court of Chancery in November 1452 Lisle was dead or dying.19 C1/18/165-70; 19/159. A writ de diem clausit extremum to inquire into his lands and heir was issued on 6 Dec.20 CFR, xix. 2. No post mortem survives. He had presented to the living at Sapperton earlier in the year, although when the church again fell vacant in 1454 it was his son who did so. John recovered Great Rissington within a few years, only to lease it in 1460 to Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley, and his wife for their lives, and then to sell both his Gloucestershire manors to (Sir) William Nottingham II*. Although he had eventually married, the match cannot have proved particularly advantageous, since his wife, Margaret, daughter of Nicholas Poyntz*, was one of seven children, and the likelihood of her inheriting anything of substance was remote.21 VCH Glos. vi. 100; xi. 91; CCR, 1454-61, p. 134; CAD, ii. B3061, 3188.