HERON, John

The Herons, tenants of the bishop of Durham since at least the late twelfth century, acquired the manor of Ford in north Northumberland by marriage in the second half of the thirteenth century. Sir William Heron (d.1379) received a licence to crenellate Ford castle and, as a measure of his high standing, a personal writ of summons to the Parliament of February 1371.9 CP, vi. 484-6. For the castle at Ford: A. Emery, Greater Med. Houses, i. 94-95. His great-grandson, another Sir William, died in 1425 leaving a young daughter as his heiress. On 31 Jan. 1427 her wardship and marriage was sold for 100 marks by Thomas Langley, bishop of Durham, to her cousin, William Heron of Thornton, sheriff of Northumberland in 1424-5 and another great-grandson of Sir William.10 DURH3/2, ff. 238v-9; 38, m. 14d. This grant was to lead to a reunification of the two branches of the family, but not before a period of crisis in the family’s affairs.

This William, our MP’s father, met a premature end when, in January 1428, he was killed in the course of a violent dispute with his neighbour, John Manners†. The incident quickly gained notoriety and in the following month the Crown appointed a royal commission to investigate the so-called Causa de Heron. In 1429 both sides appointed arbiters to settle the dispute: our MP’s mother Isabel chose Sir Robert Umfraville, who was probably her father, while Manners was represented by his close kinsman, Sir Robert Ogle I. As well as the matter of justice for William’s murder, the dispute also revolved around the question of financial compensation and the fate of his young heir, John. Isabel accused Manners of attempting to get the Heron estates illegitimately taken into the King’s hands during her son’s minority. Eventually, in the summer of 1431 the matter was settled: Manners was forced to undergo a humiliating ceremony of reconciliation and agreed to provide for 800 masses for the murdered man’s soul and pay 250 marks in damages.11 J.W. Armstrong, ‘Violence and Peacemaking in the English Marches towards Scotland’, in The Fifteenth Cent. VI ed. Clark, 56-70.

Although this settled the matter of William Heron’s murder, the question of the wardship of his son and heir remained unresolved. On 8 July 1428 the Crown granted the custody of the estate (save Isabel’s dower) and the marriage of the young John Heron to the earl of Northumberland and two lesser men. This grant was contested by Umfraville and Sir William Tempest*, who claimed that on 2 Jan. 1427 William Heron had conveyed all his property in Northumberland to them. It was not, however, until 12 May 1439 that the Crown eventually submitted to the feoffees’ claim and the grant of the wardship and marriage of John Heron was revoked.12 Hist. Northumb. xi. 381-3; E368/212, communia Mich. rot. 25; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 258-9; CCR, 1435-41, pp. 300-2; CIPM, xxiii. 17-18. By this time John had reached his majority and had entered his father’s estates. On 11 July 1438 he had received a papal dispensation to marry his late father’s ward Elizabeth (a match no doubt long planned). As the principal property of the family, the manor of Ford was bound by a settlement in tail-male made in 1337 and had thus already come to our MP by that route, she was not a significant heiress, but the marriage had the merit of preventing any dispute between heir male and heir general.13 CP, vi. 488; CP25(1)/181/12/52. For his inheritance: DURH 3/2, f. 265v; CIPM, xxiii. 17.

The public career of John Heron of Ford needs to be distinguished from that of his two cousins, both Northumberland esquires, one resident at Crawley and the other at Chipchase. This is particularly difficult in the case of the former, who in February 1438 was granted the constableship of Bamburgh castle in survivorship with Sir William Elmden*, an office he held without interruption until succeeded by our MP in 1459.14 CPR, 1436-41, p. 179; 1446-52, pp. 247, 526; 1452-61, p. 512. It is, however, not possible to be dogmatic about the identity of the escheator appointed in November 1439: this was either our MP or the Crawley Heron. For the rest, it is clear that our MP was the sheriff appointed in November 1440 to be succeeded a year later by his Crawley namesake. The other John, of Chipchase, was less active, although he did serve as sheriff of Northumberland in 1443-4.15 CFR, xvii. 130, 177, 205, 284. Indeed, the three Johns filled that office for three of the four years from 1440 to 1444. There can be no doubt that Heron of Ford was the most important of the three men. On 10 Jan. 1441, while he was sheriff, he and his wife secured a pardon from Bishop Neville of Durham concerning their entry into her father’s estates in Norhamshire and Islandshire, and on the following 11 Apr. he was present in the cathedral to witness Bishop Neville’s installation.16 DURH3/42, m. 12; Durham Univ. Lib., cathedral muns., priory reg. iii, ff. 267-8v. More importantly, on 4 Jan. 1442, described in the return as ‘of Ford, esquire’, he was elected as one of knights of the shire for Northumberland alongside his wife’s uncle, Sir Robert Ogle II* (he may also have attested his own return, although it is likely that the attestor was a namesake).17 C219/15/2. Whatever the circumstances of his election, the events of that Parliament saw him promoted to a position of national responsibility. The defence of the sea and the protection of English merchants was a major concern of the Commons in this assembly. A petition asked for a force of eight capital ships and 14 smaller vessels, carrying a total of 2,260 men, to guard the English coast. The government accepted the plan, albeit in curtailed form; and in June 1442 Sir Stephen Popham* was appointed as commander of the force with, as his subordinate captains, three others who had also sat in the Parliament (Sir William Euer*, Miles Stapleton* and Heron), and a fourth who had not, Sir John Passhele.18 PROME xi. 373-5; CPR, 1441-6, pp. 106, 108; E28/70/62-63; E101/71/4/911. The musters were originally to be taken at Winchelsea on 31 July, but there were delays. Heron and Euer were instructed to arrest shipping in Kingston-upon-Hull and Newcastle-upon-Tyne in June, and by the following month Euer had assembled all but 75 men of his agreed force of 547 and five vessels, despite the port of Hull being ‘desolate and utterly destitute of any shippes or other vessailes or maryners’. It was not until 13 Sept., however, that Heron finally mustered his retinue at Southampton. He was able to draw extensively upon kinship networks and other connexions in the north-east to fill his retinue. The highest ranking individual to accompany him to sea was Sir William Lumley (who in May 1432 had become his mother’s second husband), but the Heron clan was very prominent. As well as Gerard Heron of Chipchase and John Heron of Coupland, there were two Williams, another John, an Edmund and a Gerard Heron, junior, listed among the men-at-arms.19 E101/54/3; E153/1361/1.

Unfortunately for Heron, the expedition ended in acrimony and litigation. The captains and their retinues had returned to England by the end of October, and process was begun in the Exchequer to ensure that all monies spent on the expedition were accounted for. On 12 Nov. 1443 the sheriff of Northumberland was ordered to distrain Heron’s goods for failing to render account for the money he had received in May the previous year, and in the following month the first of Heron’s lands in Northumberland were seized by the Crown. He may have succeeded in enfeoffing the manor of Ford itself, but by August 1445 various of his lands in Thornton, Netherton, Ford and Great Ryle were in the King’s hands.20 E199/33/46. In Trinity term 1444 Euer and Stapleton were arraigned before the barons of the Exchequer and committed to the Fleet prison for failing to render account for the sums they had received for wages, but by December 1445 both had been discharged leaving Heron to answer for any outstanding amounts.21 E159/222, recorda Mich. rots. 21d, 25.

It may be that difficulties arising from his service in 1442 were a deciding factor in Heron seeking election to the Parliaments of 1447 and February 1449. On 9 Feb. 1447 he was chosen alongside the lawyer, John Cartington*, as one of the knights of the shire for Northumberland, but his election does not appear to have had eased his difficulties at the Exchequer. On 28 Jan. 1449 he was present at Newcastle-upon-Tyne to see himself returned alongside Ralph Gray II* to the assembly summoned to meet the following month at Westminster.22 C219/15/4, 6. Here he enjoyed greater success. On 4 July, during Parliament’s second and final session held at Winchester, he secured a royal pardon for both himself and his wife for all actions relating to the 1442 expedition and for his entry into his father’s estates. On the same day a writ of non molestetis was directed to the barons of the Exchequer and all further process against him ceased.23 E403/745, m. 14; E159/225, brevia Trin. rot. 11d, recorda Trin. rot. 6.

Heron’s pardon and recovery of his estates saw an increase in his status in the north-east. On 23 Oct. 1449 he was appointed as one of the conservators of the truce with Scotland, a duty he repeated in July 1451, and on 8 Nov. that year he was again pricked as sheriff. He was also prominent in Redesdale where he enjoyed ‘the governance and keeping’ as lieutenant to the warden of the east march, Henry Percy, Lord Poynings, an office he had almost certainly held since at least November 1446.24 Rot. Scot. ed. Macpherson etc. ii. 340, 353; CFR, xviii. 250; Durham cathedral muns., priory small reg. ff. 12v-13. On 4 May 1452 the King’s council wrote to him, Poynings, Sir Robert Ogle II and Ralph Gray ordering them to ensure that the truce with Scotland was observed.25 PPC, vi. 125-6. By the end of his shrieval year Heron had also been knighted, for he was noted as such when his attorney was admitted at the Exchequer in Michaelmas term 1452.26 E159/229, rot. att. As was often the case his official year resulted in litigation. On 30 June 1452 Robert Mildenhale, a Londoner, took advantage of Heron’s shrievalty to sue him successfully in the Exchequer of pleas over an obligation of £14 10s. made in the parish of St. Martin Vintry in March the previous year; and in Trinity term 1455 Heron was sued by Thomas Thorpe*, one of the barons of the Exchequer, and his son, Roger*, over their arrears of wages as porters of the castle of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.27 E13/145A, rots. 59d, 61d; 145B, rot. 74.

Heron, it seems, was never far from controversy. In 1451 he became embroiled in the feud between his kinsman, William Tailboys*, and Ralph, Lord Cromwell. On 28 Nov. 1449 Tailboys, a man of violent and unstable temperament, had assembled a band of ‘slaughterladdes’ and attempted to murder Cromwell after a meeting of the King’s council at Westminster. This led to a petition in Parliament and Tailboys’s imprisonment in the Tower of London. Heron apparently aided Tailboys during this imprisonment. According to the deposition of John Millom, one of Tailboys’s servants, in May 1451 he and Sir John Stanes, a priest in Tailboys’s service, had ‘made and ymagyned a bille in ryme to the finall distruccion of the good name and fame of the Lord Cromwell’ and had delivered it to Heron to take to their master then languishing in Newgate prison. Heron discussed the bill with Tailboys before taking it back to Millon and Stanes with some suggested amendments. Nothing more is heard of Heron’s involvement in this matter but his association with Tailboys continued into the 1450s. By 1455 Tailboys appears to have settled his family’s lordship of Harbottle on Heron, and in 1457 Heron stood surety for him when was sued in the Exchequer of pleas by the chief baron, Peter Arderne, and another Exchequer official, Robert Tanfeld*. When, in 1461, both Tailboys and Heron were attainted for their support of the house of Lancaster the escheator’s return for Cambridgeshire revealed them to be jointly seised of the manor of Croydon cum Clopton. Eventually, Heron’s daughter, Elizabeth, was to marry Tailboys’s son and heir, Robert†.28 VCH Cambs, viii. 31-32; R. Virgoe, E. Anglian Soc. ed. Barron, Rawcliffe and Rosenthal, 301; C67/41, m. 5; E13/145B, rot. 63d; E153/586.

Nothwithstanding his entanglement in Tailboys’s dispute with Cromwell Heron had emerged as one of the leading figures in the north-east by the mid 1450s. In July 1455 the King’s council thanked him for his efforts in leading the defence of Berwick-upon-Tweed with the sheriff of Northumberland, Robert Manners*, and in November 1456 he was himself pricked as sheriff for a third time.29 PPC, vi. 249-50; CFR, xix. 175. From 1457 he was regularly appointed to the commission to enforce the Anglo-Scottish truce on the marches, and in 1458 and 1459 he travelled to Scotland to meet representatives of James II.30 Rot. Scot. ii. 383, 387-8, 390, 397, 398. In these years he also strengthened his connexion with Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland (d.1461), under whom he had served as lieutenant of Redesdale since 1446. In 1456 he accompanied the earl south and in June a royal messenger delivered writs of privy seal to them both in Surrey.31 E403/807, mm. 3, 6. It was doubtless this attachment to the earl that explains Heron’s growing commitment to the King and the Lancastrian party during the late 1450s. In May 1457 he was sent by the council to the King at Kenilworth ‘for certain special matters and causes’, probably related to the imprisonment of the earl’s brother Richard Percy. On 14 May Heron was among a group of mainpernors, led by Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, and Eleanor, countess of Northumberland, who sealed bonds worth £16,000 that Richard would remain a ‘true prisoner’ in the Marshalsea. On 18 Mar. 1458, a week before the so-called ‘Love Day’ reconciling the various factions in the nobility, the recognizance was cancelled.32 R.A. Griffiths, King and Country, 360; CCR, 1454-61, p. 223; E403/810, m. 5.

The peace promised by the ‘Love Day’ was short-lived. By the autumn of that year open hostilities between the magnates had broken out once more in London, and in May 1459 the King and queen left Westminster for Coventry. On the following 17 July Heron was granted the constableship of Bamburgh castle in survivorship with his eldest son, Roger. The circumstances in which his kinsman, John Heron of Crawley, had been persuaded to surrender his life grant of 15 Apr. 1452 are unknown, but this grant secured a vital royal stronghold in Northumberland and it is clear that our MP was identified as a trusted Lancastrian. The Herons’ control over Bamburgh was further strengthened on 17 Aug. when the lordship was leased to our MP’s sons, Roger and John, for 20 years from Easter 1459.33 CFR, xix. 243; CPR, 1452-61, p. 512. On 13 Oct. the Yorkist lords fled England in the wake of the rout at Ludford Bridge. In the period of open hostility between the houses of Lancaster and York which followed Heron emerged as one of the key supporters of the King. The names of Northumberland’s knights of the shire for the Coventry Parliament of November that year are not known, but it is conceivable that Heron, as one of the staunchest supporters of the Crown in the county, was returned to the assembly which saw the attainder of the Yorkist lords. Throughout this period he remained closely linked with the earl of Northumberland. On 20 Dec. he witnessed the earl’s grant of the advowson of Shulbrede priory in Sussex to Bishop Waynflete of Winchester, and on the following day he was named to a commission of array, headed by the earl, in Northumberland.34 Magdalen Coll. Oxf. Misc. 224; CPR, 1452-61, p. 560. In the first half of 1460 Heron’s status as one of the most important supporters of Henry VI and Queen Margaret was confirmed by his appointment to several commissions of oyer and terminer with wide-ranging powers to investigate supporters of the Yorkist lords throughout England. In June 1460, with Sir Ralph Gray and Sir Ralph Percy, he was ordered to arrest the Northumbrian knight, Sir John Middleton, and later that month he was appointed for the first time to the bench in his home county.35 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 562, 564, 609, 613.

On 30 Dec. 1460 Heron was present in the company of the earl of Northumberland at the battle of Wakefield. It may have been in the aftermath of Wakefield that he returned north and, along with the earl and another of his servants, William Bertram*, compelled the prior and convent of Durham to lend 400 marks to the Lancastrian cause, ‘against their good will by might and power’.36 Hist. Dunelmensis Scriptores Tres, p. cccxlv. It is likely that Heron then accompanied Queen Margaret south and that he was also present at the second battle of St. Albans on 17 Feb. 1461 which saw the defeat of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick. After the battle Heron was one of the three Lancastrian knights (the others being (Sir) Robert Whittingham II* and (Sir) Edmund Hampden*) who were despatched to negotiate with the mayor and aldermen of London. On 21 Feb. they met a delegation of Londoners at Barnet and it was agreed that the three knights, accompanied by 400 armed men, should be allowed access to the city. A proclamation was issued by the mayor and aldermen that the Lancastrians were not to be harmed, but when they arrived outside Aldgate on 23 Feb. they were apparently refused entry and three days later the Yorkists lords arrived in the city.37 H.E. Maurer, Margaret of Anjou, 198-9. Heron returned north and rejoined the queen’s forces. On 29 Mar. he was present at the battle of Towton where he was, in all probability, killed fighting alongside his lord the earl of Northumberland.

Within weeks of Edward IV’s victory at Towton the new regime moved to secure Heron’s property in Northumberland and elsewhere. On 2 May the Crown commissioned Sir Robert Ogle II to seize the lordships of Harbottle and Redesdale and the castle of Ford, lately belonging to Sir John and now in the possession of his son, Roger.38 CPR, 1461-7, p. 29. When Edward IV’s first Parliament assembled at Westminster on 4 Nov. Heron was among those Lancastrians attainted. He was accused with others of murdering the duke of York at Wakefield and of fighting against the King at Towton. His death at the latter engagement is suggested by his absence from those charged with offences against the King after that date.39 PROME, xiii. 43-45, 47.

The fate of the Herons of Ford over the next decade is obscure. Elizabeth outlived her husband, and in Trinity term 1466 she was sued, as the administrator of his estate, by Richard Quatermayns* for debts totalling £240. She appears to have lived to a great age, and in February 1498 she made a demise of a tenement in Newcastle-upon-Tyne with the assent of her grandson and heir, William Heron (d.1535).40 CP40/820, rot. 43; Northumb. and Durham Deeds (Newcastle-upon-Tyne Recs. Cttee. vii), 108. Meanwhile, in the Parliament of 1472 Roger Heron had successfully petitioned to be restored to his father’s lands.41 PROME, xiv. 101-2. On 20 Apr. 1475 he was appointed as constable of Norham castle by Bishop Booth of Durham and remained as sheriff of Norhamshire and Islandshire under Booth’s successor, William Dudley, until 1481. In the reign of Henry VIII it was recalled that he had ‘ruled the country (Norhamshire) very well’. Like his father, he entered the service of the Percy earls of Northumberland. On 22 Aug. 1481 he was knighted by the fourth earl during the campaign against the Scots. He died in 1485 leaving as his heir his underage son, John. The Herons continued to be one of the leading families of Northumberland, playing an important role in the defence of the marches, throughout the early sixteenth century and beyond.42 Hedley, ii. 44-45; Hist. Northumb, xi. 384-7.