MANCHESTER, John

Manchester came from a minor gentry family established at Beeston near Nottingham since the late twelfth century.3 Feudal Aids, iv. 98; Notts. IPM (Thoroton Soc. iv), 126, 131. Despite his family’s antiquity, he was the first of its members to make a significant impact on local affairs. He had a training in the law, and although he never progressed to the higher reaches of the profession he became an influential man in his native county through the several offices of local legal administration he held. He first appears in the records on 14 May 1410 when a weaver complained in the Nottingham borough court that, on the previous 21 Dec., Manchester and Richard Aungers had forcibly taken from him looms worth four marks.4 Notts. Archs., Nottingham recs., ct. rolls 1305, rot. 17d. By the autumn of 1414 he was well enough established as a local lawyer to be chosen by Sir Thomas Hercy† as his under sheriff ;5 KB27/615, rot. 29; PRO List ‘Sheriffs’, 103. Hercy’s shrievalty, from Mich. 1414 to 1 Dec. 1415, is omitted from his biography in The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 347-9. and not long afterwards he was appointed to the clerkship of the peace in his native county.6 Walter Taillard was still in office as clerk of the peace on 2 Apr. 1418, but by the following 6 Aug. he had been replaced by Manchester: E372/265, rot. Not.d; 270, rot. 26d. During a second term as under sheriff, on this occasion under Sir Ralph Shirley†, the sheriff between November 1420 and May 1422, he was drawn into a dispute between Thomas Elmham, prior of Lenton, and the feoffees of Margaret, Lady Scrope, one of the daughters and coheirs of Robert, Lord Tybotot (d.1372), over the right of presentation to the church of Langar. When the justices of assize came to Nottingham on 1 Aug. 1421 the prior complained that Manchester had arrayed the panel of the jury due to appear before them ‘in favorem et denominacionem’ of Lady Scrope’s feoffees. The justices upheld the complaint and Manchester was ordered not to meddle further.7 CP40/640, rot. 341. Such cases demonstrate the potential influence residing in the hands of the lesser officials of county administration, and our MP, as both a long-serving clerk of the peace and occasional under sheriff, was ideally placed to exploit that potential.

Throughout the 1420s Manchester was very active in the affairs of both borough and county. In the Nottingham parliamentary election of 19 Apr. 1425, one of several he attended in the early 1420s, he stood as mainpernor for the attendance at Parliament of John Wilford*, one of those returned; and in the Nottinghamshire elections to the Parliament of 1426 he acted in the same way for one of the county MPs, Norman Babington*.8 C219/12/5; 13/1-4. As one might expect of a local lawyer, he also attended the visitations of the justices of gaol delivery and assize. In July 1423, for example, he stood surety for several of those facing trial at a session of gaol delivery at Nottingham; and in August 1427, again at Nottingham, he was a pledge for the prosecution by a widow of an appeal for the murder of her husband. More interestingly, in March 1424 Elizabeth Fitzalan, dowager-duchess of Norfolk, nominated him as her attorney in an assize of novel disseisin pending at Derby.9 JUST3/56/21; 203, m. 31d; JUST1/1537, rot. 25d. He may have owed this nomination to Babington, who was (or else was soon to be) the steward of her household. It was probably also at about this time that he was appointed to a minor office in the administration of the duchy of Lancaster lands in Derbyshire, although it is not known how long he served or to whom he owed his appointment.10 R. Somerville, Duchy, i. 549.

Manchester’s legal training and perhaps also a related willingness to serve without wages made him an obvious candidate as an MP, and he was duly returned for Nottingham to the Parliament of 1427. He also attested the irregular county election to the same assembly, an election to which, according to a later inquiry, the suitors of the county court had not been summoned. The list of attestors gives able support to this finding, for it is headed by four local lawyers, the second named of whom was Manchester, with the leading men of the shire being conspicuous by their absence.11 C219/13/5; Parliamentarians at Law ed. Kleineke, 116-31. Whatever may have been Manchester’s part in this unsatisfactory election, he put his time at Westminster to good use. On 12 Nov., while Parliament was still in session, he was granted the office of clerk of the statute merchant in Nottingham. In the same month Babington, as the new sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, chose him as his under sheriff. This choice is probably to be explained by the earlier connexion between the two men, but was an unfortunate one in that Manchester was destined to be absent from his native county not only for the month that remained of the Parliament’s first session but also for the two months of its second, between January and March. Soon after his return to Nottinghamshire he was called upon to perform an important function: on 20 Apr. 1428, as under sheriff, he sat at Retford with two county j.p.s to hear an indictment of a large number of men involved in a major riot against the prior of Blyth.12 CPR, 1422-9, p. 444; KB9/223/2/74; KB27/671, rex rot. 4.

Like other lawyers, Manchester was the plaintiff in numerous actions of debt in the court of common pleas, most no doubt concerned with the recovery of unpaid professional fees. In Michaelmas term 1424, to cite a term at random, he had pleas pending against 16 defendants for debts totalling £81. The defendants were for the most part tradesmen, yeomen and other lesser individuals, and none, in either this term or others for which the rolls have been searched, was of above the rank of gentleman. While most of these actions were for 40s., the minimum sum claimable in the court, two in this particular term were for much larger amounts: he demanded £20 each from two Derbyshire men, Lambert Shirokes of Whitwell and Thomas Padley of Buxton. Since both were styled ‘bailiff’ and he sued a separate action of account against Padley, it is probable that he had employed them as estate officials and hence that he owned property in that county.13 CP40/655, rots. 7, 393, 396, 525.

Unfortunately, there is little evidence concerning the location and extent of Manchester’s landholdings. One might expect that as a lawyer from a modest family much of his land came to him by purchase, but the surviving records note only one such acquisition. In 1432 he bought a messuage and other unspecified property in Lenton, just outside Nottingham. According to an indictment taken before commissioners of oyer and terminer in April 1434, more than a little irregularity attached to this transaction. William Richardson of Burnaston near Derby had allegedly delivered deeds to the Derbyshire lawyer, Richard Brown†, for his advice on a matter concerning the property; Brown had then, without consulting his client, sold the land and delivered the deeds to Manchester.14 KB9/11/15. Given the active role our MP took in Nottingham affairs it may be inferred that he also held property there. Indeed, in 1421 a horse was allegedly stolen from his house in the town and in 1430 he sued a tiler of Sneinton for breaking his close in Nottingham and taking goods worth 100s. It may be that the close involved lay in Swine Green (now Carlton Street), for his son John was recorded as holding property there in 1446. Shortly before his death he temporarily added to his holdings by taking to farm from the borough authorities at £3 p.a. that part of the bank of the Trent known as ‘Hebethstener’ (now Alderman’s Parts). Nevertheless, if later evidence is to be credited, the Manchesters were not numbered among the more substantial borough landholders. In the subsidy returns of 1473 Hugh Manchester, probably our MP’s grandson, was assessed at a modest 3s. for a tenth part of his freehold there.15 JUST3/203, rot. 34d; CP40/679, rot. 544; Nottingham Recs. ed. Stevenson, ii. 184, 290, 356.

On 29 Aug. 1429 Manchester was returned to represent the town for the second successive time, and he was also one of its MPs in the next two assemblies. He put his time at Westminster to good personal use. On 28 Jan. 1431, while Parliament was in session, he won a further grant of royal patronage. In company with the other leading lawyer of Nottingham, Robert Rasyn*, he was awarded custody of some 60 acres of land in Gotham, Thrumpton and Kingston-on-Soar, a few miles to the south-west of the town, to hold during the minority of John, son and heir of the Leicestershire knight, Sir Robert Neville of Prestwold.16 C219/14/1-3; CFR, xvi. 24. The two sureties to this grant, Thomas Makworth* and Robert Walsh*, were also sitting MPs. Shortly after the conclusion of this Parliament he again appeared in association with Rasyn, who appears to have been one of his closest friends. On 11 May they were the recipients in a grant of goods made by a London horse-dealer: their fellow grantee was Robert Cavendish, serjeant-at-law, an indication that the grant was a reflection of their legal connexions in the capital. In the following month Manchester was once more the beneficiary of royal patronage: in company with another Nottinghamshire lawyer, William Neville of South Leverton, he was granted, at a rent to be agreed with the treasurer, the keeping of lands in Derbyshire during the minority of the infant Peter, son and heir of Gervase Frecheville of Staveley.17 Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, p. 260; CFR, xvi. 41.

Manchester’s connexions outside Nottingham may have served to recommend him further to the electors there. His administrative offices, particularly his long-held clerkship of the peace, brought him into regular contact with many of the leading men of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. In 1425 he was numbered among the feoffees of the greatest of the Nottinghamshire gentry, Sir Thomas Chaworth*, and it was probably at about this time that his legal services were retained by Chaworth’s equivalent in Derbyshire, Sir Richard Vernon* (this, at least, is the implication of the payment of £3 made to him by Vernon as arrears of his fee in 1429-30). His associations with the influential Babingtons extended beyond Norman, under whom he had served as under sheriff: in 1431 he acted in a fine made upon the marriage of Thomas I*, brother of Sir William Babington, c.j.c.p., to one of the coheiresses of the Derbyshire family of Dethick.18 CCR, 1422-9, p. 315; 1435-41, p. 215; S.M. Wright, Derbys. Gentry (Derbys. Rec. Soc. viii), 67, 218, 249; Derbys. Feet of Fines (Derbys. Rec. Soc. xi), 1079, 1085.

It was probably through his service to such prominent local men that Manchester came to the notice of a greater one, Ralph, Lord Cromwell. In June 1434 Cromwell surrendered his grant of the keeping of the royal manor of Clipstone in Sherwood to the intent that a clerk in his service and our MP should have the custody. As treasurer of England, he was well placed to make such arrangements. In the following October Manchester added to this grant the potentially lucrative office of alnager, and this too he owed to Cromwell’s patronage. By the mid 1430s he was extremely well connected and on his way to becoming a man of substance. In the tax returns of 1435-6 he was assessed on a respectable income of £16 p.a., a significant part of which must have been derived from legal fees.19 CFR, xvi. 205, 223; E179/240/266. Indeed, by this date he had become too successful a lawyer to continue to hold the important but minor office of the clerkship of the peace, and he surrendered it shortly before representing Nottingham in Parliament for the fifth time in October 1435.20 He was replaced as clerk by John Brydde* at an unknown date between 18 Jan. and 26 Sept. 1435: E101/581/7.

On this last occasion Manchester’s return was slightly irregular. He was in technical breach of the statutes relating to residence in that he attested the county election yet was returned for the borough. More significantly his name was inserted on the dorse of the parliamentary writ in what was clearly a space left in the original endorsement. No obvious explanation presents itself, but there are at least two contradictory interpretations. Either he stepped in to fill a vacancy or else he was duly elected but initially refused to allow his return to be added to the writ.21 C219/14/5. However this may be, it was soon after the ensuing Parliament that, on 1 Feb. 1436, he was nominated to his first and only ad hoc commission of local government. The commissioners’ task was not a routine one. The church of Beighton in the north-east corner of Derbyshire, to which the King had recently recovered the right of presentation, had reportedly been seized by an armed band. The commissioners were instructed to imprison those who refused to surrender the church and have them in Chancery to answer for the disseisin. Manchester’s appointment is probably to be explained by his wardship of the Frecheville lands which lay in the vicinity of Beighton, together with his connexion with Sir Richard Vernon who headed the commission.22 CPR, 1429-36, p. 527.

By the mid 1430s Manchester was at the height of his influence. Accidental death was, however, shortly to curtail his flourishing career. According to an inquisition taken on 22 Apr. 1437 at Nottingham by the county escheator, he had drowned in the river Trent ten days earlier. Since a horse, valued at one mark, was returned as the cause of his death, it is possible that he had unwisely attempted to swim his horse across the river, but it is more likely that he had simply lost control of his mount.23 E153/1435/3. His wife survived him. As his executrix, she was drawn into a considerable amount of litigation in pursuit of his creditors. For example, in Trinity term 1438 she had pleas of debt pending against as many as 15 individuals, all of them for relatively small sums – the largest was for a modest £6 – and most probably for unpaid fees. She died intestate shortly before 18 Apr. 1448 when administration of her goods was granted to her two daughters. Manchester was succeeded by his son John, who was of full age at his untimely death. Indirect evidence suggests that the younger John married, probably in his father’s lifetime, the daughter and eventual heiress of our MP’s old friend, Robert Rasyn. He had a much less distinguished career than his father and played little part in the affairs of either the borough or the county.24 CP40/710, rots. 7, 412, 476; Borthwick Inst., Univ. of York, York registry wills, prob. reg. 2, f. 172.