MELTON, Sir John

The Melton family owed its position to the career of William Melton, who, from modest origins, rose to become a prominent royal administrator and a long-serving archbishop of York. On his death in 1340 he left to his nephew, Sir William Melton (d.1362), manorial property at Aston and Towton in the West Riding, Kilham and Owstwick in the East Riding and at Kingsclere and Bentworth in Hampshire.8 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 714. He also advanced his heir by contracting him in marriage to Joan (d.1369), daughter of Anthony, Lord Lucy. This marriage, some 60 years after it was made, was to bring the prospect of a further significant increase in the family’s wealth. On the death of Joan’s niece, Maud, in 1398, Sir William’s son, another Sir William Melton† (d.1399) was left as common-law heir to the extensive Lucy estates, including the great honour of Cockermouth (Cumberland). Unfortunately for the Meltons, however, Maud had, in 1384, resettled her great inheritance to the advantage of her second husband, Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, on condition that his descendants would quarter the Lucy arms with their own. As a result the Meltons had to content themselves with a royal annuity of £50 that the Lucys had held in fee since 1344, and a reversionary interest in the Lucy manor of Radstone in Northamptonshire (expectant on the death without male issue of the earl’s brother, Thomas Percy, earl of Worcester).9 J.M.W. Bean, Estates Percy Fam. 7-9; CP, viii. 254; CIMisc. vii. 268; CPR, 1401-5, pp. 395, 426. Our MP’s gt.gds., another Sir John Melton, would later attempt to regain part of the Lucy inheritance from the Percys on the grounds that the arms condition had been broken: LP Hen. VIII, i. 1176; E41/368; J.H. Baker, ‘Sir John Melton’s Case (1535)’, Cambridge Law Jnl. lv. 249-64.

None the less, even with this disappointment, the archbishop had successfully established the Meltons among Yorkshire’s leading gentry families. His great-nephew, Sir William, served in France under both Edward III and John of Gaunt, was a prominent local administrator, and sat as shire knight for Yorkshire in both 1385 and 1388 (Feb.). His son, Sir John, the father of our MP, maintained the family’s military tradition, taking part in the conquest of Normandy under Henry V, but played little traceable part in public affairs thereafter.10 C61/115, m. 1; E101/407/10, m. 2; E101/70/3/642.

The subject of this biography was probably born in 1407.11 His father’s four surviving inquisitions post mortem, taken in 1455, describe him variously as aged ‘30 and more’, ‘40 and more’ and ‘48 and more’, but the greater and more precise of these seems most likely: C139/157/22. He was certainly of age by the spring of 1432, when he was sued in the common pleas by Joan, widow of Sir Robert Hilton, for her dower portion in, amongst other lands, the East Riding manors of Swine and Winestead.12 CP40/685, rot. 264d. For Joan’s will, see Test. Ebor. ii (Surtees Soc. xxx), 23-25. At some point before that date, and presumably before Sir Robert’s death, Melton had married Elizabeth, one of Hilton’s two daughters and coheiresses, and Joan evidently found it necessary to pursue her rights against Melton, Elizabeth and her other daughter Isabel, by then the widow of Robert Hildyard (d.1428). This claim fell when Joan died later that year, but it was to prove only the first of a series of legal actions over the Hilton inheritance, with Melton and the two sisters engaged in various suits against Sir Robert Hilton’s younger brother and heir male, Sir Godfrey†. In Trinity term 1432, with Joan’s dower suit still active, Melton sued Sir Godfrey in the court of King’s bench for trespass; and on the following 1 Dec. the latter countered by securing a commission of oyer and terminer to investigate claims that Melton, together with three of his wife’s relatives, John Constable of Hedon, (Sir) John Constable* of Halsham and Robert Constable of Flamborough, their kinsman the prominent Lincolnshire knight Sir Thomas Cumberworth*, and dozens of others had, amongst other charges, broken his close at Swine and threatened his tenants at both Swine and Winestead.13 KB27/685, rot. 41; CPR, 1429-36, p. 275. No process on this commission is known to survive, but the issue seems to have reached a conclusion two years later at an assize session in York. On 30 Aug. 1434, the assize heard a complaint by Melton and the two Hilton heiresses that Sir Godfrey had disseised them of their manor of Swine. The jurors found for Melton and the heiresses, stating that Sir Godfrey’s claim, based on an alleged enfeoffment made to him, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and Gloucester’s wife Eleanor by one William Hilton, was invalid.14 JUST1/1542, rot 17. The Hilton inheritance was seemingly divided between the two sisters shortly afterwards, with Winestead passing to Isabel and her Hildyard descendants, and Elizabeth and John receiving Swine, where the couple would be based for much of the next two decades.

Aside from these issues over his wife’s inheritance, Melton appears only occasionally throughout the 1430s and 1440s, and mainly in conjunction with his wife’s Constable relations and his new neighbours in the East Riding. Indeed, despite the potential for confusion caused by the longevity of Melton’s father, the spheres of the two men rarely seem to have overlapped. In 1436 Melton was again involved with aspects of the Hilton inheritance, when he, Elizabeth and Isabel combined to bring a suit against the abbot of Louth Park over the advowson of the church of Fulstow in Lincolnshire, which the abbot claimed had been granted to the abbey by the women’s grandfather in 1383.15 CP40/703, rot. 423. His connections with the Constables of Halsham were highlighted in April 1440, when he headed the witnesses to a series of transactions between Sir John Constable and John Ellerker of Risby. His activities also reached higher up the local social scale. On 4 Apr. 1442 he witnessed a demise by William, Lord Fitzhugh, to a group including Constable, and a few days later he again joined Constable, and his wife’s nephew, Robert Hildyard, in witnessing a quitclaim of lands in Burton Pidsea.16 E. Riding of Yorks. Archs., Chichester-Constable mss, DDCC/111/16, 88/97, 141/68/p40/b-c, 74/4; Yorks. Deeds, ix (Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. cxi), 38-39; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 80, 116. Melton was clearly taking up the position in East Riding society held by former lords of Swine, and the early link with Fitzhugh is especially significant, since Melton would be involved in many of his dealings over the next decade, and his son and heir, John, would later marry Fitzhugh’s daughter, Margery.

Melton’s activities were not, however, confined to his native county. In 1442-3 he was in receipt of robes as an esquire of the royal household, although he did not maintain a place there because of a prolonged period of absence in France in the 1440s.17 E101/409/9, f. 36v. A military career was a natural step for one awaiting his inheritance, and his father’s connexions with the great commander, John, Lord Talbot, a substantial landowner in the vicinity of the Melton residence at Aston, made it equally natural that he should serve under him.18 For his father’s connexion with Lord Talbot: SC8/198/9891; CPR, 1436-41, p. 73. Precisely when he first went to Normandy is unclear, but he was certainly there by December 1441 and he was soon acting as Talbot’s lieutenant at the castle of Rouen. He probably returned to England with Talbot in February or March 1442, securing an exemption from holding local office on 23 Mar. and witnessing two Yorkshire deeds in the following month, but he was back in Rouen by September.19 CPR, 1441-6, p. 105; Add Ch. 3945; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, fr 25776/1525, 1556, 1559. This second term of service was to end in the ignominy and expense of capture and imprisonment. Few details are known, but on 7 Mar. 1450 Melton was granted special permission to conduct trade with France out of Southampton, in order to pay an outstanding ransom, for which he had left two of his children as hostages. It is not clear when he was captured, but he is almost totally absent from the records from late 1442 onwards, and he may well have been taken during the fall of the English fortress at Dieppe on 14 Aug. 1443. Members of Talbot’s personal retinue were certainly present at Dieppe, and Melton’s captor, Raoul, seigneur de Gaucourt, was one of the commanders of Charles VII’s force which took the fortress.20 Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars. of English ed. Stevenson, i. 514; PSO1/17/891; A.J. Pollard, John Talbot, 60-61.

Melton may have had the misfortune to be a prisoner for more than five years. He was not certainly back in England until the spring of 1449 when, on 12 Mar., he witnessed a deed for Anthony Nuthill of Long Riston.21 W. Yorks. Archive Service, Bradford, Spencer Stanhope mss, SpSt/4/11/92/13. It was his fa. who, in Mar. 1449, witnessed an important deed by which a jointure was settled on John, s. and heir apparent of Sir John Constable, and Laura, da. of William, Lord Fitzhugh; and on the following 3 Nov. attested the Yorks. parlty. election: Chichester-Constable mss, DDCC/133/3; C219/15/7. It is possible that he returned again to France to witness the last rites of the English occupation, for it is hard otherwise to explain why he was knighted during this period. He was a knight by 12 Feb. 1450, when he began his career in local government with appointment to an East Riding sewer commission.22 CPR, 1446-52, p. 319. He was not styled a kt. in the warrant to trade with France granted to him three weeks later, but this reflected his status when he petitioned for the warrant not at the moment of its granting.

Melton’s election to the Parliament of November 1450, alongside Sir John Saville* was perhaps a little surprising given his relative lack of experience, but many of the men elected to that gathering were both former soldiers and supporters of Richard, duke of York, and Melton clearly fell into both categories. The Melton family seat at Aston lay close to the duchy of York estates in south Yorkshire, and these familial ties may well have been strengthened during Melton’s service with Talbot and York in the defence of Normandy. His election was also undoubtedly another step on his path to rehabilitation, both in terms of his personal career and in strengthening his family’s position, and both continued to improve over the next few years. In 1451 he again witnessed a series of property transactions in the East Riding for Lord Fitzhugh, and it was probably around this time that his son’s marriage to Fitzhugh’s daughter took place.23 Yorks. Deeds, ix. 106-7. In July 1451 he was appointed to the East Riding bench, and on 25 Aug. he was one of 24 people from the eastern coast nominated to inquire into ships breaching an agreement with the king of Denmark by trading with places other than the Bergen staple.24 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 479, 597.

In November 1453, in a natural progression, Melton was appointed as sheriff of Yorkshire. It was an unfortunate time to be appointed as it followed upon major clashes between the Percys and the Nevilles in the previous summer and autumn. Further, his term of office coincided with a rising in the county, supported by the Percys and led by Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, against the authority of the duke of York, as Protector. No doubt Melton took an active part in its suppression, and on 24 July 1454 he was appointed, along with Sir Brian Stapleton* and Sir Thomas Rempston† to guard the captured duke of Exeter as a prisoner in Pontefract castle. His role here, together with what else is known of his political affiliations, marks him out as a supporter of York and the Nevilles. It is, therefore, rather surprising that, in the May following the end of his shrievalty, he should have been summoned to the great council that was to provoke the Yorkist rising which ended at the first battle of St. Albans.25 PPC, vi. 218, 340.

In August 1455, when the Yorkists were in control of government, Melton petitioned for protection from the debts arising out of his troubled shrievalty. He complained that he could not raise the moneys due to the Crown because of the ‘exilite and desolacion’ of various unspecified places in Yorkshire and that, for every pound he did succeed in levying, he had had to contribute 2s. of his own to make up the shortfall. Further, additional charges had been placed upon him by the commission, headed by York, sent to suppress and investigate Exeter’s rising, for not only had he to attend continually on the commissioners but he also had had to retain additional men. Such pleas were routinely made by sheriffs at the end of their terms, and the government recognized Melton’s particular difficulties only to the extent of pardoning him an extra ten marks ‘by way of reward’ over and above the pardon of account in £240 then generally awarded to Yorkshire sheriffs. This may partly explain why he troubled to secure the additional protection of a general pardon in the following November.26 E159/232, brevia Mich. rot. 14; C67/41, m. 4.

By this date Melton had finally inherited the family patrimony with his father’s death on 24 May 1455 (only two days after the battle of St. Albans although there is no evidence that either father or son fought there). This brought a very significant augmentation of his resources, although the family’s principal manor, that of Aston, remained in the hands of his father’s feoffees, including Thomas Everingham*. The elder Sir John’s view of his heir’s character may be reflected in the codicil to his will, drawn up on 1 Apr. 1455, where he felt it necessary to specify that, should his son interfere in any way with the duties of his feoffees in Aston, then the manor should be sold and any remaining proceeds spent on alms and on masses for his soul. Only if the feoffees were left to their task was the younger Sir John to receive the manor on completion of their duties. This apparent distrust did not, however, deter the father from naming the son among his executors.27 C139/157/22; PSO1/64/26; CFR, xix. 126-7; Borthwick Inst., Univ. of York, York registry wills, prob. reg. 2, f. 319.

Despite this, Melton seems to have moved back to Aston soon after his father’s death, and was generally described as ‘of Aston’ for the rest of his life. The family’s outlying manor of Radstone in Northamptonshire seems to have passed to his younger brother and fellow executor, Anthony, possibly in 1443 when the elder Sir John granted the manor to Everingham and others, presumably as feoffees.28 The manor was held by an Anthony Melton in the 1490s, and reverted to Sir John’s gds. and h. John in 1504, explicitly as h. of his gt.gdfa. (the elder Sir John, d.1455): Warws. RO, Holbeche mss, CRO 457/3/3, 4/15, 82/1; CPR, 1494-1509, p. 364. Other aspects of the elder Sir John’s estate were not so straightforward, and in July 1456 Melton and the other executors were forced to bring a suit in the Exchequer court against John Stanhope*, the former sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, who had allegedly refused to pay an assignment of 100s. granted by the King out of the revenues of the town of Derby in order to pay a debt.29 E13/146, rot 75d. Perhaps prompted by his father’s death, and the appearance of his first grandson on 2 Feb. 1455, Sir John also made provisions for his own family at this time. Around Easter 1455, he granted the manor of Towton, together with lands in Owstwick and Catwick, in jointure to his eldest son John and his wife Margery, and in August he also granted them the manor of Fenton by Cawood.30 C139/168/28; C140/49/27; CP40/777, rot. 86d; CP25(1)/281/161/5. Margery was seemingly still living at Fenton in 1491, when she accused local men of trespass in her property there: CP40/916, rot. 238. However, these plans would prove somewhat in vain, since the younger John died in 1458, and was buried at Swine, where the tomb of him and his wife, together with an elaborate epitaph, was to be noted by the herald Warburton during his visitation in 1652.31 CFR, xix. 195; T. Thompson, Priory of Swine, 108-10.

In the late 1450s Melton’s family connexions drew him into a violent local quarrel. In 1457, his brother-in-law, Henry Pierrepont, husband of his sister Thomasina, was murdered on Papplewick Moor in Sherwood Forest by John Green, steward and brother-in-law of Sir William Plumpton*, with whom the Pierreponts were in a long-running dispute. Green himself was then murdered by Henry’s brother, John, prompting a string of legal cases, and in 1459 Melton, together with John Stanhope and Richard Illingworth*, stood as arbiter for the Pierreponts in an attempt to resolve the matter. Henry Pierrepont had probably married Melton’s sister back in the late 1420s or early 1430s, and in 1434 either our MP or his father was involved in transactions relating to the sale by his sister’s father-in-law, the financially troubled Sir Henry Pierrepont*, of the manors of North and South Anston in Yorkshire and Rolleston in Nottinghamshire. Melton’s arbitration apparently failed, and his relations with his sister’s family may not have remained entirely cordial, since in February 1465 and July 1467 he was required to enter recognizances that he would keep the peace towards another Henry Pierrepont, presumably his nephew.32 CP40/695, rot. 290; S.J. Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian Eng. 200-1; Plumpton Letters (Cam. Soc. ser. 5, viii), 27-28; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 327, 438.

Melton’s increasing profile may explain his involvement in Northamptonshire affairs in September 1458, when he was a party to various conveyances in connexion with the disputed manor of Woodcroft. This was alongside a number of local notables, including the staunch Lancastrians, Lionel, Lord Welles, and (Sir) Edmund Hampden*, and others such as Henry Green*, William Aldewyncle* and Richard Quatermayns*, but precisely why Melton should have become involved in this matter, far from his Yorkshire home, is unclear.33 Northants. RO, Fitzwilliam (Milton) Chs. 675-6, 679, 2240; CP40/786, rot. 135d.

Despite his close connexions with the duke of York, Melton appears to have been relatively successful in keeping himself out of trouble during the disturbances which preceded the outbreak of civil war. On 25 Jan. 1458 he secured another general pardon, perhaps significantly on the same day as, and immediately following, a pardon to Duke Richard, and he clearly had the duke’s trust. A week later he was one of many of the duke’s adherents who entered bonds to Alice, dowager-duchess of Suffolk, for the payment of the portion of York’s daughter on her marriage to the young duke of Suffolk.34 CAD, vi. A6337, 6341. Shortly before his death at Wakefield, York appointed Melton as one of his feoffees alongside Thomas Bourgchier, archbishop of Canterbury, Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, and others, a charge in which Melton was still engaged during the 1470s.35 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 721 n. 35; K.B. McFarlane, Eng. in the 15th Cent. 234n.; C67/42, m. 44; P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 221; CPR, 1467-77, p. 261; 1476-85, p. 269; Notts. Archs., Foljambe of Osberton mss, DD/FJ/4/37/2. On this evidence Melton should have been clearly identified as a Yorkist partisan, and he was duly omitted from the East Riding commission of the peace after the defeat of the Yorkists at Ludford Bridge. Yet he was named to the Lancastrian commission of array issued at the end of the Coventry Parliament, and in May 1460 he was named to a commission to inquire into the West Riding land of those attainted in that Parliament.36 CPR, 1452-61, p. 560; Plumpton Corresp. p. lxvi. Further, he was restored to the bench by the Lancastrians in the following month, only to be removed by the Yorkists after their victory at the battle of Northampton. This suggests that he was thought in some circles to be a Lancastrian loyalist,37 The Meltons’ connexion with the Lancastrian Talbots may be significant here. In Feb. 1455 Talbot’s son and heir, John, earl of Shrewsbury (d.1460), stood as godfather to our MP’s gds. and eventual heir, John (d.1510): C140/50/47. but this impression is contradicted by his nomination as sheriff of Yorkshire that November.

Melton’s term as sheriff was to be abbreviated. On 6 Mar. 1461, two days after Edward IV had taken the throne, he was replaced by Sir John Saville, the new government probably seeing Saville as a more forceful local presence. As the effective lord of the manor of Towton (technically held by his young grandson) our MP presumably suffered losses at the time of the battle there, but there is no evidence to suggest that he himself was present. He continued to play a full part in local affairs. On 8 May he was appointed to arrest rebels in the East Riding together with three of his relatives, Sir John and Sir Robert Constable and Robert Hildyard, and around this time the same four men were working together to provision royal ships in the port of Kingston-upon-Hull. On 10 May he was included on the commission of array; he was restored to the East Riding bench at the end of the month, and continued to be appointed to commissions to arrest rebels over the next two years.38 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 31, 102, 277; DL37/31/62.

Melton’s later years appear to have been relatively uneventful, and although he remained on the East Riding bench until 1472, his election to the Parliament of 1467 would effectively be his last major office. In 1465 he had secured confirmation of the letters patent of 1344 by which he received his £50 annuity as the Lucy heir, and he pursued a number of suits against local men in the central courts, mainly for small debts and trespasses, including an alleged attack on his house at Kilham.39 CPR, 1461-7, p. 329; CP40/816, rot. 45d; KB27/817, rot. 10d; 819, rot. 63d. His wife Elizabeth died before Easter term 1466, when Sir John and his second wife, Cecily, brought a suit for debt in the common pleas against her stepson John Curson.40 CP40/820, rot. 292. Perhaps surprisingly for a man of his age, Melton died intestate on 23 Oct. 1474, and administration of his affairs was granted on 3 Nov. He was succeeded by his grandson, John, who proved his age in February 1476, and although earlier jointures had left Cecily with life interests in Kilham, Kingsclere and Bentworth, she gave up her Hampshire interests in April 1479.41 York registry wills, prob. reg. 4, f. 218. Sir John’s inqs. post mortem correlate with the proof of age in giving his gds.’s date of birth as 2 Feb. 1455, but the boy’s father’s inq., taken in Oct. 1458, described him as only ‘two and more’: C139/168/28; C140/49/27; 50/47; C141/6/18.