MARMYON, Sir Mauncer

Like the Marmyons of Tanfield (Yorkshire), who had been summoned to Parliament by writ in the early fourteenth century, Mauncer Marmyon was a descendant in a junior line of the Anglo-Norman family of Marmyon of Tamworth (Warwickshire).5 CP, viii. 505-22; Add. Ch. 20927. His own immediate ancestors had been established from the early thirteenth century on the borders of the south Lincolnshire fens, principally at Keisby, where they were tenants of the Beaumonts, and Ringstone in Rippingale, where they were tenants of the bishops of Lincoln. Outside Lincolnshire, they had lands at Leicestershire at Galby and Cold Newton, and by the late fourteenth century they also held the manor of Shelton in Bedfordshire.6 CChR, iii. 192; J. Nichols, Leics. ii (2), 567; iii (1), 349; Feudal Aids, iii. 119, 123, 127, 193, 197; CP25(1)/289/55/157. For tenure: CCR, 1413-19, p. 144; Leics. Village Notes ed. Farnham, ii. 275. They had long played a part in parliamentary history: John Marmyon† sat for Lincolnshire in 1298, Sir William Marmyon† represented Leicestershire in the two Parliaments of 1307, and another Sir William† took four Lincolnshire seats between 1352 and 1372.

By the end of the latter’s career, however, the family appears to have been in decline. Before his death in 1393 Sir William arranged to sell his manor of Billingborough, only a few miles from Rippingale, to Thomas Holand, earl of Kent (d.1397), lord of nearby Bourne, and soon after his son John was obliged to surrender the manor of Shelton, which Sir William appears to have acquired illegally, to Sir William Papworth†.7 CIMisc. vii. 170; CPR, 1399-1401, p. 463; VCH Beds. iii. 162. Moreover, in 1400, John’s title to the manors of Keisby and Leasingham, near Sleaford, was contested, albeit unsuccessfully, by Robert Goodrich†. The basis of this challenge is unknown, but it is probable that Goodrich, who can have had no hereditary claim, was the mortgagee.8 Add. Ch. 21124. The dispute was decided by arbitration: William Leek† was one of the arbiters chosen by Marmyon, and Thomas Priour† one of those chosen by Goodrich. William, Lord Roos, acted as umpire. In these circumstances it is not surprising that John should have cut a less substantial figure in local affairs than his ancestors, although he was still a man of some substance for his lands in Kesteven and Leicestershire were valued at a respectable £40 p.a. in the subsidy returns of 1412. What little is known of him suggests he was a soldier. In January 1406, after he had been outlawed for trespass in an attempt to recover Shelton, the King granted him the goods thus forfeited to the value of £300 for expenses in military service in the company of Henry, Lord Beaumont, and Sir Thomas Rempston†.9 Feudal Aids, vi. 480; CPR, 1405-8, p. 143. In June 1406 John finally quitclaimed Shelton to Papworth and others: CP40/582, cart. rot. The feoffment he made of his lands nearly ten years later, in June 1415, to Rempston’s son and heir, another Sir Thomas†, Simon Leek† and others, suggests he was about to depart on the Agincourt campaign. Soon after, on the following 6 Dec., he drew up his will and died before 25 Jan. 1416.10 Add. Chs. 21035-6; Reg. Repingdon (Lincoln Rec. Soc. lxxiv), no. 147.

The terms of the will did little to forward the interests of Mauncer Marmyon as John’s heir, for John bequeathed his widow a life estate in all his Lincolnshire lands.11 She also had some interest in his Leics. lands at Galby: Add. Chs. 21262-3. The estate was additionally charged with a life annuity of two marks to their daughter, Mabel, a nun in Sempringham priory, neighhbouring Rippingale. John provided for his own burial in the priory: Reg. Repingdon, no. 147. It was only her willingness to compromise that saved their son from a lengthy period of penury. Not long after John’s death she granted Mauncer the manor of Ringstone to hold in joint tail general with his wife, a grant that was probably part of the arrangements for his marriage.12 On 23 Dec. 1416 her husband’s feoffees confirmed the grant: Add. Ch. 21126. In June 1422 she demised the other principal Marmyon manor, that of Keisby, to Mauncer for term of her life at an annual rent of 16 marks, although it is clear that she intended to continue her residence there for she reserved to herself ‘le north chambour’ together with a stable and lands she had purchased from her former neighbour, Sir Geoffrey Luttrell (d.1419) of Irnham.13 Add. Ch. 21042; CP40/653, rot. 331. A little over two years later, in September 1424, this rent was reduced to a modest seven marks p.a. on condition that Mauncer confirmed her life estate in other Marmyon properties. He entered into a 100-mark bond at Sleaford before William Babington, c.j.c.p., to make this confirmation and pay the rent.14 Add. Chs. 21045-6.

Mauncer’s mother’s generosity did nothing, however, to prevent her son leading a remarkably undistinguished career. Early references to him principally concern his involvement in local disorder. In April 1423 he was bound to the King in £200 to find security of the peace to William Gase, parson of Dunsby in the immediate neighbourhood of his main Lincolnshire estates. On 8 July he came personally into Chancery to find this security and, on the following day, there entered into a further recognizance in £100 to Joan, countess of Kent, and her nephew, the young Humphrey, earl of Stafford. The condition of this latter recognizance was that he submit himself to her ‘humiliter et honeste prout decet domine tanti status et preeminencie’ in all matters between them, save the question of his marriage money.15 CCR, 1422-9, p. 74; C54/273, m. 2d. The coincidence in dates strongly suggests that the two recognizances are connected – perhaps Gase was a servant of Joan – and the dispute looks like one between feudal lord and tenant because Mauncer held of Joan half a knight’s fee in Laughton and Aslackby, near Rippingale.16 CCR, 1441-7, p. 105. However this may be, his surety of the peace led him into difficulties. On 26 Jan. 1425 process was instituted against him in the Exchequer on the grounds he had forfeited his surety by an assault. Fortunately for him, in July 1427, a local jury endorsed his plea of self-defence.17 E159/201, recorda Hil. rots. 4d, 16d.

Marmyon soon found himself in more serious trouble. Early in 1431 his neighbour Richard Casterton of Humby appealed him in the court of King’s bench for assault, alleging that, at Humby at 4 a.m. on 5 Jan. 1429, our MP had attacked him with a sword with the result that he lost the use of three fingers. After process had gone as far as the issue of a writ of outlawry, Mauncer appeared personally in court on 18 Oct. 1431 to find mainprise for a subsequent appearance. In the meantime, he brought an action of his own, alleging that Casterton and other lesser men had conspired to have him falsely indicted of felony and that, as a result of this false indictment, he had been imprisoned in Lincoln castle before acquittal before specially-appointed justices of gaol delivery (this commission is dated 4 Apr. 1430 but the date of the trial is unknown). The outcome of this plea has not been traced. Casterton’s appeal, on the other hand, continued its unavailing process, until, in Michaelmas term 1434, the appellor was fined half a mark for his failure to continue the prosecution, a sign that he had come to terms with our MP. Yet while Marmyon was able to extricate himself from the serious charges levelled against him, one of his servants, John Pete, a yeoman from Keisby, had not been so fortunate. An approver had appealed Pete of having broken into Casterton’s close and houses at Humby and stolen money and plate worth as much as 115 marks. At sessions of gaol delivery on 30 Nov. 1429 he had pleaded not guilty and had been condemned to give battle with the approver at ‘le Pelours place’ in Lincoln castle. His defeat in the ensuing duel resulted in his hanging, a personal tragedy for himself and a public humiliation for his master. This suggests that the subsequent appeal and indictment against our MP may have been more threatening than such legal processes generally were for a man of gentry rank. It is striking that the approver specifically identified Pete as a servant of Marmyon and that the offence he alleged against him was almost exactly the same as the one of which Marmyon was indicted. This implies either that Casterton was being particularly ruthless in exploiting the judicial machinery against an innocent Marmyon or, more probably, that our MP was indeed guilty of waging a violent campaign against him.18 KB27/679, rot. 10; 680, rots. 1, 25d; 683, rot. 64; 684, rots. 9, 53d; 690, rot. 79d; 694, fines rot. 1d, rex rot. 13d; CP40/682, rot. 352d; C66/426, m. 24d; JUST3/203, rot. 1.

Nevertheless, this unhappy episode proved to be no more than a short-term reverse for Marmyon. He soon found material advancement through a second marriage. In the early 1430s he married Elizabeth Wolf who brought him a Leicestershire estate, centred on the manor of Frolesworth, and valued in an inquisition of 1449 at just over £8 p.a.19 Trans. Leics. Arch. Soc. xii. 194; Nichols, iv (1), 182; E149/186/22. This acquisition explains why he attested the Leicestershire election of 8 Sept. 1435 – a function he never performed in his native Lincolnshire – and was assessed to the 1436 subsidy in his wife’s county (on a modest income of £40 p.a.) despite being sworn to the peace in his own two years before.20 C219/14/5; E179/192/59 (where he is styled as ‘of Frolesworth’); CPR, 1429-36, p. 382.

Controversy, however, was never far away in Marmyon’s career. In the early 1440s he fell into dispute with his neighbour, Sir Nicholas Bowet of Rippingale, over rights of common pasture in Ringstone, and, given his involvement in disorder, it is not surprising that he should have sued out a general pardon in July 1446.21 CP40/723, rot. 321; 724, rot. 432; C67/39, m. 33. Against this background, his election, in the following January, to represent Lincolnshire in Parliament appears aberrant. He was a strange choice. Not only was he significantly less wealthy than the generality of the county’s MPs, but he had previously played no part in the administration of the shire. Nor, notably, had his fellow knight of the shire, Sir John Byron*, who although he held lands in Lincolnshire was principally resident in Lancashire. Their return to Parliament suggests that those who had greater claims to represent the county, forewarned by the summons of the assembly to so unusual a venue as Bury St. Edmunds (the election was held ten days after the issue of writs changing the venue from Cambridge), were reluctant to attend a Parliament that was to witness the court clique’s coup against Humphrey, duke of Gloucester.

At first sight as surprising as Marmyon’s election is his pricking as sheriff in November 1448. It is odd that he should have been chosen despite his complete lack of administrative experience, for he had not even been appointed to one of the routine commissions of local government in the 25 years or so since he came of age. Even more unusual is the fact that his is the only name on the pricked list.22 C47/34/2/5. What makes these circumstances particularly suspicious is his conduct in office. He was appointed at a time when the household esquire William Tailboys* was in urgent need of local support, and his behaviour as sheriff implies that he was appointed to protect Tailboys from the consequences of his criminal actions. More difficult to determine is why the choice should have fallen upon our MP. It may be that he was selected as an adherent of his neighhbour and overlord, John, Viscount Beaumont, who, as a prominent coutier, may have been favourably inclined to the lawless esquire, but there is no firm evidence to support this likely surmise. He may even have had a connexion with the King’s chief minister, William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk. The evidence is indirect but tantalizing: in the early 1440s John Eston, a King’s serjeant, was one of de la Pole’s feoffees, and at the end of that decade John Eston of Castor (Northamptonshire) acted as a mainpernor for Marmyon in the Exchequer, named him as a feoffee, and served with him in the garrison at Rysbank in the marches of Calais. If the two Estons were the same, then our MP himself may have belonged to the remoter reaches of the duke’s affinity.23 CPR, 1441-6, p. 126; CCR, 1441-7, p. 222; E368/222, recorda Mich. rots. 10-11; KB27/754, rot. 91; DKR, xlviii. 383.

However Marmyon’s appointment as sheriff is to be explained, he was soon called upon to act in Tailboys’s favour. When he took office the lawless courtier’s most pressing problem was the ongoing process on appeals for murder sued against him by two widows, Elizabeth Saunderson and Joan Storrour. On 28 Nov. 1448 writs of outlawry on both appeals were delivered to William Brome, the King’s bench filacer responsible for Lincolnshire writs, but Marmyon failed to execute them. This led to the issue of new writs in the following Trinity term returnable on the octave of St. John the Baptist.24 KB27/753, rex rot. 18. If Marmyon had any doubts about whether he could afford a second default these were quickly dispelled. According to accusations made by the Commons in March 1450, when the previous Parliament had reassembled in Winchester in mid June 1449 the duke of Suffolk, had ‘entreted’ him not to execute the writs and ‘falsely advertised [the King] to write to the seid Shirref for the same noon execution, the seid Duke writyng by his lettre to the seid Shirref in emboldishyng hym heryn, that he hadde signed his pardon, and that the day of the same retourne passed, the pardon therof shuld be hadde’.25 PROME, xii. 102-3. Some indirect evidence to support this charge is provided by two letters of privy seal: the one, dated to an uncertain day in June 1449, is an order for the issue of a pardon to Marmyon for his failure to execute the writs against Tailboys; and the other, dated 23 June 1449, instructs the barons of the Exchequer to allow him to account as sheriff for only what he was able to collect.26 E28/78/120; E159/226, brevia Easter rot. 2d. Not surprisingly, in the face of such secure promises, Marmyon took what was then the line of least resistance and again failed to execute the writs.

Marmyon must soon, however, have wished he had ignored Suffolk’s entreaty. In Trinity and Michaelmas terms 1449 fines totalling a substantial £175 were imposed upon him in the court of King’s bench for this failure, and on 30 Oct. these fines were assigned to the expenses of the royal household.27 KB27/753, fines rot. 1d; 754, fines rot. 1d; E401/814, 30 Oct. It was not until a week later, on 6 Nov. (ironically the day on which the Parliament assembled that was to bring down Suffolk), that he obtained his promised pardon. On 21 Nov. he pleaded it in the Exchequer in bar to the proceedings against him for the payment of the fines, and in the following Hilary term he went quit.28 E368/222, recorda Mich. rots. 10-11. Nevertheless, his problems were far from over. The widows who had suffered from his failure of duty took advantage of Suffolk’s declining fortunes to press for redress: in Michaelmas term 1449 Elizabeth Saunderson sued Marmyon for damages in the court of King’s bench and Joan Storrour commenced a similar action in the Exchequer of pleas. The result of both actions was the same. In May 1450 two Middlesex juries awarded Elizabeth £500 and Joan £100. Although, on 10 June, the court of King’s bench reduced the former sum to 200 marks, Marmyon was still left with a bill for damages beyond his capacity to pay.29 KB27/754, rot. 111; E5/531.

Matters were made worse for Marmyon by the death of his second wife early in 1449 and the consequent delivery in the following June of her lands to William Walshale, her son by her first husband.30 E149/186/22; CFR, xviii. 97, 118-19. Mauncer’s receptiveness to the blandishments of the ill-fated Suffolk had cost him dear. These grave difficulties at home explain why, very soon after the damages had been awarded against him, he left England to serve in the retinue of John Stourton II*, Lord Stourton, at Rysbank.31 Rot. Gasc. et Franc. ed. Carte, ii. 324 (letters of protection of 30 June 1450). Even though this is the earliest evidence of his military service it is difficult to believe it marks his first such experience. That, despite his modest wealth, he was knighted in the late 1430s, strongly suggests that he was in France at that date, probably not for the first time, and this would partly explain his absence from ad hoc commissions of local government. It may be that he met his death while serving under Stourton, for he was dead by 25 June 1451.32 CFR, xviii. 178. Bureaucratic inertia explains why, although dead, he was outlawed in the Mdx. county court on 4 Nov. 1451 for failure to pay Elizabeth Saunderson her damages: KB29/81, rot. 28.

Marmyon was succeeded by his son, John, who by the autumn of 1448 had been married to Alice, the daughter of a leading Nottinghamshire knight, (Sir) Hugh Willoughby*, and, in 1459-60, served as sheriff of Lincolnshire. Neither John, however, nor his successors were elected to Parliament, and the family failed in the main male line on the death of our MP’s great-grandson, William Marmyon, in 1520. Their ancient estates passed to the Northamptonshire family of Hasilwode through the marriage of William’s daughter to John Hasilwode, warden of the Fleet prison.33 Nottingham Univ. Lib. Middleton mss, Mi Db 3; Trans. Leics. Arch. Soc. xxii. 178. Katherine’s title was unsuccessfully contested by the heir male, William’s brother, Edward, a cleric: Leics. Village Notes, ii. 54-56.