MARTINDALE, William

The Martindales acquired the manor of Westnewton (in the north-west of Cumberland) by marriage in the reign of Edward III. Roger Martindale, the husband of the heiress, was one of the Cumberland coroners in 1371 and served several times as a tax collector there between 1379 and 1385, but he did not rise to any higher responsibility.2 J. Nicolson and R. Burn, Westmld. and Cumb. ii. 163; CCR, 1369-74, p. 236; CFR, ix. 141, 145, 225, 338; x. 119. He was alive as late as 1396 when he secured a papal indult to have a portable altar: CPL, v. 54. William’s father was only a little more prominent: his public career was confined to two appointments to commissions of array in Cumberland and the attestation of several county elections between 1416 and 1434.3 CPR, 1416-22, p. 196; 1429-36, p. 360; C219/11/8; 12/6; 13/3; 14/1, 4. His career overlapped with that of his more notable son. When our MP attested the elections of 1429 and 1433 he was described as ‘junior’; both he and his father were among those to be sworn to the peace in 1434; and on 18 Aug. 1435 at Penrith they sat together as jurors at a gaol delivery.4 C219/14/1, 4; CPR, 1429-36, p. 383; JUST3/11/8, 12, 13. One can only guess whether it was our MP or his father who was assessed at £40 in the subsidy returns of 1436 and who sued out general pardons in the late 1430s both on his own account and as a feoffee of George Warwick of Warwick (Cumberland).5 E179/90/26; C67/38, m. 9; CPR, 1436-41, p. 342. It is probably safe to assume, however, that later references relate to the younger William.

In the 1440s Martindale played a modest part in local affairs. He sat as a gaol delivery juror on five occasions between 1440 and 1447 and twice attested parliamentary elections.6 JUST3/11/12, 13, 15, 16, 19; C219/15/2, 6. He was not, however, appointed to any office or commission of local government, and on the available evidence it is surprising that he had status enough to secure election for the county on 24 Jan. 1447 in company with John Pennington*. The explanation lies in membership of the affinity of the leading local magnate, Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland (d.1455): both MPs are known to have later been in receipt of fees from him and there can be little doubt that they were already part of his affinity by the time of their election.7 C219/15/4. On 26 Jan. 1448 Thomas Martindale, described as a gentleman of Cumb., offered mainprise in a royal grant made to a leading Percy man, Thomas Curwen: C60/255, m. 9. This may be an error for William, and, if so, it is the first reference to connect our MP with Percy.

In the following decade the course of Martindale’s career was determined by his membership of that retinue as it became drawn into conflict with the rival affinity of the Nevilles.8 In 1445 Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, had a plea of debt of £10 pending against our MP in Yorks., but this can have had nothing to do with the future rivalry: CP40/739, rot. 46. When, early in 1453, the earl’s younger son, Thomas Percy, Lord Egremont, intervened in a dispute within the Threlkeld family, our MP was among an impressive gathering of the Percy retinue which witnessed the readiness of the disputants to abide their lord’s arbitration.9 The award was returned shortly before 5 Feb.: HMC Le Fleming, 3-4. More significantly, on the following 10 Aug., he was one of nine men, headed by Sir Ralph Percy, singled out by the Crown as a ‘greet sturrer and moever’ of riots in the north and ordered to obey royal commissioners headed by Sir William Lucy*. It is probable that, two weeks later, he was in the Percy army led by Egremont which confronted the Nevilles at Heworth Moor near York. His name duly appeared in the bill presented before jurors when the duke of York came to York at the head of a commission of oyer and terminer in the following June, although, along with several others, it has been struck out.10 PPC, vi. 154-5; KB9/149/1/89. Whether or not he was present at Heworth, our MP was among the most trusted of the Percy retinue: by Michaelmas term 1453 he was serving as steward of their lordship of Cockermouth and was in receipt of a fee of £5 p.a. in addition to the same sum for his office. He probably also owed his knighthood to the Percys. He took up the rank between 17 Oct, 1450, when he attested another Cumberland election, and early in 1453, although one can only speculate upon the occasion.11 Bean, 96-97; C219/16/1.

In view of this seniority in the Percy retinue it is surprising to find that Martindale’s career has left little trace in the records after this date. On 2 Oct. 1455 he sat at Penrith on the jury at the inquisition post mortem of the earl of Northumberland, killed on the Lancastrian side at the first battle of St. Albans, another battle at which our MP’s presence can be inferred but not proved. In February 1456, as the duke of York’s second protectorate came to an end, he sued out a general pardon as ‘of Newton, esquire alias knight’.12 C139/160/37; C67/41, m. 7. Thereafter he found himself facing litigation in the court of common pleas. In 1458 he was sued by his neighbour, Elizabeth, widow of William Osmundlaw (son of the Appleby MP of 1431), for her dower in Waverton and other nearby vills: she recovered on his default, but Martindale appears to have ignored the judgement. In the following year he had a more formidable opponent when Humphrey Dacre, as executor of Thomas, Lord Dacre, claimed £20 against him and another Percy retainer, John Swinburne, probably as tenants of the late lord.13 CP40/788, rot. 169d; 790, rot. 237d; 793, rot. 56.

Little is known of Martindale’s part in the civil war of 1459-61, although it is unlikely that he stood aside. On 13 Nov. 1459 he headed the attestors to the election of his fellow Percy retainers, (Sir) Thomas Curwen* and William Leigh*, and one piece of evidence suggests he took a more active and violent role. In Trinity term 1462 a writ of outlawry was issued against him in Lincolnshire at the suit of one William Colom, who claimed that he and others had, in the time of Henry VI, broken his close and houses at Stamford and taken goods worth £40.14 C219/16/5; KB27/820, rot. 30d. This incident probably took place as the Lancastrian army moved north after failing to gain entry into London after its victory at the second battle of St. Albans on 17 Feb. 1461. And, if our MP’s battle honours included that confrontation, they probably also included Wakefield and Towton: the earl of Northumberland was a prominent Lancastrian commander at all three battles and met his death at the last.

None the less, although he was almost certainly militarily active, Martindale, like most others of the Percy retinue, escaped attainder in the first Parliament of Edward IV’s reign, and his legal difficulties in the 1460s were comparatively minor ones. He was outlawed at Colom’s suit in the Lincolnshire county court on 7 Mar. 1463 and he continued to be troubled by the widow of William Osmundlaw. She complained to the chancellor that he had disseised her of her jointure and, ‘with grete myght’, taken her son, John, away from her on the pretext that he had a right to the boy’s wardship, and that, in the conventional language of Chancery petitions, he was ‘of so grete myght’ that no redress could be secured against him locally. Perhaps the Osmundlaws were Percy tenants and our MP was acting, albeit high-handedly, in the interests of the young heir of the attainted Percy earl.15 KB27/830, rot. 30d; C1/29/338. In 1466 our MP had actions pending for a trespass at Dundraw, Whitrigg and Anthorn, where Elizabeth claimed property, and it may therefore be that her actions against him failed: KB27/821, rots. 48, 92; 822, rot. 53 (2). If this is so it is further evidence that the Percy retinue kept its identity despite the loss of its head at Towton. This identity is also apparent in an award returned on 12 Mar. 1465: Martindale with other Percy men were among those chosen to end a dispute between their fellow former Percy retainer, Sir John Pennington, and a Neville man, Sir Thomas Lamplough, to whom the new King had granted a Percy forestership formerly held by Pennington.16 HMC 10th Rep. IV, 227; CPR, 1461-7, p. 87.

Although Martindale appears to have maintained an identity of interest with the Percys into the 1460s, he also developed some ties, albeit indirect and superficial, with the Nevilles. In the mid 1460s he married, probably as his second wife, the widow of Roger Bethom, younger brother of Sir Edward Bethom.17 The marriage had taken place by 23 Mar. 1468, when the couple were sued at the Lancashire assizes by her brother-in-law, Richard Bethom: PL15/33, rot. 2d; 34, rot. 28; 36, rot. 11. Roger Bethom was living in Apr. 1462: PROME, xiv. 220-3. The Bethoms, one of the leading gentry families of Westmorland, were closely connected with the Nevilles through the marriage in 1450 of Sir Edward to the earl of Warwick’s niece, Joan, daughter of William Neville, earl of Kent. Whether, however, our MP’s own marriage into the Bethoms had any political significance is to be doubted. It certainly did not return him to any significant part in local affairs, for little is known of the long last years of his life.

There is, however, one interesting reference to Martindale in his old age. On 27 Sept. 1482 he appeared before the commissary general at York to remember an incident from his youth. He testified that Sir Peter Tilliol*, who had died as long before as 1435, had made a will directing that his inheritance should descend to his eldest daughter if her descendants adopted the Tilliol name, but that he and others, whom he did not identify, had destroyed the will to preserve the inheritance rights of the younger daughter, Margaret, then the wife of (Sir) Christopher Moresby†.18 Nicolson and Burn, ii. 458. His advanced age means it is unlikely that he long survived this incriminating testimony, although he may have been alive as late as January 1486, when returned as a tenant of the late Lord Dacre in respect of lands in Westnewton.19 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 70.

The family failed in the main male line on the death of his grandson, James, in about 1529, leaving five daughters as his coheiresses. Their title was contested by their uncle, Alexander Martindale, who unsuccessfully claimed that the family estates had been settled in tail male upon an ancestor unknown to him.20 Nicolson and Burn, ii. 163; C1/655/8, 10.