MONNINGTON, John

Monnington’s precise place in the obscure pedigree of the Herefordshire gentry family, which provided the county with MPs in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, is unknown. It is, however, clear that he was the son and heir of Hugh Monnington, who, in the inquisition post mortem of Edmund, earl of March, in 1425 was returned as a former tenant of the earl in a moiety of a knight’s fee in King’s Pyon, a few miles to the north-west of Hereford. In 1428 this moiety is recorded as the property of our MP. Indeed, it was almost certainly in his hands as early as 1420, when he was included in a list of Herefordshire men suitable for military service.4 CIPM, xxii. 510; Feudal Aids, ii. 412; E28/97/12B. John’s father was dead by Trin. term 1414 when his widow and the vicar of Canon Pyon were plaintiffs as his executors: KB27/613, rot. 8. His inheritance also included the manor of Lawton’s Hope in Kingsland, a few miles to the north-west of Leominster, for which, in December 1437, he did homage to the bishop of Hereford.5 Reg. Spofford (Canterbury and York Soc. xxiii), 224, 226. Until then the manor seems to have been held in jointure or dower by his mother, who in 1417 had brought a trespass action in respect of her lands there: CP40/625, rot. 408d.

Monnington made his career as an administrator. He began that career in the service of his influential neighbour, John Merbury*. In 1417 he acted for Merbury in an important final concord by which the considerable inheritance of Merbury’s second wife, Alice Crophill, was settled jointly on the couple, and it is probably not coincidental that he should have been pricked as escheator in 1420 when Merbury was serving as sheriff.6 CP25(1)/291/64/67: CFR, xvii. 31-33. His term in the office proved unusually long, three years as opposed to the statutory one, and, at least at one point, troubled. In November 1421 he was required to find surety in £40 for his appearance before the royal council to answer for an undisclosed matter.7 CCR, 1413-22, p. 219. None the less, this difficulty did not prevent his appointment a few months later to a more profitable office, that of feodary of the duchy of Lancaster lands in Herefordshire and Gloucestershire, a nomination he no doubt owed to Merbury, then in office as steward of the duchy lordship of Kidwelly.8 Somerville, i. 638.

Monnington also acted for Herefordshire men less important than Merbury: in 1418 he was party to a final concord in company with his neighbour, John Milborne of Tillington; in December 1423 he offered surety in the Exchequer for Roger Shrigley, royal farmer of a small Herefordshire property; and in February 1424 he did the same for Edmund Morris† as alnager of Shropshire.9 CP25(1)/83/53/11; CFR, xv. 61-62, 64. These few early references suggest that Monnington was a lawyer in a small way of business, and later ones strongly confirm this impression. His election for Hereford in 1425 is probably to be seen in this context. His connexion with the city was slight: in 1422 he made a conveyance as a feoffee in a messuage in Widmarsh Street, but he never attested an election there nor played any documented part in city affairs. His standing as a lawyer together with his connexion with Merbury were probably his qualifications in the eyes of the city electors, yet his return was probably more of a case of a candidate seeking a constituency rather than a constituency seeking a candidate. His own motive for seeking election at this time probably lay in his association with Merbury. Significantly, on 14 Apr., a week before his own return, he had attested Merbury’s election for the county.10 C219/13/3; Herefs. RO, Hereford city recs. MT/V/5.

Soon after his single experience of the Commons, Monnington extended his landholdings by lease. On 6 Nov. 1427 Sir Richard Neville, soon to be earl of Salisbury, farmed the manor of Bridge Sollers, about six miles to the south of King’s Pyon, to him at an annual rent of £11 to be paid in St. Paul’s cathedral, London. Neville himself held the manor by royal grant during the minority of John, Lord Clifford, and Monnington was to hold it until Clifford came of age in 1434.11 E210/5468; CIPM, xxii. 301. By then he had made a further acquisition: a final concord levied in 1431, by which a dovecote and a moiety of four messuages and some 170 acres in Canon Pyon, Wellington, Derndale, all to the north of Hereford, and Holme Lacy, to the south, was settled on him and his heirs, almost certainly represents a purchase on his part. His holdings were sufficient to justify his description as an esquire in the list of Herefordshire men to be sworn to the peace, and he is accorded the same designation when named as one of the executors of Merbury’s will.12 CP25(1)/83/54/38; Reg. Spofford, 224, 226; CPR, 1429-36, p. 376.

Later, Monnington was among the 21 Herefordshire gentry to whom the young Henry Beauchamp, duke of Warwick, distributed fees. By June 1446 the duke was paying him an annuity of five marks, presumably for his legal services, but the duke’s premature death in that month ended the arrangement. Thereafter Monnington makes only two further appearances in the records: he attested his eleventh Herefordshire parliamentary election on 21 Jan. 1447 and in Hilary term of that year he nominated an attorney in the court of King’s bench as joint-plaintiff with Thomas Bromwich* in an action of trespass.13 E368/220, rot. 122d; C219/15/4; KB27/744, att. rot. 1d. Given the frequency with which he attended county elections, it is likely that his failure to appear again suggests that he died soon after this last appearance. He was, in any event, dead by Michaelmas term 1453, when his widow, Joan, sued Merbury’s son-in-law, (Sir) Walter Devereux I*, and others for her dower in the manor of Lawton’s Hope and two messuages and some 500 acres in Lawton and King’s Pyon. The defendants were presumably Monnington’s feoffees, and it is a measure of his standing that they should have included, alongside Devereux, John Barowe, archdeacon of Hereford, and Bromwich.14 CP40/771, rot. 290d.

It is not clear whether Monnington had a son and heir, but he seems to have had a daughter. At the proof of age of Ellen Walwyn, wife of his kinsman and feoffee, Richard Monnington, taken in 1442, one of the witness recalled that a daughter, Alice, had been born to our MP and baptized in the church of Canon Pyon on 25 Jan. 1426.15 CIPM, xxv. 613.