MIDDLETON, Thomas

Middleton had an unusual career. Hailing from a Northumbrian family of antiquity and wealth, he acquired land by marriage in Warwickshire, and after settling there was returned to represent that county on one occasion. Yet, strikingly out of the ordinary for a knight of the shire, he played no traceable part in the administration of the county he represented, and although he had some connexion with the gentry of his adopted county, he appears to have remained something of an outsider. His only office came in neighbouring Worcestershire, where he briefly acted as deputy to the hereditary sheriff, Richard Neville, earl of Warwick. He had passed into Neville’s service from that of the ill-fated Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and his career was that of a baronial retainer, whose stake in local society was too slender to support an independent role. His independence was diminished further by the consideration that he had no lands in his own right, his interest in his wife’s property being for life only.

Middleton came to Warwickshire through a circuitous route. His father had done little for his several younger sons, seemingly preferring that they make their own way in the world. Thomas and his brother, Richard, thus entered Duke Humphrey’s affinity. The first certain evidence of this connexion dates from 1440, when Thomas was sued for debt by a Genoese merchant as lately living in the duke’s household, but he had undoubtedly been in Gloucester’s service for some time before that date. Indeed, this service probably explains his presence in London as early as 1432, when he appeared in person in the court of common pleas to sue a London hosteler, Thomas Penson, for the loss of goods worth £20, allegedly stolen by unknown malefactors when he was staying in Penson’s house.2 CP40/717, rot. 358; 687, rot. 414. Gloucester’s retinue is also the probable context for his marriage to a Warwickshire widow. Her first husband, Sir Thomas Strange, had numbered among that affinity, at least if we may judge by the heavy securities he offered on behalf of the duke’s intimate, Sir John Keighley, in 1431. But however the match came about, it had taken place by 3 July 1437, when they sued out a general pardon as a couple.3 CCR, 1429-35, p. 109; C67/38, m. 4.

Strange had not been a wealthy knight: he owed his prominence to service rather than acres. None the less, his widow had a jointure interest in the greater part of his albeit modest estate. She brought Middleton a concentrated estate near Stratford-upon-Avon, namely the manors of Walton Deyville and Walton Mauduit (held of the earldom of Warwick) with land at Wellesbourne. Added to this was a claim to the reversion of the manor of Earlstone in distant Hampshire, settled on her and Strange by her father, Sir Thomas Wykeham, in 1431. In her inquisition post mortem many years later, her Warwickshire lands were valued at £13 10s. p.a. This was sufficient to give Middleton a landed stake in county society but insufficient to make him a natural appointee to the main offices of local administration.4 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 599. It is not clear whether Middleton ever acquired Earlstone: CP25(1)/207/32/33; VCH Hants. iv. 279. Interestingly, however, in Hil. term 1451, while he was sitting as an MP, he and his wife were sued for assault and theft there; and in Trin. term 1459 William Fiennes, Lord Saye and Sele, and his wife, Margaret, da. and h. of William Wykeham*, sued him for forcible entry into the manor: KB27/759, rot. 40d; 793, rot. 61.

A worthwhile marriage was one of the benefits of service to the duke. Less welcome were the financial obligations Middleton entered into as one of his servants. On 17 July 1439 he and nine others offered mainprise in the hefty sum of £2,000 for the appearance of Owen Tudor alias Owen ap Meredith, widower of Queen Katherine de Valois, before the King and council. There is no obvious explanation as to why he should have done so, but since at least one other of the sureties had close connexions with the duke it is possible that he was acting on the latter’s behalf.5 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 284-5. Tudor duly appeared and secured a royal pardon: CPR, 1436-41, p. 344. In the following year he found himself defending actions of debt in the court of common pleas against Christopher Warter, a wealthy London skinner, and a merchant of Genoa for a total of as much as £200.6 CP40/717, rots. 358, 467. Here there can be no doubt that these were for debts incurred on Duke Humphrey’s behalf, and later evidence implies this was the beginning of financial difficulties that continued to trouble Middleton throughout his career. They also explain why, on 26 May 1441, he conveyed all his goods to his lord, Gloucester, his father-in-law, Wykeham, his brother, Richard, and the vicar of Walton.7 CCR, 1435-41, p. 477.

It may be that, until Duke Humphrey’s death, Middleton’s principal residence was the ducal household: in an action of debt of 1451 he is described as nuper manentem with the duke of Gloucester (as he had been in one of 1440), and in a pardon of 1457 he was described as ‘alias late of Greenwich’, where the duke had had a palace. In these circumstances the duke’s fall and death early in 1447 must have come as a profound shock to him. Although he himself seems to have escaped arrest, his brother, Richard, was among several of the duke’s servants indicted of treason and only pardoned on the point of execution.8 CP40/763, rot. 611d; CPR, 1452-61, p. 317; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 498.

On a more positive note, by this date Middleton had begun to establish himself in the county of his wife’s estates. In 1439-40 the couple were admitted to the guild of the Holy Cross at Stratford-upon-Avon, to which many of the county’s gentry belonged, and in July 1446 he was a witness at Compton Murdack, near Walton, for his neighbours the Verneys. More interestingly, on the following 23 Jan. he was a juror at the inquisition held at Warwick on the death of Henry Beauchamp, duke of Warwick. Since several other of this high-ranking jury were servants of the Beauchamps, he may have had a connexion with that great family, but if so there is no direct evidence of it.9 Reg. Gild of Holy Cross, Stratford-upon-Avon ed. Macdonald (Dugdale Soc. xlii), 160; Shakespeare Centre Archs., Willoughby de Broke mss, DR98/115a; CIPM, xxvi. 592. With the death of the King’s uncle, it was natural that Middleton should develop these local associations further. When, on 22 Apr. 1448, he sought further protection against his creditors by making another grant of his goods, he chose several men with interests in Warwickshire, headed by Humphrey, duke of Buckingham, Ralph, Lord Sudeley, and John, Lord Beauchamp of Powick. More significantly, soon after, he married one of his children (whether a son or a daughter is unknown) to a child of the Worcestershire lawyer, John Wood I*. The match is noticed in an account for the year July 1448-9 of the Stratford guild, which sent a gift of money to mark the occasion and then entertained Wood and one of the wedding guests, Thomas Burdet*, when they travelled to Stratford after the nuptials at Walton. Later, on 18 Sept. 1449, it was our MP’s turn to be entertained by the guild, of which he appears to have been an honoured member.10 CCR, 1447-54, p. 51; Shakespeare Centre Archs., Guild of Holy Cross, Stratford-upon-Avon mss, masters’ accts. BRT1/3/54-55.

None the less, even if Middleton had intensified his interests in Warwickshire, it is still surprising to find that, on 19 Oct. 1450, he was returned to represent the county in Parliament.11 The attestors were of modest rank, but this was typical in Warws.: C219/16/1. It is possible that Middleton did not attend the whole of the Parliament’s last session. On 19 May 1451, a week or so before the dissolution, he is recorded as witnessing a deed at Stratford: Guild of Holy Cross mss, grants and leases BRT1/2/502. He was qualified neither by wealth nor seemingly by connexion for such a role, and his election must therefore be taken as evidence that he had already entered the service of the county’s leading magnate, the Neville earl of Warwick. The earl may have looked favourably upon him as a fellow northerner. In the context of later evidence it is significant that three of the earl’s affinity, Thomas Hugford*, John Hugford† and Thomas Muston, were among his trustees of 1448. Direct evidence of his service to Neville, however, does not come until 8 Nov. 1451, when he was associated with the earl and several from the earl’s circle as a trustee of goods. By the following year he numbered among the earl’s life annuitants.12 CCR, 1447-54, p. 410; C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 698.

There is some evidence to show Middleton as active in Warwickshire in the earl’s service in the early 1450s. On 6 May 1454, for example, he was one of the jury at an assize of novel disseisin who found in favour of the earl’s retainer, Sir Baldwin Mountfort, in the great dispute over the Mountfort inheritance, and was then sued for attaint by the defeated litigant, Edmund Mountfort*.13 CP40/779, rot. 507; KB27/774, rot. 78d. And yet the evidence of Middleton’s activity on the earl’s behalf is limited, and he seems, on the available evidence at least, to have existed very much on the periphery of the retinue. In fact, disregarding his single and surprising election to Parliament, he played as little a part in his adopted county as a Neville man as he did as a servant of Gloucester. What is known of his career in these years concerns continuing problems of debt. Warter continued to pursue him for the debt he had incurred on Gloucester’s behalf, and several other Londoners brought actions against him.14 CP40/752, rots. 170d, 346. Middleton was driven to seek protection not only in the alienation of his goods but also in a devious device of pleading that he was to use on several occasions. In Trinity term 1449, having been outlawed at the suit of a London draper, William Edy, he appeared in common pleas to have the outlawry revoked on the grounds that the address ‘of Walton in Warwickshire’, as he had been described in the action, was inadequate as there were two Waltons in the county, namely, Walton Deyville and Walton Mauduit. On the following 4 Oct. a jury, sitting before the justices of assize at Warwick, found for him, and the unfortunate plaintiff was obliged to begin his action anew.15 CP40/746, rots. 172, 254; 753, rot. 310d; 754, rot. 125. One outlawry surmounted, however, others soon followed. By May 1457 he was labouring under no fewer than three of them, at the suits of the long-suffering Warter, Nicholas Wyfold, a London grocer and alderman, and the executors of a London goldsmith, John Pattesle.16 CP40/778, rot. 429d; CPR, 1452-61, p. 317.

The change of regime in 1461 might have been expected to produce a change in the desultory pattern of Middleton’s career. Not only did he have a place in Warwick’s service, but his brother Richard was a committed Yorkist who benefited greatly from Edward IV’s accession. Yet there is little discernible change in Thomas’s career, and it is clear that he continued to be troubled by debt. The desire to put his goods beyond his creditors’ reach probably explains why, on 6 Nov. 1465, he conveyed them to Warwick, the earl’s brother, John Neville, earl of Northumberland, and others. Later, in June 1467, he was outlawed for debt in the London hustings at the suit of a tailor, Richard Sutton, again securing revocation on the grounds that there were two Waltons in Warwickshire.17 CCR, 1461-8, p. 323; CP40/828, rot. 329. His few other appearances in the records concern his continued service to Warwick. In 1465-6 he took his turn to act for the earl as sheriff of Worcestershire; and late in 1468 he and his brother Richard twice witnessed important charters of the Neville earl and Anne, his wife, in connexion with the endowment of the collegiate church of St. Mary, Warwick.18 PRO List ‘Sheriffs’, 158; Bodl. Dugdale mss 15, p. 73; E326/4461.

Middleton died on 4 Aug. 1471 and was buried in Wellesbourne church.19 Dugdale, i. 574. He appears have died intestate, for in the late 1470s his wid. was sued for debt as his administratrix: CP40/866, rot. 288. His heir was his son, Leonard, but as this son was not the heir of his mother, his prospects were poor. His mother’s heir was the son she had been pregnant with on the death of her first husband. As it transpired, her longevity meant that neither of her sons ever inherited.20 By her death in 1490 she must have been in her eighties if not older, and her heirs were her great-grand-daughters: CIPM Hen. VII, i. 599 (where her heirs are wrongly described as her grand-daughters); Warws. RO, Mordaunt of Walton mss, CR133/16. Leonard’s only hope of a competence for himself and his issue lay in a settlement made long before. Thomas Middleton’s father had made little or no direct landed provision for his younger sons, but he had settled a reversion upon them. Beyond his ancient patrimony in Northumberland, Sir John had held an interest in the manor of Gratton in Derbyshire and a moiety of that of Wansley in Nottinghamshire. At an unknown date, but probably in the 1430s, he willed that the reversion, set to fall in on the deaths of the life tenant (Elizabeth, widow of William Gretton of Selston), himself and his wife, should pass in successive tail-male to his three younger sons, William, Richard and our MP, and finally to his eldest son, John, also in tail-male.21 C1/54/118; CP25(1)/291/64/109. The reversion fell to William, who made his career in the household of Henry VI, and then to Richard, who died in about 1490. Both died without male issue, but Leonard, who predeceased Richard, left a son, another Thomas, who in Hilary term 1503 sued a collusive action designed to confirm his title to the property. He must, however, have died, again without male issue, for by the following May the lands had passed to the next remainderman, Sir John Middleton†. So ended the brief line established by our MP.22 CP40/963, rots. 411, 413; HMC Rutland, iv. 30.