MUSGRAVE, Sir Richard

The Musgraves, a family of ancient stock, rose to prominence in the mid fourteenth century. Our MP’s great-grandfather, Sir Thomas Musgrave† (d.c.1385), in the midst of a career dedicated to Anglo-Scottish conflict, was summoned to the Lords between 1350 and 1373, and although no later member of the family was accorded the same honour the family long remained one of the most important in Westmorland. In the time of our MP their estates were largely confined to that shire: they held several manors in the east of the county, centred on their caput honoris, Hartley castle (of which nearly nothing now survives), with only a single outlying property located at South Holme in north Yorkshire. The bulk of these lands were held from the Cliffords, with whom their relations were understandably close; close enough, indeed, for the future Lord Musgrave to have married, in the mid 1340s, as his second wife, the widow of Robert, Lord Clifford (d.1344).8 CP, ix. 433-7; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 810. Judged by national standards, the family were not particularly wealthy. In the subsidy returns of 1436 our MP was assessed on an annual income of £80, insufficient, in most counties, to number a man among a shire’s richest gentry. Yet, in the context of the impoverished north-west, the Musgraves were one of the best endowed families. Among the Westmorland gentry in 1436 only Sir Henry Threlkeld*, also assessed at £80, and Sir Thomas Strickland*, assessed at £86, could match our MP’s income.9 E179/195/32. In the early part of his career he did enjoy his full income, for in the spring of 1411 he assigned his father’s widow, Alice, an annual rent of £20 payable to her at Appleby in return for a release of her dower rights: Musgrave of Edenhall mss, D/Mus/2/10/42, 44, 78.

Sir Richard’s father, during the course of a turbulent career, played the prominent part expected of one of such high local standing, serving as MP and j.p. in his native shire and, despite his lack of lands there, as sheriff in neighbouring Cumberland. While his father still lived, our MP made a violent start to his own career. On 26 July 1408, if a complaint made to the chancellor by the victim conveys the truth, he led 120 of his father’s tenants and servants to the house of John Helton* at Helton Bacon, near Appleby, with the intention of assaulting or even killing him. Finding him absent, they rode to the common pasture at nearby Murton, where they stole cattle worth as much as 35 marks belonging to Helton and his tenants. Thereafter, so Helton’s complaint ran, the campaign of intimidation was maintained so that he had dared not approach his own house for nine months. This seems a more serious complaint, at least in terms of the level of alleged violence, than those that usually came before the chancellor. Musgrave is said to have been acting as agent of his father and John Helton of Burton, but there is no other evidence to explain his actions. Perhaps his father’s death in the autumn of 1409 brought the matter to a close.10 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 809-11; SC8/117/5833.

Helton’s allegations did not prevent Musgrave, upon inheriting the family patrimony, taking his father’s place on the Westmorland bench. Curiously, however, he was almost immediately removed. Of the eight j.p.s of 1410, three, among whom was Musgrave, were not reappointed on the issue of the next commission in the following year. His removal was followed by the further annoyance of a fine of 60s. for his failure to take up knighthood.11 CCR, 1409-13, p. 155; E372/256, Westmld. Such treatment is unlikely to have encouraged him to sacrifice himself in the King’s service, and he did not take part in the invasion of Normandy. Instead, on 4 Sept. 1415, as the royal army besieged Harfleur, he headed the attestors to the parliamentary election held at Appleby, and on 25 Oct., the day of the battle of Agincourt, he sued out a general pardon.12 C219/11/6; C67/37, m. 27. He did, however, serve on the 1417 campaign alongside his brothers, John and Thomas, in the retinue of Sir John Neville, son and heir-apparent of Ralph, earl of Westmorland. It is likely that he was knighted on the campaign, for when he next appears, as a commissioner of array in his native shire in the spring of 1418, he had taken up the rank.13 E101/51/2, m. 21; CPR, 1416-22, p. 196.

Soon afterwards Musgrave was involved in another episode of disorder. In a petition to John, duke of Bedford, as guardian of England, (Sir) John Pennington*, another of the leading gentry of the north-west, complained that, when he and 14 companions were on their way to garrison Berwick-upon-Tweed, they were violently assaulted and despoiled of goods and harness, not by the Scots, but by a large band of English, headed by our MP and his brother, John. This was, on the face of it, a serious offence, but there is no evidence to give the incident either context or precise date (beyond that it took place between 1418 and 1420) and nothing to suggest that the Musgraves suffered for their conduct.14 SC8/65/3243.

After this colourful start to his career, Sir Richard settled to a more peaceful role in local administration. He troubled to attend most of the parliamentary elections held in Westmorland between 1411 and 1453, and he also served on several occasions, unusually for a man of his rank, as a juror at sessions of gaol delivery. In 1422 he headed the jurors in both Westmorland and Cumberland at the inquisitions post mortem held on the death of his feudal overlord, John, Lord Clifford, killed at the siege of Meaux.15 JUST3/70/10, 12, 16, 18; C138/64/37. Consistent with his rank, he also discharged more important duties. Restored to the bench in 1422, his removal was occasioned soon afterwards by his nomination by Lord Clifford’s widow, Elizabeth, as her deputy as sheriff of Westmorland. As such he conducted three parliamentary elections. In the first, held on 19 Apr. 1425, his putative father-in-law, Thomas Bethom*, was elected, and in the last, on 18 Sept. 1427, his younger brother, John, was returned.16 PRO List ‘Sheriffs’, 150; C219/13/3, 5. His importance is also demonstrated by his close links with the leading gentry of the north-west. As the father of many children, he formed a series of marital connexions. At least five of his daughters married into families from the neighbourhood of Hartley: his daughter, Eleanor, married William Thornburgh*; Mabel became the wife of William, son and heir-apparent of Sir Henry Threlkeld; Mary appears to have married, as his second wife, Thomas Warcop† of Lammerside; Agnes is described in the pedigrees as the wife of Robert, son and heir-apparent of Robert Warcop*; and, again to quote the authority of the pedigrees, Isabel married Thomas Middleton of Middleton. Another of our MP’s daughters, Margaret, married further afield: in 1435 a licence was issued for the settlement of jointure upon her and the Northumbrian esquire, Thomas Ilderton*.17 CP25(1)/249/8/26; HMC Le Fleming, 3; P. Musgrave, Ancient Fam. of Musgrave, 49; DURH3/36, m. 8. Mary’s marriage has been omitted from the biog. of Thomas Warcop III in The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 769-70. Of greater significance, however, was the match made, before the mid 1430s, between Sir Richard’s eldest son, Thomas, and Joan (b.c.1414), daughter and coheiress of one of the leading Cumberland gentry, William Stapleton*.18 In the subsidy returns of 1435-6 Thomas was assessed at £10 p.a., probably in respect of lands settled upon him by his father at the time of this marriage: E179/195/32. The marriage had produced a son old enough to enter into an indenture of retainer in 1456: Cam. Misc. xxxii. 132. This led, many years later, to another: in 1457 Joan’s sister, Mary, after the death of her first husband, William Hilton of Hilton, married Thomas’s younger brother, Richard, and eventually Stapleton’s residence of Edenhall was to fall to the main line of the Musgraves.19 DURH3/50, m. 14d; CP, ix. 437.

These marriage connexions had a significance for Musgrave’s sole election to Parliament in 1433. He was returned in company with Sir Henry Threlkeld, while his son-in-law, William Thornburgh, and his putative nephew, Roland Wharton*, were the MPs for Appleby.20 C219/14/4; Musgrave, 49. The election of this closely-related group, at hustings conducted by Roland’s father, Henry, came at a time of intense conflict in the politics of Westmorland, and it is hardly likely to have occurred accidentally. Significantly, Thornburgh and Threlkeld, supported by our MP’s eldest son, Thomas, had taken a leading hand in recent troubles in the county, supporting Sir John Lancaster† (d.1434) in his attempts to disinherit his daughters in favour of his male kin. The election is be seen in the context of this quarrel, particularly as Thornburgh and Threlkeld may have feared petitions against them to the Commons on account of their recent violent disruption of sessions of the peace at Appleby. If, however, Sir Richard was ready to support his kin in Parliament, this did not prevent him later playing a disinterested part in the dispute: in 1436 he was one of the commissioners who presided over an assize of novel disseisin successfully sued by the representatives of the Lancaster coheiresses against the male Lancasters.21 Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. lxiii. 178-83; C260/145/23.

At about this time Musgrave was also called upon by the Crown take a hand in another local quarrel, that between Thomas Bethom and William Stapleton over the property of Bethom’s second wife, who was Stapleton’s stepmother. Our MP had a personal interest here, for his wife may have been Bethom’s daughter and his son and heir-apparent, Thomas, married Stapleton’s daughter while the dispute was in agitation. In May 1434 he was one of those commissioned to inquire into those lands held by Stapleton’s father which, much to the disadvantage of Bethom’s wife, had been omitted from an earlier inquisition. For reasons that are unclear the commissioners long delayed to act. Not until 22 Apr. 1441 did they, among them our MP, come to Penrith to hear a jury declare that Stapleton’s father had died seised only of those lands specified in the suspect inquisition.22 CPR, 1429-36, p. 356; CIPM, xxiv. 88-89. Musgrave’s role here may not have been unbiased as these findings favoured his son and heir as husband of Stapleton’s coheiress-presumptive.

The second part of Musgrave’s career is only sporadically documented, a reflection, in part, of the paucity of surviving records for the north-west, and perhaps also of the growing importance of younger members of his family. Although he continued to be appointed to local commissions, the records speak principally of his younger kinsmen. By the early 1450s two of these had entered the service of Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, as the earl embarked on a systematic attempt to extend his influence in Westmorland. By 1453 our MP’s younger son, John, was acting as one of the earl’s receivers, and on 22 Nov. 1456 our MP’s grandson and heir-apparent, Richard, entered into a life indenture with the earl. This indenture gives an indication of the family’s other connexions. The younger Richard was said to be, ‘bylast and witholden toward and with the said Erl terme of his lyf’ against all save John, Lord Clifford, and Thomas, Lord Dacre. This supports the identification, in the traditional pedigrees, of this Richard’s wife as the sister of Clifford, and the grand-daughter of Dacre.23 A.J. Pollard, North-Eastern Eng. 254; Cott. Vespasian F XIII, art. 63; Cam. Misc. xxxii. 132; CP, ix. 437-8. If such a match had taken place by this date, then it must have added to the conflict of loyalties posed to the Musgraves by the descent into civil war. Clifford, as his father had been, was an energetic supporter of Lancaster, responsible for the killing of the young earl of Rutland at the battle of Wakefield and himself a victim of the Yorkists at the battle of Towton; the earl of Salisbury was one of the leaders of the Yorkists. The patronage bestowed on the Musgraves in the early days of the new reign shows that they actively sided with the latter. On 1 Feb. 1462 our MP’s son Richard was granted two offices from the forfeited Clifford estates, the constableship of Pendragon castle and the chief forestership of Kirkby Stephen; five days later, our MP’s grandson, Richard, was entrusted by the Crown with the constableship of another of the forfeited Clifford castles at Brougham.24 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 75, 143. There is no reason to doubt that the head of the Musgraves shared the Yorkist sympathies of his son and grandson. His appointments to commissions are consistent with such an allegiance. The Yorkist government named him to a commission of arrest in November 1460, and he was appointed to further commissions of array and arrest early in the new reign. Yet his role appears to have been a passive one, probably because of advanced age. By 1460 he must have been over 70 years old, and he did not long survive the change of regime. The inscription on his tomb in Kirkby Stephen church dates his death to 9 Nov. 1464.25 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 651-2; 1461-7, pp. 66, 132, 280, 575; Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. iv. 198. His descendants provided many MPs.