POLTON, George

The name of this MP, as written over an erasure on the Wiltshire return to the Parliament of 1426, was given as Geoffrey Polton.2 C219/13/4. No trace of anyone bearing this first name has been found, but there are firm grounds for assuming that the man in question was George, the nephew of Bishop Polton.

The Poltons were a Wiltshire family, four of whose members had represented the borough of Marlborough in the fourteenth century, including John Polton, an innkeeper and stall-holder who sat in 1385. Richard Polton (d.1400) officiated as a coroner in the county.3 CAD, v. A12137; CCR, 1399-1402, p. 160. George is first mentioned in a final concord of 1399 when a messuage and carucate of land in Poulton in Mildenhall (about a mile from Marlborough) were settled on Thomas Polton and Isabel his wife for life, with successive remainders to another Thomas Polton, a cleric, and to George and William Polton (perhaps George’s father) in tail-male and finally to George’s right heirs.4 Wilts. Feet of Fines, 204. Thomas the cleric, at that time archdeacon of Taunton, reinforced his Wiltshire roots by becoming parson of Pewsey in 1402 and prebendary of Salisbury in 1408, but is best known for his distinguished career at the Roman curia as papal notary and Henry V’s proctor from 1414, and as a proto-notary at the Council of Constance. A diplomat, he continued to reside chiefly at Rome, despite being provided successively to the bishoprics of Hereford (1420) and Chichester (1421), returning to England in 1424 only to engage in a complicated struggle for the see of Worcester. He was eventually translated there on 27 Feb. 1426, while Parliament was in progress at Leicester.5 CPR, 1401-5, p. 9; 1405-8, p. 368; Reg. Chichele, ii. 485-95, 671; Oxf. DNB, ‘Polton, Thomas’. Whether his nephew George, present at the Parliament as an MP for Great Bedwyn, was permanently attached to the bishop’s household is not known, although the fact that he sometimes lived at Amberley in Sussex,6 DKR, xlviii. 258. the location of one of the palaces of the bishop of Chichester, suggests that he may well have accompanied his kinsman on his travels. Significantly, after Thomas Polton’s translation to Worcester George was referred to as ‘formerly’ of Amberley.

Since Bishop Polton was a close friend of Sir William Sturmy*, who lived in Great Bedwyn (at Wolf Hall), it may be confidently speculated that Sturmy and his advisers were behind the return of the bishop’s nephew for this borough. The elderly Sir William did not himself sit in Parliament in 1426 (although he had done so on 12 earlier occasions, including one in which he occupied the Speaker’s chair), but there can be no doubt that he took an interest in the representation of the Wiltshire boroughs in the 1420s, and that of Great Bedwyn in particular. Sturmy not only made Bishop Polton the principal feoffee of his estates, but within a year of the Parliament he named him as overseer of his will, in which he bequeathed to him the advowson of Easton Royal priory.7 PCC 7 Luffenham (PROB11/3, f. 55); CIPM, xxii. 716. On 14 June 1428 George Polton was granted royal letters of protection as sailing for France in the retinue of the earl of Salisbury,8 DKR, xlviii. 258. so it would appear that he had ceased to be part of his uncle’s entourage. The bishop was appointed an envoy to the Council of Basel in November that year, and having eventually journeyed to Switzerland in the spring of 1433 it was at Basel that he died the following August. In his will, made on 6 Dec. 1432, he had left his niece Emma (George’s sister) the sum of £10 to be received after the death of her husband ‘Tarant’, ‘et non ante’, but he proved more generous to George, leaving him and his descendants his house at Marlborough, provided that he performed the exequies in St. Peter’s parish church in the town and arranged for 24 masses to be sung for his soul on the next day. George was not, however, named among the executors, who included the Wiltshire lawyer Robert Andrew* (one of the shire-knights in the Parliament of 1426), another of the bishop’s nephews, Master Philip Polton, the archdeacon of Gloucester, and their kinsman Thomas Lavyngton* of Reading.9 Reg. Chichele, ii. 485-95. For George’s cousin Philip Polton (d.1461), a canon lawyer educated at Oxford university, see Oxf. Hist. Soc. xciv. 81; Biog. Reg. Univ. Oxf. ed. Emden, iii. 1493-4.

Under the terms of the entail of 1399 George now inherited the family property in Mildenhall, but he did not hold it for long. Last recorded attesting the Wiltshire election indenture drawn up at Wilton on 6 Sept. 1435, he died in the following year. His widow survived for at least 18 years more, possessed of the Polton family property held by knight’s service of the barony of Castle Combe.10 G.P. Scrope, Hist. Castle Combe, 157, 220.