REDMAYNE, Richard

Richard Redmayne was a surprisingly inactive member of an important northern gentry family that had been established at Levens in south Westmorland from the reign of Henry II. The Redmaynes had a distinguished record of military and parliamentary service even before they were significantly advanced by the marriage of our MP’s grandfather, in the early 1390s, to Elizabeth, daughter of William, Lord Aldeburgh, and coheiress to an extensive estate in the West Riding, centred on the manor of Harewood. Her lands enabled Sir Richard to enjoy a more prominent career that he might otherwise have done, yet, even so, that career, culminating in his election as Speaker in the Parliament of 1415, marks him out as a man of energy and talent. Towards the end of his life he suffered the setback of the death of his eldest son, Sir Matthew, leaving his infant grandson as heir to the Redmayne inheritance.3 CIPM, xxv. 123. Sir Matthew probably died in the French war. In 1417 he had served in the retinue of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and probably remained in arms thereafter: E101/51/2, m. 2.

This misfortune determined the instructions Sir Richard gave to his feoffees on 1 May 1425, shortly before his own death. These were designed to keep the family patrimony out of wardship. He provided that the feoffees convey the manors of Levens and Harewood to his younger son, Richard, to hold until his grandson came of age; uncle was then to convey to nephew in tail male.4 Yorks. Arch. Jnl. iv. 94-95. This plan, however, so obviously designed to avoid wardship that it fell within the terms of the Statute of Marlborough, was never implemented. Jurors at Sir Richard’s Yorkshire inquisition post mortem returned that he died seised of his moiety of Harewood, and the Crown was thus able to claim our MP as its ward. On 5 Feb. 1427 it entered into an arrangement that marked a compromise between its own financial interests and the family’s concern to keep hold of its own. The manor of Harewood was committed to the custody of our MP’s kinsman, Thomas Redmayne, and Richard Duckett†, husband of the ward’s aunt, to hold until our MP’s majority for an annual rent of 20 marks.5 CIPM, xxii. 736; CFR, xv. 159. Significantly, no grant was made of the young Richard’s marriage and it must be presumed that his grandfather had contracted a marriage for him. The identity of the bride is revealed in a much later legal record: she was a daughter of Sir William Gascoigne of Gawthorpe, near Harewood, and the grand-daughter of another Sir William Gascoigne, c.j.KB. The match may have been in agitiation when Richard was no more than a baby. This at least is a possible interpretation of the fine of November 1417 by which Sir Richard Redmayne and his wife alienated her part of the manor of Kelfield to the bride’s father.6 KB27/1011, rot. 3; Yorks. Arch. Jnl. xxii. 156; CP25(1)/280/153/42; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 161; iv. 186-7. Although the evidence for this marriage is strong, it does pose one difficulty. Our MP’s gds., Richard, is known to have m. a da. of Sir William Gascoigne† (d.1551) of Gawthorpe: Greenwood, 102-3. If Richard’s grandmother was also a Gascoigne then the bride was his 2nd cousin, twice-removed, an unlikely but not impossible match. An awareness of this potential difficulty may explain why the peds. give our MP another wife, namely a da. of his Westmld. neighbour, Thomas Middleton of Middleton, by Isabel, da. of Sir Richard Musgrave*: ibid. 92-93. Such a marriage, however, is improbable on chronological grounds.

At an inquisition held at Wetherby, a few miles from Harewood, on 24 Nov. 1437 Redmayne formally proved his age, and on 4 Dec. the escheator of Yorkshire was ordered to give him seisin of Harewood.7 CIPM, xxv. 131; CCR, 1435-41, p. 145. His adult career then began briskly.8 In his early career he is to be distinguished from his uncle, a servant of John, duke of Bedford. This Richard had been master forester of Kendal under the duke, an appointment renewed by the Crown in 1437, and was probably the father of the distinguished churchman, Richard, abbot of Shap and successively bp. of St. Asaph, Exeter and Ely: CPR, 1436-41, pp. 83, 73, 118; Greenwood, 117-27. He made his presence immediately felt by joining his kinsmen, John and Adam Redmayne, in illegally hunting in the park of Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, at Spofforth, not far from Harewood. More positively, on 21 May 1438 he stood surety when the Crown entrusted the greatest of the Westmorland gentry, (Sir) Thomas Parr*, with the keeping of part of the barony of Kendal, lately held by the duke of Bedford.9 CP40/709, rot. 28d; CFR, xvii. 37-38. If our MP’s mother has been correctly identified as a da. of Sir Thomas Tunstall, then Parr, husband of Tunstall’s daughter, Alice, was his uncle by marriage. Soon after, despite his youth, he was named as escheator of Cumberland and Westmorland; and, on 4 Jan. 1442, he was elected to represent the latter county in Parliament.10 He is described as ‘junior’ in the return to distinguish him from his uncle: C219/15/2. Eleven days before the end of the assembly, he again offered surety in respect of a significant Westmorland grant, namely the commitment of the Salkeld lands to Otwell Worsley, a household servant of Cardinal Beaufort and keeper of the gate of Carlisle castle, and Roland Vaux*.11 CFR, xvii. 226.

Given the much stronger competition for office and influence in Yorkshire than in Westmorland, it was natural that the young Redmayne should have begun his career in the latter county. Yet it was in the former that, in June 1445, he was named to his first ad hoc commission of local government. Two days after this appointment, he joined Sir William Ryther*, who held the other moiety of the manor of Harewood, in suing out an exemplification of the grant made by King John of free warren, a fair and a market to the hereditary lords of Harewood. A year later, on 1 July 1446, he sued out a general pardon to purge any financial claims the Crown may have against him as a former escheator and his grandfather’s heir.12 CPR, 1405-8, p. 275; 1441-6, pp. 348, 369: C67/39, m. 40.

Such a beginning to a career was typical of leading gentry, yet from these beginnings Redmayne’s career did not develop. Although it is not surprising that he failed to replicate the success of his able and well-connected grandfather (who sat in five Parliaments and served a remarkable eight terms as sheriff), it is curious indeed that he should have withdrawn from public affairs after the mid 1440s. Indeed, so complete is his anonymity in the 1450s that it is tempting to conclude that he had become incapacitated by illness or accident. Such a conclusion is, however, contradicted by a return to some modest activity in the 1460s. Mysteriously, on 30 Jan. 1462 he was retained, at a generous annuity of £10, by Richard Neville, earl of Warwick.13 A.J. Pollard, North-Eastern Eng. 301-2; SC6/1085/20, m. 13. Perhaps he had been introduced to the Neville circle by Walter Strickland II*, who had been a retainer of the earl’s father. The two men had sat together for Westmorland in the 1442 Parliament, and, more significantly, in 1458 our MP’s son and heir, William, was married to Strickland’s daughter, Margaret, with a portion of 200 marks.14 H. Hornyold, Strickland of Sizergh, 61. It may even be that the annuity was a reward for Redmayne’s active support for the Nevilles in the civil war of 1459-61. Certainly some military activity is implied by his knighthood not long after the grant of this annuity.15 The date of this knighthood is hard to determine. He is described as a knight in the acct. of Mich. 1465-6 that is the only known record of his annuity –SC6/1085/20, m. 13. This does not show, however, that he was a knight when that annuity was granted. Indeed, other evidence shows he was not. On 19 June 1465 he sued out a pardon of outlawry for debt as an esquire: CPR, 1461-7, p. 412. Again this cannot be taken as certain evidence of his rank at that date, for it may refer to his status at the date of the outlawry. But, if it was he rather than his uncle who brought an action of debt in Mich. term 1463, he was then still an esquire: CP40/810, rot. 293. The most likely occasion for his knighting was the coronation of Elizabeth Wydeville on 27 May 1465, but his name is not listed among those known to have been dubbed on that occasion.

None the less, Redmayne justified neither this annuity nor his social promotion by returning to administrative action. He held no office nor received any commission during the 1460s and is about as invisible in the surviving records as a man of his rank could be. On 5 Oct. 1466 he headed the jurors at the inquisition post mortem taken on the death of his kinsman, Sir Brian Stapleton*, and in 1469 he numbered, alongside the earl of Warwick, among the feoffees of Sir William Parr†.16 C140/20/28; CPR, 1467-77, p. 177. But this was hardly enough to warrant his annuity. If he did offer any support to the earl it came during the Readeption when he was appointed to the commission of the peace in Westmorland, a position he should have held, given his family’s local importance, since the 1440s. That support was probably passive rather than active, and on 14 June 1472 he successfully sued out a pardon from the restored Edward IV. He appears only twice more in an active role. A month after his pardon, on 12 July, he witnessed an important deed for Richard Musgrave; and on the following 25 Oct. he sat as a juror in the Westmorland inquisition taken on the death of Jacquetta, dowager-duchess of Bedford, with whose first husband his uncle, Richard, had been closely associated. He died on 21 Mar. 1476.17 C67/49, m. 24; CCR, 1476-85, no. 707; C140/42/49; 55/20.

Redmayne’s inactivity contrasts not only with that of his famous grandfather but also with those of his two eldest sons, and particularly with the younger of them, Edward. Admitted to Lincoln’s Inn shortly before his father’s death, Edward succeeded to the inheritance on the childless and premature death of his elder brother, Sir William, in 1482. Thereafter he combined an energetic political and administrative career, most notably as an esquire of the body to Richard III, with continued legal studies, advancing as far as reader in 1490. Fittingly, the most magnificent of the surviving tombs at Harewood is to his memory, and not, as was once believed, to his undistinguished father.18 J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii. 1296-7; HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 709; Greenwood, 98-106; W.E. Hampton, Mems. Wars of the Roses, no. 369.