TAILBOYS, John

As a younger son of one of the wealthiest Lincolnshire families, John Tailboys was endowed by his father with an estate sufficient to enable him to play a role in local affairs. The form this endowment assumed was, however, far from straightforward. An inquisition taken in April 1468, nearly a year after John’s death, found that his father had granted him, in tail general and with the licence of Henry IV, the former Umfraville manor of Stallingborough near Grimsby. But these findings were false. The true story appears in an earlier inquisition of September 1467. It states that Stallingborough had been leased in 1396 by William Kyme (who, other evidence shows, had the manor in tail male by grant of Gilbert Umfraville, earl of Angus) to Sir Walter Tailboys for a term of 20 years; that Sir Walter had demised his interest to John; and that John had continued his possession beyond the term, to, it implied, the disinheritance of the leasor’s grandson, another William Kyme.6 C140/25/29. The veracity of these findings is established by a deed of acquittance of October 1406, by which the elder William Kyme acknowledged the receipt of a rent of six marks from John for the manor of Stallingborough.7 Bodl. Dodsworth mss, 49, f. 88d. Significantly, there is no licence for the alienation of the manor of Stallingborough on the patent rolls of Hen. IV, but that a licence was issued in 1377 for Gilbert Umfraville, earl of Angus, to settle it in remainder on William Kyme and his male issue: CPR, 1374-7, p. 432. On this evidence it appears that our MP, who, throughout his career enjoyed powerful connexions, employed his influence to recall a grant of one of his ancestors to the disinheritance of a lesser family.

Although seemingly improperly acquired, this manor was the principal contributor to John’s income, assessed at 40 marks p.a. in 1436 and hence well beyond the expectations of most youngers sons even of families as substantial as Tailboys (although part of this income was probably drawn from fees).8 E179/136/198. The manor was valued at 20 marks p.a. in 1467: C140/25/29. Like many other such sons, he began his career as a soldier, serving in the Agincourt campaign of 1415, but it was as an administrator and baronial servant that he made his way in the world.9 DKR, xliv. 569. After being appointed to his first royal commission of local government in May 1418, in the mid 1420s, he held successively the offices of escheator and sheriff. Up to his death in 1467 he served on nearly 30 ad hoc commissions, and from 1437 was almost continuously appointed to the Lindsey bench. Further, between 1425 and 1453 he attested no fewer than 11 county elections, more than any other Lincolnshire MP of the period.10 Lincs. Archit. and Arch. Soc. v. 54.

Such a record was exceptional for a younger son and must have owed something to his service to his social superiors. His first master appears to have been the Lincolnshire lawyer William Lodington of Gunby, who was elevated to the bench of the common pleas in 1415. Lodington’s access to royal patronage explains the grant of 16 July 1418 to him and our MP of the 12-year keeping of the forfeited Despenser manor of Bonby, which lay not far from Stallingborough, a grant which Tailboys was obliged to surrender on the justice’s death in January 1420. Thereafter he acted as one of the feoffees for the implementation of Lodington’s will.11 CFR, xiv. 248, 251-2, 344; Reg. Fleming, i (Canterbury and York Soc. lxxiii), 206. His next master was, in Ralph, Lord Cromwell, an altogether more powerful figure. His lengthy service to the greatest of the Lincolnshire magnates is the dominant theme of his career and endowed him with an importance in local affairs far beyond that justified by his relatively modest landed wealth. It is not known exactly when this service began but it had done so by March 1428 when he acted for Cromwell in the acquisition of the manor of Winteringham from William, Lord Fitzhugh. In Cromwell’s will of 1 May 1431 he was bequeathed an annual fee of ten marks for life, larger than that left to any other of the lord’s servants (save John Fulnetby, who was assigned the same amount).12 CPR, 1429-36, pp. 291-2, 366; Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Cromwell pprs. Misc. 256, 359. Clearly their association had become a very close one by this date and thereafter it is no exaggeration to say that Tailboys was involved in nearly every transaction of significance that concerned Cromwell. No doubt he was a member of his council from about 1430 down to the lord’s death in 1456, and as a feoffee and an executor he continued his service even beyond that date.13 Test. Ebor. ii (Surtees Soc. xxx), 198; C1/26/52; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 199-200, 341; Cromwell pprs. Misc. 323; Magdalen Coll., Candlesby deeds, 35b; E328/136. His election to the Parliament of 1439 is also to be seen as a function of this service, for it was in this Parliament that Sir John Gra* petitioned against Lord Ralph’s unlawful detention of the manor of Multon Hall.14 S.J. Payling, ‘A Disputed Mortgage’, Rulers and Ruled ed. Archer and Walker, 126.

This connexion probably also explains Tailboys’s marriage to the half-sister of another adherent of Cromwell, the wealthy Nottinghamshire esquire, John Cockfield. This marriage had taken place by Hilary term 1429, when our MP and his wife sued for the recovery of a small Lincolnshire estate at Wainfleet and Thorpe St. Peter that they claimed as the entailed inheritance of her mother. Earlier, that inheritance had also included property in Stallingborough, and it may be that Tailboys further augmented his lands there by marriage.15 CP40/672, rot. 241; Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian Eng. 140-1. More certainly, Cromwell’s sponsorship explains why he benefited so extensively from royal patronage, for all save two of his grants came during Cromwell’s ten-year period as treasurer of the Exchequer (1433-43). In February 1434 he was one of those to whom the keeping of the impoverished Lincolnshire priory of Newstead-on-Ancholme was committed; in July 1439 he was appointed joint custodian of Somerton castle, a grant that was extended for 12 years in February 1451; and in September 1441 he was allowed to purchase for 200 marks the marriage of Eleanor, daughter and coheiress of Sir Robert Roos*, with a later grant of the keeping of the Roos lands in Yorkshire for her maintenance.16 CPR, 1429-36, p. 333; 1441-6, pp. 2, 51; CFR, xvii. 95, 198; xviii. 196-7; PPC, v. 300; E159/221, brevia Easter rot. 6. It was also probably to Cromwell that he owed the exemption from local office and distraint of knighthood granted to him in March 1442. Such exemptions are not to be taken literally, as their recipients often continued to hold office after suing them out, as did Tailboys. Nor did it protect him from distraint, as he was fined in 1465 for his failure to take up knighthood.17 CPR, 1441-6, p. 58; E198/4/37. In his case, as in those of other Lincolnshire men who sued out similar exemptions at about the same time, the grant was probably designed to insure against appointment to the shrievalty of the county since that office, even when judged against other shrievalties, was particularly burdensome financially.

As a man so intimately associated with the greatest of the Lincolnshire magnates, Tailboys was bound to be in heavy demand from his family and neighbours as an executor and feoffee. During the course of his career he figured as an executor for his mother Margaret, his namesake, John Tailboys, rector of Staveley in Derbyshire, and the Lindsey clerk of the peace Richard Duffield*, and as supervisor of the will of Sir Thomas Cumberworth*.18 CPR, 1441-6, p. 215; CP40/722, rot. 129; 723, rot. 171d; 765, rot. 221d; Lincoln Diocese Docs. (EETS, cxlix), 56. As a feoffee he served, among others, Sir William Frank of Clee, his widow Grace and her second husband, Thomas Darcy of Ordsall (Nottinghamshire), John Neville of Faldingworth, Robert, Lord Willoughby of Eresby, and Elizabeth, Lady Grey of Codnor, although in the last two cases he was acting as an agent for Cromwell.19 Feudal Aids, iii. 353; CP25(1)/145/158/33; 159/9; 160/26; Add. Ch. 44513; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 313-14, 466. Darcy was another of Cromwell’s affinity: Payling, Political Society, 141-2. In the late 1440s he joined other of that lord’s affinity in arbitrating a dispute between Hamon Sutton I* and Sir John Bussy of Hougham.20 C1/15/141. Predictably, he took on positions of trust for his elder brother Walter, but it is surprising to find him acting in the same capacity for his lawless nephew, William*, who was in violent dispute with Cromwell from the late 1440s.21 KB27/673, rot. 64; CCR, 1422-9, p. 395; 1441-7, p. 245; CPR, 1461-7, p. 371; E153/1155/8, 9, 11.

After his patron’s death in 1456, John maintained his place in local affairs. His nephew’s partisan support for the house of Lancaster did not prevent our MP adapting to the regime of Edward IV. Indeed, it is possible that he had a positive allegiance to the Yorkist cause. He was removed from the Lindsey bench in November 1458, only to be restored by the Yorkists two years later;22 There is clearly a Lindsey commission missing from the enrolments in CPR, 1452-61, p. 670, since John sat as a j.p. at Louth on 24 Sept. 1460, although, according to the enrolments, he was not restored until 16 May 1461: KB27/798, rex rot. 42d. and he was omitted from the Lancastrian commission of array of December 1459 but appointed to the Yorkist commission of arrest in the following November.23 The Annales attributed to William of Worcestre mentions John as one of the captors of Hen. VI in July 1465: Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of Eng. in France ed. Stevenson, ii (2), [785]. But, as is clear from Waurin (J. de Waurin, Receuil de Chroniques (Rolls ser. xxxix), 344-5), this source confuses Henry’s captors with his defenders, and it is almost certain that the John mentioned in the Annales was the brother of Sir William. He died on 16 Apr. 1467, leaving as his heir his grand-daughter Margaret, who, some time before February 1444, had married John, son and heir of William Aiscough (d.c.1455), j.c.p., a neighbour from Kelsey. Margaret was a good catch for she was also the heiress of her paternal grandmother, and hence stood to inherit the manors of Nuthall and Baseford in Nottinghamshire on the death of her great-uncle, John Cockfield, and his wife, Margaret (d.1464). Her right to these manors was recognized by a fine levied in Easter term 1444, but they never came to our MP because his wife was already dead by this date.24 Lincs. Peds. 945; CCR, 1441-7, p. 213; R. Thoroton, Notts. ed. Throsby, ii. 254; CP25(1)/186/39/20.