TAILBOYS, William

In 1437 the family of Tailboys inherited the Kyme lands and were thereby elevated to the first rank of the English gentry. On the death of his elder brother, Sir Walter, in 1441, our MP was left heir apparent to these great estates, and they duly came to him on his father’s death in April 1444.3 CIPM, xxvi. 215-17; CPR, 1441-6, p. 268; CFR, xvii. 292, 308; E159/222, brevia Hil. rot. 6d. His inheritance was only briefly burdened by dowagers. His stepmother, Alice, died in 1448, and his er. brother’s widow the year before: CPR, 1446-52, p. 155; CIPM, xxvi. 585. By this date he was already an esquire of the royal household where he first appears in 1441, and he probably owed his position to the patronage of his father-in-law, Sir William Bonville.4 E101/409/9, f. 37. If later indictments are to be taken at face value he had also already embarked on a criminal career that was remarkable even by the standards of the later years of Lancastrian rule. He may have been the young layman `by name Taylboys’ resident in the abbey of Bardney (Lincolnshire), whose aggressive behaviour was condoned by Abbot John Waynflete to the discomfiture of the monks in 1438; and he was certainly the man allegedly involved at Brothertoft, near Boston, in July 1442 in assaults on Philip Meres, probably younger brother of the influential Thomas Meres*, and Richard Fermer, and, as an accessory, in the murder of Thomas Lodde.5 Vis. Religious Houses Diocese of Lincoln (Canterbury and York Soc. xxiv), 20; KB27/754, rex rot. 31. Fermer allegedly died of his wounds, albeit more than six months after the supposed assault. But, assuming he was guilty of these offences, they had no immediately adverse effect on his career. Already a j.p. in Holland, he was added to the benches of Lindsey, Northumberland and Kesteven after his father’s death, and was returned to represent his home county in the Parliament of 1445.6 CPR, 1441-6, pp. 473-4, 476; CFR, xviii. 39.

These responsibilities did not, however, put an end to Tailboys’s criminal activities. The following year saw a spate of new offences, the most serious of which, if we can rely on the less than impartial evidence of later indictments, took place at Boston on 7 Sept. 1446 when, at the head of 80 men, he staged a riot to prevent the hearing of indictments before the Holland j.p.s.7 KB27/754, rex rot. 31. If this riot did take place, it is surprising that Tailboys sat as a Holland j.p. at Swineshead less than a month later: KB9/254/7; KB27/744, rex rot. 7d. This is a clear indication that he had something to fear from the normal processes of the law. The general pardon he and his wife sued out on the following 3 Nov. was no protection – for it covered only offences before 1 Sept. 1441 – and, in any event, he was ready to add new offences. A little over a year later, on 10 Nov. 1447, he and his servants allegedly murdered John Saunderson at Frampton, near Boston, a felony which was later to cause him considerable difficulties.8 C67/39, m. 23; KB27/778, rex rot. 36. None the less, these crimes did not lead to immediate indictment, and even as late as early 1448 his local standing seems to have been remarkably unaffected by his criminal propensities. According to the Croyland chronicler, it was our MP who, when the abbot was involved in litigation with Thomas, Lord Dacre, sometime between Trinity term 1447 and 17 Feb. 1448, came to the Lincoln assizes, ‘to conduct the cause of the church of Croyland, and proved himself a most faithful supporter of it to the very utmost of his abilities’.9 Ingulph’s Chron. of Croyland Abbey, ed. Riley, 405; KB27/745, rot. 83d; CP40/746, rots. 338-9, 432, 477.

Nevertheless, leaving such favourable notices aside, Tailboys’s immunity from prosecution was not to last much longer, and like other criminal gentry he eventually lost the position in county society to which his birth entitled him. He made his first great mistake on 14 Mar. 1448 when his servants set upon John Dymmok at Langwath, near Wragby, imprisoned him for nine hours, and forced him to enter into two obligations in 500 marks each on threat of death. Since Dymmok was a member of one of the county’s leading gentry families and a servant of Robert, Lord Willoughby of Eresby, this offence could not be ignored, and it is difficult to understand why, if Tailboys was engaged in no more than a random campaign of banditry and extortion, so inappropriate a victim should have been singled out. But, whatever the reason for the assault, its had serious consequences. On 5 May a powerful commission of oyer and terminer issued out of Chancery to inquire into the MP’s crimes. It was headed by Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, but its issue was probably the initiative of another of its members, Ralph, Lord Cromwell, who, as the leading Lincolnshire magnate, could not allow Tailboys to go unchecked. This commission transformed an affair of merely local import into a matter of wider concern. To defend his position Tailboys exploited his court connexions to have the commission overturned and so brought the Crown into the affair as his perceived protector. On 3 June the King instructed the chancellor to repeal the commission on two grounds: first, that it had been obtained ‘by sinistre informacion’ to Tailboys’s ‘utter undoing and disheritision’; and, second, that the alleged miscreant was prepared to abide by the ruling of two or three lords of the royal council in any complaints that might be brought against him.10 Virgoe, 464; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 187-8; E28/77/53. No indictments taken before the commrs. survive, but they may nevertheless have sat either before, or in spite of, the repeal of the commission. From Trin. term 1448 until at least Mich. 1450 Cromwell and four of the five judges named in the comm. were being distrained to bring the extracts of their sessions into the Exchequer for the levying of fines: E383/284, unnumbered.

Such partisan and politically damaging intervention on behalf of its servants was typical of the regime of William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, in the late 1440s, but the protection that intervention gave Tailboys was to be only partial. Indeed, he had already suffered some of the consequences of his alleged criminality. Royal protection of its esquire did not prevent his detention in the Marshalsea to find security of the peace to Dymmok, although, on 13 June, he was able to secure his release when two senior household men, Sir Robert Shotesbrooke* and Edmund Hampden*, together with Sir William Lucy* and Sir Godfrey Hilton†, stood mainpernors for his appearance in the court of King’s bench in the following quindene of Michaelmas.11 KB27/749, rex rot. 16d. Before then, on 14 July, Dymmok was able to undo some of the damage done by the royal order of 3 June by obtaining a further oyer and terminer commission, albeit with the more limited remit of inquiring only into offences committed against him. While there is no evidence that this commission sat, Tailboys’s long immunity from indictment ended on 9 Aug. when the Lindsey j.ps, sitting at Horncastle, took a long series of presentments against him.12 CPR, 1446-52, p. 189; KB9/260/93, 94. Significantly, sitting at the head of these justices was Lionel, Lord Welles, an indication that his enemies now included three of the four Lincolnshire magnates. A clash between central and local authority was developing: on the one hand these magnates were determined to bring Tailboys to account; on the other, his friends at Court were ready to protect him.

This is the immediate context of the famous letter Tailboys wrote to John, Viscount Beaumont, the Lincolnshire magnate closest to the court clique.13 Paston Letters ed. Gairdner (Lib. edn.), ii. no. 100. He probably wrote to Beaumont not as his patron but as lord of Boston, where direct action was being taken against his servants. Although undated by year, it was probably written on 21 Aug. 1448, for it refers to the indictment of Tailboys’s servant, William Sheriff, among those indicted 12 days earlier. It was written in a tone of outrage in which Tailboys painted himself as the innocent victim of the vindictiveness of Lords Cromwell, Welles and Willoughby, who proposed to ‘set a sessions’ and hang the unfortunate Sheriff.14 It is worth noting that Tailboys cites as his fellow Lincs. esquire of the Household Hugh Wythom*, as another of his local enemies. Wythom was one of the j.p.s who was to take indictments against him on 2 Oct. 1448. Beaumont, on good terms with his fellow Lincolnshire magnates, reacted by attempting to promote a compromise.15 For his relationship with Cromwell: R.L. Friedrichs, `Ralph, Lord Cromwell’ (Columbia Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1974), 244. Willoughby appointed Beaumont as one of the executors of his will of 6 June 1452, while Welles later acted in the same capacity for Beaumont: Lincoln Diocese Docs. (EETS, cxlix), 61; E211/281. At Southwell on 15 Sept., in the presence of Beaumont and, significantly, the duke of Suffolk himself, Dymmok released to Tailboys all former sureties of the peace, and in return our MP entered into a new bond to Lord Willoughby in 1,000 marks to leave Dymmok unmolested.16 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 210-12; E368/227, communia Hil. rot. 13. This did not, however, stem the local tide against him. On the following 2 Oct. further indictments were taken against him before the Holland j.p.s sitting at Boston; and in Michaelmas term (which began a week later), the widows of John Saunderson and John Storrour, two men for whose murders Tailboys and his servants had been indicted before the j.p.s, instigated appeals in the court of King’s bench.17 KB9/260/96; KB27/750, rots. 72, 94.

It is fair to assume that Tailboys had appealed to the duke of Suffolk as the leading courtier, just as he had appealed to Beaumont, and that this explains why the duke troubled to come to Southwell. If, however, his intercession was in the interests of compromise, his later interventions were interpreted very differently by our MP’s local opponents, led by Cromwell. Tailboys duly failed to keep his date in King’s bench on the quindene of Michaelmas, but on the following 8 Nov. he and his sureties were pardoned of the hefty sums they should have forfeit. Explicitly, this pardon was granted because of our MP’s bond to Willoughby and his presence, on the day he should have been in King’s bench, about the King’s person; but it was later claimed that it had been obtained by Suffolk, ‘by full undue combrous suyte’ to the King and ‘for grete rewardes ... promysed and yeven’.18 KB27/750, fines rot. 1d; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 201-2; PROME, xii. 102-3. The case against Suffolk in this regard cannot be proved, although it is fair to conclude that his patronage explains the improvement of Tailboys’s fortunes in the last months of 1448. Four days after the pardon, he was recommissioned as a Lindsey j.p., a provocation to his enemies that could profitably have been avoided. A month earlier the indictments pending against him had been called into the court of King’s bench to prevent their local determination which would have been so much to his disadvantage.19 KB9/260/92, 95.

Further assistance came to Tailboys in April 1449, when the King wrote to Lord Welles reprimanding him for his failure to find surety of the peace to Tailboys and summoning him before the Council.20 PPC, vi. 336-7. Undated by year, internal evidence dates this letter to 1448 or 1449. Written on 5 Apr. and summoning Welles for the quindene of Easter, the notice it gives is, however, too short for the year to be 1448. Even if Suffolk was himself responsible for extending these advantages to Tailboys, his actions might be excused as the legitimate protection of a household esquire against enemies who had a near monopoly of local power.21 Tailboys continued to receive Household robes down to the failure of the lists in 1451: E101/410/6. Yet his next alleged intervention was more difficult to pardon. In the following Trinity term, which began on 18 June, writs of outlawry were issued against Tailboys and his servants on the appeals sued by the widows of Saunderson and Storrour. Writs to the same effect issued in the previous November had gone unexecuted by the Lincolshire sheriff, Sir Mauncer Marmyon*, who had reason to fear the legal consequences of a second default.22 KB27/753, fines rot. 1d, rex rot. 18. Suffolk allegedly dispelled these fears. According to accusations made by the Commons in March 1450, when the previous Parliament had reassembled in Winchester in mid June 1449, the duke ‘entreted’ Marmyon not to execute the writs and ‘falsely advertised [the King] to write to the seid Shirref for the same noon execution, the seid Duke writyng by his lettre to the seid Shirref in emboldishyng hym heryn, that he hadde signed his pardon, and that the day of the same retourne passed, the pardon therof shuld be hadde’.23 PROME, xii. 102-3.

In normal circumstances, the active support of the chief minister might have been enough to save Tailboys from the consequences of his crimes; yet Suffolk’s own position was coming increasingly under threat, and so, in the autumn of 1449, Tailboys turned to a more direct method of defending himself. According to the later confession of one of his servants, he began, in September, actively plotting to have his enemy Cromwell murdered.24 Virgoe, 481. What happened next is not entirely clear, but it is certain that soon afterwards he was arrested and imprisoned in the Fleet, presumably after 10 Oct. when he was appointed to a royal commission. His arrest probably reflects his patron’s declining fortunes, and on 25 Nov. he was brought into the court of King’s bench to answer the indictments laid against him before the Lincolnshire j.p.s. His plea of not guilty resulted in his committal to the Tower of London.25 CPR, 1446-52, p. 316; KB27/754, rex rot. 31. This committal, however, proved ineffective, for three days later he had liberty enough to lead the notorious assault on Cromwell at the door of the Star Chamber.26 PROME, xii. 147-9; KB27/755, rot. 21d. This blatant offence not only contributed to the downfall of Suffolk but finally brought home to Tailboys the consequences of his actions.27 It was Suffolk’s attempt to excuse him of even this last offence that, according to the anonymous author of the Annales, prompted Cromwell to labour the Commons against the duke: Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English in France ed. Stevenson, ii (2), [766]. With no-one effectively to protect him, his enemies now had more than enough ammunition to move decisively. Before the first session of the Parliament of 1449-50 ended on 17 Dec. the Commons, almost certainly acting at Cromwell’s instigation, petitioned against Tailboys as ‘a comon Murderer, Mansleer, Riottour, and contynuell Breker of [the King’s] peas’ and asked that he be committed to the Tower without bail for 12 months to answer whatever might be brought against him.28 PROME, xii. 147-9. They also asked that the constable of the Tower should forfeit £1,000 if Tailboys escaped, perhaps because of his failure to detain him on his last committal. This neglect of duty is probably to be explained by James Fiennes*, Lord Saye’s tenure of that office.

This was the prelude to a series of private suits. Already in the previous Michaelmas term John Dymmok had sued a bill against Tailboys for the assault of March 1448, and after the King had acceded to his detention in the Tower on 20 Jan. 1450, both Cromwell and Willoughby followed Dymmok’s example, Cromwell for the Star Chamber assault and Willoughby for the loss of Dymmok’s services. On 9 Feb. a Middlesex jury awarded Cromwell massive damages of £3,000 (which the judges reduced to £2,000), and on 27 May 1451, two Lincolnshire juries awarded Willoughby and Dymmok damages which together were scarcely less considerable.29 KB27/755, rots. 21d, 26, 30. Rich although he was, such great charges were far beyond Tailboys’s capacity to pay, and effectively condemned him to a lengthy period of imprisonment as release was dependent upon their discharge. To add to his troubles, on 24 Aug. 1451 he was finally outlawed on the appeal of Elizabeth Saunderson.30 KB29/82, rot. 1. He now had to content himself with plotting from prison the downfall of Cromwell, whom he clearly saw as the chief author of his troubles. While detained in the Tower during the spring and summer of 1450 he had urged his servants to make various attempts on Cromwell’s life, and in the following summer, by then a prisoner in Newgate, he resorted to the more subtle approach of sponsoring the circulation of rhyming bills designed to incite opinion against his enemy. Neither tactic proved effective.31 Virgoe, 477-82.

Thereafter Tailboys’s imprisonment in Newgate continued until the Yorkists took control of government after the first battle of St. Albans. On 12 Oct. 1455, perhaps surprisingly in view of his earlier affiliations, the new regime included him under the terms of a general pardon.32 C67/41, m. 30; E159/232, brevia Hil. rot. 10d. Since his extensive estates made him a potentially useful ally, and with Cromwell’s influence on the wane, it seems likely that the new government viewed his pardon as politically advantageous. Its most immediate consequence was to allow Tailboys finally to free himself of the indictments of 1448. On 25 Nov. 1455 he appeared in the court of King’s bench to plead his pardon and find mainpernors for his future good conduct.33 KB27/778, rex rot. 36. Heading these mainpernors were Robert, bastard bro. of another of Cromwell’s enemies, Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, and Thomas Burdet*. On the following day, despite being recommitted to Newgate, he was reappointed to the Kesteven bench. Such marks of favour did not, however, lead speedily to his release, even though his principal opponent, Cromwell, died in the first days of 1456. There remained the question of the damages awarded against him in 1450 and 1451, and it was to be more than another year before he was able to clear himself of these. On 24 Mar. 1457 he entered into a 1,000 mark bond to Cromwell’s executors to keep the peace for seven years. This was clearly intended as the prelude to the restoration of his liberty for, by deeds executed on 3 and 20 Apr., Dymmok and the executors of both Cromwell and Willoughby released to him all the damages in which he had been condemned. On 13 Apr. (Sir) John Fortescue*, c.j.KB, ordered the sheriffs of London to produce the prisoner before him at his hospicium at ‘Bosamysynne’, and on 27 May Tailboys, on paying a fine of £40 to the Crown, was finally declared a free man after an imprisonment of some eight years.34 CCR, 1454-61, pp. 197-8; E13/145B, rot. 54d; KB27/784, rots. 63d, 64d, fines rot.d. How much of these damages he had paid is unknown, but he was still making payments to Cromwell’s executors in 1459: HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, i. 211. An entry in the accts. of the executors suggests that they remitted all but 500 marks of the £2,000 to him, but that this 500 marks was still unpaid as late as Apr. 1469: Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Cromwell pprs., Misc. 355, m. 4d.

One can only speculate what brought about this reversal in Tailboys’s fortunes, but it is interesting to note that the terms of the recognizance into which he entered with Cromwell’s executors indicate that the tactics employed against him may not have been entirely legitimate. He undertook not to sue such writs as attaint and maintenance against any of those who had acted as jurors between Cromwell and himself or who had, at Cromwell’s instigation, prosecuted appeals against him or indicted him of felony or trespass. This suggests not only that Cromwell had orchestrated the campaign against him but that some of the indictments had been falsely procured. Moreover, the surety of the peace Tailboys was to enter into as a condition of this recognizance specifically excluded William, nephew of the late Lord Willoughby, another indication that his enemies were not themselves blameless.35 At the Lincs. assizes on 28 Feb. 1457, Tailboys won debt and damages of £108 against William Willoughby after, it seems, the latter had defaulted on an agreement to sell him a small estate in Kirton-in-Holland, Boston and Sutterton: CP40/782, rot. 519; CPR, 1461-7, p. 295. The two men were still at odds in Feb. 1460 when Tailboys was required to find surety of the peace to Willoughby: KB29/89, rot. 26.

None the less, while Tailboys may have had legitimate grievances, it is hard to believe that the campaign against him was provoked by anything other than his own lawlessness. This impression is strengthened by what is known of his career after his release from prison. Although he was able to sue out a general pardon in January 1458, he was excluded from the Kesteven bench in the following November, and, strikingly, he was then included in a schedule of notorious criminals against whom the Commons in the Coventry Parliament of 1459 urged the King to take drastic action. Tailboys’s inclusion was striking in that it stood in contradiction to his political sympathies: a Commons, dominated by Lancastrian loyalists, was prepared to denounce him even though he too was a Lancastrian. They clearly considered him a criminal first and a Lancastrian second.36 C67/42, m. 40; PROME, xii. 501-2. Anticipation of his inclusion in this schedule explains his grant, dated 21 Sept. 1459, of all his goods in Enfield, where he appears to have taken up residence, to Richard Keston*, one of his creditors, and John Young*: Cal. P. and M. London, 1458-82, p. 153; DL29/199/3134.

It was perhaps fortunate for Tailboys that open war broke out soon afterwards. His violent nature allied with his extensive northern and midland estates made him one of the principal Lancastrian commanders. He may have fought at the battle of Wakefield on 30 Dec. 1460; he was knighted at the second battle of St. Albans on the following 17 Feb. 1461; and he went on to fight at Towton. Thereafter his career mirrors that of others who remained loyal to Lancaster during the northern campaigns of 1461-4. On 26 June 1461 he was one of those who raised the deposed King’s standard at Ryton and Brancepeth in the bishopric of Durham, and soon after he fled with Queen Margaret into Scotland. Attainder and the consequent forfeiture of his estates followed as a matter of course in Edward’s IV’s first Parliament, that of November 1461. In the following July, as captain of Alnwick for the Lancastrians, he was forced to surrender this Northumbrian stronghold to (Sir) Ralph Gray II*. He added to his battle honours two years later when he fought at Hedgeley Moor in April 1464 and at Hexham in the following month.37 Six Town Chrons. ed. Flenley, 152; PROME, xiii. 444-46; Paston Letters, iii. 307; C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, i. 186, 249; Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English, ii (2), [779]; Three 15th Cent. Chrons. (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xxviii), 156, 178. Unlike many other leading Lancastrians he escaped from the latter defeat, but he was not to remain free for long. Hiding in a coal pit in his former lordship of Redesdale, which the Crown had granted to Sir Robert Ogle II*, Lord Ogle, he was captured, and, on 20 July, executed at Newcastle-upon-Tyne before burial in the house of the Friars Minor there.38 CPR, 1461-7, p.113; Year Bk. Easter 4 Edw. IV, f. 20, pl. 40 (Reports del Cases en Ley, 1679). There has been some doubt about his date of death (CP, vii. 360-1, n. 1), but it is given as 20 July in C140/15/49. According to Gregory’s Chronicle he had with him a war-chest of 3,000 marks, upon which the continuation of the Lancastrian campaign depended.39 Historical Collns. Citizen London (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xvii), 226. One can only speculate upon why it was in his hands and what he intended to do with it.

Tailboys’s near-continuous involvement in criminal activity meant that he established few close connexions with his fellow Lincolnshire gentry. He is rarely found acting as a feoffee, although, in March 1448, he was one of those enfeoffed by Henry, Lord Scrope of Bolton in, inter alia, the manor of Bolton in Wensleydale.40 Notts. IPM (Thoroton Soc. xvii), 51-52. He was also a feoffee for John Neville of Faldingworth in 1446: Add. Ch. 44478. His own feoffees at the time of his attainder comprised his uncle John*, John’s son, Walter, John Langholm II*, and William Coote of Threekingham, Queen Margaret’s attorney-general and one of those who had been appealed with him for the Saunderson murder.41 C140/15/49; CPR, 1461-7, p. 371. For Coote: Lincs. Archit. And Arch. Soc. iii. 52; KB27/751, rot. 73. His closest associate appears to have been his fellow Northumbrian landholder, John Heron*, another who died in the cause of Lancaster. Heron was involved with him in the drawing up of malicious rhyming bills against Cromwell in 1451, and in 1457 acted as one of his mainpernors in the Exchequer of pleas. Later, probably after 1461, Heron’s daughter Elizabeth was to marry Tailboys’s son and heir, Robert.42 Virgoe, 480; E13/145B, rot. 63d; VCH Cambs. viii. 31-32.

Tailboys differs from other well-known criminal gentry in that he was not the loser in a dispute over land or otherwise disappointed. His motives must remain obscure. Probably he was no more than ‘a lawless and ruthless gang-leader’,43 Virgoe, 469. although the truth may be less straightforward. It is possible that his family’s newly-acquired great wealth gave him an inflated view of his own position in Lincolnshire society (late in his career, if not before, he styled himself ‘earl of Kyme’),44 Cal. P. and M. London, 1458-82, p. 153. He is often so styled in the chronicles.: e.g. J. Warkworth, Chron. Reign Edw. IV (Cam. Soc. x), 4; Six Town Chrons. ed. Flenley, 152. For the use of this title by his Umfraville ancestors: CP, i. 152, n. 1. and that this brought him into conflict with the established county magnates, Cromwell, Willoughby and Welles. If this admittedly speculative reading of his extraordinary career is correct, it is probable that some at least of the indictments taken against him in 1448 were fabricated in an effort to clip his wings, a supposition given some support by the terms of the 1457 recognizance.

Tailboys’s unfortunate career only disadvantaged his family briefly. In the early 1460s his forfeited estates were divided between adherents of the new regime with, as the principal beneficiaries, his future capturer, Lord Ogle, who had his Northumberland lands, and Sir Thomas Burgh†, who was granted the bulk of his Lincolnshire estates.45 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 112, 113, 151, 371; J.S. Mackman, ‘Lincs. Gentry and the Wars of the Roses’ (York Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1999), 173-4. None the less, the family’s interests were not entirely disregarded. His widow, as the daughter of Lord Bonville, who had given his life in the Yorkist cause, had a claim on the new King’s compassion; and a third of the estate was duly assigned to trustees for her support.46 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 89, 144. Sir William’s son, Robert, still under age at his father’s execution, may have owed his quick rehabilitation to the principal of these trustees, John, Lord Dynham. Strikingly, he was added to the commission of the peace in Lindsey in December 1471, at about the time he came of age, and in the following autumn he secured election to represent Lincolshire in Parliament. During the assembly, in which his younger brother William represented Weymouth, he successfully petitioned for the reversal of his father’s attainder.47 CPR, 1467-77, p. 621; C219/17/2; PROME, xiv. 43-44. Robert was said to be 14 ‘and more’ in an inq. of Jan. 1465: C140/15/49. Later the family made further social advance. In 1529 Robert’s grandson, George Tailboys†, while representing Lincolnshire in Parliament, was raised to the peerage, probably on account of his marriage to Henry VIII’s mistress, Elizabeth Blount, mother of Henry Fitzroy. The family failed in the main male line in 1541 with the death, as a minor, of the first Lord Tailboys’s son, Robert, and, on the childless death of Robert’s sister, Elizabeth, in the early 1560s, the estate was divided between his four aunts.48 The Commons 1509-58, iii. 419-20; CP, vii. 362-3; xii (1), 602-5.