SHARDELOWE, John

From a long-established gentry family originally resident at Thompson in south Norfolk, Shardelowe was the great-great-grandson and namesake of a judge of the common pleas and government minister of Edward III’s reign.6 J. Gage, Hist. Thingoe Hundred, 60-61; VCH Cambs. x. 141. He was still in his early infancy when his father, Sir Robert Shardelowe, died.7 CIPM, xxi. 675. Sir Robert appears to have spent part of his career abroad: when the MP’s grandfather, Sir John Shardelowe, drew up his will in 1391 he asked his son to act as one of his executors, should the latter be in England when the will was proved.8 PCC 8 Rous (PROB11/1, ff. 61v-62). In May 1400, less than a year after Sir Robert’s own death, the Crown granted custody of his estates in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Norfolk and Essex, together with John’s wardship, to Sir John Tiptoft†.9 CPR, 1399-1401, p. 291. Within two years, however, Andrew Newport† and Margaret his wife challenged Tiptoft’s ownership of the wardship. They claimed that Sir Robert had not been a tenant-in-chief but had held his property in Fulbourn from them rather than directly from the King. The Newports’ feoffees began a Chancery suit against Tiptoft, and the matter came before a local commission of inquiry as well as the council learned in the law at Westminster. Subsequently, in November 1402, a jury sitting at Royston found in favour of the Newports and the wardship was assigned to them on the following 6 June. Four days later, however, it was re-granted to Tiptoft, presumably after he had privately come to terms with the couple.10 CPR, 1401-5, pp. 124, 170, 260; CCR, 1402-5, pp. 71-72.

Upon attaining his majority, Shardelowe proved his age before the escheator in Cambridgeshire, in September 1420. Several witnesses, including the man who had fetched the water used at his christening, testified that he had been baptised in the parish church of All Saints, Fulbourn, on 7 Mar. 1399.11 CIPM, xxi. 675; CCR, 1419-22, p. 84. At Fulbourn itself John inherited the manor of ‘Shardelowes’ and other lands and, within days of coming into possession of these properties, he acquired from the Crown a 20-year farm of further jurisdictional rights in that township.12 CFR, xiv. 359. It is not clear how much of the Shardelowe estate was set aside as dower for his mother, although Sir Robert Shardelowe had certainly awarded her a life interest in the manor at Leverington in Cambridgeshire, upon condition she provided for their son’s upbringing and education and paid him an annuity of £20 from its issues after he had come of age. In the event, she would outlive him, meaning he never gained full control of his inheritance.13 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 205-6. It is worth noting, however, that Shardelowe was found to have held his Suff. properties by demise from his mother, when his inq. post mortem for that county was held, and that they reverted back to her, to hold for life, after his death: CIPM, xxiv. 13.

The young man appears to have married the following year, for William Loveney settled his manor in Stratton next Ipswich upon Shardelowe and his daughter, Margaret, and their heirs in September 1421.14 Harl. Ch. 53 B 35. Presumably John’s former guardian had agreed the match with Loveney (who, like Tiptoft, was a prominent servant of the Lancastrian dynasty) some years earlier. Shardelowe and his wife settled in Suffolk, probably at Stratton or perhaps at Easton Bavents on the coast, where his mother spent at least some of her widowhood.15 C.F. Richmond, John Hopton, 79.

In spite of his relative youth, Shardelowe gained election to the Parliament of 1423 and was pricked as sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk soon after its dissolution. On 15 Nov. 1424, just ten days after he had completed his term as sheriff, the Crown (taking account of the costs he had incurred while in office) excused him £140 of the issues of his bailiwick.16 E159/201, brevia Mich. rot. 26d. On the same day, however, Sir Simon Felbrigg KG sued him in the Exchequer for unjust detinue of 500 marks, the arrears of an annuity of 100 marks charged upon the issues of Norfolk and Suffolk which Richard II had granted to the knight in 1395.17 E133/136, rot. 13; CPR, 1391-6, pp. 563, 601. Even more immediately after the expiry of his term as sheriff, Shardelowe acted as a mainpernor for Sir John Gra*, a Lincolnshire knight with marital troubles. On 7 Nov. 1424 he and others bound themselves to the Crown that Gra would keep the peace towards his wife, and treat her honourably.18 CCR, 1422-9, p. 189.

Shardelowe stood surety for a much more prominent figure, Thomas Beaufort, duke of Exeter, in the following May, when the duke was granted the keeping of the estates of the recently deceased earl of March in East Anglia and other eastern counties.19 CFR, xv. 85. His connexion with Beaufort, a magnate with territorial interests and influence in the region was more than a passing one, for he had become one of that lord’s household knights by the second half of 1426, shortly before Beaufort’s death.20 William of Worcestre, Itins. ed. Harvey, 355, 359. He had not, however, received the honour of knighthood from the duke of Exeter, for he was one of those whom the young Henry VI dubbed on 19 May that year during the Leicester Parliament. Like other members of the Beaufort affinity, Shardelowe gravitated towards William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, after losing his patron. He had formed a connexion with Suffolk by 1430, although he went overseas immediately after Beaufort’s death.21 H.R. Castor, King, Crown and Duchy of Lancaster, 86-87. In February 1427 he received letters of attorney from the Crown preparatory to leaving the country, and he obtained similar letters in the middle of the following year. His destination was France, where he served in the retinue of John, duke of Bedford, but for how long is unclear.22 DKR, xlviii. 245, 259; Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, ii. 436. Presumably he had returned to England by late 1429, when he and two other knights who had served in France, Sir John Cornwall and Sir William Wolf*, were among those who brought a suit for trespass against two residents of Ipswich.23 KB27/674, rots. 6, 68d.

Shardelowe was chiefly occupied with East Anglian affairs in the last two years of his life, when he served successively as sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk and the neighbouring counties of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire and joined the Suffolk bench. It was as sheriff that his name appears on the Norfolk and Suffolk indentures for the Parliament of 1431, and (unless his under sheriff presided) he probably also took part in the parliamentary elections for Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire the following year. Near the end of his second term as sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, one Roger Bracy sued him in the Exchequer, for failing to act upon, and indeed destroying, a writ that the plaintiff had taken out against a Norfolk draper. In early 1432, shortly after completing this term of office, he was sued in the same court by another plaintiff who made similar allegations. This second suit was still unresolved at the time of his death, and it would appear that the case brought by Bracy likewise failed to reach a conclusion.24 E13/139, rots. 11d, 25.

Shardelowe was also active as a de la Pole feoffee and counsellor late in life. In October 1430 he was one of those upon whom the earl of Suffolk, prior to his marriage with Alice Chaucer, enfeoffed his estates in East Anglia and elsewhere. Evidently one of de la Pole’s most trusted counsellors, he was associated with the earl in the negotiations for Alice’s hand with her father, Thomas Chaucer*.25 E210/5796; CAD, v. A10892; CPR, 1429-36, p. 346; Harl. Chs. 54 I 9-12, 19. De la Pole’s choice of him as a negotiator was no doubt influenced by his former connexion with the Beauforts, to whom Chaucer was closely related. In the same period Shardelowe and John Roys*, another of de la Pole’s advisors, looked after their patron’s affairs at Gayton Thorpe, Norfolk, where the local inhabitants had broken into the earl’s fold-courses,26 C.F. Richmond, Paston Fam.: First Phase, 235n. and both of them stood surety at the Exchequer in February 1431, when Suffolk obtained the keeping of the Bardolf estates in west Norfolk, formerly held by the late duke of Exeter.27 CFR, xvi. 33. At the following Christmas Shardelowe entertained de la Pole at his manor of Easton Bavents where they feasted on curlew and other wildfowl. His mother, Ela, had lived at the manor-house until a year or so earlier, but she had recently moved to Cotton in central Suffolk. It is possible that he himself resided on the property during the last few years of his life, since he ran up debts with a number of men who lived in its vicinity, sums which the bailiff of Easton Bavents had to pay off in the early 1430s.28 Richmond, John Hopton, 79-80.

Shardelowe died on 10 Sept. 1432 while serving as sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire. Seven days later, his executors, Sir John Howard* and Robert Crane, were ordered to deliver the records pertaining to this office to John Clopton, his successor as sheriff.29 CIPM, xxiv. 13; CFR, xvi. 112. It is thanks to this order that we know the names of his executors, for his will has not survived. Crane, a lawyer, was an old associate, for he had acted as a mainpernor for Shardelowe in 1420. No evidence survives of any previous connexion between the MP and Howard, a man of his father’s generation, but he was perhaps an old friend of Sir Robert Shardelowe. Following Shardelowe’s death, writs of diem clausit extremum were sent to the escheators of Norfolk and Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, but only the record of the inquisition post mortem held in Suffolk survives. This shows that he held manors at Barton, Cavenham, Cowlinge, Stradishall and Downham in west Suffolk, along with lands and property rights in neighbouring parishes.30 CFR, xvi. 102; CIPM, xxiv. 13. Not mentioned were two other manors, perhaps because his mother held a life interest in them. These were Easton Bavents, where she had until recently resided, and Chediston, properties formerly belonging to the Bavent family which the Shardelowes had acquired in the second half of the previous century.31 W.A. Copinger, Suff. Manors, ii. 34, 62. Elsewhere, as already noted, the Shardelowe manor at Fulbourn, Cambridgeshire, had come into John’s possession, but not that at Leverington in the same county. It is probable that his father’s properties at Ashen, Essex, and Santon, Norfolk, had also come into his hands, although the Shardelowe manor at Hainford near Norwich (another former Bavent property) may have remained with his mother.32 F. Blomefield, Norf. x. 423. See CPR, 1452-61, pp. 206-7, for Sir Robert Shardelowe’s lands.

Shardelowe died childless and was succeeded by his kinsman Thomas Brewes*, grandson of Sir Robert Shardelowe’s sister, Joan.33 CIPM, xxiv. 13. Brewes parted with some of his inheritance by selling Fulbourn to Joan, Lady Abergavenny, in 1433,34 VCH Cambs. x. 141. and Ela Shardelowe, perhaps acting in accordance with her son’s will, began to dispose of the former Bavent properties soon afterwards. Sir John Fastolf bought Hainford in 1434, and in the following year John Hopton of Blythburgh paid her 400 marks for the reversion of Easton Bavents – to vest upon her death – in the following year.35 Richmond, Paston Fam.: First Phase, 235n; idem, John Hopton, 27. By 1436-7, Hopton was farming it from her for £20 p.a. and she granted him the manor outright in 1451, in return for an annual pension of 20 marks. Finally, in the will she drew up just before she died in November 1457, Ela directed her executors to sell Chediston and to apply the money raised to pious uses. She was buried in St. Mary’s church, Bury St. Edmunds.36 Wills Bury St. Edmunds (Cam. Soc. xlix), 13-14.