SHEFFELD, Robert

The pedigrees trace the ancestry of the Sheffelds back to a Sir Robert, who is said to have flourished in the time of Henry III.7 W.B. Stonehouse, Isle of Axholme, 276. Although there is no strictly contemporary support for the first Sir Robert’s existence, it may indeed be that the family had long been established in Lincolnshire by the time of our MP. When the Tudor antiquary John Leland visited the Isle of Axholme in about 1538 he saw five Sheffeld tombs in the church of Owston Ferry, the only one of which now survives is the mutilated early fourteenth-century effigy of a Knight Templar with the Sheffeld arms upon its shield. Leland also tells us that the family came originally from Hemswell near Gainsborough and that they had come to the Isle when, at an unspecified date, the ‘Bellethorp’ lands at West Butterwick had descended to them.8 Ibid. 233; J. Leland, Itin. ed. Toulmin Smith, i. 38; ii. 17.

Whatever the early history of the family, it was not until the career of our MP that the Sheffelds came to play a significant part in local affairs, and thereafter successive legal careers, each more successful than the last, brought rapid advancement. The foundations of this advancement were laid by our MP’s father, himself a minor lawyer who married an heiress. In 1430 she brought their son the small Yorkshire manor of Azerley near Ripon and some lands in West Butterwick to add to their existing estate there.9 J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii. 1388; CIPM, xxiii. 69, 372. For the father’s uninteresting will: Lincs. AO, Reg. Fleming, f. 1v. More significantly, the father launched the son on a legal career that went much further than his own. Admitted to Lincoln’s Inn before 1420, by the mid 1420s Robert had advanced far enough to serve alongside John Fortescue* as one of the Inn’s governors. Although he did not then follow Fortescue and some other governors to the dignity of serjeant-at-law and thence to the judicial bench, his career was, none the less, a profitable one.10 Lincoln’s Inn, London, Black Bk. 1, f. 6; L. Inn Black Bks. i. 2, 3.

The ready cash available to the successful lawyer enabled Sheffeld to extend significantly the family estates by purchase. Two of these purchases are recorded in the feet of fines: in 1442 he bought 50 acres of meadow in West Butterwick from one Walter Castelforth; and a year later he acquired from a minor esquire, William Eston of High Burnham, several hundred acres of land in East and West Butterwick and surrounding vills. But his principal purchase came in 1445, when he paid another esquire, Brian Boys of Chilton (Durham), 260 marks for the manors of South Conesby and Gunness, to which he added, in 1448, some neighbouring lands in Flixborough and North Conesby.11 CP25(1)/145/159/12, 19; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 294-8, 305; 1447-54, pp. 175-6, 279-80. What is remarkable about this series of acquisitions is that they all lay either in the Isle of Axholme, the small part of Lincolnshire which lies west of the river Trent, or on the neighbouring bank of that river. This implies that, even in the context of the sluggish fifteenth-century land market, a determined purchaser could find lands in the area of his choice.

Sheffeld also extended his estates by marriage, taking as his wife one of the two daughters and coheiresses of his neighbour and fellow Lindsey j.p. Thomas Santon and a kinswoman of another lawyer, John Portington, j.c.p. from 1443 until his death in 1454. It is not clear what properties she brought him on her father’s death in about 1437, but they probably comprised small manors in Santon, Flixborough and North Conesby, all in the vicinity of West Butterwick, together with some property on the Yorkshire side of the river Humber at Hessle, Tranby House and Anlaby and a reversionary interest in a larger Yorkshire estate expectant on the failure of her half-sister’s issue.12 CP25(1)/280/158/31; Feudal Aids, iii. 364-5. Such constant additions to the family’s lands meant that Sheffeld died a wealthy man: in 1436, before his major purchases and before his wife had come into her inheritance, he was assessed at £40 p.a., but, judging from his son’s inquisition post mortem of 1503, his income must have been in excess of £100 p.a. at his death.13 E179/136/198; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 566.

So able a lawyer was bound to be in heavy demand as an associate in the affairs of his neighbours, and Sheffeld’s connexions were both broad and distinguished. From early in his career he served as local steward for the dean and chapter of Lincoln and was retained as counsel by the Yorkshire abbey of Selby.14 Ramsey, p. c. No doubt better evidence would reveal many other similar relationships. During his long career he was a feoffee for each of the four Lincolnshire barons of his day, Ralph, Lord Cromwell, Robert, Lord Willoughby of Eresby, Lionel, Lord Welles, and John, Viscount Beaumont.15 HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, i. 17; CPR, 1436-41, p. 358; 1452-61, pp. 200, 341; E153/1155/8; CP25(1)/145/158/33, 35; 293/71/315; C140/3/32; C1/28/290. He also supported Cromwell in his dispute with Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor: Notts. IPM (Thoroton Soc. xvii), 19; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 351-2. He also acted in the same capacity for, amongst others, Elizabeth, widow of Sir Thomas Dymmock of Scrivelsby; Agnes, daughter of Hamon Sutton I*, on her divorce from John Bussy; William Ayscough, j.c.p., of South Kelsey; the wealthy Nottinghamshire esquire, Ralph Mackerell*; and, most interestingly, the prominent Household servant, John Penycoke*, who during the early 1440s was acquiring land in the Isle of Axholme.16 CP25(1)/280/158/31, 45; CCR, 1441-7, p. 347; 1447-54, pp. 164, 387; CP40/699, cart. rot. 1; CAD, iii. D512. Not surprisingly, he is also found acting as an arbiter. In 1440 he was nominated with Fortescue by John Bate, dean of Tamworth (Warwickshire), to arbitrate the dean’s dispute with a Derbyshire gentleman, Nicholas Fynderne, over the manor of Stretton-en-le-Field. Later in that decade he was involved with other local lawyers in two failed arbitrations. The award he returned in the dispute between two leading Lincolnshire men, Hamon Sutton I and Sir John Bussy of Hougham over the marriage of their children, was voided by the failure of another of the arbiters, Wiliam Stanlowe*, to seal it; and at about the same time, despite several meetings in the church of Deeping St. James between Sheffeld, Richard Welby*, Henry Green* and Richard Benyngton, no decision was made in a boundary dispute between the abbeys of Croyland and Peterborough.17 CCR, 1435-41, p. 383; C1/15/141; Ingulph’s Chron. of Croyland Abbey ed. Riley, 412-13. For another of his failed arbitrations, involving the Lincoln MP, Roger Knight*: C1/11/496; 53/41. More successfully, in 1450 he mediated the settlement of a dispute between two Lincolnshire knights, Sir William Tirwhit* and Sir Thomas Cumberworth* (the latter of whom later, in 1451, nominated him as one of the supervisors of his will) over a watercourse which ran between their lands in Bigby.18 Belvoir Castle deeds 1759; Lincoln Diocese Docs. (EETS, cxlix), 56.

Sheffeld’s acquisitions of property and his connexions are the most noteworthy features of a career that was as colourless as it was successful. Its basic outline is quickly sketched. For 30 years he took an active role in local administration, probably serving, for most of that time, as Lindsey’s custos rotulorum.19 He was one of the most active of the Lindsey j.p.s. and is found endorsing writs of certiorari calling Lindsey indictments into the ct. of KB: E101/569/41; KB9/260/92. No particular significance can be attached to the timing of his returns to Parliament nor to his only appearance as an attestor to a Lincolnshire election, which occurred in March 1453. The only event of his career suggestive of a firm political affiliation is his presence among the j.p.s who took indictments against William Tailboys* at Horncastle in August 1448.20 KB9/260/93. Twice he benefited from royal patronage: in 1440 he was granted a minor Lincolnshire wardship, and in 1443, in common with several other of the county’s landholders, he successfully sued out an exemption from office.21 CFR, xvii. 134-5; CPR, 1441-6, p. 228. In his case this exemption was probably intended to prevent his forced promotion from apprentice to serjeant-at-law and thence to the less remunerative judicial bench. There is, however, nothing beyond these minor marks of royal favour to associate him more closely with the court, his connexion with Penycoke arising not out of common service about the King but rather from his importance in the neighbourhood of Penycoke’s purchases.

The date of Sheffeld’s death is unknown. His last appointment to a local commission was in March 1465, and he was certainly dead by June 1466, when his widow was allegedly the victim of a minor offence against her property at South Conesby.22 KB9/317/16. Before his death, he ensured that the rise of his family, which he had done so much to begin, would continue for at least one further generation. He provided his heir with a legal education, seemingly at the Inner Temple rather than Lincoln’s Inn.23 There is some confusion on this point. In 1451 a ‘Sheffeld’ was admitted to L. Inn and appears as ‘Sheffeld, jun.’ in a list of the Inn’s members in 1455: L. Inn Adm. i. 11; Lincoln’s Inn, Black Bk. 1, f. 169. Yet in a pardon of June 1462 our MP’s son and heir is described as ‘of Inner Temple’: C67/45, m. 25. Further, he invested in a good marriage for him: in about 1456 he contracted him to Genette, daughter and heiress-presumptive of Alexander Lounde of South Cave (Yorkshire), who brought with her an estate ideally situated to supplement those lands the Sheffelds already held on the banks of the Humber.24 CCR, 1454-61, p. 190; VCH Yorks. (E. Riding), iv. 44. Nor did he neglect the interests of his second son, William, a Cambridge graduate of the late 1450s whose ecclesiastical career culminated in appointment as dean of York.25 Alumni Cantabrigiensis ed. Venn and Venn, iv. 56; Test. Ebor. iv (Surtees Soc. liii), 118-20. The family’s success was continued in subsequent generations: our MP’s grandson, Robert†, was recorder of London and Speaker of the Commons in 1512; his great-great-grandson, Edmund, was promoted to the peerage as Lord Sheffield at the accession of Edward VI in 1547; and before its failure in the main male line in 1735 the family had added the dukedom of Buckingham and Normanby to its honours.26 The Commons 1509-58, iii. 304-5; CP, ii. 398-401, xi. 661-3; Oxf. DNB, sub nomine.