SKULLE, Walter

The younger son of an obscure Welshman, Skulle enjoyed an extremely successful career considering his limited prospects at birth. No doubt he owed his rise to a combination of his own ability, patronage and his marriages. In spite of his success, he comes across as a somewhat colourless figure, an impression that probably reflects the nature of the sources rather than the reality. Even if very obscure, Skulle’s father was not necessarily of lowly background. Originally from Brecon, David Skulle settled at Much Cowarne in Herefordshire but evidently he maintained strong links with his native Wales, with which both Walter and his elder brother Miles were always closely associated.25 Vis. Herefs. 65; Griffiths, i. 148.

A lawyer, Miles Skulle served in the administrations of Herefordshire and the principality of South Wales and he found employment with several important magnates. One of his earliest patrons was John, Lord Tiptoft†. He was a feoffee and surety for Tiptoft, as well as a party to a series of recognizances on behalf of Joyce Charlton in 1421-2, shortly before she became Tiptoft’s second wife. Miles was also a legal counsellor of Humphrey Stafford, earl of Stafford and later duke of Buckingham, and a justice on Stafford’s lordships in Herefordshire and South Wales. Furthermore, he served Henry Beauchamp, duke of Warwick, and perhaps Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and acted as a feoffee for Sir John Pauncefoot†. Pauncefoot’s estates included holdings at Much Cowarne where Miles’s own principal residence lay. Miles’s landed interests were scattered, although his most important property dealings were in Herefordshire where for nearly three decades he was a working j.p. He was appointed to his last commission of the peace in November 1458 and he probably died not long after that date. His heir was his son William.26 Griffiths, i. 148-9; CFR, xiv. 210; xv. 39-40, 73-74, 115, 178-9, 232; xvi. 43, 59; CPR, 1422-9, pp. 546-8; 1429-36, p. 377; 1436-41, pp. 370, 453, 536; 1441-6, pp. 48, 49, 153, 155, 286, 320-1, 463; 1446-52, p. 237, 298; 1452-61, pp. 166, 167, 403; E159/208, brevia Hil. rot. 10; CCR, 1441-7, p. 272; SC8/85/4247; Feudal Aids, ii. 419.

Successful though it was, Miles’s career was certainly less distinguished than that of his younger brother. Walter is first heard of in the mid 1430s, as an esquire of the royal household. In the autumn of 1435 he was one of a small force of Household men whom the Crown assembled to help defend Calais, then seriously under threat from the French, and he undertook to serve there for two months with four archers. It is not clear how much time he actually spent in the royal establishment, for he features in only one of the extant Household accounts from the reign of Henry VI, that for 1443-4, as an ‘esquire of the hall and chamber’.27 E404/52/32; H.L. Ratcliffe, ‘Military Expenditure of English Crown 1422-35’ (Oxf. Univ. M.Litt. thesis, 1979), 103-5; E101/409/11.

It is likely that the status he gained as a King’s esquire helped Skulle to make a good first marriage. His bride Margaret was a lady of higher social rank than he, for she was a member of a cadet branch of the Beauchamp family and a relative of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick. Both Margaret’s father and paternal grandfather were briefly peers of the realm, a status also enjoyed by her maternal grandfather. Although her father lost his title of Baron of Kidderminster at the accession of Henry IV, he died in 1420 possessed of estates in Worcestershire, Warwickshire and Oxfordshire which were probably worth comfortably over £100 p.a. His heir was Margaret, by then about 20 years of age.28 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 153-4; CIPM, xxi. 515-16. At that date she was already the widow of John Pauncefoot, probably a younger son of Sir John Pauncefoot, the knight whom Miles Skulle served as a feoffee. She subsequently married the Worcestershire esquire John Wysham, who appears to have died in the early 1430s, and then Walter Skulle. It is more than likely that the latter was some years her junior, and she may simply have fallen for her third husband, who could have brought little to the marriage in material terms. After marrying Margaret, Skulle took up residence at her castle and manor of Holt, which lay by the Severn just a few miles north of Worcester. He was styled ‘lord of Holt’ when in 1442 he and Margaret obtained a papal licence to keep a portable altar. Elsewhere in Worcestershire, Margaret possessed an interest in the advowson of the chapel of St. Mary at Trimpley. In the early 1450s she and Skulle reached an agreement about the advowson with her kinsman John Wood I*, who would appoint her husband as an executor of his will of 1458. Through his first marriage, Skulle became a figure of some consequence in Worcestershire, allowing him to represent the county in at least four Parliaments, and of sufficient wealth to make a loan of £20 to the Crown in 1454.29 CPL, ix. 312; CP25(1)/260/27/46; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 893; PCC 13 Stokton (PROB11/4, f. 98); E401/834, m. 38.

If it is not known exactly when Skulle married Margaret Beauchamp, it is probably safe to assume that she was already his wife when he was returned to his first Parliament in December 1436. As in the previous assembly, much of the business of the Parliament of 1437 was concerned with the conduct and financing of the war in France. Among the taxes the Commons granted to the Crown was a tenth and fifteenth, and several weeks after the Parliament was dissolved Skulle and his fellow MP, Thomas Rous*, were commissioned to assign reductions in contributions to that levy to impoverished communities in Worcestershire. The commission, the first known of Skulle’s local government offices, was followed soon afterwards by his appointment to the commission of the peace in Worcestershire, a body on which he served almost continuously over the next 40 years. Against what was later to become an established convention, he remained on the bench during his terms as sheriff, an office he held in several counties. The fact that it was for Herefordshire that he was initially pricked for the shrievalty suggests that he possessed an unknown landed interest there, whether inherited or otherwise acquired. During this first term as sheriff of that county, he informed the Chancery that one of the local coroners, Thomas Capull, was insufficiently qualified for that office, and in February 1439 he was ordered to hold an election for a replacement.30 CCR, 1435-41, p. 201. No sooner had he completed this same first term, he began another as sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire, an appointment made possible by the estates he held in his wife’s right in Oxfordshire, where Margaret had inherited the manors of Wigginton, Ardley and Weston.31 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 153; VCH Oxon. vi. 9, 11; viii. 254; C1/24/57.

While serving as sheriff of Herefordshire, Skulle obtained the position of attorney in all the royal courts, both English and Welsh, in Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire. His grant was made to him as a ‘King’s esquire’, and his connexion with the Crown made it easier to bid for grants from a King all too liberal in the exercise of his patronage. The office of attorney was clearly a sinecure (he was permitted to exercise it through a deputy and three years later he gave it up in favour of a fellow Household man, John Perrot), and it is possible that he was a lawyer like his elder brother Miles, since he was also placed on several commissions of gaol delivery.32 CPR, 1436-41, p. 254; 1441-6, p. 66; E101/410/9. It is assumed by both HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 773, and The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 893, that he was indeed a member of the legal profession but, unlike Miles, he was never a member of the quorum as a j.p. It was likewise as a King’s esquire that in October 1439 Skulle received the wardship of Richard Croft†, then aged about ten, the brother and heir presumptive of the late John Croft of Croft castle in that county. This royal grant also assigned to him the wardship of any child which John’s then pregnant widow might bear, since such issue would replace Richard as John’s heir. In the event, the lady bore John a posthumous daughter, Joan, but the girl died in 1445 and the modest Croft estate passed to Richard, himself still a minor at that date.33 CFR, xvii. 109; Oxf. DNB, ‘Croft, Sir Richard’. Skulle continued to benefit from royal patronage during the 1440s. In September 1442 he obtained a grant for life of the office of constable of Cardigan castle, for which he received a fee of £40 p.a., and he became steward during pleasure of Cantref Selyf, Penkelly and Alexanderston in South Wales, all part of the de Bohun inheritance to which the Crown had a claim, in December 1443. His stewardship was interrupted when his predecessor as steward, Nicholas Poyntz*, regained the office in February 1444, but he was able to recover it a few months later. In a fresh grant of July that year, the King not only recommitted it to him, to exercise in person or through a deputy, but enlarged it to include the castle and town of Bronyllys and the lordship of Llangoed.34 CPR, 1441-6, pp. 240, 275. Skulle soon received further offices from the Crown. In March 1445 he was appointed chief remembrancer in the Irish exchequer for life, again with licence to exercise that position through a deputy. (There is no evidence that he ever crossed the Irish Sea.) A year later, he and Rees ap Thomas obtained a grant in survivorship of the stewardships of Cardiganshire and Cantrefmawr in Carmarthenshire, with joint fees of £26 13s., as well as of the keeping of Glyncothy forest in the latter county, all offices which formerly ap Thomas had held in association with Roger Norreys. In due course, this grant was superseded by another of 1 Mar. 1449, by which the same offices, along with that of constable of Cardigan, were bestowed on Skulle and his son Hugh in survivorship. Assuming that he was legitimate, or else not the offspring of an early, unknown marriage, Hugh was a younger son, and at that date still a minor. Later in the same month, Skulle received yet another grant, this time of the offices of porter of Bronyllys and forester of Cantref Selyf, both of which were committed to him for life. Even if Skulle’s offices in South Wales were sinecures, he was held responsible for them. In May 1454, for example, he was one of the officers of the principality whom the council ordered not to employ the lawless Gruffydd ap Nicholas and others in any capacity.35 R.A. Griffiths, King and Country, 206-7; SC6/1306/7.

In all likelihood Skulle owed his knighthood, bestowed at some stage in the later 1440s, to his connexion with the Household. It is impossible to ascertain what part (if any) his status as a Household man played in his parliamentary career, even though his last two Parliaments were summoned in circumstances favourable to the Court-dominated government of the time. Similarly, it is not known whether he was helped to gain election to the Commons by his wife’s connexions, or by his own family’s links with the Beauchamps or other lords. While Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick (d.1439), was still alive, the Skulles are said to have looked to him for patronage, and Skulle’s elder brother Miles became an annuitant of Beauchamp’s son and successor Henry Beauchamp, duke of Warwick, before 1444-5.36 C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 404; Griffiths, Principality, i. 149. After Duke Henry died in 1446, the Crown leased out a large part of his lands to Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley, and Sir John Beauchamp of Powick, a distant relative of the main Beauchamp line. In September that year the grant was amended to allow a share of the lease to William de la Pole, marquess of Suffolk, who had acquired the wardship of Duke Henry’s infant daughter and heir Anne. Among these huge estates was the lordship of Glamorgan, of which Skulle was sheriff (or steward) in 1448. It is not known how he came by the office, although it is worth noting that he was already linked with Sir John Beauchamp, by then Lord Beauchamp of Powick, at that date. Earlier in the decade, he and Beauchamp had acted as co-feoffees for the Holt family, and in 1447 he had served as Powick’s deputy in the office of justiciar of South Wales. Skulle was also steward of Pembroke in the late 1440s; presumably through the appointment of Powick’s co-lessee, William de la Pole, who in early 1447 had succeeded Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, as earl of Pembroke. Following the death of young Anne Beauchamp in 1449, the earldom of Warwick passed to her uncle by marriage, Richard Neville, whose retainer Skulle was to become. Skulle also had ties with John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, for he was one of the feoffees to the use of the will of that lord, the son and successor of his brother’s patron.37 A.F.J. Sinclair, ‘Beauchamp Earls of Warwick’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1988), 73, 168; Griffiths, Principality, i. 152-3; Birmingham Archs., deeds formerly lodged with Smythe Etches & Co., 3375/427015; Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Temple Bar deeds, 47.

It is hard to ascertain exactly when Skulle became associated with Richard, duke of York, and his cause. There is no evidence of any connexion between him and York in the early 1450s, and his election to the Parliament of 1453, summoned early that year in favourable circumstances for the Court, suggests that he was still identified with the Household at that date. The calling of the Parliament was in large part prompted by the need for parliamentary taxation to repay the loans that the Crown had raised to meet the considerable costs of the defence of Calais, the keeping of the sea and the re-conquest of Gascony. Both Skulle and his fellow knight of the shire, Humphrey Stafford III*, had taken part in seeking such loans in Worcestershire, by virtue of a commission of 21 Dec. 1452. Once Parliament had opened, it was ordered that anyone who had loaned money to the King since Michaelmas 1452 was to have his loan repaid directly from the tax render under the supervision of the commissioners for the loans and the Members of the Commons. Skulle, Stafford and their receiver, William Broke, subsequently faced proceedings in the Exchequer for their failure to account fully for the loans they had raised. Broke spent time in the Fleet prison and in 1455 all three men were ordered to satisfy the Crown of a sum of just under £31 that was still outstanding.38 PROME, xii. 211, 215; E159/230, recorda Trin. rot. 19.

During the first session of the Parliament of 1453 Skulle and Ralph, Lord Sudeley, then steward of the Household, were among those to whom the Crown, by means of letters of 21 Mar. 1453, entrusted the keeping of the Herefordshire abbey of Dore, in order to protect it from its oppressors.39 CPR, 1452-61, p. 48. He had more than a passing association with Sudeley, since the peer was a feoffee to the use of the settlement made at the marriage of his son and heir, Thomas Skulle, to Anne Stafford. Anne was the sister of Humphrey Stafford III and the daughter of (Sir) Humphrey Stafford I*, a knight who likewise had ties with Sudeley and with the latter’s associate John, Lord Beauchamp of Powick. The match, contracted some time before Sir Humphrey was killed during Cade’s rebellion in 1450, was short-lived. Thomas himself had died by 1454-5 when his 15-year old widow sued Sudeley and his co-feoffees, who included her late husband’s uncle Miles Skulle. The purpose of Anne’s suit was to make good her jointure right to the manor of Wiggington and other estates in Oxfordshire, part of the inheritance that her mother-in-law Margaret had brought to the Skulles in marriage.40 Carpenter, 428, 684; C1/24/57.

One authority states that Skulle, pricked for his third term as sheriff of Herefordshire in the wake of the Yorkist victory at the first battle of St. Albans in May 1455, was one of York’s followers by the mid 1450s.41 Griffiths, King and Country, 177, 211n. This is by no means an unreasonable assertion. First, just over a fortnight after the battle, the MP and the duke’s servants, (Sir) Walter Devereux I* and Sir William Herbert*, were chosen to arbitrate in a quarrel connected with the manor of Ashton in that county.42 Longleat House, Wilts., Devereux pprs. DE/Box I/12, 13. Secondly, in August 1456, Devereux and Herbert, presumably acting for the duke, seized Carmarthen castle but bypassed that of Cardigan where Skulle was constable, possibly suggesting that the MP was sympathetic to York’s cause.43 Griffiths, King and Country, 213. On the other hand, the MP was subsequently appointed to several anti-Yorkist commissions. In December 1459, after York had fled the kingdom, he was named as a commissioner of array, and in February 1460 he was placed on a commission of oyer and terminer charged with investigating treasons committed on lordships belonging to the duke and his leading allies. In the following spring he and Thomas Throckmorton* were ordered to defend the city of Worcester against the Yorkists, and at about the same time he was among the leading figures in Worcestershire commissioned to rally the King’s lieges in the county against the duke and his allies, as soon as they re-entered the realm. In short, either the Lancastrian government did not realise Skulle’s true sympathies, or he was far from an out-and-out political partisan. There is no evidence that he participated in any of the civil war battles, and it is impossible to tell whether the pardons he obtained in November 1455 and April 1458 were any more than prudent safeguards.44 C67/41, m. 18; 42, m. 21.

During this troubled period Skulle also found time for private affairs. In the spring of 1460 he successfully sued William Grimhill in the court of common pleas for a manor in the Worcestershire parish of Hallow, although his lawsuit bears all the hallmarks of a collusive action. The history of the manor is incomplete but Grimhill’s family had held it in previous centuries and were to do so again in Henry VIII’s reign. One possibility is that Skulle was acting as a feoffee rather than for himself, whether for Grimhill or someone else altogether.45 CP40/797, rot. 325; VCH Worcs. iii. 369.

By the second half of 1460, when the government was again in the hands of York and his allies, Skulle was certainly identified with the duke’s cause, as was his former ward Richard Croft. From at least early September that year he was treasurer of the Household, an institution the Yorkists were then using to control the monarch. In the following November he surrendered the offices of porter of Bronyllys castle, forester of Cantref Selyf and steward of Cantref Selyf, Penkelly, Alexanderston and Llangoed, so that they might be re-granted to the Yorkist esquire Roger Vaughan.46 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 864; CPR, 1452-61, p. 646. Skulle remained treasurer until at least early February 1461, if not until the end of Henry VI’s reign. Several months after Edward IV had seized the throne, Skulle began lawsuits in the Exchequer against William Bracebridge†, a former customs collector at Hull. These actions related to £80 assigned to him from the customs of that port, by means of a tally of 5 Dec. 1460, in order to reimburse him for costs he had incurred as treasurer. Their outcome is not recorded but presumably this particular round of litigation was settled out of court, since in July 1462 he gave his opponent a formal release of all suits and demands. The same sum of £80 was also the subject of a Chancery suit brought by the London fishmonger John Curteys in the early years of Edward IV’s reign. Curteys complained that Skulle had passed the tally of 1460 on to him, to repay him for fish supplied to the Household, but had then rendered it useless by giving the release to Bracebridge.47 E13/147, mm. 38, 76d; 148, m. 16d; 167, m. 10; C1/27/151.

Following Edward’s accession, Skulle remained a j.p., served on the occasional ad hoc commission and, late in his career, as sheriff of Worcestershire. The shrievalty of Worcestershire was part of the inheritance of the earls of Warwick, but he owed his appointment to the Crown since the then earl was the infant son and heir of the late George, duke of Clarence. After 1461 he no longer received royal grants of offices that were little more than sinecures, perhaps because the new King pursued a policy of favouring younger men in this way,48 Davies, 265. but he certainly did not go unrewarded. On 1 Feb. 1462 he received in tail-male estates worth 20 marks p.a. in Droitwich and elsewhere in Worcestershire forfeited by the Lancastrian esquire John Lenche. Eleven days later, the King awarded him an annuity of £40 for life from the issues of Caernarvonshire and Cardiganshire, a grant subsequently exempted from the Act of Resumption passed by the Parliament of 1463 and renewed at the end of 1468. (In the original grant of this annuity he is styled a ‘King’s knight’ but it is a moot point whether he was ever actually a member of Edward IV’s household. He does not, for example, feature in any of the surviving Household accounts of this period.) In 1465 Skulle received a pardon by which the Crown exonerated him from any offences he may have committed, and excused him from all fines.49 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 91, 110, 380; 1467-77, p. 116; PROME, xiii. 164; E101/411/13, 15; 412/2.

By the mid 1460s Skulle was already linked with one of the new King’s chief supporters, Richard Neville, earl of Warwick.50 Pollard, 103, assumes that he was one of Neville’s retainers by the later 1450s. He was certainly associated with Warwick by January 1463, when the King granted the next presentation to the deanery of Wallingford in Berkshire to the two men.51 CPR, 1461-7, p. 215. In the event, it appears that Warwick made that presention (of Leysan Jeffray in 1469) alone: CPR, 1467-77, p. 160. He was Warwick’s steward in Worcestershire and a member of his council by 1464, in which year he and his fellow councillors, Sir Walter Wrottesley and Sir Edward Grey of Astley, journeyed to Glamorgan (a lordship that Neville held in the right of his wife) on their master’s business.52 M. Hicks, Warwick, 252; H.G. Wrottesley, Hist. Fam. Wrottesley (Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. vi (2)), 220. Whether Skulle remained in Warwick’s service during the short-lived Readeption of Henry VI is not recorded, and the pardon he received from the restored Edward IV in November 1471 need not have had any political connotations.53 C67/48, m. 34.

It was shortly after Edward first seized the throne that Skulle married his second wife, Frances. She was the widow of the Lancastrian Sir William Mille, son and heir of the Gloucestershire esquire Thomas Mille*. Sir William had died four days after fighting for Henry VI at Towton, probably of wounds suffered in the battle. Following his attainder in the Parliament of 1461,54 PROME, xiii. 42-44, 49-51. the Crown granted away much of his lands to the Yorkist Thomas Herbert†. Excluded from Herbert’s grant were Frances’s jointure estates, the manors of Avenbury and Allensmore in Herefordshire and lands at Tregate in the same county, and in December 1461 she obtained letters patent, confirmed in the following February, to safeguard her possession of them.55 C140/8/22; CPR, 1461-7, p. 72. Having married her, Skulle must have petitioned the Crown over the same estates, for they were incorporated in a grant that the couple received from Edward IV in August 1464. They were now assigned to the Skulles and their issue, as were the former Lenche estates obtained by Skulle in February 1462 and a rent of four marks p.a. from Dore abbey. The grant also provided for Frances’s son and two daughters by Sir William Mille to succeed to all these holdings if she failed to bear Skulle children, but when it was renewed in October 1468 even this contingent interest in favour of the offspring of her previous marriage was removed.56 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 85, 388; 1467-77, p. 110. In the meantime, Skulle also took steps to protect his interests from his first marriage. Before the Commons in the Parliament of 1463 submitted a petition to the King seeking the upholding of free passage on the Severn, he ensured it included a proviso preserving his right to levy fees or duties on the river in the vicinity of Holt castle. During the Parliaments of 1467 and 1472, Skulle and Frances safeguarded their grant of 1464, by obtaining exemptions from the Acts of Resumption passed by those assemblies.57 PROME, xiii. 248, 281; xiv. 166.

Still an office-holder in the late 1470s, Skulle was active until his death. By the early 1480s he had renewed his claims against William Bracebridge in the court of the Exchequer. Bracebridge responded in May 1482, pleading that he was quit of the £80 demanded from him, by virtue of the release that Skulle had given him in July 1462. The matter was referred to a jury but Skulle died before it could sit.58 E13/167, m. 10. While the date of his death is unrecorded, he was certainly no longer alive on 2 Dec. 1482 when the escheator in Worcestershire was ordered to hold an inquisition post mortem for him in that county.59 CFR, xxi. no. 666. Neither the records of this inquisition nor his will (assuming he made one) have survived, although he is known to have outlived his sons and his widow’s will shows that he was buried in Worcester cathedral. Frances Skulle did not long survive him, for she died in the following summer. In her will, dated 14 June 1483 and proved on 29 July of the same year, Frances chose to be interred beside him in the cathedral, ‘afore the ymage of Jhesu’, rather than with her previous husband. Practical considerations may have played a part in her choice: it is not known where Sir William Mille was buried but, even if he had received a proper funeral, he may have been interred in northern England. On the other hand, she could have held Skulle in particular affection, since she provided for priests to pray for his soul but not for that of Sir William, who does not feature anywhere in the will. She did however remember her three children by Mille, her son Thomas and her daughters Alice and Anne, of whom Anne was the wife of Richard Williams. She left £10 and a bed with a pair of ‘fyne shetes’ to Thomas and gowns and gold rings to his sisters. Frances’s will also shows that she was living in Worcester at the end of her life, in a ‘mansion place’ on Greyfriars Street which she ordered her executors, her son-in-law Richard Williams and the chaplain Richard Barbour, to sell under the direction of her overseer Thomas Lygon†.60 Logge Reg. of PCC Wills ed. Boatwright, Habberjam and Hammond, i. 232-3.

Not mentioned in Frances’s will is Joyce, her daughter by Skulle. She was married, probably after 1480, to Edward Croft, the son and heir of the MP’s former ward Richard. In 1487-8 Edward’s younger brother John, who afterwards took up residence at Holt, was married to Joyce’s elder half-sister Joan, Skulle’s daughter by Margaret Beauchamp and one of the coheirs of the Beauchamp inheritance. The Crofts already possessed a stake in that inheritance before the marriage of John and Joan, for some years earlier Thomas Croft†, uncle of John and younger brother of Richard, had married Joan’s half-sister Elizabeth (Margaret’s daughter by either her first or second husband). Elizabeth did not bear Thomas, who died in 1488, any children, but her share of the Beauchamp inheritance was not completely lost to the Crofts. Her subsequent marriage to Nicholas Crowmer was likewise childless, meaning that when she died in 1500 her estates were divided between Joan and her other half-sister, Alice (Margaret Beauchamp’s daughter by John Wysham), then wife of the Bedfordshire knight Sir John Guise. Presumably the Crofts had secured Skulle’s assent to the match between Thomas Croft and Elizabeth and, assuming that he was then still alive, to that between Joyce and Edward. Evidently deliberate, this sequence of marriages, so advantageous for the Crofts, may have arisen out of an understanding reached between a by then apparently sonless Skulle and his former ward.61 Davies, 259, 262-5. But this account of the Skulle-Croft connexion fails to realize that the MP had outlived as many as 3s.