STANSHAWE, Robert

A lawyer, Robert was the son of a gentleman of middling rank. Perhaps also a member of the legal profession, John Stanshawe was active in Gloucestershire in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, as steward of the hundred of King’s Barton, as a j.p. in the wake of the Peasants’ Revolt and as a member of several ad hoc commissions.8 CPR, 1374-7, p. 267; 1377-81, pp. 422, 576; 1381-5, pp. 138, 246, 496; 1388-92, pp. 132, 133, 340; CFR, ix. 230. Both Robert and his younger brother Nicholas were sent to Lincoln’s Inn but neither of them rose to any great prominence as a lawyer. Exactly when they were admitted to the inn is unknown but it was certainly before 1420 and quite possibly several decades earlier. Each of them maintained an association with Lincoln’s Inn by sending a son there in the 1440s.9 L. Inn Adm. i. 8, 9.

A settlement made in the winter of 1394-5 provides the earliest known reference to Robert. By then he was already married to his first wife, Margaret, since it was by means of the settlement that her grandfather, Nicholas Chazey, arranged for the couple to succeed to the Chazey manor at Mapledurham, Oxfordshire, after the deaths of himself and his own wife, another Margaret. Chazey was Margaret Stanshawe’s maternal grandfather, the father of her mother Elizabeth, but the name of Elizabeth’s husband is not recorded.10 CP25(1)/191/24/43. Robert was further provided for in the spring of 1407, when his own mother, the widowed Isabel Stanshawe, settled the manor of Stanshawe’s Court in Chipping Sodbury, Old Sodbury and Yate on him and his heirs and that of Kingrove in Winterbourne on his brother Nicholas.11 CIPM, xix. 961. By June 1409 he also held the manor and advowson of Alderley, a few miles to the north of Stanshawe’s Court, but whether by his mother’s grant is unclear. His first wife was dead by that date, for in the same month he had the Alderley estate settled on himself and his second wife, Isabel Poyntz.12 Hale mss, D1086/T2/7-8. Even though Margaret had not borne him any children, he remained in possession of the former Chazey manor at Mapledurham, apparently because the settlement of 1394 permitted him to retain it in fee simple.13 Hist. Mapledurham, 75-76; CIPM, xxvi. 509. The heir to the rest of the Stanshawe estates was Robert’s elder brother, Thomas, but Thomas predeceased their mother, dying in September 1410.14 CIPM, xix. 795. When Isabel herself died at the beginning of 1412 her heir was Thomas’s 12 year old son John.15 CIPM, xix. 961. John must also have died prematurely, for by 1428 his manor of Clevancy in Wiltshire had passed to Robert.16 Feudal Aids, v. 277; VCH Wilts. ix. 54. Evidently his nephew’s heir, the latter likewise succeeded to John’s manor of Highway in the same county.17 VCH Wilts. vii. 198. It is unclear whether Robert also inherited the tenement or burgage that he held at Tetbury in Gloucestershire,18 Glos. Archs., Sotherton-Estcourt mss, D1571/T77/3, 5. or whether it was a property he had purchased. Like many lawyers, he was active in the land market from time to time. He seems to have acquired a manor in the neighbourhood of Thornbury in the early 1420s,19 CP25(1)/79/86/22. and in the following decade he purchased an estate near Stroud, a highly controversial transaction which was challenged in the court of Chancery.20 Procs. Chancery Eliz. ed. Caley and Bayley, pp. xxix-xxx; SC8/139/6916.

While Stanshawe appears not to have begun his career in local government until a few months after his mother’s death, he had already formed useful connexions before that date. In October 1408, for example, he stood surety for Sir Hugh Waterton, a prominent servant of the Lancastrian dynasty with interests in south-west England.21 CFR, xiii. 128. More significantly, over the following two years he began to have dealings with the Berkeley family. In this period he and his wife Isabel sold to Thomas, Lord Berkeley, lands in Wotton-under-Edge, Bradeley, Worteley, Horton and Yate, some of which they had only recently bought from William Parker of London and his wife.22 Cat. Muns. Berkeley Castle, i. 348, 471; CP25(1)/79/85/42, 46, 57; J. Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys ed. Maclean, ii. 112. He maintained a connexion with the Berkeleys, and by the early 1420s he was serving Thomas’s nephew, James, Lord Berkeley, as chief steward of his estates. In this period Berkeley’s grip on those estates was far from secure, for his claim to them had met with the determined opposition of Thomas’s daughter and heir Elizabeth and her husband Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick. It is not known for how long Stanshawe held his stewardship but his association with the Berkeleys was an enduring one, and in the mid 1430s he witnessed a settlement James made for the benefit of his younger sons.23 Cat. Muns. Berkeley Castle, i. 662.

In spite of his connexion with the Berkeleys, Stanshawe also served none other than the earl of Warwick, who by 1422 had retained him for his counsel with a fee for life of £10 p.a. from the manor of Cherhill in Wiltshire.24 J.S. Roskell, Commons of 1422, 68; CPR, 1446-52, p. 22; A.J.F. Sinclair, ‘Beauchamp Earls of Warwick’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1987), 334. Simultaneously to serve two feuding lords, seriously at odds with each other until they reached a settlement over the Berkeley inheritance in 1425,25 Oxf. DNB, ‘Berkeley, James’. was a considerable feat and must have demanded great diplomatic skill, if not a great deal of dissembling, on his part. Presumably Stanshawe advised Warwick when the latter purchased the reversion of the estates of the former Bedfordshire priory of Grovebury from Alice Chaucer, widow of Sir John Phelip†, in 1429, since he was among those associated with the earl in the conveyance which followed.26 Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 306; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 607. Apart from Berkeley and Beauchamp, Stanshawe found employment with at least one other great magnate, Berkeley’s ally, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, whom he served as a steward in Berkshire.

If Stanshawe’s links with any of these lords had a bearing on his parliamentary career, his Beauchamp ties were perhaps the most significant. In the Parliament of 1422 at least, he and other retainers of the earl of Warwick are likely to have comprised ‘the most powerful single seigneurial bloc’ in the Commons.27 Roskell, 70. Stanshawe was returned to his first Parliament a decade after beginning to play a part in local government and a few months after his appointment to the commission of the peace. The assembly of 1422 was the only Parliament which he and his brother Nicholas attended together. In this assembly Nicholas represented Appleby for the last time, having previously sat for that borough in the three preceding Parliaments. Robert would likewise sit in four Parliaments in all, although only the first two of these were consecutive.

A few weeks after the dissolution of the third of these assemblies, Stanshawe was removed as a j.p. by means of letters close of 21 July 1426. The letters stated that his dismissal was ‘for notable causes specially moving the King and council’.28 CPR, 1422-9, p. 224. Whether it was politically inspired or related to some breach of the law or dereliction of duty on his part is unknown. He did not recover his place on the bench until 1434, although from that date he remained a j.p. for the rest of his life. A pressing concern of Stanshawe’s final Parliament was the problem of lawlessness throughout the kingdom, and both the Lords and the Commons swore an oath to uphold the peace. In January 1434, a month after the Parliament was dissolved, Stanshawe and the other knights of the shire were ordered to draw up the names of all those in their respective counties whom they thought should likewise swear the oath, which they were afterwards commissioned to administer. The Parliament of 1433 was not the last occasion that Stanshawe represented his native county in a national assembly, for he also attended the great council held at Westminster in the spring of 1434.29 CCR, 1429-35, p. 271; PPC, iv. 213.

It was probably during his last Parliament that Stanshawe petitioned the Commons for support in a quarrel over lands at Siston, a few miles to the south-west of Chipping Sodbury. He had recovered the lands from Robert Moun alias Russell in the court of common pleas, but soon afterwards, as he complained in his petition, he had encountered further trouble. Having won his suit, he had obtained a writ directing the sheriff of Gloucestershire to deliver the lands to him, a task the sheriff had delegated to John Burnell, one of the King’s bailiffs in Gloucestershire. Upon arriving in Siston, however, Burnell had found himself confronted by John Kemys* and 39 other armed men, many of them wearing the livery of Sir Maurice Berkeley I*. They had prevented him from performing his duties, so deferring the execution of Stanshawe’s writ. The latter concluded his petition by asking Parliament to authorize the chancellor to hear and determine the riots and contempts committed at Siston, and to award him damages. The Commons adopted his bill and referred it to the Lords but in the end it was not accepted, on the grounds that it was within the scope of the common law to provide a remedy for his grievances.30 SC8/139/6916; CP40/687, rot. 572d. Why Berkeley’s men should have acted against the interests of Stanshawe, who had witnessed a settlement on behalf of their patron just a few years earlier, is a mystery.31 CCR, 1429-35, p. 120.

The quarrel between Stanshawe and Moun was part of a wider series of disputes over the Siston lands, all dating from the earlier 1430s, which also involved the merchant Thomas Canynges*. Canynges disputed Stanshawe’s right to them by asserting that they ought to revert to him after the death of Moun, who was merely a tenant for life, while Moun resisted the claims of both men. The quarrel between Stanshawe and Canynges was referred to the arbitration of John Weston† and others after the former sued the latter in King’s bench, but this effort to reach an out of court settlement broke down. Canynges blamed Stanshawe for the failure, alleging in a subsequent Chancery bill that his opponent had refused to accept the arbitrators’ award. According to the bill, Weston and his fellows had awarded the lands to him, provided that he paid Stanshawe £10.32 C1/9/176; 12/256.

Stanshawe was embroiled in more controversy in the mid 1430s, this time over his acquisition of a small estate at Stonehouse and King’s Stanley near Stroud. He purchased the estate, comprising two messuages, some plough-land and 40 acres of meadow and pasture, in the early summer of 1435. Soon afterwards, however, the vendor, a minor landowner named John Stonehouse, petitioned the chancellor to complain about the circumstances of the sale. In his bill, Stonehouse alleged that one of the MP’s servants had brought him to a wood near Nympsfield where the waiting Stanshawe had made him an offer for the lands in question. After he had refused the offer, Stanshawe had plied him with so much Syrian wine that he had ended up sealing a deed of sale after all, while completely drunk (‘owte of mysylff’) and oblivious to what was happening. Aghast at what he had done once he had sobered up, he had attempted to have the sale reversed, not least because it ran totally against the interests of both his wife, who possessed rights of dower in the lands in question, and his brother and heir. Ignoring his entreaties and refusing to take his money back, Stanshawe had brought him to the house of Sir John Juyn, chief baron of the Exchequer, at Bristol, in order to have the transaction verified in Juyn’s presence. Over the following few days, Stonehouse and his wife had found themselves the reluctant guests of Stanshawe at Alderley and elsewhere. During this time, Stanshawe’s wife and one of his servants had entered his chamber and taken away from him all his deeds and evidences, his own wife helplessly standing by. Stonehouse concluded his bill by asking the chancellor to annul the sale and requesting that he might have attorneys to bring the matter before the King and his council.33 VCH Glos. x. 274; CP25(1)/79/89/56; Procs. Chancery Eliz. pp. xxix-xxx. While no other documents from this case survive, it is likely that the petition failed since the estates of Stanshawe’s son and successor were to include holdings at Stonehouse and King’s Stanley.34 C140/42/48. Whatever the true circumstances of the sale, Stanshawe must have enjoyed a cordial relationship with Stonehouse in the past, for he had witnessed a charter on the latter’s behalf in the spring of 1422.35 CCR, 1419-22, p. 252.

This charter notwithstanding, there is surprisingly little evidence relating to Stanshawe as a witness or feoffee, whether on behalf of his fellow gentry or his noble patrons.36 CCR, 1408-13, pp. 274-5; 1413-19, p. 196; 1429-35, p. 120; 1441-7, p. 148; Cat. Muns. Berkeley Castle, i. 662. Furthermore, there is just one known example of him acting an arbitrator, in a dispute between his brother and William Widcombe over the manors of Stourden and Hinton in Gloucestershire. The manors were part of the inheritance of Nicholas Stanshawe’s wife, Margery, but Widcombe had challenged her title to them. When Stanshawe and a fellow arbitrator, Thomas Drew*, made their award in February 1428 they directed that Widcombe should give up his claim to the manors and that Nicholas and Margery should pay him £100 in return. In the event, it was not until the spring of 1433 that Widcombe formally released the property to the couple and to John Horton, rector of Trowbridge, Wiltshire.37 Bristol RO, Ashton Court mss, AC/D/3/10a-b, 12. A kinsman of the Stanshawe family, Horton would appoint the MP one of his executors in his will of 1443.38 PCC 15 Rous (PROB11/1, f. 118v).

Early in the following year, Stanshawe had the manor of Stanshawe’s Court settled on himself and his wife for the term of his life, with remainder to their eldest son Robert and the latter’s wife Joan. One of the parties to this settlement was none other than the chancellor of England, John Stafford, archbishop of Canterbury, but it is not known how he had come to form a connexion with such an important figure.39 CP25(1)/79/90/96. In the autumn of 1445 Stanshawe was party to another settlement, by which his daughter Isabel received an interest in the manor and advowson of Tormarton near Chipping Sodbury, part of the inheritance of her husband Maurice de la River.40 CP25(1)/79/91/104. By now approaching the end of his life, Stanshawe obtained a royal pardon in the following July, and in December 1446 he secured letters patent confirming his annual fee of £10 from the Beauchamp manor of Cherhill, a precaution prompted by the recent death of Henry Beauchamp, duke of Warwick. The son of Stanshawe’s former patron, Henry had died leaving an infant daughter as the heir to the Beauchamp inheritance.41 C67/39, m. 36; CPR, 1446-52, p. 22.

In the event, Stanshawe himself died just a few months after acting to safeguard his Beauchamp annuity. Shortly before his death, he drew up a last testament, dated 18 Mar. 1447. Requesting burial in the parish church of Yate near Chipping Sodbury, he directed that a chaplain should sing for his soul for three years after his death and provided for members of his immediate family. He set aside £40 for the education and upbringing of his younger son, Henry, 100 marks for the marriage of his daughter, Blanche, and smaller sums of money and various items of plate for his other daughters, Katherine, Margaret and Isabel de la River, and for his brother, Nicholas. Isabel was to have ten marks, but only if her husband prevailed in a lawsuit against Sir Theobald Gorges alias Russell* over the manor of Bradpole in Dorset; otherwise she was have a silver cup. Stanshawe left his wife all his silver vessels or dishes (‘vasa’) to hold for the rest of her life, after which they were to pass to their elder son, Robert. Stanshawe appointed four executors: his wife, his heir and namesake, his brother and Richard Sherman, rector of Bagpath.42 Reg. Stafford, ff. 159v-60. He died on the following 1 Apr. and was succeeded by the younger Robert Stanshawe, then some 23 years of age.43 CIPM, xxvi. 509. In September 1448 the young man formally confirmed the estate for life which his widowed mother enjoyed in lands at Alderley and elsewhere.44 Hale mss, D1086/T2/9.

Another lawyer trained at Lincoln’s Inn,45 L. Inn Adm. i. 9. the younger Robert Stanshawe entered the service of John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, who had retained him for his counsel by 1451. As a Talbot retainer he was caught up in the well known Berkeley-Talbot dispute, meaning that he found himself working against the interests of the same James, Lord Berkeley, whom his father had served three decades earlier.46 A.J. Pollard, ‘The Talbots’ (Bristol Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1968), 238, 419. In September 1451 he witnessed a deed by which the Berkeleys ceded lands at Slimbridge to the Talbots, a conveyance made shortly after Shrewsbury’s son John, Viscount Lisle, had seized Berkeley castle and taken Berkeley and his sons prisoners.47 KB27/763, rot. 42. Later that decade, Robert inherited the estates of his uncle, Nicholas Stanshawe, who died without any surviving male issue in June 1457.48 C139/173/27. Following his own death in December 1472, he was succeeded by Thomas, his second but eldest surviving son.49 C140/42/48; C1/56/157.