STYUECLE, John

Although of uncertain parentage, John was probably the son or a close relative of Sir Nicholas Styuecle, since he had succeeded to several of that knight’s Huntingdonshire properties by the second half of the fifteenth century.6 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 527, 529; CP25(1)/94/37/8; VCH Hunts. ii. 231, 265; C1/53/199; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 412. There is no record of his activities before his election to the short Parliament which opened at Bury St. Edmunds in February 1447,7 He should not be confused with a namesake, the putative son-in-law of a prominent Londoner, Robert Large*: C1/26/441; S.L. Thrupp, Merchant Class Med. London, 352. and it is impossible to prove that he was the ‘Stucle’ admitted to Lincoln’s Inn seven years earlier.8 L.Inn Adm. i. 8. It is worth noting that he was never a member of the quorum as a j.p. On the other hand, he later planned a legal career for his son: a case of like father, like son?

It is likely that Styuecle enjoyed the active support of Sir Nicholas when he stood for the Commons, since the knight, one of the most prominent men of the shire, attested the return. Six days before Parliament opened, the abbot of Ramsey, an important local religious house, appointed John and his fellow knight of the shire, Robert Stonham*, to act as his proxies while it sat. Two years later, Styuecle was re-elected to the Commons, again probably with the support of Sir Nicholas. Although the latter did not actually attest the election on that occasion, another relative, Ralph Styuecle, the county coroner, was present. The Parliament, which met for five months during a period of extreme unpopularity for the government, was a difficult one for the King although the Commons did grant him a fifteenth and tenth. Two weeks after the assembly was dissolved, Styuecle and his fellow MP, Thomas Tresham*, were appointed commissioners to distribute the reductions in that tax allowed to various communities in their county.

The Huntingdonshire county election to Styuecle’s last Parliament proved controversial. When the county court met on 17 Oct. 1450, the approved candidates, Styuecle and Robert Stonham, were challenged by Henry Gymber‡, who also sought election. In response, their supporters sent a certificate to Chancery giving their version of events and seeking to have the election confirmed. The certificate, attached to the indenture witnessing their return, lists the names of 124 freeholders of the county and refers to some 300 other unnamed ‘good communers’ who supported them. Sir Nicholas Styuecle heads the list, followed by 18 esquires and gentlemen, including Stonham and Styuecle themselves. Quite clearly a partisan document, it states that Gymber’s supporters comprised some 70 ‘freholders comoners’ incited ‘be labour of dyvers gentilmen of other shires’, and that their candidate was ‘not of gentell berth’ and therefore ineligible to sit as a shire knight. Gymber was certainly of obscure parentage, but by this date he was probably qualified in landed terms to stand as a knight of the shire and a few years later he was of sufficient status to serve as a j.p. and royal commissioner in Huntingdonshire and elsewhere. His challenge failed, an inevitable outcome given that shortly before the election Styuecle had joined the royal household, of which Stonham was also a member: the certificate states that the majority of the electors who had chosen them did so because they were esquires for the King’s body. Like that of February 1449, the Parliament of 1450 was also a difficult one for the government. The duke of Somerset, who had assumed Suffolk’s mantle as chief minister, was just as unpopular in the country, and the Commons petitioned to have him and other prominent courtiers dismissed the court altogether. They also demanded various reforms, including an Act of Resumption, so Styuecle, given his household status, is unlikely to have welcomed such developments.9 C219/15/4, 6; 16/1; PROME, xii. 184-6; J.G. Edwards, ‘Hunts. Parlty. Election of 1450’, in Essays Presented to B. Wilkinson ed. Sandquist and Powicke, 383-95; E101/410/6, f. 40.

There is little information for Styuecle’s career in the 1450s. Not yet a j.p., he appears to have served on only one commission during that decade, assuming that he was the ‘John Stowekeley the younger’ who, along with his former opponent, Henry Gymber, and others, was ordered to arrest John Mynstrechaumbre† and Reynold Arneburgh* in July 1458. In December 1452 he received 6s. 8d. from the Exchequer for the costs he had incurred some time earlier (probably in late 1449) while ensuring the safe custody of John Halton, held on charges of treason, at Westminster.10 E403/791, m. 5. Possibly the MP of that name, Halton himself subsequently appealed one Robert Norris for high treason in May 1453, whereupon a duel between the two men was organized at Smithfield. Various Household men were ordered to attend the duel, but Styuecle was not one of them: PPC, vi. 129-38; E364/87, m. B. Halton is misread as ‘Lyalton’ in PPC, a mistake replicated by J.G. Bellamy, Law of Treason, 146-7. HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 411, wrongly gives 1452 as the date of the duel. Also during the early 1450s, he received a retainer from an important local magnate, John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, who granted him an annuity of ten marks for life, payable out of the issues of the Tiptoft manor at Eversdon, Cambridgeshire, in return for his past and future service.11 C1/52/223.

Despite his membership of the Lancastrian Household, Styuecle successfully made the transition to the position of esquire in that of Edward IV, perhaps with the assistance of his powerful patron, a supporter of the new dynasty. Edward possessed comparatively few reliable allies amongst the nobility and gentry at his accession, and one means of ensuring control of the shires was to appoint to local offices important Household men like Sir Thomas Montgomery†, pricked as sheriff of unruly Norfolk and Suffolk in November 1461. The simultaneous appointment of Styuecle to the shrievalty of the neighbouring counties of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire is, therefore, a significant indication that the King was willing to trust him. Even trusted supporters needed mollifying, however, so it was perhaps not surprising that Edward was prepared to pardon a penalty of £600 forfeited by Styuecle, along with George Darell, keeper of the great wardrobe, and others, after John Browe*, an embattled litigant for whom they had stood surety, had disobeyed an order to appear in Chancery. In the early 1460s Styuecle joined the bench in Huntingdonshire and, briefly, in Cambridgeshire as well. In 1465 he was distrained for knighthood, although it is hard to ascertain how much his lands were worth at this or any other stage in his career. According to his inquisition post mortem, they brought in an annual income of just under £40 p.a., a significant underestimate since Sir Nicholas Styuecle, whose lands he had inherited, had enjoyed a landed income worth at least £133 p.a. in the mid 1430s.12 E101/411/15, f. 19; 412/2, f. 36v; CPR, 1461-7, p. 90; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 412; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 529.

As the evidence of his commissions and attendance at parliamentary elections indicates, Styuecle continued to play a part in Huntingdonshire affairs in his later years, and he took the precaution of purchasing a royal pardon, in his capacity as a former sheriff there, in 1467.13 C67/46, m. 26. Following the downfall of the earl of Worcester in 1470, he went to Chancery to safeguard the annuity Tiptoft had granted him. In his bill he stated that one John Wood, who now held Eversdon to the use of the earl’s will, was refusing to allow him the annuity. In response, Wood denied that he held the manor to any such use. He claimed that he, (Sir) Edmund Ingoldisthorpe*, John Prysote*, c.j.c.p., and Thomas Lokton* had received seisin of the manor to indemnify them after they had put up bonds to guarantee that Worcester would pay a sum of 600 marks to John, Lord Dudley. The earl had never paid the sum and he, Wood, the sole surviving surety, was entitled to retain the manor and its income, since he was now left exposed to possible action by Dudley.14 C219/17/1, 3; C1/52/222-3. In the late 1470s Styuecle took part in conveyances involving his own manors in Buckden, Beechamstead, Staughton, Dillington Pury and Hail Weston, probably in connexion with a settlement he had made.15 CP25(1)/94/37/8.

Subsequent land transactions reveal that the MP counted among his feoffees leading figures like John Russell, bishop of Lincoln and, from 1483, chancellor of England, John, Lord Dynham and (Sir) William Hussey*, c.j.k.b. All three of them acted for him and his wife, Margaret, by conveying lands in Ramsey, Westowe and Raveley to their son, Gerard, and William Horne, a London alderman, in August 1484. At the same time, he had two of the Styuecle manors in Great Stukeley demised for seven years or longer to Horne, who was to supply food, clothing and other provisions to Gerard, while he was ‘atte courte for his lernyng in the lawe’, and also to his wife, should the young man marry. As it happened, Gerard was married to Horne’s daughter Isabel soon afterwards. After the MP’s death, however, he fell out with his father-in-law over those properties that William Horne leased from the Styuecles.16 CP25(1)/94/37/2; CAD, vi. C6972; C147/263; C1/109/54.

Styuecle kept his place on the magistrates’ bench during the political upheavals brought about by the accessions of both Richard III and Henry VII, although he was not appointed to any more ad hoc commissions after September 1486. During Richard’s reign he and his wife were plaintiffs in a Chancery suit concerned with a breach of contract. According to them, they had entered into an agreement with John Broughton† in November 1476, by which Broughton was to have received two of the Styuecles’ manors in Beechamstead, along with lands in Stokton, Pyrye, Arlyngton and Hail Weston, in exchange for lands of equal value belonging to him in Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire. Despite this, the Styuecles claimed, Broughton had failed to perform his part of the agreement, and, since his death in 1479, two of his feoffees had likewise failed to implement it. While the outcome of this case is unknown, it is worth noting that none of the properties the Styuecles had expected to receive from Broughton featured in the MP’s inquisition post mortem.17 C1/53/199; CIPM Hen.VII, i. 412.

Styuecle died on 24 Apr. 1488. He left his manors in Great Stukeley to his son and heir, Gerard, and Isabel, his daughter-in-law, while settling two others in Upwood to the use of his widow for life, with remainder to Gerard and his heirs.18 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 412. By the late 1490s Gerard had remarried. His 2nd wife was Joan, da. of William Taylard†: Add. Chs. 34135-6. This provision for his wife was perhaps a sign of his affection for her, for Margaret Styuecle already possessed a life interest in the two Styuecle manors at Beechamstead, possibly as a result of a settlement made when she and John married. What Margaret had brought to the marriage is unknown. Evidence for her background is lacking, although she was a kinswoman of Thomas Mallory*, who had also sat in the Parliament of 1450 and who had named Styuecle as a supervisor of his will of 1469.19 Archaeologia, lvi. 166-72. She survived until 1507 and during her widowhood roughly half the estate remained in her hands. As a result, Gerard Styuecle never came fully into his own, since he died in the previous year.20 CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 900; VCH Hunts. ii. 231. Had it survived, Styuecle’s will might have identified other children besides Gerard and established whether he had a younger son in the John Styuecle living at Stukeley in the early sixteenth century.21 CCR, 1500-9, no. 11 (xiii). The John Styuecle living at Folksworth in n. Hunts. in 1493 was a descendant of Ralph, the Hunts. coroner of the mid 15th century. A Henry Styuecle was elected abbot of the Benedictine monastery at Ramsey in 1506 but, since monks often adopted place name aliases upon entering their religious houses, it is not at all certain that he was another relative: CCR, 1485-1500, no. 629; VCH Hunts. iii. 175; CPR, 1494-1509, p. 481.