STRELLEY, Sir Robert

The Strelleys, whose pedigree can be traced back to the reign of Henry I, were one of the most ancient and wealthiest families of Nottinghamshire. In the thirteenth century they had added substantially to their long-held property at Strelley near Nottingham through remunerative marriages, the most profitable of which was that of Sir Robert Strelley (d.1302) to Elizabeth Vavasour of Shipley in Derbyshire. She brought with her lands ideally situated to supplement those the Strelleys already held: the manor of Shipley, lying just across the border from Strelley, and that of Bilborough, immediately adjacent to the family residence. These acquisitions left them with a remarkably compact estate, their only outlying lands being at Ferrybridge and Friston near Pontefract in the West Riding, and they added very little to this property until the failure of the family in the senior male line at the beginning of the sixteenth century. None the less, their long-held patrimony was sufficient to ensure they remained among the leading families of their native shire. They had a fine tradition of parliamentary service: our MP’s great-grandfather, Sir Sampson†, represented the county four times between 1368 and 1383, and his grandfather, Sir Nicholas†, once, in 1394. Junior branches, established at Woodborough and Hathersage, also provided MPs, the most notable of whom was Richard Strelley† of Woodborough, a royal servant, who sat eight times for the county in the 1330s.4 S.J. Payling, ‘Political Society in Notts.’ (Oxf. Univ. D. Phil. thesis, 1987), 87-89; Political Society in Lancastrian Eng. 20.

Our MP’s father had not played a significant part in the affairs of the county because he did not inherit the family estates until late in life. Indeed, he never held one of the main administrative offices in his native shire, although he did serve as the sheriff of Staffordshire in 1434-5 (an appointment he owed to the lands he held in that county in right of his second wife, Joan, widow of Sir Thomas Harcourt (d.1420) of Ellenhall, and to an association with Humphrey, earl of Stafford, later duke of Buckingham).5 On 3 Apr. 1427 he witnessed the earl’s confirmation of the borough charter of Newport: Archaeologia, xlviii. 450-1. Joan was the da. of Sir Robert Francis† of Foremark in Derbys. and the sis. of Isabel, the wife of the Strelleys’ neighbour, Sir Gervase Clifton*. Our MP was not to be so long kept out of his inheritance. He was only in his mid twenties when he came into an estate with an annual clear value of about £100.6 This was the sum at which his father was assessed for the income tax of 1436: E179/240/266. This assessment may have included the property his father held in the right of his second wife, but his own tax assessment of £100 10s. in 1451 suggests it is a reasonable minimum valuation to place on the Strelley patrimony: E179/159/84.

This prosperity was threatened by the survival of his stepmother. By a fine levied in Hilary term 1435 his father had made a generous settlement upon her: she was given a life interest in the the family’s caput honoris, the manor of Strelley. Robert resorted to subterfuge to overturn a settlement that was so threatening to his interests. An earlier conveyance gave him the necessary pretext. Early in the reign of Henry IV his grandfather, Sir Nicholas, had conveyed the bulk of his property, including the manor of Strelley, to a group of feoffees including the Derbyshire lawyer, Peter de la Pole†. Strelley now sought to show that these feoffees had remained seised until after the death of his father and thus that the jointure settlement was invalid. This, at least, is the conclusion to be drawn from a letter from Pole to Strelley dated 12 Jan. 1439. Pole stated, in reply to an inquiry from the latter, that he did not remember reconveying the lands to Robert’s grandfather, but that he could not answer for his co-feoffees. He concluded by saying what his correspondent wanted to hear, namely that if any deed of re-enfeoffment was produced he would disavow it unless it was sealed with his seal of arms or signet.7 SC1/51/68 (no year is given but it must date from between Sir Robert’s death and the feoffment of Sept. 1439). While one cannot be certain what lay behind this exchange, it seems that Strelley was manoeuvering to deny his stepmother’s life interest in the manor of Strelley. This manoeuvre was complete in September 1439 when Pole quitclaimed to him all his right in the lands he had by Sir Nicholas’s feoffment and declared that he had not previously made any re-enfeoffment.8 C146/9991. This episode has been misinterpreted in The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 508.

Although the evidence is conflicting, it is likely that this was a dishonest ruse on Strelley’s part, perhaps trading on a leading lawyer’s inability to remember all the conveyances in which he had been involved. The jurors in his father’s Nottinghamshire inquisition post mortem, sitting four days after Pole wrote his letter, gave an account that served our MP’s interest. They referred to the feoffment made by Sir Nicholas; described Pole as the only survivor of these feoffees; and claimed that our MP’s father had entered on Pole’s possession to levy the final concord of 1435.9 Notts. IPM (Thoroton Soc. xvii), 6-8; CIPM, xxv. 232. It is unlikely that this was true. The jurors in the inquisitions post mortem of Sir Nicholas, taken only nine years before, made no mention of feoffees and stated that he died seised of all his estates in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire; and this statement is supported by a surviving deed of 1405, whereby Pole and three of his cofeoffees granted Sir Nicholas the manor of Strelley and all else they had of his feoffment and appointed attorneys to deliver seisin.10 Notts. IPM (Thoroton Soc. xii), 188-9; CAD, vi. C4724; C146/8246. When, in the reign of Hen. VIII, the lands of the family were disputed between the heir male and the heirs-general, the former claimed that the 1405 re-enfeoffment was a forgery, but the only evidence he cited in support of his claim was the letter from Pole to our MP: SP1/243, f. 120. Faced with the very damaging prospect of the caput honoris of the family coming into the hands of his stepmother, Strelley seems to have suborned first Pole and then the jurors in his father’s inquisitions post mortem. Given that his stepmother was alive as late as 1460, it was as well for him that he was able to do so, and the inappropriateness of the 1435 settlement gave the colour of justification to his resort to subterfuge.11 CAD, vi. C6832. Less justifiable was his apparent attempt to deny her her common-law dower. The jurors in Notts., Derbys. and Yorks all denied that his father had had seisin in the Strelley lands: CIPM, xxv. 231-3. It is, however, possible that, having set aside her jointure interest in the manor of Strelley, he came to some private arrangement with her over dower.

Having so neatly disposed of his stepmother’s claims, Strelley consolidated his property rights by, in July 1441, suing out of Chancery an inspeximus and confirmation of the charters of Henry III that had given his family free warren in their demesne lands in Strelley, Shipley and elsewhere.12 CPR, 1436-41, p. 563. More importantly, he made a second marriage which brought him a connexion of the first importance, for his new wife was a niece of Cardinal Kemp. At first sight it is singular that he should have married into what was principally a Kentish family, and the explanation almost certainly lies in Kemp’s archiepiscopate at York. In about 1435 Strelley’s neighbour, Gervase Clifton*, had married ‘at the instance of Cardinal Kemp’, the widow of William Scott I* of Brabourne in Kent, the cardinal’s kinsman. It thus seems that Kemp did for our MP what he had already done for Clifton. Beyond a very valuable association this marriage had another potential benefit for it was not made at the expense of a generous jointure settlement. On 10 Feb. 1443 feoffees, headed by the bride’s brother, Thomas, then archdeacon of Richmond, settled the manor of Oxton with lands in Chilwell and elsewhere on the couple and their male issue.13 Payling, ‘Political Society in Notts.’, 89-90; HMC Middleton, 283; CAD, iii. C3415.

The marriage, whether coincidentally or not, marked the moment when Strelley’s public career began. He appears on the pricked list for the shrievalty of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in November 1442, when the marriage must have been in negotiation if not already contracted; appointment to the county bench followed early in 1444; and he was named as sheriff in 1445. He also attracted the patronage of the local baronage. In April 1443 William, Lord Zouche, from whom he held his manor of Shipley, appointed him to the chief stewardship of his estates in the locality at an annual fee of £2, and in June 1444 Lord Abergavenny appointed him as steward of Oswaldbeck at a more generous annual fee of eight marks.14 CAD, vi. C5735; C47/34/2/4; Harl. Ch. 112 B 50. Soon afterwards his career was further advanced when, no doubt through the patronage of Chancellor Kemp, he was admitted to the royal household in 1451.15 E101/410/9, f. 42. A second appointment to the shrievalty came quickly afterwards, and, as sheriff, he was able to render the King signal service. According to the pardon of account he secured at the end of his term, during the duke of York’s Dartford rising in February 1452 he first raised the defensible men of Derbyshire to await the coming of the duke of Buckingham and then led the Nottinghamshire posse comitatus to London to attend on the King for four days. For this he was granted, on 22 Jan. 1453, a pardon of account of £100, £20 more than was usually granted to the sheriffs of the two counties.16 E159/230, brevia Mich. rot. 16d.

Strelley remained active in local administration for the rest of the decade, being appointed to various ad hoc commissions and occasionally sitting as a j.p., as he did, for example, seven times from October 1455 until his removal from the bench in November 1458.17 Payling, ‘Political Society in Notts.’, 313. On 5 Jan. 1457 the prior of Sempringham (Lincolnshire) granted him the advowson of the impoverished church of Broxtowe, which, at our MP’s petition to William Booth, archbishop of York, was united in the following year with the neighbouring church of Bilborough, of which Strelley was patron.18 Harl. Ch. 111 C 37; A.H. Thompson, English Clergy, 126. More mundanely, on 8 Nov. 1457 he appeared in person in the Exchequer to pay a fine of five marks for failure to take up a knighthood that his wealth would easily have allowed him to support; and on 1 June 1458 he sued out a general pardon, styled as late sheriff, probably to insure himself against fines arising out of any irregularities in his conduct while in office.19 E159/234, fines rot. 4d; C67/42, m. 10.

Strelley’s service as a Household esquire does not seem to have inspired him with any lasting enthusiasm for the Lancastrian cause, and it is probable that his connexion with the Nevilles through Lord Abergavenny influenced his political affiliations more strongly than his period in the Household. In this context it may be significant that his brother John was involved with the Yorkist Humphrey Bourgchier* in a major act of disseisin in Nottinghamshire in December 1457.20 KB9/289/78. These indirect indications of Robert’s loyalties go some way to explain why, on 6 Oct. 1460, he stood for election to the Parliament which was to meet in the Yorkist interest in the wake of their victory at the battle of Northampton. Uniquely, a poll list survives for this election, and it shows that Strelley stood jointly with his first cousin and another former Household esquire, John Stanhope*. Their victory was secured by the large number of freeholders from the neighbourhood of Stanhope’s estates in the north of the county who came to Nottingham to vote for this joint ‘ticket’. Strelley seems to have been either unable or unwilling to mobilize the support of his own neighbours; only six of the 57 electors who voted for both him and Stanhope and can be identified by place came from the wapentake of Broxtow in which his estates lay, compared with 45 from Stanhope’s wapentake of Bassetlaw. Nevertheless, Strelley headed the poll with 161 votes.21 Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian Eng. 161-5.

During the parliamentary recess in December Strelley was reappointed to the county bench from which he had been removed in 1458 for reasons that are not likely to have been political (22 commissioned j.p.s were reduced to 15). After Edward IV’s accession he continued to play an active part in local administration. Indeed, it may be that he was considered a staunch supporter of the new regime, and it is not impossible that he had been knighted on the Yorkist side at the battle of Northampton. In February and March 1462 he sat on the bench when indictments were taken against those responsible for plundering the property of two of the leading Yorkist supporters in the county, Henry Pierrepont† and Richard Illingworth*.22 KB9/299/121; KB27/810, rex rot. 5d. The Pierrepont case is particularly interesting for his property had been ransacked by a Devon contingent of the victorious Lancastrian army as it marched south after the battle of Wakefield: CP40/806, rot. 40. His appointment as sheriff in the following year confirms this impression, as does the appearance of his son, John, on the list of Household esquires of 1464-5, and of both John and one of his younger sons, Nicholas, on that of 1466-7.23 E101/411/15; 412/2. During his shrievalty he spent some time in the neighbourhood of London: on 10 Aug. 1464 the abbot of Stratford Langthorne in Essex appointed an attorney to receive £2 16s. 8d. owed by our MP for his and his servants’ board: CAD, vi. C6820.

One can only speculate on what prompted Sir Robert to abandon his Yorkist allegiance in 1470. Given his association with the Nevilles through Lord Abergavenny, a strain may have been placed on his loyalty by the growing division between the King and the Nevilles. Alternatively, an indirect connexion with George, duke of Clarence, may have been a factor. His daughter, Joyce, was the wife of Humphrey Salway of Stanford-on-Teme (Worcestershire), who had been marshal of the Lancastrian court during the 1450s and was now the head of a family very closely associated with the duke. Equally speculatively, judgements against him in the Exchequer of pleas in 1469 may have weakened his Yorkist allegiance: damages and costs totalling £45 were awarded to John Wenlock*, Lord Wenlock, and Richard Forde for his failure to pay them sums assigned on the issues of his shrievalty during his last term in the office. But whatever the explanation, he was among those who, with Clarence and Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, had their lands seized in April 1470 in the aftermath of the aborted Lincolnshire rebellion, and, in the following month, he was removed from the county bench. In these circumstances, it was natural that reappointment should come during the Readeption, and that he was nominated to the commission of October 1470 to arrest felons in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.24 Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian Eng. 82, 155n; E13/154, Hil. rot. 13; 155, Trin. rot. 8d; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 218, 247.

Strelley’s support for the Readeption proved to be more than simply passive. He fought in the earl of Warwick’s ranks at the battle of Barnet on 14 Apr. 1471 but, fortunately for him, he was thereafter able to benefit from Edward IV’s desire for reconciliation. Although, on 11 May 1472 before royal commissioners of inquiry sitting at Barnet, he was one of many indicted of treason for their participation in the battle, he was allowed to sue out a general pardon on the following 17 Aug. Two weeks later, on 30 Aug., a royal signet letter ordered Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor, and the other unnamed occupiers of his estates to allow him full possession of them; and his rehabilitation was complete when he appeared in the court of King’s bench on 16 Oct. to plead his pardon in bar of the indictment.25 KB27/845, rex rot. 5d; CPR, 1467-77, p. 372; SC1/44/54. Grey initially refused to respond to the royal order and Strelley had to petition the King for redress: SC8/182/9092. This relatively rapid restoration may have been aided by his son and heir, John, who had remained steadfastly loyal to Edward IV. Indeed, shortly before Sir Robert secured his pardon, the King had awarded John and his wife, Margeret, an annuity of £10. Our MP, perhaps in gratitude, now did something for the couple himself, settling upon them in tail-male the same lands he had formerly given in jointure to his now-deceased second wife.26 CPR, 1467-77, p. 342; CAD, iii. C3280. Margaret’s surname is unknown. By 1479 John had married Sancha, da. of Robert, paternal half-brother of Richard Willoughby*: Nottingham Univ. Lib. Middleton mss, MiD 4770; Mi Db 4/3.

Nevertheless, although Strelley was restored to his lands, he did not recover his place in local affairs. Not until the accession of Henry VII did he again appear on the Nottinghamshire bench and by then he was too old to resume the position he had lost. He did not survive long into the new reign, dying at Strelley on 17 Jan. 1488.27 Derbys. Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. Jnl. xiv. 87; Add. 32490 N34.

Shortly before his death he was allegedly the victim of a significant robbery. According to a case in the Nottingham borough court, brought by his three sons after his death, two townspeople had, on 12 Jan., forcibly entered their father’s house in the town and carried away a chest full of silver cups and spoons, worth over £100, and a coffer containing 950 marks in cash.28 Nottingham Recs. ed. Stevenson, iii. 14. The latter is an astonishing sum, and, if it is to be credited, Sir Robert was a very wealthy man. It may be that this wealth derived from the exploitation of the abundant coal deposits in the vicinity of his principal estates. This was to make a very significant contribution to the income of the family and their neighbours, the Willoughbys, in the sixteenth century, and coal was certainly being mined in the area much earlier. Indeed, mines at Strelley appear to have been vigorously worked during the fifteenth century: the will of Sir Robert’s son John refers to coal pits there ‘gonne in tyme of my life’ and ‘endyd and done’.29 CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 423. One part of the workings may have been the subject of dispute in the mid 1450s when our MP sued John, abbot of Dale, for taking coal and trees worth £24 from Trowell: KB27/777, rot. 13d; 778, rot. 86; 781, rot. 13d; 784, rot. 53; 788, rot. 72. Profits from coal-mining would explain why Sir Robert was able to make a series of small purchases of land. In October 1444 he took the opportunity provided by the childless death of Joan, widow of a merchant, Robert Glade†, to purchase property, amounting to a messuage, five cottages and six acres of land, in the town of Nottingham.30 CAD, iii. C3741; vi. C4555. This is not the only evidence of our MP’s interest in the county town. According to the accts. for the rebuilding of the bridge of ‘Hethbeth’, which fell down late in 1457 or early in 1458, he contributed 24 great beams from his park at Shipley to the project: Nottingham Recs. ii. 220-1. His other purchases are not so well documented but a comparison of his inquisition post mortem with those of earlier heads of the family show that he added to their ancient estates several small parcels of land in the north of the county, principally at South Leverton and South Wheatley.31 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 382-3.

Although Sir Robert’s will does not survive, some information about his family is provided by that of his brother-in-law Thomas Kemp, bishop of London. In February 1489, Kemp left £20 to each of his two nephews, Sir Nicholas and Thomas Strelley, and £10 to each of their sisters. These were surprising bequests when one considers that his sister, whose marriage had linked the two families, had died 30 years before. The fact that their elder brother John is not mentioned strongly implies that he was Sir Robert’s son by his first marriage.32 PCC 28 Milles (PROB11/8, f. 229). The family did not long survive Sir Robert in the direct male line. His son, John, died in 1501, leaving as his heir a boy, also called John, who did not long survive. The estate, after a protracted dispute, was divided between the heirs general, the four sisters of the last John, and our MP’s grandson, Sir Nicholas Strelley (d.1560), who inherited the manor of Strelley.33 Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian Eng. 69, 241; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 423-4; Derbys. Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. Jnl. xiv (1892), 91-95.