TROUTBECK, John

As their name suggests, the Troutbecks probably originated from Westmorland. The first member of the family associated with Cheshire was John’s father, a man of obscure background who married a woman from that county, apparently after entering her father’s service. A strong supporter of the Lancastrian dynasty, William Troutbeck fought for Henry IV at the battle of Shrewsbury and probably participated in the Agincourt campaign.20 Clayton, 163; CPR, 1401-5, p. 20; 1405-8, p. 30; PCC 21 Marche (PROB11/2A, f. 163v); J.P. Earwaker, Hist. Church of St. Mary, 113; W. Beaumont, ‘Boteler Tomb in Warrington Church’, Jnl. Chester Arch. Soc., i. 218. In the late 1420s the government sent him to Ireland to apprehend the Scottish rebel James Stewart, who had fled Scotland following the execution of his father Murdoch, duke of Albany, in May 1425. The English authorities were concerned that Stewart, a possible pretender to the Scottish throne, could cause trouble in Ireland, but they were also aware that they could use him as a bargaining chip in their dealings with James I of Scotland. William’s mission was to bring him England, although Stewart was still in Ireland when he died in 1429.21 PPC, iii. 327; New Hist. Ire. ii. ed. Cosgrove, 575-6; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 158, 163; R. Nicholson, Scotland: The Later Middle Ages, 287. William’s wife Joan likewise entered the service of the Crown, for she joined the household of Queen Katherine, wife of Henry V. In the spring of 1422 she accompanied the queen to France,22 Foedera ed. Rymer (Hague edn.), iv (4), 61. and eight years later Henry VI’s Council rewarded her with an annuity of £20 for life for her past and future service to Katherine, by then queen dowager.23 CPR, 1429-36, p. 81; 1436-41, p. 383; PPC, iv. 50; DKR, xxxvii (2), 719.

William Troutbeck began his long administrative career in Cheshire upon becoming chamberlain of Chester in November 1412, an appointment confirmed to him during pleasure at the accessions of Henry V and Henry VI.24 DKR, xxxi. 252; CPR, 1413-16, p. 140; 1422-9, p. 4. As chamberlain of Chester, William was the chief executive officer in the county palatine and his influence in the north-west of England was further enhanced in February 1423 when he was appointed chancellor of the neighbouring county palatine of Lancaster, a position he held until 1439.25 Brownbill, 150; R. Somerville, Duchy i. 476. Although the chamberlain of Chester received a relatively meagre fee of £20 p.a., he wielded a great deal of patronage and was well placed to accumulate other offices and sources of income. William Troutbeck certainly exploited such possibilities (sometimes to the detriment of the Crown’s best interests),26 VCH Cheshire, ii. 20-21; CPR, 1422-9, p. 60; 1436-41, pp. 33, 57, 60-61; E403/727, m. 7; CFR, xv. 79; xvi. 322; DKR, xxxi. 252; xxxvii (2), 719. and he amassed sufficient wealth to make sizeable loans to the King and invest substantially in land.27 PPC, iv. 323, 327; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 466-7. In Cheshire he acquired manors at Dunham-on-the-Hill, Mickle Trafford, Hoole and Little Budworth, a fifth part of the manor of Little Neston and Hargrave and holdings in Woodchurch, Ledsham, Little Christleton and Chester; in Lancashire he obtained the manor of Rainford.28 Clayton, 163; DKR, xxxvii (2), 461, 611, 720; Cheshire and Chester Archs., Troutbeck and Talbot mss, DDX 178/4. For a time, he also leased Hawarden castle, along with the lordships of Hawarden and Mold in North Wales and Macclesfield in Cheshire, from the dowager Queen Katherine.29 CFR, xvi. 322.

In addition to these investments, William acquired the wardship of Margery, the infant daughter and heir of Thomas Huls. In May 1421 he agreed to pay the Crown the capital sum of 350 marks for the wardship, along with an annual rent for as long as he remained her guardian.30 CFR, xvi. 391; DKR, xxxvii (2), 717. In due course he married her to his son, so greatly increasing the landholdings of the Troutbeck family. The Huls family owed its fortune to Margery’s grandfather, Sir Hugh Huls, j.KB (d.1415), who had ploughed the winnings from his successful legal career into land. Margery’s considerable inheritance included manors at Brimstage, Oxton, Mobberley and Raby in Cheshire, Albrighton in Shropshire, Leighton and Weston in the Welsh marches and Oxhey in Hertfordshire, as well as moieties of others in Shropshire, Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Devon.31 Brownbill, 160; DKR, xxxvii (2), 368-9; CIPM, xx. 353-8; xxi. 572-6, 864. Oxhey, in the hands of farmers when William acquired Margery’s wardship,32 CIPM, xxi. 574. would become one of the main residences of the Troutbeck family. It is not known exactly when Margery and John Troutbeck were married, although the young couple were certainly man and wife by the summer of 1432.33 According to the visitations, the marriage took place in 7 Hen. VI (1428-9): Vis. Cheshire (Harl. Soc. xviii), 223. John may have resided in the household of Margaret, dowager duchess of Clarence, before the marriage, for he had been in Margaret’s retinue when she had visited St. Albans abbey three years earlier.34 J. Amundesham, Chron. S. Albani ed. Riley, i. 41. He owed his ties with the duchess to his father, to whom her late husband Thomas, duke of Clarence, had awarded an annuity of £20.35 PPC, ii. 315-16. John and Margery received livery of her inheritance in Cheshire in late August 1432. She had reached the age of 14 by that date, although it is likely that he had yet to attain his official majority.36 DKR, xxxvii (2), 718; CHES3/36, 10 Hen. VI, no. 7; CIPM, xxiv. 126. A year later, the couple took possession of Oxhey and all the other parts of her inheritance which lay outside the county palatinate.37 CCR, 1429-35, p. 218. As far as his own inheritance was concerned, Troutbeck did not come fully into his own until late in life, for his long-lived mother retained in jointure the manors of Dunham-on-the-Hill, Mickle Trafford, Hole and Little Budworth, the Troutbeck share of Little Neston and Hargrave and various properties in Chester.38 CHES3/43, 31 Hen. VI, no. 5. While Joan Troutbeck was still alive, he had to make do with Mobberley and Brimstage (in which he awarded his own wife rights of jointure),39 CHES31/32, 23 Hen. VI, no. 2; Troutbeck and Talbot mss, DDX 178/22. and, perhaps, Oxton as well.

Technically still a minor when his wife’s estates came into his hands, Troutbeck did not enter public office until the later 1430s. In January 1437 he and his father, both described as ‘King’s esquires’, were jointly appointed to the offices of steward and receiver of the lordships of Hawarden and Mold during pleasure. A month later he was made parker of Pickan in Hawarden, again during pleasure, and in the following May he and his father received a grant in survivorship of the office of parker of the royal lordship of Shotwick, a position which hitherto William Troutbeck had exercised alone. In August 1437 William obtained letters confirming him as chamberlain of Chester. Over the previous quarter of a century he had held the office during pleasure but the new letters granted it to him for life and provided for his son to succeed him as chamberlain (although during pleasure only) after his death.40 CPR, 1436-41, p. 77. In the following May John was placed on an ad hoc commission in Hertfordshire, an appointment he owed to his wife’s landed interests there, but his native county remained his main sphere of activity. At Michaelmas 1438 he was pricked as sheriff of Cheshire during pleasure and in May the following year he received a grant making him sole steward and receiver of Hawarden and Mold and parker of Pickan for life. Much more significantly, in June 1439 the by now elderly William resigned as chamberlain of Chester and John was installed in his place as chamberlain, again for life. In all likelihood it was this appointment which caused the younger Troutbeck to stand down as sheriff a few weeks later. Within a year of becoming chamberlain of Chester, John obtained grants, likewise for life, of the office of parker of Padeswood in Flintshire and the keeping of certain lands and woods at Little Saughall in Cheshire. One of his first actions as chamberlain was to appoint John Dedwode as his deputy, a function which Dedwode had previously performed under William Troutbeck, and in which he was later assisted by two other deputies, William Horton and David Ferrour. These men would have attended to much of the chamberlain’s routine work, but it is very unlikely that their master, always deeply involved in Cheshire affairs, ever treated his most important public office as a mere sinecure.41 Clayton, 165, 169.

In April 1444 William Troutbeck gave up an annuity of £10 he received from the issues of the county palatinate, in order that his son should have £20 p.a. from the same source instead. Still alive in the following September,42 DKR, xxxvii (2), 719-20. he died later in the same year or in 1445 and was buried in the sumptuous chantry chapel which he and his wife had built in the parish church of St. Mary on the Hill, Chester. His will does not survive but he is known to have enjoined his son to find a chaplain for the chantry, and to ensure that the cleric received a fee of £5 6s. 8d. p.a.43 Ibid.; Earwaker, 2, 31, 32. At the beginning of June 1446 William’s widow and son acquired general pardons from the Crown, although it is unclear whether these were connected with the dead man and his affairs.44 DKR, xxxvii (2), 720; Add. Ch. 7387.

By the time he became chamberlain of Chester John Troutbeck was already associated with the royal favourite (Sir) Thomas Stanley II*, afterwards Lord Stanley.45 DKR, xxxvii (2), 397. The head of a cadet branch of the Stanleys of Cheshire, Stanley was appointed constable of Chester castle in 1437, chamberlain of North Wales and controller of the royal household in 1439 and justice of Chester in 1443. He and Troutbeck commonly worked together at an official level but they also became friends, serving each other as sureties and feoffees.46 Ibid. 719; CFR, xvii. 75, 131; Clayton, 165. In the mid 1440s they acquired a 44-year lease of the pasturage and underwood in Delamere and Mondrem, two forests in the county palatinate of which Stanley was already surveyor and rider (‘equitator’).47 DKR, xxxvii (2), 674. They sealed their friendship with the marriage of Troutbeck’s eldest son and heir, William, to Stanley’s daughter, Margaret.48 According to Earwaker, 184, the marriage took place in 1448.

In stark contrast to the relationship between Stanley and Troutbeck was the rivalry and suspicion which marked the latter’s dealings with Thomas Daniell. The ambitious and ruthless younger son of a minor landowner from Cheshire, Daniell had won the King’s favour after gaining a place in the royal household, and Henry VI rewarded him with a grant for life of the manor of Frodsham in that county in the spring of 1441. The grant was made on the unconfirmed understanding that the manor was worth no more than £20 p.a., but this was well below its true value. Acting in his capacity as chamberlain of Chester, Troutbeck reacted to the King’s display of careless generosity by actively seeking to thwart Daniell’s grant. On 13 May 1441 he paid a personal visit to the treasurer of England, Ralph, Lord Cromwell, at his lodgings in London to query its validity and on the following day it was revoked at a meeting of the King’s Council. Soon afterwards, however, Daniell first secured fresh letters patent awarding him £20 p.a. from Frodsham, and then prevailed upon the King to supersede these letters with a new grant awarding him an annuity for life of £30 from the same source. Before the end of the same year he recovered possession of the manor itself, having surrendered this latest annuity and undertaken to answer to the Crown for any income beyond £30 p.a. which he derived from the property.49 L.E. James, ‘Wm. de la Pole, 1st duke of Suffolk’ (Oxf. Univ. B.Litt. thesis, 1979), 23-24; PPC, v. 144-5.

Even if he was fulfilling his duty in querying the original grant, it is unlikely that Troutbeck had played a wholly disinterested role in this affair since he must have feared that Daniell would challenge the important position he enjoyed in the affairs of the county palatine.50 In HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 877, and T. Thornton, Cheshire and the Tudor State, 121 (presumably following Wedgwood), Troutbeck is described as ‘of Frodsham’, so giving him very particular reasons for opposing Daniell’s grant, but there is no evidence that he ever resided in that parish or held lands there. In spite of his family’s record of service to the Lancastrian dynasty and the fact that he himself had become an esquire of the Household by the late 1430s,51 E101/408/25, f. 7. Troutbeck was an esquire of the hall and chamber until at least 1451-2: E101/410/9. he cannot have viewed the great favour in which Daniell was held with equanimity. The controversy over Frodsham was alarming enough in itself, but the manor was just one of a series of offices and grants in Cheshire that the latter received in the mid and later 1440s. The most significant of these was a grant of February 1445, by which Daniell was awarded the reversion of the office of chamberlain of Chester on Troutbeck’s death, so destroying any hopes that the latter might have had of passing on the office to his son. To make matters worse, the grant further stipulated that Daniell would become chamberlain should Troutbeck commit any offence in the future, or if evidence emerged that he was guilty of any past transgressions.52 CPR, 1441-6, p. 333.

In March 1446 Daniell was made steward and chamberlain of Middlewich for life; in September 1447 he obtained a lease of the estates in the county which made up the inheritance of a minor, Thomas Gerard;53 DKR, xxxvii (2), 180. and in June 1448 he became bailiff of the hundred of Eddisbury, again for life. Exploiting his powers as chamberlain, Troutbeck forestalled the last of these grants by leasing out the bailiwick (by means of letters to which he affixed an earlier date to those issued to Daniell) to his friend Sir Thomas Stanley and two other gentlemen, Geoffrey Starky and Robert of More, even though by doing so he was deliberately flouting the King’s wishes. Stanley and his fellow farmers held the bailiwick for three years, until it was resumed by the Crown by virtue of the Act of Resumption passed in the Parliament of 1450. Daniell was not compensated for his loss until February 1453 when the King, noting that his rival had acted out ‘of grete malice’, ordered the Exchequer to pay him £24, the total rental value of the property during the period which Stanley and his associates had held it at farm.54 E404/69/97; E403/791, m. 10. Given the tensions between Troutbeck and Daniell, it is more than a little curious that the King should have granted the two men the office of remembrancer at the Exchequer, with a fee of £20 p.a., in March 1447.55 E404/65/177; 67/78. The grant was in survivorship, although they were to relinquish the office to William Essex* in the autumn of 1450. Either it was yet another striking example of pure ineptitude on the part of Henry VI, or an ill-judged attempt to keep the rivalry of the two men in check by forcing them to work together. Whatever the case, it is unlikely that they were willing partners, for they were again at loggerheads in 1451. In Trinity term that year a suit which Troutbeck had brought against Daniell, his elder brother John Daniell and several other Cheshire esquires, came to pleadings in the court of common pleas. He alleged that they, along with John Salghall, abbot of Chester, and Henry Boolde of Lancashire, had spread a false rumour that he had sheltered a felon at Great Saughall in the county palatine, and in the following Michaelmas term Daniell was obliged to provide a security of the peace, to guarantee that he would do Troutbeck no harm. In the meantime Boolde responded with litigation of his own against the MP, his widowed mother and several associates in the court of King’s bench, alleging trespass and conspiracy on their part. Troutbeck was arrested and briefly detained in London in November 1451 as a result, but Boolde failed to pursue his suit.56 CP40/760, rot. 383; 762, rot. 310; 763, rot. 659; KB27/763, rot. 21.

Pre-dating the long-running feud with Thomas Daniell was Troutbeck’s quarrel with William Stanley of Hooton, a cousin of Sir Thomas Stanley and head of the main line of the Stanley family. In the autumn of 1438 he and several associates were required to enter recognizances in the exchequer at Chester to guarantee that they would keep the peace towards William of Hooton and John Tildesley, and in the following summer he and Stanley agreed to refer their differences to the arbitration of Sir Thomas. In spite of his friendship with Troutbeck, on this occasion the knight carried out his responsibilities impartially since he ordered the MP to reimburse William for damaging his corn with his livestock, and to compensate him and others for the livestock he had taken from him.57 CHES2/110, rots. 4 (6-7), 9d (5-8); Add. Ch. 73883. If peace was restored between Troutbeck and William Stanley it was not permanent, because a decade later a Cheshire jury indicted Troutbeck for wrongfully imprisoning his adversary in Chester castle. According to the jury, Troutbeck had issued a writ in his capacity as chamberlain of Chester to Stanley at the end of May 1449, directing him to appear before the county palatinate’s exchequer on the following 10 June. On the day in question over 140 English and Welsh ‘malefactors’ recruited by Troutbeck had ambushed William while he was travelling to Chester, and later that month Troutbeck had incarcerated him in the castle for three days.58 CHES29/158, rots. 27-28.

The indictment was just one of a number brought against Troutbeck in June 1450, when he was also accused of numerous misdeeds in the county palatinate between the mid 1430s and late 1440s. These included the wrongful seizure of goods and livestock, extortion and other instances of false imprisonment. It was further alleged that he had harmed the Crown’s interests by failing to render account for an annual rent of 100 marks due to the King from the duchy of Lancaster manor of Halton, and by felling a dozen oaks in Delamere forest.59 Ibid. Even though Troutbeck retained the position of chamberlain, it is hard to believe that he did not at times abuse his office. As it happened, no immediate action was taken against him over the indictments, which were laid before his friend Sir Thomas Stanley in his capacity as justice of Chester. At about the same time as they were drawn up, Troutbeck quarrelled with his ‘cousin’ Agnes and her husband William Denny. The Dennys brought a bill against him in the Chancery at Westminster alleging breach of trust with regard to certain properties in Chester they had assigned to him to administer on their behalf. They claimed that he had taken the income from the properties for himself, even though they awarded him a gift of ten marks and an annual fee of 26s. 8d., in return for his trouble and to ensure his continued friendship.60 C1/19/133.

As these quarrels demonstrate, Cheshire was the focus of Troutbeck’s activities for most of his life but, thanks to his wife’s manor at Oxhey, he was sufficiently identified with Hertfordshire to sit for that county in two Parliaments. Unless his status as an esquire of the Household was purely nominal, he must have spent at least some of his time in the south-east of England. No doubt he found Oxhey useful in this respect, given its relative proximity to London, although he also rented a townhouse in the City and held two messuages in the ward of Aldersgate.61 T. Thornton, ‘A Defence of the Liberties of Cheshire, 1451-2’, Historical Research, lxviii. 339n; C139/172/21; CFR, xix. no. 509. His fellow knight of the shire in 1442 was another household man, Nicholas Morley*, but it is impossible to tell whether either of them owed his seat to his links with the Crown. The two MPs shared more in common than membership of the Household, for Morley was likewise an associate of (Sir) Thomas Stanley II and may also have come from the north-west of England. Whatever part Troutbeck’s household connexions played in his election to the Parliament of 1442, it is tempting to assume that they influenced his return as an MP five years later when the government and Court mobilized their resources to secure the election of their supporters to the Commons. The Parliament of 1447 was called to deal with the government’s principal critic Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and it met at Bury St. Edmunds, well away from London where Gloucester enjoyed considerable popular support. Troutbeck’s fellow MP in 1447 was Peter Paule*, a comparatively insignificant figure, who may have owed his election to his master John Holand, duke of Exeter. Exeter (ironically a past associate of Gloucester),62 M.M.N. Stansfield, ‘Holland Fam.’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1987), 201, 210. died later that year, and following his death his executors appointed Troutbeck surveyor of several Holand manors and lordships in North Wales and Cheshire, to hold during the pleasure of the late duke’s son and heir (then still a minor) with a fee of £10 p.a.63 Add. Ch. 72497. Assuming that the two men had formed a good relationship during their time in the Commons, it is possible that Paule helped Troutbeck to acquire the office, although the latter was better placed than most to bid for it, thanks to his office of chamberlain of Chester. Troutbeck was re-elected to the Commons at the beginning of 1449, although this time for Hindon in Wiltshire. The lord of Hindon was William Waynflete, bishop of Winchester, who is known to have exercised his influence at the borough’s elections,64 V. Davis, Wm. Waynflete, 3n. although there is no evidence that Troutbeck had any connexion with him. Even though the MP possessed an interest in Wiltshire through his wife’s estates, he appears not to have had prior dealings with Hindon and it is possible that he was found the seat because he was a household man.

In spite of his membership of the Household, Troutbeck played a leading role in the protests against the inclusion of Cheshire in the subsidy which the Parliament of 1449-50 granted to the Crown. He and the other gentry of the county reacted strongly to this expedient, which ran contrary to the practice of the previous 70 years and was seen as an attack on the liberties of the county palatinate. While the Parliament was still sitting he was ordered to appear in the Chancery to answer certain charges, perhaps in relation to his involvement in the protests. Among those who put his name to a petition the protesters sent to the King, he also personally lobbied Henry VI over the same matter at Blackheath early in the following year. The King backed down in March 1451, by reaffirming Cheshire’s liberties and franchises and agreeing that the county should not have been asked to contribute to the subsidy. Shortly afterwards, however, the government provoked fresh controversy by trying to apply the Act of Resumption passed in the Parliament of 1450 to Cheshire. Once again Troutbeck, who had sat in that assembly as a Member for Weymouth, played a leading role in opposing this new breach of liberties, in the face of which the government was likewise forced to yield. During these protests he was one of the gentry of Wirral hundred who ignored an order to take part in an inquisition held by the sheriff of Cheshire, and he was fined no less than £100 for his defiance. His behaviour was seen as particularly reprehensible given that he was chamberlain of Chester, although afterwards it was officially excused on the grounds that the county’s principal office-holders were not expected to serve on such inquisitions. Troutbeck’s participation in the protests is certainly striking. Possibly he was partly motivated by resentment over Thomas Daniell’s grant in reversion of the office of chamberlain, but it is also likely that he had a genuine desire to defend the rights and privileges his county so proudly possessed. Earlier, in 1441, he had taken part in demanding the reaffirmation of certain of those rights and privileges before Cheshire would pay the Crown a mise, the tax applicable to the county palatinate.65 Clayton, 47-48; Thornton, ‘Liberties of Cheshire’, 338-40; Thornton, Cheshire and the Tudor State, 1-5; CCR, 1447-54, p. 187; E404/68/91.

It is conceivable that the government had encouraged the indictments brought against Troutbeck in June 1450, particularly those relating to abuses of office, as a means of warning him not to take his opposition too far. The alleged abuses included the ‘fraudulent’ levying of 50 marks, a sum which was in fact his reward from the county palatinate for his part in the negotiations over the mise of 1441.66 CHES29/158, rots. 27-28; Thornton, ‘Liberties of Cheshire’, 340n. If the early 1450s did mark a real rift between the government and Troutbeck, it is intriguing that he should have gained election for Weymouth in 1450. The lord of that Dorset borough was none other than the government’s chief opponent, Richard, duke of York,67 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 386. who is known to have worked for the return of his followers to the Parliament in question. It is impossible to establish whether Troutbeck formed an attachment with York, but any such link was probably very temporary, since his family remained true to the Lancastrian dynasty following the outbreak of civil war.68 It is unclear whether the general pardon which Troutbeck obtained (as ‘of Chester’) in Nov. 1455 was of any political significance: Add. Ch. 7389.

Following the Parliament of 1450, Troutbeck is not known to have received any further offices or grants, save for a future lease of the manor of Shotwick, assigned to him in October 1452. Previously the Crown had assigned Shotwick, part of the earldom of Chester, to the late Sir William Porter† and his wife Agnes in survivorship. She was still alive when Troutbeck received his grant, meaning that his lease could not begin until after her death. The terms of the grant were highly advantageous, for he was to have the manor for 50 years at a low rent of ten marks p.a., and it is possible that it was a reward from the county palatinate for his services in lobbying the King about the subsidy of 1450.69 DKR, xxxvii (2), 720; Thornton, ‘Liberties of Cheshire’, 338n. Shortly after acquiring it, he finally came fully into his own, for his mother died before the end of 1452, having appointed him and her grandson William, Troutbeck’s eldest son, as her executors.70 CHES29/161, rot. 28. In the following year the newly enriched Troutbeck was called upon to contribute to a desperately needed loan for Gascony and he agreed to provide £40, which he sent to London in the summer of that year. It says much for the confusion at the centre of government that he and others who had lent money subsequently received letters demanding sums that they had already paid.71 M.G.A. Vale, English Gascony, 149, 150; E403/793, m. 16.

Bullying letters were the least of Troutbeck’s worries, for in the same period he was the subject of a petition complaining about his activities as chamberlain of Chester. The petition was addressed to the Parliament of 1453 but it is likely that it was never actually submitted to that assembly, since it exists as a draft rather than an official record. It was drawn up in the name of the treasurer of England, John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, perhaps at the behest of one of the Troutbeck’s opponents. In the petition, Troutbeck was accused of having made unjust claims for expenses in relation to the manor of Shotwick, then still in the hands of Agnes Porter. He was also alleged to have cheated the King out of the wardship of Hugh Venables of Kinderton, to whom he had married his daughter Elizabeth. The boy was the nephew and heir of Hugh Venables the elder, who had died in 1449 possessed of estates in Cheshire worth some 200 marks p.a. These properties were held directly from the King as of the earldom of Chester, but the elder Venables had conveyed them away to feoffees in order to avoid the feudal incidents due to the Crown when he died. Venables was not the only Cheshire landowner to resort to such an expedient in this period, but the petition claimed that he did so when he was frail and near death and under the sway of Troutbeck. According to the petition, Troutbeck had issued him a licence to alienate his estates under the seal of Chester and then, following the alienation, had acquired the boy’s wardship for himself. The petition further alleged that Troutbeck had used his administrative powers to halt all legal process arising from the indictments taken against him some three years earlier. It called for the King and Parliament to order the justice of Chester, Sir Thomas Stanley, to proceed against him and called for his removal as chamberlain if found guilty. In his response to these articles, likewise recorded in draft form, Troutbeck denied any wrongdoing and claimed that the indictments had come about through ‘Senestre labour’. With regard to the Venables wardship, he asserted that its initial purchaser (presumably from the Crown) was the elder Hugh Venables, from whom he had bought it after the Venables-Troutbeck marriage. He also began to prepare a petition of his own, in which he likewise refuted the articles and other allegations of wrongdoing.72 Add. Rolls 7184-6; Clayton, 136, 164.

Even if the controversy did not in fact come before the Parliament of 1453, it appears to have prompted the authorities into action. In August that year the indictments of 1450 were brought before pleas of the Crown presided over by Sir Thomas Stanley at Chester, although Troutbeck was formally acquitted of those charges at the beginning of the following year.73 CHES29/158, rots. 27-28. He nevertheless found himself in further trouble in 1455, when he was admonished for misusing the seal of Chester in a dispute between James Hall, the rector of Northenden, Cheshire, on the one hand and Reynold Boulers, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, on the other. Boulers had cited Hall to appear before him at Lichfield but the rector had disobeyed the summons, asserting that it was against the liberties of Cheshire to make him appear outside the county palatine. Troutbeck had intervened in the controversy by sending a writ of prohibition under the seal to the bishop on Hall’s behalf but, following an appeal by Boulers to the Council, the King ordered Troutbeck never again to use the seal to block episcopal jurisdiction.74 J.P. Earwaker, E. Cheshire, i. 289-90; VCH Cheshire, ii. 33. In spite of having incurred yet more disapproval, Troutbeck remained chamberlain of Chester until he resigned the office in the spring of 1457, although in favour of the King’s carver Sir Richard Tunstall† rather than his old adversary Thomas Daniell.75 Tunstall was appointed chamberlain for life by means of letters patent of 21 Feb. that year, but the letters were voided by a legal technicality, meaning that Troutbeck was still acting as chamberlain on the following 5 Mar., and Tunstall did not assume office until after 6 Apr.: CPR, 1452-61, p. 388; Clayton, 165-6.

By now approaching the end of his life, Troutbeck appears willingly to have relinquished his duties as chamberlain to Tunstall, since Sir Richard was one of the feoffees upon whom he settled his Cheshire estates in early 1457. A powerful group, the feoffees included William Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, John, Viscount Beaumont, John Sutton, Lord Dudley, and Sir Thomas Stanley, now Lord Stanley. Troutbeck did not end his days in the county palatinate, for he died at Oxhey on 26 Aug. 1458.76 Clayton, 165; CHES3/45, 37 Hen. VI, no. 9; C139/172/21; Brownbill, 161. In a short will made just two days earlier,77 Herts. Archs., archdeaconry ct. St. Albans, reg. 1415-70, 1 AR, f. 92v. he directed William, his eldest son and heir, to decide a suitable burial place for him, assigned ten marks to a chaplain to sing masses for his soul for a year, left a chalice to the parish church at nearby Watford, provided for two of his younger children and made bequests to his ‘cousin’ Richard Ryxton and various servants. He also set aside £100 for his younger son John to receive upon attaining his majority and a further 200 marks for the marriage of his youngest daughter Isabel. Presumably because they were already provided for, Troutbeck’s two other daughters, Cecily and Elizabeth, do not feature in the will. Like Elizabeth, Cecily was also married by this date, to John Dunne of Utkinton, Cheshire.78 DKR, xxxvii (2), 117. Troutbeck appointed three executors, his son William, his relative Richard Ryxton and his servant Ralph Wynstanley. Curiously, the will does not mention either his late first wife Margery, who had died in November 1456,79 C139/163/8. or his second wife Alice, the daughter of John Judde, a London merchant and master of the King’s ordnance.80 CPR, 1452-61, p. 342; CCR, 1461-8, p. 57.

Shortly after coming into his own, the MP’s heir, the newly knighted William Troutbeck, fell into dispute with his stepmother. Alice Troutbeck began suits in Chancery against him and one of her late husband’s feoffees, claiming a right to hold Oxhey for life which they were ignoring. It appears that the matter was settled out of court since in February 1459 William and Alice agreed to refer their quarrel to arbitration.81 C1/26/262-4; CCR, 1454-61, p. 354. In the following April, however, the manor was temporarily seized by the Crown, on account of a debt that the late MP had owed the King in his capacity as chamberlain of Chester.82 E199/11/26, mm. 2-3. Sir William Troutbeck’s career proved extremely short-lived. In the autumn of 1459 he answered the call to arms of James Tuchet, 5th Lord Audley, one of the main Lancastrian leaders in the Midlands and an immediate neighbour of the Troutbecks in several counties.83 The Troutbecks shared with the Audleys the lordship of the manors in west and south-west England in which they had inherited moieties from the Huls fam.: CIPM, xxi. 572-3, 575-6, 864. On 23 Sept. that year he and Audley were killed fighting for Henry VI at Blore Heath, a battle in which his brothers-in-law and fellow knights, John Dunne and Hugh Venables, likewise fell for the Lancastrian cause.84 C139/177/47; J.L. Gillespie, ‘Cheshiremen at Blore Heath’, in People, Politics and Community ed. Rosenthal and Richmond, 81. Although Sir William’s inquisitions post mortem state that he died on 22 Sept. Sir William’s widow Margaret paid the Crown £100 for the keeping of their eldest son, another William, and after the accession of Edward IV, she and her second husband, Sir John Boteler*, obtained a fresh grant of this wardship.85 CPR, 1452-61, p. 582; 1461-7, p. 209. The younger William Troutbeck was to fight for Henry Tudor at Bosworth and Stoke, and following the second of these battles he was knighted on the field.86 Clayton, 115; Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, vi. 101, 187.