VAUX, Roland

The Vauxs of Triermain in the parish of Lanercost, on Cumberland’s border with Northumberland, were descended from Hubert Vaux, who had been granted the barony of Gilsland by Henry II in 1158. The barony passed in the female line to the Multons and then, in 1315, to the Dacres, but the male descent of the Vauxs was perpetuated through an illegitimate line. In 1212 Hubert’s son, Ranulph, had granted the manor of Triermain to his bastard son, Roland, the progenitor of our MP.1 CP, ix. 397, 406, 408; Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. xxii. 30. This branch added to its property in 1323 when Edward II gave another Roland the neighbouring manor of Tercosset, forfeited by Andrew Hartclay†, earl of Carlisle. This Roland went on to serve as sheriff in Cumberland in 1338 and, in 1340, Edward III licensed him to crenellate his residence at Triermain, a necessary precaution in an area of border warfare.2 CIPM, xi. 447; H. Summerson, Med. Carlisle, ii. 256; Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. xxii. 31. His grandson, another Roland† (1359-c.1412), represented the county in the Parliament of 1399. Our MP was, in all probability, this Roland’s grandson. An action sued in Easter term 1428 shows that he was the heir, probably the son, of one Robert Vaux, and that he was then in the wardship of the family’s overlord, Thomas, Lord Dacre.3 If he was Robert’s son then his mother was Margaret, who, by Easter term 1428, was the husband of Henry Brotherwyke, a minor Northumb. landowner: CP40/669, rot. 127; CIPM, xxiv. 61b. It is not known when she died.

Vaux was of age by 1434 when sworn to the peace in Cumberland; and in the subsidy returns of the following year he was assessed on a modest annual income of ten marks.4 CPR, 1429-36, p. 383; E179/90/26. This appears to underestimate the family wealth, and it is probable that his holdings were then diminished by his mother’s survival. However this may be, he began to play a modest part in local administration in the mid 1430s. On 29 Sept. 1435 he sat as a juror at Appleby at the inquisition post mortem of Elizabeth, widow of Thomas, Lord Clifford. Given that his family is not recorded as holding property in Westmorland before this date, it is, at first sight, curious that he should have done so. Later evidence, however, shows that he owned land at Thrimby near Appleby, perhaps through a wife or his mother.5 CIPM, xxiv. 393. His holdings at Thrimby are known from a series of actions he brought for close-breaking there from 1453: e.g. CP40/768, rot. 177d; 794, rot. 287; 832, rot. 291. In the mid 1460s his rights were contested by the priory of Watton in Yorks., but the record gives no indication of the basis of the contending titles: KB27/829, rot. 48; 830, rot. 81; 837, rot. 14d. More significantly, on 12 Jan. 1440 he travelled to Penrith to sit as a juror in the inquisition taken on the death of Katherine, wife of Richard Salkeld of Corby, some 12 miles from Triermain. Here he may have been acting as a friend of the family: the heir was a minor, also called Richard† (b.1425), and on the following 21 Feb. Vaux was able to secure from the Crown a joint lease of the manor of Corby to hold during the minority, a grant extended in 1442 to include the rest of the boy’s inheritance at a modest total annual rent of ten marks.6 CIPM, xxv. 394; CFR, xvii. 152, 226. The impression that he was acting in the interests of the family is strengthened by the readiness of the boy’s maternal uncle, William Stapleton, to act as mainpernor for the grantees. The heir proved his age in 1446: CIPM, xxvi. 586. He married the ward to his only child.

The pace of Vaux’s activities increased in the 1440s. In addition to appointments as escheator and commissioner of array, he sat as a gaol delivery juror on three occasions at Carlisle, the site of another of his outlying properties.7 JUST3/11/12, 15, 20. His landed interest in the city is known only from actions he brought for close-breaking: CP40/740, rot. 269; 748, rot. 354d. This rising status was probably occasioned by his entry into the service of the Nevilles: on 30 June 1443 he was one of those gathered at the earl’s castle at Middleham (Yorkshire) to witness the settlement of a dispute between William Stapleton* and Thomas, Lord Clifford.8 Cumbria RO, Carlisle, Musgrave of Edenhall mss, D/Mus/E172. His continued service to that great family brought a further quickening of his administrative activities in the 1450s. Between 1450 and 1453 he served successively as escheator, sheriff (holding the two offices simultaneously for 26 days) and MP, an improbably sudden combination for one serving only his own interest. His Neville connexion explains why his election was apparently contested at a time when the Nevilles were coming into increasing conflict with the Percys. The indenture of return, dated in the county court, names no fewer than 154 attestors, far more than in any other surviving fifteenth-century indenture for Cumberland. The Neville interest dominated: the sheriff, Thomas de la More*, was a supporter of the family; the attestors were headed by the earl of Salisbury’s younger son, Sir Thomas Neville, and Vaux and the other successful candidate for the county, John Skelton II*, together with one of the MPs for Carlisle, Thomas Derwent alias Derwentwater*, were seemingly all Neville men. Three of our MP’s male kin were among the attestors – John, Thomas and William Vaux, probably all of a junior branch of the family settled at Catterlen – together with several Skeltons. The most likely explanation is that the election was a demonstration of strength by the Nevilles to prevent the return of Percy adherents.9 C219/16/2. The election was also unusual in that it was not held until 13 Mar., a week after the Parl. had begun. This delay was an inevitable corollary of the unusually short interval allowed between summons and meeting, particularly in the northern counties when county courts were held only every six weeks rather than four. The return marks an interesting contrast with the previous Cumberland election, held in October 1450 and attested by our MP: on that occasion a Percy man, Thomas Crackenthorpe*, was returned to accompany a Neville servant, de la More, by a county court attended by the servants of both families.10 C219/16/1.

On 14 July 1453, during the second prorogation of his Parliament, Vaux was was described as an esquire resident at the Neville stronghold of Middleham when he offered mainprise in a royal grant to a fellow MP, John Archer II*. More significantly, when the earl of Salisbury became chancellor in the following April, Vaux and the other Cumberland MP, Skelton, were among his clients admitted to the customary privilege of prosecuting their debtors in the court of Chancery.11 CFR, xix. 34; R.L. Storey, End of House of Lancaster, 122-3. It is not known whether this support for Neville extended to taking up arms against the King at the first battle of St. Albans in May 1455, but Vaux did gain some benefit from the period of Yorkist dominance in the wake of their victory there. Since the conclusion of his term as sheriff in 1452 he had been pestered by the Exchequer to account for the full farm of the shire. He had petitioned eloquently against the injustice of this demand, citing, in the dramatic language typical of such petitions, the ‘grete discencions riottes and debates ... moeved and stired betwix certaine persones’ during his term of office ‘so that almost that oon half of the shire was diuided fro the other’. But he had also described in less hysterical language the general difficulties facing any sheriff of Cumberland in attempting to raise the full shrieval farm. For example, the sheriff was responsible for raising the sum of just over £43 p.a. from the royal demesne lands in the county, but, according to our MP’s petition, about a quarter of this property lay wasted by the Scots. For these and other reasons, Vaux claimed, he had been able to levy only about £62 of the total farm, adding that knowledge of this recurring shortfall had deterred men from taking the office and that he himself had only agreed to serve on the promise that he would be ‘put in comfort and trust to be utterly discharged’ of un-leviable sums. None the less, despite the strength of his case, the Exchequer refused to relent and Vaux took advantage of his new influence to force its hand. On 6 Aug. 1455 he secured a writ of privy seal ordering the end of process for any sums impossible to levy, and two months later he took the additional precaution of suing out a general pardon, with ‘sheriff of Cumberland’ as an alias. The Exchequer officials, however, remained unmoved and Vaux was forced to present a further petition to the new administration, complaining additionally of the great costs he had incurred ‘in rydyng and fyndyng of men in executyng of his seid office for diuerse discencions riottes and debates moeved’. On 16 Dec., at a council meeting attended by the Neville earls of Salisbury and Warwick, he was compensated with a pardon of account in the sum of £70 and the matter was closed.12 E159/232, brevia Mich. rot. 2, Hil. rot. 6d; C67/41, m. 27; E28/87/20.

Little is known of Vaux in the later 1450s. On 25 Feb. 1457 he secured, in the name of himself and his wife, Joan, a papal indult to have a portable altar. Similar licences were given on the same day to others connected with the Nevilles, including John Tunstall*, and it may be that the Nevilles had petitioned the Pope on their behalf. There is, however, no firm evidence that Vaux repaid the favour by taking up arms for them in the civil war of 1459-61. Although, on 5 Apr. 1460, while the Lancastrians were in control after Ludford Bridge, he sued out a general pardon, giving the Neville stronghold of Penrith as a former address, there is no reason to infer from this that he had fought at Ludford.13 CPL, xi. 130-1; C67/43, m. 3. Indeed, since (beyond pardon of accounts) he gained no traceable reward from his Neville service, it is likely that advancing age meant his support for the Yorkist cause was passive rather than active. Even so, his administrative skills were in demand after Edward IV’s accession since many of Cumberland’s leading gentry had disqualified themselves from appointment through support for Percy and Henry VI. He was the new regime’s choice of sheriff of Cumberland in November 1461 and a few days later he was named to a commission of array. This service brought him no direct grant of royal patronage, although he did successfully petition not only for a pardon of account of £140 in respect of the double term he served as sheriff but also for a payment of £100 as costs ‘in the resistyng and subduyng of oure traitours enemyes and Rebelles’.14 E159/241, brevia Hil. rot. 3.

Nevertheless, although trusted by the Yorkist government, Vaux did not rank alongside his former ward and son-in-law, Richard Salkeld, in local importance under the new dispensation. Indeed, he cuts a rather obscure figure in the last years of his career. Although in 1466 he was again named as sheriff, he took the office with the greatest reluctance and failed to serve out his full term.15 PRO List ‘Sheriffs’, 27. For the rest, aside from a brief and belated nomination to the Cumberland bench during the Readeption and the attestation of Richard Salkeld’s election to Parliament in 1472, his local activity was confined to service on juries. In August 1466 he was a juror in the inquisition taken at Carlisle into the lands of his neighbour the attainted Lancastrian, Ralph Dacre*, Lord Dacre, who, as a Dacre ward himself, he had probably known since boyhood. In March 1469 he attended the inquisitions post mortem of two prominent local widows, Margaret, widow of William Stapleton, and Margaret, widow of William Crackenthorpe*, and in September 1475, his last appearance in the records in an active role, he sat as a juror at both the Westmorland and Cumberland inquisitions taken on the death of Hugh Lowther*.16 C219/17/2; CPR, 1467-77, p. 610; C140/29/40, 42; 51/20.

Little can be discovered about Vaux’s associations with other Cumberland gentry. In the early 1460 he was acting as one of the administrators of another Neville servant, Thomas de la More (d.1459), one of whose daughters and coheirs married his kinsman, William Vaux of Catterlen.17 CP40/800, rot. 59; CPR, 1461-7, p. 253; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 749. This couple’s son, John, was retained by Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, in Apr. 1461: Cam. Misc. xxxii. 138. As we have seen, Roland’s own daughter and eventual heiress married his former ward, Richard Salkeld, a match known only from the couple’s surviving monumental effigy.18 VCH Cumb. ii. 217-18. Similarly obscure is our MP’s death date. An inquisition taken as late as 1486 returned him as tenant of Triermain and Tercrosset, and it can only be assumed that he died shortly afterwards. His death brought an ancient male line to an end: the castle of Triermain and his other lands descended through his daughter Joan to division between her daughters by Salkeld.19 Cumb. and West. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. iii. 177; n.s. xiv. 248.