WARDALE, Robert

Wardale first appears in the records in 1414 when, in company with John Dryng, he paid 6s. 8d. in tithes to the church of St. Mary in Scarborough. Another Wardale, William, also appears in the tithe accounts of that year and continued to do so until 1417, and it may be that he was our MP’s father.3 E101/514/31, ff. 8, 55. However this may be, Robert quickly became a far more important figure in local affairs than any of his ancestors had been. Between 1424 and 1450 he served at least eight terms as bailiff, and it is surprising, given this central place in the borough’s politics, that he should have been elected to Parliament on only one recorded occasion. His position was supported by what appear to have been significant commercial interests, although these are nowhere very clearly defined in the surviving records. In his early career he seems to have been in partnership with Dryng. In 1419, for example, the two men were joint-plaintiffs in actions of debt in the court of common pleas totalling £32 against Hugh Clitheroe† of Kingston-upon-Hull, a fishmonger of York, and others, and in 1421 they claimed nearly £40 from two local gentry. Later he worked with another of the town’s MPs, John Thorpe*. In November 1437 the two men took a bond in nearly £30 from another of the town’s merchants, Adam Quarrom, and in 1438 they were together sued for £40 by Sir John Constable*. To these joint actions are to be added several brought in his own right, the most notable of which was the £100 he claimed against four London mercers in 1428.4 CP40/632, rot. 92d; 641, rot. 20d; 671, rot. 273; 708, rot. 254; 718, rot. 171.

Wardale’s commercial interests were supplemented by landed ones. In 1442 he sued a yeoman and six husbandmen for breaking his close at Falsgrave, just outside the town. Earlier he had himself been a defendant in respect of property there. While an MP in the Parliament of 1426 he had been sued, in company with John Acclom*, also then sitting for Scarborough, by three local gentry, headed by Sir John Salvin. The offence was an apparently significant one in that the two MPs were accused of taking goods worth as much as £30 and depasturing grass worth £10, but there is no other evidence to give it context.5 CP40/662, rot. 20; 727, rot. 143.

Wardale’s lengthy and interesting will, made on 12 July 1457, adds to these modest details.6 Borthwick Inst. Univ. of York, York registry wills, prob. reg. 2, ff. 356-7. Like all the town’s leading burgesses, he wanted to be buried in the church of St. Mary, but he was more specific, directing that he be laid to rest near the font where Hugh Rasyn* lay buried. He described Rasyn as former master of the town’s grammar school, and he was perhaps remembering the man who had been responsible for his education. But he may also have been remembering, additionally or alternately, a benefactor in a material sense. His chief messuage was called ‘Schoolmaster’s Place’ and it may have come to him from Rasyn. Wardale’s charitable bequests were numerous if not individually large, and included 4d. to each of the 20 paupers resident in the almshouse of St. Thomas, with a further 13s. 4d. to be divided among the other poor of the town with the interesting proviso that ‘nullus Scotius habeat partem’. He left six marks for a chaplain to pray for his soul for seven years after his death (in the winter in the church of St. Mary and in the summer in the chapel of St. Thomas), with a further 6s. 8d. p.a. for the celebration of a perpetual obit in St. Mary’s for his own soul and those of his late wives, Agnes and Isabel, and of John Storror of Scarborough and Storror’s wife, Cecily. It is possible that he had inherited some property from Storror, perhaps in right of one of his wives. He left 16d. p.a. from the issues of his lands, in implementation of Storror’s will, to provide for four paupers living in two small almshouses near the house of the Friars Preachers.

Less conventional than these charitable bequests were the provisions Wardale made for his property. His son, Thomas, was already established in his own right, pursuing his fishing and trading interests from the late 1430s, and he was to have only a life annuity of 40s.7 Thomas paid tithes on catches of fish to the church of St. Mary: E101/514/32, ff. 30, 36v. Thomas’s daughter, Alice, was left a tenement in Cartgate (now Cross Street) in fee tail, and the rest of the family property, including ‘Schoolmaster’s Place’ and the holdings in Falsgrave, were to pass to her brother John in fee tail. Several remainders were limited in successive fee tail to Alice, the testator’s daughter, Agnes, wife of Christopher Millom, and then Alexander Sparrow of Northstead (near Scarborough), perhaps a grandson. If the issue of all three of them should fail then the bailiffs and community of Scarborough were to sell the property and put the proceeds to the enhancement and maintenance of the chapel and almshouse of St. Thomas. The executors entrusted with discharging these many provisions were the chief beneficiary, his grandson, John, and William Killinghall, vicar of Willerby, a few miles south of Scarborough, acting under the supervision of Robert Killom, vicar of St. Mary, and John Wynde, the chaplain of the chantry of St. James within the said church. They were to share £4 between them for their labour, and Killinghall was additionally bequeathed a ‘ciphum nigrum’.