WARTON, Hugh

Warton, one of the few men of any significance to represent Leominster during the reign of Henry VI, hailed from a minor gentry family from Wharton, in the immediate neighbourhood of that borough. Something of his family circumstances is revealed in legal actions of 1422 and 1436. On 9 Mar. 1422, before the assize justices at Hereford, he was a defendant, alongside Agnes, widow of William Warton, another William Warton and others, in an assize of novel disseisin sued by Roger Morris and Margaret Piriton, his wife, for property in Leominster, Stoke and Eaton; in Easter term 1436 he was sole defendant when Joan, widow of the younger William Warton, claimed dower in a messuage, 120 acres of land, 26 acres of meadow, 10 acres of pasture, eight acres of wood and 19s. 6d. of rent in Wharton, Newton, Eton Gamage, Ivington and Leominster.1 JUST1/1525, rot. 11d; CP40/701, rot. 104d. In 1429 Morris was still pursuing Agnes for part of the estate claimed in 1422: CP40/672, rot. 432. This leaves no doubt that our MP was the younger William’s heir, and little that they were both sons of the elder William.

As a younger son Hugh had his own way to make in the world, and by Henry V’s death he had found a place in the royal household, among the ranks of the yeomen of the Crown. To whose patronage he owed this advancement is unknown, although it is possible that he was related to John Warton, a yeoman of Henry IV’s buttery.2 CCR, 1402-5, p. 285. His position was a remunerative one, for the royal yeomen were well rewarded. On 9 Dec. 1422 Warton sued out letters patent granting him, for life, 6d. a day from the issues of his native county, a grant authorized by a bill endorsed by Henry V’s chamberlain, presumably in the last days of that King’s reign.3 CPR, 1422-9, pp. 87-88; E159/200, brevia Easter rot. 8. His annuity appears to have been paid regularly: E101/565/32/4. Not only did this annuity give him resources beyond that of other Leominster men, but his place in the royal household recommended him to the borough’s electors, as one whose ordinary duties kept him at Westminster and who would thus be ready to serve for little or no wages. The relationship may have been a symbiotic one, in that a place in the Commons probably added to his prestige in the Household.

On 2 Mar. 1430, a week after the end of his second Parliament, Warton was one of 134 yeomen of the royal household retained to go with the young King to France, each taking wages of 45s. 6d., that is 6d. a day, for their first quarter’s service, and the same sum, payable on 1 May, for the second quarter. He probably remained continuously in the royal entourage until the King returned to England late in January 1432. This is implied by a later financial account which shows that he was owed 46s. 8d. for three periods of service, namely, March to May, August to October 1431 and January 1432, and there is no reason to suppose he returned in the interim.4 E404/46/302-3; E403/693, m. 20; 695, m. 6; SC8/153/7626, 7629. In the course of this Household service, he probably witnessed both of Henry VI’s coronations, the first on 6 Nov. 1429 at Westminster, during a Parliament of which he was a Member, and the second in Paris on 16 Dec. 1431.

Once home Warton lost little time in resuming his parliamentary career. On 25 Apr. 1432 he was elected for Leominster in company with the most important townsman, Richard Winnesley*; and he was returned again on 16 Sept. 1435. In the meantime, he had been one of the Herefordshire men who took the oath of 1434 not to maintain peace-breakers.5 C219/14/3, 5; CPR, 1429-36, p. 377. These, however, were to be among the last acts of a career that ended just as it was beginning to flourish. On 1 Feb. 1437 Warton was granted the keepership of the King’s artillery in the castles of North Wales with its daily wages of 6d., a sinecure that could be exercised by deputy; on the following 2 Dec., he was sent by the royal council in London to the King at Windsor, presumably to take a message; and, four days later, he was one of those to whom the Herefordshire esquire, Thomas Bromwich*, acting as a feoffee of the late Richard de la Mare*, was licensed by the Crown to grant the manor of Brimfield.6 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 35, 43, 125; E403/729, m. 6; B.P. Wolffe, Hen. VI, 361. Yet, at this point his career suddenly ends. Most likely he had died: the appointment, on 30 Dec. 1437, of John Norris* to his keepership of artillery is consistent with such an explanation.7 CPR, 1436-41, p. 142. On the other hand, he may still have been alive in Hilary term 1443 when a Hugh Warton sued Leominster’s overlord, the abbot of Reading, for assaulting him there. Later references are, however, more certainly to be assigned to a namesake, probably his son. This Hugh, who was assessed to the subsidy of 1451 on an income of £5 p.a. in the hundred of Leominster, was appealed as an accessory to murder in 1454, and attested the Leominster election of 1478.8 CP40/729, rot. 284; E179/117/64; KB27/773, rot. 58d; C219/17/3.