WASTNES, John

The branch of the Wastnes family to which John belonged had been established at Todwick in south Yorkshire since before 1300, when it had a grant of free warren there, and at Headon in north Nottinghamshire from early in the reign of Edward III.6 J. Hunter, S. Yorks. ii. 159; CChR, ii.489; R. Thoroton, Notts. ed. Throsby, iii. 250-1. The latter manor was held of the duchy of Lancaster honour of Tickhill, and this tenurial tie was supplemented by one of service. At the time of the Lancastrian revolution of 1399, our MP’s grandfather, another John, was one of those who had garrisoned Nottingham castle on behalf of Henry of Bolingbroke, and was rewarded with a life annuity of 20 marks assigned on the duchy honour of Leicester.7 R. Somerville, Duchy, i. 350; S.J. Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian Eng. 128. For the er. John’s will, proved 20 Jan. 1409: Borthwick Inst. Univ. of York, Abps. Reg. 18 (Bowet), f. 343. This theme of Lancastrian service continued into the next generation. Our MP’s father participated in the campaigns of 1415 and 1417, on the latter occasion in the retinue of Henry, Lord Fitzhugh, and, if one may draw an inference from his death as a comparatively young man early in 1420, he may have fallen in France.8 E101/45/1, m. 6; 51/2. Another member of the family, Richard, who may have been our MP’s uncle, pursued a military career that lasted into the 1430s.9 Richard’s place in the pedigree is unknown, but that he was related to our MP is implied by the appearance of John’s future brother-in-law, Henry Boson, in his war retinue of 1435, and of John’s relative, John Holme, as his surety in 1440: DKR, xlviii. 307; CPR, 1436-41, p. 429.

On the death of his father, John was still a minor, and his wardship should have passed either to the King, as duke of Lancaster, or, more properly, to John Talbot, Lord Furnival and later earl of Shrewsbury, from whom the manor of Todwick was held.10 Yorks. IPM, 159. There is, however, some indirect evidence that, initially at least, he was in the custody of his powerful neighbour, Sir Richard Stanhope*, one of the executors of his father’s will.11 His father’s will has not been traced, but Stanhope is described as his executor in a common-law action: CP40/656, rot. 262d. In November 1421 Stanhope was ordered to make available for the scrutiny of two duchy lawyers those evidences in his custody which related to the manor of Headon, a demand which no doubt arose out of concerns of the duchy council that the King had been deprived of his legitimate rights. Unfortunately the outcome of this inquiry is not recorded.12 DL42/17, f. 170. It was while a minor that, in Hilary term 1421, Wastnes was sued in the court of common pleas by a Yorkshire esquire, John Holme of Paulholme, for the manor of Todwick. Holme claimed in right of his wife, Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of one Adam Wastnes. The pedigree of the family is not well enough documented to be certain of the unlikely merits of this claim, but in any case it proved unsuccessful.13 CP40/640, rot. 135; Hunter, ii. 159.

Wastnes began his public career by attesting the Nottinghamshire parliamentary election of 1425 and, unusually for one of the the gentry from the north of the county, he regularly appeared as an attestor for the remainder of his career. At this early period of that career he may have followed the example of his father and putative uncle, Richard, by fighting in France. Either he or a namesake was serving in the garrison at Alençon early in 1434, although, if this was our MP, there is no other evidence of his military service.14 C219/13/3; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, Fr. 25771/831. Later in the same year his prospects were improved by what appears to have been an act of generosity on the part of his mother and her new husband, the rising lawyer, Richard Bingham. By a fine levied in Michaelmas term 1434 they conveyed to him her dower interest in the manors of Headon and Todwick.15 CP25(1)/292/68/153. Even with this concession, he was assessed on an annual income of only £26 in the tax returns of 1435-6, but, given that he was distrained to take up knighthood in both 1430 and 1439, this must have been an underestimate.16 E179/240/266. In 1412 his father had been assessed at £20 p.a. on his Notts. lands alone, and the family’s property in Yorks. was valued at 26 marks in an inquisition of 1420: E179/159/48; Yorks. IPM, 159.

Wastnes’s first appointment to the shrievalty in 1441 marks a sudden rise to prominence, for it was unusual for such an important office to be a landholder’s first experience of local government. His term of office was not a happy one. Although he was granted a pardon of account in £50 at its conclusion, he faced several suits for his alleged failure to make the payments charged on his shrievalty. On 5 June 1443 Sir William Meryng* complained in the Exchequer of pleas that he had withheld £4 10s. of his parliamentary wages, and on the same day the executors of Sir Ralph Gray, formerly captain of Roxburgh castle, sued him for failing to honour tallies in the sum of 49 marks assigned on the issues of his bailiwick. Later, in Trinity term 1446, he was summoned before the Exchequer barons to explain why, in his shrieval accounts, he had claimed allowance of £19 as paid to Sir William Babington, the former c.j.c.p., in discharge of a tally, when no such sum had been paid.17 E159/219, brevia Hil. rot. 4; Parliamentarians at Law ed. Kleineke, 373; CP40/728, rot. 243; E13/142, rot. 49; 144, rots. 45, 54d.

Wastnes attested the parliamentary elections of January 1447 and October 1449, when, in an election unusually held at Newark rather than Nottingham, Henry Boson, who was probably already his brother-in-law, was returned. A year later, on 19 Oct. 1450, it was his turn to be elected.18 C219/15/4, 7; 16/1. Nothing known of his previous career suggests that his election had any political dimension, but an incidental reference suggests that it may have done. The name ‘Wastnesse’ (without a Christian name) occurs in the exchange of bills between the King and Richard, duke of York, which took place in the highly-charged circumstances of the last days of September and the first days of October 1450. According to the King’s answer to York’s first bill ‘one Wastnesse’ was among those who had threatened him, apparently to his face, that York, then in Ireland, ‘schuld be fechid home with many thousandis’ to assume control of government.19 R.A. Griffiths, King and Country, 283n., 301. If our MP was a supporter of York, it would explain his election not only to this Parliament but also to that of 1455, which met after the Yorkist victory at the first battle of St. Albans. On balance, however, the identification is to be rejected. If our MP was a Yorkist militant enough to make threats in front of the King, then it is surprising that there is no other evidence of his Yorkist allegiance.

A more likely explanation for Wastnes’s elections in both 1450 and 1455 is a connexion with the leading Nottinghamshire magnate, Ralph, Lord Cromwell. It is probably significant that his fellow Nottinghamshire MP in both Parliaments was one of Cromwell’s close associates, Richard Illingworth*. Further, there is some evidence that Wastnes had his own connexion with this powerful lord. In February 1451, during the second session of the 1450 Parliament, he acted as surety in Chancery for two of Cromwell’s most intimate followers, John Tailboys*and William Stanlowe*, when they were granted the keeping of Somerton castle in Lincolnshire, and in the following February he acted in the same capacity for Stanlowe alone. It may also be relevant that on at least one occasion he borrowed money from Cromwell: the accounts of the latter’s executors show that, at their testator’s death, Wastnes owed him £10.20 CFR, xviii. 196, 254; Magdalen Coll. Oxf. Cromwell pprs. 127/34, m. 5. He was also associated with Cromwell’s friend, John Talbot, who succeeded to the earldom of Shrewsbury in 1453. Not only was his manor of Todwick held of the Talbots, but, in June 1451, he acted as a mainpernor when Talbot was granted the keeping of the Derbyshire manor of Bakewell. This connection may have been significant in the context of his election in 1455. Among the 61 attestors were, most unusually for a Nottinghamshire election, two Derbyshire men, Robert Eyre* and John Statham, the first a servant of Shrewsbury, the second of Cromwell.21 CFR, xviii. 201; Payling, 166.

These connexions are themselves sufficient to explain Wastnes’s two elections without the need to seek a further explanation in strong Yorkist sympathies. In any event, what little is known of his career in the late 1450s offers further contradiction to the notion that he was a militant Yorkist. He was pricked for his second term as sheriff in 1456 when the Lancastrians were very firmly in control of administration, and he appears to have remained on amicable terms with the increasingly-militant Lancastrian regime of the late 1450s. On 15 Nov. 1457, at the end of his shrievalty, he was awarded a pardon of account in the sum of £80; and he also secured the additional security of a general pardon.22 E159/234, brevia Trin. rot. 25d; C67/42, m. 35. A year later he was appointed to the only major administrative office he had not yet held, that of j.p., and it was clear that the government considered him a trustworthy member of the county gentry. In any event, his political loyalties were not to be tested because he died before eruption of the civil war of 1459-61. Alive on 13 July 1459, when he appeared personally in the Exchequer to pay a fine of 6s. 8d. for an allowance falsely claimed during his first shrievalty, he was dead by the following 28 Aug., when a writ of diem clausit extremum was issued in respect of his lands in Nottinghamshire. A few days later, on 2 Sept., his widow took the veil, and on the following 3 Apr. she was granted administration of her intestate late husband’s goods.23 E13/144, rot. 54d; CFR, xix. 214; Test. Ebor. iii (Surtees Soc. xlv), 335; Borthwick Inst., Abps. Reg. 20 (Booth), f. 278v. Yet, although he was very firmly dead in the eyes of the Church, the government was slow to acknowledge his death. No inquisition appears to have been taken in response to the writ of August 1459, and in November 1460 Wastnes’s name oddly appears on the list of new escheators.24 CFR, xix. 292. This appointment can hardly be taken as evidence of a new commitment to the Yorkists, then in control of government, for there can be no doubt that he was dead.

Wastnes was succeeded by his son Richard, who, shortly before his father’s death, had married a minor Leicestershire heiress, Elizabeth Ryddynges of Prestwold. He did not long survive our MP and he was in turn succeeded by his half-brother, Robert (d.1477), then a minor. The latter wardship led to a dispute with the earl of Shrewsbury’s widow, Elizabeth. In Easter 1469 she had an action pending against the boy’s mother claiming damages of £200 for detinue of her ward. Our MP’s widow compounded the offence by marrying the boy to Elizabeth, daughter of the wealthy York merchant, Thomas Nelson*, without the dowager countess’s consent. The matter was quickly resolved by arbiters headed by John Neville, Marquess Montagu, and by the mother’s agreement to pay 50 marks.25 Trans. Leics. Arch. Soc. xvii. 43-44; CP40/831, rot. 449; E210/10755; Heraldic Vis. of Northern Counties, 8; Hunter, ii. 160.

Despite his family’s remarkable longevity in the male line, John Wastnes is one of only two of its members known to have been elected to Parliament.26 His ancestor, Hardolph Wastnes, sat in the Parliament of Sept. 1337, but he was summoned by name rather than elected: OR, i. 115. His direct descendant in the male line, Sir Hardolph – an unusual Christian name used by the family in the fourteenth century – was created a baronet in 1622. Not until 1742, with the childless death of another Sir Hardolph†, the only other known MP in the family, did the family fail in the male line.27 The Commons 1690-1715, v. 809. Although the estates passed away from the male line in 1742, a William Wastnes assumed the baronetcy in 1887: Complete Baronetage ed. Cokayne, i. 213-14.