BOTELER, Nicholas

More can be added to the earlier biography.2 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 306-7. In the late 1440s Boteler was involved in a dispute with his gentry neighbour, Thomas Travers of Nateby. Its origin seems to have lain in an alleged assault made by Travers’s son, John, on one of our MP’s servants. On 2 Aug. 1446 the elder Travers gave a bond in ten marks to Boteler, undertaking, in the spirit of compromise, to abide his award in the matter. Later Boteler brought an action on the bond, and Travers denied that he had knowingly accepted the condition. On this evidence the dispute was a routine one, yet it has one curious feature. At the Lancaster assizes of August 1450 Boteler sued Travers under the 1392 Statute of Praemunire, claiming that the defendant had brought various plaints against him in the court of Rome. Unfortunately, no details are given for the matter was not pleaded, but, in any event, the dispute was soon concluded. In the spring of 1451 our MP acknowledged himself satisfied of the debt and damages awarded him in the action on the bond.3 PL15/10, rot. 31; 16, rot. 16. This was nearly the last act of his career. Still living on the following 20 Aug., when he witnessed a conveyance of the manor of Elell (near Lancaster), the property of Sir Henry Pleasington*, he was dead by 1 May 1452, when his widow made a lease of some of his property at Garstang. She was alive as late as 1468.4 PL15/17, rot. 22d; 27, rot. 14d; 30, rot. 4; CP40/826, rot. 44.

Shortly before his death, in the subsidy returns of 1450-1, Boteler was assessed on an income of £30 p.a., although the fact that he had earlier twice been distrained to take up knighthood implies his real income was over £40 p.a.5 PL14/155/7/119.