CARLISLE, Robert I

Three Robert Carlisles represented the city of Carlisle between 1378 and 1449, the first between 1378 and 1388, the second between 1410 and 1422, and the third in 1449. Their careers overlap and no certain division can be drawn between them. It is, however, fairly clear that they represented three successive generations of the same family. On chronological grounds, the writ of May 1433 for the election of a new verderer in the forest of Inglewood is more likely to refer to the MP of 1378-88, than, as suggested in the earlier biography, the MP of 1410-22. Such writs were often issued tardily, and thus this revision does not rule out the speculation in the earlier biography that the former died soon after his mayoralty of 1424-5. It is, in any event, certain that the eldest Robert was dead by 13 Nov. 1429 when his son and widow, Margaret, quitclaimed to another of Carlisle’s leading citizens, William Denton, all his lands in Parton (near Whitehaven) with a moiety of the lordship there, which Denton had by his gift.3 Cumbria RO, Carlisle, Lonsdale mss, DLons/L/D52, 55. In an inq. of 1425, Denton and the MP’s father had been returned as lords of the manor of Parton: CIPM, xxii. 442. The quitclaim may represent the surrender of the Carlisles’ interest to Denton. If the writ of 1433 does indeed refer to his father, then the MP had a much longer and more important career than suggested in the earlier biography.

The foundation of Carlisle’s success was a legal training. He is almost certainly to be identified with the ‘Carlell’ who was a member of Lincoln’s Inn by 1420 and was still on the list of those liable to the payment of dues in the mid 1430s.4 Lincoln’s Inn, London, Black Bk. 1, ff. 1v, 13v, 24v. During the years when he routinely represented his native city in Parliament he was active as a lawyer in the central courts. In Hilary terms 1418 and 1420, for example, he (described as ‘junior’) stood surety for the payment of various small fines in the court of King’s bench, a function routinely discharged by attorneys in that court.5 KB27/627, fines rot.; 635, fines rot. 1d. About the time of his father’s death, however, he abandoned this life in favour of local affairs. In 1425 he was named as an arbiter to act on behalf of William Bewley† in a dispute involving some of Cumberland’s leading gentry, and, probably three years later, he assumed his father’s place on the quorum of the county bench.6 CP40/685, rot. 123. From the early 1430s he was occasionally appointed to local ad hoc commissions and regularly appeared as an attestor to the county’s parliamentary elections. His local importance was further emphasized by his office as steward of the prior of Carlisle and underpinned by an annual income, assessed in 1436, of £5 p.a.7 Cumbria RO, Aglionby of Nunnery mss, DAy1/127; E179/90/26. Indeed, he was significant enough to be nominated late in 1436 as one of the keepers of the west march pending the appointment of a new warden.8 Rot. Scot. ed. Macpherson etc., ii. 297.

In 1437-8 and 1439-40 Carlisle served as mayor of Carlisle, as his father had often done, and in the autumn of 1445 he was among the leading citizens of Carlisle sworn to keep the new ordinance concerning the city’s governance.9 H. Summerson, Med. Carlisle, ii. 421; Cumbria RO, Carlisle city recs. Ca2/15. Interestingly, his father’s career had followed a very similar course, for the father too, after representing Carlisle in several Parliaments as a young man, did not sit in Parliament again, but, for a further 40 years, remained very active in local affairs. This parallel between the careers of father and son supports the suggestion that the MP of 1410 lived long after his last return to Parliament, but the strongest evidence in its favour is provided by the description, on the dorse of the Cumberland electoral writ, of the Carlisle MP of February 1449 as ‘Robert Karlill, junior’. It is, of course, possible that there were four successive Robert Carlisles, and that the MP of 1410 was the grandfather rather than the father of the MP of 1449, but it is more likely that the second Robert, like his father, had a long career.

Despite, however, the probable length of that career, references to the MP are scarce. It seems unlikely that he is to be identified with the namesake, who, in February 1448, leased a meadow in Burwell in distant Cambridgeshire, but he was almost certainly the same man who, three years earlier, had sued one William Berwyk for fraudulently selling him 1,000 diseased sheep in London.10 CFR, xviii. 84; KB27/735, rot. 55. These agricultural interests are also reflected in the lease he took in 1448 from Marmaduke Lumley, bishop of Carlisle, of the episcopal tithes at Caldewstones (in Dalston) for an annual farm of four marks. Interests of another sort are reflected in the records of the mayor’s court of Carlisle. These records are now largely lost, but in the few surviving rolls of the late 1430s our MP is one of the most active litigants, suing for sums too small to be claimed in the court of common pleas. On 10 Sept. 1436, in the only action successfully concluded, he recovered 4s. 4d. from one Thomas Robinson as the unpaid farm for certain land in the city.11 Cumbria RO, Diocesan recs. DRC2/10; Carlisle city recs. Ca3/1/9-11.

Just as there is doubt about when the career of Carlisle’s father ended, so there is doubt about the end of his own career. He was certainly living in 1462-3, when he took receipt of his son’s fee for the stewardship of the bishop of Carlisle’s baronies of Dalston and Linstock, and it is a fair speculation that it was he rather than his son who is named in a list of the city’s creditors drawn up on 18 Aug. 1464. The best guess is that he died shortly after he was named on the quorum of the Cumberland commission of the peace of 6 Feb. 1466.12 Carlisle city recs. Ca4/138; Diocesan recs. DRC2/9. In any event he was certainly dead by Michaelmas term 1469, by which time his widow, Margaret, had assumed the farm of the bishop of Carlisle’s tithes at Caldewstones.13 Diocesan recs. DRC2/12.