CRACKENTHORPE, John

John Crackenthorpe was still under age when his father, a prominent local lawyer, was murdered on 25 Aug. 1438 in the course of a feud over the inheritance of our MP’s mother.4 According to the jurors in his father’s inqs. post mortem, he was born on 2 Feb. 1420: C139/92/35a. Much later, in his mother’s inq. post mortem, the jurors cited a deed, dated 14 Oct. 1417, naming him as remainderman in a settlement of the manor of Bromfield, but this, and other deeds cited by the jurors, appears to have been a forgery: C140/7/6. At the time he may have been studying at Lincoln’s Inn, with which the Crackenthorpes, in their several branches, had very close links. Not only had his father been a prominent fellow, but several other members of the family were trained there during the Lancastrian period. The records of admissions rarely provide Christian names, but at Christmas 1441 a ‘John Crackenthorpe the second’ was admitted. This may have been our MP, as also may have been the ‘Crakenthorp’ admitted two years earlier and even the ‘Crakenthorp junior’, a member in the mid 1430s.5 L. Inn Adm. i. 8; Lincoln’s Inn, London, Black Bk. 1, f. 24v. The last is the more likely, for, as early as 28 Nov. 1439, described as ‘son of Robert’, our MP joined a senior member of the inn, Robert Sheffeld* in taking a bond from the wealthy Derbyshire knight, Sir Richard Vernon*. Vernon, on pain of £100, undertook to ensure that a yeoman of his Westmorland manor of Maulds Meaburn would surrender to the Marshalsea, presumably to indemnify the two lawyers for sureties they had offered on the yeoman’s behalf. Soon after, our MP may have been briefly active as an attorney in the court of common pleas: in Michaelmas term 1440 either he or a namesake represented Sir Christopher Moresby†.6 CCR, 1435-41, p. 354; CP40/719, rot. 243.

It is not clear what property Crackenthorpe inherited from his father, a younger son, dependant on his wife’s inheritance and the profits of his legal career for the bulk of his income. Indeed, when, in 1446, our MP appeared personally in the court of common pleas to answer Thomas, Lord Dacre, for a debt on a bond entered into by his father in 1429, he pleaded, probably accurately, that he had no lands in fee simple from his father.7 Dacre replied he had property in Bromfield, but this seems to have been part of our MP’s maternal inheritance: CP40/742, rot. 288; C140/7/6. To make matters worse, he had a long wait before he inherited the much more extensive estates of his heiress mother. She lived until 1462, holding the manors of Howgill, Milburn and Skirwith, clustered in the neighbourhood of Penrith either side of the border between Cumberland and Westmorland, together with the more distant Cumberland manor of Bromfield.8 C140/7/6. She may, however, have made some concessions to him. He is generally styled as ‘of Howgill’, implying that he was living at her manor there, and it is hard to explain his part in local affairs before her death without the assumption that she had surrendered something to him. None the less, her long life helps to explain why he cut a much less impressive figure than his father.

It is hard to establish a satisfactory narrative of Crackenthorpe’s career, for he cannot be entirely distinguished from his first cousin and near-neighbour, resident at Newbiggin (near Howgill) and who may also have been a member of Lincoln’s Inn, and, after the death of this slightly older man in 1466, from that John’s son and heir.9 Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. xxxiii. facing p. 43. It was John of Newbiggin (b.c.1413), who married Anastasia, wid. of John Hebden (d.1439) of York: C139/92/35b; CP40/732, rot. 456; Test. Ebor. ii (Surtees Soc. xxx), 148n. The relationship between the two cousins appears to have been close. In his will of 1462 the Newbiggin John left our MP his second-best covered silver cup: Test. Ebor. ii. 148n.

It is, however, certain that it was our MP who, despite his lack of lands, served a term as escheator of Cumberland and Westmorland in 1444-5.10 CFR, xvii. 304. That he, rather than his Newbiggin cousin, was the escheator is established by a suit of 1449, when our MP, as late escheator, and Thomas Crackenthorpe brought pleas of debt of 200 marks, filed in Mdx., against Thomas’s brother, John ‘of Newbiggin’, and three others: CP40/755, rot. 586. Later, at Appleby in October 1450, he both stood as a juror at the inquisition post mortem of Margaret, widow of Sir Robert Lowther†, and attested the election of his obscure stepfather, John Strete II*, as MP for Westmorland.11 C139/133/2; C219/16/1 In between times he appears to have made periodic trips to Westminster. On 28 Apr. 1446 he was in Chancery to enter into a bond in ten marks to two Chancery clerks, and in the following June he was in the Exchequer of pleas to answer Thomas Bewley for, as escheator, illegally seizing livestock worth seven marks. More interesting, in either 1447 or 1448 he took responsibility for delivering into the court of King’s bench an indictment taken before the Cumberland j.p.s at Carlisle.12 CCR, 1441-7, p. 382; E13/144, rot. 41; KB9/276/9.

Crackenthorpe’s willingness to travel may have recommended him to the Westmorland electors, for on 15 Mar. 1453 he was returned to Parliament with John Tunstall*, a servant of Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury.13 C219/16/2. Some irregularity attached to Tunstall’s return – his name has been added in different hand and ink in gaps left in the indenture and on the dorse of the writ – and it may be that Crackenthorpe was the electors’ choice and Tunstall the earl’s. There is, in any event, little reason to suppose that our MP also numbered among the earl’s retinue. Indeed, what little evidence there is implies he did not, despite the fact that he lived in the neighbourhood of the earl’s castle at Penrith. In 1446 Salisbury had sued him for breaking into his house at Gamelsby, near Carlisle, and taking goods worth £10, an offence perhaps arising from one of Crackenthorpe’s actions as escheator. Of more significance, in his will of 1 Dec. 1449 Sir John Neville, son and heir of Ralph, earl of Westmorland, named a John Crackenthorpe among his executors. This may have been the John resident at Newbiggin, but if it was our MP it would place him at potential odds with Salisbury, who was then in dispute with the earl of Westmorland, as the representative of the senior branch, over the family inheritance.14 CP40/741, rot. 411; 742, rot. 41d; Test. Ebor. ii. 146-8.

At the next Westmorland election, held on 3 July 1455, Crackenthorpe attested the anomalous return of his first cousin, Thomas Crackenthorpe*, a Percy retainer with little property in the county.15 C219/16/3. This indenture is badly damaged so it is not possible to see whether Moresby was party to it as sheriff. He had, however, been dep. to the hereditary sheriff of the county, Thomas, Lord Clifford, killed on the King’s side at St. Albans, and he was not replaced in office until Nov. 1455. A year later he was added to the Westmorland bench in an expansion of the quorum, and, a year after that, he was named to his first ad hoc commission of local government.16 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 409, 680. Yet thereafter his career did not flourish, despite the fact that his lands were significantly augmented by his mother’s death in 1462. Although he retained his place on the bench, it was nearly 20 years before he was again named to a casual commission. Why this should have been so is difficult to say. It may be that he was identified with the house of Lancaster: his cousin, Thomas Crackenthorpe, fell in that cause at the battle of Towton, and the same source that identifies Thomas as among the fallen also names ‘Sir John Crackenthorpe’. This must, however, be an error. Both our MP and his namesakes of Newbiggin survived the battle. Another source suggests potentially different loyalties for our MP: it has a ‘John Grakyngthorp’ among those who travelled north with Edward IV to fight the Lancastrians late in 1462. The likelihood, however, is that this was one of the Newbiggin Johns, probably the younger one.17 Three 15th Cent. Chrons. (Cam. Soc. n.s. xxviii), 157, 160-1.

References to the MP in the 1460s are few. On 6 Nov. 1461 he was given favourable terms by the governors of Lincoln’s Inn for the payment of the arrears of his dues as a member of the Inn; and a month later he offered surety when the keeping of a third of the forfeited Percy lordship of Egremont was committed to William Irton.18 L. Inn Black Bks. i. 36; J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), i. 100, 538; CFR, xx. 45. Five years later, in 1466, he sued (Sir) William Martindale* and other Martindales for subverting his soil at Bromfield, near the Martindale residence at Westnewton; and on 12 Feb. 1469 he sued out a general pardon.19 CP40/818, rot. 71; C67/46, m. 10.

Against this background of modest activity, it is surprising to find Crackenthorpe much more active in the 1470s, at least as far as activity is accurately reflected in the surviving records. On 6 Oct. 1472 he was named second in the list of attestors to the Cumberland parliamentary election, and in the following June he was added to the quorum of the bench in that county.20 C219/17/2. From 1475 he was named to routine gaol delivery commissions for Appleby, and, more significantly, by 12 Jan. 1478, when he conducted the county’s parliamentary election, he was under sheriff of Cumberland. It is tempting to identify the under sheriff as his younger and more important namesake of Newbiggin, but the latter was a knight by March 1472 and the under sheriff is not identified as such in the return. If, as seems likely, the MP was the under sheriff, then the explanation for his new prominence in the 1470s may lie in a connexion with Richard, duke of Gloucester, who was named as sheriff of Cumberland for life in February 1475.21 C219/17/3; PRO List ‘Sheriffs’, 27; CPR, 1467-77, p. 485. If so, this would help explain his restoration to the Westmorland bench, and the addition of his second son, Anthony, to the j.p.s there, in May 1483.22 Both Anthony and his er. bro. Ambrose were admitted to L. Inn in the 1470s: Baker, i. 537-8. Yet this late flowering of his career is not reflected outside his appointment to office. He last appears in the records in the spring of 1485, when commissioned to arrest several members of the Martindale family who held Hayton castle against the Musgraves, and he was probably dead by the following autumn. He was, in any event, omitted from the first commissions of the peace of Henry VII’s reign.23 CPR, 1476-85, pp. 545-6; 1485-94, pp. 484, 504.

Towards the end of his life Crackenthorpe married his eldest son, Ambrose, to Isabel, whose family name is unknown. On 10 Aug. 1478 he settled the manor of Skirwith, the inheritance of his mother, on the couple in jointure, and, three days later, he made the same settlement of the manor of Bromfield. It is odd that he should have chosen to divest himself of his Cumberland manors, but in doing so he did not lose his place on the bench. The family failed in its senior main line on the death of Ambrose in 1520, leaving the inheritance to be divided between Anthony’s three daughters.24 C142/35/79.