MAIDSTONE, Richard

More may be added to the earlier biography.3 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 666-8.

The inglorious end to Maidstone’s first expedition to France did not deter him from further military service, and in July 1417 he once again crossed the Channel, on this occasion in the retinue of the earl of March.4 E101/51/2; DKR, xliv. 589, 597. He would maintain a close connexion with March for the remainder of the latter’s short career. After the earl’s appointment as lieutenant of Ireland in May 1423, he charged Maidstone with the receipt of the funds assigned to him for the safekeeping of the lordship. Having been ordered by the government to commandeer shipping for the lieutenant’s crossing, Maidstone was left to advance money of his own to satisfy the masters and mariners, and he was still receiving repayments from the chamberlain of North Wales in November 1424.5 E403/660, mm. 12, 15; 663, mm. 5, 8, 10; 666, m. 13; 669, m. 6. Maidstone probably remained in Ireland until the earl’s death of the plague in January 1425, but on his return lost little time in profiting from his master’s untimely demise. The earl’s estates, with the exception of the widowed countess’s dower lands, had been entrusted to Archbishop Chichele, and it was he who in January 1427 farmed the chase of South Fryth in Kent to Maidstone for an annual rent of five marks. Within four years, this lease became the subject of litigation in the court of common pleas, for the archbishop had assigned the rent to one Christopher Medecroft, who, so Maidstone claimed, had refused to receive it.6 CP40/683, rot. 469.

Around the same time Maidstone also became involved in a far more serious dispute, as a result of his marriage to Joan Durant, the twice-widowed mother-in-law of Sir John Arundell II* of Trerice. In November 1414 Joan and Geoffrey Jolynton, then her husband, had agreed to farm her dower lands to Arundell and his wife for an annual rent of £20, but by March 1431 this rent had fallen into arrears by eight years. Maidstone and his wife were able to raise the outstanding money by distraint, but simultaneously sued the Arundells in the court of common pleas. Using his privileges as an officer of the Crown, Maidstone also began a parallel suit before the chancellor, and although Sir John duly appeared and was granted permission to continue to fight his case by attorney, he was soon summoned back into Chancery in person by a fresh complaint lodged by Maidstone, and had to find sureties of £500 for his appearance. The dispute continued throughout the Parliaments of 1432 and 1433 in which Arundell and Maidstone respectively sat as knights of the shire, but only in late 1434 did the parties agree to seek the arbitration of the prominent lawyers Nicholas Aysshton*, Nicholas Radford*, John Fortescue* and Master Peter Styuecle, or in the event of their failing to agree, the award of Chief Justice Cheyne. Mutual bonds of £400 were sealed to confirm the agreement, but although in February 1435 Arundell agreed to pay 200 marks to Maidstone, litigation in the matter was still ongoing in Easter term 1437, and the quarrel was probably terminated only by Joan Maidstone’s death in 1439.7 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 349, 350, 354; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 91; iii. 667; CP40/683, rot. 463; 695, rots. 34, 136d, 253; 705, rot. 447; C1/1508/5.

Having set out on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land shortly afterwards, on his return Maidstone remarried. His second wife, Joan Dauntsey, has not been identified, but she was clearly not the sister of Sir Walter Dauntsey of Dauntsey who by this date was already married to John Dewall*.8 VCH Wilts. xiv. 12. She did, however, bring property to her husband, for one Richard Bray, who had been present when Maidstone and Joan had negotiated their marriage recalled how she had said to her prospective husband ‘Sir, I have of myn oun and may make yowe seure of xx marcs worth of lyflode’, and he had replied ‘Dame, and ye doo soo I shall doo yowe as goode a torn’.9 C4/99/32. The marriage did not last long, however, for Maidstone himself died soon after. He is last recorded at the Middlesex shire elections on 11 Jan. 1442, and had died by 13 May 1443, before which date a petition regarding his daughter’s inheritance had been presented to the chancellor. As a result of this petition, the court of Chancery heard how Joan had taken the precaution of hiring a London scrivener, a man called Joy, who had previously assisted her in similar matters, to forge a deed (supposedly made on the day after their wedding) settling the remainder of all her husband’s lands after his death on her and her heirs, and had attempted to bribe one of Maidstone’s supposed feoffees to swear to the legality of the matter in court, if required.10 C219/15/2/47; C1/10/93; C4/99/32.