STANHOPE, Sir Richard

The earlier biography is mistaken in describing Elizabeth, cousin and heir of Sir Roger Cuyly (d.1359) of Ansty in Warwickshire, as the widow of Stanhope’s elder brother.7 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 452-5. She was rather his stepmother. The distinction is an important one. By a final concord levied in 1380, our MP’s father had settled the Cuyly inheritance (which besides Ansty, included manors at Brizlincote in Bretby in Derbyshire, Ratcliffe Culey in Leicestershire and Oxton in Nottinghamshire) on his issue by his former wife, our MP’s mother. This irregular settlement later led Sir Richard into dispute with Roger Deyncourt, son of Sir John Deyncourt (d.1393) by Margery, widow of Sir Roger Cuyly. In a petition presented in the Parliament of October 1404, of which Stanhope was a Member, Deyncourt claimed that the note of the supposed fine of 1380 was forged ‘par aide et favour’ of the chirographer of the common pleas. This allegation is unlikely to have been true, but Sir Richard, perhaps believing that there were other grounds on which his title could be challenged, proved willing to compromise. On 30 Nov. 1406 Deyncourt quitclaimed the manor of Ansty to him and his heirs; in return he surrendered to Deyncourt the royal life annuity of 40 marks he had enjoyed since 1400.8 VCH Warws. viii. 43; PROME, viii. 313-14; CCR, 1405-9, p. 231; CPR, 1405-8, p. 277.

This dispute was one of several in which the combative Stanhope was involved. A petition in the Leicester Parliament of April 1414 gives a vivid account of one of the most notable of them. His neighbour, Margaret, widow of William Bassett of Fledborough, laid against him the general charge of oppression and cited specific instances, the most serious of which was an assault committed in May 1406. In normal circumstances such a petition would have excited little response, but Henry V’s determination to pacify the country before his departure for France ensured that this was not so in this case. Sir Richard was called to answer before the King and Lords and his denial of Margaret’s charges did not convince his examiners. He was committed to custody in Kenilworth castle on the grounds that, since he was ‘un de les plus puissant et riotous persons’ in Nottinghamshire and the complainant merely a ‘povre et simple’ widow, the truth of the allegations could not be adequately investigated while he remained at large.9 PRO31/7/114 (a copy of SC8/97/4081, which is now only partially legible). Although his earlier extensive involvement in disorder in the county amply justified his imprisonment, it would be wrong to give too much credence to Margaret’s allegations or to dismiss out of hand his vigorous denial of them in the next Parliament. Judging from the presentments made against the petitioner before commissioners of inquiry on 1 June 1414 she was far from a poor and simple widow.10 RP, iv. 55 (cf. PROME, ix. 110); KB9/204/2/24; KB27/617, rex rot. 22d. Moreover, whatever the truth of her allegations, their context was a family dispute in which Stanhope appears to have had the support of other members of her family. In April 1412 Margaret’s son, Thomas Bassett, had conveyed all his landed property in Nottinghamshire and Warwickshire to our MP, and soon after named him as one of his executors. Once released from captivity Sir Richard had his own complaints about Margaret’s behaviour. In Michaelmas term 1414 he sued two actions against her in the court of common pleas: one for her failure to render account of issues from her son’s lands in Warwickshire, which she had occupied during his minority; the other for taking sheep and trees worth 40 marks from the Bassett property at Stokeham near Rampton.11 Add. Ch. 15740; CP40/615, rots. 505, 580.

Margaret’s death soon afterwards ended the dispute but was not quite the end of Sir Richard’s difficulties regarding the Bassett inheritance. In 1415 Philip Repingdon, bishop of Lincoln, sued him (together with his brother-in-law, Ralph Cromwell, Sir Thomas Chaworth* and Thomas Pensax, parson of Fledborough) on a plea that they render him the custody of the land and heir of Thomas Bassett, whom he claimed had been his tenant by knight service. Their competing claims were resolved ‘per mediacionem amicorum’ by an award made at Westminster on 6 Nov. 1416. It was agreed that the bishop should concede the wardship to Stanhope, who was in return to offer payment of £40, £20 of which was to be pardoned to him ‘ob reverenciam et devocionem quas erga ipsum reverendum patrem et ecclesiam suam Lincoln’ idem dominus Ricardus gerere’.12 CP40/621, rot. 106d; Reg. Repingdon (Lincoln Rec. Soc. lxxiv), 136-8. This left Sir Richard free to marry the heir, William Bassett, to his daughter Katherine. Whatever the rights and wrongs of his conduct towards to the family up to this date his treatment of his son-in-law was highly questionable. He did not re-convey the Bassett patrimony to him on his coming of age. Instead, he prevailed on William to make a quitclaim to him of the property in return for a rent charge of £12, which was less than the property’s annual value. Moreover, by a voluntas dated at Fledborough on 20 June 1433, he instructed Sir Thomas Assheton, great-nephew of his first wife, and his other feoffees in the Bassett lands to make conveyance on his death to Katherine (who may have been a widow by this date) for the term of her life. Only if she was allowed undisturbed possession was the legal remainder to be settled on the right of the Bassetts, otherwise Katherine was to have the property in fee simple.13 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 163-4; Add. Ch. 15741.

Another widow with whom Sir Richard came into dispute was Joan, widow of Sir William Thirning (d.1413), c.j.KB. As a result of her first marriage to Sir Reynold Everingham (d.1398), Joan had a contentious claim to dower in the Longvilliers inheritance, to which our MP had fallen common-law heir on the childless death of Sir Reynold’s first wife, Agnes Longvilliers. In normal circumstances Joan would have had no entitlement to dower in the inheritance of an earlier wife of her husband, but, by a fine levied in 1387, Agnes had limited to Sir Reynold an estate of inheritance in a significant part of her lands. Thus on 30 Sept. 1399 the escheator of Nottinghamshire was ordered to assign Joan dower in the Longvilliers parts of the manors of Tuxford, Egmanton and Laxton. Her subsequent marriage to the powerful Thirning explains why Sir Richard initially found it politic to compromise rather than resist Joan’s claim. Consequently, he leased from her lands in Laxton and Egmanton, a substantial part if not all of her dower, at an annual rent of £24 13s. 4d. Predictably, however, after Thirning’s death he discontinued payment of the farm, leaving Joan to sue at common law for the arrears. The dispute rumbled on. In 1419 the two parties entered into mutual bonds in Chancery in 200 marks, and on 4 May 1430 they did the same in the court of common pleas in the lesser sum of £40. It may be that these bonds were connected with arbitrations, and no more is heard of their competing claims until after Sir Richard’s death.14 Payling, 48-49; CIPM, xvii. 1158; CP25(1)/186/35/37, 38; CFR, xi. 286-7; CCR, 1399-1402, pp. 25-26; 1413-19, p. 527; 1419-22, p. 44; CP40/615, rot. 304d; 629, rot. 2; 677, rot. 136d.

Several indictments were laid against Stanhope when royal commissioners of inquiry came to Nottingham in June 1414. Among them was the charge that on 8 Oct. 1408, at Laneham near Rampton, he and his armed followers had assaulted and imprisoned Robert Morton† of Bawtry. Morton was an esquire of the royal body who had been politically compromised and financially damaged by his involvement in the Mortimer plot of 1405. There is, however, nothing to suggest that his quarrel with our MP was informed by a political motive.15 Earlier the two men had been on good terms with our MP, offering surety for him in 1401 and 1402: KB27/562, rex rot. 26d; 564, rex rot. 5. The alleged assault may explain why Morton brought an action for trespass against Stanhope in Michaelams term 1409. Soon after, our MP replied by claiming damages of £10 against Morton for an assault on his servant John Chamber. Neither of these cases came to pleading, but it is clear that Chamber was not an innocent party. In October 1411 Stanhope, with his friends, John Tuxford, Henry Booth*, and John Wilbram, appeared personally in the court of King’s bench to offer sureties that Chamber would keep the peace towards Morton. This appears to have been the prelude to the settlement of the dispute. Sir Richard may have been brought to settle by the crisis in his affairs later in the same month. On 24 Oct. he was committed to the Tower of London for his violent maintenance of John Tuxford in the latter’s dispute with Alexander Meryng. Two days after his release on the following 30 Nov. he and Morton entered into mutual bonds in £200 to abide by certain unspecified agreements, presumably arising out of an arbitration.16 KB9/204/2/26; KB27/594, rot. 59; 595, rot. 16; 596, rot. 19; 602, rex rot. 23; CP40/598, rot. 152d; Payling, 191; CCR, 1409-13, p. 310.

It is not difficult to see why Stanhope should have been drawn into so many conflicts. With the possible exception of the Markhams, the Stanhopes were the principal gentry family in the north of Nottinghamshire and yet they were also recent arrivals. Our MP appears to have been determined to stress his family’s pre-eminence both by expanding their lands within the narrow confines of north Nottinghamshire and taking an active interest in the affairs of his lesser neighbours. This strategy explains his maintenance of John Tuxford, the complaints made against him in the Parliament of April 1414 and his reluctance to yield to the claims of Joan Thirning. It was not, however, productive only of conflict. Much of the expansion of his estates was achieved without rancour and his relations with the majority of his neighbours were cordial. Not surprisingly he appears to have attached particular value to establishing good relations with the more important of them. Most significant here was the marriage in 1403 of his heir-apparent to a daughter of Sir John Markham, j.c.p., of East Markham, and his support for the prior of Blyth, for whom he acted as an arbiter in 1428.17 S.J. Payling, ‘Law and Arbitration’, People, Politics and Community ed. Rosenthal and Richmond, 149; CCR, 1422-9, pp. 409-10.

Although principally resident at Rampton, Sir Richard established a second residence a few miles to the south-east at Haughton. His Longvilliers inheritance there consisted of only a messuage, a few cottages and a carucate of land held of the chief landholders there, the Monbouchers of Gamston. He soon set about extending it. In 1405 he leased all the property of Margaret, widow of Sir Nicholas Monboucher, for term of her life at an annual rent of £11, and in 1412 he exchanged his lands in neighbouring Bevercotes for those of John Bevercotes. Several minor purchases of no more than a few acres each are also recorded. The omissions in his inquisition post mortem make it impossible to say how large an estate he built up there, but later the Stanhope holdings at Haughton became very important to the family. In 1509 his great-great-grandson, Sir Edward Stanhope, established a large park there.18 CIPM, xvii, 1160; Nottingham Univ. Lib., Newcastle of Clumber mss, Ne D 1894, 1896-7, 1898-9; Trans. Thoroton Soc. xxxv. 6.

Sir Richard also sought to extend his influence through the purchase of the wardships and marriages of his lesser gentry neighbours. An action he brought in 1431 against a local lawyer, Richard Wakefeld, provides an interesting example. He claimed that he had retained the defendant to provide him counsel concerning the purchase from Henry V of the marriage of Richard, son and heir of John Bevercotes, but Wakefeld had defrauded him by conspiring with John’s widow to purchase the manor to her use. Curiously these alleged events had occurred many years before – Henry V had granted the marriage to Joan on 22 Jan. 1416 – and one can only surmise that Stanhope had only recently discovered his attorney’s suspect role. Moreover, despite the grant to Joan, our MP had eventually secured the marriage, purchasing it in June 1422 from the executors of her grantee Henry Sutton† of Averham.19 CP40/682, rot. 232; 684, rot. 25d; Newcastle of Clumber mss, Ne D 946. Shortly before, Stanhope appears to have secured the wardship of another of his neighbours, John Wastnes* of Headon, heir to a more substantial estate than Richard Bevercotes. John’s father William died in January 1420 having named our MP as one of his executors. It is not certain on what grounds Stanhope assumed the wardship and the Crown clearly shared this uncertainty. In November 1421 he was ordered to make available for the scrutiny of two duchy of Lancaster lawyers those evidences in his custody relating to John’s manor of Headon. It may be that he had taken advantage of his position as executor to usurp the duchy’s rights, but there is no direct evidence to confirm this.20 CP40/656, rot. 262d; DL42/17, f. 170.

Shortly before Stanhope’s death his annual income was assessed at £107.21 E179/240/266; Payling, Political Society, 227. This wealth enabled him to make the sort of settlements on younger sons that were expected of families of the greater gentry. In 1410 he granted his manors in Skegby and South Muskham to his son Thomas for life at an annual rent of 20 marks payable during his own lifetime. At an unknown date he settled his manor in South Cottam near Rampton on his son James for life.22 Payling, Political Society, 70-71. Place Names of Notts. (English Place Name Soc. xvii), 212, is in error in identifying ‘Southcoton’ as Cotham near Newark. Both these sons were among the executors of his will. In the early 1440s they were sued as such by William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, who claimed that they, along with our MP’s daughter, Katherine, and her second husband, John Tunstall of Tunstall in Lancashire, were detaining charters from him. Unfortunately no evidence has been found to show what lay behind these actions.23 CP40/730, rot. 263; 731, rot. 454; Payling, Political Society, 82.