STANTOR, Peter (d.1415), of Ebbesbourne Wake, Wilts.

Through employment by the Crown and some well-calculated marriages, Stantor, in the later part of his life, came to enjoy an income of over £78 a year.Feudal Aids, vi. 456, 534. He seems to have begun with nothing, but was already a ‘King’s esquire’ by 1382, when he was given the wardship of the lands in Wiltshire lately belonging to Nicholas Berengar, along with the marriage of Joan, one of his daughters and coheirs. He soon himself married his ward, who, however, died in 1386, having borne him a daughter who had also died. Subsequently the Berengar lands were partitioned between Stantor (by the courtesy) and his sister-in-law and her husband. Stantor’s share was the manor of Shipton Bellinger and part of Snoddington, in Hampshire, and Ebbesbourne Wake, in Wiltshire, all of which he was to retain for life.CIPM, xv. 710-11; xvi. 331-2; CCR, 1385-9, pp. 71-72; CPR, 1381-5, p. 158; VCH Hants, iv. 512-13. But the greater part of his income came from an annuity of £40 granted him by Richard II in July 1389, in order that he and his second wife might maintain their estate. Stantor continued to wear Richard’s livery, certainly until as late as 1397 and probably until the end of the reign, and it would appear that his services to the King were of a personal nature, for in July 1400 he was instructed, along with other of Richard’s former retainers, to stay in attendance on his widowed queen, Isabella, while Henry IV travelled north. Meanwhile, the new King had confirmed his annuity, charging it on the issues of Wiltshire instead of on the revenues of South Wales as previously. Stantor was returned to Parliament for the first and only time in 1404, and in the following year he was appointed to the Wiltshire bench. He attended the county elections to the Parliament of 1407.CPR, 1388-92, p. 89; 1391-6, pp. 248, 289; 1399-1401, pp. 68, 105, 323; 1413-16, p. 89; E101/402/5, f. 31d, 403/10; C219/10/4.

There is little to record about Stantor’s personal connexions. He acted as a mainpernor for a yeoman of the King’s chamber in 1389, and for a Chancery clerk, Master John Chitterne, in 1393; and, either as a feoffee or a tenant, he became involved in the lawsuits over the St. Martin estates between Henry Popham and John, Lord Lovell, in 1405. Stantor’s third marriage brought him an interest in property in Dorset together with the manor of Great Horningsham in Wiltshire, which last was valued at 13 marks a year in 1412, although subsequent disputes with Sir Walter Hungerford, over rights of common pasture, which were decided in Hungerford’s favour, probably led to its depreciation.CCR, 1385-9, p. 602; 1402-5, pp. 412-13; 1413-19, p. 294; CFR, xi. 87; Feudal Aids, vi. 534; Dorset Feet of Fines, ii. 259.

Stantor died on 6 Dec. 1415. His will (which was to be administered in the following January), has not survived. He may have had a son named Walter, who succeeded to his third wife’s property, but that of his first wife now passed to her nephew, Robert Bodenham.C138/11/18; PCC 30 Marche; H.C. Hoare, Modern Wilts. (Heytesbury), 48.