MANNERS, Sir Richard (by 1510-51), of Garendon, Leics.

Richard Manners was brought up in the household of his great-uncle Sir Thomas Lovell I and probably entered the royal service on Lovell’s death in 1524. He combined his duties at court with attachment to his elder brother, the 1st Earl of Rutland, with whom he was closely associated in the locality and whom he followed in war. His marriage to the twice-widowed Margaret Dymoke brought him the independence and the establishment at Garendon which qualified him for a knighthood of the shire in the Parliament of 1542. During the first prorogation he joined Rutland with the army in the north and he was still there when the second session began early in 1543. After his brother’s death in the following September he took charge of his nephew’s affairs until the 2nd Earl came of age, and also became a prominent figure in his own right. In 1548 the Protector Somerset made him warden of the east and middle marches, but it was as sheriff under Somerset’s successor the Earl of Warwick that he helped to quell a rising in favour of the ex-Protector. He died on 9 Feb. 1551 at his nephew’s London house and was buried five days later near the high altar of St. Katharine Cree. His heart was interred at Croxton-Keyrial in Leicestershire, where a monument was erected to his memory. No will has been found, but the 2nd Earl who was his heir was thought by an unidentified contemporary to have been both executor and overseer.PCC 27 Jankyn, 28 Pynnyng; LP Hen. VIII, iii, vii, xii-xv, xvii-xx; HMC Rutland, iv. 274; HMC Bath, iv. 70; HMC Shrewsbury and Talbot, ii. 27-28; Hamilton Pprs. i. 620, 622; APC, ii. 74, 458; iii. 31, 200; W. K. Jordan, Edw. VI, ii. 60; Machyn’s Diary (Cam. Soc. xlii), 3, 314; Nichols, ii(1), 67.