SKIPWITH, Patrick

The Skipwiths of Skipwith in Yorkshire and South Ormsby in Lincolnshire were among the greatest gentry families of late medieval England and, as such, they were able to make generous provision for their younger sons. Our MP’s father, a younger son of the royal justice Sir William Skipwith, benefited to an unusually high degree from such provision. A substantial part of his father’s Lincolnshire lands, most notably the manor of South Ormsby, was granted to him in fee, and this enabled him to play a prominent role in the affairs of the county. He also made excellent marriages for his two sons: the elder, Thomas, gained prestige through marriage to Margaret, sister of Robert, Lord Willoughby of Eresby (d.1452), and the younger, Patrick, lands in marriage with Agnes Hawley, who brought him the manor of Utterby, situated very near Ormsby. Oxf. DNB ‘Skipwith, Sir William’; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 388-90. This manor had been entailed in 1390 in jointure on Agnes’s parents, and hence a moiety of it came to Patrick on the death of her father shortly before May 1420, and the other moiety on the death of Agnes’s nephew, Henry Constable, probably in the late 1450s. CCR, 1389-92, p. 181. Constable was the son of Agnes’s sister Margaret: CP40/790, rot. 605d.

Before coming into this relatively meagre marital inheritance, Patrick benefited as his father had done from a generous settlement in favour of a younger son. That such a settlement could be contemplated was no doubt due to the reunification, anticipated if not then accomplished, of the Skipwith inheritance in the hands of the junior line, which occurred in about 1415. On 1 Dec. 1415, soon after his father’s death, his father’s feoffees, headed by Thomas Langley, bishop of Durham, granted to a group of minor Lincolnshire gentry an annual rent of 50 marks from Skipwith property in Bigby and neighbouring vills. Although there is no surviving record of the instructions John left to these grantees, one can safely assume that these holdings, well-placed to complement the Utterby estate Agnes stood heir to, were assigned by him to provide for Patrick. The rent charge was designed to protect the reversion to the main Skipwith line: it was to be paid only if Patrick or his heirs, who were to hold the lands in tail-male, attempted to alienate the lands to the disinheritance of that line. Lincs. AO, Massingberd Mundy mss, 1MM/1/3/13; W.O. Massingberd, Ormsby-cum-Ketsby, 76-77. Together with his wife’s moiety of the manor of Utterby, these properties contributed to Patrick’s income of £40 p.a. (as assessed for taxation in 1436), which would have been higher had his mother Alice, assessed at 80 marks p.a., not held some of his inheritance in dower. E179/136/198; Feudal Aids, iii. 265, 303. Alice was still alive as late as 1446: CP25(1)/145/159/39.

While such an income made Patrick one of the least wealthy Lincolnshire MPs of Henry VI’s reign, it was sufficient to make him a man of account. This was particularly so since, following the death of his elder brother, Sir Thomas, in December 1417, leaving an heir under a year old, he became the effective head of the Skipwith family. Sir Thomas probably died in France. He indented to serve in the retinue of his brother-in-law, Lord Willoughy, in the 1417 campaign: E101/51/2, m. 15. His inq. post mortem dates his death to 1 Dec., the day on which Henry V laid siege to Falaise and it is probable that he fell there: CIPM, xx. 698-9. Predictably, therefore, he followed his father in taking an active part in county affairs. Having attested the election of 1425 he was himself returned two years later. There is some indirect evidence that this election was contested. The indenture of 6 Oct. 1427 names 119 attestors, considerably more than any other surviving Lincolnshire indenture for the Lancastrian period. Yet more striking is the fact that nearly all of the attestors came from the parts of Lindsey where both Patrick and his fellow MP Walter Tailboys* resided. S.J. Payling, ‘County Parlty. Elections’, Parlty. Hist. xviii. 252-6. Moreover, a significant number of them were attached to Patrick by something beyond a tie of neighbourhood: John and William Hawley were his brothers-in-law; William Neucom of Saltfleetby, William Tetford of Raithby and John Bernetby the elder of Barton-upon-Humber were later to act as his feoffees; Laurence Moigne of Theddlethorpe and Robert Forman of Utterby were among the grantees of the 50-mark rent of 1415; and Alan Forman of Utterby, Richard Yerburgh of Yarborough and Robert North of North Thoresby are found associated with the Skipwiths in other contexts. For Patrick’s feoffees: CCR, 1435-41, p. 241; CP25(1)/145/159/39. For the other connexions: Massingberd, 76-77; CCR, 1419-22, p. 211; 1435-41, pp. 107-8. This suggests that Patrick had come to the county court expecting opposition and had brought friends along with him to ensure it was overcome. Unfortunately nothing more is known of the circumstances of the election. Its apparent contentiousness may, however, have been due to the dispute between Skipwith’s fellow Member Tailboys and Sir John Keighley over the manor of Theddlethorpe which lay not far from Utterby, a dispute in which our MP sided with Tailboys. JUST1/1537, rot. 9.

Skipwith’s family background and his appointment as customs collector in the port of Kingston-upon-Hull in 1438 suggest he was well connected, but little can be discovered of these connexions. In August 1428 Ralph, Lord Cromwell had acted for him as a feoffee in the manor of Withcall, near Utterby, and his appointment as customs collector came during Cromwell’s treasurership. CCR, 1422-9, pp. 445, 447, 452; CFR, xvii. 11-12, 16, 19-20. Yet there is nothing else to suggest that his association with Cromwell was close, and it would be unwise to use it to explain his second return to Parliament on 29 June 1433, again following an election with an unusually large number of attestors. His brothers-in-law, John and William Hawley, acted as sureties for his appearance at the Parl.: C219/14/4.

There is little else to relate about Skipwith’s career. He held the office of customs collector only relatively briefly, being replaced by Thomas Everingham* in November 1441, and he may have been glad to lose it, for in Easter term 1440 he and his fellow customer, John Bedford†, had been sued by Richard, duke of York, in the Exchequer of pleas for the massive arrears of nearly £2,500 of an annuity charged on the Hull customs. CFR, xvii. 200-1; E13/141, rot. 43. Indeed, in the early 1440s Skipwith appears to have retired from public life. His last recorded appearance in a public capacity was his attestation of the county election of 1442. Thereafter he is recorded only in connexion with litigation or the settlement of his estates. In 1446 he and his wife conveyed some of their lands to feoffees headed by Robert Mouter, clerk of the hanaper in Chancery, and Henry Hawley, and in January 1449 these feoffees reconveyed the manor of North Elkington to the couple with remainder in tail to their eldest son John and his wife Agnes, daughter of a neighbour and associate, John Langholm I*. CP25(1)/145/159/39; Massingberd, 78. Later in the same year, on 11 Dec., Patrick’s younger son William, then at the beginning of a modestly successful legal career, was appointed escheator of Lincolnshire, a sign that the Crown no longer considered our MP as available for office. CFR, xviii. 146; J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), ii. 1409; HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 773. The last reference to him alive comes from Trinity term 1458 when, with his wife Agnes, he sued his nephew, Sir William Skipwith, and others in the court of common pleas for a moiety of the manor of Utterby, once the property of Henry Constable. CP40/790, rot. 605d. In 1455 Constable had granted Sir William a 16-year interest in his moiety: Massingberd Mundy mss, 1MM/1/3/6. He was dead by Hilary term 1465 when his putative sons, Robert and Thomas, had actions of debt pending as his administrators. His widow was alive in 1471 when she joined William, then their eldest surviving son, in suing his feoffees for failure to convey lands to her co-plaintiff. CP40/814, rot. 227d; A. Gibbons, Notes on Lincs. Vis. 1634, p. 52; C1/38/188.