The marriage of Stanhope’s parents, probably contacted in 1403, linked the two principal gentry families of north Nottinghamshire. When, however, Sir Richard Stanhope sought a bride for the eldest son of this marriage he looked further afield, turning to a network of relationships among the leading gentry of Lancashire into which he had been drawn by his own marriage to Elizabeth Staveley. In 1427 the young John was contracted to Elizabeth Talbot, whose stepfather, Sir John Assheton† (d.1428) of Ashton-under-Lyne, was Elizabeth Staveley’s nephew.
Although her rights and those of his uncles were the principal reasons for the young Stanhope’s diminished income, he faced other annoyances. The jointure interest of his mother threatened to keep him out of the greater part of the Stanhope manor in Tuxford, although, fortunately for him, she survived his grandfather by only a year.
Stanhope’s reduced income may partly explain why he was slow to make his presence felt in local administration. Yet, given the high standing of his family, it is still surprising that he did not begin his administrative career until 1449, and it is tempting to suggest that his age was overestimated in his father’s inquisition post mortem. It is clear, however, from the few references to his activities in the late 1430s that this was not the case. He was in London in November 1437 when he entered into a bond in £5 to Christopher Warter, a London moneylender, and Peter Ardern, the future j.c.p., and soon after he brought two actions of trespass in the court of King’s bench.
Stanhope began his Household service in 1443 and in the summer of 1444 he was one of those to whom the King entrusted the task of escorting his new queen from France at the respectable wages of 18d. a day.
Particularly significant in this respect is Stanhope’s return to represent his native county in the Parliament summoned to meet on 6 Nov. 1449 in a period of mounting political tension. From the point of view of the embattled government, Household representation was at a premium, hence it is suggestive that Stanhope’s fellow Nottinghamshire MP was Henry Boson*, another esquire who had accompanied the queen to England. What makes this return so interesting is the circumstantial evidence that the election it records was contested. In a departure from custom the election was held not at Nottingham but at Newark, and, more significantly, as many as 223 attestors are named, including both the successful candidates. These are sure signs of either contest or irregularity. It may be that the election witnessed a conflict between supporters and opponents of the government. Its resolution in favour of the former is noteworthy in view of the number of the latter who were returned to this Parliament. The result of the Nottinghamshire election departed from the national norm for two reasons: the returning sheriff was the prominent Household official, Thomas Staunton*, and, more importantly, Stanhope himself wielded very considerable electoral influence, bringing to the hustings many lesser freeholders from the vicinity of his estates in the north of the county.
A few days before the dissolution of his first Parliament Stanhope was nominated to his first ad hoc commission of local government, and on 5 July 1452 he took the precaution of suing out a general pardon. The failure of the Household lists in the same year makes it impossible to say how long his service as an royal esquire continued, but it is likely to have extended at least a couple of years longer. On 5 Mar. 1453 he was again elected to Parliament with another Household esquire Robert Clifton*, and at the end of this lengthy assembly he was rather belatedly appointed to the county bench.
Stanhope soon had cause to regret that the choice had fallen on him. During his term of office he was called upon to undertake some exceptional services, not least because of a visitation to Derbyshire of a powerful commission of oyer and terminer. The first two sessions, held in July and September 1454, had been the problem of the previous sheriff, but the final sessions caused serious difficulties for our MP. Not only did he find it impossible to bring sufficient trial jurors to court, but he incurred considerable expenses ‘in gaderyng and taking with hym grete people’ to the sessions at Chesterfield and Derby. Moreover, the disturbed state of the county had brought him additional expenses in resisting ‘suche people as was not wele disposed, and in riding with moche people on his owne costez in executing of his office because the people is wilde’. He also faced the further burdensome duty of ‘assembling of ccc personez by vertue of letters of prive seal to him directe for the rescowez of youre towne of Berwik’. He brought these 300 men to Doncaster only to hear that the attacking Scots had withdrawn. This at least is the story he told when petitioning for a pardon of account of £100. He was, however, allowed only £80, the sum generally conceded to the sheriffs of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, and there can be no doubt that his term of office left him out of pocket.
In these circumstances, it was as well for Stanhope that his landed resources had been supplemented by the death of his grandfather’s widow a month after he had taken up office as sheriff. Her inquisition post mortem was taken at East Retford on 28 Apr. 1455, and although our MP can have had little to fear from its findings (they were merely routine), it is interesting to note how many of the jurors are known to have been numbered among his servants. Indeed, he was later sued for illegally giving livery to two of them, John Harpham, ‘coverledwever’, and Hugh Longe, fisher, both of Dunham. On 14 May the escheator was duly ordered to deliver to him Maud’s share of manors in Tuxford, Rampton and Egmanton. In the following year his uncle James’s death brought him the Longvilliers manor in South Cottam near Rampton, which James had held for life by grant of Sir Richard.
Little is known of Stanhope’s career in the immediate aftermath of his first troublesome shrievalty. He sued out a general pardon on 15 Apr. 1458, perhaps as an indemnification for debts due to the Crown from his term of office. Curiously, he was removed from the commission of the peace in the following November, although it seems unlikely that a political motive underlay his dismissal. The bench was reduced from 22 to 15, and the removal of Stanhope and others may have been no more than rationalization. That he was not out of political favour with the increasingly militant Lancastrian government is suggested by his election to represent Nottinghamshire in the notorious Coventry Parliament of November 1459 and his appointment to the commission of array in the following month.
Nevertheless, the question of Stanhope’s political loyalties at this date is a complex one. His service in the Parliament in which the Yorkist lords were attainted did not prevent his re-election to that of October 1460 when the Yorkists were firmly in control. Indeed, he was one of only four men known to have been returned as shire knights to both these highly-charged assemblies. The partial survival of returns makes this a minimum estimate, but it is clear that re-election was rare. In John’s case the explanation probably lies in family connexions with both the Yorkists and the Lancastrians. Sometime before 1443 his aunt, Katherine, had taken as her second husband, John Tunstall*, uncle of Richard Tunstall†, a leading courtier in the 1450s, and, in Easter term 1459, Stanhope had appeared with the latter as joint-plaintiff in a suit concerning lands near Rampton.
The interest of Stanhope’s election to the Parliament in 1460 extends beyond what it reveals about his political sympathies. The unique survival for our period of a poll list for his return explains why his family were so prominent in the parliamentary representation of the county in the fifteenth century. He polled 150 votes and the other successful candidate, Sir Robert Strelley*, 160, both well ahead of the other two candidates. Since no fewer than 139 of Stanhope’s supporters also voted for Strelley it is clear that they stood as a joint ‘ticket’. It is equally clear that Stanhope was responsible for mobilizing the bulk of their support. Just as that of October 1449 had been, this election was decided by the large number of small freeholders who travelled down to Nottingham from the Bassetlaw. Of the 57 attestors who voted for both men and whose place of residence can be identified, no fewer than 45 came from Bassetlaw, and it is clear that many of these were Stanhope’s neighbours and perhaps his tenants. It is particularly significant that seven of them appear among those to whom he had allegedly given livery of cloth ten years earlier. According to an action sued by Sir John Talbot, on 20 Jan. 1450 (during the prorogation of a Parliament of which he was a Member), Stanhope had illegally given livery to 24 yeomen and lesser men of Rampton and neighbouring vills. Six of these men attested the election of October 1449. Predictably, therefore, there was a significant overlap between the attestors of the two elections: 68 names are common to both. Many small freeholders from the north of the county are to be found as attestors in only these two returns. Clearly Stanhope wielded a considerable amount of electoral influence, the mobilization of which was liable to ensure that he would prevail in a contest. His prosecution for illegally distributing livery of cloth implies that such distribution was the means by which he ensured that this mobilization could be affected.
Stanhope’s family connexions together with his eagerness to sit in a Yorkist Parliament explain why he took such a leading part in the administration of his native county during the early years of Edward IV’s reign. Restored to the county bench in July 1461, he was entrusted in the following November with the shrievalty, an office he held for two years rather than the statutory one. Towards the end of his term there appears to have been a serious riot in the north of the county. According to indictments laid before the j.p.s at East Retford in September 1463, a gang of more than 60 men, led by William Wentworth, assaulted and detained several of the sheriff’s servants on the previous 2 July and, on the following day, disseised Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, and our MP’s son, Henry, of six acres of meadow in Sutton near Lound. It is unfortunate that more cannot be discovered about this episode, but it does imply that the Stanhopes had influential connexions.
On 11 May 1467 Stanhope was again returned to Parliament in what appears to have been another disputed election. According to an action sued in the Exchequer of pleas by Henry Pierrepont† against the returning sheriff, Nicholas Kniveton, the majority of the electors had voted for him and Stanhope, but the sheriff had falsely returned Stanhope and his kinsman Sir Robert Markham (part of whose lands Stanhope had formerly held in wardship). The return itself supports the idea that there was a contest for it bears a strong resemblance to those of October 1449 and 1460: there are as many as 360 attestors; the two men returned, together with Pierrepont, are named among them; and the attestors are not listed in order of rank. Unfortunately, however, there is no obvious pattern in the order in which the attestors are named and, if this return is derived from a poll list, it does not clearly reveal the story of the election.
During the Readeption Stanhope appears to have reverted to his earlier Lancastrian sympathies. On 6 Nov. 1470 he was appointed as sheriff for the third time, and in a privy seal writ of 19 Nov., described as ‘our welbeloved esquire’, he was awarded a pardon of account that differed from the common form in that it came in advance of service rather than retrospectively and was for the sum of £100 rather than £80.
The fact that after this Parliament Stanhope largely disappears from public affairs is to be explained by his advancing years rather than political disfavour. With the exception of a short period immediately after the accession of Henry VII, he continued to be appointed to the county bench despite successive changes of government and he served on his last ad hoc commission of local administration as late as 1488. There is, however, little to indicate that he took much of an active part in local affairs during the last 20 years of his long life, although in December 1481 he was one of four men who made proposals for the settlement of a dispute between the towns of Nottingham and Retford.
Apart from the death of his eldest son, the most significant event of the later years of Stanhope’s life was his purchase in reversion of the north Nottinghamshire property of his aunt of the half blood, Maud, Lady Willoughby, one of the coheiresses of Ralph, Lord Cromwell. In May 1480 the reversion, expectant of Maud’s death, of a third of the manor of Markham Clinton, a ninth of the manor of Tuxford, and an annual rent of ten marks in Tuxford was settled on our MP and four feoffeess to his use. Two years later there were negotiations as to how Maud should be made secure in her life estate. On 3 Sept. 1482 Stanhope, having taken the advice of William Hussy*, c.j.KB, met with Maud’s legal representative, Thomas Fitzwilliam II*, at Lincoln, and agreed to convey the property to the vendor for the term of her life in return for her bond in the sum of 200 marks that she would not alienate from him. Since Maud survived him this arrangement was destined to benefit his heirs rather than himself.
In these later years Stanhope was involved in two lawsuits which throw some light on his agricultural activities and his landholdings outside Nottinghamshire. In a petition addressed to the chancellor, Ralph Beere*, a London fishmonger, complained that our MP had defrauded him over the sale of a considerable volume of wool. Beere alleged that, on 9 Nov. 1475, Stanhope had undertaken to deliver to him at Rampton more than 23 sacks of good Nottinghamshire wool. When, however, he had failed to collect the wool on the agreed day (he claimed, rather implausibly, that he had been prevented from doing so by bad weather that had lasted as long as six weeks), our MP had demanded from him a pipe of red wine worth four marks as a penalty. Far worse, after Beere had sold the wool on to John Tate†, a London merchant, it was discovered that in excess of four sacks of dross were mixed with the good wool. Further, Stanhope had instituted an action of common law demanding over £117 against him on the bond into which he had entered on agreeing to buy the wool. The truth of these allegations is impossible to judge, but they do indicate that Stanhope was a wool grower on a significant scale. At about the time that Beere lodged his petition, Stanhope and his wife Katherine were pursuing an action before the council of the duchy of Lancaster. They claimed that Katherine’s nephew, Christopher Southworth, had allegedly received £70 in rents and profits from their lands in ‘Blakborneshire’, Katherine’s dower from her first marriage. On 22 June 1478 Southworth agreed to abide by the award of the duchy auditor John Luthington, but no record survives of the decision.
According to the detailed pedigree produced before the Heralds in 1569, Stanhope had as many as nine children by his first wife, but the surviving evidence provides spouses for only four of them. His eldest son Thomas married Mary, daughter of John and sister of Edward Jerningham of Somer Layton in Suffolk. At first sight such a match is a surprising one for a family without land or direct associates in East Anglia, but it came about through our MP’s neighbours, the Cliftons. The bride was the grand-daughter of (Sir) Gervase Clifton*, the illegitimate son of Sir Gervase (d.1453), through her mother. The relationship between the Stanhopes and Cliftons was further reinforced before our MP’s death by the marriage of Edward Stanhope, the son of Thomas and Mary, to Adelina, daughter of the Sir Gervase Clifton who died in 1491. From neighbouring families of lesser status our MP found husbands for two of his daughters: Eleanor married a gentleman, George Clay of Finningley, a descendant of Edmund Clay, chief justice of the king’s bench in Ireland in the 1380s, and Elizabeth took to husband an esquire, Humphrey Hercy of Grove, grandson of Hugh Hercy*. For a spouse for his second son, Henry, Stanhope looked slightly further afield. Although there is some doubt about the precise position of Henry’s wife Joan in the Rochford pedigree, it is most likely that she was the daughter of Henry Rochford (d.1470) of Stoke Rochford in Lincolnshire by his second wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Henry, Lord Scrope of Bolton. Of Stanhope’s other sons, one pursued a successful career in the Church: Ralph Stanhope, a fellow of Balliol College, was junior proctor of Oxford university in 1482-3, and rector firstly of Ordsall near Rampton from 1483 to 1486 and then of Salle in Norfolk.
Stanhope is unusual for a member of the greater gentry in that a considerable volume of evidence survives of his connexions with his lesser neighbours. This may have owed something to the tenurial distinctiveness of the northern part of Nottinghamshire. Only three families, those of Stanhope, Markham and Clifton, had extensive holdings there, and of these only the Stanhopes were not distracted by their holdings elsewhere. It was thus natural that our MP should, in the absence of baronial leadership, have served as a focus of the aspirations of the lesser gentry. He often appears as a feoffee for men on the borders of gentility. In 1452, for example, he was named among the feoffees of William Bolour of Gringley on the Hill, and in 1464 he was one of those enfeoffed by Robert Cuteler of East Retford of lands in Gringley and elsewhere. Interestingly, the latter was one of those to whom Stanhope had allegedly given livery against the statutes in 1450. Stanhope was also an obvious choice as a supervisor of wills, and he was nominated in this role by John Thornhagh of Sturton le Steeple in 1471 and by Richard Bevercotes of Bevercotes in 1476. Significantly, both Thornhagh and Bevercotes had attested the 1467 election, and there can be little doubt that Stanhope’s interest in the affairs of his lesser neighbours does much to explain his considerable electoral influence.
Stanhope died on 12 Dec. 1493 at the age of about 80. Sometime before his death he had conveyed the bulk of his estates, including the manor of Rampton, to feoffees, headed by his friends and neighbours, Sir Robert Markham, Gervase Clifton, and Thomas Molyneux, to the intent that, after his death, they should settle the property on his grandson and heir in tail. Having taken such care with the future descent of the family estates, it is surprising that such an elderly man should have died intestate. On 2 Jan. 1494 administration of his goods was granted to his son-in-law, Humphrey Hercy.
Stanhope’s grandson and heir, Edward, found himself the victim of Henry VII’s jealous attitude towards the protection of his feudal rights. On 22 Apr. 1494, in a delayed response to the writ of diem clausit extremum issued on the previous 20 Dec., an inquisition was held into the estates of our MP. The return, in line with common practice, significantly undervalued the property in respect of both its financial value and the services due from it to the Crown. Six years later, the escheator, ostensibly acting on his own initiative and as part of a wider inquiry, took another inquisition. This found that manors at South Marnham and South Cottam had been omitted from the first inquisition and that the value of John Stanhope’s estates was not under £60, as assessed in 1494, but over £130. Moreover, while the manor of Rampton had been returned in the earlier inquisition as held of the duchy of Lancaster by service of an eighth of a knight’s fee, the service due was in fact a full knight’s fee, and that the manors of Laxton and Skegby were held of the duchy by service of two knights’ fees not a tenth of one. These findings had serious repercussions. They meant that not only had Stanhope’s heir not paid what was due from him as a relief, but that he had held the two undeclared manors without suing livery. The result was that all Sir Edward’s lands were taken into the King’s hands and recommitted to him at a yearly farm of over £132. Given the support he had already rendered Henry VII’s cause – he had fought for him not only at the battle of Stoke in 1487 but also against the Cornish rebels ten years later when he was knighted for valour – this was an ungenerous proceeding.
Nonetheless, despite this setback and the punitive damages awarded against him in his dispute with Sir William Meryng, Edward’s was a successful career which marked the beginning of the family’s transformation from one of merely local importance to one of national significance. He took as his second wife, Elizabeth, sister of John Bourgchier, later earl of Bath, and in the early 1530s the daughter of this marriage, Anne, married Edward Seymour, later duke of Somerset. This important connnexion explains why Anne’s half-brother, Sir Michael Stanhope†, was able to obtain Shelford priory in the aftermath of the Dissolution. This compensated the male line of the family for the earlier loss of its ancient estates on the death of Sir Michael’s elder brother Richard (d.1527) without male issue. Thereafter the family flourished despite Sir Michael’s attainder and execution in 1552. In 1605 his third son, John†, was elevated to the peerage as Lord Stanhope of Harrington (Northamptonshire), and in 1628 Philip Stanhope, head of the Shelford branch of the family, was created earl of Chesterfield.