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.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Shortly before Stanhope’s death his annual income was assessed at £107.