STRICKLAND, Walter I

As a younger son, The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 513-18. Walter initially took a subservient role to that of his elder brother Sir Thomas, whose career had begun in the 1390s as a retainer of John of Gaunt and continued with service to the house of Lancaster both in battle and local administration. The generous landed settlement made on Thomas at the time of his marriage meant that Walter’s own prospects were limited, and he did not figure in the Westmorland tax return of 1436 which marked out his brother, with an income of £86 p.a., as the wealthiest landowner in that impoverished county. Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. viii. 329. Walter followed his brother to France for military service under Henry V, and having been recruited by Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, he fought in Gloucester’s contingent at the battle of Agincourt. E101/45/13; N.H. Nicolas, Agincourt, 333. This fostered a personal attachment to Duke Humphrey, with whom he was mustered again in 1417 for the large-scale conquest of Normandy. E101/51/2. While there, and by a stroke of good fortune, Strickland attracted the attention of Henry V himself, and joined the royal household as one of the King’s esquires. On 1 Mar. 1419, soon after the fall of Rouen, the King granted him two annuities, each of £10, assigned on the alnage collected in York and on the fee farm of London. Strickland had been responsible for capturing the traitor Henry Talbot, for which the offered reward was 1,000 marks, so these annuities were apparently awarded him in lieu. DKR, xli. 745; CPR, 1416-22, p. 332; 1429-36, pp. 65-66. He probably came back to England with the King, only to return to France again in the royal army assembled in the spring of 1421. In May that year, as ‘of Lancashire’, he took out letters of protection as once more a member of the retinue of the duke of Gloucester. DKR, xliv. 624-5. This connexion with Duke Humphrey stood him in good stead, for following the death of Henry V he secured confirmation of his annuities on 15 Dec. 1422, by the advice of the Council over which Gloucester, as Protector, presided. CPR, 1422-9, p. 12. Furthermore, in the following month he successfully petitioned to have the office of ranger of Waltham forest. E28/39, no. 22; CPR, 1422-9, p. 20.

As this appointment suggests, Strickland intended to make his career in the south of England, and henceforth his participation in the affairs of his native Westmorland became sporadic, although he did participate in a settlement of land on the marriage of one of his nieces in the autumn of 1425, Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. x. 471. and late on in life he held office in the county by royal appointment. But it was in the south that he sought a bride. His choice fell on Isabel, the posthumously born daughter and heiress of John Olney of London. Olney had died shortly after making his will on 15 Jan. 1411, in which he left to his widow Joan several properties in the city parish of St. Mary at Hill, with remainder to the child in her womb. Cal. Wills ct. Husting London ed. Sharpe, ii. 388-9. Lawsuits after the death of Isabel and her only son Richard concerned other properties in the same parish in which Olney had held a reversionary interest. He had promised them to the parish church after the expiry of the life-interest of his child: C1/31/39; 38/269. By the time Strickland married that child, Isabel, her marital history had been a complicated one, to say the least. She had been married to Philip Boteler, the son of a wealthy London draper, and had given birth to a daughter, Katherine, For Katherine see Cal. Wills ct. Husting, ii. 554-5; Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, pp. 4-5. but after she was widowed and had agreed to wed Strickland another Londoner, John Godyn, alleged that she had been contracted to marry him long before. Without summoning Strickland to make his case, the ecclesiastical courts upheld Godyn’s claim, declaring Katherine to be illegitimate and Isabel’s marriage to Strickland invalid. CPL, x. 348-9. It was not to be until after the couple’s deaths that the matter was finally cleared up to the satisfaction of Katherine Boteler and her half-brother Richard Strickland.

For Walter Strickland, the attraction of the match lay only partly in his wife’s inheritance in London – of properties which had been in her father’s family for several years. Hornyold, 45. These included a ‘great tenement’, four other houses and a stable in the parish of St. Mary at Hill, which together with the advowson of the parish church were settled on the couple for life in 1431, with remainder to their son Richard and then to Katherine Boteler; and a reversionary interest in a number of other buildings in the same parish which were held for life by Richard and Joan Horn (quite likely Isabel’s mother). Corp. London RO, hr 160/20-22. What attracted Strickland even more was his wife’s claim to the manor of ‘Planches’ in Haversham, Buckinghamshire, that of Claybrooke in Leicestershire, and a moiety of Compton Chamberlain and the advowson of the church at Barford St. Martin in Wiltshire, all of which had been held until her death in 1423 by Isabel’s distant kinswoman Elizabeth, Lady Clinton. She, whose last (of four) husbands had been Sir John Russell† of Strensham in Worcestershire, had been an heiress of note, who had died childless. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 250. At Lady Clinton’s death her estates were in the hands of trustees, and her heir at common law was found to be another distant relation: namely, William Lucy, the son of Alice, wife of Sir Thomas Lucy†, of the Warwickshire family. Yet in suits brought in the court of common pleas in 1428, Strickland and his wife claimed Haversham under the terms of an entail made long before (in 1324) by her ancestor Sir John Olney of Buckinghamshire. Their claim was upheld, and Lady Clinton’s manors were transferred to them by final concord dated January 1429, with a reversionary interest, should Isabel’s issue fail, to the descendants of Alice Lucy. CP40/667, rot. 106; 685, rot. 130; Peds. Plea Rolls, ed. Wrottesley, 335-6; C139/12/36; VCH Bucks. iv. 368; CP25(1)/292/66/87. A deed among the fam. papers at Sizergh (Hornyold, 43) purports to be a contract of marriage for Walter and Isabel, but obvious anomalies lead to suspicions that it is a forgery. For one thing, the date, 1382, cannot be correct, as Isabel was not born until 1411. For another, her father was allegedly party to it, and he died before she was born. Thirdly, although it relates to the Olney property in the parish of St. Mary at Hill, it also concerns the moiety of the manor of Compton Chamberlain in Wiltshire, and the advowson of Barford in the same county which were never in the possession of Isabel’s father. The estate was to be valued at Isabel’s death at £40 p.a., C139/117/7. but was probably worth more, for in the tax assessments made in 1436 Strickland was said to have land in Buckinghamshire, Wiltshire and London (which he must have held jure uxoris) worth £57 p.a. E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14 (x)d. The Stricklands also tried to claim other properties in Buckinghamshire (the manors of Hardmead and Little Linford which Isabel’s great-great-grandfather had once held), but in this instance there is no sign that they were successful. CP40/703, rot. 642; 706, rot. 117d; 725, rot. 414; VCH Bucks. iv. 363, 393. Together, they sued out a royal pardon in July 1437, and obtained a papal indult to have their own portable altar in March 1441. In the indult Walter was styled ‘nobleman of the diocese of York’. C67/38, m. 8; CPL, ix. 232.

Although Strickland’s brother had twice been sheriff of Buckinghamshire, it was as a newcomer to the county that Walter himself sought election to Parliament in 1429, for this was only a matter of months after the final concord which had confirmed him and his wife in possession of Haversham. His candidature provoked vociferous opposition from many members of the shire community. On 31 Aug. the sheriff Sir Thomas Waweton* returned to Chancery an indenture recording that 80 men, gathered in the shire court at Aylesbury, had elected Sir John Cheyne I* and Strickland as knights of the shire in the Parliament summoned to meet a month later on 22 Sept. This result was disputed: on 24 Sept., only two days after Parliament’s opening, a commission was set up to investigate allegations that Waweton had made a false return after the voice of those assembled at Aylesbury had clearly favoured John Hampden II* and Andrew Sperlyng*. Even so, it was not until 1 Mar. 1430, a week after the dissolution, that the justices of assize found Waweton guilty of offences under the electoral statute of 1406, on recognizing the validity of an indenture of the same date (31 Aug.), in which 125 men from Buckinghamshire had attested the election of Hampden and Sperlyng. Waweton was fined £100. C219/14/1; CPR, 1429-36, p. 39. No evidence has come to light of a connexion between Strickland and Waweton, or, indeed, between him and Cheyne, to throw light on the incentives given to the sheriff to break the law. The question remains as to whether Buckinghamshire had been un-represented in the Parliament, or, if not, whether it was Cheyne and Strickland or Hampden and Sperlyng who took the county seats in the Commons. Circumstantial evidence places Strickland at Westminster while the Parliament was in progress. During the first session a tailor from Buckinghamshire whom he had been suing for trespass obtained a pardon of outlawry, so it is at least likely that he was present to settle their differences; and, of greater significance, he appeared in person in the court of King’s bench on 29 Nov., with his brother Sir Thomas (then sitting as a shire knight for Westmorland), and Geoffrey Threlkeld*, the MP for Appleby, to offer sureties of the peace for two men accused of threatening John Cavendish, the King’s embroiderer. CPR, 1429-36, p. 16; KB27/674, rex rot. 12d.

Shortly after the dissolution of the Parliament, Henry VI, accompanied by a substantial army, set off for his realm of France for his coronation. Strickland remained in England. There is no doubt that he continued to enjoy the favour of the Council, and in this respect the possibility of a continuing link with the duke of Gloucester, regent of England during the King’s absence, should not be discounted. On 20 May 1430, in return for relinquishing one of his annuities of £10 and any further claim to the reward for taking Henry Talbot, he was granted the office of master of the King’s dogs, known as ‘heirers’. This post, which earned him wages of 1s. a day from the issues of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, ensured that he would wear Henry VI’s livery for the rest of his life. CPR, 1429-36, pp. 65-66, 117; E101/408/14, 19, 21; 409/2, f. 49v; 6, f. 28; 409/13; Add. 17721, f. 42. Naturally enough, in the 1430s he established amicable relations with others in the milieu of the Court, such as John Penycoke* of the Chamber, for whom he stood surety at the Exchequer, CFR, xvi. 316. and Sir William Beauchamp*, the King’s carver, for whom he acted as a mainpernor. Together with Beauchamp, too, he was a co-feoffee of an estate in Wiltshire. CFR, xvi. 265; CPR, 1429-36, p. 118; CCR, 1435-41, p. 120. They acted on behalf of Nicholas Wotton II*. It was in that county (where he held property in right of his wife) that from November 1432, following the King’s return home, he served a term as sheriff.

Yet Strickland also extended his interests into Sussex. At an unknown date he was taken up by the earl of Arundel, who granted him for life the office of master-forester of the lordship of Arundel and his other forests in that county and Surrey, with an annual fee of £10, and when the earl died in 1435 Strickland showed the Council his letters patent, thereby obtaining confirmation of the appointment during the minority of the earl’s heir. CPR, 1429-36, p. 464; E159/213, brevia Mich. rot. 16. Later that year he came to the Exchequer to refuse responsibility for certain prests delivered to the late earl, since he was not the latter’s executor: E159/212, recorda Mich. rot. 20. He was still receiving the fee in late 1438: E159/215, brevia Mich. rot. 29d. That same year he was made deputy butler in the Sussex ports of Chichester and Shoreham. No diminution in royal favour occurred after the King came of age. As ‘King’s esquire’ Strickland secured another office to add to his portfolio, in May 1437 being granted for life the office of keeper of the park of Calgarth, in his native Westmorland, with wages of 6d. per day to add to his income from the Crown. CPR, 1436-41, pp. 63, 186; E159/214, brevia Mich. rot. 44. Yet more was to follow. Less than a year later he secured the office of receiver of the royal lordship of Kendale, specifically for good service in the past and yet to come. CFR, xvii. 34; E364/74, m. Hd; 77, m. Md. Presumably he performed his duties in the north-west by deputy. More profit was to be made in the south, where in September 1438 he obtained a grant for life of the alien priory of Lyminster (Sussex), at a yearly farm of 26 marks, after bidding a mark more than the previous farmers were prepared to pay. This scarcely mattered, for just a few months later he succeeded in gaining exoneration from the farm altogether. CFR, xvii. 41-42; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 203, 255; E159/216, brevia Easter rot. 15. He was also able to obtain the keeping of lands in Sussex and Hampshire pertaining to the abbey of La Luzerne in Normandy. His brothers Sir Thomas and William Strickland stood surety for him at the Exchequer. CFR, xvii. 122-3. In return for such benefits, Walter agreed to take on the shrievalties of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire in 1439 and of Surrey and Sussex two years later. Then, on 16 Oct. 1442 he gave up the receivership of Kendale and his remaining royal annuity of £10 in return for grants for life of the keepership of Calgarth, the fishery of Windermere and other lands in Westmorland, for which he undertook to pay five marks p.a. Two days later the Council pardoned him £40 owing on his account for one of his terms as sheriff. Recs. Kendale ed. Farrer and Curwen, i. 148-9; CPR, 1441-6, p. 149; PPC, v. 221; E159/219, brevia Trin. rot. 8.

These signs of governmental approval notwithstanding, Strickland’s performance as sheriff of Surrey and Sussex had met with severe criticism from those forced to have dealings with him. On 28 Nov. Sir Ralph Grey, the former captain of Roxburgh castle, brought a bill against him in the Exchequer court for unjust detention of £30 due to him from the issues of Strickland’s bailiwick; and in January 1443 the parson of Coveham accused him and his under sheriff Walter Fust of unlawful arrest. E13/142, rots. 27, 39d. Strickland’s response was to secure a general pardon of all misdemeanours and any resulting fines he had incurred. CPR, 1441-6, p. 174. Nevertheless, as a consequence of his unacceptable behaviour in office, he, his under sheriff and the latter’s brother, John Fust*, were to be distrained in Sussex on a plea of contempt and trespass, and to be brought to King’s bench in Michaelmas term 1444. KB27/734, rex rot. 21d.

In a final concord of 1442 the estates that Strickland and his wife had successfully claimed after the death of Lady Clinton were settled on the couple in jointure, with successive remainders in tail to their son Richard, to Isabel’s other issue and to her right heirs. Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 551; CP25(1)/293/70/263. Accordingly, when Isabel died in April 1445, Walter was entitled to keep the estates for life. C139/117/7. His right to do so met with a challenge, in the form of an opportunistic suit brought in the common pleas three months later by (Sir) Hugh Willoughby* and others, claiming to be heirs under the Olney entail of 1324. CP40/738, rot. 530. It may have been for this reason that in the autumn Strickland sought and obtained the escheatorship of Hampshire and Wiltshire, hoping perhaps to be able to control the descent of at least part of his late wife’s estate. However, he died in office in the spring of 1446, on or shortly before 6 Apr., when his nephew and namesake succeeded him in the keepership at Calgarth. CPR, 1441-6, p. 426. A new escheator was appointed the next day.

Strickland’s son Richard was still a minor, aged 14, although for the past three years he had held the post of master of the King’s harriers jointly with his father. CCR, 1441-7, p. 330. The inquisition taken in Buckinghamshire after the death of Walter’s wife had found that she had held Haversham of Lord de la Zouche, to whom the wardship and marriage of the heir pertained, but the findings of the inquisition were now, in 1446, challenged by the Crown: (Sir) Thomas Stanley II*, the controller of the Household, and Thomas Stokdale† (one of Strickland’s feoffees), offered to prove at their own costs that the manor was held of the King by knight service, and on 6 May they were granted the wardship and marriage should they succeed in so doing. CPR, 1441-6, pp. 434-5. Not all of Richard’s inheritance came under their control, for in the last months of Walter’s life he had married again. His second wife, Agnes, was the widow of Richard Combe, the former j.p. in Surrey and sometime MP for Guildford. The Exchequer pursued her for debts owing from Strickland’s time as receiver of Kendale, but in March 1449 she managed to obtain a royal pardon for any irregularities in his accounts. CPR, 1446-52, pp. 263-4; E159/228, recorda Easter rot. 3. Agnes seems also to have successfully claimed dower from part of the estate of Strickland’s first wife – the moiety of Compton Chamberlain and the advowson of Barford St. Martin in Wiltshire. These properties were said to have been in her stepson’s hands when he died in 1458, C139/169/35b. yet Agnes was in possession in the late 1460s, and in 1474 she was recorded holding them jointly with Cardinal Thomas Bourgchier and his brother John, Lord Berners, for term of her life. Wilts. Feet of Fines, 689. The date of Agnes’s death is not known, but probably occurred before July 1485, when the Wiltshire estate called ‘Strekelond Moite’ and the advowson were granted by Richard III to one of the esquires of the body. It later fell with the rest of the inheritance of Strickland’s first wife to her heir under the terms of the entails, (Sir) William Lucy* (d.1492). CPR, 1476-85, pp. 549-50; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 836, 839.