TAILBOYS, Walter

Anciently established at Hepple, Northumberland, and Hurworth-on-Tees, Durham, the family of Tailboys was elevated to the first rank of the English gentry and translated south to Lincolnshire as a result of the marriage contracted in 1337 between Sir Henry Tailboys (d.1369) and Eleanor, daughter and heir of Sir Gilbert Burradon of Burradon, a few miles north of Hepple. When this marriage was made its far-reaching consequences cannot have been foreseen, for they were only finally worked out during the career of the subject of this biography. Through her mother, Elizabeth, sister of Gilbert Umfraville, earl of Angus (d.1381), Eleanor was destined to become, a century later, a substantial heiress in her issue. Such a prospect was remote in 1337 and, even on the death of her uncle in 1381 without surviving male issue, she inherited only a relatively small part of the Umfraville estates. Shortly before his death, the last earl had alienated part of his inheritance to the Percys and entailed most of the rest in tail-male upon his half-brother Sir Thomas Umfraville (d.1387) and the latter’s illegitimate sons, Thomas† and Robert. Only if their male issue failed would these valuable entailed properties, consisting principally of the Northumberland barony of Harbottle and the greater part of the Lincolnshire lands once of the barons of Kyme, come to the Tailboys family. CP, i. 150-2; vii. 358-9; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 686-8. Nevertheless, those Lincolnshire lands that passed to the family in 1381 were enough to occasion its move south and the establishment of a new residence at Goltho in Lindsey. To those lands, listed in The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 559 (where Newton Kyme wrongly appears as ‘Norton Kyme’), as coming to Eleanor Tailboys on the death of her uncle in 1381, needs to be added the Lincs. manors of Faldingworth and Goltho: CIPM, xv. 431-6. In Nov. 1399 Sir Walter Tailboys also acquired the manor of Calceby, which had earlier passed from Umfraville to Percy: Lansd. 326, f. 187. Eleanor’s son, Sir Walter, played a prominent part in the county’s affairs, and on his death in 1417 his son, the subject of this biography, immediately assumed his role. The earlier biography omits his stewardship of the Lincs. lands of Thomas Holand, duke of Surrey, in the late 1390s: Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Cromwell pprs. Misc. 63. Indeed, for the first half of his career the younger Walter could hardly have been more administratively active: a j.p. in Lindsey from 1420, sheriff of the county in 1423, and one of its representatives in Parliament on five successive occasions between 1425 and 1431.

It was during his first service in Parliament that Tailboys became involved in a dispute with the noted soldier Sir John Keighley, younger brother of Sir Gilbert Keighley of Keighley, Yorkshire, over an estate centred on the manor of Theddlethorpe, Lindsey. This estate had recently been in the hands of the Braytoft family and it may be that Tailboys and Keighley were rival purchasers. On 13 Aug. 1425 Tailboys and others sued out a special assize of novel disseisin to try their respective titles, and two months later, on 13 Oct., a local jury condemned Keighley in the massive sum of £640 for disseising Tailboys and his co-feoffees of the disputed estate. C66/416, m. 1d; KB27/673, rot. 64. These damages were out of all proportion to the value of the property and may reflect a local jury’s hostility to the pretensions of Keighley as an outsider. But Keighley’s place in the service of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, meant that his claims could not be dealt with so summarily. If a later action brought by Tailboys is taken at face value, Keighley sought to bring his lord and the Crown into the dispute by having our MP’s servants falsely indicted for breaking the duke’s close at Highgate (Middlesex) and taking cattle worth £20. This first phase of the dispute ended in February 1427, when Keighley and Tailboys entered into mutual bonds in 1,000 marks to abide the award of a panel headed by two royal councillors, John Stafford, bishop of Bath and Wells, and Ralph, Lord Cromwell, with whom Tailboys had close connexions. CP40/670, rot. 140d; CCR, 1422-9, pp. 329, 335-6.

No award was forthcoming, and the task of ending the dispute fell instead to Gloucester. On 6 July 1428, acting not as Keighley’s lord but rather discharging his duty as Protector to reconcile influential disputants, he returned what appeared to be a fair compromise: under mutual penalties of £500, Tailboys was to remit to Keighley disproportionate damages awarded in the assize, and in return Keighley was to pay him £50 and release all actions. Unfortunately, presumably because Tailboys was dissatisfied with its terms, this award was not implemented, and came rather to serve as another issue between the parties. On 20 Oct. the King’s attorney, William Babthorpe, produced the award in the Exchequer and claimed that Tailboys should forfeit his £500, not to Keighley (then under sentence of outlawry for his failure to pay the damages in the assize) but to the King. E159/205, recorda Mich. rot. 9. Much later, in 1440, Tailboys avoided execution of the said £500 by producing in the Exchequer letters of pardon of 1437: E159/216, recorda Easter rot. 11; C67/38, m. 14. The unscrupulous Keighley then added to Tailboys’s difficulties by resorting to blatant fraud in an attempt to negate the findings of the contentious assize. Through an intermediary, he paid ten marks to a clerk in King’s bench, Thomas Bolton, to introduce minor amendments into the record of the assize so as to render it null at law. This offence was immediately discovered. On 8 June 1429, the day the amendments were made, an indictment was laid by a Westminster jury, made up of officers of the court, against Bolton for having made them. KB27/675, rex rot. 4d. Yet this did not stop Keighley suing, three weeks later, a new writ of error on the false amendments. The was how matters stood when the dispute reached its climax in the Parliament of 1429-30, to which Tailboys was returned. Both he and Keighley presented petitions. For his part Tailboys cited Bolton’s fraud; and Keighley alleged error in the record of the assize and in the process of outlawry against him. Both petitions are enrolled on KB27/673, rot. 64, but neither appears on the Parliament roll.

These petitions proved the prelude both to a statute (8 Hen. VI, c. 12), annulling the effects of emendations made by the ‘misprison’ of court officers, and to the satisfactory conclusion to the dispute. Under bonds entered into on 1 Jan. 1431 Keighley undertook to suffer the judgement of the assize to be confirmed, to discharge Tailboys of the £500 penalty incurred for failure to implement Gloucester’s award, and to see that he was received into the duke’s favour. He was also to affirm before Philip Morgan, bishop of Ely, Sir Thomas Cumberworth*, Sir Richard Pickering*, William Keighley and John Langholm I*, that he had not caused Tailboys to be indicted of felony and to acknowledge him to be ‘venerabilem generosum bone fame’. C54/281, m. 12d (calendared in CCR, 1429-35, pp. 109-10). In return our MP undertook to acknowledge himself contented of the punitive damages awarded against his rival, who had paid little or nothing. Not surprisingly, the dispute had ended in victory for Tailboys. While his opponent had no connexions among the politically influential men of Lincolnshire beyond Gloucester’s retainer Sir Robert Roos*, Tailboys enjoyed the active support of Cumberworth, his fellow Lincolnshire MP in 1425, Thomas, Lord Roos, one of his co-plaintiffs in the 1425 assize, and, most importantly, Lord Cromwell.

In all probability it is this Cromwell connexion that explains why Tailboys was returned to every Parliament between 1425 and 1431. His brother, John, was, by 1430 if not before, one of Cromwell’s most intimate servants, while his other brother, Henry, acted as the receiver of Cromwell’s wife in 1429-30. Walter himself was among those enfeoffed in 1424 of Lord Ralph’s caput honoris, the castle and manor of Tattershall; and in 1439 he was one of the feoffees for the foundation of the collegiate church there, the project closest to Cromwell’s heart. Further, in 1441 his son and heir apparent, another Walter, served in France under Lord Ralph’s cousin and heir-male, Sir Robert Cromwell. HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, i. 172-3, 207-8; CPR, 1422-9, p. 212; 1436-41, p. 292; E101/53/33, m. 4; 54/9, m. 1. When our MP died in 1444 there can have been no hint that just five years later his son, William, was to lead a violent assault upon the man who had long been a patron of the Tailboys family.

Along with Tailboys’s connexion with Cromwell went lesser links with other local barons. Tailboys employed Lord Roos as one of his feoffees in the disputed manor of Theddlethorpe; he himself was a feoffee of John, Lord Welles (d.1421); and in 1435 he was one of the trustees for implementation of the contract made on the marriage of Lionel, Lord Welles’s son and heir apparent, Richard, and Joan, daughter of another Lincolnshire baron, Robert, Lord Willoughby of Eresby. Reg. Fleming, i (Canterbury and York Soc. lxxiv), 354; C140/4/33; Lincs. AO, Earl of Ancaster mss, 2ANC3/A/20. More surprising was his association with John, duke of Bedford, whom he served as steward of the Lincolnshire manor of Burwell, which had once been in the hands of the barons of Kyme to whom the Tailboys family were heirs. There is no other evidence to connect our MP with this great man, and it may be that he owed the office to Cromwell’s patronage and his own standing in the county. CPR, 1436-41, p. 25; SC6/909/7.

Given Tailboys’s prominence in county administration his connexions with his fellow leading Lincolnshire gentry must have been broad, but little evidence survives. Twice in the surviving records he appears as a feoffee for a Lincolnshire knight – for Cumberworth and the soldier Sir William Frank of Clee near Grimsby – but his own feoffees in the 1420s and on his second marriage in 1432 were drawn from the second rank of the Lincolnshire gentry. The most prominent figures among them were his brother John, his near neighbour John Fulnetby, his fellow knight of the shire of 1427, Patrick Skipwith*, and John Langholm I, who served with him in the Parliaments of 1426, 1427, 1429 and 1431 as Member for Grimsby. CP40/679, cart. rot. 2; Feudal Aids, iii. 353, 354, 361; CCR, 1422-9, p. 395; CIPM, xxvi. 216. Another close associate from the same rank of society was William Thymolby of Thimbleby, who in June 1424 was contracted to his daughter, Joan, and went on to attest his returns to the Parliaments of 1427 and 1431 and act as a feoffee for his widow. Bodl. Dodsworth mss, 49, f. 84d; Lincs. Archit. and Arch. Soc. v. 57; CPR, 1441-6, p. 441, 1446-52, p. 5. Aside from his service as a feoffee for Cumberworth, it is only through the marriage of his eldest son Walter to Mary, daughter of Sir William Tirwhit*, his fellow knight of the shire in 1426, that evidence survives of a more than passing association with one of the leading Lincolnshire gentry families. CIPM, xxvi. 585.

Walter’s own second marriage – the identity of his first wife is unknown – is an interesting example of how a greater gentry family could extend its ties far beyond its county or region. In 1432 he took a west-country bride, Alice Stafford, widow of (Sir) Edmund Cheyne. The marriage probably came about because the Cheynes owned the manor of Tothill, not far from the disputed Theddlethorpe estate, and it is likely to have been a part of the marriage agreement that her father Sir Humphrey Stafford should surrender in her favour the keeping of this manor, which he had by royal grant during the minority of her daughters. CFR, xvi. 42, 80-81. The marriage may also have owed something to associations formed in Parliament, for Stafford had been present with Tailboys in the Parliaments of 1426 and 1427 and Cheyne in that of 1429. However this may be, this marriage to the daughter of a prominent west-country landholder led to two more. Our MP was probably responsible for contracting his young stepdaughter, Anne Cheyne (b.1428), to John Willoughby† of Frampton, cousin of Lord Willoughby. More importantly, Walter’s second marriage provides a context for the marriage, in about 1438, of his second son and eventual heir, William, to Elizabeth, the daughter of another very wealthy west-country landholder, Sir William Bonville*, later Lord Bonville, who also served with Tailboys in Parliament in 1425 and 1427. This marriage was due in part to a family connexion through the Cheynes – Bonville’s uncle, Thomas, had been the first husband of (Sir) Edmund Cheyne’s mother, Cecily (d.1430) – but it also owed something to the new wealth of the Tailboys family. Bonville’s readiness to contract a daughter to one who was yet but a younger son must have owed something to the consideration that, by 1438, our MP had joined him among the handful of English gentry worth more than £500 p.a. CIPM, xxvi. 352; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 558.

If the childless death of Gilbert Umfraville, earl of Angus, in 1381 had had a major impact on the fortunes of the family, even this was of little significance compared with the transformation occasioned by the childless death of Sir Robert Umfraville on 27 Jan. 1437. This brought Tailboys a large estate composed principally of the Lincolnshire lands once of William, Lord Kyme (d.1338), with the much less valuable Northumbrian properties, ravaged by intermittent border warfare, of the Umfravilles. His title to these estates was confirmed by collusive litigation against Sir Robert’s feoffees in the court of common pleas. CP40/705, rots. 326d, 327, 332d; 706, rot. 321. One of the defendants was the chronicler and long-time Umfraville servant, John Hardyng, who had acted as a feoffee for Tailboys in 1432. The impact of this windfall was considerable. In 1436 Walter had been one of the wealthiest landowners resident in Lincolnshire with an income assessed at just over £159, but his income was modest compared with that of Sir Robert Umfraville, who was assessed at £400 p.a. E179/136/198; 158/38. With the death of Sir Robert’s widow, Isabel, in January 1439, all his lands came into Walter’s hands, elevating the latter to a wealth little inferior to that of the Lincolnshire peerage. The new inheritance also occasioned a further move for the Tailboys family, from Goltho some miles south to South Kyme, where the last earl of Angus had built an impressive tower, which still survives. A. Emery, Greater Med. Houses, ii. 296-7.

The great wealth of the family after 1437 and the expectation of such riches during Sir Robert Umfraville’s last years is reflected in the family settlements made by Walter. On his second marriage in 1432 he settled a generous jointure of four manors, including Goltho and worth £100 p.a., on Alice and his male issue by her. CCR, 1429-35, p. 223; CIPM, xxvi. 216.; Dodsworth mss, 49, f. 92. Such a settlement, which, without the Kyme lands, might have seriously undermined the expectations of his heir by his first marriage, was probably made in anticipation of the Kyme inheritance. It is not known what settlement he made in favour of his eldest son, Sir Walter (d.1441), on the latter’s marriage to Mary Tirwhit, but it probably included, inter alia, the Yorkshire manor of Newton Kyme, which had previously been part of his own mother’s jointure. CCR, 1413-19, p. 465; CIPM, xxvi. 215. We are better informed about the marriage of his second son William to Elizabeth Bonville. On 31 Jan. 1438 he subinfeudated to the couple the manor of Hurworth-on-Tees in county Durham. DURH3/46, mm. 20, 21d. Sir William Bonville subinfeudated to the couple the manor of Yeovilton, Som.: CIPM Hen. VII, i. 713, 1048. Unfortunately, it is unknown what provision he made in favour of Eleanor, his only child by his second marriage. Much later, on the death of her cousin, Humphrey Stafford IV*, earl of Devon, in 1469, Eleanor, then the wife of Thomas Strangeways†, fell common-law coheir (with her two maternal older half-sisters, Anne Willoughby and Elizabeth, wife of Sir John Colshull*) to her maternal gdfa. Sir Humphrey Stafford: C140/32/30.

After inheriting the Kyme lands the remainder of Walter’s career was uneventful. The move to South Kyme occasioned a disagreement with his new neighbour and feudal overlord, John, Lord Beaumont, over the course of a ditch that ran between their lands. In February 1439 Beaumont sued out a commission of oyer and terminer against him for diverting the ditch and flooding his land, but the dispute was quickly resolved and did not prevent Walter’s addition to the Kesteven bench in the following May. Later, on 8 Mar. 1441, describing himself as ‘lord of Kyme’, he sued out a papal indult to have a portable altar. CPR, 1436-41, p. 271; CP40/714, rots. 321, 322, 325; CPL, ix. 231. By this date, however, despite his new wealth, it seems that he had moved into semi-retirement. His nomination to the Kesteven bench lasted only until November 1439, and between early 1436 and his death on 13 Apr. 1444, he served, beyond his appointment as a j.p., on only one routine commission of county government. He died intestate and, on 2 June 1444, administration of his goods was committed to his son and heir, William, and a master in Chancery, Nicholas Wymbissh, canon of Lincoln. CIPM, xxvi. 215-17; DURH3/164/65; Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Stafford, f. 123d.