The Threlkelds, well established by the late thirteenth century, were one of the leading gentry families of the counties of Westmorland and Cumberland. They had a long tradition of parliamentary service: between 1330 and 1402 the head of the family represented Westmorland on at least eight occasions and Cumberland at least once. Their main residence lay at Crosby Ravensworth in the former county, where, near the border between the two counties, they held a further manor at Yanwath; but they also held manors at Threlkeld and Ousby in Cumberland, together with an outlying small manor, acquired by marriage in the late fourteenth century, at Firby in the East Riding of Yorkshire. By the standards of the north-western gentry this was a very valuable patrimony. In the subsidy returns of 1435-6 our MP was assessed in Westmorland at an annual income of £80. Of the others taxed in the county only Sir Thomas Strickland* was assessed on a greater income.
Henry Threlkeld was born at an opportune moment for the future of his family. His father’s first marriage to Margaret de le Bowes had produced only two daughters, and, since Sir William was approaching the age of 50 when she died, the probability then was that the patrimony would be divided between them.
On 16 Sept. 1424 the new knight was at Appelby as a juror in the inquisition post mortem taken on the death of Elizabeth, widow of Thomas, Lord Clifford (d.1391), but it was not until a few years later that his career in local government began in earnest. On 23 Aug. 1428 he was one of six knights who tried a very important assize of novel disseisin at Carlisle arrayed by William Stapleton† against the baronial family of Dacre. Three months later, he was appointed to his first administrative office, that of escheator. While serving he attested both the Westmorland election at Appleby on 1 Sept. 1429 and the Cumberland election at Carlisle 12 days later. In doing so he was in breach of the statute that demanded that attestors only witness the election of the county in which they were resident on the day the writ of parliamentary summons was issued. Yet his landed interests in both shires made the breach merely a technical one, and it may be that he was present at the Cumberland court as escheator. In any event, he did not attest any further election there. While in office he also sat on the jury which met at Appleby on 21 Oct. 1429 to make assessments for the parliamentary subsidy granted in the previous year.
Thereafter the drudgery of such routine service was briefly broken by a resumption of Threlkeld’s military career. On 23 Apr. 1431 he entered into an indenture with Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, undertaking to serve the earl with the large retinue of eight men-at-arms and 22 archers for a period of six months from 5 June. On 1 June, in preparation for his departure to France, he conveyed his lands in Cumberland to feoffees headed by William*, son and heir of William Stapleton, and another leading member of the local gentry, Robert Bellingham.
Threlkeld’s prominent public position did not deter him from involvement in the wave of disorder which overtook his native county in the early 1430s. According to a petition presented by the victim to the earl of Salisbury, probably in the earl’s capacity as warden of the west march, a group of prominent Westmorland gentry – led by our MP and his brother-in-law, William Thornburgh*, and acting at the behest of Katherine, Thornburgh’s stepmother and now wife of Sir John Lancaster† of Rydal –attacked the house of John Cliburn at Cliburn, ‘at which assawte thei shot a ml arrowes’. They desisted only upon the arrival of three of the county j.p.s, Sir Christopher Moresby, Hugh Salkeld† and Robert Crackanthorpe*, a prominent local lawyer. This, however, was not the end of Cliburn’s ordeal. Soon after, as he made his way to the earl to seek his aid, he and his son-in-law, John Borell, were assaulted as a prelude to the plunder of Borell’s shop in Appleby and Cliburn’s imprisonment.
While, however, the dating is clear, the context of these crimes can only be very partly reconstructed. Seemingly they were an episode in the quarrel over the division of the lands of Sir John Lancaster between his heirs male and his four daughters, one of whom was married to Robert Crackanthorpe. This culminated on 25 Aug. 1438 with Crackanthorpe’s murder at the hands of the Thornburghs and Lancasters.
While involved in these disorders Sir Henry did not neglect other affairs. In August 1434 he leased the rectory of the church of Crosby Ravensworth from its patron, the abbot and convent of Whitby in north Yorkshire, at a rent of as much as £22 p.a.
From this point on, however, Threlkeld’s level of recorded activity diminished. His involvement in local administration appears to have ended in 1437. Although he appears on jury panels in 1438, 1439 and 1443, he did not serve.
Conflict, albeit of a less violent kind, also compromised the last years of Threlkeld’s declining career. In the early 1440s he became involved in a dispute with the wealthy and influential Richard Restwold* over property at Tebay and Borrowdale Head, a few miles to the south of Crosby Ravensworth.
Another quarrel soon arose to trouble Sir Henry. Early in his career his relationship with his first wife’s numerous kin, the Thornburghs, had been close; by 1447, however, the two families had fallen out, perhaps in part because the tie between them had been removed by her death. On 9 Nov. 1447 the influential knight of Lancashire, (Sir) Thomas Haryngton I*, returned an award after the Threlkelds and Thornburghs had entered into mutual bonds in 300 marks. If its terms are an accurate guide, the matter dividing them was a petty financial one: Haryngton awarded that Thornburgh pay our MP seven marks in cash in discharge of a debt together with a further mark for the purchase of a black gown.
Sir Henry’s death resulted in open dispute between his widow and heir. This prompted the intervention of Thomas Percy, Lord Egremont, acting in the role of peacemaker for which his violent temperament hardly suited him. Early in 1453 the disputants swore an oath to abide his arbitration before an impressive gathering of the Percy retinue, headed by (Sir) Thomas Curwen*, Sir Henry Fenwick, (Sir) John Pennington*, (Sir) William Martindale*, John Huddleston*, John Broughton* and William Leigh*. The award marked a further reverse for Lancelot. Egremont decreed that he was not to trouble his stepmother in her jointure, and on 5 Feb. she named Pennington as her attorney to receive certain tenements for her put-upon stepson. Since she had probably already married Pennington’s son, Thomas, Lancelot may have had cause to resent Egremont’s intervention.
Lancelot’s early difficulties perhaps explain the obscurity of his career in the 1450s (although he did serve a term as escheator in 1457-8), and there is nothing to show where his loyalties lay in the civil war of 1459-61. In the early 1460s, however, his standing was significantly enhanced by marriage to Margaret (d.1493), daughter and heiress-presumptive of Henry Brounflete, Lord Vessy (d.1469), and widow of John, Lord Clifford (d.1461). By 1468 he had wealth enough to marry their infant daughter, Anne, to Hugh, grandson and heir of Hugh Lowther*, with the handsome portion of 420 marks.