TILLIOL, Sir Peter

Tilliol’s marriage occurred earlier than suggested in the earlier biography. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 614-17. In April 1382 he purchased Elizabeth Leyton’s marriage for £400 from Sir Roger Fulthorpe, j.c.p., who had himself bought the marriage from Edward III’s mistress, Alice Perrers. B.A. Barker, ‘The Claxtons’ (Univ. of Teeside Ph.D. thesis, 2003), 207. The marriage promised a significant augmentation of Tilliol’s resources, for the bride was her father’s heiress in the manor of Hetton-le-Hole and other property in the palatinate of Durham. However, her mother had a jointure and dower interest in the bulk of this property, including in the manor of Hetton, and it was not until her death in 1421 that the Leyton estate was reunited in Tilliol’s hands. Even then he encountered difficulties, having to pay Thomas Langley, bishop of Durham, of whom the lands were held by knight service, an extortionate £60, twice the annual value of the lands, for livery. Ibid. 24-25, 73, 97; R.L. Storey, Thomas Langley, 261-2; CIMisc. viii. 60 (p. 34).

After Tilliol’s second shrievalty in 1394-5 he was pursued by the Exchequer for arrears of £89 in his account. He appealed to the Crown for relief on the grounds that his ancestral lands to the annual value of 100 marks had been ‘pleinement destruitz et degastez’ by the Scots and that he himself had twice been captured and ransomed by them to the cost of 1,000 marks (a reference to his captures in 1385 and 1388). On 26 Mar. 1397 the King instructed the Exchequer to discharge him of the arrears. E159/173, brevia Trin. rot. 3. If this plea of poverty was valid for the early part of Tilliol’s career, it was not appropriate for its later part. There can have been few, certainly amongst the gentry of the north, who were more active litigants in the court of common pleas. From the later 1390s he routinely filed large numbers of debt pleas. In Easter term 1418, for example, he had actions pending against 38 defendants for a total of about £800. CP40/629, rots. 60, 163-4d, 325d. This term may have been atypical in the total claimed, for one of the actions was for as much as £467 against his neighbour, Sir Richard Muncaster† of Hayton, but in terms of number of actions it was routine for him. CP40/629, rot. 60. This adds to the evidence for Muncaster’s indebtedness cited in The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 809. It is not clear why he should have been so litigious, but one possibility is that he systematically advanced money on loan. In November 1432, for example, Hubert, brother of Sir William Leigh*, mortgaged his property in Carlisle to him for security of the repayment of 40 marks within three years. Cumbria RO, Whitehaven, Pennington-Ramsden mss, D/Pen 47/16.

Tilliol invested some of his wealth in leases. At some date before 1419 (and perhaps several years before), Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland, leased the extensive manor of Bolton inWestmorland to him at an annual rent of £30. This was later to lead to problems. On 1 Dec. 1433 the Crown appointed a commission, headed by Sir James Strangeways, j.c.p., to hear an assize of novel disseisin sued by Tilliol against the earl’s son, Sir George Neville, for the leased manor. When the assize was taken on 21 Dec. at Penrith the jurors proved unsympathetic to the aged Tilliol: they claimed that the late earl had legitimately re-entered the manor for arrears of rent and named feoffees who then settled the manor on Sir George in tail-male. JUST1/143/3, m. 7.

The findings of the jurors (who included Sir Peter’s son-in-law, Sir Christopher Moresby†) in Tilliol’s inquisition post mortem, held at Carlisle on 29 Jan. 1435, did not satisfy the Crown. The mental incapacity of our MP’s son, Robert, the last male member of a great and ancient lineage, gave it title to a valuable wardship, and there was clearly a suspicion that the jurors had concealed the full extent of the Tilliol lands. On 16 May a second jury (which included three members of the first) added further properties, but said that they were in the hands of Sir Peter’s cousin, William Lowther† of Rose castle, George Warwick, and a chaplain, John Knoblowe. Since these men were among Sir Peter’s executors there can be little doubt that they were feoffees for the execution of the will. They were assisted in their task by the other executors, William’s brother, Geoffrey Lowther*, and two other local chaplains, Stephen Parke and John Bampton. CIPM, xxiv. 318-19; CP40/700, rot. 58d.

Tilliol’s incapacitated son did not long survive him, dying in royal wardship on 10 Nov. 1435. On the following 2 May the King ordered the escheator of Cumberland to divide the Tilliol lands between the MP’s two daughters, Margaret, the wife of Sir Christopher Moresby, and Isabel, the wife of a lesser man, John Colville. CIPM, xxiv. 457; CFR, xvii. 277-8. Some confusion has attached to this marriage for, rather curiously, Isabel married two John Colvilles. This is clear from a lawsuit of Michaelmas term 1422 when her father sued her, as the executrix of Sir John Colville, and her husband, John Colville, described as a yeoman, for a debt of about £10. A later suit describes her more specifically as the widow of Sir John and the wife of John, then accorded the rank of gentleman. There can be no doubt that her first husband was Sir John Colville of Ingleby Arncliffe in Yorkshire, who died campaigning in France in 1418, and the probability is that her second was Sir John’s cousin and heir-male. Even, however, if the latter was the heir-male of the former, the second marriage was a poor one because the Colville lands were divided between the heirs-general, namely Sir John’s aunts, Joan Mauleverer and Isabel Wandesford. It is likely, therefore, that Isabel contracted this marriage against the wishes of her father, and this might explain why John was disparagingly described as a yeoman in the 1422 suit. CP40/647, rot. 18; 674, rot. 464d; Yorks. Arch. Soc. xvi. 164, 212-14. In a pardon of 1429 John Colville is promoted further, being described as an esquire: CPR, 1422-9, p. 516.

The poor expectations of Isabel’s second husband may have been a factor in the later dispute over the Tilliol inheritance. It was later claimed that Sir Peter had willed that the whole of his inheritance should descend through Isabel, as the eldest daughter, if her descendants adopted his family name. There must be a doubt about the truth of this story, yet it has the air of plausibility. It is not fanciful to suppose that Sir Peter, whatever his attitude to Isabel’s second marriage, should have been anxious to perpetuate his ancient name; and the story explains why Colville, with no paternal inheritance to endear his own name to him, adopted that of Tilliol. Further, much later, in 1482, the elderly (Sir) William Martindale* made a sworn statement before the commissary general at York that he and others had destroyed Tilliol’s will in the interests of the younger sister, Margaret Moresby. Ancestor, iv. 99; W. Hutchinson, Cumb. ii. 573; J. Nicolson and R. Burn, Westmld. and Cumb. ii. 458. Even before coming of age, William is described as ‘Colville alias Tilliol’, and it was as William Tilliol that he was named as escheator of Cumb. and Westmld. in 1448: CPR, 1436-41, p. 346; CFR, xviii. 103. In these circumstances, it is not surprising that the Tilliol inheritance should have been disputed between the families of Colville and Moresby. Litigation continued into the 1460s before a satisfactory division was accomplished with William Colville alias Tilliol (d.1479) establishing title to the castle of Scaleby. CP40/748, rot. 228d; 790, rot. 352; KB9/288/1-5; KB27/805, rot. 13; 806, rot. 16d; Hutchinson, ii. 572-3; Nicolson and Burn, ii. 458-9.