TRUTHALL, John

Of all the men who represented Lincolnshire during our period Truthall was, with the exception of John Newport II*, the poorest and most obscure. He was also the only one whose origins lay in a distant county. Later evidence makes it clear that he came from a Cornish family which presumably took its name from the village of Truthall near Helston. In 1499 his grandson or great-grandson, Richard Truthall, sold the small manors in Mousehole and Penzance, to Sir Henry Willoughby of Wollaton (Nottinghamshire), who may have been a kinsman of our MP’s wife. CCR, 1485-1500, no. 1164. For what little is known of the Cornish Truthalls: CAD, iv. A9990; vi. A13009; C1/29/44; Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR/1/193. There is, however, no evidence to suggest that our MP held these manors, and he clearly represented what was, in his time, a junior branch of the family. All that is known of him places him firmly in the east Midlands, where he appears to have been established by the late 1420s. A later action in the court of common pleas shows that he was executor of the mother of John, Lord Beaumont, Elizabeth, daughter of William, Lord Willoughby of Eresby, who appears to have died in 1428. CP40/689, rot. 168d; CP, ii. 61. How the scion of a minor Cornish family should have formed such a connexion is unknown. That connexion was, however, to determine the course of his career. He soon established himself in the counties of Lincolnshire and Leicestershire, in which the Beaumonts had their principal estates. In Trinity term 1430, described as a gentleman resident at Loughborough, he was sued by William, Lord Ferrers of Groby, for felling trees at Charley in the forest of Charnwood. In 1434 he was sworn to the peace in neighbouring Lincolnshire, and two years later he was assessed for taxation in Leicestershire on an annual income of £9. If, however, his earliest connexion in the Midlands was with the latter county, it was at Laughton, virtually in the shadow of the Beaumont castle at Folkingham, that he came to reside. CP40/678, rot. 182; CPR, 1429-36, p. 382; E179/192/59.

Whatever importance Truthall came to possess in local affairs depended entirely on his position as one of the most intimate servants of Lord, and later Viscount, Beaumont. By Michaelmas 1435, he was acting as Beaumont’s receiver. CP40/699, rot. 156. Their association was long and close: on 23 Apr. 1438 Truthall was present at the baptism of his lord’s second son and eventual heir, William, in the parish church of Edenham (Lincolnshire); and, in his will of 8 Feb. 1456, the viscount named our MP as one of his executors, with a reward of £10 for his labours. He may also have had a more substantial reward: at an unknown date, the viscount granted him the manor of Anthorpe, near Louth, perhaps to hold as a life tenant. C139/181/76; Add. Ch. 74926; E211/281; E357/80, rot. 19d; E153/1155/7.

Truthall’s sole election to Parliament in 1453 is also to be interpreted in terms of his service to Beaumont. As chamberlain of the royal household and chief steward of Queen Margaret, the viscount was understandably anxious to secure the return of his own men to an assembly, the compliance of which was so vital to the recovery of the court’s fortunes after the debâcle of 1450. This provides the only convincing explanation for the return of so unlikely a Member as Truthall for the county. While serving in Parliament he played a part in a small piece of private Beaumont business. Among his fellow MPs was John Chiselden*, from whose family the viscount had, in 1451, acquired the manor of Leigh in Rutland with the stewardship of the forest of that county. On 8 Mar. Chiselden quitclaimed his right in these holdings to the viscount’s heir, William, Lord Bardolf, Truthall and others in a deed witnessed by three other sitting MPs, Thomas Everingham*, Richard Hotoft* and William Elton*, a nice illustration of the intermeshing of private and public business. CPR, 1446-52, p. 454; VCH Rutland, ii. 16; CCR, 1447-54, p. 441.

Truthall’s long service to one as powerful as Viscount Beaumont gave him indirect access to royal patronage. In 1442 the Crown granted him a life exemption from office, and, more importantly, in March 1455 named him as customs collector in the port of Boston, where Beaumont was lord. CPR, 1441-6, p. 42; CFR, xix. 105. The proximity of Laughton to Folkingham also makes it likely that Beaumont facilitated his acquisition of land there although it is not known how or when this acquisition came about (save that he and his wife were seised of some lands there by July 1440). CCR, 1435-41, p. 462. In 1444 he sued his bailiff there for account: CP40/732, rot. 194. In the Lincolnshire subsidy returns of 1450-1 he was assessed on a respectable annual income of £19, but the only evidence for the extent of the family’s estates comes from early sixteenth-century inquisitions. By then our MP’s descendants possessed the manor of ‘West Hall’ in West Laughton with its appurtenances in neighbouring vills, and a small estate of some 80 acres not far away in Ingoldsby, together valued at £9 p.a. in 1541. They also held lands in south Nottinghamshire comprising more than 100 acres in Colston Basset, where they were tenants of the Stafford dukes of Buckingham, and nearly 150 acres spread over the nearby vills of Kinoulton, Costock and Rempstone, altogether valued at £11 p.a. in 1515. E179/276/44, m. 1; C142/30/93; 63/66; E150/575/12; 731/2. That their estates were of similar extent in the late fifteenth century is suggested by the royal grant of December 1471 to Richard, duke of Gloucester, of the manors or lordships of Laughton, Ingoldsby, Colston Basset, Keyworth, Costock and Rempstone, once belonging to John Truthall and forfeited to the King because of his adherence to Henry VI at the Readeption. CPR, 1467-77, p. 297.

This John, however, was not our MP but his successor. Although the former’s date of death is unknown, there is strong evidence that he died before the accession of Edward IV. Some of the inquisitions into Viscount Beaumont’s lands taken early in that reign state that the MP, like his master, was dead before 4 Mar. 1461 (although some do not), and this is lent some support by his omission from the executors named in an undated will made by Beaumont after February 1456. CIMisc. viii. 273-6, 315, 405; E357/80, rots. 20d, 25, 33; E211/281. It is probable that he died in the late 1450s. His son, John, despite forfeiting his estates after the Readeption, maintained the family’s position in Lincolnshire. He was pardoned on 13 Feb. 1472, when described, seemingly erroneously, as a knight, and in March 1486 he was granted the office of bailiff of the lordships of Boston, Frieston and Butterwick (Lincolnshire) by Henry VII. CPR, 1467-77, pp. 285-6; 1485-94, p. 83; C67/48, m. 11. Interestingly, however, he married a Cornish bride. By Oct. 1464 his wife was Joan, wid. of Thomas Penlees of Trevisker: Arundell mss, AR/1/391.