VERNON, Fulk

Fulk Vernon, a younger son of one of the greatest gentry families in the Midlands, first appears in the records in Easter term 1434 when, in company with his elder brother, Richard, he offered mainprise in the court of King’s bench for Richard Broun†, a lawyer in his father’s employ. KB27/692, rex rot. 7. Soon after, he was preparing (perhaps not for the first time) for military service in France. On 23 June 1434, or shortly before, he contracted to serve for half a year with ten other men-at-arms and 33 archers in the army to accompany the return of Regent Bedford to France, and on 14 July he mustered his retinue at Dover. E404/50/333; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 424-5. Financial problems arising from this service are the likely explanation for actions he sued in the court of common pleas in the following Hilary term. He claimed debts totalling the considerable sum of 740 marks against 13 plaintiffs, including Sir Richard Copley, a Yorkshire knight, and John Lamare, an Irish esquire. It is a fair speculation that the plaintiffs had defaulted on contracts to serve in his retinue. CP40/696, rot. 235d.

Once back in England Fulk began to play a prominent part in the affairs of his native county. On 6 Dec. 1436 he was elected to represent Derbyshire in Parliament, the indenture being attested by his father and elder brother. KB27/692, rex rot. 7; C219/15/1. On 9 Nov. following he was appointed keeper of the duchy of Lancaster park of Shottle in Duffield Frith (although he held the office only briefly), and, more significantly, in April 1438 he was nominated as steward of High Peak jointly with his father. DL42/18, ff. 93v, 100. This second appointment seems to have been made shortly after his elder brother’s death and thus at a time when he stood heir-apparent to the Vernon inheritance. It is thus not surprising that he should again have been returned to Parliament in 1439. He put his time at Westminster to good use: on 29 Dec. 1439, during the prorogation, he added to his offices a life grant of the bailiwick of the wapentake of Morleston and Litchurch. CPR, 1436-41, p. 366. Although this grant describes him as keeper of Shottle park, that office had been granted to John Curson* in May 1439 and to Bartholomew Halley* in the following Nov.: DL42/18, ff. 115v, 142v.

This series of grants implies that Fulk already had taken a place in the royal household. He had certainly done so by 1441, when he appears in the first of a series of lists of those in receipt of household robes. Further, he had a closer relationship with the King than many of his fellow recipients. On 11 May 1443 he was appointed to supply lead for a project close to Henry VI’s heart, the building of Eton College. This was no doubt to his profit for the Vernons had significant lead-mining interests in High Peak. E101/409/9; CPR, 1441-6, p. 162; S.M. Wright, Derbys. Gentry (Derbys. Rec. Soc. viii), 21. Two weeks later there followed another more significant mark of favour. On 25 May he was appointed for life as steward of those duchy of Lancaster lands in Staffordshire and Derbyshire which had been resumed during the Parliament of 1442 from the feoffees for the performance of Henry V’s will. This grant has been interpreted as one of the stewardship of Tutbury, an office normally beyond the aspirations of men of his rank, and it has been suggested that Humphrey Stafford, earl of Stafford (from 1444, duke of Buckingham), who had held the office since 1435, had surrendered it in his favour. DL37/10/21; R. Somerville, Duchy, i. 540; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 343. The Vernons’ connexion with Stafford is certainly consistent with such a surrender, but the accounts of the honour of Tutbury demonstate that the earl remained its steward after the apparent grant to our MP. Clearly the grant to Fulk was a more limited one. DL29/402/6456.

Soon afterwards Vernon’s fortunes suffered a reverse. On 13 May 1444 the constable of the Tower of London was ordered to receive him into custody. One can only speculate on the reasons for his confinement. CCR, 1441-7, p. 172. It may be relevant that, on the previous 5 Nov., he and his father had stood surety for the appearance of his younger brother John in the court of King’s bench to find security of the peace to John Rollesley. This may reflect the family’s involvement in serious local disorder and Fulk’s arrest the Crown’s method of containment, but if this is so these troubles have left no other trace in the surviving records. If this is the explanation for his arrest, he may have been free as early as 26 May 1444, when he and his father were pardoned for the sums they had forfeited for John Vernon’s failure to find surety: KB27/730, rex rot. 29d; 732, fines rot. 1; CPR, 1441-6, p.268. An equally speculative suggestion is that he was detained for financial irregularities arising out of either his military service or his office-holding in the duchy of Lancaster, but again the surviving records provide no supporting evidence. Whatever the explanation, his imprisonment was the prelude to a further threat to both his and his father’s influence. In October 1444 a rising star of the court, Henry Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, was granted the reversions of the stewardships of High Peak and Tutbury. This posed an obvious threat both to their influence and to that of their patron, the duke of Buckingham. Although not as great a threat as once believed, for Somerville omitted to note that the grant was only in reversion: Somerville, 540; Bull. IHR, lxviii. 227.

None the less, if the prospect of further local advance was closed to Fulk and his father, promotion was still possible in the service of the Crown abroad. On 17 July 1444, after what can only have been a brief period of imprisonment, Fulk was one of the Household esquires deputed to bring the King’s bride, Margaret of Anjou, to England at the generous wages of 18d. a day. He was not back in England until October 1445 and in the interim his father had been appointed to the treasurership of Calais. Add. 23938, ff. 5, 14v. There is little reason to doubt that the duke of Buckingham, as captain there, was responsible for this appointment, and that the same patronage explains Fulk’s subsequent acquisition of the captaincy of neighbouring Hammes castle. On 23 May 1447 he contracted by indenture with the King to hold that office for a term of 30 years from the end of the captaincy of (Sir) Robert Whittingham I*. This reversion quickly fell in for a later reference shows that our MP was in receipt of wages as captain before his death. E101/71/4/919; CPR, 1452-61, p. 484. Such appointments further enhanced the family’s status, but they may have brought financial problems in their train. Fulk’s father incurred considerable debts as treasurer, and it is interesting to note in this context that, eight days before acquiring the reversion of the Hammes captaincy, he himself had entered a bond in 100 marks to an esquire of the royal body, John Hampton II*, and that, a month later, he joined his father in mortgaging their manor of Aylestone (Leicestershire) to another of Buckingham’s retainers, John Vampage*, the King’s attorney-general. C131/68/13; CCR, 1441-7, p. 493.

During these last years of his short career, Fulk continued to play a part in local affairs despite his interests abroad. Although his name does not appear on the enrolled commissions of the peace for Derbyshire until after his death, payments recorded on the pipe roll show that he was acting in that role in the period immediately after his return from France in October 1445. He sat on the bench at least eight occasions between that date and July 1447. Curiously, on 19 Jan. 1447 he headed the attestors to the election of Walter Blount* and Nicholas Fitzherbert* to represent Derbyshire in Parliament. Since the Vernons appear to have been at odds with both of those elected, it may be that he attended in an unsuccessful attempt to forestall their election. Equally, he may have been prepared to put individual animosities aside to secure the election of Blount, a fellow Household man, to a Parliament in which a strong court presence was vital to the planned attack on Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. Wright, 253; C219/15/4.

Fulk’s short but eventful career was over by 8 Feb. 1449, when he was described as deceased in the grant to Blount of his office of bailiff of the wapentakes of Morleston and Litchurch. In other respects, however, the authorities were slow to recognize the fact of his death. He was appointed to the county bench on the following 4 July and made a post mortem appearance in the lists of those in receipt of Household robes. CPR, 1441-6, p. 221; 1446-52, p. 588; E101/410/3. More interestingly, on 20 Nov. 1451, the sheriffs of London were ordered to arrest him and seize his goods in payment of the recognizance to Hampton. They duly held an inquiry into his goods there, finding that, on the day of the recognizance, he had goods but not lands in the City. These goods included a series of furred garments, the grandest of which was a penula of sables containing 95 furs and valued at as much as £4 15s., together with much more modest items, the cheapest of which was a ‘barehide’ worth no more than 8d. Together these items were said to be worth over £15, which, given the fact that the sheriffs would have to account for them at the Exchequer, was probably an undervaluation. What is not clear is why they were in the City. The jurors said that, on the day of the recognizance, they had been in the hands of Henry Waver, a draper and later an alderman of London, and it may be that Fulk had either purchased them from Waver or else raised a loan from him on their security. Unfortunately the surviving records can take us no further in these speculations. If Fulk left a will, it has not survived. Nor, even though he is unlikely to have remained unmarried once he fell heir-apparent to the great Vernon patrimony, is there any evidence to identify his wife. It is, however, certain that he died without surviving issue for on the death of his father in August 1451 his younger brother, William, was the heir. C131/68/13.