WARCOP, Robert

More may be added to the earlier biography. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 767.

Warcop did not inherit his family lands until late in his career. His earlier prominence is to be explained by a legal training. On 12 Dec. 1415, a month after the end of his first Parliament, he sued out a general pardon as a ‘man of law’ alias ‘esquire’ resident at Melsonby near Ravensworth in north Yorkshire. There is nothing to show how he came to have an interest in that county, but it is a fair speculation that it came to him through an unidentified wife, either an heiress or, more probably, a widow. If so her property was not confined to Melsonby, for, in 1428, Warcop was returned as holding property some 15 miles away at East Harsley. C67/37, m. 53; Feudal Aids, vi. 320. Towards the end of his life he added to his landholdings through purchase: in 1438 he acquired the manors of Langholme and Gamblesby with other property scattered through several Cumberland vills, the inheritance of the wife of another lawyer, Thomas Manningham†. Manningham and his wife had moved to her estates in Bedfordshire, and her northernmost holdings were of no further interest to them. CP25(1)/35/14/13. The earlier biography suggests that our MP was acting merely as a trustee, but the descent of the property to his heirs shows that he was purchasor: CPR, 1467-77, p. 13.

Warcop’s putative son, another Robert (d.1464), was also a lawyer – he was of the quorum of the peace and was retained as legal counsel by Fountains abbey – and this adds to the difficulty of drawing a line between their careers. C140/26/47; Mems. Fountains Abbey, iii (Surtees Soc. cxxx), 31, 74. The evidence of the electoral returns, however, supports the supposition that the elder Robert died in the late 1430s. He attested four Westmorland elections between 1425 and 1435; and two Robert Warcops, described as ‘senior’ and junior’, attested all three elections between 1449 and 1453. C219/13/3; 14/1, 4, 5; 15/7; 16/1, 2. Since our MP was active as early as 1408, the probability is that the latter two were his son and grandson. On 27 Apr. 1462 the grandson was retained by Richard Neville, earl of Warwick. Cam. Miscellany, xxxii. 144.