STRELLEY, Sir John

This biography replaces that of Sir Robert Strelley, who, on the basis of a writ de expensis issued in his name, was wrongly credited with attending the Parliament of 1407 in Sir John Strelley’s place. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 507-8. In fact, Robert Strelley was probably not even of age in 1407, and in any event he was still an esquire as late as 1409: S.J. Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian Eng. 204; C139/48/28. The writ clearly cited his Christian name in error.

The Strelleys of Hazelbadge, a village in the High Peak of north Derbyshire, were a branch of the more prominent Strelleys of Strelley, Nottinghamshire, who held the overlordship of the manor of Hazelbadge. Although the Strelleys of Hazelbadge were a relatively obscure family by the fifteenth century, they had been established as tenants there since at least the thirteenth century and Sir John’s great-grandfather, Hugh, had served as bailiff of the High Peak in 1345. Kerry, 72-118; Feudal Aids, i. 250, 261; Derbys. Chs. ed. Jeayes, 619; CIPM, ix. 541. Born on Christmas day in 1379, John was aged 11 years at his father’s death. His paternal inheritance consisted principally of the manor of Hazelbadge and a quarter of that of Repton at the other end of the county. These properties were supplemented by the distant lands of his mother, who had inherited the manor of Redenhall in Norfolk from her brother Edward, Lord Montagu, in 1361, CIPM, ix. 140-1; xvi. 1029-30; Kerry, 116-17; Harl. Ch. 84 A 49; CP, ix. 84-86; F. Blomefield, Norf. v. 368. but she retained these until at least 1402. CCR, 1389-92, p. 409; Feudal Aids, iii. 645. At the time of Sir Hugh’s death, John’s inheritance was also charged with the dower of his maternal grandmother, Joan, and that of the elderly Margaret, widow of Philip Strelley, from whom Sir Hugh had inherited the estate in 1367. CIPM, xi. 434; xii. 169; xvi. 1029-30. For reasons which are now obscure, John was also heir to the reversion of the estate of the Bassets of Rushton in Northamptonshire. In addition to their manor of Rushton and another known as ‘Bassetts’ in Milton Ernest in Bedfordshire, they had also held the manor of Nether Haddon in north Derbyshire. Unfortunately, however, from Strelley’s point of view, these lands remained in the hands of John Barley, widower of Eleanor Basset, as tenant by the courtesy until 1421 if not later. CP25(1)/291/63/40; Feudal Aids, i. 250, 261; CIPM, xiii. 165, 261; CFR, viii. 225-6; HMC Rutland, iv. 28.

Since the family held a mill at Brough near Hazlebadge in chief, the young John’s wardship fell to the King, who granted it initially to Thomas, duke of Gloucester. However, John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, and Sir Nicholas Strelley†, as overlords of Sir Hugh’s estates at Repton and Hazlebadge, respectively, challenged in Chancery the legality of the letters patent awarding custody to Gloucester in March 1392, alleging (falsely) that Sir Hugh had held no lands of the King. After Duke Thomas failed to answer their suit, his grant of custody was revoked and the wardship was given to Sir Nicholas in the following year. C245/23/53; CPR, 1391-6, pp. 55-56; CFR, xi. 321. No doubt this new arrangement suited the young John better, but nothing more is known of him before he came of age. As befit the grandson of a knight raised to the peerage after fighting at Crécy, he then became a professional soldier and was knighted after leading a retinue of seven archers in the Scottish campaign of 1400. In the following year he entered the retinue of Henry, prince of Wales: on 7 Oct. 1401, together with members of the prince’s council, he witnessed the surrender of two Welsh rebels, and in 1403 he was paid for service in Wales with one esquire and four archers. CP, ix. 84; E101/43/3; DKR, xxxvi. 207, 482; E101/404/24 (1), f. 5; W.R.M. Griffiths, ‘Henry, Prince of Wales, 1399-1413’ (Oxf. Univ. M.Phil. thesis, 1981), 173, 196. It may have been his status as a prince’s knight that precipitated his election to Parliament for Derbyshire in September 1407, since the prince’s faction had recently begun to increase its influence in the county, chiefly in the person of Strelley’s neighbour (Sir) Roger Leche†, steward of the prince’s household.

Strelley’s return to Parliament also occurred at about the same time as his marriage and consequent improvement of his financial position. His wife Joan, to whom he was married by late in 1407, had had three previous husbands. Kerry, 116. Most of the property she brought him came from the first of these, Nicholas Kniveton, who owned considerable lands in south-west Derbyshire. After his death in 1390, Joan had been given a life interest in the manor of Mercaston with property in several nearby vills, which she conveyed to feoffees to hold to her use, with successive remainders to Nicholas’s sons. With her added income, Strelley’s Derbyshire estates were assessed at £33 p.a. in the tax returns of 1412 and this was probably an underestimate. CP40/603, rot. 518d; 605, rot. 321d; 607, rot. 532d; Wolley Ch. VI 41; Derbys. Chs. 1692; Feudal Aids, vi. 412. Although it must have increased his income and raised his profile in the county considerably, Strelley’s marriage brought him into dispute with Kniveton’s feoffees and his son and heir, Thomas Kniveton. Two of the most important of these feoffees were Sir Nicholas Montgomery I† and Sir John Cockayne*. A series of lawsuits filed against the couple beginning in the following year suggests that the trustees had strongly opposed the marriage, and in the summer of 1409 the dispute flared up into violence. CPR, 1391-6, p. 138; Radbourne Chs. ed. Jeayes, 447-8, 451; Wolley Ch. XI 31; Derbys. Chs. 1692-3; Kerry, 116; CP40/590, rot. 203d; 591, rot. 536; 594, rot. 245; 595, rot. 7; 599, rot. 411d; 600, rot. 170d; 601, rot. 7; 605, rot. 56d; 619, rot. 250d. At a peace session held in Derby on 27 July 1409 a detailed presentment described a serious scuffle at a hostel called Lymestre Inn in Ashbourne on the previous 25 June. A dispute over the impounding of two of Strelley’s horses by the town bailiff Thomas Glover and Henry Stere (over a debt allegedly owed to the latter) led to a fight in which Sir John’s servant, Roger Baret, was killed by a blow from a bill. One of the assailants, Nicholas Chaloner, was indicted for manslaughter and four of his accomplices, including Stere, were charged as accessories. KB9/198/8; KB27/594, rex rot. 16. This may have been no more than an isolated incident but the fact that it took place at Ashbourne, where Cockayne was the principal landholder, suggests the possibility that it owed something to the ill-feeling between Strelley and Kniveton’s feoffees. Further, Stere seems to have been connected with Thomas Kniveton: Elizabeth, duchess of Norfolk, had sued them for trespass on her lands in Ashbourne in 1405. CP40/579, rot. 575; 598, rot. 199d. However this may be, the trial of Chaloner and Stere took place in Ashbourne on 1 Aug. 1411 before two justices at assize, headed by John Cockayne, uncle of Sir John Cockayne and another of Nicholas Kniveton’s feoffees. The defendants were acquitted, and when asked by Cockayne to reveal who had committed the act, the jurors named ‘David Bangor, walsmon’ as the killer. No further action was taken until an indictment of ‘David Walsheman, yeoman of Ashbourne’ for Baret’s murder was made on 4 June 1414 before commissioners of oyer and terminer. Here the presentment against Walsheman, made by the jurors of High Peak wapentake, was stronger than the initial indictment of Chaloner before the j.p.s. Stere was again indicted as an accessory and both were indicted for assault and mayhem against Strelley. Another significant difference was that the crime was said to have taken place in Strelley’s own house in Ashbourne, removing the possibility that the killing could be interpreted as self-defence or accidental, since entry into Strelley’s house implied premeditation. This was important because from 1390 to 1414 the crime of murder could not be exonerated by the King’s general pardon. CP40/535, rot. 375; KB27/594, rex rot. 16; KB9/204/2/39-40, 43. What lay behind these legal manoeuvres is unclear, but they do imply that Strelley had the advantage or, at least, that his opponents had played into his hands by resorting to violence. Thereafter the dispute ran out of steam. Civil actions of debt between Sir John on one part, and the Kniveton heir and feoffees on the other, were abandoned by Easter 1415, and in the same term Stere successfully pleaded a general pardon (dated on the previous 26 Jan.) to end the process against him. This may indicate a settlement of differences between the parties, and it is surely more than coincidental that Strelley purchased a general pardon on the same day as Stere acquired his. CP40/612, rot. 258; 613, rot. 156; 615, rot. 399; C237/37/15.

By this date, however, Strelley had serious financial difficulties which had already led him to sell property. In 1412 he sold his fourth part of the manor of Repton, which lay far from the bulk of his Derbyshire estates in the High Peak, to John Fynderne of Findern, a local esquire and Exchequer clerk who had recently purchased another moiety of the manor and had been one of the few attestors of Strelley’s election to Parliament in 1407. M. Jurkowski, ‘John Fynderne’ (Keele Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1998), 391-4; C1/71/43; C219/10/4. Next to go was the reversion of the Basset properties in Derbyshire, Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire. In October 1414 the reversion of the Bassets’ manor of Nether Haddon was purchased by Sir Roger Leche, and in the following year Strelley conveyed his reversion of the two other Basset manors to William Penythorn. Derbys. Feet of Fines (Derbys. Rec. Soc. xi), 1045; CP25(1)/291/63/40; C1/10/306. What led to this state of severe indebtedness is a matter for speculation. His quarrel over his wife’s interest in the Kniveton lands is hardly an adequate explanation, although it may have exacerbated his difficulties. Nor is it likely that his participation in Prince Thomas’s successful chevauchee in 1412, the only occasion on which he is known to have fought in France, undermined his financial position. J.H. Wylie, Henry IV , iv. 74.

Whatever its cause, Strelley’s indebtedness may explain why he took no part in county administration beyond his one election to Parliament. Little is known about the later years of his life, nor the circumstances of his death, but he probably died not long before 2 Feb. 1422, when his widow Joan agreed to lease her life-interest in her late husband’s estate to Sir Richard Vernon*, the leading gentry landholder in north Derbyshire, in exchange for an annuity of ten marks. Kerry, 116-17. The couple had no issue, and Sir John’s heir was Hugh Strelley, probably his brother. A soldier who had fought at Agincourt, Hugh had recently married an heiress from Kent, and his interests lay primarily in that county. E101/45/21/22; C81/1123/2; C76/98, m. 17; CCR, 1413-19, pp. 515, 525; 1419-22, pp. 18, 45, 86-89; KB27/636, rots. 36, 46d; 637, rots. 2d, 40d, fines rot. 1. Probably soon after Sir John’s death, he disseised Joan Strelley of her tenements in Hazlebadge and Allestree, but once she had involved Vernon, Hugh decided to continue the process Sir John had begun and sell off most of the family estate to local landowners. In July 1422 he released his right to the Basset manor of Nether Haddon to Sir Roger Leche’s feoffees, who sold it on to Vernon; and in January 1424 he sold his lands in Castleton, Brough, Allestree, Hope and Hassop to John, Lord Talbot (later earl of Shrewsbury) and conveyed to him a further messuage and lands in Over Shatton in the Peak in the following May. C1/69/186; HMC Rutland, iv. 28; Harl. Ch. 84 A 49; Derbys. Chs. 557; C146/3362. Joan Strelley is last known to have been alive on 30 June 1429, the date on which Vernon paid her an instalment of her annual farm from Hazlebadge, and probably died before December 1431, by which time Thomas Kniveton had been given livery of his inheritance. Kerry, 117; Feudal Aids, i. 293-6.