SUTTON, Henry I

In the earlier biography this MP was conflated with his namesake of Averham in Nottinghamshire. The Warwickshire man was the less important of the two and much about his career is obscure. He probably hailed from a mercantile family of Coventry. As early as March 1376, described as ‘of Coventry’, he entered into a statute merchant there, and he was later admitted to the town’s prestigious guild of the Holy Trinity. C241/159/66; Reg. Guild Holy Trin. Coventry (Dugdale Soc. xiii), 13. By the late 1380s, however, he was established as a county landowner, holding the manor of Ditchford Frary, some 30 miles south of Coventry. It is not certain how he acquired the manor but it may have been the inheritance of his mother. On 11 Nov. 1395 one Thomas Blythe granted to Sutton and his wife Margaret all his lands in Ditchford and neighbouring Stretton-on-Fosse which he had by inheritance from John Ditchford, once lord of Ditchford Frary. The probability is that Sutton enjoyed the same descent, for Ditchford is known to have left four daughters, and a visitation pedigree of 1619 identifies his mother as the daughter of Ditchford’s daughter Joan and her husband John de Brayles, who had made several presentations to the chapel of Ditchford between 1339 and 1349. Bodl. Dugdale mss, 13, p. 143; W. Dugdale, Warws. 453-4; VCH Warws. v. 155-6; Vis. Warws. (Harl. Soc. xii), 78.

Sutton’s landholdings were not confined to Warwickshire, for he also had lands in the neighbouring counties of Worcestershire and Northamptonshire. By a final concord levied in 1410 he acquired in the latter county a messuage and 14 acres in Staverton, near the Warwickshire border, from a barker of Coventry; and in 1412 his widow was assessed in the subsidy returns on an annual income of 19 marks from lands in Bradden, Barnwell and unspecified other places there. A later conveyance by one of his daughters and coheirs shows that he also held the Worcestershire manor of Barnt Green in Alvechurch. CP25(1)/179/91/81; 293/72/360; E179/155/52; C1/1495/7. Aside from his apparent purchase in Staverton it is not known how these lands came to him. Another mystery is the quality of his marriage. The same visitation pedigree names his wife as Margaret, the daughter of one of the leading gentry figures in Warwickshire, Sir John Peyto, who represented the county in as many as seven Parliaments from 1368 to 1386. Such visitation evidence is often to be discounted, but there is contemporary record of Sutton’s connexion with the Peytos. In May 1386 Sir John presented to the chapel of Ditchford Frary, as Sutton himself did in March 1391. More significantly, in the indenture witnessing his election to represent Warwickshire in the Parliament of 1407, he was described as resident at Wolfhamcote, a Peyto manor; and later, in 1422, Sir John’s grandson and heir, William‡, was among the witnesses of a contract for the marriage of one of Sutton’s daughters. Dugdale, 454; C219/10/4; Dugdale mss, 13, p. 143; C1/6/110.

Notwithstanding this close connexion with the Peytos, Sutton was an insubstantial figure whose election to Parliament is hard to understand in the context of his public career. He was named to only one commission, and that was in the most junior of roles, as a tax collector. In 1398, the same year as he was appointed to this commission, he served as a juror at the assizes held at Warwick, finding in favour of John Catesby† in the protracted dispute over the manor of Ladbroke, and offered surety of the peace in Chancery for one John Coke of Lilbourne (Northamptonshire). CFR, xi. 266; Med. Legal Recs. ed. Hunnisett and Post, 325; CCR, 1396-9, p. 410. He has not been traced taking any further part in public affairs until his election to Parliament on 17 Oct. 1407 in company with a much more important man, Sir Alfred Trussell†. It is tempting to suggest that he was returned as a member of the affinity of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, the dominant landholder in the county, but his connexion with that retinue appears to be only indirect, through the Peytos. C219/10/4.

Sutton makes several appearances in the records for the year after he sat in Parliament. In June 1408, by a deed dated at Wolfhamcote, Giles Shukburgh of Upper Shuckburgh quitclaimed his right in the manor of Ditchford Frary to Sutton and his wife; and Sutton himself released to Catesby’s son,another John*, certain lands at Ladbroke. A month later he offered surety at the assizes at Warwick for various servants of Richard Merbrook of Coventry. Here he is described as ‘of Flecknoe’ in the parish of Wolfhamcote. CAD, v. A10458; Dugdale mss, 13, p. 143; JUST1/1514, rot. 7d.

Sutton did not live much longer after this brief burst of activity. He was alive in May 1410 when party to a draft agreement in settlement of the dispute over the status of the church or chapel of Ditchford Frary, which the warden and scholars of Merton College, Oxford, claimed to be a dependency of their church of Great Wolford. This was a long-running quarrel. In Michaelmas term 1403 Sutton had appeared in person in the court of King’s bench to sue John Robylot, vicar of Great Wolford, and others for trampling and depasturing his grass at Ditchford Frary since as long before as the summer of 1387. The agreement of 1410 did not bring the dispute to an end, and it continued to trouble Sutton’s widow and daughters. KB27/570, rot. 20; R.N. Swanson, ‘Parochialism and Particularism’, in Med. Eccl. Studies ed. Franklin and Harper-Bill, 251-8.

Before his death, Sutton contracted his eldest daughter, Eleanor, in marriage to Geoffrey Allesley (d.1441) of Little Lawford, about ten miles from Coventry, and although his will does not survive he is known to have appointed his wife and Allesley as his executors. C241/212/34. His other daughter, Margaret, remained unmarried for some years after his death. Not until 9 Feb. 1422, at Coventry, did her mother, in the presence of William Peyto and Allesley, make a contract with a lawyer, Hugh Dalby of Brookhampton, for her marriage to Hugh’s son, Edmund. According to a later complaint in Chancery, Hugh undertook to settle lands with an annual value of ten marks on the couple, but then, because his son died so soon after the marriage, he refused to do so. C1/6/110. This helps to explain the settlement Margaret’s mother made in either February or August 1423, granting her interest in the manor of Ditchford Frary to Eleanor and Allesley and their issue, at an annual rent of £12 for her own lifetime. Soon after, the younger Margaret made a second marriage to Simon Mallory of Chilvers Coton, the younger brother of John Mallory*, and it was this new couple who sued Hugh Dalby for his failure to settle jointure. Dugdale mss, 13, p. 143; P.J.C. Field, Sir Thomas Malory, 78.