DUNTON, Thomas

Of unknown origin, Dunton was a resident and burgess of Ipswich but also a servant of Richard, duke of York, and he enjoyed the status of ‘gentleman’.1 Add. 30158, f. 13. While it is impossible to prove a connexion between the MP and the Duntons of Hadleigh in south-east Suff. (e.g. see CFR, xv. 113; xvii.7; CCR, 1454-61, p. 397), it is worth noting that York briefly held the manor of Hadleigh, formerly of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, in the late 1440s: P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 66, 80. A lawsuit of the early 1450s reveals his connexion with York. The suit came to pleadings in the court of common pleas at Westminster in Easter term 1452. The plaintiff, William Wetenhale, complained that Dunton and Walter Bilston had unjustly impounded 200 of his sheep at Stanford le Hope, Essex, in March 1451, until he paid 40s. Appearing in court in person, Dunton replied that the plaintiff held a manor and other holdings at Stanford of York’s honour of Rayleigh, and that the sum represented Wetenhale’s share of an aid that the duke had lawfully levied on his tenants when marrying his elder daughter, Anne, to Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, in the mid 1440s. While the plea roll refers to Bilston as ‘lately of Lexden, bailiff’, it fails to record what position Dunton held under the duke.2 CP40/765, rots. 396, 396d.

Whatever his exact role in York’s employment, the MP enjoyed the trust of one of his patron’s most important followers, Sir Edmund Mulsho*, for whom he was a feoffee of estates in Suffolk (by at least the mid 1440s) and Essex. Mulsho had received these estates by grant of York, who seized them back into his own hands after the knight’s death in the autumn of 1458. In March 1462, following a petition of complaint from two of Mulsho’s surviving feoffees, Edward IV instituted a commission of inquiry into the duke’s actions. Dunton was not one of the petitioners for, as the wording of the commission records, he was no longer alive at that date.3 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 180, 205; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 114-15.

He may have died at about the same time as Sir Edmund Mulsho: John Dunton became a freeman of Ipswich in October 1458, possibly in succession to the MP, if his son.4 Add. 30158, f. 22.