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Courtiers and Politics in Elizabethan Herefordshire: Sir James Croft, his Friends and his Foes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

W. J. Tighe
W. J. Tighe
Affiliation:
Muhlenberg College, Pennsylvania
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Extract

For well over a decade studies in local history have occupied a significant position in the historiography of early modern England. In particular, the study of the ‘county community’ as the most significant English political and governmental unit and as the primary sphere of social and affectional loyalties for the greater number of those Englishmen constituting the political nation has become securely established. Within this wide and fruitful field for continuing research the theme of the ‘points of contact’ or reciprocal communication between the court and the county, Westminster and the provinces, which Sir Geoffrey Elton raised not so long ago and which Kevin Sharpe more recently attempted to apply to the problems of government in early Stuart England, suggests that investigations of the gentry of a particular county might illustrate how this interchange between the centre and the localities functioned. For such a study to prove fruitful, however, one prerequisite would appear to be necessary: a member of a prominent county family, perhaps its head, who also holds a major office of state or position at court. Such a man was Sir James Croft whose eminent position in Herefordshire was founded on the contacts he made and the patronage he attracted in the last years of Henry VIII's reign. Although this position was threatened in the years of his disgrace during Queen Mary's reign, it gathered strength again in the 1560s, and reached its apogee during the following two decades. Between 1570 and his death in 1590, he served at court as comptroller of the household.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , June 1989 , pp. 257 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

1 The literature is so extensive that to single out particular works might seem invidious. Two must, however, be mentioned, Smith, A. Hassell, County and court: Government and politics in Norfolk, 1558–1603 (Oxford, 1974)Google Scholar and MacCulloch, Diarmaid, Suffolk and the Tudors: Politics and religion in an English county 1500–1600 (Oxford, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Taken together, they reveal how dissimilar the patterns of local politics and elite dominance could be in two contiguous counties during the reign of Elizabeth I.

2 Elton, G. R., ‘Tudor government: the points of contact. I. Parliament’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (TRHS), 5th series, XXIV (1974), 183–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Tudor government: the points of contact. II. The council’, TRHS, 5th series, XXV (1975), 195–211Google Scholar; ‘Tudor government: the points of contact. III. The court’, TRHS, 5th series, XXVI (1976), 211–28Google Scholar; Sharpe, Kevin, ‘Crown, parliament and locality: government and communication in early Stuart England’, English Historical Review, CI, 399 (1986), 321–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 These families included the Crofts of Croft Castle, the Scudamores of Kentchurch and their cadet branch at Holme Lacy, the Coningsbys of Hampton Court, the Harleys of Brampton Bryan, the Baskervilles of Eardisley and Pontrilas, and others, like the Rudhalls, the Warnecombes, the Wigmores, the Pembridges and the Prices who, although not greatly inferior to the former families, with whom, or some of whom, they had links of kinship and service, appear to have been of somewhat lesser consequence.

4 Bindoff, S. T., The Commons 1509–1558 (London, 1982), I, 104–8Google Scholar; Hasler, P. W., The Commons 1558–1603 (London, 1981), I, 174–7Google Scholar; III, 582, 616–17.

5 Almost. In 1559 the knights were Sir Robert Whitney and Humphrey Coningsby, and in 1562/3 the junior knight to Croft was James Warnecombe, Croft's brother-in-law.

6 Bindoff, I, 724–5; Hasler, I, 672–5; Ham, R. E., ‘The autobiography of Sir James Croft’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, L (1977), 48–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Calendar of the Patent Rolls (CPR), Philip, and Mary, , II, 1554–1555, pp, 124–5Google Scholar. It is not clear when, or whether, Croft recovered his estate: as his father was then still living the landed element of his estate may not have been very substantial. Croft married, aged twenty-two, around 1540, Alice (d. 1573), daughter of Richard Warnecombe of Ivington, Herefs. and widow of William Wigmore of Shobdon in the same county. Until Croft's father died on 1 January 1562 he appears to have dwelt at Shobdon, so it may be that until that time most of his landed estate consisted of his wife's jointure. During his period of imprisonment under sentence of death one of his offices was bestowed elsewhere (CPR, Ph. & M., II, 1554–1555, p. 191Google Scholar). Professor Loades (Loades, D. M., Two Tudor conspiracies (Cambridge, 1965), p. 125Google Scholar) notes that Croft was bound over for £500 to his ‘good abearing’ in January 1555 and concludes ‘it appears that Croftes, Carew and Gibbes redeemed their lands and chattels without payment’. Croft himself, in the autobíographical fragment referred to above, declares (p. 53) ‘in processe of time I was delivered, and after remayning a Suitor in Court, I obtained nothing but some small Portion of my goods and a Pension of Kinge Phillip of 100 pounds by the Yeare’. The Patent Rolls contain no material relating to a later restoration of Croft's possessions.

7 CPR, Ph. & M., IV, 1557–1558, pp. 2, 12, 71Google Scholar; ibid. Eliz. 1, I, 1558–60, pp. 40, 107, 113, 294; ibid. Eliz. I, II, 1560–3, p. 111; Historical Manuscripts Commission (H.M.C.), A calendar of the Shrewsbury and Talbot papers, II (London, 1971), 57, 61–63, 65–70, 72, 73, 77, 79Google Scholar; , H.M.C., Pepys manuscripts (London, 1911), pp. 79–80Google Scholar; , H.M.C., A calendar of the manuscripts of the marquess of Salisbury preserved at Hatfield House (London, 1883–1976), I, 336–7Google Scholar; Ham, , ‘Autobiography’, pp. 50–3Google Scholar. For Yaxley see Bindoff, III, 680–2. In his plea to Leicester for help in February 1566 Croft complained that as a result of his disgrace following the bungled assault on Leith he had been banished for a year from court, lost an office worth £1000 a year – the governorship of Berwick – and otherwise hindered to the value of £8000, so that he who had once served in the king's privy chamber was now faín to beg or to sell all his inheritance to maintain the countenance of a poor gentleman (, H.M.C., Pepys manuscripts, pp. 79–80Google Scholar). As early as 1561 Robert Dudley was active on Croft's behalf. In July of that year Croft received a grant of the wardship of his fellow-countryman and future son-in-law, John Scudamore (CPR, Eliz. I, II, 1560–1563, p. 111Google Scholar), and when, in the following December, Scudamore's grandfather's financial demands were holding up the match, Dudley wrote to the elder Scudamore to urge on the agreement, claiming in his letter that it was to such an end that he had procured Croft the wardship grant (British Library (B.L.), Additional MS 11049, fo. 2).

8 The state papers and letters of Sir Ralph Sadler, Knight Banneret, ed. by Clifford, Arthur (Edinburgh, 1809), II, 98Google Scholar; Public Record Office (P.R.O.), C. 115/Box M/7536; Ham, , ‘Autobiography’, p. 57Google Scholar. Leicester, , it is well known, became an advocate of a ‘forward’ policy in the Low Countries by the mid 1570sGoogle Scholar. Two of the many letters from Croft to his son-in-law Scudamore which are among the Scudamore family papers, one dated 6 November 1568 (P.R.O., C. 115/Box M/7549), the other undated (B.L., Add. MS 11049, fos. 5–6) allude to the troubles of the rebel forces in France and the Low Countries. In the latter he wrote that the duke of Alba ‘hathe wysely and polytyckly handeled those wars’. Perhaps the two fell out quickly: in October 1578 Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, a man not otherwise known to have had much to do with Croft, could write to Burghley that the comptroller ‘is marvellously oppressed with grief of mind that he could not attain to such honour at her Majesty's hands as he thought his service had deserved. Thinks the man has not the readiest way to do good to himself as other courtiers have, and finds he is hindered by indirect means. He standeth in need of help more than, perhaps, his stomach will yield to make show of to the world’ (, H.M.C., Hatfield House, II, 214Google Scholar). It is interesting that Northumberland should complain to Burghley of Croft's disappointed expectations for his court career, when twelve years earlier Cecil had considered Croft's likely advancement as one of the undesirable consequences of a marriage between Leicester and the queen.

9 By an unfortunate coincidence, when Leicester died on 4 September 1588 Croft's unstable eldest son, Edward, was in trouble for attempting to procure the earl's death by sorcery (Croft, O. G. S., The house of Croft of Croft Castle (Hereford, 1949), pp. 67–9)Google Scholar.

10 B.L., Royal MS 18.A.XLVI, fos. 1–9; P.R.O., SP.12/208/81, 82. Croft was one of the five English commissioners appointed in January 1588 to negotiate a peace or a truce with the duke of Parma, the governor-general of the Netherlands and commander of Philip II's forces there. When the conference opened in Ostend in March two months were spent bickering over the terms of the meeting. Croft suddenly went riding off to meet Parma in April by himself and returned to report that the duke was willing to concede all the demands which the English had presented on behalf of the Dutch save the concession of religious freedom. But when Parma's answer was presented to the English commissioners some days later it was evident that Croft, who knew no foreign language, had been deceived or had deceived himself, for the answers conceded none of the English demands. The queen at first summoned Croft back to England, but soon relented. When the commissioners returned to England early in August, however, his explanations proved unsatisfactory and, as a result, he suffered a brief spell of imprisonment in the Tower (Read, Conyers, Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth [London, 1960], pp. 403–4Google Scholar). Read makes out Croft's conduct to be treasonable, an opinion which seems excessively harsh.

11 Letters and papers, foreign and domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII (LP), 21 vols., ed. by Brewer, J. S., Gairdner, J. and Brodie, R. H. (London, 1862–1932), II, pt. 1, 2735Google Scholar. The list is erroneously dated 1516. Dr David Starkey kindly informed me of the correct date of the list. Croft's grandfather, Sir Edward Croft, died on 23 March 1547.

12 Croft, pp. 36–56.

13 I owe much of my information on the earlier history of the Scudamore family to Mr John S. Hunt who has been undertaking research into the family's history. The best available account is in Burke's landed gentry, 18th edn, III, 811–16.

14 John Scudamore of Kentchurch (1522–93) had been removed from the commission of the peace in 1569 when he refused to sign an undertaking to conform to the established religion (P.R.O., SP.12/60/22), and his son and heir Thomas (d. 1606) was likewise a life-long catholic. Thomas's heir, his son John (d. 1616), was a violent recusant in his youth but conformed after his father's death. John's own son, another John (d. 1670), was, like the better-known Sir Robert Harley, to be one of the few supporters of the parliament among the greater gentry of Herefordshire in the 1640s.

15 HMC, Twelfth report, appendix, part IV, The manuscripts of His Grace The Duke of Rutland, G.C.B., preserved at Belvoir Castle, I (London, 1888), 21Google Scholar; B.L., Add. MS 11042, fo. 45; LP, II, pt. 1, 2735; Bindoff, III, 284–5; PRO, PROB. 11/53, fos. 314r–315r (P.C.C. 44 Holney); SP.12/11/45.

16 CPR, Eliz. I, II, 1560–1563, p. 111Google Scholar.

17 B.L., Add. MS 11049, fo. 2; P.R.O., C.115/M/7344.

18 B.L., Add. MS 11049, fo. 4; PRO., C.115/M/7337.

19 H.M.C., Twelfth report, app., pt. IV, 1, 107; P.R.O., C.115/M/7338, 7611.

20 Lambeth Palace Library, Talbot MS H., fo. 441; P.R.O., E.407/1/26; E.407/2/187; SP.12/208/81, 82; , G.E.C., The complete peerage (London, 1910–1959), XI, 572–4Google Scholar. Scudamore's successor, Sir John, who had been knighted and created a baronet in 1620, was the eldest son of Sir James Scudamore, Sir John's second son who died aged fifty in 1619. The eldest son, Henry, whose riotous behaviour had given his father much trouble, was dead by 1595. John, the second son, had a complicated and mysterious career as, successively, a servant of Sir Francis Walsingham, then a religious refugee and Catholic priest and, after his return to England and protestantism in 1606, a household servant of Archbishops Bancroft and Abbott. He outlived his father, as the latter's inquisition post mortem reveals, and released whatever rights he may have been supposed to have in his father's estate to his nephew in 1624 (Burke's landed gentry, 18th edn, III, 814), but the date of his death is unknown. He was not mentioned in his father's will (PRO, PROB.11/142, fos. 137r-138v (P.C.C. 84 Swann)).

21 Berry, W., County genealogies of Hertfordshire, pp. 162–3Google Scholar; Bindoff, I, 680–1; Hasler, I, 636; CPR, Ph. & M., I, 1553–1554, pp. 84, 200Google Scholar; ibid. Eliz. I, 1, 1558–60, pp. 90, 339; P.R.O., E.150/450/4; E.150/452/6.

22 , H.M.C., Twelfth report, app., pt. IV, 1, pp. 91, 92–3Google Scholar; P.R.O., E.157/1, n.f. (3 January 1572/3); Bourne, H. R. F., A memoir of Sir Philip Sidney (London, 1862), pp. 69–70Google Scholar; Letters and memorials of state, ed. by Collins, Arthur (London, 1746), I, 296Google Scholar; Longleat House, Devereux papers, v, fo. 25r.

23 P.R.O., SP.12/107/15. This list of deputy lieutenants in Wales and the marches bears the date 1575, but as one of the deputy lieutenants of Anglesey, Sir Richard Bulkeley, was not knighted until 7 February 1577, the list must have been revised thereafter.

24 P.R.O., SP.12/167/45, 46; 12/120/68; STAC.5, A.16/5; A.7/33. It was probably around this time, late in 1583 or early in 1584, that Coningsby sent Sir Francis Walsingham a long list of exceptions to Rudhall's becoming sheriff of Herefordshire which the calendarists dated as 1577/78 (P.R.O., SP.12/120/68). The plea, which grounded itself on Rudhall's alleged partisan-ship, evidently succeeded, for he was not sheriff until 33 Elizabeth. Walsingham had earlier, in 1576, unsuccessfully recommended Wigmore for the office of clerk of fines to the Council in the Marches (P.R.O., SP.12/108/61).

25 The account which follows is taken from P.R.O., STAC.5, W.17/15 and W.38/21. Due to the loss or destruction of the Star Chamber decree books, all stories based on the records of that court get left in the air, the endings uncertain. Thus it is that we cannot know what conclusions the court came to concerning these Herefordshire affrays – a pity, considering the contradictory accounts provided in the rival submissions.

26 The identity of this Warnecombe cannot be established with confidence. According to two volumes of manuscript pedigrees compiled in the nineteenth century by Robert Biddulph Phillips, John Warnecombe of Hereford had three sons: John, James (the recorder) and Richard. John, the eldest, married Jane Scudamore, the Elizabethan Sir John Scudamore's aunt. This John Warnecombe must have been well advanced in years by 1584, if, indeed, he was still alive, which is uncertain. But if the John Warnecombe whom Coningsby's followers assaulted were not he, then the pedigrees provide no alternative candidates for the position. None of the three Warnecombe brothers had any sons (Hereford Record Office, B.56/1, fo. 32r; B.56/2, fo. 119r).

27 P.R.O., STAC.5, A.16/2, A.25/7. Some years later Vale brought a case against Coningsby, alleging that when he had complained to Coningsby about an assault which one of his men had made upon him, Coningsby's only response was to set Vale in the stocks for two days and two nights and then to send him to gaol in Hereford for five weeks without bail (P.R.O., STAC.5, V.9/12). Vale repeated the accusation made elsewhere (P.R.O., STAC.5, W.48/3) that it was Coningsby's custom to give his retainers livery of divers colours in order that it should not be known that they were his servants.

28 P.R.O., STAC.5, C.17/6. The ‘Mr. Gawdy’ whom Coningsby went to visit was probably Francis Gawdy of Wallington, Norfolk (d. 1605), then a serjeant-at-law, but later one of the justices of the Queen's Bench and subsequently, for a few months before his death, chief justice of the Common Pleas. Gawdy's wife, Elizabeth Coningsby, was Thomas's second cousin.

29 The incident is well-documented: P.R.O., SP.12/213/81 is a letter of complaint written to Burghley in the immediate aftermath of the troubles in Hereford on 15 and 16 July; STAC.5., C.21/8 contains Coningsby's bill of complaint to the Star Chamber, together with the replies of Wigmore and others; SP.12/216/47 is Wigmore's bill of complaint about the same incident, to which SP.12/216/46 is Coningsby's answer; STAC.5, C.19/13 and C.69/31 are interrogations and responses ex parte Coningsby; STAC.5, W.31/31, W.45/8 and W.48/3 are interrogations and responses ex parte Wigmore. There are some indications that other outbreaks happened in the intervening years (P.R.O., C.155/M/7589).

30 Acts of the privy council of England (APC), ed. Dasent, J. R., XVI, 1588, pp. 248, 258, 291Google Scholar; XVII, 1588–9, p. 85.

31 The Star Chamber material abounds for the troubles in 1590: P.R.O., STAC.5, C.57/29 is a bill of complaint by Coningsby against some of the partakers in all these tumults, together with a few replies; STAC.5, C.22/20 comprises yet another, longer, bill of complaint by Coningsby covering much the same ground, together with a reply by Herbert Croft and other depositions; STAC.5, C.7/27 is a series of questions to be ministered to various parties on Coningsby's behalf, together with some answers – other answers to the same set of questions are at STAC.5, C.44/8; STAC.5, C.67/3 comprises varíous interrogations and answers as well as Herbert Croft's version of what took place on the occasions for which he had been called in question; STAC.5, C.6/1, C.6/2, C.6/3 are the answers of various of Croft's servants to Coningsby's complaints, while STAC.5, C.9/32 is a series of questions for and responses from two seemingly disinterested parties, a citizen and a tanner of Leominster, about the great preparations made beforehand against Coningsby by the adverse party.

32 Croft, declaring that the man in question was not the undersheriff, Anthony Pembridge, but one James Matthews, denied that he drew his dagger upon him, but admitted that ‘att such tyme as the aforesaid Matthewes did so reprehend the defendant for wearing of his aforesaid wepons this defendant tould the aforesaid Matthewes that if he did not laye his handes from of this examinate, he this examinate would make his braynes fly abrede the Churchyard’. He claimed that he was drunk at the time.

33 Many of those with him, like William Keshall alias Black Will, were frequent actors in these incidents, but others included Croft's first cousin, Henry Scudamore, the gentleman pensioner's eldest son, whose appearance there is one of the few scraps of evidence for the involvement of the Holme Lacy family in these quarrels.

34 APC, xx, 1590–1591, p. 67Google Scholar; XXI, 1591, pp. 115, 176.

35 Williams, Penry, The Council in the Marches of Wales (Cardiff, 1958), pp. 276–96Google Scholar.

36 B.L., Add. MS 11053, fos. 30–1; P.R.O., C.115/M/7618.

37 APC, XX, 1590–1591, pp. 69–70, 76–7, 104–5, 114–16–Google Scholar.

38 Tighe, W. J., ‘Herbert Croft's repulse’, BIHR, LVIII (1985), 106–9Google Scholar.

39 APC, XXVIII, 1597–1598, p. 4Google Scholar.

40 ‘Journal of the siege of Rouen, 1591, by Sir Thomas Coningsby, of Hampton Court, Co. Hereford’, The Camden Miscellany, Volume the First, ed. by Nichols, J. G. (Camden Society, old series, XXXIX [1847]), 13–65, 73Google Scholar; Hasler, I, 174–5; Lambeth Palace Library, Talbot MS H., fo. 519.

41 P.R.O., C.115/M/7581, 7614, 7615. The highly entertaining details of how Coningsby and his friends went about to promote Pembroke's election are to be found in the bill of complaint which Richard Perrott, an alderman of Hereford and Scudamore supporter, submitted to the Star Chamber court (P.R.O., STAC.5, P.44/22). There appears to have been no further action taken there upon the complaint.

42 , H.M.C., Hatfield House, XI, 114Google Scholar.

43 Fitzwilliam Coningsby, Sir Thomas's only surviving son, held the junior place in 1621, while in 1624 Sir Robert Harley first sat for his native shire.

44 His second wife, Mary Shelton, who was appointed one of the chamberers of the privy chamber, with wages of £20 a year, on 1 January 1571 (B.L., Lansdowne MS 59:22). She held this influential position until the end of the reign, by which time she was in poor health (, H.M.C., Hatfield House, XII, 538Google Scholar). She did not long survive her retirement, as she was buried, according to the Holme Lacy parish register, on 15 August 1603.

45 CPR, Eliz. I, VII, 1575–1578, p. 427Google Scholar; Lambeth Palace Library, Shrewsbury MS 701, fo. 171; 704, fos. 21–2; 707, fo. 209; Talbot MS H., fo. 293; M., fo. 133.

46 P.R.O., C.115/M/7749; Ward.7/68/122. Both Coningsby and Scudamore's names had been suggested as appointees to the Council in the Marches in 1591, but nothing came of the notion (, H.M.C., Hatfield House, XIII, 457Google Scholar).

47 P.R.O., C.142/424/93; Robinson, C. J., A history of the mansions and manors of Herefordshire (London, 1873), p. 146Google Scholar. Jonson described his Puntarvolo as ‘a vaine-glorious Knight, over-Englishing his travels and wholly consecrated to Singularity; the very Jacobs staffe of complement: a Sir that hath liv'd to see the revolution of Time in most of his apparell. Of presence good ynough, but so palpably affected to his owne praise, that for want of flatterers he commends himself to the floutage of his owne familie. He deales upon returns and strange performances, resolving, in dispight of publike derision, to sticke to his own particular fashion, phrase and gesture’ (Ben Jonson's Every man out of his humor, ed. by Bang, W. and Greg, W. W. (Louvain, 1907), p. 3Google Scholar).

48 Letters and memorials of state, ed. Collins, , II, 306–7, 311–12Google Scholar; P.R.O., SP.14/9/64; B.L., Loan 29/202, pt. I, fos. 62, 65–6, 67–8, 71, 76–7. Sir Thomas Cornwall, writing to the Harleys, described (fo. 71) Coningsby's answers as ‘dowbtfull & dark, muche like unto the oracles of Apollo or other ydolds, havinge dowble & dowtfull interpretatyone’.

49 P.R.O., STAC.8/93/12; 8/77/20.

50 , H.M.C., Hatfield House, XI, 441Google Scholar; B.L., Loan 29/202, pt. 2, fos. 16–17, 29–30, 39–40, 44.

51 P.R.O., PROB.11/148, fos. 291v-296r (P.C.C. 28 Hele). The will begins ‘In the name of the almighty God of heaven. Amen. I, Sir Thomas Coningsby of Hampton Court in the Countie of Hereford, knight, ould in years, accidentallie lame of leggs yett healthie of bodie and never stronger in mynd and Judgment, glorie to god on high, for from dotage the lord deliver me, and being in such condicion I make this my last will and testament, a thing I never formerlie did and therefore neede not revoake all former ones, the which I discomend in my selfe, especiallie over disceminge in my fate and inclination in all the course of my life to adventure thwarts & daungers aswell of my person as of my worldlie fortunes and even now, hoping all had been past and to have betaken my selfe to repose in the contemplacion of gods omnipotent operacions, even now such a disturbance’ is arisen by his son's folly that ‘I make my last will and testament by my owne hande writing in manner following…’.