Political connections

Malton has been associated with national politics since its origin. It returned 2 MPs to Parliament from 1640-1832, and one from 1833-1885. The MPs’ identities reflected not only local but national power relationships throughout this period.

Eustace Fitzjohn delivered the castles of Alnwick and Malton to the army of David, king of Scotland who was fighting in support of the claim of Maud, his niece, to the crown held by King Stephen. The Scots garrison at Malton castle was removed by an army of northern nobles under the direction of Archbishop Thurstan of York, who then burned the town in retribution for its affiliation during this, the first English civil war, some would say. Eustace Fitzjohn returned from temporary exile in Scotland to begin rebuilding and fortifying the town and its castle site.

Whilst not overtly involved in national politics, the Eures were important regional players, being Lords of various Marches, and several of the male line died in battle – at Towton during the wars of the roses; at Ancram Moor, the culmination of a Eure-led military rampage across southern Scotland which had included the burning and sacking of Edinburgh and Melrose; at Marston Moor, fighting for the Royalist cause, during the English Civil War.

Sir William Eure was born 1485 and knighted ‘beneath the banner’ at Tournay in 1513. He was the Sheriff of County Durham 1519-23, of Northumberland, 1526-27 and Lieutenant of the Middle Marches after 1522. By 1538, he was Captain of the town and castle of Berwick and Warden of the East Marches and was a member of the Council of the North after 1540. He owned Warkworth as well as Malton and lived mainly at Witton Castle. He was created Lord Eure in 1544, dying in 1547.

His eldest son Ralph had already died at the battle of Ancram Moor, itself the culmination of a blood- letting adventure begun some months earlier with the burning of Edinburgh by Hertford’s army of which Eure’s 4,000 regiment of Border Horse had been a part. During the following July – November 1544,

“ ‘The whole number of towns, towers, steads, bastell houses seized, destroyed and burnt in all the border country was an hundred and ninety-two. Scots slain, 400, prisoners taken, 815, nolt 10,386, sheep 12,492, nags and geldings 1,296, gatys 200, bolls of corn 850, inside gear, etc, an infinite quantity’” (Haynes, Murdin, collection of state papers left by William Cecil Lord Burghley).

In September, Eikford church and town were burned, as well as Moss Tower, its 34 occupants slain; more than 500 nolt and 600 sheep taken, as well as 100 horse-loads of loot from the tower. Coldingham Abbey was seized and Melrose ransacked before Eure’s raiders were confronted at Ancrum Moor by an army under the command of the Earl of Arran. Sir Ralph was buried at Melrose.

His son William inherited upon his grandfather’s death, becoming the 2 nd Lord Eure. He became Captain of Berwick castle and Warden of the Middle Marches, but lived mainly at Ingleby Greenhow, where his house around 2 courtyards survives. Built in the C16, it seems likely to have been the 2 nd Lord Eure’s creation. (Ralph, 3 rd Lord Eure sold Ingleby in 1608, having built his own Prodigy House in Malton by 1604). William also had a house in York, where he commanded the County Militia that resisted the ‘Rising of the Northern Earls’ and was Vice-President of the Council of the North, as well as the Protestant that such a position required (the Eures of Malton during the C17 were Catholics, suggesting that the 2 nd Lord Eure’s Protestantism may have been pragmatic rather than real. His participation in the minor persecution of local Catholics may confirm, rather than confound this). He died in 1593 and was buried at Ingleby.

Ralph, 3 rd Lord Eure was born at Berwick Castle in 1558. He married Mary Dawnay, receiving a dowry of £2,000 (£340,000, 2008), which may have contributed significantly to his building fund in Malton. He lived mainly at Ingleby and then Malton. Contrary to received wisdom, it is unlikely that he had an earlier house upon the Castle site after 1569. The Prodigy House was built immediately after his acquisition of the Clifford share of the castle and manor of New Malton in 1599. Any residence he had in Malton prior to the construction of the new house in 1604 was likely elsewhere in town – perhaps on the site of Strickland’s hunting lodge, or even York House.

Ralph Eure attended St John’s College, Cambridge and then travelled widely across Europe during 1582 and 1583: to France, Italy and Germany, becoming proficient in several languages as well as in classical architectural detail, on the evidence of the former gatehouse, the Old Lodge, the detail of which displays unusual sophistication for its time. He became MP for in 1584 and was part of the commission that negotiated with James VI his transition to the English throne. He was Sheriff of Yorkshire in 1593 and became a member of the Council of the North after 1594; Vice President of the Council after 1600. He was briefly Warden of the Middle March in 1595 but, perhaps reflecting the southward shifting of the family, his authority was not accepted by local lords. By 1599, when he extended his ownership of Malton, he was raising an army in the North Riding to serve in Ireland. He was prevailed upon by Elizabeth 1 to act as ‘Ambassador Extraordinary’ in later life as a result, to the King of Denmark and the Emperor Rudolph II in 1603.

By 1604 he had completed a large mansion on the site of Malton Castle. This was compared at the time to Temple Newsam and Audley End, but no images of it survive and little obvious trace on the ground.

Purey-Cast, writing in 1890 said that

“ It is easy to trace the site...it must have extended round 3 sides of a quadrangle similar to Cobham Hall in Kent...The gateway...has been converted into a charming hall [using panelling and probably chimney pieces recycled from the mansion after 1674]. Above a curiously carved wooden chimney piece are still the arms of Lord Eure.”

Barker elaborates:

“Another sitting room is panelled with Jacobean panelling. Pillars in pairs break into separate panels the wainscoting round the room. Elaborately carved pilasters support the mantelpiece, which consists of four bas reliefs depicting the story of Jonah, in carved oak” (p50)

Both of these chimney pieces – almost certainly made originally for the Prodigy House - were stolen from the Lodge around 1992, though the over-mantle of one, bearing the Eure arms, remains as a dislocated decoration on a wall. This theft was one of the more serious losses of cultural property in Malton’s history and certainly one of the most avoidable. Ongoing efforts should be made to locate these chimney pieces so that they might be re-united with the site in the future.

In 1607, Ralph was appointed President of the Council of the Marches of Wales, and was buried in Ludlow upon his death there in 1617.

In 1611, his son William, yet to become 4 th Lord Eure, had purchased the Conyers third of the Manors of New Malton, Welham and Sutton, thus consolidating ownership of the whole manor – and very much of the town – in the hands of the Eures. He lived at Ingleby, but this was sold in 1608. In 1622, William, now Lord Eure sold his holdings in Stokesley and also Witton Castle. The Eure Estates and their influence had begun to seriously wane by this time, having each reached their peak under his father Ralph.

William was a Catholic and a recusant, a serious disadvantage politically and financially at this time. In 1625, Lord Clifford seized arms and armour from the house, to raise monies to pay fines associated with the Eure recusancy. In 1632, the house was besieged, and then seized after a breach in its wall was ‘battered by a great piece ordnance’. The house was returned immediately but by 1635 William was opining that trustees, “ to pay his debts, had sold most of his estate and leased the rest and yet many debts remained unpaid. He offered to make any settlement, provided he retained the Malton house, the honour of his family and the park” (Barker, 53). Eure claimed that £32,000 had been taken out of his estate - £2,853,000 in modern currency values. William, 4 th Lord Eure died in 1646. He was buried in the former Priory Church at Old Malton.

His second son William pre-deceased him, killed fighting Cromwell’s New Model Army at Marston Moor, as did his eldest son, Ralph, who had been killed in a duel. Reflecting the diminishing fortunes of the family, William had sold all of his lands for £6000. His wife had written in 1642 that “ Times are soe bad here we have not made on peney on ower coles, and we have not received on peney from Misterton [her family lands], soe my husband was forst to send for thos rents as were gathered up to keepe life and soule together, which was but on hundred pounds. I still have half my rents behind. I am in such a great rage with Parliament ...for they promised us all should be well if my Lord Strafford’s [Sir Thomas Wentworth, whose descendants were to purchase all remaining Eure lands in Malton, 1n 1713] head ware off, and since there is nothing better’” (Margaret Eure, nee Denton, 1642, in Barker 56)

The Eure estates and title were inherited by Ralph’s son William, still a child, in 1646. He died of smallpox in 1652, intestate. The inheritance was not resolved until 1662, when the Estates, but not the title were left jointly to Margaret and Mary Eure, Colonel William Eure’s daughters.

“All this time, the contents of Old Lord (William) Eure’s chapel in his manor house in Malton had remained untouched, but in 1656 it was ordered that all Popish relicts, vestments, cruxifixes, surplices, altar cloths, cushions, books and ointment, chalices, plate, wafer moulds, wax candles, girdles and other relicts, should be seized and burned in the Market Place of New Malton by the Sheriff of the county and that the cruxifixes and moulds for wafers be first broken and then burned” (Barker, 58). Margaret and Mary each inherited a living of £1,514 per annum (£130,000, 2008), indicating the decline of the Eure fortunes. Margaret married Thomas Danby in 1659. Danby became first Lord Mayor of Leeds in 1661, his arms still partaking of the City’s today, but was murdered on a London street, his throat cut, in 1667, at the behest, it was said, of Margaret.

Mary Eure married William Palmes of Lindley in London in 1663.

It was Margaret alone who contested ownership of Ralph Eure’s prodigy house with Mary and William Palmes, therefore. Resolution of this matter was decided in 1674 by a writ of partition which saw the house dismantled and its component parts sold. The proceeds of this sale were divided equally between the Danbys and Palmes and William Palmes became in the name of his wife’s inheritance, Lord of the Manors of New and Old Malton, living in Old Malton, probably in Hunters Hall, but perhaps in the Hunting Lodge on Yorkersgate. Hearth tax records of the 1680s list William Palmes as resident in Old Malton, however. Palmes was MP for Malton.

The de Clifford’s of Skipton were active on the regional and national stage:

George de Clifford

George de Clifford was a naval commander and courtier to Elizabeth 1, having been her jousting champion. He was elevated to the peerage. It was George who conveyed his family’s third part of New Malton to Ralph Eure in 1599. He was Lord Lieutenant of Cumberland, Northumberland and Westmoreland 1603-1605. His half-sister Margaret, later Margaret Stanley, Countess of Derby, was daughter of Lady Eleanor Brandon, niece of Henry VIII. She was heir apparent to Elizabeth I but pre- deceased her. James VI of Scotland was crowned James I of England over the claim of Margaret’s grand- daughter Lady Anne Stanley. George de Clifford frittered his lands away to debts from jousting and horse-racing, however, and this is evidenced by land sales in Malton and Norton. Ralph Eure reportedly offered him only £675 in 1599 for his third of the Manors of New Malton, Welham and Sutton, a mere £68,000 in modern value.

Even in 1530, the Henry de Clifford had let the Manor of Welham to Prior William for 40 years, the lease of which must have fallen with the Priory in 1539.

In 1588, Anthony Wright and William Ferrande acquired half of Welham and Sutton Manors, half of 6 houses with lands there and in Norton and 1/3 of the castle and manor of New Malton, with 1/3 of 50 houses, 1/3 of 3 mills with lands in New and Old Malton (Hudleston 90), presumably from George de Clifford. This may have been mortgaged or leased only, since in 1599-60

“Ralph Lord Eure acquired from George, Earl of Cumberland, Francis Clifford, William Ingilby and Marmaduke Grimston, 6 houses in New Malton; and half Welham and Sutton manors, a house and cottage with lands there; 1/3 of New Malton castle, with 1/3 of 100 houses, 1/3 of 100 cottages, of 4 water-mills, fairs, markets, etc and free fishing in Darwent in Welham, Sutton and New Malton” (Hudleston 90)

In 1611, William Eure, son of Ralph (who died 1617) “acquired from Sir George Conyers half of the manor of Welham and Sutton, 1/3 of the manor and castle of New Malton, 20 houses, 20 cottages, 3 water-mills, free warren, free fishery and view of frankpledge in Welham, Sutton, New and Old Malton”

Sutton Grange had been Priory land, and another recorded transaction shows such former Priory land being redistributed between the local gentry:

“In 1586-7 Thomas Lord Howard, Henry Lord Berkeley, Sir Henry Knevett, Thomas Knevett, Thomas Preston and John Penruddock acquired from William Lord Howard the manors of Rillington, Wintringham, Scampston, New Malton (?) and others” (Hudleston 90).

After 1600, then, the de Clifford interest in the Malton area had ceased. That of the Conyers, too, by 1611, although the family remained as Land agents to the Eures.

William Palmes of Lindley was one of the MPs for Malton from 1678-1713, alongside Sir William Strickland from 1685-1708, and Strickland’s son, also Sir William, 1708-1713. The seat was then shared by Strickland with Sir Thomas Watson-Wentworth in 1713, before Charles Watson-Wentworth joined his father in Strickland’s absence 1714-15. Strickland returned 1715-27 (with his father returning 1722-24 in his place), sharing the seat with Charles Watson-Wentworth. William Palmes of Lindley

Thus did the MPs of Malton reflect the shifting balance of ownership within the town in these years and in Malton began Charles Wentworth-Watson’s illustrious political career. After 1727, the MPs were sometimes Wentworth-Fitzwilliam’s but always – apart from a brief moment 1807-08, Whig allies of theirs. Edmund Burke, for example, Malton MP from 1780 until 1794 was Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd ’s private secretary, advisor and confidant from 1765 until the latter’s death in 1782.

William Palmes was of a branch of the Palmes of Naburn formed during the Tudor period by Guy Palmes, second son of William of Naburn. His daughter being ultimately the only surviving child of the line, this branch of the family was subsumed into the Strickland family.

Palmes married Mary Eure in 1663 and after resolution of the dispute between joint heiresses Margaret and Mary had become effective Lord Of the Manors of New and Old Malton.

Mary Eure

The marriage in 1684 of Sir William Strickland, 3 rd Baronet had created an important alliance for Palmes between the Eure and Strickland families. The Strickland’s were one of the major families of East Yorkshire, already entwined with the Cholmleys of Whitby, still to combine with the Constables of Burton Constable.

The Strickland’s had arrived at Boynton around 1545 from Marske. William Strickland of Marske had married his cousin, a Strickland of Sizergh, a very much wealthier branch of the family, who brought with her a significant dowry, seed capital, perhaps, for William’s ambition and his purchase of Boynton. He was reputed to have sailed to the Americas with John Cabot and to have made sufficient money for the purchase from this enterprise. He is reputed to have brought the first turkeys to Europe, to have bred them for the table and laid the foundation for his familiy’s benefitting from the adoption of the turkey as a ceremonial bird for eating by James I. Richard Marriott, current owner of Boynton Hall and a Strickland descendant doubts the truth of both tales, though not the utility to William’s and his descendants’ ambition of their being told.

Sir William, 1 st Baronet, had been an early ally of Thomas , his mother having been Strafford’s sister, but made his reputation as an ardent supporter of the Commonwealth and of Cromwell. Indeed, his being made a baronet by Charles I in 1641 has been interpreted as an attempt by the King to win him away from the logic of his strong Puritanism. It failed. He was MP for Hedon throughout the Long Parliament. He sat later in the Protectorate Parliament 1654-56 and, as Lord Strickland, in Cromwell’s House of Peers. His son, Sir Thomas held senior office under Cromwell, sitting as MP for Beverley. The Strickland’s association with Malton became solid with William the 3 rd Baronet’s marriage to Elizabeth Palmes in 1684, though his father had once been an earnest, but rejected, suitor of Margaret Eure. He was MP for Malton 1685-1708; MP for Yorkshire 1708-1710 and for Old Sarum 1716-22, before making a brief reprise as MP for Malton 1722-24. He died in 1725. In 1672, William had purchased from James and Barbara Hebblethwaite, son and widow respectively of Sir Thomas, a property at the ‘western end of the street there called York House Gate’ for £150, as well as a plot of land adjoining belonging to his future wife, Elizabeth Palmes. The Hebbletwaites were Lords of the Manor of Norton, but at the time of the purchase there was a sitting tenant, Thomas Langley, Lord of the Manor of North Grimston. Whilst this purchase may have been of York House itself, it is most likely to have been a building on the site of the Talbot Hotel, and to have formed the nucleus of the Strickland Hunting Lodge on this site. The Hunting Lodge was transformed into a very grand building by probably both Williams over time, in at least 3 different phases of construction, before being purchased by the Watson-Wentworths by 1739 and vertically extended by them to become Malton and Ryedale’s first private hotel.

Elizabeth Palmes

Sir William Strickland, 3 rd Baronet

It was the third Baronet whose effect was felt most by the buildings of Malton – he redesigned York House as well as substantially building the Hunting Lodge that was to become the Talbot Hotel. He laid out gardens along the river Derwent behind both houses.

His son, also William, 4 th Baronet, was the more significant politician nationally and was given two houses in the Market Place by the King in the 1720s. He was Lord of the Treasury 1725-27 and Treasurer to the Queen’s Househol in Sir Robert Walpole’s cabinet, was Secretary at War after 1730 and Privy Counsellor until his death in 1735. For these reasons, perhaps, The White House in Richmond, built originally as Royal hunting lodge before being gifted to Walpole, and currently home of the Royal Ballet School is constructed of Hildenley limestone from formerly Strickland-owned quarries near Malton. This was a rare deployment of this stone in a building not owned by the Stricklands.

His son George still a minor in 1735, York House was sold to the Watson-Wentworth’s in 1739 by the executors of William’s estate, including Sir Hugh Cholmley. The deed of this sale is held in the Fitzwilliam Archive at the North Yorkshire County Council Archive in Northallerton.

The Watson-Wentworths of near Rotherham first bought a dominant share of Malton in 1713, from William Palmes, purchasing more incrementally from the Stricklands after 1715 when the third Baronet was taken to task by his son for having over-extended himself, their estate in 1715 generating less income than could cover their obligations.

The Wentworth Estate had been built by Thomas Earl of Strafford, ‘Black Tom’, Lord Deputy in Ireland 1635, at which time he had acquired the Coolattin Estate in County Wicklow. He had waged a campaign to remove Catholic Irish gentry from their estates, to be displaced by incoming Protestants, at the same time as being a close ally of the anti-Puritan Archbishop Laud. Recalled from Ireland in 1639, he was chief advisor to Charles I but was betrayed and made scapegoat by the King in 1641 and executed in an attempt to mollify the Long Parliament. His betrayal of Strafford reputedly haunted Charles thereafter who was even prepared to accept that his ultimate defeat was just retribution for the manner of the losing of his most astute political advisor. After the Restoration, the Strafford title was reinvested. The 2nd Earl died without issue, however, and the Estates fell to the Watson Wentworths, Marquesses of Rockingham, after 1695.

1st Marquess of Rockingham, Thomas Watson-Wentworth purchased the majority of New Malton and Old Malton from William Palmes in 1713. He died 1750.

Charles, progressed through a sequence of titles – Honourable Charles Watson-Wentworth before 1733; Viscount Higham 1733-46; Earl of Malton, 1746-1750, before becoming 2 nd Marquess (English peerage) and Earl Malton (Irish peerage) upon his father’s death in 1750.

He was a prominent Whig grandee, became Prime Minister – for 18 months – in 1765, before leading the Opposition until 1782. He was a supporter of constitutional rights for the colonies as well as of independence for America. He was Prime Minister again for 14 weeks in 1782, his term curtailed by his death but in this brief time formally recognised American Independence, initiating British withdrawal from the Revolutionary War. He was succeeded by Pitt the Elder. The Wentworth Estates fell to the 4 th of Milton, another Whig politician and Rockingham’s nephew. The Earl’s Fitzwilliam were peers of both Ireland and England. The 4 th Earl was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and he commissioned John Carr of York to design a new house at Coolattin, County Wicklow, the Earl of Strafford’s retreat. Its construction interrupted by ‘local difficulties’ which resulted in the burning of the part-built structure, it was finally completed in 1807. It is now centre-piece of a golf-course.

New Malton remained in the hands of the Wentworth-Fitzwilliams until 1997. Much of Old Malton continues to belong to Lady Juliet Tadgell, sole surviving child of the last Earl Fitzwilliam.

Estates in and Huntingdonshire were acquired from the 16 th century onwards by the Fitzwilliam family. The founder of the local dynasty was Sir William Fitzwilliam, a Merchant Taylor, a Merchant of the Staple of Calais and an Alderman of the City of London; he was probably knighted in 1515. He first began building up a landed estate in Essex (Gaynes Park, sold in 1636) and then in 1502 began buying land in the Soke of . Much later the family acquired other distinct estates, most notably in Ireland (based on Coollattin Park, Co. Wicklow) and Yorkshire, where they inherited in the late eighteenth the Marquess of Rockingham's estates centred on the great house at Wentworth Woodhouse, situated between Sheffield and Barnsley.

The oldest part of is the north front, which is probably built in the period c1590-1610 either for Sir William IV or V, who were both courtiers. After 1618, and for the next three or four generations, the family's income came from less lucrative sources, principally the agricultural management of their estates, especially grazing sheep on enclosed land, and from rents from their tenants. So it was not until the mid-18 th at the third Earl was able to enlarge the Hall by commissioning the architect Henry Flitcroft to design the imposing south front in the Palladian style. Milton remained the principal house of the Earls Fitzwilliam until after the death of the fifth Earl in 1857, when it was agreed to divide the estate, so that the sixth Earl retained the Yorkshire and Irish estates and went to reside at Wentworth, whilst his eldest surviving brother, George, acquired the Milton Estates. In the 1880's the Earl's estates totalled 22,200 acres in Yorks with 91, 800 in Ireland, whilst the Milton Estate consisted of 23,300 acres extending along the Nene Valley roughly between Peterborough and Irthlingborough. What remained of all these estates was combined under the tenth Earl Fitzwilliam in 1952, with Milton Hall again the principal residence.

Following the death of Sir William Fitzwilliam I in 1543, the next two heads of the family (Sirs William II & III) were courtiers, holding mostly minor state appointments, but made useful marriages and enjoyed the patronage of Lord Burghley. Under Queen Elizabeth, Sir William III held appointments in Ireland, principally Lord Deputy 1560-1594, and was also Keeper of Fotheringhay Castle when Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned there. Sir William V was elevated to the Irish Peerage in 1620 with the title of Baron Fitzwilliam of Lifford, and the third Baron was advanced to the Earldom in 1716. The third Earl (in the Irish Peerage) became the first Baron in the British Peerage in 1742 and four years later was raised to the Earldom; the consequent dual numbering in the two peerages frequently causes confusion (we use the numbering in the Irish Peerage in this text). In 1807, as a result of their Yorkshire inheritance, the fourth Earl altered the family name (by Royal Licence) to Wentworth Fitzwilliam [sometimes hyphenated]. One of their lesser titles was Viscount Milton, which was used by the heir apparent from the early 18 th century as a courtesy title.

The Earldom descended naturally through several generations but faltered with the sudden death (without issue) of the eighth Earl in 1948, aged 38, when the title reverted to an elderly distant cousin. As the ninth Earl also had no children it was necessary to determine who would succeed to the title, so in the early months of 1951 a case was brought before the High Court in London between Capt Tom Fitzwilliam, who lived at Milton Hall, and his much older brother George James, known as Toby. The case hinged on the validity of their parents' alleged marriage in Scotland in 1886, and was ultimately resolved in favour of Capt Tom. It was only 13 months later that the ninth Earl died, and so in 1952 the title came back again to the branch of the family at Milton.

Four years after he inherited as the tenth (and last) Earl, Tom Fitzwilliam married Lady FitzAlan-Howard, but there was no issue from that marriage, and following the Earl's death in 1979, Milton Estates have therefore descended through the Countess's family from her first marriage, initially to her daughter Lady Elizabeth Anne Hastings, and then to her grandson, Sir Phillip Naylor-Leyland

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