The Gentry: Stories of the English. Adam Nicolson
who was about seventeen, at home in Plumpton. Waiting for the court process to begin, with his retainers, the men of the forest and his cousinage around him, sixty-three men in all, he wrote to her:
To my entyrely and right hartily beloved wife, Dame Agnes Plumpton, be this Letter delivered.
My deare hart, in my most hartily wyse, I recommend mee unto you, hartily prayinge you, all things laid apart, that you see that the manor and the place of Plumpton bee surely and stedfastly kept;
and alsoe that I have this Tuesday at even 6 muttons slene, to bee ordained for the supper the said Tuesday at night: and alsoe that yee cause this said Tuesday a beast to be killed, that if neede bee, that I may have it right shortly.
And thus I betake you to the keepinge of the Holy Trinity, who preserve you evermore to his pleasure. From Yorke
By your owne lover Robert Plompton Kt.66
In court, Empson produced a document showing that old Sir William had left the manors of Plumpton and Idle to his granddaughters. Given the confusion of Sir William’s affairs, it is perfectly possible that the document was real but Robert refused to accept it as anything but a forgery. His advisers urged him to make a compromise – there were negotiations with Empson’s lawyers held in St William’s Chapel on the bridge over the Ouse67 – but Plumpton would not move ‘and said that he would not departe with noo party of his land’.68 The negotiations were broken off and the bought and frightened jury awarded everything Plumpton owned to his cousin-enemies. It was then that open war began.
Agnes and her son William had fortified the house and its yards ‘with guns, bowes, crossebowes, bills, speares and other weapons &c. as if it were in of warr’.69 The Plumpton men squeezed in there, taking in beasts and other supplies, bolting the gates, storing the water.
The attack on the hall occurred at some time that October, a ferocious fight in which at least one man of Plumpton’s, Geffrey Towneley, who was probably a cousin, was killed, but the assailants were beaten off and the Plumptons remained in physical possession of the place.70 The bravest of their cousins, Sir John Townley, offered to support them, assuring them that ‘if ther be any thinge that I may doe for you, yt shalbe redy to you, as ever was any of my ansistors to yours, which, I enderstand, they wold have bene glad to do any pleasure to’.71
Other cousins and sons-in-law, scattered across the northern counties, found themselves besieged by the Empson gangs, writing anxious letters to Robert Plumpton, asking for ‘knowledg by the bringer herof how that ye do in your great matters’,72 fending off threats and visits from men demanding money, their goods and lands.
Robert, as a last hope, rode to Westminster to implore protection from the King. Agnes and her son William were left anxiously at Plumpton: not exactly under siege but expecting at any moment a renewed attack. Money was short and, as they had all agreed before Robert rode south, William went out with his men, armed, to collect the rents from their tenants due at Martinmas, 11 November. Some paid up, some refused, ordered by the Rocliffes to do so as the Plumptons were no longer their legal landlords. Those who wouldn’t pay William evicted from their houses and lands, seizing their cattle and goods. The Empsons, Rocliffes and Sotehills hovered, waiting to pick up the pieces. Desperate letters from Agnes went south, looking for an answer to their predicament.73
In the middle of that winter, she went down to join him, perhaps to urge him on, perhaps to comfort him. The seventeen-year-old William was left alone in Plumpton. The forces of the establishment, including the Archbishop of York, currying favour with Empson, threatened William but he stood firm, upholding what was left of his family’s honour and summoning ‘divers other husbands, labourers, yeomen, shermen, a webster, and a smith’74 to court for trespass on land where they did not acknowledge him as landlord. If they attempted to plough the strips in Plumpton’s open fields to the east of the hall, he said he would attack them.
That winter, probably to raise some money when the sap was down, he had timber trees felled in the Plumpton woods, ashes and others, valuable property which Sir John Rocliffe claimed was his. The Archbishop wrote again, warning William of the consequences of this ‘senestor’ behaviour. The Archbishop was prepared to let him take boughs for fuel but not the whole tree. ‘Sir, I wold advise you to doo otherwise. If ye will not be reformed, I acertaine you that the said Sir John shall be for me at liberty to take his most avantage.’75
In these circumstances, threat and legality become indistinguishable. In March 1503, William finally wrote to his parents in London, from where for weeks they had not bothered to tell him their news. Spring was around the corner and William was faced with the prospect of his Rocliffe enemies ploughing up the land they claimed they owned for spring wheat. ‘Sir, I marvell greatly that I haue no word from you vnder what condition I shalld behaue me & my servants. Sir, it is sayd that Sir John Roclife will ploue, but we are not certayne.’76
With help from his Gascoyne cousins, William was re-arming. Ten longbows were delivered to the hall. He was ready for the next stage of the battle and suspected that his father might be guilty of wishful thinking or a lack of resolution. Any talk of royal protection, he told his father, seemed like little more than ‘fayr words’.77 His mother had returned to Plumpton and just before Valentine’s day Robert for once wrote to her from London. Cash was short again:
To my right hartily and mine entyrely beloved wife, Dame Agnes Plompton, bee this delivered.
Best beloved, in my most harty wyse I recommend mee unto you. Soe it is, I mervaile greatly, that yee send mee not the money that yee promised mee to send with John Waukar within 8 dayes after you and I departed, for I am put to a great lacke for it. Therefore, I hartily pray you, as my especiall trust is in you, to send me the said money in all hast possible, and alsoe to send me money, for my cost is very sore and chargeable at this tyme: for I have spent of the money that I brought from you.
Therefore, deare hart, I pray you to remember mee. And as for my matter, there is noe mooveinge of it as yet. And for diverse consideracions and greate hurts might falle to you and mee and our children hereafter, I heartily pray you to remember to hast the money unto mee, as my especiall trust and love is in you,
From London in hast, the Tuesday next afore St. Valentines day, by your lovinge husband, Robert Plompton, kt.78
Hurried, repetitive and emotional as this was, less coherent than she was to him, Agnes can have been left in no doubt.
Through the spring of 1504, the sense of an impending disaster grew more insistent, as did Agnes’s realization that Robert was incapable of saving them. In mid-March she sent him the money he needed, which she had somehow scraped together, and asked him that he ‘be not miscontent that I sent it no sooner, for I have made the hast that I could that was possible for me to do’.79 She was managing the tricky situation with the tenants, evicting some, squeezing money out of others. In mid-April, her patience was breaking. He hadn’t written; he had let the whole business go on too long. Word had reached her of his hopelessness and their adversaries’ persistence and ingenuity: ‘Sir, I marvell greatly that ye let the matter rest so long, and labors no better for your selfe, and ye wold labor it deligently. But it is sayd that ye be lesse forward, and they underworketh falsly and it is sene and known by them.’80
The rent that was due at Whitsun in early May would be a valuable prize for whoever gained the right to the manor by then. There was talk all over the county that Robert was allowing his enemies to win. ‘Sir, I besech you to remember your great cost and charges, and myne, and labor the matter that it myght have anend.’81 The Rocliffes had taken to arresting select individuals. They had got the machinery of the law on their side. And what was he doing? ‘Ye dow none to them, but lett them haue there mynd fullfilled in every case.’82
The Rocliffes and Sotehills were tightening their grip on the county, by threat and persuasion excluding the Plumptons from the world they had once called their own. Plumpton loyalists were being charged and held. No one would buy the wood the family had felled over the winter, or anything else they were trying to sell. Robert needed to bring the