Sir John Cockayne (died 1438) was an English soldier, politician and landowner whose wealth made him a major force in the affairs of Derbyshire under the House of Lancaster. After numerous acts of criminality in concert with other Midlands landowners, he became a member of the Lancastrian affinity centred on John of Gaunt and a supporter of Henry IV. He fought in two campaigns of the Hundred Years War but his violence and lawlessness continued and he was decidedly out of favour during the reign of Henry V. With power less concentrated in the early years of Henry VI, he was able to serve three terms as High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the Royal Forests and to wield considerable power and influence. He represented Derbyshire no less than nine times and Warwickshire twice in the House of Commons of England.
Background
Ancestry
John Cokayne was the eldest son of Edmund Cockayne (died 1403) of Ashbourne Hall Ashbourne, Derbyshire. Elizabeth Harthill (died 1416), daughter of Sir Richard Herthil or Harthill (died 1390) of Pooley Hall, near Polesworth, Warwickshire. The Cockayne family are known to have lived at Ashbourne from the mid-12th century.Gentleman's Magazine, volume 215, p. 224. The Derbyshire historian Stephen Glover wrote that the Cockaynes "resided and flourished for many generations in this town, and had considerable estates in the county, much increased by a match with the heiress of Herthill."Glover, p. 32. His mother's patrimony was to be an important factor in the prominence Sir John Cockayne assumed in his county's affairs, although he did not gain full control of it until after his mother's death. However, the family were already wealthy before the Harthill inheritance, although it has been pointed out that they suffered over several generations from "reduced family income due to the longevity of dowagers,"Wright, p. 9. which led to Edmund and his brother John not being knighted in their youth.
The Cokaynes gained considerable advantage over many decades from a close connection with the Duchy of Lancaster, especially under Edward III's son, John of Gaunt. Sir John's grandfather, also Sir John, had been joint custodian with Henry de Haydock of the Duchy lands north of the River Trent under Henry of Grosmont, 1st Duke of Lancaster, including several important estates in LancashireJohn of Gaunt's Register, volume 2, p. 347, no. 1799. and Staffordshire,John of Gaunt's Register, volume 2, p. 349, no. 1801. and he was responsible for them during the transition to Gaunt's control.
Confusions of identity As his family were unimaginative in their choice of personal names, Sir John Cokayne is often confused with others of the same name. Footnote 1.
Sir John was confused by GloverGlover, p. 34. with his uncle Sir John Cokayne (died 1429), appointed an executor by John of Gaunt as "chief seneschall de mes terres et possessions,"Armitage-Smith (1905), p. 430-1 the post held previously by his father. It was this uncle who was a distinguished lawyer and it was he, not Sir John Cokayne of Ashbourne, who was Chief Baron of the Exchequer throughout the reign of Henry IV,Foss, p. 303-4. as well as Justice of the Common Pleas from 1406 until 1429, the year of his death. The Chancery rolls have numerous references to him, as he was a very active judge and administrator for several decades. Sometimes he is distinguished from his nephew as John Cokayne the Elder. Glover's confusion arose from his belief that uncle John died in 1403 at the Battle of Shrewsbury, thus leaving his later career unattributable. It was his brother Edmund, Sir John's father, who died in the battle.
Sir John Cockayne's eldest son, also named John and also knighted, is also sometimes confused with him. The problem of identification is considerable, as the son died before his father (dvp or decessit vita patris in genealogical records), so their careers overlap for some decades with no clear chronological span for the younger Sir John to occupy as head of the family. Moreover, Sir John had a second son called Sir John by a different wife, with further confusion.
Early career
Armed marauder
Sir John Cokayne first appearance in the history of his region was as a bandit leader in the reign of Richard II. On 26 February 1388, while John of Gaunt was abroad and the Lords Appellant, including Gaunt's son, Henry Bolingbroke, were at the height of their power, Cockayne's name headed the list of a group of young landed gentry accused of "divers enormous offences in the county of Derby, against the ministers, officers and servants of the king's uncle John, duke of Lancaster."Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1385–1389, p. 463. It was alleged that they had set an ambush to kill Gaunt's officials. A substantial party of Midlands landowners, headed by Robert de Ferrers, 5th Baron Ferrers of Chartley, was deputed to bring Cockayne and his gang to justice. Among the posse were Sir Walter Blount, a justice of the peace, a veteran of Gaunt's campaigns and his main representative in the region,Roskell et al. Members BLOUNT, Sir Walter (d.1403), of Barton Blount, Derbys. – Author: C.R. John Ipstones and Thomas Beek, both rewarded by Gaunt for their service in his campaign for the Crown of Castile.Walker, p. 225. Ipstones had a reputation for violence and had besieged Blount's home with an armed band the previous year during a dispute over a bond that Blount had taken from John Moston, a tenant of Ipstones.Walker, p. 221. This internecine warfare among Gaunt's affinity was a principal part of the wave of violence afflicting the north Midlands,Walker, p. 222. a major embarrassment for Gaunt, who had been arguing in parliament that the great lords' affinities were a force for order.Walker, p. 228. Cokayne's main disruptive activity seems to have been breaking into Gaunt's enclosures. Despite his family links with Gaunt, Cockayne was not at this time part of the duke's affinity: Simon Walker, the historian of the affinity, found no clear evidence of that before 1398,Walker, p. 267. the year of Gaunt's death. The commission to arrest him named nine accomplices and he was said to have a retinue of twenty. However, he soon made friends with some of the very Lancastrian affinity members who had been commissioned to arrest him.
Ipstones had long been involved in a complex dispute over lands at Tean, Staffordshire, and Hopton, Shropshire, which he claimed by right of his mother. The other claimant, Maud Swynnerton, a cousin, was still a child in 1381 when Ipstones seized the manors with the help of Richard Thornbury and John Wollaston.Collections for a History of Staffordshire, vol. 13, p. 169. Ipstones seems to have quarrelled with Thornbury, his chief accomplice, as he was granted a pardon for his murder on 13 November 1387.Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1385–1389, p. 366. Cokayne was one of those whom he recruited to fill the gaps in his own entourage. Maud continued to uphold her side in the property dispute and, now a widow, was living with Joan Peshale, her mother-in-law, at La Mote, a house within Chetwynd Park in Shropshire. Cokayne joined Ipstones and Beek in abducting Maud from Chetwynd in December 1388. They were said to be "armed as for war,"Collections for a History of Staffordshire, vol. 16, p. 28. but stole a collection of additional weapons as they took Maud, who was forced to marry William Ipstones, Sir John's son, and made to renounce her claim to the disputed estates. However, Joan Peshale pursued the matter through the courts, alleging that the gang had entered her manor by scaling the walls with ladders, threatened her and her tenants, attacked her servants and abducted a maidservant called Alice Costeyne as well as Maud. Property losses were put at £100.Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1388–1392, p. 339-40. Cokayne was prominently named in all the allegations as well as in the gaol delivery made at Shrewsbury Castle when they were committed for trial in 1390. However, they were acquitted by the jury, probably because of intimidation.
Pious purposes In 1392 Cokayne was party to an important donation intended to fund a chantry at St Oswald's Church, Ashbourne. On 18 March he, together with John Kniveton, Roger Bradbourne and Richard Cokayne, granted rents worth 100 shillings a year from the manor of Mercaston to William Hyde, the church's chaplain.Jeays (ed). Descriptive Catalogue of Derbyshire Charters, p. 210-11, no. 1693. In this, they were acting as feoffees for Nicholas Kniveton and the purpose of the chantry was to pray for the souls of the Kniveton family, who were probably relatives of the Cokaynes. Cokayne was involved in the process over some time, as he had witnessed the transfer by feoffees of the Mercaston estate to Johanna, the widow of Nicholas Kniveton, in June 1391.Jeays (ed). Descriptive Catalogue of Derbyshire Charters, p. 210, no. 1692. As was customary, the souls of others concerned in the grant were included, and in this case John, Duke of Aquitaine and Lancaster was named, as the manor was held of him, together with John Sheppey, the Dean of Lincoln, who confirmed the grant. Hyde paid £20 for the licence to accept the alienation in mortmain of the rents,Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1391–1396, p. 138. a costly privilege because the property passed thereby outside the land market and beyond most royal taxation. With reference to a later donation to set up a chantry at Ashbourne for the Bradbourne family, the local historian Susan Wright comments on the peculiar "intensity of relations, including much intermarriage, among those families with manors between the Dove valley and Derby in the Peak foothills" which was both celebrated and created through such rituals.Wright, p. 58.
Responsibility and criminality
Cokayne now began to acquire a degree of influence and recognition in Derbyshire society. In March 1392 he received a commission of array.Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1391–1396, p. 93. In February 1393 he received a commission of arrest to pursue a fugitive in a case brought to attention by his uncle John.Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1391–1396, p. 237. Rituals of social solidarity and political responsibility did not make Cokayne markedly less inclined to consort with criminals. In May John Cokayn, probably the uncle, obtained a pardon for a man involved in a rampage of housebreaking and murder at Ashbourne.Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1391–1396, p. 267. Although there is no suggestion in the text that Sir John himself was present on this occasion, the list of those involvedCalendar of Patent Rolls, 1391–1396, p. 268. overlaps substantially with that of his cronies who had terrorised the area in 1388, including Edmund Harthill, presumably a cousin. Moreover, when Sir John was returned to Parliament for the first time in 1395, he had another indictment for felony hanging over him. While he was at Westminster he had the case transferred to Derbyshire by a writ of nisi prius, which covered also Thomas Lache and William Walsh, both of Normanton,Calendar of Close Rolls, 1392–1396, p. 328. presumably his accomplices. The other knight of the shire in 1395 was Peter Melbourne or Fauconer, a one-time MP who was a close and devoted adherent of Gaunt. It was rare for the Derbyshire gentry to send two inexperienced men to Parliament: generally at least one would have served before.