Lord Audley - the strains of family and politics in the fifteenth century

In my last post I referred to the career and fate at the hands of the headsman on this day in 1497 of James Touchet, seventh Lord Audley. Looking at his life and that of his family opens up some of the political choices that faced members of the English aristocracy in the mid to late fifteenth century.

His grandfather James Tuchet, 5th Baron Audley was the Lancastrian commander at the battle of Blore Heath in 1459, and was killed there, aged about 62. His son  John Tuchet, 6th Baron Audley born in 1423, succeeded him. Despite the circumstances of his father’s death, in 1460 he threw his lot in with the Yorkists and fought for them at the battles of Mortimer’s Cross, Barnet and Tewkesbury in 1471. On that last occasion his younger half-brother, Sir Humphrey Audley, aged 34 or 35, was on the opposing Lancastrian side. His maternal ancestry might be typified as Yorkist, but he himself was not. Following the battle Sir Humphrey was one of those beheaded by the victorious Yorkists. Lord Audley continued to flourish under King Edward IV and served as Lord Treasurer under King Richard III from 1484. Following  Bosworth he appears to have discreetly retired, and died in 1490.

His son James Tuchet, 7th Baron Audley

had married as his first wife in about 1483 Margaret Darrell, whose mother had been born Margaret Beaufort, daughter to Edmund Duke of Somerset and sister to Dukes Henry and Edmund, all of whom died violent deaths as Lancastrians in 1455, 1464 and 1471 respectively. By her previous marriage she was also the mother of the Duke of Buckingham who helped King Richard III to the throne in 1483, only to attempt unsuccessfully to install Henry of Richmond later on that year, and end up being beheaded at Salisbury. Buckingham’s family were originally inclined to the cause of Lancaster, but he had found himself resentful at having been married as a child and ward to the sister of Elizabeth Woodville. His changes of allegiance in 1483 remain striking. Audley’s first wife was therefore a second cousin of King Henry VII, and one might have expected Lord Audley to opt for a quiet life. However as the biography linked to above shows he allowed a number of resentments with the new monarch to fester and so joined the Cornish peasant rebels in their march on London. Quite what he thought he might achieve as the only aristocratic member of this popularist uprising is unrecorded, but it took only a few days for the rebellion to be defeated at the battle of Deptford and for the leaders to be tried and executed. The barony was not restored to his son until 1512, the estates not until 1533.

What the misfortunes of the fifteenth century Audley show is that despite the seeming  importance of family and connection and assumed allegiance to a cause or faction men did change sides and risk the loss of life, of family and of property.

Despite all these changes and the scanodal which engulfed the then head of the family, the Earl of Castlehaven, in 1630-31, the barony survived, fell into abeyance from 1872-1937, was then restored until it fell again into abeyance among the three co-heiresses of the 25th Baron in 1997. The history of the barony from 1313 can be read at Baron Audley