FRESCHEVILLE (FRETCHWELL), Sir Peter (?1513-58), of Staveley, Derbys.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Nov. 1554

Family and Education

b. ?1513, s. of John Frescheville of Staveley by Elizabeth, da. of John Leke of Sutton in the Dale. m. Elizabeth, da. of Sir Richard Tempest of Bracewell and Bowling, Yorks, 2s. 4da. suc. fa. June 1518. Kntd. 11 May 1544.2

Offices Held

J.p. Derbys. 1539-47, 1555-d.; commr. musters 1539, 1546, relief 1550.3

Biography

A lineal descendant of the Barons Frescheville of Staveley, whose title lapsed after the 13th century, Peter Frescheville was the first of his family to emerge from its subsequent obscurity. That he did so was mainly due to his marriage to a daughter of Sir Richard Tempest, whose brother Thomas purchased Frescheville’s wardship, and two thirds of Staveley manor valued at £22 a year, in February 1519 for £200. Sir Richard Tempest was a seasoned warrior and it was doubtless under his tutelage that Frescheville acquired the military prowess which was to be rewarded by his own knighthood when he served with the Earl of Hertford in Scotland in 1544. He had not suffered by Tempest’s implication in the rebellion of 1536 and subsequent death in prison: two years earlier he had received livery of his Derbyshire lands, which lay chiefly in the hundred of Scarsdale and were valued at £53 a year, and in 1539 he was appointed to the Derbyshire commission of the peace and took the musters for Scarsdale. He augmented his inheritance by purchasing the remaining third of Staveley and other nearby lands from (Sir) Francis Leke in 1545 and the Earl of Cumberland in 1552. In 1545 his park at Staveley was the subject of a fierce dispute which was brought before the Star Chamber. While Frescheville denounced his neighbour Godfrey Foljambe for trespassing on his parkland to hunt his deer, Foljambe charged Frescheville not only with failing to enclose the park properly, thereby allowing the deer to roam, but also with ordering servants to kill him while hunting. The case appears to have left Frescheville unharmed: his temporary removal from the commission was not to occur until the beginning of Mary’s reign and was to last for only a year.4

Returned for Derbyshire to the Parliament of November 1554, Frescheville and his fellow-knight Henry Vernon were among the large body of Members who withdrew themselves from it without leave. Frescheville failed to appear in the King’s bench to answer his summons and was repeatedly distrained until Hilary term 1557 when he was given a day in the following term to answer. A year later he and Vernon were fined £4 each. In 1557 he was one of the Derbyshire gentlemen who complied with Mary’s demand for a loan of £100 for defence.5

Frescheville died between January 1558 and the following 23 Nov. when a writ of diem clausit extremum was issued. The findings of the inquisition held during the following year are so poorly preserved as to be useless. He was succeeded by his son who, although he did not follow his father onto the commission of the peace, was pricked sheriff of Derbyshire in 1570.6

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: C. J. Black

Notes

  • 1. Huntington Lib. Hastings mss Parl. pprs.
  • 2. Date of birth estimated from age at fa.’s i.p.m., C142/33/27. The Gen. n.s. vii. 136-7; LP Hen. VIII, iii; C142/120/25.
  • 3. LP Hen. VIII, xiv-xvi, xviii, xx, xxi; CPR, 1547-8, p. 82; 1553, p. 352.
  • 4. CP; LP Hen. VIII, iii, viii, xx; Index 10217(1); Wards 9/129/4; HMC Bath, iv. 72; Lincs. Peds. (Harl. Soc. lii), 955; CPR, 1550-3, pp. 273-4; 1553-4, p. 18; St.Ch.2/15/130-8, 321-6.
  • 5. Strype, Eccles. Memorials, iii(1), 262, iii(2), 78; KB29/188.
  • 6. C142/120/25.