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CHAPTER XII.

E

SIR EDWARD, ESQUIRE TO KING RICHARD III.

DWARD, who on his brother William's death without

male offspring, succeeded to the Redman inheritance, was a man of twenty-six at the time of his accession, as is evidenced by the escheat of 22 Edward IV., No. 49:

The Jurors say that Sir William Redman, knight, held the Manor of Levens, on the day on which he died, of William Parr as of his Barony of Kendal, and that Edward Redman is brother and heir of the said William and twenty-six years of age. (Dods. MS. 70, fo. 141b.)

The new Redman Lord of Harewood appears to have been a man of greater enterprise and energy than his brother, father, or grandfather, and for a brief time rivalled the industry, if not the discretion, of any of his predecessors. Very soon after his accession, in 1483, we find him discharging magisterial duties in three countiesWestmorland, the West Riding of Yorkshire, and Wiltshire; though what took him so far south as the latter county it is impossible to say. In 1483-4 he was engaged as Commissioner in assessing subsidies, &c., in the county of York; and in the same years we find him actively employed with John, Lord Scrope, of Bolton, and others in arresting and imprisoning the rebels in Devon and Cornwall, who had taken part in the insurrection headed by Henry, Duke of Buckingham, against the infamous

Richard III, the failure of which cost the Duke and many of his sympathisers their heads.

In 1484 Edward was busily engaged in the south of England as Commissioner of Array for the county of Dorset ; and for all these loyal services to his Sovereign he was rewarded by the grant of a Somersetshire manor and broad acres in Dorset.

"Grant to Edward Redmayne, alias Redemayne, Esquire of the body, and the heirs male of his body, for his good services against the rebels, of the Lordship or Manor of Illubruar, Co. Somerset, late the property of Thomas Arundell, Knight, and the lands of Middleton, &c., Co. Wilts., late of Roger Tocotes, rendering to the King £6 yearly. (Patent Rolls, 2 Ric. III-)

From this grant we see that Edward was one of the trusted officers of Richard III., who executed the orders of that odious King, and on whom his favours were showered. Two months after Richard bad been carried from Bosworth field, flung limp and lifeless across a horse's back, and Henry VII. had come to his throne, Edward was fortunate in receiving a pardon for his misguided loyalty to the tyrant. On October 23rd, 1485, there appears a general pardon and release to "Edward Redmayne, of Harwode, Co. York, alias of Levens, Co. Westmoreland, alias of Shideoke or Chideoke, Co. Dorset, for all manner of offences committed before the date hereof."

After this spell of exuberant activity Edward seems to have settled down into the less stimulating, if safer, life of a country gentleman. As a partisan of Richard he was not likely to be in great favour at the Court of the first of the Tudor Kings; and it may be that the exciting times which culminated on Bosworth field had satisfied his thirst for adventure. At any rate he seems to have held

no public office of any kind for several years after receiving his pardon.

In 1459 it was found by an inquisition on Thomas Harrington, Esquire, that he held land in Lupton of Edward Redman, Esquire; and in 1494 Edward emerges from his obscurity to assume the duties of sheriff of Cumberland, an office, as we have seen, which had been held half-a-dozen times by his great-grandfather. Nine years later, in 1503, his name appears with those of Sir Roger Bellingham, Walter Strickland, and others in a Commission for an assessment of aid. (Rolls of Parliament, 19 Hen. VII.)

In 1509 he had succeeded in getting himself into hot water again; for we find Henry VIII., in the first year of his reign, granting a pardon to "Edward Redmayn, brother and heir of William Redmayn, knight; otherwise Sir Edward Redmayn, of Isell, in Co. Cumberland, late Sheriff of Cumberland, lately of Levens, in the County of Westmoreland, Esquire; late Sheriff of Somerset and Dorset; brother and heir of William Redmayn, Knight of Harewod in the County of York, Esquire; of London gentleman; late of Chideoke, in the County of Dorset."

From this variegated description we gather that Edward had been sheriff of the two southern counties of Somerset and Dorset, as well as of Cumberland; that he was a knight at Isell, near the ancestral Redman; an esquire at Levens and elsewhere, and a "gentleman at large" in London; in fact he must have been a veritable chameleon among Redmans, and deserved a pardon if only for the embarrassing burden of his qualifications. So far as I have been able to discover, Edward was the last of his line to be prominently identified with any county south of Yorkshire.