Death
From
Hunter1:
Thomas Portington, the head of the family, had a little before that date been slain in his house at Barnby, an event attended with some remarkable circumstances.
The house of York had still many friends in the county from which their title was derived, after the battle of Bosworth; and particularly in the neighbourhood of the chase of Hatfield and the castle of Coningsborough, it might be expected that there would be no ready acquiescence in the rule of the house of Lancaster. We have seen Morton of Bawtry arming himself for the field against the earl of Richmond; and we now find Portington of Barnby a party in that last effort to support a falling cause, which ended in the decisive battle of Stoke. After that battle, he seems to have retired with some of the vanquished party to his house at Barnby, and there to have maintained himself for
some time against the king's authority. Two privy seals commanding him to repair to the king he resisted, and treated with indignity the serjeant at arms by whom they were delivered: and when the king issued his warrant to sir Richard Tunstall the steward of Pontefract, and to the high sheriff, to bring his body, and the posse comitatus was raised for the urpose, Portington defended himself in his house. He attacked with his sword some who gained access, and shot with arrows through the windows upon those without. In the fight he was himself shot dead by an arrow, which found its way through one of the holes out of which the arrows from within were discharged.
Margaret Portington, the widow of the man that was slain, appealed against seven persons who were present at the death, and eighteen other persons who were supposed to be concerned in the affair; and was proceeding with the prospect of success, when the appellees referred the whole matter to parliament, and obtained, as might be expected, an act of oblivion and indemnity. The facts above stated are of the showing of the accused, and we have no other notice of the transaction. But that she should be able, under the circumstances as there related, to be permitted to have process of appeal at all, and to prosecute it, as it appears she did, to the outlawry of some of the parties, shows what appears to be something more than a spirit of independence to be admired, in a Yorkshire jury of those times. Perhaps there were some minute infractions of the law on the part of the king’s officers which rendered necessary the act made for their protection.
I wish we could recover the name of the spirited lady who under such circumstances had courage to prosecute the widow's appeal. But the received pedigrees, which too often fail us when they are most wanted, represent the wife of Thomas Portington as an Isabel, daughter and heir of Anthony Kiddal, of Lincolnshire. The whole act is too curious to be omitted. The spirit of insubordination which it discloses, broke out in several acts of direct rebellion in the early years of the reign of Henry VII; nor were the factions in the county composed till it had been some time under the judicious government of the earl of Surrey.
Footnotes
[1] South Yorkshire - History and Topography of the Deanery of Doncaster, by the Rev. Joseph Hunter, London, 1828; Parish of Barnby, page 212
Abt 1450 - 