he had been in England on Christmas day in the house of Marmaduke Constable and had seen this done. Marmaduke himself said his grant (litteras pheudatarias) required this ceremony, if he neglected it he could be deprived of his fief, and showed letters commanding it. Four years ago Doctor (sic) Marmaduke Constable told me the same, but instead of a coin he said a rose was shot into the sea, and not at Christmas but on St. John Baptist's day.’
Marmaduke Constable, son of Sir Robert Constable of Flamborough, and Agnes, daughter of Sir Philip Wentworth of Suffolk, was the eldest of a family of eleven, five sons and six daughters. His epitaph says his age was seventy at Brankiston (i.e. Flodden) Field in 1513. This would place his birth about 1443; but the ‘Escheators' Inquisitions,’ taken after the death of his father in 1488, and of his mother in 1496, give his age respectively as over thirty-one and over forty, from which we may infer that he was born about 1455, a more likely date, as his son Robert was born about 1478, when he would be twenty-three, and heirs to property then married young. His wars in France must have been in 1475 with Edward IV, and 1492 with Henry VII. The latter ended with the treaty of Estaples, and we find Constable named among the gentlemen appointed to receive the French delegates who ratified it. Berwick was surrendered to the Duke of Gloucester in 1482. Under that duke, when king as Richard III, Constable held the important stewardship of the honour of Tutbury in Staffordshire. Henry VII, however, pardoned his adherence to King Richard (Pat. 1 Hen. VII, p. 2, m. 22) and received him into favour. The first three years of Henry's reign were disturbed by repeated risings in the north. Humphrey Stafford, Constable's brother-in-law, was hanged for his share in that of 1486 (Lord Lovel's), and in another the Earl of Northumberland was murdered by a Yorkshire mob on 28 April 1489. Constable was then sheriff of Staffordshire, 1486–7, and of Yorkshire, 1487–8; in the latter year he received ‘by way of reward’ 340l. He also obtained the stewardship of some of Northumberland's lands during the minority of the young earl (Pat. 5 Hen. VII, p. 1, m. 21). His father dying in 1488 he became Sir Marmaduke Constable of Flamborough, having previously been known as of Someretby in Lincolnshire. He was a knight of the body to Henry VII, and was at the reception of Catherine of Aragon in 1501. In 1509 Henry VIII sent him to Scotland, with Sir Robert Drury and Dr. John Batemanson, to negotiate the treaty which was signed at Edinburgh on 29 Nov. 1509, and in the following year he and Drury were commissioned to treat for the redress of grievances. He was then, 1509–10, sheriff of Yorkshire. On 9 Dec. 1510 he obtained an exemption from serving on juries, &c. (Pat. 2 Hen. VIII, p. 2, m. 9). To the battle of Flodden in 1513 he accompanied the Earl of Surrey with a powerful band. The ballad of Flodden Field describing the muster has it:—
Sir Marmaduke Constable stout
Accompanied with his seemly sons,
Sir William Bulmer with his rout,
Lord Clifford with his clapping guns.
He was one of those who signed the challenge sent, 7 Sept., by Surrey to the king of Scots. On the 9th, the day of the battle, ‘the captain of the left wing was old Sir Marmaduke Constable, and with him was Master William Percy, his son-in-law, William Constable, his brother, Sir Robert Constable, Marmaduke Constable, William Constable, his sons, and Sir John Constable of Holderness, with divers his kinsmen, allies, and other gentlemen of Yorkshire and Northumberland’ (contemporary news-letter printed by Ric. Fawkes; reprint, Garret, 1822). His two sons, his brother, and William Percy were among those knighted after the battle. Henry VIII acknowledged his services on that day by a letter of thanks dated Windsor, 26 Nov. 1514 (Prickett, Bridlington, p. 186; Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. ii. 208), in which he refers to the royal license already granted to him on account of his ‘great age and impotency’ to take his ‘ease and liberty,’ and addresses him as knight of the body, Sir Marmaduke Constable, the elder, ‘called the little.’ In July 1515 he received a charter of liberties constituting Flamborough a sanctuary for felons and debtors, &c. (Pat. 7 Hen. VIII, p. 1, m. 29). In the Record Office are two orders, one dated 18 Jan. 1518, by Lord Darcy to a servant, to deliver wethers and kids to Constable. They are curious as written on the backs of playing cards (Cal. Hen. VIII, vol. ii. app. 43). He died on 20 Nov. 1518 (Esch. Inq. 11 Hen. VIII). His brother, John Constable, dean of Lincoln, and brother-in-law, Sir William Tirwhit, executors of his will (dated 1 May, and proved at York on 27 April 1520), afterwards, by deed 4 July 1522, in his name founded four scholarships in St. John's College, Cambridge. His tomb in Flamborough church is described by a writer in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ of 1753 (p. 456): ‘This epitaph’ (quoted above) ‘is written on a copper plate fixed into a large stone, which is placed upon
