# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lumley, John (1493-1544)

​LUMLEY, JOHN, fifth (or sixth) Baron Lumley (1493–1544), born in 1493, was elder son of Richard, fourth or fifth baron Lumley, by Anne, daughter of Sir John Conyers, K.G., of Hornby Castle, Yorkshire. He fought at Flodden (1513), was summoned to parliament on 23 Nov. 1514, and received livery of his lands on 18 July 1515. On 9 April 1516, with Sir Ralph Bowes, he entertained Dacre, who was going north to treat with the Scottish commissioners at Durham. In 1518 he had the first of a long series of disputes with the Bishop of Durham, and was reported to have cut off a man's ears at Chester-le-Street. He went on the expedition into Scotland in 1519, and was one of those rewarded for the destruction of Cessford. In 1520 he was at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. In the preparations on the borders in 1522 he was reported to be backward. Lumley was one of those who signed the petition to Pope Clement VII (13 July 1530), praying him to grant the divorce. In October 1536 he took a leading part against the government in the pilgrimage of grace, as one of the leaders of the men of the diocese of Durham. In the evidence it appeared that, like Ellerkar and the Percies, he had been under compulsion at first, but he evidently sympathised with the movement, and must have known that it was impending. With the host from Durham he moved to Pontefract, bearing the banner of St. Cuthbert. From Pontefract the men of the bishopric, twelve thousand strong and well armed, marched, as the rearguard of the main body, to Doncaster, and Lumley was one of the representatives of the rebels who met envoys from Norfolk's army on Doncaster bridge (27 Oct.) After the pardon had been proclaimed by Sir John Russell in the beginning of December, Lumley took no further part in the northern insurrection. He was weak in health and troubled about his estates, which he settled upon his grandson John, lord Lumley (d. 1609) [q. v.] He died in 1544, and was buried in Guisborough Abbey.
He married Joan, daughter of Henry, lord Scrope of Bolton. By her he had one son, George Lumley (d. 1537), who paid the fine for knighthood in 1536, and took part with his father in the northern insurrection of that year. In January 1537 he joined in the second Yorkshire rising under Sir Francis Bigod [q. v.], and took part in the capture of Scarborough, which he held for a few days with four hundred men. On 20 Jan., however, he returned to York and gave himself up. He was taken with Bigod and six others to London, imprisoned in the Tower, arraigned 16 May, and executed at Tyburn on 2 June 1537. Just before his death he wrote to his wife, telling her to bring up his son as a faithful follower of the king. He had married Jane, second daughter of Sir Richard Knightley of Fawsley, and left a son John (1534?–1609), who is separately noticed, and two daughters, Jane, who married Geoffrey Markham, and died without issue; and Barbara, married first to Humphrey Lloyd [q. v.]; and secondly to William Williams of Cockwillan, Carnarvon. George Lumley was attainted, and thus at his father's death the peerage became extinct. It was revived in 1547 for the benefit of his son, but a claim to the original barony was unsuccessfully made in 1723 by Robert Lloyd, a descendant of Margaret Lloyd.
[Letters and Papers Henry VIII, ed. Brewer and Gairdner; Froude's Hist. of England, vols. ii. and iii.; Burke's Extinct Peerage; Rutland Papers (Camd. Soc.), p. 30; Wriothesley's Chron. (Camd. Soc.), i. 63–4; Surtees's Hist. of Durham, ii. 156 et seq.]
W. A. J. A.