Family and Education

b. by 1533.1

Offices Held

Mayor, Carlisle in 1554, 1566-7.2

Biography

Robert Dalton probably came of a family which although prominent at Carlisle is to be distinguished from the more important one of nearby Dalston Hall which produced John Dalston, knight of the shire in 1558. Dalton had served at least one term as mayor before being returned to Parliament and in July 1561 his was one of the signatures which followed the mayor’s in the Carlisle Dormont Book. In 1567 his second mayoralty was interrupted by a summons to appear before the Privy Council after an investigation by the 9th Lord Scrope and the bishop of Carlisle of a controversy ‘touching the mayor’. He appeared on 21 Apr. and ‘being found culpable therein’ was committed to the Fleet. Eight days later the warden was ordered to release him and to charge him no more ‘than for his ordinary commons’ as he was ‘a very poor man’. He was nevertheless required to give satisfaction at the next assizes for the £100 he was said to owe the city of Carlisle, ‘as also all other sums wherewith he may be justly charged to have taken out of the common treasury of the same, and also to restore the charter of the said city and such plate of the city’s as has come into his hands’. He was to be replaced as mayor either by him ‘who was on the other side alleged to have been according to their charter lawfully chosen’, or by the senior alderman. What befell him thereafter is unknown, but 12 years later there was again a Dalton in the Fleet.3

Dalton’s election to Parliament had taken place when William, 3rd Lord Dacre, was warden of the west marches, which were administered from Carlisle, and it may be a pointer to Dacre’s interest in the matter that about 1561 a namesake of Dalton, a former prebendary of Durham, was ordered to remain with Dacre; the name was, however, a not uncommon one in the north, its bearers including the Lancashire son-in-law of John Kitchen and a brother of Thomas Dalton of Hull. At Carlisle itself a Robert Dalton was granted a gunner’s room in 1590 and two years later the same man or another was admitted to the merchants’ guild.4

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Alan Davidson

Notes

• 1. Date of birth estimated from first reference.
• 2. C219/23/36; APC, vii. 344.
• 3. Carlisle Recs. (Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. extra ser. iv), 13, 45, 86, 89-90, 308; APC, vii. 323 344, 347, 349-50; xi. 308.
• 4. CSP Dom. 1581-90, p. 703; 1601-3, Add. 1547-65, p. 522; Emden, Biog. Reg. Univ. Oxf. 1501-40, p. 158; VCH Lancs. vi. 102; vii. 333; Chetham Soc. cv. 244-5; Glover’s Vis. Yorks. ed. Foster, 141.