Between them, Thomas Holme and his brother Robert dominated the political and economic life of York during the late 14th century, for the pair of them were not only extremely rich and successful merchants but also active public figures who devoted years of their lives to the business of local government. Robert Holme, the elder of the two, was born and raised in the village of Holme-on-the-Wolds, moving to York by 1347, when he was admitted to the freedom as a mercer. By the time that Thomas himself took this step, seven years later, Robert had already served as both chamberlain and bailiff of York; and he subsequently went on to occupy the mayoralty as well as sitting in at least two Parliaments, thus setting a pattern for his sibling to follow. Success may, therefore, have come more easily for Thomas, who rose rapidly in the civic hierarchy, and, as a former mayor, had achieved aldermanic rank by 1377. Although he continued from then onwards to sit regularly on the bench and discharge a number of other royal commissions, Thomas evidently now felt able to devote more time to his manifold commercial interests, which are far better documented from this point onwards.
By October 1376, Thomas was rich enough to consider endowing an existing chantry in his parish church of St. Mary’s, Castlegate, with one of his messuages in York. He then paid £10 for royal letters patent permitting him to alienate the property, although a few months later he secured a second licence for rather less than half this sum, presumably recouping the difference. We know that he owned numerous dwellings and shops in the city, as well as widespread farmland in Little Smeaton, Norton, Pontefract and Stapleton in Yorkshire, and in Newark, Nottinghamshire, some of which may well have come to him through his first wife, Mary.
During the course of his civic career, Holme contrived to stay aloof from most of the factional disputes which drove the ruling elite into hostile camps. He experienced some trouble during his mayoralty as a result of embezzlement and fraud by the common clerk, John Rufford, and was subsequently called upon to testify in court, but his own probity remained unquestioned. Later, in May 1381, both he and his brother were among the leading citizens of York to be summoned before the royal council and interrogated about the recent outbreak of disorder as rival groups fought for control of local government. In common with the rest, they were both bound over in heavy securities to keep the peace, yet neither seems to have posed much threat to public order. Holme faced a far greater crisis in 1398, some two years after his brother’s death, when Richard II was turning a covetous eye towards his wealthier subjects in the north. Although he was not apparently forced to enter one of the notorious blank charters’ whereby Richard extorted money from other members of the York mercantile community, Holme appeared a prime victim for even less attractive methods of fiscal terrorism, and in May 1398 he was forced to offer pledges worth £1,000 as a guarantee that he would appear before the royal council at the end of the year. The award to him, two months later, of Richard’s full letters of pardon suggests that he had to pay heavily for a reprieve, but the sum itself remains unknown. The pardon refers specifically to help given by Holme to the Lords Appellant during the period 1386 to 1388; and although the precise nature of this support is now hard to determine his Membership of the Merciless Parliament of 1388, when the Appellants purged the court party of Richard’s more unpopular favourites, assumes particular significance. It is interesting to note that one of his sureties was William Frost, to whom he was now related by marriage, and who stood high in the King’s favour.
Holme’s second wife, Katherine, was a daughter of the Hull merchant, Walter Frost, and thus clearly a woman of considerable wealth in her own right. Access to her fortune may have enabled Holme to accelerate the ambitious programme of charitable endowments which had begun years before, in 1376, although some of hisplans for the further expansion and embellishment of what was now effectively his chantry at St. Mary’s had already been implemented during the time of his first marriage. Between May 1383 and May 1392, Holme secured no less than five royal licences for the alienation of extensive property in York for the support of two priests there; and in 1387 he received permission to settle rents worth 30s. a year upon St. Leonard’s hospital as well. His decision to set up a hospital of his own, on Castle Hill, probably stemmed from that mixture of civic pride and fear of the after-life which prompted so many of his wealthy contemporaries to undertake works of public utility: being childless (like Richard Whittington, another notable benefactor of the deserving poor) he faced few of the usual constraints with regard to entails or family settlements. His almshouse was founded in about 1390, and six years later his brother, Robert, bequeathed money to the inmates. But it was the chantry at St. Mary’s which constituted Holme’s proudest achievement, representing as it did a remarkable investment in both hard cash and energy. Although by 1480 the endowment had declined sadly and could only support one priest, an inventory of 1428 suggests that Holme’s chantry had once been the finest in the city. Its vestments, jewels, books and plate were then worth almost £100, two breviaries alone being valued at £20 and £15 respectively. The impressive chests of brocade, damask, cloth of gold and embroidery may well have been purchased out of funds set aside for pious works in Holme’s will, although as a merchant with widespread connexions in London and Calais it is quite possible that he acquired these sumptuous goods on his travels. He was, of course, buried in St. Mary’s, his death having occurred at some point between April and early November 1406.
All Holme’s property in York was held for life by his widow and executrix, Katherine, upon whom he also settled a substantial estate in Little Smeaton and Norton. These holdings, along with a considerable amount of other property in Pontefract and Newark, were eventually sold for the upkeep of the chantry, but Holme did remember his two nephews, Thomas (the son of an otherwise obscure brother named John), and Robert I, his elder brother’s child (who was to represent York in the second Parliament of 1414), leaving them land and tenements in Pontefract, Stapleton and Calais. Shortly before the summer of 1411, Katherine married the wealthy landowner, Robert Morton of Bawtry. She brought him no less than 33 messuages and their appurtenances in York alone, and when he died, in 1424, she gained possession of some of his estates, too.