BURGHAM, Thomas

Burgham was from an ancient family with holdings at Brougham and Carleton, on either side of the border between Cumberland and Westmorland, where they were tenants of the Cliffords, and at Penrith, where they were tenants of the Nevilles. They also had property in Carlisle, which John Burgham represented in Parliament twice in the 1390s (curiously, at a time when very few MPs represented both a borough and a county, he had already represented Cumberland).5 W. Hutchinson, Cumb. i. 299-300; J. Nicolson and R. Burn, Westmld. and Cumb. i. 393-4; E210/4210. Thomas may have been John’s son and thus to be identified with the ‘Thomas, son of John’, who in Hilary term 1409 brought an action as one of the executors of another Thomas Burgham, perhaps his uncle.6 CP40/592, rot. 118.

Whatever the MP’s exact place in the family pedigree, the pattern of his career leaves no doubt that he was a lawyer. He began his traceable public career by attesting the first Cumberland election of 1416 and was named to his first ad hoc commission of local government in 1419.7 C219/11/8; CPR, 1416-22, p. 273. By 1420 he was serving as clerk of Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland’s liberty of Penrith, and he soon developed a significant practice as a local lawyer. In 1425 he was named as a feoffee of one of the leading local gentry, Sir Henry Threlkeld*, and in 1427 he stood as strawman when Thomas, Lord Dacre, settled several manors in tail-male.8 Hope-Wallace (Featherstone) mss, ZHW/1/69; CP25(1)/35/14/2, 5. He was present at the Cumberland gaol delivery in August 1429 to offer mainprise for one of the indicted, a task he must also have discharged on other unrecorded occasions, and in the following month he attested the contested county parliamentary election at Carlisle.9 JUST3/11/3, m. 4; C219/14/1. He also employed his legal skills further afield, travelling to Westminster on behalf of the Carlisle borough authorities in 1429 and 1432 to account at the Exchequer for the forfeitures of Scottish coin.10 E159/206, recorda Mich. rot. 12d; 208, recorda Hil. rot. 2d.

In 1433 Burgham was one of those entrusted with the task of hearing an assize of novel disseisin arrayed by Sir Peter Tilliol* against George Neville, Lord Latimer, a younger son of the late earl of Westmorland. On 21 Dec. at Penrith he duly sat as one of three justices, headed by Sir James Strangeways, j.c.p., to hear a jury find in the defendant’s favour, a verdict that, given his family’s connexion with the late earl, was probably welcome to him.11 C66/435, m. 22d; JUST1/143/3, m. 7. Indeed, by the mid 1430s he may have formed a connexion with the new lord of Penrith, Latimer’s elder brother, Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury. This, at least, is the implication of an action pending in 1434: the executors of Sir Robert Lowther† sued a clerk, Robert Ellergill, receiver of Penrith for the earl of Salisbury, and our MP for £40 each, an indication that Burgham, like his co-defendant, had a part in the administration of Penrith. Another connexion is made explicit by his attendance at Appleby on 29 Sept. 1435 to offer testimony at the inquisition taken into the estates of his feudal overlord, Elizabeth, widow of Thomas, Lord Clifford.12 CP40/692, rot. 99d; CIPM, xxiv. 393.

Such associations are enough to explain Burgham’s addition to the quorum of the Westmorland bench in 1434. Even so, it is surprising to find that he had status enough to command election as a county MP. On 13 Dec. 1436 he was elected for Westmorland in company with another lawyer, Robert Warcop*. The hustings were attended by most of the county’s leading gentry, as many as four knights heading the attestors, and so there is no reason to suppose that he was not the free choice of the electors.13 C219/15/1. Rather his return is another indication of the low level of competition for seats in that county.

Thereafter, with the exception of his appointment to a commission of array soon after his service as an MP, Burgham’s functions were more typical of a local lawyer of his modest wealth. On 11 Sept. 1438 he sat as a j.p. at Appleby with Thomas, Lord Clifford, and Sir Christopher Moresby†, to hear indictments concerning the murder of Robert Crackenthorpe*, one of Westmorland’s most important men.14 CPR, 1441-6, p. 191. Burgham appears to have been on friendly terms with the Crackenthorpes, who were his neighbours at Brougham. In 1430 he was a joint-plaintiff with Robert’s father and brother, John† and William*, in an action concerning close-breaking there: CP40/677, rot. 98d. In December 1440 he was a juror in the inquisition taken at Brougham on the death of Joan, widow of the earl of Westmorland, and in the following year his neighbour, William Stapleton*, nominated him to act as his under sheriff. Later in August 1445 he was one of those who returned an award between Sir Henry Threlkeld, with whom he had long been associated, and Threlkeld’s daughter-in-law, Mabel Musgrave. 15 CIPM, xxv. 518; CP40/724, rot. 132; Cumbria RO, Kendal, Le Fleming of Rydal mss, WDRY/92/91. In this period Burgham also made his only recorded purchase of property: by a final concord levied in the Easter term of 1440 he acquired seven messuages and over 100 acres of land in Brougham from William Thornburgh*, one of those implicated in Crakenthorpe’s murder.16 CP25(1)/249/8/31.

From the late 1430s Burgham appears in the records as ‘senior’.17 Lancs. RO, Misc. docs. DDX41/6. He is so described, for example, when, in 1443, he brought an action in the court of common pleas as one of the executors of Sir Christopher Moresby and, four years later, when he was chosen as a feoffee by Hugh Salkeld of Rosgill.18 CP40/729, rot. 398; Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. n.s. xiv. 26. Given his age such a designation is not surprising, and his younger namesake (and presumably his son) became active in local affairs in the early 1440s, serving as a juror in an inquisition held in 1442. Both men attested the Cumberland elections of 1453 and 1455.19 CIPM, xxv. 569; C219/16/2, 3. The son may have been a lawyer like his fa., for he was one of the coroners of Cumb. at his death in 1476: C242/13/24. This is one of the last references to our MP in an active role. On 10 Aug. 1455, again described as ‘senior’, he granted a tenement opposite the floodgate in Carleton to Thomas Carlton, and in May 1457 either he or his son secured a pardon of outlawry at suit of debt.20 Hope-Wallace (Featherstone) mss, ZHW 1/88; CPR, 1452-61, p. 320. His last appointment to the bench came in July 1459 and his omission in the following December suggests that he was then dead.21 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 663, 680. The family attained to no later distinction: Henry Brougham† of Brougham, Lord Brougham, Lord Chancellor in the early 1830s, was not a descendant of our MP.22 CP, ii. 339-42; The Commons 1790-1820, iii. 265-75.