SHERMAN, Thomas

Sherman used the alias of Baker intermittently throughout his life, and it is of interest to note that while one of his sons was known as Sherman, the other chose to be called Baker. To judge from the crops and large numbers of livestock mentioned in his will, his income largely derived from farming, although there is also evidence that he was a money-lender, and the possibility that he had some education in the law. In the course of his career he steadily accumulated land and property, so that by the end of his life he was a ‘gentleman’ and rentier of some substance in Lewes and elsewhere near the Sussex coast. This process of acquisition began in June 1452 when together with his brother John he paid £20 to obtain from the prior and convent of Sele a lease for three years of the manor of ‘Munkynberne’ and the tithes of Southwick. Cat. Suss. Deeds, Magdalen Coll. ed. Macray, ii. no. 165. The legality of the process by which he acquired some of his holdings was open to question. When Amicia Wryther, widow of the prosperous merchant John Wryther* of New Shoreham, died intestate in 1457, Archbishop Bourgchier of Canterbury, evidently noting the value of her estate, delegated his brother John, Lord Berners, his nephew Humphrey Bourgchier and Sir Richard Fiennes to take control of its administration, only for them to find that Sherman had removed all the moveable goods from Amicia’s home at Cliffe near Lewes. The archbishop promptly excommunicated him, and when Sherman refused to submit and appealed to the apostolic see, Bourgchier petitioned Pope Calixtus III to aggravate the processes against him, seeking heavier penalties. Accordingly, on 12 Nov. the Pope annulled letters leading to Sherman’s absolution from the sentence, and empowered Bourgchier to prosecute him further, if necessary invoking the aid of the secular arm. Reg. Bourgchier (Canterbury and York Soc. liv), 181; CPL, xi. 156-7, 167. How Sherman extricated himself from this severe sentence does not appear, and matters clearly worsened. In January 1458 Lord Berners presided over sessions of the peace at Croydon in Surrey at which Sherman was indicted for assaulting a cleric named Thomas Hanwell at Streatham on the previous 30 Nov. and stealing from him two bags containing £10 in money (quite likely part of Amicia’s estate). KB/291/84. In defence of his actions, it might be posited that he had merely taken possession of the inheritance of his wife Joan, for his son Thomas was later able to substantiate a claim to two messuages and some 160 acres of land at Cliffe and Ringmer which Amicia had settled on our MP and his wife and the latter’s issue. Thus, it seems likely that Joan was her kinswoman. CP40/948, rot. 348.

These events of the autumn of 1457 brought Sherman’s role as clerk of the peace in Sussex (an office which he had occupied for about seven years) to an end. The identity of Thomas Baker alias Sherman, the clerk of the peace in Suss. from 1474 to 1494 (Stephens, 169; KB9/340/49d; 342/34d, 36d, 38d; 345/98d, 100d; 946/13d), is uncertain. While he may have been our MP, serving a second term, doubt is cast by a petition to the chancellor from Edw. IV’s reign, in which it was claimed that John Baker ‘the elder’ had procured the post of clerk in neighbouring Surrey for his son Thomas: C1/32/11. Lacunae in the records of his home town of Lewes mean that there is no surviving evidence of his participation in local government. Yet he was prominent enough to be returned to the Coventry Parliament of 1459 as one of the borough’s representatives, and his brother John achieved a similar distinction eight years later in 1467. In the will John made in July 1474, he left his most valuable maser to Thomas, and best robe to the latter’s son and namesake. John, an unusually devout man, had built a chapel dedicated to St. Mary in the graveyard of the local church of St. Peter Westout, and although he was survived by at least one son, he left a considerable portion of his lands and tenements in Lewes and Willingdon for the support of the chaplain, whose annual stipend of ten marks was to be funded for as long as 100 years, under the supervision of our MP and his heirs. PCC 19 Wattys (PROB11/6, f. 140). Thomas took on the duties of executor along with his widowed sister-in-law, and was kept busy for at least 14 years sorting out his brother’s affairs, notably by bringing lawsuits to recover his debts, which included the sum of £60 owed to him by a London butcher. CP40/856, rot. 55d; 883, rot. 437; Add. 39377, f. 20.

Litigation in the central courts preoccupied Sherman for the last 20 years of his life. Besides suits against his own and his late brother’s debtors, he was party to several pleas relating to his acquisition of property. He had purchased from one William Brasier an estate called ‘The Hyde’ just outside Lewes, but encountered difficulties when Edward Fowler, who married Brasier’s widow, found a deed showing that the reversion of the property should by law have been transferred to Robert Wodefold* and the latter’s brother-in-law Richard Sutton. Although Fowler, for ‘very grete love confidence and truste’ gave Sherman the deed, ‘dyvers displesures’ later arose between them, and Sherman brought an action in the common pleas against him, alleging that the document had been forged. C1/54/186. The Shermans had clashed with the Wodefolds before: in 1456 John Sherman had claimed damages of 29 marks against Robert Wodefold’s mother Mary and her son-in-law Sutton for setting their dogs on his flock of sheep; and in 1457 the Sherman brothers had sued Robert for trespass: KB27/779, rot. 62; 784, rot. 47. In another suit in Chancery Sherman himself was the petitioner, aided by his son John Baker. They said that a chaplain named John Leye, who needed money to secure his acquittal on an indictment for a felony, had sold them his reversionary interest in property in the parishes of Denton, Heighton, Bishopstone and Norton, but that Leye’s feoffees refused to relinquish their title. In response to the petition, Leye’s sister Alison Thatcher asserted that the land in Norton had been settled on her and her issue in accordance with their father’s will, and that the descent of the other holdings was also governed by an entail. It was alleged that Sherman and Baker had compelled Leye to grant the lands and tenements to them ‘by subtyle and crafty meanes’; they played upon his fears of being arrested on indictments ‘surmytted to be ayenst hym’ and convinced him that he was likely to be utterly ruined without their help, so for ‘drede and fere therof’ and ‘of other synystr vexacions and manasses’ he, though innocent, complied with their demands. Our MP and his son protested that no compulsion had been used. C1/56/15-18. Yet there were other instances where Sherman obtained property by dubious means, notably by foreclosing on mortgages. In another petition to the chancellor, this one dated 1480, John Godeman and his wife explained that, being in great need of money, in May 1476 they had borrowed 43 marks from Sherman on the security of five tenements and a croft in Lewes, it being understood that if they repaid the loan within seven years he would return their property to them. Accordingly, Sherman received a rental income of £12, but when Godeman proffered the remaining amount due he refused to relinquish the estate. Sherman’s response was that the Godemans had broken clauses in the indentures agreed between them. C1/51/176-8. He and his son John Baker again acted together in the late 1470s, when Sherman obtained judgement in the common pleas against Richard Wode of Bucksteep for the sum of £18 6s. 8d. Wode was arrested by the under sheriff, John Warnet, who was persuaded by Baker, acting as mediator on his father’s behalf, to stand surety in £20 for the payment of the debt. Sherman received the amount due at Hilary 1479, but Baker nevertheless sued Warnet on his bond and the latter was forced to appeal to the chancellor for redress. C1/51/213-14. In all these suits our MP could depend on the legal expertise of his son Baker, a member of the Inner Temple who, after representing Lewes in the Parliament of 1478, served on the quorum of the Sussex bench in 1483-4. John probably died, childless, before 1490, in the lifetime of his father. J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), i. 255.

Sherman acquired yet more property (a messuage and some 50 acres of land in Kingston by Lewes) in 1491. CP25(1)/241/95/20. Elderly, infirm and aware that he was close to death, he made his will on 1 Dec. 1494. It was proved on the following 12 Sept. Requesting burial in the chapel founded by his late brother, of which he himself now became a substantial benefactor, Thomas donated to the foundation £40 in cash, innumerable cattle and sheep, and all the grain currently in his store (except what was needed for his widow’s household), together with the profits of specified lands and tenements at Arlington, Kingston and Chiltington. His widow was left his property in Lewes for life, with remainder to his surviving son, Thomas, in tail. The latter was to inherit all his holdings in Ringmer, Cliffe, Lancing, Hollington, Westham and South Malling, including ‘The Hyde’. The testator decreed that if the issue of Thomas junior happened to fail, all these properties were to be used for the foundation of a second chantry. PCC 20 Vox (PROB11/10 ff. 158v-159); Suss. Wills, iii (Suss. Rec. Soc. xliii), 128-9. Thomas the son made his will in December 1503, asking to be buried in the same chapel as his father, and next to the tomb of his late wife and son, George. PCC 1 Holgrave (PROB11/14, f. 3v). The annual income of ‘Sherman’s chantry’ in St. Peter’s Westout was said to be £11 5s. 9d. at the time of its confiscation under Henry VIII. The property donated to it by our MP and his brother John was sold by the Crown in 1549. Suss. Chantry Recs. (Suss. Rec. Soc. xxxvi), 28, 111.