Thomas came from a Northamptonshire family. In 1408, after the death of his young cousin, William, the son and heir of Theobald Ward, his parents brought a suit against Robert Chiselden† and his wife Amy, Theobald’s widow, for possession of the manor of Harpole, claiming title to the manor under the terms of an entail made in 1364 whereby if the male issue of Simon Ward failed the manor should pass to his daughter Maud (Thomas’s mother) and then in tail-male. Although in about 1411 Chiselden made an agreement with James Bellers† (who had married his stepdaughter, Margery Ward), apparently permitting Amy to retain as dower a substantial part of the Ward property including the manor now in dispute, Maud Tame had taken possession of Harpole by 1412, and Thomas’s brother Robert died seised of it and the advowson of the parish church in April 1420. It was Thomas, his brother’s heir, who made a formal presentation to the living in 1444, although Amy Chiselden retained other Ward properties in the neighbourhood until her death in the following year.
Tame had moved to southern England long before, when, early in his career, he joined the retinue of the famed soldier Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury. In July 1417 he mustered as a mounted man-at arms in the force the earl had contracted to provide for Henry V’s second invasion of Normandy.
There is insufficient evidence to chart Tame’s movements properly in the years before his election to Parliament, although it is likely that he continued to serve with the earl of Salisbury in France for much of that period. In 1422 he was named as a co-feoffee with the earl of property at Wimborne Minster, and at an unknown date his lord granted him for life tenements known as ‘Tilherst’ and ‘Lokkeslond’ in Hampshire, worth 26s. 8d.
Whether Tame accompanied his lord to the siege of Orléans, where Salisbury met his death the following November, is not known, but his participation in local government at home did not begin until February 1430, with his first appointment as sheriff. He was to fill this office, either in Hampshire or in Somerset and Dorset, for an impressive five terms altogether, and was placed on the short-list for the shrievalty of Hampshire on another two occasions, in 1441 and 1448, although not pricked in the event. It was in Hampshire that he took the oath not to maintain malefactors (as generally administered in 1434); and there too that he attested the elections to the Parliament of 1442.
Following the death of his wife Elizabeth, Tame had again married a woman who had twice been wed before. Gillian Hamely’s first husband, John Plecy, had held property in Christchurch near Tame’s manor of Avon, and had also left her dower lands in Dorset, Surrey and Northamptonshire, which, farmed by Plecy’s heir, John Cammell, gave her an income of 23 marks a year.
On occasion, Tame was asked to be a feoffee of property in Hampshire and Dorset. For instance, he had a fiduciary interest in land in Fernhill once belonging to John Fromond, which increased the endowment of Winchester College in 1442, and in other of Fromond’s estates which passed to the elder son of John Roger† of Bryanston.
Tame took out a royal pardon as former sheriff in February 1458. His removal from the Hampshire bench at the end of the year was probably prompted by his links with the politically-suspect Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, and his wife Countess Alice (the daughter and heiress of his former lord), from whom he held the manor of Kinson. It seems very likely that his service to Montagu had led to employment by his son-in-law Neville, and it was to the latter that he owed his appointment as constable of the earl’s castle at Christchurch. Earl Richard’s estates were forfeited by Act of Attainder in the Parliament held at Coventry in December 1459, following the rout of the Yorkist force at Ludford Bridge. Tame and John Filoll were then appointed by the Crown as joint stewards of his lordships of Christchurch Twynham and Ringwood, but it may that this merely confirmed their existing roles as a temporary expedient.
Tame had drawn up a will on the previous 13 Aug., and in a deed dated at Ringwood on 31 Aug., and acknowledged on 4 Nov. before his stepson Edmund Ashley, he had made a formal quitclaim of his lands in the Midlands. The timing of these important documents strongly suggests an involvement with the Yorkists’ military activities, and that Tame was putting his affairs in order before joining his lord in the Welsh marches. He died at an unrecorded date before 25 Jan. 1460. The will, which was proved on 26 May, was brief, simply stating his wish to be buried in the chancel dedicated to the Virgin Mary in the church of Saints Peter and Paul at Ringwood, that small sums of money should be given to two canons of Christchurch Twynham priory to pray for his soul, and named beneficiaries should receive specified items of plate. Ashley was left a silver cup called ‘Welcombe’. Tame named as his executors his wife Gillian, John Holand, the vicar of Ringwood, the Surrey esquire Thomas Bassett* and John Whitehead.