THORNES, Thomas

Thornes, like the majority of Shrewsbury’s MPs, was from the well-established elite of families resident there. Originally from Thornes near Lichfield in Staffordshire, the Thornes family had been active in the town’s affairs since the admission of our MP’s grandfather to the ranks of the burgesses in 1344. Between 1357 and 1410 the family provided the borough with MPs in at least 11 Parliaments with, on the last occasion, Thomas’s father and uncle sitting together. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 593-5.

If the evidence of a proof of age taken in 1446 is to be accepted, the young Thomas was married by December 1425, when his wife, Margery, stood as godmother at the baptism in the church of Moreton Corbet, a few miles from Shrewsbury, of Thomas*, son and heir of Sir William Mallory of Papworth St. Agnes (Cambridgeshire) and Margaret, widow of Robert Corbet† of Moreton Corbet. C139/144/45. He himself first appears in the records in an active role in April 1428 when he entered into two bonds, dated in the London parish of All Hallows in the ward of Bread Street, to a London citizen, John Selby. CP40/684, rot. 149d. Soon afterwards he made another marriage, for either Margery died young or the testimony of the proof of age is not to be trusted. On the following 24 Sept. his father entailed upon him and his wife, Isabel, ten tenements in Castle Foregate, High Street, Bakers’ Row and ‘Lestalles’ in Shrewsbury. Salop deeds 6000/6273. This probably represented a large part of the Thornes property in the town, for Thomas took a leading part in the borough’s administration even before his father’s death. Indeed, he was far more active there than his father had been. He was elected as bailiff in 1432, being later accused, along with others, of converting the proceeds of the murage, granted by the Crown in 1431, to his own use. CPR, 1429-36, p. 470. The accusation does not appear to have damaged his standing. In 1435-6 he acted as councillor to the bailiffs and in the following year, after a more than customarily short interval since his last term, he was himself re-elected as bailiff. While in office he was elected to represent the borough in Parliament, a continuation of the established practice by which a serving bailiff took one of the parliamentary seats. On 21 Apr. 1437, nearly a month after the conclusion of the assembly, he received £4 1s. in what was said to be part payment of his wages for 73 days of parliamentary service (including travelling time). If he received no further payment, and there is no record that he did, this represented about 1s. a day, only half the customary rate for borough MPs. C219/15/1; Shrewsbury bailiffs’ accts. 3365/373.

Soon after this parliamentary service, Thornes clashed with a group of townsmen, headed by Roger Pontesbury†, over the collection of the fifteenth and tenth voted by an earlier assembly. On 11 June 1437 he and his fellow bailiff, John Beget, were ordered to assist the collectors, but a week later, when they took distraints to enforce payment, Pontesbury and others assaulted them and recovered the goods distrained. The miscreants were later admitted to make fine in the Exchequer. E159/214, recorda Mich. rot. 17. Thornes also found himself on the other side of the law. At a session of the peace held at Ludlow on the following 17 Sept., he and his wife were indicted as accessories to the theft of goods worth as much as 160 marks from Katherine, widow of William Horde*. This alleged offence was an episode in the dispute between Katherine and her stepson, John Horde*, in which our MP and his putative brother Robert supported the latter. The indictment put Thomas and Isabel to the inconvenience of appearing personally in the court of King’s bench two months later, but the legal process was quickly concluded by the acquittal of the principals in February 1438. KB9/229/1/48, 49; KB27/706, rex rot. 24.

It was probably at about this time that Thornes inherited his paternal property at Thornes and what appears to have been his more substantial maternal inheritance. His mother’s lands are described in a final concord levied in Easter term 1407, by which they were entailed on her issue by our MP’s father, as consisting of the manor of Startlewood, 16 messuages, ten carucates of land, 200 acres of meadow and pasture, six acres of wood, 20s. of annual rent and the hereditary office of bailiff of Aldermore, all lying in Shrawardine, Alderton, Webscott and other nearby vills, a few miles to the west and north-west of Shrewsbury. CP25(1)/195/20/14. This did not represent the full extent of her property, which other evidence shows also consisted of a manor in the same vicinity at Shelvock, one of the 11 townships of Ruyton Eleven Towns, with property a little further afield at Eaton Mascott to the south of Shrewsbury. It is not known when Thomas came into these lands, but his appearance on 9 Sept. 1439 as a juror in an inquiry concerning lands omitted from the inquisition taken on the death of John Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, suggests that he may then have been the tenant of his mother’s property at Shelvock and Eaton Mascott held of the Fitzalans. C139/98/27.

For a townsman, Thornes’s parental landed inheritance was a considerable one, but its acquisition did not change the pattern of his established career in borough administration. Late in 1439 he was elected, for a second successive occasion, to represent his native borough, again in company with William Burley II*. They were once more remunerated at half the established daily rate. Shrewsbury bailiffs’ accts. 3365/373, 851; D.R. Walker, ‘Shrewsbury in the 15th Cent.’ (Univ. of Wales, Swansea Ph.D. thesis, 1981), 375-6. In September 1440, seven months after the end of the Parliament, Thornes’ fellow townsmen chose him as bailiff for the third time in only eight years, and two years later he was chosen as coroner by electors including his putative younger brother, Robert. His experience made him a natural choice to serve among the first body of aldermen, established under the new composition granted to the borough during the Parliament of 1445-6. No doubt had he lived he would have served again as bailiff and MP but his career was to be cut short. By the time a list of the first aldermen was entered in the borough’s assembly book only nine of the original body survived. Thornes was among the three who had died. Shrewsbury assembly bk. 3365/67, f. 68v.

On 4 Nov. 1446 Thornes’ feoffees, including William Mytton*, William Bastard* and Nicholas Ashby*, settled all his lands upon his widow, Isabel, with remainders in successive tail-mail to his four sons by her, namely Thomas, Richard, William and John, and then to his right heirs. Salop Archs. Philipps mss, 4229/1/8. This generosity to the widow was probably determined by the minority of the heir, but it did not meet with the approval of the new earl of Arundel, William Fitzalan. In Hilary term 1449 he sued Isabel for our MP’s land and heir, claiming damages of £100 because Thomas had been his tenant by knight service in respect of two messuages, 2½ virgates of land and eight acres of meadow in Eaton Mascott. The dispute was compromised: in 1455 Isabel acknowledged the earl’s right and, in return, the earl remitted the wardship to her. CP40/752, rot. 323d.

The holdings of the Thornes family outside the county town are reflected in the service of the younger Thomas as escheator of the county in 1465-6. Either this Thomas or his son, another Thomas, held office as bailiff of Shrewsbury on four occasions between 1476 and 1490. The bailiff, in a significant expression of the family’s standing, married into the leading shire gentry, taking as his wife a daughter of (Sir) Roger Corbet II* of Moreton Corbet. Walker, 406-8; E153/1587; Vis. Salop (Harl. Soc. xxviii), 136. The eldest son of this marriage, Roger†, made a similar marriage to a daughter of Sir Roger Kynaston of Myddle, and both Roger and one of his younger sons, Robert†, sat as Shrewsbury MPs. The Commons 1509-58, iii. 444-5. For the family’s later hist.: Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 4, viii. 260-1.