TOKE, Ralph

According to family tradition, the Tokes established themselves in Kent shortly after the Conquest and counted among their ancestors Robert de Toke, who accompanied Henry III to the battle of Northampton in 1264. E. Hasted, Kent ed. Drake, vii. 506-7. Whatever the credibility of such claims, they probably purchased their manor at Bere in the late fourteenth century, perhaps moving there from Canterbury where a John Toke had been assessed for the parliamentary subsidy in 1334. Kent Lay Subsidy of 1334/5 (Kent Rec. Ser. xviii), 161. It would appear that the primary cause for their advancement in the decades prior to Ralph’s birth was the marriage of his parents, since his mother was apparently one of the daughters of the prominent Sussex landowner, Sir Thomas Hoo. Little is known of his father, save that he was porter of Dover castle in 1402-5, E101/44/22. and became a freeman of the Port by June 1409 and one of its jurats in 1412. In 1416 he claimed exemption from the parliamentary subsidy in the hundred of Bewsborough by virtue of his status as a Portsman. Last recorded paying maltolts at Dover in 1425-6, het was listed as ‘John Toky senior’ in a local subsidy assessment probably dating from 1435. Egerton 2088, ff. 146v, 155v; E179/124/88; Add. 29615, ff. 82v, 211; Dover Chs. ed. Statham, 167.

According to one source, Ralph was John’s second son, and like his brothers, John Toke the younger and Thomas, he became prominent in the government of the Port of Dover. Thomas was common clerk from 1439 into the 1450s, dep. mayor on a number of occasions and mayor in 1472-3. He was an official at Dover castle during the 1450s. He made his will on 16 Oct. 1472: Jones, 290; Add. 29810, ff. 14, 18, 20, 28, 32v, 37, 39, 45, 51, 59v; C67/42, m. 28; Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, Canterbury consist. ct. wills, PRC 32/2, f. 279. A lawyer by profession, Ralph had gained the freedom of Dover when he claimed exemption from the parliamentary subsidy on property in the hundred of Newchurch in 1433. E179/234/2/48. In 1433-4 the jurats of Dover paid him and another lawyer, Gilbert German*, 6s. 8d. for their counsel about the Port’s liberties, and in the following year he was employed to write a copy of a royal patent. Add. 29615, ff. 201v, 205v. He was again paid for legal services in 1435 and 1436 when he, John Greenford* and John Pirie* secured confirmation of the liberties, probably in relation to the parliamentary subsidy or to an ongoing dispute with Faversham. Add. 29810, ff. 3, 4v. It is possible that Toke spent his early career in the circle of members of the Fiennes family, to whom he was related through his mother. A feature of his latter years, his links with (Sir) James Fiennes* also brought him into contact with other Kentish men of standing like Stephen Slegge*, Gervase Clifton* and Thomas Brown II*.

In July 1440 Toke first represented Dover at a meeting of the Brodhull, and in the same year he was one of a delegation of leading Portsmen who met representatives of Dover’s member-ports at Canterbury. Ibid. f. 37; White and Black Bks. of Cinque Ports (Kent Rec. Ser. xix), 13. At that date he was not yet one of the 12 jurats of the Port, but he was finally named among their number in September 1441. Over the next three years, Toke continued to serve as a jurat and he again represented the Port at meetings of the Brodhull. He also performed duties on behalf of the Cinque Ports as a whole. In July 1447, for example, he was one of two auditors appointed to determine the legal costs involved in a dispute between Fordwich and the abbot of St. Augustine’s, Canterbury. White and Black Bks. 14, 16, 23. A measure of his importance within Dover was his election as one of the barons for the Parliament of 1442. During the following two years, he received parliamentary wages totalling £11 4s. 8d., although it is unclear exactly how long he and his colleague, John Ward I*, spent at Westminster. Add. 29810, ff. 44v, 50. On 8 Sept. 1444, only three years after first joining the body of jurats, he was elected to the first of five consecutive terms as mayor. During this term he was one of the four representatives from Dover who attended the coronation of Queen Margaret in May 1445, a duty for which they each received expenses of 26s. 8d. Ibid. f. 61v. During his second mayoral term, he, the bailiff of the Port, Walter Nesham*, and the commonalty of Dover received a general pardon, dated 6 Nov. 1446, for all offences contrary to the statutes of livery. There is no evidence to follow the suggestion that they obtained it as part of a plan to regain royal favour in the wake of Dover’s association with Eleanor Cobham, duchess of Gloucester, who had been arrested for witchcraft and sorcery in 1441. It is more likely that the pardon is an example of Toke’s use of his connexions to secure an advantageous grant of letters patent for the Port. Dover Chs. 213-21; Jones, 240.

Some 18 months before Toke first became mayor, the Crown had made him collector of customs at Sandwich. He perhaps owed the appointment to the patronage of Sir James Fiennes, then fast becoming the dominant figure in Kentish society, although it was through Ralph, Lord Sudeley, that he became deputy butler in the same Port in 1446. Toke’s connexion with Fiennes ensured for him a role in land transactions involving that patron and leading members of the Fiennes circle, CCR, 1447-54, p. 68; 1454-61, p. 79. and probably it was through it that he came to play an important role in the affairs of all the Kentish Cinque Ports during the 1440s. In 1442-3, for example, the jurats of New Romney spent 2s. 9d. soliciting his help in an unspecified matter, and in the same year those of Hythe retained him with an annual fee of 13s. 4d. E. Kent Archs., New Romney recs., assmt. bk. 1384-1446, NR/FAc 2, f. 131v; Hythe recs., jurats’ acct. bk. 1441-56, H 1055, f. 17. Almost certainly, it was through Fiennes, by then Lord Saye and Sele, that Toke secured the offices of marshal and steward of Dover castle, following his patron’s appointment as warden of the Cinque Ports in February 1447. Jones, 290. In the following April, he led Dover’s delegation to the meeting of the Brodhull which agreed an unprecedented gift of 100 marks to the new warden, and it was he who formally recited the Ports’ liberties to Saye when the latter first sat in the warden’s court of Shepway. White and Black Bks. 22-23.

It is likely that Toke’s links with the warden explain his election to the Parliament of 1449-50. Even though the MPs chosen for Kent, Canterbury and Rochester were not (unlike their predecessors in the previous two Parliaments) linked with the Court party, there is evidence that Fiennes and his associates attempted to influence the elections in the Cinque Ports. In Hythe the barons initially agreed to elect Robert Berde* at the ‘special request’ of Saye, Clifton and Toke, only returning Richard Rykedon* upon learning that Berde had already agreed to sit for Rye. H 1055, f. 28v. Toke’s own election as one of the barons of Dover may also have been part of Saye’s efforts to have his interests represented in the Lower House. Whatever the case, he must have found the Parliament an uncomfortable experience, given the hostility it displayed towards the Court party and its impeachment of the duke of Suffolk over the disaster in Normandy, a debacle in which the Commons also implicated Fiennes. The first two sessions of the Parliament (held at Westminster and London) lasted for 81 days, although it appears that Toke was paid for just 60. His parliamentary wages amounted to £6 13s. 4d., almost certainly because he had agreed with the jurats to serve for a flat fee of ten marks, a concession that a man of his wealth (he advanced the Crown the substantial loan 100 marks during the second session) could well afford. E401/813, m. 17; E403/777, m. 7. Toke did not accompany his fellow baron Richard Grygge* to the final session at Leicester, perhaps through prior agreement or because he chose to absent himself as the opposition to Suffolk and Saye stiffened. Alternatively, ill health may explain his failure to travel to the Midlands, since he died just weeks after the dissolution of the Parliament early in June 1450.

Toke died on 28 Aug. 1450. E356/19, rot. 25d. In Hilary term 1451 his widow, Elizabeth, sued Laurence Stourstrete in the court of common pleas over land he had sold to her late husband. CP40/760, rot. 73. The action against Stourstrete was one of a series of disputes involving Elizabeth and her fellow executor, Thomas Doyly*, whom she married after Toke’s death. Doyly was a member of the King’s household who had participated with Toke in land transactions during the 1440s and acted as his feoffee. Some of these disputes were heard in Chancery, including a couple concerning Toke’s time as customer of Sandwich which suggests that his conduct as such was not entirely honest. In one, a fellow customer, the London vintner Thomas Fetherston, accused him of having withheld £68 assigned to the latter on the customs for his wages and reward. C1/16/587; 24/29; CP40/768, rot. 402. In the other, a group of merchants from the Hanseatic League alleged that Toke had distrained their goods, notwithstanding instructions from the King to discharge merchants of the Hanse from paying tunnage and poundage. Furthermore, although he had subsequently returned their goods, he had wrongly (and successfully) demanded obligations for the payment of their customs, securities which were still in the possession of his executors. C1/19/386. Other Chancery cases shed light on the sizeable estate and wealth that Toke had accumulated during the 1440s. One arose from his purchase of property in Rodmersham, Kent, from the executors and feoffees of William Egyngden. The sale had not been finalized during Toke’s lifetime and his own executors could not gain possession of the property. Having failed to make progress at common law, they appealed to the chancellor to call the feoffees before him and compel them to deliver seisin. C1/19/343-4; CP40/760, rot. 73. A further Chancery case related to another of the MP’s purchases in the county, the manor of Goodnestone, and was brought by Doyly alone against one of the tenants. C1/71/13.

There was yet more litigation in Chancery after Elizabeth Doyly’s death some time in the late 1450s, when William Toke, one of the MP’s sons, sued Thomas Doyly and other feoffees. He alleged that his father had settled various properties scattered throughout east Kent on Elizabeth, with remainder to him, only for a division between all of Toke’s sons, in accordance with the custom of gavelkind, to occur. Doyly claimed that Toke had bargained with the executors of William Brewes* and John Guston for some of the property in question but had failed to complete the sale when he died. He added that, out of ‘the gret love’ he had for the MP’s heirs, he had used his own money to buy the property, which he was quite willing to release if he were recompensed for what he had paid. In December 1461 the Chancery referred the matter to the abbot of St. Augustine’s and the prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, who on the following 4 Apr. examined the parties and witnesses over that part of Toke’s personal estate that had come into Doyly’s possession. William asserted that an inventory of his late father’s goods and chattels and of the debts he was owed valued the estate at the extraordinary sum of £1,002 13s. 11d. He further claimed, however, that Doyly had fraudulently altered the inventory, adding fictitious debts owed by the MP while omitting others due to him. As a result, the goods were ‘not apprised therin to the halff value of the same’, a considerable undervaluation which, presumably, Doyle intended for his own enrichment. The examinations are incomplete and the outcome of the suit unrecorded, but it appears that the weight of evidence backed William against his stepfather. C1/27/302-4, 309.

Whatever the truth of the competing claims between William Toke and Doyly, it is clear that the MP had acquired great wealth during the 1440s, that he used it to purchase an estate in east Kent and that he had settled this on his three sons in accordance with the custom of gavelkind. Exactly how this fortune was acquired is unclear, but his employment as legal counsel in the affairs of the Cinque Ports is unlikely to have generated this kind of wealth. His association with Fiennes and the profits of his customs office in Sandwich offer an alternative explanation. The rapid accumulation of money and property by men like Toke and Slegge may go some way to explaining the unpopularity of Fiennes and his circle in Kent.

There is no evidence that the MP’s sons followed in his footsteps by taking part in the government of the Port of Dover. Little else is known of William besides his dispute with his stepfather, although his relations with his neighbours were at times strained. In the late 1460s he was involved in disputes in Chancery – this time with William Sellowe*, John Greenford and others – over property in and around Canterbury which, he alleged, should have descended to his wife, Alice Wodeland. C1/32/81; C4/5/82-83; PRC32/1, f. 50. Even less is known of another of the MP’s sons, John Toke, probably the eldest of the three. John predeceased his mother and seems not to have married or had any children. C1/27/310.