TOKER, Reynold

A cutler by trade, Toker came from a family which had been resident in the Liskeard region since at least the thirteenth century, and his career seems to have been strictly a local one. KB27/677, rex rot. 3; LR14/53. He first occurs in the records in 1418 when he was in dispute with two fellow Liskeard cutlers, John Colys* senior and junior, over an unspecified trespass. CP40/628, att. rot. 6d. In May 1420 his neighbour Richard Fook settled a close in the manor of Liskeard on him and Robert Brewys†. Cornw. RO, Liskeard bor. recs., B/Lis/20/2/44. Toker was obviously well regarded by the townsmen, for he regularly appears in a prominent position among those attesting local deeds and served a term as mayor before his single election to Parliament. In March 1430 he was one of two burgesses required to accompany the new mayor to St. Stephen’s priory, Launceston, and attest an agreement alongside him. Ibid. B/Lis/20/2/46; B/Lis/78, 79; Arundell mss, AR1/983.

As he had not previously become prominent in either royal administration or in the service of the duchy of Cornwall, it may be assumed that it was his local standing which led to his election to the 1426 Parliament. Within a few years of his spell in the Commons, Toker and his parliamentary colleague John Colys found themselves in serious jeopardy: a jury at sessions held in Somerset in January 1430 presented that in September 1422 they had been guilty of clipping coins and passing the resulting metal on to known counterfeiters at Wells. They were fortunate that on this occasion the wheels of the judicial system moved with uncharacteristic speed and the same August they were tried and acquitted at the Somerset assizes. KB27/677, rex rot. 3. In 1434 Toker was the subject of another charge, when he and a number of associates were accused in the court of common pleas of depriving Robert Pyne of a bale of almonds. The location of the supposed offence, the port of Polruan on the Fowey estuary, suggests that Toker had allowed himself to become involved in one of the acts of privateering with which the men of the far south-west commonly increased the profits of legitimate trade. CP40/693, rot. 366.

The serious nature of the charges against him did not preclude Toker from serving as a royal tax collector in Cornwall on no fewer than five separate occasions between 1429 and 1437, and in 1435 he was appointed reeve of the duchy of Cornwall manor of Liskeard, within which he held land. He had relinquished this latter office by the time he attested the Cornish shire elections at Lostwithiel in December 1436, so we can only speculate whether his renewed activity as a tax collector earlier that year had caused him to take a fresh interest in parliamentary affairs. Indeed, such was the experience of the men charged with levying subsidies in the localities that they might well have wished to influence the negotiations of the Commons. In June 1437 the Cornish collectors, including Toker, reported to the Exchequer that the borough of Truro was so badly decayed that they had been unable to levy the required sum of money. The cash-strapped Westminster authorities were reluctant to accept this excuse, and ordered an inquiry by the justices of assize. Cornw. RO, Truro bor. recs., B/Tru/16. The outcome of this inquiry is not known, but in any event, Toker was never again to hold office. Indeed, by January 1438 he had fallen foul of too powerful an opponent, the leading lawyer and future royal justice Walter Moyle*. Moyle, who was evidently well connected in the city of London, had begun proceedings against him in the London sheriffs’ court, and as a consequence he was imprisoned in the capital, and had to secure his release by suing out a writ of corpus cum causa. He was dead by early 1448, when Joan Reynell, either his own widow or a widowed daughter, was engaged in the execution of his will. KB145/6/16; CP40/748, rot. 454d.