TREMAYNE, Thomas II

There is a possibility that Thomas was related to John Tremayne†, the Cornish serjeant-at-law and sometime recorder of London who served as a j.p. in Hampshire, if only because when in 1386 John made a grant of his lands in the parish of St. Erth, Cornwall, he did so at Winchester. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 646-8; CAD, iv. A9981. But even if this was the case, Thomas did not follow John into the legal profession. A merchant or ‘chapman’, by 1440 he was trading in victuals such as herring which he carted from Southampton to markets in various places in Hampshire, including Andover. At that stage in his career he lived at St. Mary Bourne, a parish to the north-west of Whitchurch. There, he probably operated the local mill, for he brought in eight quern stones to furnish it. Brokage Bk. 1439-40 (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1941), 92, 102, 108. In July 1440, also as ‘of St. Mary Bourne’, he stood surety for the Exchequer grant to John Gymer of Winchester of the farm of alnage to be collected in the county and city over the next eight years. Curiously, the grant was not recorded on the fine roll, and when a further commitment of the alnage was made during the Parliament of 1442 it was in response to a petition from the mayor and commonalty of Winchester protesting about the ills arising from committing the farm to persons dwelling ‘far from the city’. Hants RO, Winchester recs., W/A2/8; CFR, xvii. 230.

By then Tremayne had moved more permanently to Winchester, where he set up in business. In 1443-4 he had five barrels of black soap, a grinding-stone, six bales of woad and a pipe of oil carried there from Southampton, Brokage Bk. 1443-4, i (Soton. Rec. Ser. iv), 47, 142; ii (ibid. vi), 252. and from then on he made the city the centre of his trade in madder, alum and woad, as well as wine, oil and grain. Port and Brokage Bks. 1448-9 (Soton. Rec. Ser. xxxvi), 175, 179, 210. He had dealings with the Hampshire landowner (Sir) John Lisle II*, with whom he sealed a bond in May 1446, agreeing to pay the abbot of Hyde £30 at the following Pentecost, Winchester Coll. muns. 12162. and who he accompanied to Parliament three years later.

On 7 Aug. 1441 Tremayne had been formally exempted by the civic authorities of Winchester from having to take on the office of bailiff of the commons, Black Bk. Winchester ed. Bird, 78. but he agreed to be senior bailiff two years later. This caused him trouble. Early in 1445 a bill was brought in the Exchequer of pleas against him and his fellow bailiff on the charge that by colour of their office they had unjustly taken £4 18s. 2d. from the plaintiff, William Wellys, in the previous May. E13/143, rots. 20, 28d. Tremayne contributed 5s. towards the expenses of Winchester’s MPs in the Parliament of 1445-6, and served as a collector in the city of the subsidies they had voted. Winchester recs., W/E1/18; E4/4. He himself represented Winchester in 1449, in the Parliament which met in the city itself for its third and final session.

Tremayne’s property in Winchester included the messuage and garden which he and his wife acquired in the spring of 1444 from the former mayor, John Wryther*, who was planning to return to his native Sussex. This was a substantial holding situated in Wongar Street. Tremayne paid a rent of 7s. p.a. for the garden until 1454, when the property passed to William Sylvester. CP25(1)/207/33/12; D.J. Keene, Surv. Winchester (Winchester Studies, 2), ii. nos. 366, 378. He is not recorded thereafter.