Best known for advocating the dynastic claims of Richard, duke of York, in the Parliament of 1450-1, Young enjoyed a wide-ranging career as a merchant and lawyer. His support for York in that assembly earned him a spell of imprisonment in the Tower of London, to which he was briefly returned in early 1460 on suspicion of treason, but he was never a political diehard. Although he prospered after the accession of Edward IV, under whom he became a serjeant-at-law and then a judge, he subsequently accepted the short-lived restoration of Henry VI in 1470 before ending his days back in the service of the first Yorkist King. During his long and eventful career he was returned to the Commons on at least 11 occasions, meaning that he was one of the most experienced parliamentarians of his day.
By birth Young was a native of Bristol, but his father and namesake was a Welshman who had settled in the town and become one of its leading merchants. At some stage before 1408 the elder Thomas married Joan, the wealthy widow of John Canynges, a former mayor of Bristol. Apart from the subject of this biography, Joan bore him another son and a daughter but he also assumed responsibility for her six children by Canynges, alongside whom his own children were raised.
Following in the footsteps of his father and Burton, Young also became a merchant although his decision to enter the law marks him out from his brother and half-brothers, all of whom pursued more conventional mercantile careers. William Canynges established himself at Bristol while Thomas Canynges and John Young became leading London grocers. For a time, Thomas Young co-operated in business ventures with his half-brother William. In April 1432 he and William took a statute staple for £20 from a London vintner to whom they had sold ‘divers merchandise’ on credit, and it was on the strength of that security that they began legal action against their debtor in the following autumn.
Young continued in trade long after entering the law, perhaps right up until the end of his life. In May 1445, for instance, he and John Gedney of Sandwich bound themselves in £20, to guarantee that they would satisfy the King of certain sums connected with 5,040 fells which they and three foreign merchants, John Swensbergh, Arnold van Penxston and Ingelbert van Howe, had forfeited. Presumably the five men had suffered the forfeiture for having neglected, deliberately or otherwise, to pay customs or other charges due to the Crown.
Exactly when Young began his legal training is unrecorded although he was already acknowledged as a ‘gentleman’, the sobriquet typically allowed to lawyers, as early as 1432.
A merchant and successful lawyer like Young would have possessed plentiful supplies of ready capital, and by the mid 1440s he was lending money to the Crown. In August 1444 he advanced £40 to the King, a loan for which the Exchequer issued him with a tally assigned on the customs of Bristol.
The wealth Young accumulated also gave him the wherewithal to invest in real property, although his acquisitions were respectable rather than spectacular. During the earlier 1440s he made a significant purchase from John Newton of Bristol (probably the son of John Newton†) of lands in Bristol and several Gloucestershire parishes. Among these holdings were the manor of Shrivenham in Westbury on Trym and an estate at Shirehampton, just outside the town, which became one of his principal places of residence.
Some time after embarking on a legal career, Young became recorder of Bristol, an office he occupied from at least the early 1440s until the mid 1460s or later. As the appointment indicates, he always remained closely identified with the town, where he also served on many royal commissions and which he represented in no fewer than nine consecutive Parliaments from October 1435 until mid 1451. Doubtless his fellow Bristolians regarded him as an ideal candidate for the Commons, taking into account his mercantile background, expertise in the law and familiarity with London and Westminster, where more often than not Parliament sat. Given that Young was so often in the capital – by the early 1460s he had a residence in the parish of St. Clement Danes, conveniently close to the Middle Temple
At about the same time as his appointment as recorder of Bristol, Young was retained as an apprentice-at-law by the duchy of Lancaster, which he was also to serve as a deputy chief steward of the south parts, as clerk of the court of its honour of Walbrook and as a justice in South Wales. He was to have a longstanding association with the duchy, which continued to retain him for his counsel after he became a serjeant-at-law. Although his work for it gave him an important connexion with the Crown, it was as a bureaucrat rather than a courtier and, unlike some of his contemporaries, he appears not to have benefited significantly from Henry VI’s often misguided largesse. He did however gain the stewardship of the former Gournay estates which John, Lord Tiptoft, had held in Somerset and Dorset, immediately after that peer’s death in early 1443. Young was paid a fee of £5 p.a. for his stewardship, which he was to relinquish in favour of John Byconnell* in 1461.
Besides the duchy of Lancaster, Young possessed other important institutional clients in the dean and chapter at Windsor, the corporations of Kingston-upon-Hul1, London, Exeter and Rye and the Grocers’ Company of the City of London. He had formed a connexion with the canons of Windsor before the end of the 1430s, since he was receiving an annual retainer of 3s. 4d. from them by 1439-40.
The most significant of Young’s individual clients was Richard, duke of York, although he was also employed by other important figures, among them Ralph, Lord Cromwell, William, Lord Lovell, Henry Beauchamp, duke of Warwick, Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, Robert, Lord Hungerford and Moleyns, Sir John Barre*, Sir John Fastolf, (Sir) John Howard* and Edward IV’s queen, Elizabeth Wydeville. Already associated with Cromwell by the later 1430s, Young was a feoffee for him from at least the first half of the following decade, a role he continued to perform up to and beyond that peer’s death in early 1456.
Important though such patrons were, it is for his association with Richard, duke of York, that Young is chiefly remembered. His connexion with the duke dates from at least early 1447. On 26 Feb. that year York appointed him steward of the manor of Easton-in-Gordano in north Somerset, with a fee of 53s. 4d. p.a., and two days later he witnessed a grant from the duke to the Franciscans at Bury St. Edmunds, the venue for the Parliament then taking place.
The Parliament of 1450, in which Young was again an MP for Bristol, was the scene for the most notable display of that support. Just before its dissolution in late May 1451, he took the risk of advocating his patron as contingent heir to the throne, probably by means of an oral petition. His action was probably the cause of the abrupt ending of the Parliament, and the government punished him for his audacity by sending him to the Tower. It is unclear exactly when he was released – he later complained of a lengthy confinement – although he was probably already free when a royal pardon was issued to him on 6 Apr. 1452. There is no evidence that he was involved in York’s rising earlier that year, and he cannot have put himself completely beyond the pale, since throughout this period he continued to receive his fees from the duchy of Lancaster. Presumably Young had spoken out in May 1451 under direct instruction of York, rather than from a political conviction not normally ascribed to late medieval lawyers. Whatever the case, the politics of the time were far from clear-cut, as illustrated by the fact that he was also a retainer of the duke of Buckingham, a moderate supporter of the Court. Later, in 1459, he was omitted from ad hoc commissions but remained a j.p., and he did not follow York into exile after the debacle at Ludford Bridge. Furthermore, when Parliament met at Coventry at the end of that year, he was not among those of the duke’s allies and followers attainted for treason. As already noted, in the same period he was at liberty to attend to his own affairs, namely his acquisition of the reversion of Castle Combe, and in the following year he was associating with Lord Hungerford, a peer who fought and subsequently died for Henry VI.
Following his release from the Tower, Young did not again begin to serve as an ad hoc commissioner until his appointment to a gaol delivery panel in February 1454. Early in the following month, the Crown granted him and Fulk Stafford* the keeping of the Worcestershire estates of Robert Arderne*, the only man of any standing to suffer the death penalty for his involvement in York’s rising of 1452. In all likelihood he and Stafford, a servant of York’s ally the earl of Warwick, received the grant in the interests of Arderne’s son and heir Walter rather than themselves. By now York, who was to become Protector of England just over three weeks later, had returned to the centre of affairs and was well placed to help the son of his unfortunate retainer. Some time afterwards, Walter Arderne gained permission to enter his father’s lands as though they had never been forfeit, by means of a petition probably presented to the Parliament of 1455.
It was to the same Parliament that Young, once again an MP for Bristol, presented to the Commons a well known and potentially constitutionally significant petition of his own. He appealed for recompense for the physical and financial losses he had suffered while in the Tower earlier in the decade, asserting that his imprisonment had breached the Commons’ ‘olde liberte’ ‘to speke and sey in the hous of their assemble as to theym is thought conuenyent or resonable withoute eny maner challenge, charge, or punycion’. He was careful not to repeat what he had said in 1451, although the petition tacitly repeated the claims he had advanced earlier on behalf of York. It is a moot point whether Young sincerely believed in freedom of speech for the Commons or was merely acting in the interests of himself and his patron, but his petition certainly placed his fellow MPs in something of a dilemma. They could have sought to advance their privileges by supporting it; but this would also have meant condoning what he had said in 1451. With some political adroitness, the Crown referred the matter to the lords of the Council, to provide for the petitioner as they thought fit. By this means, any possibility of a royal confirmation of a supposed right of the Commons was averted and the privilege Young claimed for the Lower House was not officially recognized. It is not known how (if at all) he was compensated for his incarceration, or whether the royal pardon he received on 11 Mar. 1456, a day before the dissolution of the Parliament, was in some way connected with his petition.
Early in 1458 Young went to the trouble of obtaining another royal pardon, probably no more than a precautionary step in increasingly troubled times.
Whether or not Boswell’s accusations of treason arose from Young’s connexion with York, it was probably no coincidence that the decision not to pursue them was made at a time when the duke and his allies were back in control of the government. By November 1460 Young was also a sitting MP, having while still on bail, and perhaps to secure himself against re-arrest, gained election to the Parliament of that year, this time as a knight of the shire for Gloucestershire. No doubt he owed much to his links with York for his election since, although an influential lawyer and man of affairs, he was scarcely a well established member of that county’s gentry. His fellow MP, Thomas Brydges*, was very probably another of the duke’s retainers from the West Country, Thomas Brydges of Coberley. While the Parliament was taking place, Sir William Oldhall died and Young was both a feoffee to the use of the knight’s will and one of his executors. Oldhall bequeathed him no less than £200, a striking mark of the esteem in which the knight must have held him.
Early in 1461, Young’s fellow lawyer and feoffee, Sir John Fortescue, turned to him for help. Unlike many of their profession, Fortescue was a man of strong political convictions and a firm supporter of the Lancastrian dynasty, and in the dying days of Henry VI’s reign he joined the queen and her army in northern England. Shortly before riding north, he hurriedly transferred his estates in Hertfordshire and Middlesex to Young and others to hold to the use of his wife.
Unlike Fortescue, Young thrived during the first reign of Edward IV. He made himself immediately useful to the new regime, helping (Sir) John Wenlock*, chief butler of England, to discharge the duties of the nominal steward of England, the King’s younger brother George. It was in that capacity that he and Wenlock received bills of claims to render services during Edward’s coronation. Among the successful petitioners were the mayor of Oxford and six of his fellow burgesses, whose claim that they should assist Wenlock at the coronation feast was upheld.
Later in the same autumn, Young was caught up in a dispute with Edward Neville, Lord Abergavenny, fortunately for him not a peer of especial importance, even though an uncle of the King’s hugely influential ally, Richard Neville, earl of Warwick. He was drawn into the quarrel as a feoffee of his brother, John Young, who a year earlier had purchased Ifield and two other manors in Northfleet, Kent, a county where Neville was also a landowner. John had obtained final confirmation of the transaction following the accession of Edward IV but soon afterwards he was troubled over his title by Neville’s servant John Rous, perhaps acting on behalf of his master. Matters came to a head in November 1461 when John Young and his feoffees, who also included William Venour and Robert White* (John’s father-in-law) took legal action against Rous at Westminster. They accused him of forgery, alleging that he had fabricated a deed of 14 Nov. 1457 by which John Lymsey had quitclaimed Ifield to him and John Joskyn*, then a Household man of Henry VI. Their lawsuit led to the arrest of Rous, who immediately sought to regain his freedom by suing for a writ of parliamentary privilege. The Parliament of 1461 was then taking place and, as a servant of a member of the Lords, he claimed the right of immunity from such arrest. Neville likewise complained about the arrest of his servant, whom the justices of King’s bench were directed to release forthwith, provided that there was no other reason for his detention. It would nevertheless appear that there was some such cause, since the writ directed to the justices was subsequently endorsed ‘not allowed’.
By the following summer Young was also busy as a feoffee for the timeserving bureaucrat John Say II*. In spite of his past membership of Henry VI’s Household, Say had served as a steward for the late duke of York in Hertfordshire and successfully adapted to the accession of Edward IV. In early May 1462 he and a number of co-feoffees received possession of one of Say’s manorial acquisitions, Liston Overhall in Essex, by conveyance from Sir John Markham (who had replaced Sir John Fortescue as chief justice of King’s bench) and others. Previously Young had possessed an interest in the same manor as a feoffee of its former owner, his late friend and associate William Venour.
A year later, Young was promoted to the upper ranks of the legal profession. In spite of the exemption he had obtained over two decades earlier, on 23 May 1463 the government issued letters ordering him, upon pain of £1,000, to take up the office of serjeant-at-law on the following 7 Nov.
It was as a King’s serjeant that Young was summoned to the Parliament which opened in June the following year, although he was already a judge by the time it was dissolved in June 1468. He was appointed a puisne justice of the common pleas in November 1467, in place of either (Sir) Robert Danvers* or Peter Ardern, two recently deceased judges of that court. To maintain his new status he was granted a customary annuity of 110 marks, along with yearly allowances for robes amounting to just over £8. Later, in December 1469, he received a grant for life of an annual tun of wine from the King’s prises in Bristol.
In spite of Young’s Yorkist connexions, the Readeption of Henry VI two years later did not halt his judicial career, another indication that, ultimately, he was not a political diehard. On 9 Oct. 1470 he was reappointed a justice of the common pleas during pleasure, with the customary wages and fees,
After Edward IV regained the throne in the spring of 1471, Young was removed from the bench of the common pleas and not, except in his native Gloucestershire, reappointed a j.p. By apparent contrast, the newly restored King knighted his brother John for his role in defending London against the Kentish rebels led by the Bastard of Fauconberg. Young had not, however, necessarily incurred Edward’s displeasure, since by then he was an old man and perhaps desired a reduction of his public duties. Furthermore, he continued to receive his annual tun of wine from the port of Bristol, a grant exempted from the Act of Resumption of 1473.
In the years following Edward IV’s restoration, the aged Young was also obliged to find time and energy for private affairs. A matter of particular importance was the safeguarding of the settlement made when his daughter Elizabeth married John Newdigate of Middlesex. During the negotiations for the marriage, which occurred in about 1465, Newdigate had agreed that Elizabeth should receive for her jointure an annuity of 20 marks for life from his manor of Harefield in that county. In spite of his undertaking, he had afterwards sold Harefield to the then chancellor George Neville, archbishop of York, for £400, forcing Young to intervene to defend his daughter’s interests. First, he had sued Newdigate in the Chancery for breaching the settlement and secondly, with the consent of a presumably by now contrite son-in-law, he had approached the archbishop and persuaded him to forsake his purchase in return for substantial compensation of £200. Notwithstanding all the trouble and expense her father had gone to on her behalf, Elizabeth’s jointure was still insecure, for Sir Robert Green†, one of the feoffees of the marriage settlement, had taken possession of Harefield for himself by the early 1470s. Young responded by bringing an assize of novel disseisin against Green, only to find that three of the knight’s co-feoffees, the lawyers Guy Fairfax, John Catesby and Richard Pygot, were refusing to co-operate in that lawsuit. In the latter half of 1471, therefore, he sued Fairfax and his associates in the Chancery, in an attempt to enforce their compliance. It would appear that the whole messy business was eventually resolved to his satisfaction, for in the end the Newdigates did not lose Harefield. Whether Elizabeth’s marriage to a man who had shown such a cavalier disregard for her interests was a happy one must remain a matter for speculation. Harmonious or not, by the standards of the time the match was a success because she bore her husband a son and heir, another John Newdigate. The younger John followed in the footsteps of his maternal grandfather by entering the law and he was called to the coif in 1510.
Another important event of Young’s later years was the death in November 1474 of his surviving half-brother William Canynges, who late in life had forsaken the world for the Church. They must have remained close to each other in their old age, for when founding a chantry at Bristol in the previous decade Canynges had directed that Young should benefit from its prayers.
In June 1476 Young was party to a conveyance of the manor of Thrussington, Leicestershire, apparently on behalf of the Nottinghamshire esquire, John Babington of Chilwell,
Young died not long after putting his name to the certificate, in the first week of May 1477. Presumably his death occurred in London since he was interred in the Greyfriars’ church there, one of the City’s more fashionable burial places. Several decades later, the Tudor historian John Stow viewed his tomb and noted an incomplete monumental inscription: …venerabile vir Thomas Yonge unus justiciariorum de banco communi tempore Regis Edwardi 4. qui obiit 4 die mensis Maii anno domini 1476 [sic].
Some 30 years of age when he succeeded his father, the younger Thomas formally took possession of his inheritance in the summer of 1478 when he swore fealty to the Crown and his widowed mother Isabel was assigned her dower lands.