SALISBURY, Thomas

Salisbury first appears in the records as an apprentice of Richard Merlawe of Lynn, who sent him to Calais with a cargo of wool in 1411.9 D.M. Owen, Making of King’s Lynn, 271. Merlawe was of Lynn, suggesting that he was not Richard Marlow†, the prominent London merchant. It is likely he came to trade in that commodity on his own account although his purchase of several millstones from the Holy Trinity guild at Lynn later in his career suggests that he dealt in grain as well.10 King’s Lynn bor. recs., accts. scabins Trin. guild, 1437-9, KL/C 7/38/16-17. Given that he was an apprentice when Henry IV was on the throne, it is noteworthy that he was not admitted to the freedom of Lynn until April 1424, even though he became controller of customs there (a Crown appointment held during pleasure) in 1418.11 KL/C 7/29, p. 66. He had to purchase his freedom,12 Although why he had to do so is unclear: apprentices at Lynn were not usually required to pay fines upon becoming burgesses. Eldest sons of burgesses were admitted to the franchise by reason of their birth. indicating that he was a younger son.

Within months of becoming a freeman, Salisbury was serving as a councillor of his borough, albeit with some reluctance. Initially he attempted to excuse himself from the role, obliging the mayor to take steps in late 1424 to ensure his attendance at council meetings.13 KL/C 7/29, p. 97. Willingly or not, he began a term as treasurer of one of Lynn’s municipal guilds in June 1425. Four years later, his fellow burgesses chose him and John Pygot to travel to Denmark, to make representations to its king about his arrest of ships sailing from Lynn to Prussia. Salisbury was offered a reward of £20 in return for accepting this mission (£5 more than that offered Pygot), although he was also threatened with a fine of the same amount should he refuse it, indicating that it was far from welcome to him. In the event he declined to go, citing the age of his parents as an excuse: it is not known if in consequence he had to pay the fine.14 Ibid. 253.

What is certain is that his father, Robert Salisbury, was nearing the end of his life in 1429, for he drew up his will on 1 Dec. that year. Robert, who lived in Lathe Street, was perhaps a brewer, since in the will he referred to certain brewing equipment, as well as a quantity of lead which he had purchased from Joan atte Lathe. He left this apparatus and metal to Thomas, to whom he also assigned a tenement in Lathe Street and a garden in ‘Cokkeslane’, provided his son would pay £100 for the real property. It is not clear if this was a sum Robert owed a third party, or whether he intended it for the use of his executors, of whom Thomas was one. The testator mentioned two other sons, Richard, to whom he left 15 marks and a tenement with a garden, and the already deceased John, said to have died in 1421.15 KL/C 12/11; HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 737. Thomas already held property at Lynn before his father died, for he granted Thomas Hamond a three-year lease of a messuage in the town at Michaelmas 1429. A decade and a half later, he sued Hamond’s widow and her then husband for arrears of rent for this property, and regarding a bond of over £20 that Hamond had given him at Lynn in mid 1431.16 CP40/733, rot. 319d; 734, rot. 306d. Not mentioned in Robert Salisbury’s will is Thomas’s first wife, Muriel, although this does not prove that they were not already married. The match was an unhappy one that ended a few years after Robert’s death. In August 1435 evidences relating to what was either a divorce or formal separation between the couple were lodged in the common chest. Among those who acted for Salisbury in the negotiations prior to the dissolving of the marriage was Thomas Burgh*, with whom he would sit for Lynn in the Parliament of 1439.17 KL/C 7/3, f. 55.

Along with the affairs of his late father, by the 1430s Salisbury was also occupied as an executor of John Buckworth, another burgess who had held property in Lathe Street. The Buckworth executorship proved difficult, since it brought him into dispute with John’s widow and her new husband, William Stalham, a fellow burgess, over certain tenements at Lynn and the guardianship of the testator’s children. The quarrel boiled over in early 1431, while Salisbury was attending his first Parliament. On 16 Feb. 1431 he and a band of supporters attacked his opponent, who had probably come to Westminster in pursuit of his quarrel with the MP, at ‘Charryng’ (presumably Charing Cross) in Middlesex. Early in the following year, a jury indicted Salisbury (referred to as a ‘chapman’ in the indictment) for the assault, and for holding Stalham prisoner for three days thereafter. Subsequently outlawed in connexion with these charges, Salisbury returned to the capital in November 1432. Having given himself up to the Marshalsea prison, he obtained a writ of error from King’s bench, drew that court’s attention to a mistake in the outlawry process applied against him, and succeeded in having the charges against him dismissed. Whatever the outcome of the quarrel between him and Stalham, Salisbury was still active as John Buckworth’s executor in 1443.18 C1/7/166; Derbys. RO, Okeover mss, D231M/T466-7, 469; KB27/686, rex rot. 25.

Also during his first Parliament, Salisbury was appointed to the first of his three commissions of sewers for that part of Norfolk in the vicinity of Lynn. His inclusion in the list of those residents of the county whom the government expected to swear the oath to keep the peace administered throughout the country in 1434,19 CPR, 1429-36, p. 405. is further evidence of his local standing, as is his service as mayor of Lynn. He served three terms as mayor, the first two of them consecutive. Shortly before completing the second of these terms, he asked the corporation to advise him how much they intended to give him for his regard, a discretionary payment given to mayors in addition to their customary fee of £10. He ended up receiving £25 for his first year and the significantly larger sum of £35 for the second, although he was obliged to wait until 1445 for this latter sum.20 KL/C 7/3, ff. 109, 109v, 208v.

Salisbury’s final term of mayor was the most noteworthy, since Henry VI came to Lynn in August 1446.21 Liber de Illustribus Henricis ed. Hingeston, 137; KL/C 7/3, f. 217v. During the visit, Salisbury presented the King a petition requesting that on civic occasions the mayor should have the right to have his sword of office borne before him, with its tip pointing upwards instead of behind him as in the past. The petition was granted, but the newly-won privilege (a symbol of absolute jurisdiction) was short-lived, since the borough’s feudal lord, Walter Lyhert, bishop of Norwich, strongly objected. Shortly after Salisbury’s term as mayor expired, Henry wrote to the corporation explaining that he had now withdrawn the grant as being prejudicial to the dignity of the Church, and ordering that it should revert to bearing the sword in the customary manner.22 KL/C 7/3, ff. 217v, 226v, 229v.

Jurisdictional disputes between the borough and its episcopal lord were nothing new, but normally the burgesses paid the bishop due respect. After the death of Bishop Wakering in April 1425, for example, Salisbury and other burgesses had attended his funeral at Norwich a few weeks later.23 KL/C 7/29, p. 43. Similarly, early in his final term as mayor, Salisbury was one of the townsmen who visited the sick Bishop Brown shortly before Brown died in December 1445.24 KL/C 7/3, f. 212v. In subsequent years Salisbury was regularly chosen to represent Lynn in discussions with two of Wakering’s successors, Bishops Brown and Lyhert, about the toll booth and other matters affecting the borough. This might entail riding to one of the episcopal manors in East Anglia, or as far afield as London if the bishop was there.25 Ibid. ff. 88, 127, 157, 191, 194, 260.

During the mid 1440s Salisbury also participated in negotiations between the borough and Thomas, Lord Scales, about that peer’s water-mill in South Lynn, a property acquired by the Trinity guild later in the decade.26 Ibid. ff. 175v, 176v. No doubt he was regarded as an appropriate delegate, since there is evidence to suggest he was closely associated with Scales, perhaps even being one of his servants or retainers. In a royal pardon he received in July 1437, for example, he was described not only as a merchant of Bishop’s Lynn but also as a ‘gentleman’ of nearby Middleton,27 C67/38, m. 9. where Scales possessed a manor and frequently resided. Some years later, he was the peer’s co-plaintiff in a suit for debt,28 CPR, 1461-7, p. 257. and it was to Middleton that two fellow burgesses, John Style* and Simon Pygot*, rode to meet him in November 1447, to discuss business relating to their borough.29 KL/C 7/3, f. 243.

Whatever the extent of his connexion with Scales, Salisbury remained very much involved with Lynn’s affairs in his later years, arbitrating in a quarrel between Henry Thoresby* and another burgess, Thomas Tulyot, in 1447,30 Ibid. f. 236. and again representing the borough in the consecutive Parliaments of 1449 and 1449-50. Of all Salisbury’s Parliaments, his second was particularly significant for Lynn since he and his fellow MP, Thomas Burgh, took with them to that assembly Henry IV’s charter to their borough, in order to have it confirmed.31 Ibid. ff. 115, 117v. In terms of wider importance, Salisbury’s last Parliament was undoubtedly the most noteworthy of those he attended, for the Commons impeached the King’s chief minister, William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk.

Salisbury died within a few years of the dissolution of his last Parliament, as in October 1453 the borough council formally released Idonea, his second wife and executrix, from any future legal action on its part.32 KL/C 7/4, p. 26. It was as his executrix that she faced demands from John Groos of Sloley, Norfolk, in 1461. In January that year, Groos began a lawsuit against her at Westminster to claim £15 from the late MP’s estate, a debt arising from a couple of bonds that Salisbury had entered into with him in November 1451. In response, she claimed that the administration of her late husband’s goods and chattels had passed to Groos; he riposted that she had possessed enough of Salisbury’s goods at Worstead to satisfy the debt when he began his suit. The plea roll does not reveal the reason for the bonds, or why Groos – not named as her co-executor – should have assumed administration of the MP’s estate. Whether Salisbury had held property in Worstead, a parish lying immediately north of Sloley in north-east Norfolk, is also unknown but it is likely that he had had more than passing dealings with Groos. Idonea features in the roll as Idonea Persons, ‘late of Ely, widow, alias late of Bishop’s Lynn, widow and executrix of Thomas Salisbury’: presumably she had taken (and outlived) another husband after Salisbury’s death.33 CP40/802, rot. 187.