BARON, Thomas II

Although no definite evidence of Baron’s parentage has been discovered, it is possible that he was a kinsman, perhaps even the son, of the important Inner Temple lawyer Roger Baron, a man of apparent south-western origin, and his wife Juliana. The family’s landholdings, if any, appear to have been insubstantial, but it seems that when in Cornwall Baron dwelt at Bodmin, rather than in the more remote borough that he represented in the Commons in 1453. By that date, indeed, his normal residence was in London, as a jury confirmed in the spring of 1451,2 CP40/761, rot. 350. and it is possible that there were professional reasons for his move to the south-east, for like his putative father Baron seems to have trained in the law, and occasionally stood bail in the King’s courts, or served as a trustee of property, alongside Westminster officials and lawyers such as Robert Clay* and the secondary Richard Pyttes.3 KB27/717, rot. 21; CCR, 1441-7, p. 397; 1447-54, pp. 62, 497. In the City, Baron apparently owned property in the parish of St. Botolph without Aldgate, as well as his own dwelling house.4 CP40/771, rot. 312; 782, rot. 422. In June 1451 Baron had to suffer the indignity of being led to the bar of the court of common pleas by the sheriffs of London as a convicted outlaw, but by skilful pleading successfully avoided longer imprisonment in the Fleet, and secured the annulment of the sentence of outlawry passed on him four years earlier at suit of two Londoners.5 CP40/761, rot. 350.

By the early 1450s Baron had established himself in the service of the young Henry Holand, duke of Exeter. It is uncertain exactly when or how this tie came about, but it had certainly been forged by the early months of 1453, when Exeter began proceedings in the King’s courts against the vicar of Bodmin, Henry Gurlyn, and his kinsman, William Gurlyn, a local gentleman, for Baron’s unlawful imprisonment.6 CP40/768, rot. 305d. Undoubtedly, it was the young duke’s influence that secured Thomas his seat in the Commons that same spring, when a number of Holand retainers were returned by south-western boroughs. Nothing is known of what part – if any – Baron played in the Parliament’s proceedings, or indeed whether he was present when on 22 Mar. 1454 Lord Cromwell’s bill seeking to have Exeter bound over to keep the peace in their dispute over Ampthill was sent to the Commons by the Lords.7 PROME, xii. 306. Certainly, he remained in Exeter’s service after the dissolution. In December 1456 he found sureties for the duke at the Exchequer, when Holand was granted custody of the earl of Richmond’s lordships of Bassingbourne and Badburgham,8 CFR, xix. 182-3. and three years later he was able to secure a conviction of an old opponent, the notary John West, before Exeter’s officials in the piepowder court of the Tower of London, where the duke held office as constable.9 KB27/794, rot. 31.

Only a few months after this personal victory for Baron, England once more descended into open civil war. Towards the end of 1459, while Richard, duke of York, and his supporters, the Neville earls of Salisbury and Warwick, went into exile, Baron’s patron, Henry Holand, joined the court party around Queen Margaret, and, perhaps to rebut suspicions over his loyalty raised by his marriage to York’s eldest daughter, soon became one of its staunchest supporters. In early October a Parliament was summoned, and it appears that once again Exeter procured parliamentary seats for his leading servants: along with Baron, the decayed borough of Old Sarum also returned his colleague of 1453, the Warwickshire lawyer John Archer II*, while other Holand men were found seats elsewhere.10 The identification of the Old Sarum MP with the duke of Exeter’s man is based on Archer’s simultaneous return, for there was also a Salisbury merchant of the same name, the son of Henry Baron, active at the time: C1/10/78; C241/232/9; CCR, 1441-7, p. 131; I.o.W. RO, Brook mss, AC95/32.65-66. No returns for the boroughs of Devon and Cornwall survive, and it is thus unclear why Holand was unable to place his men there in the same way as he had done in 1453. The following spring, the duke of Exeter (to whom half of the revenue of tunnage and poundage had been granted for the keeping of the sea) named new controllers of customs, and Baron was appointed to the Southampton district.11 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 554, 583. This appointment may have saved his life, for during the summer of 1460 he was probably attending to his new office in person, and was thus not among the Holand retainers like Archer who were taken captive, tried and executed after the surrender to the Yorkist lords of the Tower of London, which they had defended, on 19 July.

Baron’s subsequent fate is largely obscure. On Edward IV’s accession he seems to have retreated to his native south-west, where his public activities remained limited to occasional service on local juries. In October 1466 he sued out a general pardon,12 CPR, 1461-7, p. 537. perhaps to protect himself from the consequences of his actions in association with Richard Fortescue of Ermington, to whom he had become attached by 1462. About that time, John Frende of Ermington wrote to Thomas Stonor II* complaining that Baron and other Fortescue servants were threatening him daily, and putting him in such fear of his life that he dared not go to church or to market. Furthermore, they had spread a rumour that Frende’s servants had raided the houses of Baron and his friends and carried off various valuables. ‘And also I pray yov to take hede above, and make gode wacche for Thomas Baron’, Frende entreated Stonor.13 Stonor Letters, i (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, xxix), 56-57.

Baron did not, apparently, live on for many years thereafter. He is last heard of as one of the jurors at the inqusition post mortem of Elizabeth, Lady Harington and Bonville, conducted at Bodmin in January 1472, but it was probably a younger namesake who attested the Cornish shire elections in June 1483.14 Trevelyan Pprs. i (Cam. Soc. lxvii), 68-69. Baron also needs to be distinguished from a number of namesakes, including an Essex gentleman and a Bristol merchant: C1/76/67, 119/5.