COMBE, Thomas

Combe, whose unusual career found its early focus in the Exchequer, came from Kent, where his father held the manors of Combe and South Leigh.11 Presumably the manor of Combes in Swanscombe: E. Hasted, Kent ed. Drake, ii. 414. These were not to come into his own possession until long after his career had begun. In November 1453, as Thomas Combe ‘esquire’, he was bound in recognizances in 300 marks to the Sussex landowner John Halsham and his wife Margaret, Combe’s mother, as an guarantee that he would not prevent his late father’s feoffees from delivering seisin to her of these two manors and lands called ‘Rychardes’, which she was entitled to hold for life in accordance with his father’s will. Powerful supporters looked to Margaret’s interests, for the body of feoffees was headed by Humphrey, duke of Buckingham.12 CCR, 1447-54, p. 483. Buckingham was probably the feudal overlord. Thomas may have reneged on his promise, for although Margaret Halsham lived on until at least May 1468, earlier in the 1460s he petitioned the chancellor against two of the feoffees still possessed of the manors of South Leigh, Combe and Dean, as well as of substantial lands in eight Kentish parishes, requiring them to release his patrimony to him.13 C1/28/398. He eventually proved successful: by the 1480s the bishop of London was holding land of him in Wye, as of his manor of Combe, and an action he brought in 1485 for South Leigh and Dean and lands which he said had been settled on his grandfather in tail-male was probably collusive.14 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 380; CP40/894, rot. 86d.

Combe, deprived of his inheritance until relatively late in life, made his way by seeking employment in the Exchequer. There, he assisted one of the barons, John Holme, in his official duties. In January 1447, inexplicably called ‘of Somerset, gentleman’, he stood surety at the Exchequer for Holme and William Beaufitz*, and shortly afterwards he was sent by the treasurer to Bristol with instructions for the collectors of customs and subsidies there.15 CFR, xviii. 64; E403/765, m. 15. Two years later, in the spring of 1449, he was directed to press ships and men in the same port as well as in Bridgwater and Chester to facilitate the duke of York’s passage to Ireland, and in the autumn instructed to do likewise in south-coast ports for the relief of English forces in Normandy. In these commissions Combe acted alongside royal serjeants-at-arms, but in a superior capacity, for his daily wage was set at 5s. in comparison with the serjeants’ 3s. 4d. each. He received sums of money amounting to £236 13s. 4d. to cover the cost of the first exercise – one which kept him busy from 16 Apr. to 20 July and necessitated a journey to Beaumaris – but owing to delays in the Exchequer process, he proved unable to obtain a formal discharge until, by warrant of 23 Feb. 1450, his accounts were eventually heard, and authorization given for the settlement of the £58 still owed him.16 E404/66/116; E101/54/10; E403/775, mm. 2, 7.

Combe regularly acted as an attorney at the receipt of the Exchequer for corporations making their proffers in the Michaelmas and Easter terms, and in the court of Exchequer chamber he appeared on behalf of such clients as the treasurer of the Household, John Stourton II*, Lord Stourton (in 1451), and Thomas Stonor II*, the former sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire (in 1455).17 Reg. Whethamstede ed. Riley, i. 56; E13/151, rot. 101d. All the while he continued to serve John Holme the baron as his clerk, again standing surety for his superior in 1451 (on that occasion styled ‘gentleman of London’), and in 1452 under Holme’s direction and on the commandment of the newly-appointed treasurer, the earl of Worcester, he examined for defects the records of the treasurer’s remembrancer, Thomas Thorpe*. The exercise earned him a handsome reward of £10. His past employment by Holme was mentioned in the pardon he obtained in February 1458.18 CFR, xviii. 217; C67/42, m. 24; E403/796, m. 6. Meanwhile, arising out of his service at the Exchequer, in November 1455 he had benefited from a shared grant of the keeping of the seven hundreds of Cookham and Bray, backdated to Michaelmas 1454 and intended to last 21 years.19 CFR, xix. 141. It is possible that he held the lease until the Readeption: ibid. xx. 279.

Combe’s first recorded connexion with Sussex came on his appointment as escheator of that county and Surrey in 1458. The background to his election to the Parliament of 1460 as a representative for the west Sussex borough of Arundel remains obscure, but an explanation is to be found in his employment by William, earl of Arundel, as bailiff of the earl’s liberty in the rape of Arundel. While the precise length of his term of office is not recorded, it may well be the case that he owed his election directly to the earl’s patronage. That he established personal links with the town’s inhabitants is indicated in the record of his suit in Chancery to gain possession of his patrimony in Kent, for two men from Arundel provided pledges for the veracity of his claim. While the Parliament was in progress Combe commenced an action in the court of common pleas against a fellow Member, William Jacob*, regarding statutory offences allegedly committed while Jacob was mayor of nearby Chichester.20 CP40/799, rot. 291d. In the civil war which erupted during the parliamentary recess in December 1460, it seems clear that Combe, like Earl William, declared his support for the Yorkists, for at the very start of Edward IV’s reign in the following spring he was commissioned with the sheriff of Surrey and Sussex to take into the new King’s hands all possessions in those counties belonging to the defeated Lancastrian lords. Furthermore, in July 1461 he was granted for life custody of the King’s launds in Clarendon park, otherwise called ‘le laundership’. This post he continued to occupy for more than 20 years, albeit sharing it with others after 1462. It provided him with a daily wage of 3d. as well as an allowance for royal livery at Christmas and Easter.21 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 25, 29, 550; 1476-85, p. 327; CCR, 1476-85, no. 856.

For the time being Combe appears to have carried on working at the Exchequer, and in the years 1461-7 he frequently acted as an attorney for officials coming to the receipt to present their accounts.22 E368/234, rot. 3d; 240, rot. 3d. Such activities ceased when in April 1467 he was admitted by the barons to the sinecure post of one of the clerks of the ‘parcels’.23 E368/240, Easter rot. 1d. Called ‘gentleman of London’ he offered mainprise in the Exchequer in the 1460s for farmers of alnage and lessees of land,24 CFR, xx. 74, 205. but London ceased to be his principal place of residence: more often he was to be found in Sussex, and he attested the shire elections held at Chichester in April 1467 and September 1472.25 C219/17/1, 2. To the first of these assemblies he himself secured election for the Surrey borough of Bletchingley, although how this came about is obscure. On 27 June, more than three weeks after the session opened, Ralph Tickhill came before the barons of the Exchequer and sued by bill against Thomas Vaughan*, the sheriff of Surrey, for £100 as penalty under the electoral statute of 1445. He claimed that the writ of summons had been delivered to Vaughan at Guildford on 1 Mar. and Vaughan then sent a precept to the bailiff and burgesses of Bletchingley. On 12 May Tickhill and John Roger III*, resident burgesses, were elected and an indenture was drawn up between the sheriff on one part and the bailiff and burgesses on the other, witnessing the said election. Nevertheless, Vaughan returned an indenture witnessing the election of John Roger and Thomas Combe. The suit was adjourned to the Michaelmas term, and there is nothing to show that Tickhill ever replaced Combe in the Parliament.26 E13/153, m. 24. Combe’s official commitments in the 1470s took him to the Cinque Ports, where his lord the earl of Arundel presided as warden, and besides acting with Earl William on the Crown’s business he continued to be concerned in the collection of revenues arising from the earl’s estates in the region.27 Arundel Castle mss, receiver’s acct. 1475-6, A253. Choosing to live in Sussex rather than on his family manors in Kent, Combe took up the office of sheriff in 1478, and served on the local bench from 1481 onwards.

In these decades known as ‘of Pulborough, esquire’,28 C67/51, m. 3. Combe had acquired landed interests there by 1473, and by that date had formed a close association with a neighbour, Richard Mille, whose father Edmund* had purchased the manor of ‘New Place’ at Pulborough from the Husseys. Three years before his death in 1476 Richard instructed the feoffees of this manor to pay Combe £20 he owed him from its profits, and being well aware that his infant son and heir, William, was an ‘idiot and a natural fool’, he named Combe and John Apsley† as his executors so that the boy’s affairs might be satisfactorily managed. Accordingly, these two received the income from the Mille estates and took care of William until Combe’s death. In his ward’s interest Combe also took control over the advowson of Pulborough parish church, for a few years later he and the bishop of Chichester were sued by the coheiresses of the Hussey estates and their husbands for the right to make the next presentation.29 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1250; ii. 483; iii. 748; Add. 39377, f. 41; Suss. Arch. Collns. lxxii. 261-3. Combe and Apsley were frequently associated in both public and private matters during this period and became firm friends. Accordingly, in 1477 Combe agreed to be an arbiter in Apsley’s dispute with Thomas Bellingham*, and he subsequently acted as a feoffee of the disputed estate at Thakeham on his behalf.30 E. Suss. RO, Suss. Arch. Soc. mss, SAS/D/19, 21. In 1480 the two men were co-feoffees of the manor of Groveheath in Surrey in association with the queen’s kinsmen the marquess of Dorset, Anthony, Earl Rivers, and Sir Thomas Grey†,31 CCR, 1476-85, no. 719. and they were also linked by mutual ties of service to the earl of Arundel – to whose affinity the late Richard Mille had also belonged.

Like Apsley, Combe retained his place on the Sussex bench not only after the usurpation of Richard III but also following the latter’s death at Bosworth, and a similar continuity of service to the Crown is displayed by his role as collector of customs at Southampton without break from 1481 until Michaelmas 1488. After Henry VII’s accession, the now elderly Combe contracted an important second marriage, to the twice-widowed Margaret Elrington, who came from the important Sussex family of Etchingham. The material advantages of the match are obvious. Margaret’s father was said to have settled lands worth as much as 100 marks p.a. on her and her first husband, William Blount (Lord Mountjoy’s heir apparent), to which the groom’s father added property to the same value as her jointure, and following Blount’s death at Barnet in 1471 she had been courted by William Stonor†, who was attracted by reports that she stood to share with her sister an estate with an annual value of as much as 700 marks; it was then said that she might reasonably expect from her next husband a jointure worth 300 marks.32 Stonor Letters, i (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, xxix), 124, 126. Instead of Stonor, Margaret had chosen as her second husband Sir John Elrington, treasurer of the Household of Edward IV, who by his will of 1482 bequeathed to her goods and money worth in excess of £300.33 PCC 8 Logge (PROB11/7, f. 59). Furthermore, by the time of her third marriage, to Combe, she had added to her two jointures and two dowager portions her own patrimony. This she shared with her sister Elizabeth, by then the wife of Godard Oxenbridge. Margaret’s purparty included the manors of Udimore and Bugsell in Salehurst, which, with Combe’s help, she managed to keep.34 VCH Suss. ix. 173, 220; Add. 39377, f. 33.

It is less certain how the sisters had fared in the law-courts before Margaret married Combe, for their title to substantial parts of their inheritance had been challenged in 1485 by their kinsman John Etchingham, the heir-male.35 VCH Suss. ix. 212; CP40/895, rot. 12d; 906, rot. 143. In addition, Margaret had to defend her rights to the family manors of Dixter and Gatecourt. Ownership of Dixter, settled in tail on Elizabeth Etchingham on her marriage in the early years of the fifteenth century to the lawyer Richard Wakehurst†, had been strongly contested ever since Wakehurst’s death in 1455, with the Etchinghams seeking to regain possession from her two grand-daughters, who married the brothers Richard and Nicholas Culpepper. The Culpeppers claimed that Wakehurst had purchased title to the remainder for 200 marks; while Sir Thomas Etchingham asserted that Wakehurst’s widow had sold the reversion to him, and after recovering the manor in court settled it on his elder daughter Margaret, whose second husband Elrington obtained a royal licence to crenellate the manor-house there in 1479.36 C1/31/281-4; Suss. Arch. Collns. lii. 153-5; VCH Suss. ix. 273. Even so, after Elrington’s death the Culpeppers vigorously renewed their claim, and the suit dragged on for several years in the court of common pleas. Margaret no doubt hoped that Combe could support her not only in contesting this litigation, but in helping her to sort out her financial affairs, which were seriously disordered owing to the debts left by Elrington as treasurer of the Household: in 1484 and 1485 she had sought pardons from Richard III in her role as administrator of Elrington’s goods and heir to her late father.37 C67/51, m. 11; CPR, 1476-85, p. 495. Combe’s long experience of working in the Exchequer now proved useful. He had come to Margaret’s aid more than a year before they married, for in July 1486 he provided sureties for her when she obtained the Exchequer farm of the manor of Iham, and it may well have been he who devised a plan to secure seisin of Dixter and Gatecourt. In 1490 obscure new claimants appeared in court, alleging that an entail made in the early fourteenth century made them the true heirs, and these claimants ‘recovered’ the manors against Margaret in an undefended action. The Culpeppers, with some justification, protested that the recovery was made fraudulently, to defeat their claims, yet they failed in their plea and the Combes retained the estate, which passed after Margaret’s death in 1492 to her daughters by Blount.38 CFR, xxii. no. 108; Add. 39377, ff. 33v, 35; Genealogist, n.s. xxii. 85-86; xxiii. 150-1. In the final months of Margaret’s life Combe began suits against her stepsons, Simon and John Elrington, for allegedly withholding from her sums amounting to £500.39 C. Moreton, ‘Diary of a Late 15th Cent. Lawyer’, in Estrangement, Enterprise and Education ed. Michalove and Compton Reeves, 30-31.

If the marriage brought Combe the stress of prolonged litigation, it also brought him warmth and affection: in his will dated 15 Oct. 1494 he repeatedly referred to his late wife as ‘my derist hert and lady’, and stipulated that her daughter Anne Elrington should receive for her marriage £100 from the revenues of estates in Middlesex and Sussex which he and Margaret had placed in enfeoffment; and that her son Edward Elrington should have all the furnishings at Hoxton –in particular hangings depicting the armorial bearings of Edward’s parents’, so that ‘he be kynd to me and suffer his moders will and myn to be performed’. Combe also showed concern for the prospects of the children of the late Richard Mille. To Mille’s daughter Anne he left 50 marks for her marriage, to add to the like sum left her by her father, and entrusted her guardianship to his friends and principal executors, John Apsley and Edward Bartelot, who were also to have the wardship of her feeble-minded brother William. If he died in Sussex Combe wished to be buried in a pre-arranged place in Pulborough church, to which he made handsome bequests, including two cloths of gold for the high altar, silver ornaments and vestments of white damask; while the priory of St. Mary Overy in Southwark was to receive similar costly gifts, in return for prayers for the souls of the testator and his late wife. For their souls’ comfort, too, a named priest was to be paid £8 a year for five years to sing for them daily. Combe named among his executors Sir Reynold Bray†, who like him had sat in the Parliament of 1491, but it was to Apsley and Bartelot that probate was granted on 3 Nov.40 PCC 17 Vox (PROB11/10, f. 133.

The two young women remembered in the MP’s will – Anne Elrington and Anne Mille – were both found husbands from within their late guardian’s immediate circle: the latter was wed to Apsley’s brother William, and the former to her own stepbrother Edward Combe, one of the MP’s sons by an earlier marriage. A few years after his father’s death Edward petitioned the chancellor Cardinal Morton with a complaint against Apsley and Bartelot for failing to honour his father’s bequest of £100 from the lands held in trust, although they said they were unable to do so as Edward Elrington had taken possession of the property in question.41 C1/196/46. The MP’s eldest son, his namesake Thomas Combe, would appear to have married a kinswoman of the executor Bartelot, as their dealings regarding the manor of Earnley in Sidlesham would seem to suggest.42 CCR, 1485-1500, nos. 712, 922; CP25(1)/241/96/43, 47, 55; VCH Suss. iv. 202. In 1501 Thomas sued the feoffees of the manor of Blatchington-Wayfield in Sussex (which our MP had acquired in about 1485), stating that his father had made a settlement of the manor in favour of him and his two brothers. The trustees were ordered by the court to convey it to them in tail-male, but not long afterwards the manor was sold to Edmund Dudley†.43 VCH Suss. vii. 242; C1/58/163; 238/54; CP25(1)/241/97/97; CCR, 1500-9, nos. 149, 151. In the will our MP’s friend, ‘kinsman’ and executor John Apsley made in 1507, sets of vestments from the posessions of Thomas Combe and his wife were bequeathed in their memory to the parish church at Thakeham.44 PCC 30 Adeane (PROB11/15, ff. 237v-238).