| Constituency | Dates |
|---|---|
| Scarborough | 1442 |
Carthorpe was a much less prominent man than his father, who served at least ten terms as Scarborough’s bailiff and represented the town in at least three Parliaments. The survival of our MP’s mother may have been a factor in this marked contrast. She was a Scarborough heiress for whom Thomas Carthorpe, in his will of 1426, made ample provision. That will also gave life interests in one of the family’s tenements in Grey Friars’ Lane to our MP’s younger brothers, William and John, and two tenements in ‘le Condithrawe’ to their sister, Margaret. Yet our MP was hardly disinherited and his nomination as executor suggests that the will’s terms were not seen as unduly to his disadvantage. He was to have immediate possession of a tenement in Grey Friars’ Lane and another in the New Borough together with the reversion of all the property settled for the maintenance of the rest of the family.1 Borthwick Inst. Univ. of York, York registry wills, prob. reg. 2, f. 500.
Further, although his mother’s date of death is unknown, it is unlikely that she survived him; and he had resources enough, at least from the early 1440s, to be generally described as ‘gentleman’, such as when, in 1443, he was sued for debt by the master of the hospital of St. Leonard in York.2 CP40/729, rot. 99d; 730, rot. 20d.
None the less, the fact remains that very little can be discovered about Carthorpe’s activities. The records provide only occasional indications of his commercial interests. On 11 July 1432, with George Topcliffe*, he sued out a royal licence to export 300 quarters of grain to the Low Countries, and the last reference found to him is also indicative of trading interests there. In 1456 he was joint defendant with a Dutchman in an action of debt sued by Thomas, prior of Guisborough in Cleveland.3 C76/114, m. 6; CP40/782, rot. 148. His known involvement in Scarborough’s administrative affairs is restricted to his single election to Parliament in 1442, when William Paulyn* stood surety for his appearance, and the two occasions when he acted as surety for the town’s MPs, namely for William Helperby* in 1447 and for Thomas Benton* in 1450.4 C219/15/2, 4; 16/1.