INGHAM, Thomas

A wealthy mercer and merchant who rose to the top of the civic oligarchy and may have numbered William Phelip†, Lord Bardolf, among his associates,10 He was one of Phelip’s feoffees: De Antiquis Legibus Liber (Cam. Soc. xxxiv), p. clxxxiii; CCR, 1441-7, p. 22. Ingham became a freeman of Norwich in the early 1400s.11 Norwich city recs., ‘Old Free bk.’, NCR 17c, f. 40. It is possible that the Inghams had originated from Gt. Yarmouth: in his will the MP’s son and namesake refers to his ‘poor kynrede’ in that town: Reg. Aleyn, ff. 107-8. He was active in civic affairs by 1414, when among those who nominated two candidates for the mayoralty.12 Recs. Norwich ed. Hudson and Tingey, i. 276. Elected sheriff six years later, he was an alderman for the ward of Ultra Aquam and a member of the city’s guild of St. George by 1424.13 Norwich city recs., guild of St. George acct. 1423-4, NCR 8e. B.R. McRee, ‘Religious Gilds and Civic Order’, Speculum, lxvii. 82, claims that Ingham did not join the guild until 1432/3, but the man admitted at that date was probably the MP’s son and namesake. Ingham began his first term as mayor in the following year. One of his concerns during this term was a dispute between the city and two members of the gentry, John Esmond and Miles Stapleton*, a quarrel sufficiently serious for him to seek the good lordship of the King’s great-uncle, Thomas Beaufort, duke of Exeter. It was probably in connexion with this matter that Stapleton’s father, Sir Brian Stapleton, and others came for breakfast at Ingham’s house on 21 July 1425.14 Chamberlains’ accts. NCR 18a, f. 146. Another concern in the same term was the city’s on-going jurisdictional dispute with Norwich priory. In 1417 an inquisition, obtained by the prior and held before the escheator of Norfolk, had found the city’s officers guilty of encroaching on royal rights. The citizens had still to accept this finding when Ingham became mayor, and he was among those who entered negotiations about the matter with the prior’s council in February 1426. A record of the inquisition was made in the city’s ‘Book of Pleas’, one of two books of evidences it kept in the fifteenth century.15 Norwich city recs., assembly roll 1420-6, NCR 8d; ‘Bk. of Pleas’, NCR 17b, ff. 35-36. The other, the ‘Liber Albus’, was begun on Ingham’s orders in 1426. Not long before the end of his first term as mayor, Ingham informed a civic assembly that the late bishop of Norwich, John Wakering, had left 100 marks towards a new water-mill for the city, and he was one of those whom the same assembly chose to supervise its construction.16 Norwich city recs., ‘Liber Albus’, NCR 17a, note on frontispiece.

Some 15 months after relinquishing the mayoralty, Ingham was elected to the Parliament of 1427. He and his fellow MP, John Alderford*, spent a total of 129 days attending and travelling to and from that assembly, and the corporation allowed them 40d. per day each for their wages, meaning that each was entitled to just over £21. They received their wages relatively promptly, for the city had paid both in full by Michaelmas 1428. Whilst in London, Ingham and Alderford met the lawyers, William Yelverton* and Thomas Rolf, probably to consult them about the dispute between the city and Norwich priory.17 View of treasurers’ acct. NCR 7d. This quarrel was certainly an issue during the Parliament of 1429: over and above their normal daily wages, Ingham and his fellow MP, Thomas Wetherby*, received £28 4s. 8d. for the expenses incurred making representations on behalf of the city in that matter. Ingham was also paid an extra 9s. for going to the Exchequer to examine certain evidences relating to Trowse, a hamlet outside Norwich where both the citizens and the prior claimed jurisdictional rights.18 Norwich city recs., treasurers’ acct. 1429-30, NCR 7d. One of the Acts passed by the Parliament of 1429 provided for the repayment of loans made to the Crown, including an instalment of £172, apparently part of a substantial sum of £266 13s. 4d. the King owed Ingham and two other citizens, Richard Moneslee* and John Cambridge. In May 1430, three months after the dissolution of Parliament, the Crown granted them the right to recover their debt from the issues of Norfolk.19 RP, v. 419 (cf. PROME, x. 433); CPR, 1429-35, p. 61.

A year later, Ingham became mayor for the second time. During his mayoralty, he was involved in trying to resolve a dispute between Moneslee and John Reyner. The dispute went to arbitration, but the arbitrators failed to agree among themselves and he intervened in the capacity of an umpire to impose an award of his own. As a result, he was drawn into a separate quarrel with Reyner, who accused him of making an unfair award and sued him in Chancery not long after his term as mayor had finished. Either shortly before or just after he served as mayor for a second time, Ingham was a defendant in further litigation in the Chancery, this time in his capacity as a feoffee for John Earlham, a fellow mercer who had died in 1423.20 C1/8/26-27; 9/237; 12/12; 73/91; 130-1; Norwich consist. ct., Reg. Hyrnyng, ff. 109v-110.

Much more significantly, Ingham was also embroiled in the internal disputes afflicting Norwich during the first half of Henry VI’s reign. By the early 1430s he was a member of the faction associated with Thomas Wetherby, whose side he took during the controversial mayoral election of May 1433 when Wetherby attempted to impose his own candidate, William Grey, on the electors. Shortly afterwards Ingham’s conduct during his second term as mayor was called into question. He was accused of having ‘concealed’ rights or incomes which belonged to the Crown, and the King commissioned Sir Henry Inglose*, William Yelverton and Edmund Wychyngham to investigate in November 1433.21 C49/49/9; CPR, 1429-36, p. 349. The appointment of such a powerful commission indicates that the authorities treated the matter seriously, although it is possible that the complaints were partisan, emanating from the MP’s political opponents in Norwich. Ingham was also associated with Wetherby during the equally controversial (and more violent) mayoral election of 1437, an episode that prompted the Crown to confiscate the city’s liberties. Not long after the election Wetherby, Ingham and others, including the mayor, Robert Chaplain*, drew up a certificate accusing their opponents of having assembled a large crowd of rioters to prevent them and the majority of aldermen and ‘well-ruled’ freemen from taking part. The certifiers claimed that several of the rioters had menaced and assaulted William Grey and then attacked Richard Brasier, one of the sheriffs, and Ingham, then a j.p. for the city, when they had intervened to help him. The certificate provides a none too flattering picture of Ingham’s physical appearance, since it also records that Grey’s assailants had seized Brasier’s dagger and cried ‘trede don that grotbely to the ground namyng the seyd Thomas Ingham grotbely’. It added that after this incident Wetherby and his supporters had complained about the activities of the rioters to two royal commissioners (the bishop of Carlisle and John Cottesmore, j.c.p.) present at the election, but that further disorder and assaults had followed. The certifiers also claimed that neither Chaplain, Brasier nor the j.p.s among them could (‘for dred of ther deth’) make any arrests, and that Chaplain and two of those j.p.s, Ingham and John Dunnyng, had failed to secure any indictments against the wrongdoers at the next sessions of the peace because the jury had dared not act against them.22 KB9/229/1/106.

Almost certainly, the purpose of the certificate was to annul the election of John Cambridge (an opponent of Wetherby) as mayor, for it was necessary to allege riot to overturn an election, and certification was the legal process used in the case of riot.23 P. Maddern, Violence and Social Order, 189-90. The certificate was of course a partisan document, and it is worth noting that Ingham obtained a royal pardon on 6 May 1437, so raising doubts about his own good behaviour at the election, held just five days earlier.24 C67/38, m. 25. The government reacted to the events at Norwich by summoning several leading citizens before the King’s council and temporarily exiling Robert Toppe*, a member of the anti-Wetherby faction, to Bristol but it did not accept the certificate at face value, since it also sent Wetherby and Grey away from Norwich. In the meantime Ingham was also engaged in a private lawsuit which he and several co-plaintiffs had brought in the mayor’s court against William Henstead*, named as a leading miscreant by the certificate, and others for unlawfully disseising them of a tenement in Norwich. He and his associates won their suit, but in January 1438 Henstead was able to obtain a writ of error and the court of King’s bench overturned the proceedings in the lower court.25 ‘Bk. of Pleas’, NCR 17b, ff. 85v-86v; KB27/707, rot. 21.

During the city’s political disputes Wetherby and his supporters were sometimes labelled as allies of Norwich priory, but this accusation was unjustified as far as Ingham was concerned. As his record as a mayor and MP shows, he helped to defend the citizens’ interests against the prior’s claims in the 1420s, and in the mid 1430s he was involved in seeking the help of William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, against another of their ecclesiastical opponents, the abbot of St. Benet of Hulme. The 1440s were no different. In 1441, the prior obtained a special commission of oyer and terminer, to investigate misgovernment by the corporation, and both he and the abbot of Wendling brought before the commissioners bills alleging trespass and contempt against Ingham and other prominent citizens for encroaching on their jurisdictional rights.26 Maddern, 192; chamberlains’ accts. NCR 18a, f. 212; KB9/240/27d. In October that year the corporation (no doubt facing pressure from outside authorities) agreed to submit its quarrels with the prior and other churchmen to the arbitration of the earl of Suffolk, and in April 1442 Ingham was among those who gave the prior a bond to guarantee the city would abide by the earl’s award.27 Maddern, 194; Norwich city recs., docs. relating to city’s legal disputes c.1442, NCR 9c/13. Although no friend of the priory, he did not participate in the disturbances directed against it in January 1443. A subsequent indictment named him as one of those assaulted and imprisoned by the rioters, but they had probably seized the opportunity to settle old scores with a friend of Thomas Wetherby.28 KB9/84/1/10. In the wake of the disturbances (subsequently known as ‘Gladman’s Insurrection’) Ingham retained his position as a j.p., although he was obliged to join his fellow aldermen in making a formal submission to the Crown in March 1443.29 KB27/746, rex rot. 29. The King punished Norwich by confiscating its liberties for a second time and not restoring them until December 1447, although the citizens made serious efforts to recover them before that date. In early 1444 Ingham accompanied Gregory Draper* and John Drolle* to London, to ‘labour’ the King and his council for the restitution of the lost privileges, and he and Robert Toppe, his fellow MP in the Parliament of 1445, were assigned £4 over and above their parliamentary wages to finance their efforts in the same cause.30 Chamberlains’ accts. NCR 18a, ff. 226, 229.

Although former adversaries, Ingham and Toppe were able to work together for the good of their city while attending Parliament. They left for Westminster on 22 Feb., three days before the assembly, accompanied by the scrivener, Walter Jeffreys, who possessed a ‘great understanding’ of Norwich’s evidences, and during the Parliament they were also advised by the lawyers Walter Moyle* and John Jenney*. Early in the second session John Intwood, one of the sheriffs of Norwich, and the alderman, Thomas Grafton, came to London, and they and the MPs went to a meeting with William de la Pole, by then marquess of Suffolk. Ingham and Toppe remained in London for several days after the second session ended, in order to seek the ‘good lordship’ of de la Pole and other lords. It was perhaps during this recess that they and the London grocer, Thomas Catworth*, visited the former treasurer, Ralph, Lord Cromwell. The two MPs also delivered a bill to the Lords on behalf of Catworth, whom the King appointed warden of Norwich shortly after the Parliament ended.31 Norwich city recs., roll of debts claimed by Ingham’s sons after his death, NCR 7d. Of a relatively advanced age when elected to the Parliament of 1445, Ingham played a reduced role in civic affairs after its dissolution. There is little information for his activities in the late 1440s and early 1450s, although he attested several parliamentary elections and obtained a royal pardon in mid 1446.32 C67/39, m. 41. In 1453 the corporation asked him and other prominent citizens for a loan, to help cover the cost of receiving the queen when she visited Norwich in April that year.33 ‘Old Free Bk.’, NCR 17c, f. 18v.

By then Ingham’s eldest son and namesake was already dead. A mercer like his father, the younger Thomas had begun to hold office at Norwich by the later 1440s.34 Recs. Norwich, ii. 73, 296; CFR, xviii. 130; Norwich city recs., mayor’s ct. bk. 1425-1510, NCR 16a. During that period he and the MP were co-executors of a fellow citizen and mercer, Thomas Grafton, probably a family connexion.35 C1/16/385; CP40/748, rots. 236, 236d. It appears that Grafton was the MP’s son-in-law, for Ingham’s daughter, Margery, had a son, also Thomas Grafton: Reg. Aleyn, ff. 107-8. In his own will of 4 Nov. 1451 (proved the following 10 Feb.) the younger Thomas asked to be buried in the Blackfriars’ church in Norwich.36 Reg. Aleyn, ff. 107-8. His executors included his father, his younger brother Nicholas and his widow, Agnes, but she and her Ingham in-laws fell out with each other soon afterwards, following her marriage to a new husband, Thomas Denys. A servant of John de Vere, earl of Oxford, Denys appears to have won her hand with the assistance of John Paston* but the Inghams disapproved of the match.37 Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, i. 139. In October 1452 there was a disturbance between Walter, one of Ingham’s younger sons, and Denys at Wivenhoe in Essex. The earl of Oxford commonly resided on his manor at Wivenhoe and it is possible that Walter had ridden there to confront his unwanted brother-in-law. Exactly what happened is impossible to tell, although later Oxford would claim that Walter had attacked and wounded his servant.38 CP40/785, rot. 409d. Just weeks later, there was a rowdy confrontation in London between Denys’s friend, John Guybon, on the one side and Walter, his brother John Ingham and their supporters on the other, first in the rolls chapel and then outside on Chancery Lane. One of those attending evensong in the chapel at the time, John Paston witnessed the fracas in the street and he gave evidence of what he had seen to the master of the rolls immediately afterwards. While declaring that the Inghams and Guybon had brandished daggers at each other, he denied that Denys had drawn any weapon.39 C4/26/3. It would be unwise to accept Paston’s version of events at face value, since he himself was probably already at odds with the MP. Both of them held property in the Norwich parish of St. Peter Hungate, and Ingham would allege that a gutter running out of Paston’s kitchen was causing him a nuisance, a matter referred to the mayor in 1454.40 Norf. RO, Long of Dunston mss, Dun (A) 9, 495 x 2.

The Inghams and Denys were still very much at odds when they were uncomfortably thrown together as defendants in 1453, in a lawsuit brought by the London mercer, Ralph Verney*. Verney’s suit, heard in the court of common pleas, related to his business dealings with the younger Thomas Ingham. Verney claimed that the latter had died owing him £20, and that the younger Thomas’s executors, his widow Agnes, his father the MP, his brother Nicholas Ingham and Thomas Grene of Great Yarmouth had failed to honour the debt. Denys featured as their co-defendant in this suit as Agnes’s husband, although he and his wife employed a separate attorney. Following pleadings in Michaelmas term 1453, Verney won his case early in the following year.41 CP40/771, rot. 658d.

At some stage in the same period, probably while Verney’s suit was pending, the MP sued Denys and Agnes in the Chancery. His purpose was to recover another debt from the younger Thomas’s estate, namely a much more significant sum of £260 that he claimed his son had owed him. Although himself one of the younger Thomas’s executors, he claimed that Agnes and Denys had taken possession of all her late husband’s goods and had not allowed him to recover his debt.42 C1/22/130. Walter, another of Ingham’s sons, played an active part in securing the sub poena against the couple and the quarrel again took a nasty turn when Denys decided to take revenge for what he had suffered at Walter’s hands. He wrote to Walter in the name of the earl of Oxford in November 1453, summoning him to the de Vere residence at Wivenhoe. Upon receiving the letter, Walter set out from Dunston, a few miles to the south of Norwich, but a gang hired by Denys ambushed and assaulted him as he neared his destination. Early in the following year, having obtained the support of the chancellor and the earl of Oxford, who temporarily had disowned his servant, Walter petitioned the final session of the Parliament of 1453 about the outrage, claiming that his injuries were so serious that he was likely to remain on crutches for the rest of his life. The authorities arrested Denys and sent him to the Fleet prison. His pregnant wife spent a period in sanctuary at Westminster with one of her daughters by the younger Thomas Ingham before she too was imprisoned.43 Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 86-88; Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, i. 140-1. In all likelihood, Walter Ingham had exaggerated the extent of his injuries, for he would play an active role as one of his father’s executors and subsequently marry the widow of Richard Host†.44 C1/44/157; 47/247-50; 59/21; 62/455. His quarrel with Denys had later repercussions. In the spring of 1457 the earl of Oxford sued him in the common pleas over the alleged assault of 1452. Oxford claimed that he had lost Denys’s services for a year after that incident, the assault having made his servant too fearful to go about his duties.45 CP40/785, rot. 409d.

By the time of these pleadings, the MP was no longer alive. It would appear that he died in early 1457 for Geoffrey Quincy was elected an alderman in his place on 31 Mar. that year.46 Assembly bk. NCR 16d, f. 31. Like the younger Thomas Ingham, he was buried at the Blackfriars in Norwich.47 Cozens-Hardy and Kent, 20. His will is no longer extant but other sources show that he appointed Walter Ingham and another of his younger sons, John, as his executors. Before the end of the year, the two brothers began legal proceedings in King’s bench against the corporation of Norwich, alleging that it had never paid his father for attending the Parliament of 1445. In response to their suit, the sheriffs of Norwich stated that Ingham himself had received over £18 of the £20 due to him in wages as long ago as 1446, and that they were hoping to clear the remainder of the debt with a sale of worsted cloth belonging to the corporation. The court accepted the sheriffs’ claim but ordered them to complete a sale and to bring before it the money still due to the executors.48 KB27/787, rot. 66d; 788, rex rot. 24d. Walter and John made further claims against the corporation, for they drew up a list of other sums owed to Ingham, principally his expenses during his last Parliament but including the loan of 53s. 4d. he had made towards the queen’s visit in 1453 and the 4s. 6d. he had spent while mayor on a beaver hat for the city’s sword-bearer.49 Norwich city recs., roll of debts, NCR 7d.

Both executors pursued careers in London,50 CCR, 1454-61, p. 104; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 624, 625; 1467-77, p. 447; PCC 20 Logge. while their brother Nicholas, the MP’s third surviving son, remained in Norwich and became a mercer like their father.51 ‘Old Free Bk.’, NCR 17c, f. 46v; Reg. Wight, f. 2. Owing to the loss of his will, the evidence relating to Ingham’s real property is extremely fragmentary and reveals nothing about his holdings in St. Peter Hungate. It is nevertheless likely that he resided in that parish given that he had paid for the construction or rebuilding of St. Peter’s tower in 1431 and that his son Nicholas was buried in that church in 1497.52 N. Pevsner, Buildings of Eng.: Norf. i. 247; Reg. Wight, f. 2. Ingham is also said to have contributed to the building of the steeple of the Blackfriars’ church in Norwich, which fell down through neglect in 1712: F. Blomefield, Norf. iv. 341. During the first half of his career Ingham had taken part in a number of conveyances involving property in the city, but he was probably acting as a feoffee in most, if not all, of these transactions.53 Deeds recorded in Norwich city recs., ct. rolls 1399-1405, 1413-21, 1421-57, NCR 1/16-18. He was certainly acting as a feoffee (to the use of the will of Richard Deverose*) on one of these occasions. Outside Norwich, he had acquired half a knight’s fee at Great Melton, a few miles to the west of the city, by the late 1420s,54 Feudal Aids, iii. 589. and it is possible that he also owned lands at Dunston, where Walter Ingham appears to have resided in the early 1450s. Royal tax records show that his real property was valued at £6 p.a. in 1431 and at £5 p.a. nearly 20 years later, but it is likely that he had settled some of it on his son and namesake by the later date, when the younger Thomas Ingham possessed holdings valued at £4.55 ‘Liber Albus’, NCR 17a, f. 179v; R. Virgoe, ‘Norwich taxation list of 1451’, Norf. Archaeology, xl. 150. The younger Thomas had been survived by a son, yet another Thomas Ingham, and two daughters, Emma and Margery, but the boy may never have attained his majority. When Emma (who inherited property in the Norwich parish of St. Andrew) and her husband, Robert Gyggys, sued her feoffee, Thomas Ellis†, in the Chancery in the later fifteenth century, she described herself as her father’s daughter and heir.56 Reg. Aleyn, ff. 107-8; C1/53/42.