COMBE, Thomas

Combe is one of the more obscure men to have represented the Port of Dover in Henry VI’s reign and any attempt to reconstruct his career is further hindered by the fact that between 1425 and 1429 he appears to have employed the alias Coccher.2 Combe was a common name in 15th-century Kent. Our MP is not to be confused with the Thomas Combe who forfeited property in St. Martin’s by Canterbury in 1441 for forging coins: E159/220, brevia Trin. rot. 1d. It was possibly this Thomas Combe who had earlier acted as a feoffee for property near Canterbury with Thomas Ickham† and William Barton: C1/68/23. The family was well established in the Port by the beginning of the fifteenth century. In 1365-6 an ancestor, also called Thomas Combe, had been one of the chamberlains, and the MP’s putative father, described as a coal merchant, held property in St. Mary ward in 1392.3 Archaeologia Cantiana, xxv. 76; Dover Chs. ed. Statham, 127. Another probable kinsman, Thomas Combe, clerk, also held property in Dover around 1400.4 Dover Chs. 131, 149. Our MP is probably to identified with the Thomas Coccher, junior, who held property in the Port and witnessed a local deed in 1406. His father was almost certainly dead by August 1415 when another local deed mentioned property belonging to Thomas Coccher in Morines ward.5 Ibid. 155, 157, 173. Combe was still resident in this ward in 1430 when he was one of the collectors responsible for gathering an assessment of 60s. for the costs of Henry VI’s passage to Calais for his coronation as king of France.6 Add. 29615, f. 161v. Five years later he appears to have moved to Snargate ward where he was one of the constables responsible for organizing the watch.7 Egerton 2015, f. 37.

Combe was already prominent in the government of Dover when he was first recorded in the accounts: in 1422 as one of the four custodes of the Port he organized the shipping for a military expedition to Le Crotoy.8 Add. 29615, f. 72. It is possible that he was already one of the jurats by this date, as two of the four custodes were usually jurats, and he was certainly one of their number by 8 Sept. 1424. In 1425-6, as Thomas Coccher, he was one of the keepers of the passage between Dover and Calais and it was also as Coccher that he was named as a jurat between 1426 and 1429.9 Ibid. ff. 115, 116v, 126v, 138v. He was still a jurat in August 1429 when he was elected to the Parliament summoned to meet at Westminster the following month. His fellow baron was Thomas atte Crowche*, with whom he had kept the passage across the Channel four years earlier. Both attended the Parliament for 35 days and their wages appear to have been paid promptly from the money collected from maltolts.10 Ibid. ff. 156, 159. Besides his service in Parliament, Combe was only employed on extraordinary business by the Port of Dover on one other occasion, when, in July 1435, he attended a meeting of the Brodhull.11 White and Black Bks. of Cinque Ports (Kent Rec. Ser. xix), 6. Nevertheless, he continued to serve as jurat and the apparent gap in his career as such between 1435 and 1440 is probably to be explained by lacunae in the accounts. He was last chosen as a jurat in September 1444, by which time he must have been an old man, and the final reference to him in the accounts was the payment to him of an ‘ancient debt’ of 22d. that year.12 Add. 29810, f. 60.

Little evidence survives of Combe’s private affairs. In March 1425 he appeared in the mayor’s court as a plaintiff in a debt case against another local man, John Sherman.13 Egerton 2088, f. 215v. Three years later he was collecting rents in the Port on behalf of the earl of Oxford and other individuals.14 Add. 29615, f. 133v. As has previously been noted, his property within Dover itself appears to have been located in Morines and Snargate wards, but he also had interests elsewhere in Kent. In 1446 he secured exemption from the parliamentary subsidy on land he owned in Bewsborough hundred.15 E179/229/142.