CORBET, Thomas I

A representative of a long-established junior branch of the Corbets of Moreton Corbet, Thomas had a long career as one of the workhorses of local government in Shropshire.3 He is generally distinguished in the records by the addition of ‘of Leigh’. He had two contemporary Shropshire namesakes, that is, Thomas Corbet II*, designated ‘of Moreton Corbet’, and Thomas Corbet of Stanford and Wollaston, who was granted an annuity by Hen. V and died in 1449: CPR, 1416-22, pp. 336-7; 1446-52, p. 229; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 156-7; Egerton Ch. 608. On the few occasions on which confusion might arise it concerns the latter. His father’s part in local administration had been restricted to nomination to a commission of inquiry in 1411.4 CPR, 1408-13, p. 376. He makes two other significant appearances in the records. When the King’s bench came to Shrewsbury in 1414, he was indicted for illegally giving livery to two yeomen, and on 28 Sept. 1419 he headed the attestors to the election to Parl. of his kinsman, Roger Corbet I: KB27/617, rex rot. 7d; C219/12/3. That the younger Thomas cut a much more important figure was largely due to his marriage to a wealthy widow, from whom he derived the bulk of his income. Isabel’s first husband had been a tenant of Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, and, if our MP is to be identified with the namesake who served in the military retinue the earl took to France in July 1417, then mutual connexions with the earl may explain the match. However this may be, the match was made in the lifetime of our MP’s father: on 10 Apr. 1419 the couple granted a small parcel of land in Henhull (Cheshire) to Henry de Wetenhale of Nantwich.5 CIPM, xx. 712-13; E101/51/2, m. 7; NLW, Pitchford Hall mss, 1280. Soon after, on 2 June, they were obliged to pay a fine of 50 marks to the Crown for marrying without the necessary royal licence: Isabel’s first husband had been a tenant of the Crown as well as of the earl of March and had died while still a minor in the King’s wardship. The fine paid, the escheators of Shropshire and Herefordshire were ordered to assign her dower in that part of her late husband’s lands that lay outside the palatinate of Chester, that is, two-thirds of the manors of Pickthorn and Cressage in Shropshire and those of Weston and Bredwardine in Herefordshire (the other thirds were in the hands of her former mother-in-law, Katherine).6 CPR, 1416-22, p. 238; CCR, 1419-22, p. 5; CIPM, xx. 712-13. As late as July 1432 the escheators of the two counties were again ordered to make assignment on the grounds that Hen. V had died before the earlier writ could be executed, and, on 20 Oct. 1433, a detailed assignment was made to her out of the manor of Cressage: CCR, 1429-35, pp. 154-5; CIPM, xxiv. 276. There is, however, no reason to doubt that the couple had enjoyed the lands in the meantime. Later evidence shows that her dower in Cheshire consisted of several tenements and salt-pits in Nantwich together with a third of the manor of Edleston, together valued at a little less that £15 p.a. at her death in 1462.7 CHES2/134, rot. 15d.

The death of Corbet’s father in the summer of 1420 further augmented the couple’s holdings. Unfortunately no inquisition post mortem survives in respect of his Shropshire lands, but they appear to have included, aside from the family’s original endowment, the manor of Leigh near Caus, another manor, in the south of the county, at Sibdon Carwood. In addition the family patrimony also consisted of a modest outlying estate, namely eight messuages and four virgates in Arley in Warwickshire, and the manor of Sibson in Leicestershire, all of which were then in the hands of feoffees, headed by Thomas Young† of Sibdon Carwood (enfeoffed as long before as 1402).8 CFR, xiv. 333; CIPM, xx. 451-2. Corbet thus had lands in five counties, and, although none of his holdings were valuable, he had income enough to support a prominent place in the administrative affairs of a poor county like Shropshire.

By far the most interesting documented episode in Corbet’s career occurred shortly before his father’s death. At Shrewsbury on 26 Jan. 1420, if several indictments and an appeal are to be accepted at face value, one Thomas Sporyer was murdered by Hugh Burley of Broncroft, a near kinsman of William Burley I*, and Philip Bent, a yeoman of More near Bishop’s Castle. When indictments were taken in the following September, both before the local j.p.s. and before the steward and marshal of the Household (sitting as the court of the verge as the royal household was then in the town), several local gentry were named as accessories to the homicide, among whom were our MP and his cousin, Roger Corbet I*. There is no evidence to give the crime a firm context, but, tantalizingly, Bent was also indicted in the court of the verge for conspiring, a month after Sporyer’s murder, with Meduth ap Owen, Owen Glendower’s son, to levy war against the King in Shropshire. This raises the possibility that those implicated with him in the murder were also involved in this conspiracy among the dying embers of the Welsh rebellion, although it is perhaps more likely that the indicting jury were simply seeking to blacken further Bent’s name. However this may be, our MP must have been anxious to clear his name. In Easter term 1421 he troubled to travel to Northampton, where the court of King’s bench was in eyre, to answer an appeal sued by the alleged victim’s widow. On 11 Nov. 1422 he pleaded not guilty to the King’s suit as an accessory to Sporyer’s murder and, pending the verdict in the appeal, was dismissed to the bail of William Lawley* and three lawyers. The widow then abandoned her appeal and, on 30 July 1423, he was acquitted before the justices of assize.9 KB27/638, rots. 8, 9, 9d, rex rot. 9; 642, rex rot. 23d; 646, rex rot. 13. It is possible that, while this matter was pending, Corbet served briefly in France. He or a namesake mustered in the retinue of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Worcester, at Sandwich in June 1421. Yet, just as it is far from certain that it was our MP who served in the earl of March’s retinue in 1417, there must be an even stronger doubt here, and it is more likely that the soldier of 1421 was Thomas, son of John Corbet of Essex: E101/50/1, m. 2; DKR, xliv. 608.

No sooner, however, had Corbet purged himself of these legal difficulties than he was allegedly involved in events that gave rise to new ones. At midnight on 19 Sept. 1423, according to the appeal of another widow, her husband Thomas Balle was murdered at Condover, a few miles south of Shrewsbury, by Laurence Aspeden, acting as an agent of Corbet, William Horde*, Hugh Stapleton and other lesser men. Four days later Corbet was elected to represent the county in Parliament at hustings attended by both Horde and Stapleton, and it is tempting to suppose that he wanted to go to Westminster at the county’s expense to deal with the consequences of his alleged involvement in the murder. Interestingly, when the next Parliament, that of 1425, was in session, the two Shrewsbury MPs, Roger Corbet I and John Gamell*, offered surety that Corbet and others accused would answer the appeal (on which they were acquitted in March 1427).10 KB27/656, rot. 69; C219/13/2.

In view of his long career and intense involvement in local administration, it is surprising that this should be Corbet’s only recorded election, further evidence, perhaps, that he had a particular motive for standing. Despite this dramatic start to his career, it is impossible to construct a meaningful narrative of his career from the mid 1420s that is anything more than a list of administrative offices held. Nor is it possible to suggest why he should have been so active in this regard. Of his energy there can be no doubt. Between 1426 and 1444 he served as many as three terms as sheriff, and, in November 1448, he narrowly avoided a fourth appointment, for he was on the pricked list with (Sir) John Burgh III* and John Wynnesbury*.11 C47/34/2/5. For 50 years he frequently attended Shropshire’s parliamentary elections, and he was long one of the most active of the county’s j.p.s. He may also have been custos rotulorum for a period: not only did he attend nearly every recorded session in the 1430s and 1440s, but he endorsed a writ of terminari dated 6 Feb. 1444.12 KB9/245/15. Between 1429 and 1441 he attended 17 of the 28 days for which the records of the payments made to j.p.s survive: E101/584/22. For his appearances as a j.p. in Shrewsbury from the 1430s to the 1450s: Salop Archs., Shrewsbury recs., bailiffs’ accts. 3365/364, 373; KB9/228/2, m. 1; 248/28; 272/33; 274/25; 280/30, 54; 284/40; 286/10; 287/88. Yet he makes few other appearances in the records. He had occasional legal difficulties: in 1433 the Crown won execution against him in 100 marks in respect of a surety he had given for the lawless Staffordshire esquire, Richard Peshale of Chetwynd, ten years before, and in Michaelmas term 1436 his failure as sheriff to pay the annuity of John Brugge I* caused him to be condemned in the substantial damages of £28.13 KB27/646, rex rot. 29; 682, rex rot. 24, att. rot. 1; E13/140, rot. 5.

There are few references to Corbet’s connexions: in 1441 he returned an award at Shrewsbury in a dispute within the local gentry family of Stapleton; in August 1446 he witnessed a deed for the Shropshire peer, Richard, Lord Strange of Knockin; and a year later he was, for some unknown reason, at Shrewsbury with Burgh’s wife.14 CP40/717, rot. 103; Salop Archs., Lloyd of Leaton Knolls mss, 103/1/5/11; Shrewsbury bailiffs’ accts. 3365/377, m. 6d. Only in respect of parliamentary elections does he appear consistently in the records. On 12 Jan. 1447 he attested the election of his cousin, Roger Corbet II*; on 16 Oct. 1449 the two men were among only four attestors named in the indenture; and, on 15 Oct. 1450, they headed the attestors to the county election and offered surety for the two MPs, William Burley I and William Lacon I*.15 C219/15/4, 7, 16/1. Only one reference gives a more vivid impression of him. On 12 June 1458 he headed the witnesses at the proof of age of Richard, Lord Grey of Powis, son and heir of Sir Henry Grey (d.1450), count of Tancarville, by Antigone, the bastard daughter of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. Giving his own age as 60, he testified that he recalled Richard’s birth and baptism at Pontesbury because on that day, 5 Nov. 1436, Master John Brown was instituted to the rectory there. If he and the other witnesses were indeed present at the baptism then it was an impressive gathering, for with our MP were his cousin, Roger Corbet II, and four of the leading townsmen of Shrewsbury, William Burley II*, Roger Eyton*, Nicholas Stafford and Robert Scriven.16 C139/170/42; CP, vi. 138-9.

There is no evidence to illuminate Corbet’s political sympathies during the civil war of 1459-61. He was named to the Lancastrian commission of array in December 1459 and removed from the Shropshire bench, after nearly 30 years continuous service, in the wake of the Yorkist victory at the battle of Northampton. He may also have had a connexion with Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, who fell on the Lancastrian side at that battle: on 17 July, a week after the battle, he witnessed a deed by which John Harper*, as the duke’s last surviving feoffee, conveyed the Stafford lordship of Caus to new feoffees.17 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 558, 675-6; Cat. Med. Muns. Berkeley Castle ed. Wells-Furby (Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc.), ii. 947. Yet all this can hardly be taken as evidence of an affiliation with Lancaster. His younger brother, Roger, was included on a commission of arrest issued by the Yorkists soon after their victory at Northampton, and he himself was quickly restored to the bench after Edward IV’s accession. Further, in August 1461, he was one of those entrusted with the task of rallying local support against Lancastrian rebels.18 CPR, 1452-61, p. 608; 1461-7, p. 98.

None the less, advancing age – Corbet was nearly 70 on Edward IV’s accession – ensured that his administrative activities diminished under the new regime. Although he retained his place on the county bench until 1474, he was named on only one further ad hoc commission of local government after 1463.19 CPR, 1467-77, p. 407. He was active as a j.p. at least as late as Jan. 1467: KB9/313/15, 16; 317/5, 6. Advanced age was not his only disadvantage during these years. His wife’s death in 1462 diminished his wealth. On 29 Apr. 1462, 17 days after her death, the escheator of Cheshire was ordered to deliver her dower lands to Sir Robert Fouleshurst, her former husband’s cousin and heir, and at the same time Corbet no doubt also lost her other holdings in Shropshire and Herefordshire.20 CHES2/134, rot. 15d.

There are only a handful references to him in the late 1460s and 1470s. In 1465, in company with his kinsman, (Sir) Roger Corbet II, his son-in-law, William Mytton*, and many other gentry of Shropshire and Staffordshire, he was sued by Margaret Beauchamp, widow of John Talbot (d.1453), earl of Shrewsbury, for raiding her property at Whitchurch and Blackmere (Shropshire). This was presumably an episode in the famous dispute within the Talbot family, with the alleged raiders acting in support of Elizabeth, widow of Margaret’s stepson, the earl of Shrewsbury who had died for Lancaster at the battle of Northampton. If so, however, this is the only evidence of our MP’s connexion with Elizabeth.21 CP40/816, rot. 279d; I. Rowney, ‘Staffs. Political Community’ (Keele Univ. Ph. D. thesis, 1981), 158. Less contentiously, on 22 Dec. 1470, during the Readeption, he witnessed a local deed in company with his son, Peter; and on 31 May 1473 he sat on a high-ranking jury at Shrewsbury before a county bench of five peers, headed by Henry Stafford, duke of Buckingham. He last appears in an active role on 20 Oct. 1478, when, by a deed witnessed by the abbots of Shrewsbury and Lilleshull and three local knights, including Roger Corbet II’s son, Sir Richard Corbet†, he conveyed his lands in Warwickshire and Leicestershire to two prominent townsmen of Shrewsbury (Thomas Thornes and Robert Scriven), and one William Spenser, presumably for the implementation of his will. He was dead by 3 July 1480, when a writ of diem clausit extremum was issued in respect of his Leicestershire estates, and it is likely that his death had been the occasion for his omission from the county bench in the previous March. No inquisitions survive, and perhaps none were taken because his lands were all in the hands of feoffees. He was succeeded by his son, Peter (d.1504), who, in 1484, sued his stepmother (whose family origins are undocumented) for a pix containing charters. His descendant, John Corbet†, represented Shropshire in 1539.22 Salop Archs., deeds 6000/10612; Corbet of Acton Reynald mss, 322/2/278; KB9/334/87; CFR, xxi. no. 563; xxii. no. 789; CP40/890, rot. 377.