CROSS, Thomas

Cross hailed from Huntingdonshire and may have been a relation, possibly a son, of John Cross, one the men of that county required in 1434 to take the oath not to maintain lawbreakers.4 CPR, 1429-36, p. 375. In the 1440s he was described as ‘of Ramsey’, in the east of the county, and he was later a feoffee of land nearby. Although the full extent of his own property in the town is not documented, in 1456 the sub cellarer of Ramsey abbey leased to him for life a tenement there, which he subsequently held jointly with his widowed mother, paying the abbey an annual rent of 20s.5 CPR, 1446-52, p. 193; E326/3016; Liber Gersumarum, nos. 4302, 4319.

Meanwhile Cross had made his career as a clerk in the Exchequer, where, even though he never attained a post which provided a fixed salary, he proved useful in the service of important officers of the court. He was of sufficient status to appear as a surety for Brian Roucliffe, the future baron, on three occasions (in January 1446, January 1449 and July 1451),6 CFR, xviii. 13, 101, 227. and in December 1447 he collected an assignment at the Receipt on behalf of the chief baron, John Fray†. On another occasion, in July 1449, he performed a like service for Margaret, Lady Darcy.7 E403/769, m. 6; 775, m. 7. By the latter date Cross had been more specifically delegated to assist Thomas Thorpe*, the treasurer’s remembrancer. On 21 July he received payments of fees for the attendance of Thorpe and his clerks at the Exchequer, and for writing documents and making searches through the records during Bishop Lumley’s treasurership. Furthermore, on the same day he himself was given a reward of £2 for copying out the findings of inquisitions conducted before Thorpe and Peter Ardern, the new chief baron, in various parts of the realm, and also received at the Exchequer the rewards for Ardern and Thorpe (20 marks each) for carrying out their wide-ranging commissions of a year earlier. It may be deduced that he had accompanied the two men on their peregrinations.8 E403/775, m. 8; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 190-1.

Cross almost certainly owed his return to the Parliament of November 1449 to his position as a servant of Thorpe, who himself sat in the Commons as a knight of the shire for Northamptonshire. The government had need of loyal supporters in this Parliament, meeting at a time of crisis both overseas (with the impending fall of Rouen), and at the insolvent Exchequer. The King’s ministers faced severe criticism. By joining Thorpe in the Lower House Cross would have been at hand to assist him when the Crown’s fiscal policies were called into question. He had no known connexion with Shaftesbury, the Dorset borough which returned him, although as he was later to be engaged as attorney for another Dorset borough, Bridport, a similar, albeit unrecorded arrangement with the town authorities cannot be ruled out. After this initial parliamentary service he continued to be closely associated with Thorpe, whose patronage brought material benefits. From 27 Apr. 1451 he shared with Roger Thorpe*, Thomas’s son, and Sir John Burcester in a long lease, issued at the Exchequer, of the honours of Peverell, Boulogne and Hagenet, and the castle and honour of Huntingdon, back-dated to the Act of Resumption passed in his Parliament of 1449-50. Yet although he and others were granted on the following 19 Oct. the marriage of a daughter and coheir of John Helyon, when they failed to make an agreement with the treasurer about terms, this was given instead to Thomas Thorpe.9 CFR, xviii. 197-8, 263-4. Specifically described as Thorpe’s servant, Cross received a payment on behalf of Master John Somerset*, the chancellor of the Exchequer, that December.10 E403/786, m. 8.

Cross, Roger Thorpe and their associate Thomas Umfray* (previously one of their mainpernors), all secured election to the Parliament of 1453, in which Thomas Thorpe, now elevated as a baron of the Exchequer, was elected Speaker.11 J.S. Roskell, Speakers, 248-9. Some impropriety appears to have attached to the return for Heytesbury in Wiltshire, which Cross represented. On 24 Feb. the sheriff of Wiltshire drew up an indenture with the burgesses of the borough, but there can be no doubt that this indenture was subsequently amended: the names of the MPs originally elected were erased and those of Cross and Richard Keston* were added over the erasure.12 C219/16/2. Neither man had any connexion with the borough, and it looks as if the indenture was altered after its return into Chancery. It is easy to see why Cross, an associate of Thorpe, was selected to sit in an assembly in which there was a very strong contingent of royal servants. After meeting for two sessions, at Reading and Westminster, the Parliament was prorogued on 2 July, but during the summer Henry VI became mentally incapacitated, and this illness provoked a major political crisis. For a while Thorpe and his servants carried on their normal business at the Exchequer, and on 23 Oct. Cross and George Scalby were granted there the farm of property in Yorkshire previously allocated to Master John Somerset.13 CFR, xix. 78. However, in November the King’s kinsman the duke of Somerset was imprisoned in the Tower by his opponents, and the duke’s ally, Speaker Thorpe, was forced to take refuge in the sanctuary of the church of St. Martin le Grand. When, on 25 Nov., Thorpe saw fit to place his goods and chattels for safekeeping in the hands of the dean of St. Martin’s and others, among these well-wishers were Cross and Umfray.14 CCR, 1447-54, p. 484. Before the start of the final session of the Parliament, at Westminster on 14 Feb. 1454, the Speaker was imprisoned at the suit of the duke of York, and notwithstanding parliamentary privilege the Lords ruled that he should remain in prison and that the Commons should elect another Speaker.15 Roskell, 254-5.

Despite the troubles of his patron Thorpe, Cross continued to work at the Exchequer. Following the dissolution of the Parliament, he was active there on behalf of John Norris*, the former keeper of the great wardrobe, Henry Percy, Lord Poynings, and John Durem, one of the barons, and after Thorpe’s rehabilitation he returned to his service. Towards the end of 1455 he stood surety when Thorpe took over the lease of the royal honours he himself had held previously.16 E403/798, m. 6; 800, m. 6; 805, mm. 3, 4; CFR, xix. 113, 147. All this while Cross’s income had largely depended on him taking on tasks at Westminster for other clients. For instance, the burgesses of Bridport engaged his services as an attorney in the Exchequer, paying him a small annual fee of 6s. 8d. from July 1456 for the next 18 years.17 Dorset Hist. Centre, Bridport bor. recs., ‘Red Bk.’, DC/BTB/H1, ff. 13, 14, 17, 19, 23, 25, 27, 30, 32, 34, 37, 38, 40, 42, 44, 46, 48. Whereas Thorpe was a staunch Lancastrian, there is little to indicate where Cross stood politically during the years of civil war. Yet he successfully avoided the label of partisan, and following Thorpe’s death at the hands of Yorkists in February 1461 he was able to resume his career at the Exchequer. After Edward IV’s accession he appeared there not only as a mainpernor but also regularly as an attorney until the mid 1470s. Among those individuals for whom he acted in this way were William Beaufitz*, formerly clerk of Henry VI’s cellars, Sir John Scott†, and Thomas Pound*, the customer at Southampton;18 CFR, xix. 218; E13/147, rots. 2d, 63; 148, rot. 19; 150, rot. 46; 159, rot. 37. while the bailiffs of the abbot of Ramsey regularly called on this local man to present their accounts to the barons.19 E368/234, rot. 3; 241, rots. 2d, 3; 242, rot. 3; 247, rot. 1d.

Cross himself successfully brought pleas for debt in the court of the Exchequer against Thomas Walsh, the former sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire,20 E13/148, rots. 3d, 8d, 11d. but of his more private affairs little is recorded, save that in the 1460s he formed an association with a London haberdasher called Thomas Beville, and by Easter 1470 he was acting as administrator of his goods.21 CCR, 1461-8, pp. 443-4; CP40/835, rot. 193d. Cross was described as ‘of the Exchequer, gentleman’, as late as July 1474,22 CCR, 1468-76, no. 1281. although his retirement from Westminster may be dated to that same year, for Bridport ceased to pay his fee at Michaelmas, and he made no further appearances as an attorney.23 Bridport ‘Red Bk.’, ff. 48, 52. His whereabouts in his final years are surprisingly obscure, and there is no evidence that he was the man of this name associated with John Cheyne of Pinhoe, esquire, in the foundation of a guild in the parish church of St. Mary at Croscombe in Somerset, for which licences were obtained in the 1480s.24 CPR, 1476-85, pp. 259-60; 1485-94, p. 296.