CUTHBERTSON, Thomas

Carlisle’s MPs in the Parliament of 1432 are more than usually obscure. Their names are known only from the endorsement of the electoral writ and have clearly been added in a hand different from the rest of the endorsement. This was probably because the city authorities were slow in informing the sheriff of the identity of their MPs, rather than because the names were added after the return had reached Chancery. Although nothing is known of one of the MPs, John Sharp IV*, the other, Cuthbertson, was local to Cumberland if not to Carlisle. In 1426 he secured a writ of arrest to the sheriff of Cumberland against a husbandman of Hawkshead (‘Haukesdde’) for a debt of 40s.1 C219/14/3; CP40/662, rot. 229d.. Much more interestingly, he seems to have had a connexion with Sir Christopher Curwen*, one of those elected for the county in 1432. Although he was not one of the attorneys who routinely represented the Cumberland sheriffs in the Exchequer, he acted in that capacity for Curwen (as sheriff in 1433-4 and 1437-8). His legal qualifications recommended him to the Percys: shortly before 1442 he was appointed to the minor post in the administration of that great family (his position is not recorded in the account, it is noted only that he was a new appointment).2 E159/211, adventus Mich. rot. 1; 215, adventus Mich. rot. 1; P. Booth, ‘Landed Soc. in Cumb. and Westmld.’ (Leicester Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1997), 36n.