STOUGHTON, Thomas

The fact that when he died Thomas possessed landed holdings near Guildford in Surrey might lead to the conclusion that he and his brothers John and William came from the family of Stoughton living at Stoke by Guildford which played a prominent role in the affairs of that town in the first half of the fifteenth century. A namesake of our MP was particularly active in local administration in Surrey, notably as a coroner,10 CCR, 1405-9, p. 161; 1413-19, pp. 57, 136, 168. and attested as many as 20 elections of knights of the shire held at Guildford between 1407 and 1437.11 For his residence at Stoke, see CPR, 1429-36, p. 380; KB27/704, rot. 13. That Thomas may have been Thomas (b.c.1385), s. and h. of Walter Stoughton (d.1415) who inherited the manor of Stoughton and land in Stoke called ‘Chamberlayneslond’, worth £10 p.a., on his father’s death: C138/11/11; VCH Surr. iii. 371. Indeed, it is possible that the coroner was the father of the three brothers.12 According to an inq. in Lincs. in 1437 John’s fa. (and therefore Thomas’s) was called Thomas: C139/83/54. However, no contemporary record has been found to show where the three of them fitted in to the Surrey family – if indeed they did so. Nor is there any evidence of links between them and Peter Stoughton*, who sat for Guildford in the Parliament of 1447, when Thomas sat for Rye for the first time and his brother John represented Hastings.

Thomas owed his entry into royal service to this brother John, who became a member of the Household before 1430, and before long took charge of its purchasing department, the catery. In February 1444 Thomas was commissioned to purvey fish for the Household over the next six months,13 CPR, 1441-6, p. 252. and it may be assumed that he had begun trading in this commodity before that date. The focus of his trade came to be the south coast ports of Hastings and Rye, and as purveyor of sea fish and King’s serjeant on 17 Aug. 1445 he was granted for life the office of bailiff of Hastings. Yet this appointment provoked considerable opposition in the town, since by long-standing custom the men of Hastings chose the King’s bailiff themselves. John Tamworth*, the locally-elected bailiff, challenged Stoughton’s appointment, and the royal justices eventually allowed his claim as founded on prescription; Stoughton’s letters were revoked as contrary to the liberties of the Port.14 CPR, 1441-6, pp. 358, 427. This did not lead the Stoughtons to break their links with Hastings, for in his will Thomas referred to his mistress Colette Arnold of Hastings, by whom he had a bastard daughter, and the Port returned his brother John to the Parliament of 1447. At the same time Thomas himself was elected for another one of the Cinque Ports, namely Rye. Detailed financial records for this Port survive only from December 1448, but by that date Thomas and his other brother William were both paying 3s. 4d. a year to the town authorities as advocants (foreign freemen), so it is likely that when he had been returned to Parliament as a baron of Rye he had fulfilled the statutory requirements regarding residence of MPs.15 E. Suss. RO, Rye mss, acct. bk. 60/2, ff. 8v, 9, 15v, 38v. Their payments were three years in arrears by 1454. Nevertheless, while this was acceptable to the Portsmen of Rye in the context of an election to Parliament, it proved to be unacceptable to the other Ports when it came to Stoughton representing their confederation at the annual herring fair at Yarmouth. Having been chosen as one of Rye’s deputies at the Brodhull of 23 July 1448, Stoughton was put forward by Rye and Winchelsea to be their bailiff at the forthcoming fair, but the Brodhull refused to endorse the nomination ‘because he dwells in London’.16 White and Black Bks. of Cinque Ports (Kent Rec. Ser. xix), 24. Even so, Rye re-elected him to the next Parliament, that of February 1449, but perhaps only on the understanding that he would not demand any payment for his services, for although his fellow MP, Robert Onewyn I*, received daily wages there is no record of any disbursement to Stoughton.

Stoughton’s appointment as collector of customs at Chichester in the autumn of 1449 was probably made in the expectation that he would take responsibility for the ports and havens of the eastern part of Sussex. He held office for nearly six years.17 E403/781, m. 6; 786, m. 9; 791, m. 9; 796, m. 6; 807, m. 3. Although customs officials were forbidden by statute to trade on their own behalf, this did not prevent Stoughton continuing to do so in his role as purveyor of the Household. At some point in the early 1450s he petitioned the chancellor for redress when a balinger owned by men living in the liberty of the abbot of Whitby seized in the Thames a Flemish vessel laden with a cargo of salt-fish worth 100 marks purchased at his own venture for this purpose.18 C1/19/471. Stoughton sat in the Commons for Rye for the third time in 1450, but London remained his principal place of residence: in the following summer a ‘seam’ of fish costing 9s. 7d. was sent to him there, as a gift from the jurats of the Port.19 Rye mss, 60/2, f. 24.

Not long afterwards, in April 1452, Stoughton established himself as a notable property-owner in Rye by purchasing ‘Ypres Tower’, the most important fortification there, from John Ypres, esquire. Ypres had himself bought it in 1430 from the mayor and commonalty, which reserved the right to enter the tower in time of hostilities for the defence of the town. Stoughton was to hold the premises on the same terms, and also took possession of a tenement with a cellar, near the town wall, and certain parcels of land and a garden outside the north gate. That, even so, he remained largely non-resident is clear from his nomination in 1454 of another esquire, James Hyde, to receive rents and farms due to him from his tenants at Rye, and this was followed by the sale of the tower to Hyde some two years later.20 Cat. Rye Recs. ed. Dell, 139-40; VCH Suss. ix. 40-42. The tower still stands.

The focus of Stoughton’s business continued to be the London fish markets, and before 1450 he established himself as a member of the Fishmongers’ Company. Another fishmonger, Richard Berd, associated him in a ‘gift’ of his goods and chattels in that year, and a yeoman of West Smithfield did likewise in 1456. Similar transactions completed later in his career indicate that he also dealt closely with the grocers of the capital.21 CCR, 1447-54, p. 266; 1454-61, p. 195; Cal. P and M. London, 1458-82, p. 167. After leaving Sussex behind, Stoughton served from 1458 as a customer at Ipswich, an undertaking which began with him making a loan of £154 13s. 4d. to the Crown. The appointment and loan were clearly connected, for he was given an assignment for repayment on 22 Nov., the day after he took up office.22 E403/817, m. 4. The change of government following the Yorkist victory at Northampton in July 1460 made little difference to his role in the customs service and as a purveyor. Far from it: he gained promotion as controller of customs at Ipswich, and was once more commissioned to purchase fish for the Household. He appeared at the Exchequer in October and November 1460 on behalf of (Sir) Walter Skulle*, the new treasurer of the Household, and in December for (Sir) John Stourton II*, Lord Stourton, one of Skulle’s predecessors.23 CPR, 1452-61, p. 600; E403/820, mm. 2-4. Furthermore, at this critical point in the civil war his Company was prepared to make a loan to the Yorkist regime. Together with William Chattok, one of his fellow wardens of the Fishmongers’, he advanced 200 marks on 27 Jan. 1461, at a time when the Lancastrian army under Margaret of Anjou was marching south to threaten the capital.24 E403/820, m. 7. Following the accession of Edward IV his place in the King’s service was confirmed: on 28 Apr. he was reappointed to provide fish, both fresh and salted, for the Household over the next six-month period.25 CPR, 1461-7, p. 6. The pardon issued to him on 14 Feb. 1462, as a gentleman, citizen and fishmonger of London, former customer of Chichester and purveyor of fish to the Household of Henry VI, would seem to have been merely a formality.26 C67/45, m. 42.

The records afford occasional glimpses of Stoughton’s business affairs in London, although these did not always run smoothly. For instance, he quarrelled with one of his former apprentices, John Snoryng, the son and heir of Geoffrey Snoryng of Norfolk, whom he sued for a debt of £50.27 CCR, 1461-8, p. 391; CPR, 1467-77, p. 321. He acquired property in Old Fish Street in the parish of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey, and transactions to which he was a party often concerned other buildings in the same part of the city. Together with other fishmongers he had acquired a tenement and stone quay by the Broken Wharf in 1457, and in the 1460s he joined the alderman William Hampton† and fellow members of their Company in conveyances regarding three local taverns: Le Gourde, Le Swan and Le Herteshorn.28 Corp. London RO, hr 186/8; 196/21, 22; 197/22; 198/22. His own holdings perhaps included the tenement, shops and cellars in the parish of St. Margaret Moses, of which he and his wife relinquished possession in 1463.29 Ibid. hr 194/3, 4. Stoughton became sufficiently well regarded in the City as to be elected to the Parliament summoned to assemble at York on 22 Sept. 1469, although he failed to take his seat on this occasion, as the Parliament was postponed. Although his participation in the government of the City is only documented intermittently, when Edward IV fled the realm a year later, in the autumn of 1470, he was among the aldermen and commoners assigned in October to provide men-at-arms to guard the restored King Henry VI in the Tower.30 Corp. London RO, jnl. 7, f. 223v. That same month he contended unsuccessfully for the aldermanship of the ward of Farringdon Within.31 Ibid. f. 222v, followed by Beaven, Aldermen, i. 146, has John Stoughton, fishmonger, but almost certainly Thomas was meant. Stoughton had a prominent role in the affairs of his Company at this time, and was among the wardens of the Fishmongers’ who in the summer of 1471 took steps to improve the supply of fish to the capital. The Salt Wharf in Queenhithe, being too ‘narrow and streit’, endangered the safety of passers-by. The wardens offered to enlarge it at their own cost, and obtained a grant from the civic authorities of some common ground to enable them to complete the task.32 Cal. P. and M. London, 1458-82, pp. 70-71.

The Stoughtons profited from the brief restoration of Henry VI. Thomas’s brother William, who had been a member of the Household in Henry’s first reign, was put in charge of the royal catery (an office previously held by their brother John), with responsibility for purveying fish and other victuals, and Thomas himself accepted appointment as collector of tunnage and poundage in London as from 19 Jan. 1471. He was removed from the post after Edward IV regained the throne, yet his subsequent record of almost continuous employment in the customs service in London and Sandwich from 1472 until his death indicates that he was never regarded as a committed Lancastrian.33 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 231, 484, 592; E405/57, rot. 7; 58, rot. 5; 59, rot. 5d.

Although Stoughton attested the London elections of 1472, there is no indication that he ever stood for Parliament again. It remains uncertain whether it was he or his son Thomas who witnessed the election of the knights of the shire for Surrey, held at Guildford in December 1477, but it was most likely the latter who was returned for Guildford on the same occasion, and sat in the Parliament which met for a few weeks at the beginning of the next year. By that date the older Thomas was nearing the end of his life. He composed a will on 31 Oct. 1478, and died before November 1479.34 E159/256, recorda Hil. rot. 12d. Although Stoughton left his place of burial to be decided by his executrix he remembered his parish church of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey with the sum of £2 for repairs and the same amount for forgotten tithes, and made bequests to the church at Chelsea, the friars at Ludgate and prisoners in six prisons of London and Westminster. His property at St. Katherine’s beside the Tower and lands in Kent were settled in tail on his elder son, Thomas, with remainder to the younger, Henry, while the latter was to inherit two tenements at Queenhithe, his place in Old Fish Street, two shops next to St. Nicholas’s church, and another ‘gode shop’, altogether worth £16 6s. 8d. p.a., as well as a quit rent of 16s. from land pertaining to the convent of Newark beside Guildford. If Thomas and Henry both died childless these properties were to pass to their next male heir bearing the name of Stoughton, or else were to be sold. The testator left £10 each to three of his daughters, £5 to another who was a nun at Syon, and five marks to a fifth, Joan, a nun at Dartford. Joan – whom his widow Beatrice was pointedly to refer to as her late husband’s daughter, not her own – may have been the woman of this name who was his bastard daughter by Colette Arnold (herself the recipient of another five marks). All the rest of Stoughton’s lands and tenements were left to Beatrice, provided she stayed single, and the residue of his estate passed to her, his sole executor, to keep for their children.35 PCC 3 Logge (PROB11/7, f. 23).

In 1482 the widowed Beatrice Stoughton had to defend herself in a suit brought in Chancery by Gherardo Caniziani, the Florentine who had established himself as a London mercer. Caniziani had been bound to Stoughton by an obligation in £134 6s. 8d., and having paid him £116 13s. 4d. in ready money entered a complicated arrangement with his creditor for payment of the remainder, an arrangement which depended on the co-operation of Anthony, Lord Rivers, and the assignment of £16 13s. 4d. which Stoughton was expected to pay Rivers from the customs collected at Sandwich. Beatrice, contending that her late husband had not been responsible for this money, had retained Caniziani’s bond accordingly.36 C1/62/421-4. Beatrice mentioned neither of Thomas Stoughton’s sons in her will of 16 Oct. 1497, although she left £5 to her daughter Elizabeth (the nun at Syon), and to Joan, her husband’s daughter, a pair of sheets and half a mark as well as £1 for her nunnery. Although many years had passed since her husband’s death, it was only now that Beatrice passed on to their old servant Alice Denton the £2 which he had left her. She was to be buried in the church of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey, and remembered in prayers in the parish church at Dartford, where she had been christened. In her widowhood she had purchased some woodland near her place of birth, which was now to be sold to perform her will.37 PCC 34 Horne (PROB11/11, f. 273), proved on 17 June 1499.