SAGE, Thomas II

Sage was from one of Scarborough’s principal families. Three successive William Sages represented the town in at least five Parliaments between 1388 and 1421, and our MP was the son and heir of the last of these. On his father’s death in 1429, he must have been no more than a boy. He first appears in the will, made on 24 Sept. 1429 (only days after his father’s death), of his maternal grandfather, Thomas Rightwise, who bequeathed him 6s. 8d., but no more is known of him until 1447-8 when he was admitted to the freedom of the city of York. His family appear to have long had interests in the city, for our MP’s putative grandfather, William Sage†, was one of the chamberlains there in the 1390s. Thomas, however, made his long career in Scarborough.3 Borthwick Inst. Univ. of York, York registry wills, prob. reg. 2, f. 565; Freemen of York (Surtees Soc. cxvi), 93, 95, 167. His property holdings in York are almost undocumented, although in Trin. term 1462 he recovered a messuage there worth 13s. 4d. p.a. of which he had been disseised in Mar. 1460: CP40/805, rot. 93d.

That career of nearly 50 years is, unfortunately, only documented rarely. In 1449 Thomas sued his kinsman John Sage for detinue of charters, implying a property dispute within the family. Later, in 1458, along with John Daniell*, he was named to a commission of inquiry concerning a ship of Rouen, illegally seized by pirates employed by Thomas, Lord Roos, and brought to Scarborough.4 CP40/754, rot. 20; CPR, 1452-61, p. 436. More significantly, he was elected to represent the town in the Yorkist Parliament of 1460, and it thus appears that he was then, as he was certainly later to be, one of the Scarborough men connected with the Nevilles. His fellow MP, Thomas Gower II*, was a Neville man (albeit from outside the town) and John Robinson*, another Neville man, stood as pledge for both of them. The election may have been a matter of contention in that John Lambert, one of the bailiffs who presided over it, was associated with the Percys and had earlier in the year illegally arrested Robinson and put him to ransom in the Percy castle of Wressle.5 C219/16/6; C1/27/250.

There is nothing to show that Sage played any part in the civil war of 1459-61. His sympathies presumably lay with the Yorkists, although, on 12 May 1462, he took the precaution of suing out a general pardon (describing himself as ‘of Scarborough, gentleman, alias merchant’) from the new regime. Interestingly, too, he appears to have had some business interests in common with Lambert: in 1462 the two men together sued five local fishermen for a total of £25. He was also, briefly at least, in contention with Robinson, who in the following year he sued for £40.6 C67/45, m. 23; CP40/805, rot. 94d; 806, rot. 20; 810, rot. 97. None the less, he was close enough to the Nevilles to support the Lancastrian Readeption or, at least, to have been considered to have done so by the restored Edward IV. On 20 June and 4 July 1471 commissions were issued for the arrest and the seizure of the goods of, among others, Sage and Robinson.7 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 286-7. Yet both men quickly recovered their fortunes. On 6 May 1472 Sage, including ‘late of York’ among his aliases, sued out a general pardon; and later in the year he was again elected to Parliament with Robinson standing as one of his pledges.8 C67/49, m. 24; C219/17/2.

Soon after, however, Sage found a new way to get into trouble. On 3 Dec. 1474 a commission of inquiry was issued in respect of a significant act of piracy. Sixty men in three large vessels, called ‘fysshers’ and belonging to our MP, allegedly seized off Scarborough a Hanse ship, ‘le Christofre’ of Stralsund, took their prize to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and there disposed of the ship, its gear worth 100 marks and its cargo, valued at a further £200. This was contrary to the truce concluded with the Hanseatic League in the previous February as part of Edward IV’s diplomatic preparations for the invasion of France, and Sage’s offence was seemingly a serious one. The commissioners were ordered to arrest him and bring him before the King and council.9 CPR, 1467-77, p. 493.

The last part of Sage’s career is poorly documented, but ironically it may be the period when he was of the most importance. He augmented his wealth by marrying the widow of a merchant of Kingston-upon-Hull, Robert Alcock, the brother of John Alcock, bishop of Worcester, a marriage that probably took place soon after her first husband’s death in the summer of 1484.10 For Alcock: J. Kermode, Med. Merchants, 332-3; Test. Ebor. iii (Surtees Soc. xlv), 295-6. More interestingly, he benefited from the close relationship between Richard III and the borough of Scarborough. On 16 Dec. 1483 the King ordered the bailiff of the duchy of Lancaster wapentake of Pickering Lythe to pay him as much as 100 marks; and on the following 7 Apr. warrants were issued to other lesser officers of the wapentake to pay him two sums of 40 marks. One can only speculate as to the reason for these payments. The most likely speculation is that they were connected with the provision of shipping, with those of April 1484 related to a naval campaign against the Scots of that summer.11 BL Harl. MS. 433 ed. Horrox and Hammond, ii. 60, 123; Croyland Chron. ed. Pronay and Cox, 172. Whether Sage himself had any personal loyalty to Richard III, who did so much to benefit his native borough (remarkably, giving it the status of a shire incorporate), is not known.

After 1485 Sage, despite his advanced age, continued to play a prominent part on the town’s affairs. He enjoyed the unique distinction of serving as mayor under the terms of Richard III’s charter, soon revoked by Henry VII, and also held office as coroner.12 Scarborough recs. DC/SCB, ct. bk. 3, unfoliated. In August 1493, with his son-in-law, William Tunstall†, then an esquire for Henry VII’s body and formerly a servant of Richard III in the same capacity, he was commissioned to inquire into the escape from Scarborough prison of men accused of despoiling a ship.13 CPR, 1485-94, p. 443.

Sage must have been an old man when he made his will on 20 Feb. 1497.14 York registry wills, prob. reg. 5, f. 495. His religious bequests were extensive and suggest, like the story of his career, that he was one of Scarborough’s richest residents. As much as £23 6s. 8d. was set aside for prayers for his soul and those of his parents in the church of St. Mary over a period of five years, together with a further 25 marks for the celebration of 1,000 masses. Small payments totalling £6 were to be made to a variety of local religious institutions, including the guilds of St. Christopher and Corpus Christi in York, the fraternity of St. Robert in Knaresborough and the Cistercian nunneries at Rosedale and Wykeham. It was, however, in Scarborough’s church of St. Mary that he wanted to be buried, next to his first wife. The rest of Sage’s will was concerned with provision for his second wife and three children. Katherine was left the messuage in Burghwellgate in which they lived, to hold for the term of her life as part of her portion of his lands. His grand-daughter, Mary, Tunstall’s daughter, was to have ten marks; and £20 was to be divided between his two youngest daughters, Margaret and Elizabeth, over and above the portion of his goods to which they were entitled by law and custom. These two were the children of his old age. Curiously, however, he named them among his executors, who also included their mother and their half-sister, Agnes. Agnes’s husband, Tunstall, and John Scawsby, a merchant of York, were to supervise them, for which responsibility the former was to be paid as much as ten marks and the latter a modest 40s. Sage was dead by 27 May 1497, when his will was proved, and his widow did not long survive him. She drew up her own will on 15 Aug. 1498. For her burial she looked back to her second rather than her first marriage, requesting interment next to Sage’s tomb, but she remembered her origins in Kingston-upon-Hull with bequests to the fabric of the church of Holy Trinity there. Her considerable wealth is exemplified both in the £21 she set aside for prayers for her soul and in the impressive list of plate, jewelry and household goods set aside for division between her children, sisters and servants.15 ibid. ff. 516v-17v.

A later Chancery suit gives a slightly different account of Sage’s will. In about 1510 Scawsby brought a petition before the chancellor, not as supervisor but rather as one of the will’s executors. He identified as the will’s supervisors two altogether greater men, the brothers Sir Marmaduke Constable† (whom he said to have had the custody of Sage’s two daughters) and the serjeant-at-law, Robert Constable. This represented a curious conflation with Katherine’s will, which had named Scawsby as executor and the serjeant as supervisor. Equally puzzling is the reference to Sir Marmaduke, who is named in the probate version of neither will. It is, however, not intrinsically unlikely that Sage, as one of the leading men of Scarborough, should have had close links with the Constables, who lived at Flamborough on the Yorkshire coast a few miles to the south of the town, and had considerable shipping interests.16 C1/363/56.

Sage’s death brought his family to an end in the male line. His property descended to his daughters, Elizabeth, who married Walter Cawood of Thorpe in Balne near Doncaster, and Margaret who married one Thomas Bradshaw.17 C1/194/46; 363/56; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 510.