BARTON, Thomas II, of Marston, Lincs. and London.

Barton is sometimes difficult to distinguish from namesakes who were active in this period. However, there are several indicators to suggest that he came from Lincolnshire, and is perhaps to be identified as the owner of the manor of Marston, of which a Thomas Barton finally gained possession in October 1433. CPR, 1429-36, p. 325. There is no evidence to suggest that he was a member of the family which held land at Barton in Bucks., although a Thomas Barton did inherit a claim to property there from his uncle, Henry†, in 1437: CCR, 1435-41, p.129; The Commons 1386-1421, ii.138-43. There is ample evidence for his career as a royal servant, which had begun as early as 1430 when, as a yeoman of the Household, he was among a number of retainers whose wages were to be paid by the Exchequer while they were in France with the King, on the coronation expedition. E404/46/302, 303. Little else is recorded of him until 1444, by which time he had risen to the rank of King’s serjeant and groom of the Chamber, receiving the usual robes and wages. E101/409/12, f. 82v; 409/16, f.35v; 410/6, f. 41; 410/9, f. 44; CPR, 1441-6, p. 269. In June that year Barton was rewarded for his loyal service to the Crown with the post of keeper of Bourne Park in Lincolnshire, which was temporarily in the hands of the Crown following the death of John Beaufort, duke of Somerset. He may have held this post until the marriage of Beaufort’s daughter and heir, Margaret, to John de la Pole in 1450. The proximity of Bourne to Marston would have made Barton an obvious candidate for this position. Clearly a well-regarded official, the following month he was also appointed receiver of the lordship of Kendale, which had been granted to Beaufort the previous year and which now reverted back to the Crown. This post brought with it an annual stipend of £10, CPR, 1441-6, pp. 269, 276; M. Jones and M.G. Underwood, The King’s Mother, 35-37, 94; G.L. Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort, 354-5. but he held it for less than two years, for in February 1446 he gave it up in return for a grant of 20 marks p.a. from the issues of Crown lands in Norfolk and Suffolk made to him and one Agnes Ingram (whose identity has not been discovered). CPR, 1441-6, p. 413; CCR, 1441-7, p. 336. More rewards came his way in March 1447 when he was granted for life land at Leigh and Hadleigh in Essex. CPR, 1446-52, p. 35. Four months earlier he had received another grant for life, of the office of controller of customs in the port of Sandwich. The new treasurer of England, Bishop Lumley of Carlisle, may have been unhappy with the appointment, but in May 1448 he assented to Barton’s letters patent, only for the terms to be changed a year later to ‘during good behaviour’ rather than ‘for life’. This was more in keeping with Lumley’s attempted reforms of the Crown’s finances. CPR, 1446-52, pp. 37, 246; E159/225, recorda Mich. rot. 1d; 228, Hil. rot. 4d.

Like a number of servants of the Crown, Barton was directly affected by the Act of Resumption passed by Parliament in the spring of 1450. Grants to him worth a total of £4 4s. were resumed, representing the lands in Essex, although like his fellow yeomen of the Crown he was allowed to keep his annual fee of £9 2s. 6d. E163/8/14; PROME, xii. 127. Parliamentary opposition to this and subsequent Acts was muted: Barton was himself one of only seven recorded holders of Crown lands who were returned to Parliament in the autumn of that year, and only two of the others were members of the royal Household. B.P. Wolffe, R. Demesne in English Hist. 112, 257. He was returned for Lyme Regis, which had only recently regained control over its own affairs, and which frequently chose well-placed Crown servants as its MPs. Barton’s standing in the Household is clear from his appearance in July 1451 as a mainpernor at the Exchequer for the great chamberlain, John, Viscount Beaumont. CFR, xviii. 211. Despite continued attacks upon royal patronage he benefited from further displays of generosity from the King during the 1450s. In November 1451 he and William Hulyn were granted the keeping of the lordships of Sheen, Petersham and Hamme in Surrey to hold for 20 years at £23 4s. 4d. p.a., and seven months later, in June 1452, his stewardship was rewarded with the grant of the more formal office of keeper of Sheen, a post he held jointly with John de Bury until the latter’s death four years later. The post brought with it wages of 3d. a day, to add to Barton’s existing stipends, and he gained another 4d. from a grant for life (also dating from June 1452) of the keepership of the new park at Sheen. CFR, xviii. 248; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 557-8.

The background to Barton’s association with the troublesome Warwickshire knight Sir Thomas Mallory* is obscure. In October 1452 Mallory undertook under pain of £200 that he, Barton and another man would keep the peace towards William Venour, the warden of the Fleet prison, and later that year Barton obtained a royal pardon. CCR, 1447-54, p. 396; C67/40, m. 9. Mallory had long been seriously at odds with Humphrey, duke of Buckingham, and following indictments relating to offences against the duke he had already spent long periods as a prisoner, not only in the Fleet but also in the Marshalsea. Yet, conversely, Barton’s presence in the Parliament of 1453 as a representative of the borough of Bletchingley may point to his employment as one of Buckingham’s servants, for the duke was the borough’s lord. He was no doubt viewed by the Bletchingley electors as a man who had useful connexions at court and elsewhere, and he was to make a second appearance in Parliament as the borough’s MP six years later, in the autumn of 1459. This latter Parliament was summoned for the express purpose of attainting the Yorkist lords, and both Barton and his fellow Member, Thomas Acton*, were almost certainly viewed in the light of their connexions with prominent allies of Henry VI such as Buckingham. Barton’s putative links with the duke may have sprung from the proximity of his lands in Lincolnshire to the Staffords’ estates there, which included property at both Marston and nearby Bourne. It is possible, moreover, that he can be identified as the otherwise obscure Thomas Barston who had been an annuitant in receipt of five marks p.a. from the Staffords in the 1440s. C. Rawcliffe, Staffords, 191, 235. Barton’s links with Lincs. seem to have been maintained despite his court-centred career for, in Oct. 1453, described as a gentleman of London, he stood surety for Thomas Pulford who was granted the keeping of the manor of Helwell in that county: CFR, xix. 68. Barton’s administrative experience undoubtedly made him an ideal recruit for the duke, and a personal connexion between the two men is perhaps indicated by his presence on a royal commission of inquiry, headed by Buckingham in his capacity as constable of Dover, which was to investigate the theft of woollen cloth from a ship owned by four merchants of the Hanse in December 1454. CPR, 1452-61, p. 223.

Meanwhile, when ordinances had been drawn up in November 1454 to reform the Household while the King was incapacitated, Barton had been named as serjeant of the pantry, yet whether he was with the royal entourage the following May when the Yorkists defeated the King’s forces at St. Albans is not known. The defeat did not lead to any loss of influence with the King on his part: when he petitioned the Parliament of 1455-6 for exoneration from the Act of Resumption with respect to his keepership of Sheen park the King readily consented, by advice of the Lords. PPC, vi. 226; SC8/28/1367; PROME, xii. 410. In April 1456 Barton was made sole keeper of the lordship of Sheen and he and Hulyn were confirmed in their lease of this and the other royal lordships in the neighbourhood. A year later he was additionally appointed to the post of gardener. CPR, 1452-61, pp. 287-8, 352; CFR, xix. 159; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 150, 238. Yet soon after this he seems to have relinquished most, if not all, of his duties within the Household, for the pardon he obtained from the Crown in January 1458 described him as ‘late yeoman of the Crown, late yeoman of the Chamber and late receiver of the lordship of Kendale’. C67/42, m. 31. This may reflect a broadening of his interests outside the confines of the Household: a rise in his status is indicated by descriptions as ‘esquire’ from at least 1455, and the return made by the sheriff of Surrey before the Parliament of November 1459 also referred to him in this way. C219/16/5. His election to that particular Parliament was confirmation of his Lancastrian credentials, and this, combined with his long service to Henry VI’s government, was a decisive factor in his subsequent dismissal from his offices at Sheen following the accession of Edward IV. CPR, 1461-7, pp. 53, 124.

Barton had retained his post as controller of customs at Sandwich until the Yorkist victory at Northampton in 1460. Surprisingly, he was briefly given the same role in London for a few months in the first year of the new King’s reign, and was made collector at Ipswich in 1462. The royal pardon he eventually secured in July 1462 was granted in respect of his former offices in the Household, at Sheen and at Kendale. CPR, 1461-7, p. 95; CFR, xx. 70-71; C67/45, m.18; E403/827A, m. 5. Little else is known of him during the 1460s, but his career as a Crown servant was still remembered by those who remained loyal to the former King and in November 1470, during the Readeption of Henry VI, the Exchequer once more committed to him the farm of the lordship of Sheen. CFR, xx. 284. The lease would have been cancelled following the restoration of Edward IV a few months later, since Edward favoured Sheen as a residence. Nothing more is recorded of Barton.