Like nearly all the leading families of Westmorland, the Bethoms could justly claim long ancestry. They had been established at Beetham in the far south of the county, while also holding property across the border in Lancashire at Cowburn, where they were tenants of the duchy of Lancaster. The most prominent early member of the family was Sir Thomas Bethom†, who represented Westmorland in five Parliaments between 1302 and 1313, and in 1310, as reward for military service in Scotland, received a grant of free warren in his demesne lands at Beetham together with a weekly market and annual fair there. His son, Sir Ralph, may have been responsible for building the still-surviving hall at Beetham (now used as a barn).
During his early career Thomas was extensively involved in local disorder. In 1395 he was one of several members of his family whose arrest was ordered to answer before the royal council for offences against the abbot of Shap, an order repeated in 1396 and 1397. Soon after he was involved with other Bethoms in the dispute over the lands of William, Lord Windsor, supporting, for unknown reasons, Roger Windsor against Richard Duckett†. Some ten years later, in May 1407, he and three of his brothers had a pardon enrolled on the patent roll for all felonies, either with reference to these offences or later ones.
By this time Bethom had begun his career in local government even though he was yet to inherit the family estates. His father was alive as late as 1419-20, when party to a final concord concerning lands in Lancashire, but by this date our MP had twice been named to commissions of array in their native county.
Bethom’s prominence in local government was, however, short-lived. Early in 1432 he was replaced as deputy sheriff by Henry Wharton, whether because of some default on his part or because he had served what was considered a reasonable term does not appear. Thereafter he was drawn into a lengthy controversy as a result of his second marriage. His new wife was a wealthy widow whose relationship with her stepson, William Stapleton*, had deteriorated to enmity soon after her first husband’s death. Before she married Bethom the quarrel had already been unsuccessfully put to arbitration, and it was again referred without success to arbiters soon after the marriage. This second failure led to the escalation of a dispute that was to dominate the later part of our MP’s career. He and his new wife sued Stapleton in Chancery for failure to abide by earlier agreements; and in Easter term 1437 Stapleton responded by suing them for waste in property at Stainton near Carlisle.
Stapleton hit back quickly. On 12 Jan. 1438 an inquiry allegedly awarded him triple damages totaling £108 against our MP in the waste action. This, in turn, prompted Bethom to present another petition to the chancellor. After reciting the terms of the second award and Stapleton’s refusal to abide by it, he and his wife told of a third referral to arbitration, on this occasion to two powerful arbiters, Humphrey Stafford, earl of Stafford, and Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland. They claimed that, while this award was pending, Stapleton had ‘sewet pryvely’ his action of waste, taking advantage of the shrievalty of his brother-in-law, Henry Fenwick*, to secure a writ of inquiry without having the defendants summoned or warned; and that he had then resorted to yet greater corruption by securing the writ and record of the inquisition from the under sheriff, and returned them himself, having added over £100 to the sum awarded by the jury in damages.
Unfortunately no record of the award survives, but the dispute continued; there are firm indications that the Crown’s intervention through Neville had not been decisive. In Easter term 1442, while Stapleton was in office as sheriff of Cumberland, he had the Bethoms attached on a plea of conspiracy, claiming damages of 40 marks for his indictment before the Lancashire j.p.s.; and in the following term he brought a further action of waste against them, on this occasion in respect of property at Botcherby near Carlisle.
As if this long-running dispute was not enough, Bethom also found time to quarrel with a Lancashire neighbour, Thomas Laurence*. Nothing is known of the reason for this conflict or when it began, but it seems that the two men were on poor terms as early as the mid 1430s. This is to be inferred from Bethom’s nomination as a collector in Lancashire for the fifteenth and tenth granted in the Parliament of 1435: the MPs were responsible for making nominations, and it is more than coincidence that Laurence had sat for Lancashire. Bethom’s appointment was irregular in that the right of nomination in Lancashire was the responsibility of the chancellor of the county palatine rather than the King. For this reason the commission was quickly set aside; none the less, Bethom must have resented Laurence’s part in the affair. Later he resorted to violent redress.
This dispute was probably not as serious as the exaggerated indictments suggest. It certainly did not impede the recovery of Bethom’s fortunes in the early 1440s after a near-complete exclusion from public affairs after his surrender of the deputy shrievalty. In 1441 he was appointed to his first local government commission since 1418 (saving his naming as a tax collector); in 1442 he again appeared as a parliamentary attestor, on this occasion witnessing the election of his nephew, Walter Strickland II*; and, more importantly, in April 1443 he was added to the Westmorland bench.
Bethom survived into the late 1440s. On 26 Jan. 1447 he headed attestors to the election of Nicholas Girlington* and George Dacre* at a poorly-attended county court; at the Lancashire assizes of Lent 1448 he unsuccessfully reasserted his family’s ancient claim to the Lancashire church of Whittington, a few miles from Beetham; and on 2 Sept. 1448 he was named alongside Girlington among the feoffees of William, Lord Harington.