CARPENTER, Thomas, of Hastings, Suss.

As a baron of Hastings, Carpenter could claim exemption from parliamentary taxation on his moveable goods outside the liberty, doing so from Henry IV’s reign through to 1449. These claims indicate that he held land at a number of places near Hastings, including Bexley, Wilting, Ore, Guestling and Crowhurst. E179/225/34a, 36, 38, 40, 41, 50, 59; 226/69, 71; 227/94; 228/107, 110, 112, 118, 131; 229/138, 154. Few specific details survive about his holdings, although he once acquired a rent charge of 4s. p.a. from plots of land in Fairlight. Bolney Bk. (Suss. Rec. Soc. lxiii), 63.

Carpenter had probably taken some part in the government of Hastings before his elections to the consecutive Parliaments of 1429 and 1431, although the evidence is wanting. In between those two returns, in May 1430, he was associated with William Prestwick, the clerk of the Parliaments, and John Faukes (later to be a successor to Prestwick) when John Parker I* of Hastings conveyed to them and others all his goods and chattels. CCR, 1429-35, p. 44. It also looks likely that Carpenter was among the bailiffs of the Cinque Ports sent to officiate at the Yarmouth herring fair of that year. One of those who certainly was, John Adam* of New Romney, became a victim with his fellows of the obstructiveness with which the men of Great Yarmouth all too frequently received their unwelcome guests from the Ports. The bailiffs of the town refused to publish a writ (ordering that the Ports’ delegates should enjoy their customary liberties in peace), which Adam tried to deliver to them on 9 Oct.; nor would they let him and his colleagues sit to hear cases in the guildhall unless they themselves could adjudicate with them; and when, three days later, the Ports’ bailiffs set about keeping the peace of the fair and surveying the sale of herring, as they were entitled to do, the bailiffs came with an armed following and assaulted them. The Ports immediately laid a bill of complaints before the King’s Council, and Carpenter was among those delegated to conduct the suit. SC8/296/14753-4. This was almost certainly heard during the Parliament of January to March 1431, for the other delegates, Adam, William Broughton* and Stephen Alby* were all then, like Carpenter, representing their home Ports in the Commons. Later that year Carpenter witnessed a conveyance by John Edward* and other feoffees of the recently-deceased Richard Huntington* (who had sat with Carpenter in the Parliament of 1429), and he also became a trustee of land belonging to John Tamworth*. CCR, 1429-35, p. 116; Huntington Lib. San Marino, California, Battle Abbey mss, deed 1384.

Carpenter was elected bailiff of Hastings in or before the spring of 1432, and as an MP for the third time five years later. He was one of three men of Hastings put forward at the Brodhull of July 1439 to be bailiff at the Yarmouth herring fair that autumn, but which of the three actually served does not appear in the records. White and Black Bks. 12. Carpenter was regularly sent by his home Port to meetings of the Brodhull at New Romney, and not only during his terms as bailiff, for he attended ten such assemblies between 1433 and 1444. Ibid. 1, 2, 8, 9, 11, 15-17. During his first bailiffship he had witnessed important transactions at Winchelsea for the fulfilment of provisions made long before in the will of John Salerne† (d.1410), Cott. Julius BIV, ff. 46-50; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 287-8. and when, several years later in 1443, a royal licence was obtained for the foundation of ‘Salerne’s chantry’ in the parish church of St. Clement, Hastings, he was associated with two former knights of the shires, Richard Wakehurst† and Reynold Peckham*, as well as with Parker and William Courthope* (his fellow MP of 1431), as the principal founders. CPR, 1441-6, p. 197. Carpenter is not recorded after 1449. There is no evidence to link him with a younger namesake, who lived at Ore and leased the manor of Maxfield in Guestling from Battle abbey in 1474: Battle Abbey mss, deed 1605.