CHAMBER, Thomas II, of Helsington, Westmld.

There are two possible candidates for this MP, and it is possible that the one sat in 1426 and the other in 1455. The least important of the candidates lived at Kirkby Stephen, a few miles south of Appleby, and very little can be discovered about him. In 1421, described as ‘of Kirkby Stephen, husbandman’, he was sued for a debt of 40s. by one Thomas Burcy; in 1425 he himself was the plaintiff, alleging that John Burgham, once parson of Melmerby, some miles to the north of Kirkby Stephen, had taken 120 of his lambs; and in Trinity term 1426, shortly after the end of the Parliament in which he may have sat, a writ of outlawry was issued against him at the suit of John White for close-breaking at Kirkby Stephen. CP40/643, rot. 280; 658, rot. 358d; 660, rots. 389d, 418d; 662, rot. 378. He was still alive in 1440, when he had an action of debt pending against two of his neighbours, but thereafter he disappears from the records. CP40/717, rot. 199d; 719, rot. 191d. Given that his home at Kirkby Stephen lay far nearer to Appleby than did that of the other possible candidate, who resided at Helsington in the south of Westmorland, it is possible that he was the MP in the Leicester Parliament of 1426. Even so, the other candidate was the more important man, styled ‘gentleman’ rather than ‘husbandman’ in the records. He was almost certainly the MP in 1455, and, given that he is known to have been active by the late 1420s, he is to be preferred as the MP in both assemblies.

The MP, if he has been correctly identified, was from a family on the borders of gentility, established in the neighbourhood of Kendal since the late thirteenth century. Recs. Kendale ed. Farrer and Curwen, iii. 135, 156. His father, John, assessed on an income of £5 p.a. in the Westmorland subsidy returns of 1435-6, played the small part in local affairs expected of a man of such modest wealth, serving as a tax collector in the county in 1428 and attesting the county’s parliamentary election in 1435. E179/195/32; CFR, xv. 217; C219/14/5. Thomas enjoyed a greater prominence and was active even before his father’s death. At Pentecost 1427 he was employed as receiver by Richard Singleton of Preston (Lancashire), some 40 miles to the south of Helsington. He was probably assuming a role his father had previously taken, for in a later action Singleton claimed that Thomas had failed to account for £40 received from John Chamber. PL15/6, rot. 18. Thomas had succeeded to his patrimony by the autumn of 1436, when he conveyed the family lands in Helsington and Nether Staveley to two chaplains, but, aside from his possible election for Appleby in 1426, he is not recorded in a public role until August 1441, when he sat on the county jury before royal justices of gaol delivery on their annual visit to Appleby. Recs. Kendale, iii. 157; JUST3/70/14. He was to discharge the same function in 1448, 1453 and 1456: JUST3/70/20, 23, 25.

No doubt Singleton was not his only employer, and better evidence might identify the patron that recommended him to Appleby in 1426 and 1455. In view of the political context of the latter return, with the Nevilles anxious and able to influence northern elections in the wake of their victory at the first battle of St. Albans, it is tempting to suggest that, like his fellow Appleby MP of 1455, Robert Halley*, Chamber had some minor place in the Neville orbit. Unfortunately, there is only one small, and much later, indication of such a connexion: on 3 Mar. 1470 Chamber (or his son and namesake) was a juror at an inquisition post mortem held at Kendal on the death of George Neville, Lord Latimer, uncle of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick. C140/32/28.

Soon after Chamber’s election in 1455 he was drawn into disagreement with his near neighbour, Walter Strickland II*, head of one of the county’s most important gentry families. There had been tensions earlier: in 1440 Walter’s father, Sir Thomas*, had sued Chamber for hunting without licence in his park at Sizergh. And by the mid 1450s there seems to have been further points at issue between our MP and the powerful Stricklands. On 16 Mar. 1456, four days after the end of Parliament, he was at Sizergh to enter into a bond in seven marks to Walter as surety that John of York would come to a satisfactory agreement over claims to common pasture. Later, Strickland sued him for failure to discharge this bond after no settlement had been reached, and, again, for illegally hunting in his park. These pleas were still pending in 1459, but their final outcome is not recorded. CP40/719, rot. 279d; 781, rot. 63d; 783, rot. 97; 784, rot. 220d; 788, rot. 170; 791, rots. 89, 261, 263; 795, rot. 21d.

It may be that Chamber died at about this date and that later references refer to his son and namesake. At any event, a Thomas Chamber played a modest part in local affairs in the 1460s and 1470s. On 22 Oct. 1464 he entered into a bond in £20 to another prominent local figure, Sir Thomas Broughton of Broughton-in-Furness (Lancashire), perhaps in connexion with some employment under the knight, and on 5 Oct. 1466 he was a juror at the inquisition post mortem, taken at Strickland Ketel, of Sir Brian Stapleton*. PL15/35, rot. 12; C140/20/28. Soon after he had an action pending against a local yeoman for close-breaking at ‘le Hawes’ in the parish of Helsington, and in May 1467 he attested the Westmorland parliamentary election. KB27/825, rot. 43d; C219/17/1. The last reference that can be plausibly assigned to our MP dates from June 1476, when he or his son was a juror at Kendal in the inquisition post mortem of (Sir) Richard Redmayne*. The son was still alive in the early 1490s, and the family survived into the seventeenth century. C140/55/20; C1/156/40; Recs. Kendale, ii. 189; iii. 83.