Nothing is known of the pedigree of Thomas Compworth beyond his father. The elder Thomas was, like his son, almost certainly a lawyer. He established himself as a member of the lesser Oxfordshire gentry by marriage in about 1362 to Agnes, heiress of the manor of Thrupp near Kidlington, but, unfortunately for him, her title to the manor was disputed. Soon after the marriage the elder Thomas recovered it against Nicholas Mymmes of South Mimms in Middlesex, who claimed as heir-in-tail.
The loss of Thrupp was not the setback it might have been for the young Thomas, for the heir was not he but his elder half-brother, Elias Dounhall. None the less, a father convicted of heresy and an indictment for murder were not the most promising of beginnings for a successful career, and it was to be some time before matters improved. Having lost his country estate, the elder Thomas moved to Northampton, perhaps attracted by the town’s lollard community. He was there by 1393 when Richard Stormsworth† complained to the King and council that the mayor of the town, John Fox†, was maintaining a number of lollard sympathizers at his home, among them ‘un Thomas Compworth del countee doxenford qe fut convictz devant le chanceller [de] la universitee doxenford des plusours errours et heresies’.
By this date, if not earlier, Compworth was probably receiving legal training in London. Late in 1398 he came personally into the court of common pleas to sue a plea for the detinue of chattels in London worth £5, and at about the same time he made the first of his many appearances as a mainpernor in Chancery and King’s bench.
The marriage of the duke of Exeter’s daughter, Constance, to the young Thomas Mowbray, heir to the earldom of Norfolk, in 1400 brought Compworth into the service of another family whose loyalty to the Lancastrian regime was soon to fall into question. The first evidence of this service dates from July 1402, when he acted as surety for the commitment to five Mowbray servants of property in Norfolk and Northamptonshire during the heir’s minority. In November 1403 he stood surety for the pardon of Robert Butvelyn of Cottesbrooke (Northamptonshire), a Mowbray servant implicated in the Percy rebellion.
It was probably during these years that Compworth contracted what was, for a man of his rank, a potentially lucrative match. By the autumn of 1406 he had taken as his wife Elizabeth, daughter of William Hondsacre, heiress to lands in Warwickshire and Northamptonshire. Unfortunately for him, however, her title to this property was insecure, and this insecurity may have prompted him and his wife to sell their title. By a final concord levied in Hilary term 1407 the couple released their right in the manor of Withybrook in Warwickshire to the Coventry merchant, William Botener.
Despite these apparent setbacks Compworth’s legal career continued to make progress. He was sufficiently well established to be appointed briefly to the quorum of the Northamptonshire bench from 1412 to 1414. Soon after, on 27 Feb. 1416, he attested his first parliamentary election in the county, and he was again among the attestors at the election held in the next year.
Compworth also found another patron in Maud, widow of John, Lord Lovell (d.1408). No doubt their association arose in part out of their common Northamptonshire interests, but it is also significant that, as daughter of Sir Robert Holand, she was the cousin of his early master, the late duke of Exeter. In May 1415 Compworth gave surety for the grant to her of the custody of the caput honoris of the Lovells, the manor of Titchmarsh, but it seems likely that he had already been among her legal counsel for several years.
In 1420 Compworth joined with two other Northamptonshire lawyers, Thomas Billing* and William Tresham*, in winning from the Crown the wardship and marriage of Ralph (b.1409), grandson and heir of Ralph Parles† of Watford, at the cost of £100. A significant part of the Parles inheritance, including the manor of Helmdon, was in the hands of feoffees, but the grantees gained the custody of the manor of Watford with lands in Stoke Bruerne and Shutlanger. This raises the question of the status of Compworth’s own landholding in Helmdon. As early as 1412 he had been described as resident there, and it may be that he held the Parles manor as lessee. If this was so it would explain his interest in the wardship.
In these circumstances it is curious that Compworth was not restored to the bench. No very likely explanation presents itself, but it may be that earlier lollard sympathies detracted from his qualifications as a magistrate. He certainly had strong associations among the sect his father had favoured. Sawtry, who acted as his mainpernor in 1400, was burnt at the stake for his heretical opinions in the following year. Much later, in 1425 he acted in bonds alongside John Clement, a London tailor once imprisoned as a suspected sympathizer of the fugitive Sir John Oldcastle†, and William Hert of Lincoln, who was later named as a lollard sympathizer by Robert Burton, precentor of Lincoln cathedral.
Compworth’s single election to Parliament came on 3 Oct. 1427, when he was returned for the borough of Northampton. He had continued his father’s connexions with the town: in 1406 and 1410 he had been described as ‘of Northampton’ in a deed and mainprise; in 1413 he stood surety in King’s bench for Edmund Ferrers, a prominent Northampton wine merchant; and in 1424 he was named as a feoffee of the Northampton property once held by Nicholas Horncastle†.
Little is known of the last years of Compworth’s life. He attested his last recorded Northamptonshire election in 1432, and thereafter his legal business dwindled as his age advanced. He is occasionally found as a feoffee, acting both for the Buckinghamshire esquire, John Neville, and a Northampton gentleman, Thomas Watford, during the 1430s, but his appearances as a surety became far more infrequent than they had been at the height of his career.