GOWER, Thomas II (d.1460), of Stittenham, Yorks.

Just as there is doubt as to whether Thomas Gower of Stittenham or his namesake of Clapham in Surrey was returned for Appleby in 1435, there is also a doubt, albeit a lesser one, as to whether the Scarborough MP of 1460 was this Thomas of Stittenham or his son. The probability is that it was the father. Both father and son, the latter styled ‘junior’, appear among the attestors to the Yorkshire election of 25 Aug. 1460; yet on the dorse of the electoral writ the Scarborough MP is named as Thomas Gower without the addition of ‘junior’. C219/16/6. Further, although the son was to have a more significant career than the father, in 1460 the father was the more prominent man, and there is strong evidence that, as his son was later to be, he was closely connected with the Nevilles. There is thus an obvious context for his return to this Yorkist Parliament.

The elder Thomas Gower was the son and heir of Walter Gower, head of a family that had been established at Stittenham in the North Riding, very near the Neville castle of Sheriff Hutton, since the twelfth century. Walter was a tax collector in the North Riding in 1419, but he was wealthier than appointment to so modest a role implies for he was distrained to take up knighthood in 1430 and 1439. VCH Yorks. (N. Riding), ii. 183; CFR, xiv. 219. Even before his father’s death in 1443, Thomas had begun to play a part in local affairs. If he was the MP, then his return to Parliament is the first reference to him. Another Yorkshireman, the lawyer John Cerf*, was the original choice of the electors of the Westmorland borough of Appleby, who were always ready to return outsiders. Yet, although he is named as the MP in the electoral indenture, Gower’s name appears in his place on the dorse of the electoral writ. C219/14/5.

One can only speculate upon how this substitution came about. One possibility is that Cerf, informed of his unwanted election, sought out Gower as his replacement. There is no evidence that the two men knew each other, but it is probable that they did since they both had homes within a dozen miles of York. However this may be, Gower may have had an additional recommendation as an MP. Since his family home lay within the orbit of the Nevilles, an attachment to Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, may have been a consideration in his return. A connexion with that lord would also help to explain the grant to him, in January 1439, of the office of riding forester in the royal forest of Galtres, within the bounds of which the Gowers lived and in the administration of which they had previously played a part. CPR, 1436-41, p. 230. His gdfa., another Thomas, had been one of the verderers there: CCR, 1405-9, p. 51.

Further, even though no direct evidence has been found from the early part of Gower’s career of his connexion with the earl, he was on friendly terms with others of the Neville retinue, particularly with Thomas Witham. For Witham: A.J. Pollard, Warwick the Kingmaker, 86-87. In the summer of 1439 he witnessed deeds concerning the manor of Cornbrough near Stittenham, which Witham had acquired by marriage; and soon after the two men were involved in litigation as feoffees of Richard Darell in the manor of Huntingdon near York. CCR, 1435-41, pp. 467, 472; VCH Yorks.(N. Riding), ii. 179; CP40/730, rot. 123; C1/71/130. It is also significant here that on 3 June 1439 his fa. witnessed a deed for the earl’s brother, Robert, bp. of Durham: CCR, 1435-41, p. 452. They also acted together in a more contentious transaction concerning the lands of their neighbour, Robert Lokton. Lokton made two contradictory feoffments of his four small manors in Hutton-upon-Derwent and Bolton-by-Yapham: in 1440 he conveyed them to Gower and two others to hold to the use of his heirs-in-tail, and in 1444 he conveyed to Gower and Witham as purchasers to the use of Gower, subject to the payment of 20 marks p.a. to his sister, Elizabeth Wandesford, for her life. He died soon after, naming Gower as one of his executors, and the manors descended to Gower’s son, Thomas, despite the efforts of the heir-in-tail, John Mowbray, to prove his own title. C139/119/32; CPR, 1441-6, p. 352; C1/16/142-6; 41/12; VCH Yorks. (N. Riding), ii. 151-2; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 556, 1005.

Gower’s friendship with Witham shows that he was at least on the periphery of the Neville retinue, and his purchase of Lokton’s lands suggests that he was a man of some substance, particularly so after his father’s death in 1443. Indeed, in an inquisition of 1488 the combined value of the Gower and Lokton lands was put at as much as £60 p.a. Our MP did not enjoy so great an income: aside from Elizabeth Wandesford’s annuity, his mother survived his father (until an unknown date) and each of his five brothers, under the terms of his father’s will, had an annual rent charge of two marks from the family lands. CIPM Hen. VII, i. 556, 1005; Test. Ebor. ii. 89. His fa. bequeathed our MP’s three sisters a meagre ten marks each for their marriages, perhaps in recognition of the other charges on the estate. This may explain why, at least until the last years of his life, he played a relatively meagre part in local affairs.

In the 1450s, however, Gower’s relationship with the earl of Salisbury became closer. His interest in the Yorkshire elections from 1447 and his nomination to an array commission in 1448 may reflect this, as too, much more emphatically, does his appointment, in succession to the Neville retainer, Robert Constable of Barnby-by-Bossall, to the receivership of the local duchy of Lancaster lordship of Pickering. Although the steward of Pickering was Ralph, Lord Cromwell, the earl held the office in reversion, and was probably responsible for Gower’s appointment in about 1453. Unequivocal evidence of his Neville attachment is provided by his appearance in Chancery on 20 Feb. 1458 to offer surety on a pardon granted to the earl and countess of Salisbury. DL29/490/7946-7; A.J. Pollard, North-Eastern Eng. 249-50; C237/44/83.

Clearly, by the 1450s Gower was an established member of the Neville retinue, and it may be that, in the autumn of 1459, he was in the earl’s company at the battle of Blore Heath and the subsequent confrontation at Ludford Bridge. This is implied by his replacement on 13 Jan. 1460 as forester of Galtres by the King’s esquire, Henry Langton*, and it may be that it was at the same time that he lost the receivership of Pickering to Ralph Assheton†. CPR, 1452-61, p. 544. He was still receiver in Mich. 1457 but by the time of the next surviving acct., Mich. 1460-1, Assheton was in office: DL29/490/7949-50. In these circumstances, he was a natural choice as MP for the North Riding borough of Scarborough after the Yorkists recovered their fortunes in the following summer. There is no direct evidence beyond his election to connect him with Scarborough, although in 1458 he had been commissioned, alongside various men of the borough, to make inquiry and restoration in respect of a ship of Rouen wrongly seized by Thomas, Lord Roos: CPR, 1452-61, p. 436. The John Gower, who had, in the early 1440s, married the widow of the Scarborough MP, William Forster I*, may have been Thomas’s younger brother: Test. Ebor. ii (Surtees Soc. xxx), 162. His election is the last reference to him. He was dead by 27 July 1461 when his office in Galtres forest was committed to his son, Thomas, described as ‘servitor’ of the new King. CPR, 1461-7, p. 151. It is not improbable that he fell in the Neville and Yorkist cause at the battle of Towton. Under the Yorkists, his son and brother, Edward, proved themselves active partisans first of the Nevilles and then of Richard III. Thomas was killed fighting for the latter at Bosworth. For the careers of the younger Thomas and Edward: W.E. Hampton, Mems. Wars of the Roses, 384; Ric. III and the North ed. Horrox, 83; R. Horrox, Ric. III, 50, 129, 311; HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 385-6. The family’s later history was distinguished. As Leveson-Gower, they were dukes of Sutherland from 1833 to 1963. CP, xii (1), 564-9.