HERT, Thomas, of Arundel, Suss.

In the Hilary term of 1446 several men from Arundel and nearby, headed by a ‘gentleman’ called Robert Gower, and including Thomas Hert, styled ‘yeoman’, were attached in the court of common pleas to answer John Gunter esquire (the elder brother of Giles*) on a charge of illegal entry into his property a few miles away at Racton, and for assaulting his servants on 1 Aug. 1445. Gunter claimed damages of as much as £1,000. In their defence, Hert and the rest stated that in a fracas at Arundel four days before the alleged trespass one Oliver Mettreham alias Bertram had stabbed John Cokesden with a dagger, and had then fled to Racton seeking protection at Gunter’s house. They had gone there in order to arrest him. CP40/740, rot. 466. This suggests either that Hert was acting in the capacity of a town official, or else that he was in the service of the lord of the borough, William, earl of Arundel. Save for his return to the Parliament of 1453, however, nothing more is known about him for certain. It is just conceivable that he was the Thomas Hert who by the 1460s set up in business as a stationer in London, if only because of that Thomas’s association with a London tallow chandler named Robert Trott, who had possibly represented Arundel in 1450: C1/30/66. Another namesake was a groom of the ewery of the Household in Edw. IV’s reign, and claimant to property in Sittingbourne, Kent, purchased by his uncle Richard: C1/33/192.