On 28 Dec. 1392 William Palmer entered into an agreement with Robert Digby at Digby’s manor of Tilton-on-the-Hill in Leicestershire. Palmer undertook to marry Digby’s daughter for a portion of 120 marks, contracting to settle his lands in Frolesworth and Leire in the same county as jointure.
This Palmer did, like many careerists, by taking advantage of the acute financial difficulties of an established landed family. Sir John Trussell†, a substantial landowner in Northamptonshire and Leicestershire, had been forced into debt through the expenses of litigation and the heavy securities demanded of him for his involvement in disorder. In 1416 he alienated to our MP’s father his manor in Holt with lands in neighbouring Prestgrave, Drayton and Bringhurst in south-east Leicestershire, and soon after similarly surrendered his manor of Westhall in nearby East Carlton, just over the river Welland in Northamptonshire. It is likely that these properties had been mortgaged, and that Palmer had taken over the mortgages which Trussell then proved unable to redeem.
But, if William was a successful man, his eldest son, the subject of this biography, was even more so. For over 50 years Thomas Palmer was one of the most important men of business in the east Midlands. His father died between 15 Feb., when appointed to a gaol delivery commission, and 14 May 1424, when his widowed stepmother farmed her manor of Easthall in East Carlton to her son, John Palmer, our MP and John Mulsho of Finedon in Northamptonshire.
Palmer first became active in the land market in the late 1420s, probably investing the liquid profits of his father’s career for his own had hardly yet begun. On 24 June 1425 Sir John Trussell’s son, John, who had succeeded his father in the previous year, quitclaimed to him all his right in ‘Trussell’s manor’ in Holt and the manor of Westhall in East Carlton, the end of a process of acquisition begun by Palmer’s father. Far more significantly, by a fine levied in 1427, our MP acquired the other manor in Holt together with a manor in neighbouring Prestgrave and property at Ashley, a few miles away in Northamptonshire, from Joan, widow of Sir George Nowers, daughter and heir of John Olney of Holt.
This considerable augmentation of Palmer’s estates was accompanied by the development of close links with several of the leading gentry in the immediate vicinity of Holt. He had a ready entree into local society through the head of his late mother’s family, Everard Digby*, who had a residence at Stoke Dry, a few miles away. The two men long maintained a close association for over 30 years, one that survived their divergent political sympathies in the 1450s. Their family relationship was recognized in a fine levied in 1425, probably on the occasion of Digby’s marriage to Elizabeth Hunt, by which our MP, his brother, William Palmer, and his sister, Margaret Blaby, were given remainder interests, albeit distant ones, in the Digby manor of Billesdon, not far from Holt.
The expansion of Palmer’s estates came at an opportune moment for it corresponded with the death of his first wife, leaving him able to offer a substantial jointure in the search for a new bride. His lack of male issue by his first wife added urgency to his search and also left him readier to settle this jointure to the advantage of any issue he might have by his new wife. His choice fixed on Elizabeth, one of the two daughters and coheirs-presumptive of the soldier, Sir William Byshoppeston, and he made a handsome settlement upon her. On 17 Jan. 1429 two of his feoffees, his half-brother, John Palmer, and Richard Greystoke, parson of Cranoe, granted the manors of Holt, once of John Olney, and Keythorpe, a few miles to the south-west of Holt, to him and his new wife and their issue, thus giving any children the marriage might produce preference over the two daughters he had by his first wife.
Palmer’s move to Holt and the continuing additions to his Leicestershire properties explain why, in the early 1430s, the main focus of his local interests switched to that county from Northamptonshire. After a term as escheator of the joint bailiwick of Northamptonshire and Rutland,
On 29 June 1437, described as ‘of Holt, gentleman, late of Rockingham’, Palmer sued out a general pardon for something more than mere insurance. A few days later he appeared personally in the court of King’s bench to plead it against the King’s suit, pending since as long before as 1426, for his failure to bring to court a Staffordshire yeoman, for whom he had stood bail. In the late 1430s and early 1440s he frequently acted as a mainpernor for those answering indictments in the same court.
Such office only added to standing, and it is not surprising that, as an active member of two county benches, Palmer was readily able to find places in the service of the local nobility.
Such service did nothing to either lessen or intensify Palmer’s involvement in local government. On 21 Dec. 1441, he was again elected for Leicestershire, on this occasion with another leading lawyer, Richard Neel. While at Westminster he acted as a mainpernor in Chancery for Richard Pittes, who had formerly been one of his fellow verderers in the forest of Rockingham, and for other tenants of the manor of Brigstock.
Two years later, on the death of Sir William Byshoppeston, Palmer secured a further augmentation of his lands. His second wife’s brother had met his death campaigning in France in the 1430s, and this had prompted her father to make a complicated settlement of the family inheritance. By a final concord levied in 1439, to which our MP was a party, Sir William settled his entire inheritance on himself for the life of one Thomas Chapman of Drayton, with remainders to three different sets of feoffees, who were to hold successively for the lives of three other named individuals. Only on the termination of these life interests were the lands to pass to the issue of his late wife Philippa. One can only speculate on the purposes of this conveyance, but it is significant that those for whose lives Sir William and the feoffees were successively to hold were all associates of Palmer.
By the 1440s Palmer had built on the foundation laid by his father to make himself one of the richest of the Leicestershire gentry. His arrival among the county elite was reflected in the royal grant to him, on 1 May 1448, ‘of special grace’ and ‘without payment of any fine or great fee of the seal’, of licence to empark 300 acres of land in Holt or Keythorpe and of free warren in his demesne lands there and elsewhere.
On 6 Feb. 1449 Palmer was elected to represent Leicestershire in Parliament for the fourth time. The return was irregular in that no attestors are named, but even though the other successful candidate was Thomas Everingham*, a Household servant and retainer of John, Viscount Beaumont, it is difficult to discern an overt political dimension to the election.
These arrangements had been made against the distant background of the turbulent Parliament of 1449-50, which saw the fall of the duke of Suffolk. Palmer had not sat in this assembly but he had attended the Leicestershire election of 16 Oct. 1449 to witness the return of two Members, Richard Hotoft* and William Feldyng*, who were supporters of the Court. He was, however, called back into the political fray at the next Parliament. There can be no doubt that his election, on 29 Oct. 1450, to represent Rutland, for the first and only time, is to be interpreted as an aspect of his service to the duke of York. The elections to this Parliament took place in the atmosphere of uncertainty and suspicion attendant upon the duke’s sudden return from Ireland, and in several counties were successfully influenced by the electioneering of York and his supporters. Palmer’s return for a county in which his landholdings were negligible is one example of this success; Thomas Mulsho’s return for neighbouring Northamptonshire is another. The question arises as to why our MP was not elected for Leicestershire. The fact that the election for that county was delayed until 12 Nov., six days after Parliament had assembled, suggests a possible answer. The writs of summons were issued on 5 Sept. and hence the Leicestershire election could readily have been held at the county court if not of 17 Sept. then of 15 Oct. The delay implies that it was deliberately held over until after the Rutland election, even though this meant that it could not be held until after Parliament had assembled, and that the results of the two elections were linked. It is thus a fair surmise that Palmer was a candidate in Leicestershire, and that, to avoid a politically divisive contest, he agreed, perhaps after lengthy discussion, to withdraw if he could secure a seat in Rutland. Unusually in the return made by the Leicestershire sheriff four mainpernors were named for each MP. Strikingly, Palmer and his friend Everard Digby stood as mainpernors for John Bellers. The other MP was Robert Staunton*, a follower of Viscount Beaumont. Perhaps Palmer and Bellers had intended to stand as a ‘joint ticket’, but could not be returned because of the candidature of Staunton, who may have represented those who were hostile to the pretensions of the duke of York.
Two pieces of evidence suggest that once he arrived at Westminster Palmer took an active part in the proceedings of this important assembly. On 10 Feb. 1451, during the second session, he was appointed to a commission of inquiry into the complaints of soldiers retained to serve in France that Thomas, Lord Hoo, the chancellor of Normandy, and other former captains had detained the wages due to them. The appointment of this commission and Palmer’s nomination to it is likely to have been a concession to the King’s critics in the Commons. On 19 Apr., the last day of this session, York appointed Palmer as steward of all his forest courts in Rockingham, Brigstock and Cliffe, an appointment which can be interpreted either as reward for his support in this Parliament or an attempt to bind him more closely to his service.
The recovery of Lancastrian fortunes in the wake of the abortive Yorkist rising at Dartford confronted Palmer with the consequences of his identification with the duke’s cause. On 22 June 1452 he sued out a general pardon, and on the following 6 July he produced in Chancery the mainpernors necessary for its successfully pleading in bar to indictment.
Having survived this alarm, Palmer’s career resumed its established pattern. Within two weeks of his indictment he was standing as mainpernor for pardons granted to his son-in-law, William Neville, Everard Digby and the wealthy Nottingham merchant, Thomas Thurland*. On 1 Mar. 1453 he once more attested a Leicestershire parliamentary election; in December 1454 he was one of those nominated to arbitrate the dispute between Digby and Bartholomew Villers over the Clerk of Whissendine inheritance; and in 1455 his feoffees in the manor of Keythorpe – Lord Cromwell, Sir Leonard Hastings*, and his old friends, Digby and John Bellers – had a plea pending against various local clergy for hunting in his free warren there.
One reason why Palmer managed to maintain his place in local affairs despite the increasing militancy of the court party may have been his close friendship with Everard Digby, who, by 1459, had emerged as one of the most important Lancastrian supporters. More significant for the future, however, was an association Palmer formed with William Hastings, son and heir of his former parliamentary colleague and feoffee, Sir Leonard. Their alliance was a natural one. The Hastings family had long been closely identified with the duke of York, but William, like our MP, was one of the Yorkists fortunate enough to escape the attainders of the Parliament which met in the aftermath of the rout. In May 1460 he named Palmer in a feoffment of his entire estate, a feoffment no doubt intended to protect his lands from the consequences of a possible forfeiture.
The uncertainty that pervaded the politics of the late 1450s was hardly the ideal background for planning the future of an inheritance, but it was in this period that Palmer completed the settlement put in train by the marriage of his daughter Katherine to William Neville. He levied a very important fine in Easter term 1457, providing for the future division of his own lands, although not those he held in right of his wife, between his four daughters. Not improbably the occasion of this settlement was the marriage of Katherine’s sister Joan to Thomas Rokes†, son and heir-apparent of Thomas Rokes II* of Ascott in Wing, Buckinghamshire, for, by a fine of the same term, the manor of Ascott was settled on the couple and their issue. The division was a complex one. After the deaths of himself and his wife, his two manors in Holt together with land in Medbourne were to pass to Katherine Neville and the heirs of her body, and his manor of Drayton with property in Prestgrave and Bringhurst to Neville and Katherine and the heirs of her body. These manors, together with the manor of Lubenham settled in 1450, were to form the pourparty of the Nevilles. His other principal holdings, the manor of Keythorpe with property in Tugby, Goadby and Billesdon was settled, in remainder expectant on the deaths of himself and his wife, on Katherine’s full sister, Joan, and her husband, Rokes, and the heirs of her body. This left our MP’s two daughters by his first wife to divide between them the modest patrimony of their grandfather. After their father’s death, they were to have his entailed lands in Rockingham, long before settled as their mother’s jointure, Frolesworth and Leire to them and their issue. Unless and until the issue of their half-sisters failed they would inherit nothing more.
This settlement reflects two things, the one reinforcing the other. First, the generous jointure Palmer had settled on his second wife at the time of their marriage, and to which he had subsequently added, meant that, even had he wanted to, he could not legally divide his inheritance equally between his four daughters. He was bound to favour his two daughters by the Byshoppeston heiress at the expense of their half-sisters. Second, he himself appears to have been unenthusiastic about the division of an inheritance so painstakingly built up by his father and himself. For these reasons the unfortunate daughters of his first wife were largely disinherited, while one of their half-sisters was favoured over the other in the division of the main estates. In some ways his son-in-law, William Neville, became his surrogate heir.
Predictably, after the accession of Edward IV, Palmer came to take an even more central role in the administration of those counties in which he held property. On 11 May 1461 he was appointed to the important commission charged with the responsibility of taking into the new King’s hands the extensive estates of two of the leading Lancastrians in the Midlands, Viscount Beaumont and Lord Roos. In the following November he was pricked as sheriff of Rutland, and, while in office, was given the additional responsibility of acting as the King’s receiver in Leicestershire and neighbouring counties. One so active in the service of the new regime had the right to expect some reward, and Palmer was not to be disappointed. On 3 Dec. 1461 he was jointly granted, along with his nephew, William Palmer, and Ralph Hastings†, brother of Lord Hastings, the keeping and herbage of the lawn of Benefield and of the parks of Brigstock and Cliffe, part of royal forest of Rockingham, for the lengthy term of 20 years at an annual rent of 20 marks. More important was the grant to him on the following 2 Apr., for a period of ten years, of the Leicestershire manor of Freeby, near Melton Mowbray, in royal hands as a result of the attainder of Lord Roos. This grant was a recognition not only of his good service to the King and the late duke of York, but also as compensation for goods worth £340 forcibly taken from him by Roos, in his coming from Ludlow field. If this was an accurate measure of this loss, the grant was only partial recompense for, under its terms, he was to take only £16 p.a. to his own use. On 15 July 1463 the receivership of the honour of Leicester was added to Palmer’s offices and, as a further mark of royal favour, he was allowed to declare his account on oath.
Given his close association with the new regime and with William, Lord Hastings, it is not surprising that, despite his advanced years, Palmer should have been elected to represent Leicestershire, with Robert Staunton, another servant of Hastings, in the Parliament of 1467. This may not be the first time he had sat in Parliament during the 1460s. No returns survive for Leicestershire for the Parliaments of 1461 and 1463, and, although he is unlikely to have sat in 1463 when he was serving as sheriff of Rutland, his Yorkist connexions make it a distinct possibility that he was returned in 1461.
Palmer’s grant of Freeby was extended for a further period of 18 months by a grant of November 1466 and then exempted from the Act of Resumption passed during the first session of the subsequent Parliament. Curiously, despite this exemption, on 23 Nov. 1467, the manor, which he was said to hold for life, was granted to the royal servant, Edward Hardgill†, to hold from the previous Easter, but this grant did not take effect until after our MP’s death for the manor was still in his hands in 1471. He gained a further small mark of royal patronage in February 1470, when the King gave him the sum of £53 as compensation for a forfeited bond he had long before entered into on behalf of the late duke of York.
The 1460s marked both the height and the end of Palmer’s lengthy career. The brief restoration of Henry VI resulted in his exclusion from the Leicestershire bench, and he did not resume his active role in local affairs on Edward IV’s restoration. Advanced age is the likely reason, and very little is known of the last years of his life. Shortly before his death his grand-daughter, Margery Rokes, was contracted in marriage to Christopher Neel, son and heir apparent of Justice Neel. Given his long acquaintance with his fellow Leicestershire lawyer, there can be little doubt that Palmer was responsible for negotiating the terms of his grand-daughter’s settlement and he appears to have pressed a hard bargain. Even though he had favoured the Nevilles in the division of his estates, Margery’s expectations were still considerable enough for him successfully to ask that the judge settle upon her a jointure of as much as 40 marks p.a.
Palmer died on 5 Sept. 1475.
The survival of a new rental compiled for Palmer’s estates in January 1467 provides an opportunity to assess accurately the extent and value of the landed acquisitions a successful career had brought him. The total annual rental value of his father’s inheritance was a modest £9 10s. 8d., and even this may be an overestimate in that it includes property that our MP had purchased in Rockingham. His father’s purchases are more difficult to value since the rental makes no distinction between purchases of our MP and those of his father in the neighbouring vills of Holt, Prestgrave, Bringhurst and Drayton. William Palmer, however, is known to have demised his manor in Holt to farm for an annual rent of £3 13s. 4d., and, adding this to the 1467 rental value of the lands in the other three vills, we arrive at a maximum value of his purchases of about £15 (this excludes the manor he bought in East Carlton not included in the 1467 rental). Thus the total value of the property Thomas inherited was less than £25 and yet the rental value of the estates he held in his own right was £106 exclusive of the £16 he received from the manor of Freeby which he held by royal grant (this sum is also exclusive of the lands he held in his wife’s right for these do not appear in the rental).
This figure is all the more impressive when one considers that nearly all Palmer’s purchases took place in the first part of his career, and provides a striking illustration of the profitability of a legal career with an exclusively local focus. It is worth noting that he was far more active in the land market than Richard Neel, the only Leicestershire man appointed to the judicial bench in this period. Even more noteworthy is the fact that he was able to concentrate his purchases within such a small area. Generally the large-scale purchaser of lands had to take his opportunities to purchase where he found them. Palmer was fortunate, first, in the fact that his father found a knight both under financial pressure to sell and with little reason to resist that pressure, and, second, that in the neighbourhood of the estates the family thus acquired were other proprietors who, for various reasons, were open to offers for their lands in the area. The Bauds, for example, were an ancient Essex family. Their manor of Lubenham, although long in their hands, was peripheral to their main interests, and, despite the fact that it had been settled in tail-male in 1331, it is not surprising that they were willing to let it go.
Palmer’s financial interest in property extended beyond its purchase. In February 1450, with his half-brother, John, he contracted to pay 100 marks to take, over a period of four years, the wood growing on 40 acres of land at Corby, the property of the lunatic George Neville, Lord Latimer, within the forest of Rockingham. Six years later he took the farm from Henry, Lord Scrope of Bolton, of a quarter of the manor of Medbourne near Holt for a nominal annual rent of a rose, probably in repayment of a loan. More importantly, a Chancery case shows that he was a wool-grower on a considerable scale: in the late 1440s a London draper Robert Bertyn† purchased from him wool worth as much as 400 marks, a sum that proved beyond Bertyn’s means to pay.
As a recent arrival among the leading county gentry Palmer had an urgent need to establish a residence worthy of his new status. His acquisition of the manor in Holt brought with it a large manor-house built by the Trussells in the previous century. To this he made substantial additions, which still survive, most notably a magnificent bay-window at the south-west corner of the hall and a large two storey porch with an embattled roof at the south-east. It may be that these works were begun at about the same time as he purchased his licence to empark in 1448, but it is also likely that they were only completed shortly before his death. While his arms – azure, a fleur-de-lis or – both alone and impaling those of his Byshoppeston wife appear above the porch windows, a large space has been left clear over the entrance, presumably for a larger armorial decoration that was never completed. Palmer also seems to have been responsible for the addition of clerestory and other work at the parish church of Holt.
Although Palmer died without male issue, his family long continued at East Carlton through the male descendants of his younger half-brother, John, who inherited the lands of his mother, Anne Ward, heiress of the manor of Easthall. Raised to the baronetcy, the family provided several MPs in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most notably the first baronet, Sir Geoffrey Palmer†, appointed attorney-general at the Restoration.