Burton came from a family which had only recently established itself in the landowning class. Although noted during the late 14th century for their wealth and influence, his ancestors had before then lived as burgesses in Stamford, Lincolnshire, and it was because of a highly advantageous marriage that they were able to assume a dominant position in the county of Rutland. Burton’s paternal grandfather,
Sir William
† (d.1375), was a distinguished soldier and ambassador, who further consolidated the family estates and founded a college of priests at his home in Tolethorpe. His son, Thomas Burton the elder, represented Rutland in at least four Parliaments and played a prominent part in local affairs, serving as a j.p., sheriff and royal commissioner. He died in July 1382, when his eldest son, Thomas, the subject of this biography, was about 13 years old. Sir John Basings obtained custody of the boy almost immediately, agreeing to pay 100 marks p.a. for his wardship and marriage, even though a substantial part of his inheritance remained in the hands of his widowed mother, who lived on until 1414, if not longer. In addition to her jointure (which comprised the manors of Whitwell and Little Hambleton in Rutland), she received land in the three Berkshire villages of Titcomb, Hartridge and Haslewick as dower, together with rents in Belton (Rutland). Thomas’s two younger brothers also obtained gifts of property and rent at this time with the result that he eventually succeeded, in February 1391, to a somewhat depleted patrimony, possibly burdened with debt. Margery was, however, prepared to compromise, and in the following November she accepted a new dower settlement which gave her possession of the family seat at Tolethorp as well as a sizeable amount of farmland in the surrounding area. This left Thomas in control of his father’s estates in Berkshire, most of which were bought, in the spring of 1397, by the lawyer, William Coventre II, who may have been foreclosing on a mortgage. Thomas also took seisin of property, rents and reversions in the area around both Great and Little Bowden, Leicestershire, but he eventually parted with most of these as well. His position was made much easier when, in July 1400, his mother allowed him to recover all the Burton estates which still remained in her hands, probably in return for a fixed annuity. An heiress in her own right, she left him on her death the Huntingdonshire manors of Upton, Sibthorpe and Denton, which had belonged to her father, Thomas Greenham. We do not know the size of Burton’s landed income at the time of his first return to Parliament in 1420, but even allowing for his previous sales of property it seems reasonable to assume that he could theoretically rely upon reserves of over £100 p.a., albeit while still bearing a heavy load of debts. Although he engaged in a number of minor transactions in Rutland, our Member made no substantial additions to his inheritance. On the contrary, in 1412 he actually sold some of his estates there, too, to Roger Flore, an extremely shrewd and influential lawyer, who clearly drove a hard bargain for his 200 marks’ purchase price. In September of that year Burton assumed personal responsibility for the upkeep of his grandfather’s chantry in Tolethorpe, but this measure merely reflects the paucity of the original endowment, and marks the virtual end of the foundation. Perhaps because of these initial various financial problems, Burton had surprisingly little to do with the affairs of other landowners in the area. In May 1423, however, he and William Sheffield offered joint securities of £200 that the latter’s father-in-law, Roland St. Liz, would accept the award of arbitrators in a property dispute.
Not much evidence has survived to illuminate the very early stages of Burton’s career. In February 1394 he and Sir John Calveley stood surety at the Exchequer for John, Lord Beaumont, as farmer of the estates of the late Nicholas Styuecle. His longstanding and important connexion with Edward, 2nd duke of York, dates from the last years of the century. It was in the autumn of 1397 that he received an annuity of 40 marks, payable to him for life from the lordship of Oakham, in Rutland, as one of the then newly-created duke of Aumale’s knights bachelor. Five years later, York gave him a second, larger fee, this time of £40 p.a. charged upon the revenues of Stamford and Grantham, Lincolnshire; and in October 1404 a third grant of 100 marks p.a. was made to him out of the duke’s own pension from the London customs. This award seems to have replaced the two previous ones, since it alone was confirmed by royal letters patent in February 1416, four months after York’s death at the battle of Agincourt, and again at the beginning of Henry VI’s reign. On his coming of age in 1433, Richard, duke of York, offered securities of £2,000 as a guarantee that he, too, would continue to pay all his late kinsman’s retainers, including Sir Thomas. Meanwhile, Burton had long followed the example of his ‘good lord’, and thrown in his lot with the house of Lancaster. Duke Edward’s appointment by Henry IV as lieutenant of South Wales led to his own involvement in the struggle against Owen Glendower. He first took up arms on behalf of Henry IV in March 1404, when, together with a band of 12 men-at-arms (including his brother, Robert) and 45 archers, he undertook to defend the castles of Cardigan and Aberystwyth against the Welsh rebels. His task was not made any easier by the government’s failure to meet his expenses, and by the following November he had received only £50 towards a total wage bill of almost £390, a shortfall which can only have compounded his existing financial problems. His force was gradually reduced over the next few months although the question of payment still dragged on as he petitioned for redress.
Burton’s difficulty in obtaining a settlement of these accounts at the Exchequer may well explain his continuing inability to satisfy his own creditors, some of whom had been unpaid for years. In May 1422 he secured royal letters of pardon for an outlawry incurred during the previous reign, when he had refused to appear in court to answer four actions for debt. He then seems to have owed at least £155, of which £100 was claimed by the executors of one John Braundyssh, a ‘ffyschere’ from Berkshire, and the rest by an assortment of city merchants. It is tempting to see in Burton’s early land sales an attempt to deal with an inherited burden of debt, later made worse by the demands of royal office, but not enough is known about his affairs to be certain on this point. He may have been partly assuaged by a grant, bestowed upon him in about 1420, of property in Caen, Normandy; and it was, no doubt, the prospect of further acquisitions abroad which finally led him to settle in France, where fortunes were still to be made through speculation in confiscated property. Burton became mayor of Bayonne in December 1428, exactly one month after his third and last term as sheriff of Rutland came to an end, although he did not take up his duties until the following year. He had already settled his manor of Tolethorpe upon a new group of feoffees, among whom were his neighbours, Robert Browe and John Culpepper; and on 28 Jan. he received permission from the Crown to appoint attorneys in England.