BEGET, Thomas

The Begets had been established in Shrewsbury since the late thirteenth century and numbered among the borough’s leading families. Two of the family, both named John and seemingly brothers, were active in the borough administration between the 1430s and 1450s: the younger served as bailiff in 1436-7, and one or other of them as alderman (under the terms of the new Shrewsbury constitution granted in the Parliament of 1445-6) and as coroner in 1446-7 and 1453-4.1 Salop Archs., Shrewsbury recs., assembly bk. 3365/67, ff. 16v, 18, 19v; RP, v. 121 (cf. PROME, xi. 508). The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 173, is in error in naming John Beget as bailiff in 1458-9: assembly bk. 3365/67, f. 20v. It is tempting to conclude that it was one of these Johns who was the MP and that the indenture of return is mistaken in naming him as ‘Thomas’. The borough accounts, however, show that there is no mistake in the return: they record the payment of a flat fee of 40s. to the two MPs of 1447, namely, the prominent lawyer, William Bastard*, and the obscure Thomas Beget.2 C219/15/4; Shrewsbury recs., bailiffs’ accts. 3365/377, m. 7. One can only assume that he was a brother of the two Johns. He makes only one other later appearance in the records: he was alive as late as July 1461, when he was fined 40d. in the borough court for making an affray and his wife 9d. for attachment on suspicion of felony. There he is described as a shearman, the only indication of his trade.3 Shrewsbury recs., ct. rolls 3395/898; bailiffs’ accts. 3365/899, rots. 8, 9. His return is impossible to explain unless one assumes that the Shrewsbury Begets were the family that provided two household servants in Henry VI’s reign: John Becket* or Beget, MP for Reigate in 1442, was a yeoman of the Crown who died in 1445, and Thomas Beget, presumably a close kinsman, was King’s serjeant, searcher of ships in the port of Poole and yeoman of the royal chamber in the early 1450s. If the latter was the MP then he was elected as a minor courtier to a Parliament in which the royal affinity was strongly represented, but there is no evidence to connect either of these two household servants with Shrewsbury and much to suggest that their origins lay in the south of England.4 For Thomas: CFR, xviii. 147, 228; xix. 15; CCR, 1447-54, p. 443; E404/69/83; PPC, vi. 225.