BOURNE, Thomas

Very little has been discovered about this MP, and his background remains obscure, although there is a possibility that he was related to a namesake who for several years (at least from 1408 to 1424), had been bailiff of the Sussex rape of Bramber, in which Steyning is situated.1 C1/5/44. What is certain is that he was employed at the Exchequer at least from the spring of 1453, when he was representing Steyning in Parliament. It may be conjectured that the under treasurer, John Wood III*, had played a part in arranging his election, for Wood also held office as steward of the estates of Syon abbey, of which Steyning formed a part. On 14 May, during the second session, Bourne received assignments at the Exchequer on behalf of a number of magnates, for whom he secured replacements of worthless tallies. Prominent among those for whom he acted in this way was Thomas Thorpe*, the Speaker of the Parliament, who had recently been appointed one of the barons of the Exchequer, and on 24 July, three weeks after the close of the session, he received a further assignment of £200 on Thorpe’s behalf.2 E403/793, mm. 4, 14.

As Bourne was later to be described in the Exchequer records as Thorpe’s ‘servant’, and remained his subordinate there for the next seven years at least, the possibility that the baron had also been influential in securing his election should not be discounted, especially as he was not alone among Thorpe’s close associates to secure a seat for a small or impoverished borough. Furthermore, it should be noted that while the Parliament of 1453 was in progress Bourne was the recipient of payments due to Edmund, duke of Somerset, with whom Thorpe was linked in opposition to the duke of York. The return of this obscure Exchequer official to a Parliament noted for the unusually large presence in the Commons of men loyal to the Lancastrian court must have owed something, if not everything, to his links with the baron and the duke. There is further evidence of an association between them. Later the same year, on 3 Sept., Bourne stood surety at the Exchequer for the duke when the latter was given custody of the lands of a deceased tenant-in-chief; and he acted likewise for Thorpe on four subsequent occasions, in February and July 1456, February 1459 and May 1460.3 CFR, xix. 64, 147, 163, 228, 275. On each of these appearances he was described as a ‘gentleman of London’. Meanwhile, in the late 1450s he had continued to be employed at the Exchequer as an agent to receive tallies, but only during the periods when Thorpe was a baron.4 E403/796, mm. 1, 13; 798, m. 11; 800, m. 2; 805, m. 4; 817, m. 2; 819, m. 2. Nothing is recorded about him after his master’s death and Henry VI’s deposition early in 1461.5 There is nothing in the will of Thomas Bourne the London skinner (dated 7 May 1492) to suggest that they were the same person, or even related: PCC 11 Dogett (PROB11/9, ff. 85-86).