BAUD, Thomas

An old family with estates mainly in Essex and Hertfordshire, the Bauds were never especially prominent although at least two of Thomas’s ancestors sat in 14th-century Parliaments, and his great-grandfather Sir John Baud died on campaign in France in 1346. The Bauds adopted Little Hadham as their main residence in the early 1400s during the lifetime of the MP’s uncle Walter. The eldest of the three sons of Sir William Baud†, Walter died without issue in 1421 and was succeeded by his brother John who died in the following year. John left several sons, but none survived him for long and in 1426 Walter’s youngest brother, the MP’s father and namesake, became head of the family.6 Trans. Essex Arch. Soc. n.s. x. 145-76, 348; CFR, xv. 2, 25, 44-45; CIPM, xxii. 180-1, 675, 737; VCH Herts. iii. 358-60. Already in possession of a manor at Standon in Hertfordshire (a property which Sir William Baud had settled upon him), the elder Thomas Baud now succeeded to several other manors, situated at Little Hadham and Hinxworth in that county, Corringham and South Weald in Essex and Lubenham in Leicestershire. He was confirmed in possession of another Hertfordshire manor, ‘Upwick’ in Albury, in 1428 when Walter’s widow Katherine and her new husband William Goodred† surrendered her interest in that property.7 VCH Herts. iv. 8, 51; VCH Essex, viii. 82; Feudal Aids, ii. 224, 431, 447, 451; iii. 123; CP25(1)/91/111/33. Of a relatively advanced age when he inherited these estates, the elder Thomas had only a few years in which to enjoy them, for he died in 1430.

One of the more obscure MPs for Hertfordshire in Henry VI’s reign, Baud is first heard of in the autumn of 1426 when he was responsible for leasing the manor of ‘Byggyngs’ in Standon to a tenant.8 E210/4967. In the following year he became a trustee of certain lands in Bishop’s Stortford that his father had set aside for the maintenance of a chantry priest at Little Hadham,9 VCH Herts. iv. 52. and in 1428 he, the elder Thomas and others entered a series of bonds to William and Katherine Goodred. The bonds were to guarantee that the couple would receive payments totalling £126, almost certainly in connexion with the acquisition of ‘Upwick’.10 CP40/670, cart. rots. 1, 2. Baud gained election to his only Parliament within two years of his father’s death. Richard, duke of York, was his feudal lord at Standon,11 VCH Herts. iii. 353; C141/1/6. but there is no evidence that he enjoyed the support of a patron when he stood for the Commons. In any case, he was well qualified to seek election as a knight of the shire: subsidy commissioners calculated that he enjoyed a landed income of £90 p.a. in the mid 1430s,12 H.L. Gray, ‘Incomes from Land in Eng. in 1436’, EHR, xlix. 634. and he was distrained for knighthood later in the same decade. Presumably, the tax assessment included the lands and fisheries situated at Holbeach and elsewhere in the Lincolnshire fens that his wife Margery had brought to their marriage,13 C141/7/53. and it was probably due to her links with that county that he became a feoffee for Margaret, widow of the Lincolnshire esquire, John Copledyke.14 CAD, iv. A8528. He did not retain all of his inheritance, since he sold Lubenham to Thomas Palmer* in the early 1440s.15 VCH Leics. v. 22; CCR, 1441-7, p. 117.

In spite of having sat in the Commons, Baud appears not to have played any part as a county administrator before the later 1440s. Some time in the second half of that decade, the queen wrote him a letter chiding him for wrongfully suing one of her tenants at Walden, Essex, and commanding him to refer his suit to her and her council.16 Letters Margaret of Anjou (Cam. Soc. lxxxvi), 154. His lack of involvement in local affairs is difficult to explain, although it is possible that he suffered from ill health or had spent a considerable time away from home campaigning in France. Baud died on 26 Sept. 1449,17 C139/137/4. and was buried in Little Hadham parish church. In his will, dated four days earlier,18 PCC 18 Rous (PROB11/1, ff. 141v, 142). he ordered that Margery should retain Corringham for life, in return for surrendering her dower rights in his other properties. After her death, Corringham was to revert to his eldest son and heir Ralph, who was to inherit the bulk of his estates and all his household ‘stuff’ (including two vestments, a chalice, two service books and a couple of silver cruets). Baud also provided for his three younger sons. He devised the manor of ‘Berwick’ in Standon to William and his male heirs and two properties in the same parish, ‘Byggyngs’ and a holding known as ‘Oldhalle’, to Thomas and his male heirs, and bequeathed an annuity of six marks to Edmund. He expected Edmund to join the Church and the annuity was intended to pay for his schooling and maintenance until he could secure a living. Baud also ordered his executors to sell a part of his ‘livelihood’ to raise money for the marriage portions of his unmarried daughters, although without revealing their names or how many of them there were. In all likelihood, one of these girls was his daughter Elizabeth, whom he had placed in the household of William Cotton of London in the autumn of 1443. (How he came to have dealings with Cotton is unknown, but he may have had interests of his own in the City, where he was a party to transactions of property in 1443 and 1445.)19 CAD, ii. B2176-7, 2179. Elizabeth had lodged for just over a year with Cotton, who afterwards sued her father for failing to pay an agreed lodging fee of five marks.20 CP40/743, rot. 52d. Cotton was prob. the filacer of the ct. of KB of that name who died in 1459, rather than the Cambs. MP, William Cotton*: CCR, 1454-61, p. 261; PCC 15 Stokton (PROB11/4, f. 246). Yet, if so, one might expect him to have sued Baud in KB, the ct. with which he was associated, rather than the common pleas. Baud appointed four executors: his wife Margery, Thomas Barrington of Essex, John Leventhorpe (son of John Leventhorpe I*) and Roger Greyve, rector of Corringham. Some 24 years of age at his father’s death, Ralph Baud subsequently served as a j.p. and ad hoc commissioner in Hertfordshire and as sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire.21 C139/137/4; CFR, xx. 99, 103, 254, 268; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 199, p. 616. By his own death in the summer of 1483, he enjoyed possession of the manors that the MP had settled on his brothers, presumably because both William and Thomas had predeceased him without leaving any surviving sons. Ralph’s heir was his son, another Thomas Baud.22 C141/1/6; Trans. Essex Arch. Soc. n.s. x. 169. Still a minor in 1483,23 C141/1/6. this Thomas married a daughter of Sir John Fortescue†, one of his father’s feoffees.24 VCH Essex, viii, 82. Knighted at the creation of Henry VII’s second son, Prince Henry, as duke of York in October 1494,25 CCR, 1485-1500, no. 797; Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, vi. 152. he afterwards suffered financial disaster on behalf of his father-in-law, who died in 1500, heavily indebted to the Crown. In 1503 Sir Thomas, one of Fortescue’s sureties and the administrator of his personal estate, was compelled to mortgage his estates in order to pay off his father-in-law’s debts. He was living in London when he died in comparative poverty five years later, by which time Corringham was the only manor still in his possession.26 CPR 1494-1509, p. 588; VCH Essex, viii. 82; VCH Herts. iv. 8, 51; Add. Ch. 65839; CCR, 1500-9, nos. 218, 239; C1/293/54; PCC 3 Bennett (PROB11/16, f. 20).