BENTHAM, Thomas

No suitable candidate for identification with the Gatton MP of 1450 has been found. It is, however, possible that a clerical error occurred over the Member’s Christian name: Thomas Bentham’s name was inserted into the schedule accompanying the sheriff’s indenture as an afterthought in a different hand, and over an erasure.1 C219/16/1. It is thus possible that it was in fact the household official Robert Bentham I* who represented the Surrey borough. Gatton was one of a number of boroughs that were tacitly enfranchised (or re-enfranchised) in 1449 and 1450 ostensibly on the initiative of the county sheriff (in the case of Surrey this was John Penycoke*, one of the esquires for the King’s body), but in reality doubtless on explicit instructions from Westminster. While Gatton was the property of the Mowbray dukes of Norfolk, it was unquestionably in the Household interest that the 1450 return for Gatton was made. Robert Bentham had sat for different boroughs, both of them in Wiltshire, in the two Parliaments of 1449, and it seems plausible that a seat at Gatton was found for him on this later occasion.