BETHOM, Thomas

Like nearly all the leading families of Westmorland, the Bethoms could justly claim long ancestry. They had been established at Beetham in the far south of the county, while also holding property across the border in Lancashire at Cowburn, where they were tenants of the duchy of Lancaster. The most prominent early member of the family was Sir Thomas Bethom†, who represented Westmorland in five Parliaments between 1302 and 1313, and in 1310, as reward for military service in Scotland, received a grant of free warren in his demesne lands at Beetham together with a weekly market and annual fair there. His son, Sir Ralph, may have been responsible for building the still-surviving hall at Beetham (now used as a barn).4 J. Nicolson and R. Burn, Westmld. and Cumb. i. 223; CChR, ii. 167; A. Emery, Greater Med. Houses, i. 189-91.

During his early career Thomas was extensively involved in local disorder. In 1395 he was one of several members of his family whose arrest was ordered to answer before the royal council for offences against the abbot of Shap, an order repeated in 1396 and 1397. Soon after he was involved with other Bethoms in the dispute over the lands of William, Lord Windsor, supporting, for unknown reasons, Roger Windsor against Richard Duckett†. Some ten years later, in May 1407, he and three of his brothers had a pardon enrolled on the patent roll for all felonies, either with reference to these offences or later ones.5 CPR, 1391-6, pp. 654, 731-2; 1396-9, pp. 157-8, 503; CPR, 1405-8, p. 316. He was soon in need of a further pardon. On 26 Dec. 1412 he allegedly assaulted Thomas Stell at Helston, cutting off two of his fingers and damaging a third. Stell duly appealed him for mayhem, and in Easter term 1416 Bethom came into King’s bench both to plead not guilty and to produce surety of the peace. Significantly, however, Stell was not the only man to whom he was required to find such surety. On the previous 8 Sept. he and his brothers, William and Robert, had allegedly raided the parsonage of their neighbour, Robert Dockra, parson of Burton-in-Kendal, at the head of some 300 archers. Dockra, as chaplain to Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, was an important man and he petitioned the King for redress. With what result is not known, but it is indicative that when, on 20 May 1416, our MP found surety of peace both to Dokwra and Stell he had to call upon men of standing. Three of them – Sir James Haryngton† of Fishwick (Lancashire), Sir Thomas Rokeby* and Sir John Lancaster† of Rydal (Westmorland) – were prominent knights, a measure of his family’s standing and an indication that his offence against Dokwra was viewed seriously.6 KB27/618, rot. 22, rex rot. 31; 620, rot. 37d, rex rot. 27; SC8/229/11410.

By this time Bethom had begun his career in local government even though he was yet to inherit the family estates. His father was alive as late as 1419-20, when party to a final concord concerning lands in Lancashire, but by this date our MP had twice been named to commissions of array in their native county.7 Lancs. Final Concords (Lancs. Rec. Soc. l), 86; CPR, 1413-16, p. 408; 1416-22, p. 196. These new responsibilities did little in the short term to curtail his violent activities. On 12 July 1419 the chancellor of county palatine of Lancaster was ordered to draw up writs ordering Bethom and others to appear at the next Lancaster sessions or before the royal council (to answer for an undocumented offence). He was also troubled by civil actions. Before February of that year he had a pardon of outlawry for failing to answer Master Robert Appilton, parson of Beetham, for debts totaling as much as 110 marks.8 CCR, 1419-22, p. 16; CPR, 1416-22, p. 167. None the less, his long delayed entry into his inheritance may have moderated his behaviour.9 There is no strictly contemporary estimate of the value of the lands he inherited, but on the death of his s. and h. in 1472 the family lands were valued at £85 p.a.: C140/40/20; Lancs. Inqs. ii (Chetham Soc. xcix), 101. By 19 Apr. 1425 he was respected enough by his peers to be elected to represent his county in Parliament. He took advantage of his presence at Westminster to sue out, on 15 May, a pardon for yet another outlawry, promulgated before Henry V’s death for his failure to appear in the court of common pleas to answer Appilton’s executor, William de Holthorp, for a debt of £100. Clearly the fact that he was labouring under this disability of a minor outlawry had been no deterrent to parliamentary election.10 C219/13/3; CPR, 1422-9, p. 248. Thereafter he began to take a full part in local affairs. On 21 Aug. 1428 he headed a jury of gaol delivery at Appleby, and soon after Elizabeth, widow of John, Lord Clifford, chose him to act as her deputy as sheriff of Westmorland. As such he was responsible for conducting the parliamentary elections of 1429 and 1431; on both occasions his sister’s husband, Sir Thomas Strickland*, was elected.11 JUST3/70/3, m. 4d; C219/14/1, 2.

Bethom’s prominence in local government was, however, short-lived. Early in 1432 he was replaced as deputy sheriff by Henry Wharton, whether because of some default on his part or because he had served what was considered a reasonable term does not appear. Thereafter he was drawn into a lengthy controversy as a result of his second marriage. His new wife was a wealthy widow whose relationship with her stepson, William Stapleton*, had deteriorated to enmity soon after her first husband’s death. Before she married Bethom the quarrel had already been unsuccessfully put to arbitration, and it was again referred without success to arbiters soon after the marriage. This second failure led to the escalation of a dispute that was to dominate the later part of our MP’s career. He and his new wife sued Stapleton in Chancery for failure to abide by earlier agreements; and in Easter term 1437 Stapleton responded by suing them for waste in property at Stainton near Carlisle.12 C1/9/68, 307; 12/220; CP40/705, rot. 380. These were the opening exchanges in a series of actions. On 31 May 1437, before William, Lord Harington, and Robert Brokholes, sitting as Lancashire j.p.s at Cliderowe, Stapleton was indicted for felonious theft from Bethom of livestock worth as much as 100 marks, and had to wait until the following autumn for acquittal.13 CP40/708, rot. 387d; 726, rot. 470d; 727, rot. 618d.

Stapleton hit back quickly. On 12 Jan. 1438 an inquiry allegedly awarded him triple damages totaling £108 against our MP in the waste action. This, in turn, prompted Bethom to present another petition to the chancellor. After reciting the terms of the second award and Stapleton’s refusal to abide by it, he and his wife told of a third referral to arbitration, on this occasion to two powerful arbiters, Humphrey Stafford, earl of Stafford, and Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland. They claimed that, while this award was pending, Stapleton had ‘sewet pryvely’ his action of waste, taking advantage of the shrievalty of his brother-in-law, Henry Fenwick*, to secure a writ of inquiry without having the defendants summoned or warned; and that he had then resorted to yet greater corruption by securing the writ and record of the inquisition from the under sheriff, and returned them himself, having added over £100 to the sum awarded by the jury in damages.14 KB27/732, rot. 47; C1/70/85. This petition brought direct royal intervention. On 28 Nov. Stapleton was obliged to enter into a bond in £40 to appear in Chancery at three weeks after Easter unless, before then, Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, should return an award in the dispute. On the same day the rival parties entered into mutual bonds in as much as 1,000 marks to abide by the earl’s decision.15 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 235, 237-8.

Unfortunately no record of the award survives, but the dispute continued; there are firm indications that the Crown’s intervention through Neville had not been decisive. In Easter term 1442, while Stapleton was in office as sheriff of Cumberland, he had the Bethoms attached on a plea of conspiracy, claiming damages of 40 marks for his indictment before the Lancashire j.p.s.; and in the following term he brought a further action of waste against them, on this occasion in respect of property at Botcherby near Carlisle.16 CP40/725, rot. 197d; 726, rot. 470d; 727, rot. 618d; 728, rot. 136d. It may be that while these actions were pending there was a further attempt at compromise. This, at least, is the inference to be drawn from the assignment of dower to Mary Bethom made in Cumberland on 24 May 1443 and in Westmorland a week later.17 CCR, 1441-7, p. 89; C139/109/28. Again, however, the dispute would not die. On 29 Apr. 1444 the Bethoms appeared in the court of King’s bench to pursue a writ of error against the judgement obtained against them for waste at Stainton.18 KB27/732, rot. 47. This may represent no more than a tying up of loose ends in a concluded quarrel, but it is less easy to dismiss the commissions for Stapleton’s arrest issued on the following 11 May and 8 June. One of those named to the second commission was our MP’s son and heir-apparent, Edward, and he was one of those who caused proclamation to be made at the markets at Penrith and Carlisle, but there is no evidence that they secured Stapleton’s attendance.19 CPR, 1441-6, pp. 287, 290. The commrs. returned that Bethom had been present to hear the proclamation at Penrith: C47/7/6/10. At this point the quarrel disappears, perhaps because of Mary’s death.

As if this long-running dispute was not enough, Bethom also found time to quarrel with a Lancashire neighbour, Thomas Laurence*. Nothing is known of the reason for this conflict or when it began, but it seems that the two men were on poor terms as early as the mid 1430s. This is to be inferred from Bethom’s nomination as a collector in Lancashire for the fifteenth and tenth granted in the Parliament of 1435: the MPs were responsible for making nominations, and it is more than coincidence that Laurence had sat for Lancashire. Bethom’s appointment was irregular in that the right of nomination in Lancashire was the responsibility of the chancellor of the county palatine rather than the King. For this reason the commission was quickly set aside; none the less, Bethom must have resented Laurence’s part in the affair. Later he resorted to violent redress.20 CFR, xvi. 287-8. On 19 Mar. 1440 four of his servants allegedly came with 400 armed men to Yealand Redmayne, a few miles to the south of Beetham, and set fire to Laurence’s houses there. This was the probable context of bonds, dated at Yealand Redmayne on the following 10 June, entered into by Bethom and one of his sons, another Thomas, to Laurence in 200 marks each, perhaps as an earnest of their readiness to abide arbitration. If so, that arbitration was unsuccessful for, on 9 May 1443, our MP himself is said to have led 300 men in a raid on Yealand Redmayne, where Laurence was assaulted. He was duly indicted for this offence before the Lancashire j.p.s. on the following 10 Aug. Not until 4 Mar. 1445 did he appear to plead not guilty, and he was acquitted four days later.21 PL15/6, rot. 23d; 7, rot. 17; 8, rots. 17d, 29.

This dispute was probably not as serious as the exaggerated indictments suggest. It certainly did not impede the recovery of Bethom’s fortunes in the early 1440s after a near-complete exclusion from public affairs after his surrender of the deputy shrievalty. In 1441 he was appointed to his first local government commission since 1418 (saving his naming as a tax collector); in 1442 he again appeared as a parliamentary attestor, on this occasion witnessing the election of his nephew, Walter Strickland II*; and, more importantly, in April 1443 he was added to the Westmorland bench.22 CPR, 1436-41, p. 576; 1441-6, p. 480; C219/15/2. This recovery of his fortunes may explain the issue of commissions for Stapleton’s arrest in 1444.

Bethom survived into the late 1440s. On 26 Jan. 1447 he headed attestors to the election of Nicholas Girlington* and George Dacre* at a poorly-attended county court; at the Lancashire assizes of Lent 1448 he unsuccessfully reasserted his family’s ancient claim to the Lancashire church of Whittington, a few miles from Beetham; and on 2 Sept. 1448 he was named alongside Girlington among the feoffees of William, Lord Harington.23 C219/15/4; PL15/11, rot. 25; VCH Lancs. viii. ; CPR, 1446-52, p. 211. Within a few months of this last transaction he was dead: at the Lancaster assizes in the following Lent his eldest surviving son, Sir Edward, brought some minor actions of debt as his executor.24 PL15/13, rot. 7d. The new head of the family soon made a fine marriage: on 9 June 1450 he entered into a bond in 1,000 marks to Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, and the earl’s brother, William, Lord Fauconberg, to perform covenants in indentures between them concerning his marriage to Fauconberg’s daughter, Joan. Not only was the bride a Neville but she was also one of the three coheiresses-presumptive of her mother, Joan Fauconberg.25 T. Madox, Formulare Anglicanum, no. 649; CP, v. 285-6. This marriage has been dated to bef. 24 Hen. VI (1445-6) on the basis of the copy of a deed by which two chaplains, as feoffees of Sir Edward, settled all the Bethom lands in Westmorland on the couple: Bodl. Dodsworth mss, 149, f. 144. This deed is clearly misdated. Not only was Edward an esquire as late as 1447 but his father was still alive: KB27/746, rots. 2, 127. It promised to elevate the family further, but such hopes were to be disappointed. Sir Edward died without issue on 22 Feb. 1472. The heir-general was his niece, Agnes, daughter of his brother, Roger, and wife of Robert Middleton of Kirkby Lonsdale (Westmorland) and Leighton (Lancashire), but she was, in the short term, set aside in favour of her uncles. It was claimed after Sir Edward’s death that our MP had, shortly before he died, conveyed his Westmorland lands to Lord Harington, Thomas Bryan, rector of Beetham, Sir Thomas Strickland, Sir Richard Musgrave*, and William Nyanser, with the intention that, after his death, they should make estate in successive tail male to his five legitimate sons (Edward, Roger, William, Richard and John) and his bastard son, James. It was also claimed that Sir Edward had extended this entail to the family’s Lancashire lands. This evidence must be treated with caution: with respect to the purpose of our MP’s feoffment it flatly contradicts Sir Edward’s inquisition post mortem which claims he died jointly seised of the Westmorland estates with his wife.26 CCR, 1468-76, nos. 706-7; C140/40/20; Lancs. Inqs. ii 101-2. None the less, the lands in both counties descended to Edward’s brother, Richard, who was seised in 1478.27 C1/70/64; CCR, 1476-85, no. 623. Extinction in the male line was, however, only slightly delayed. By Richard III’s reign all our MP’s sons were dead without male issue, and the inheritance descended to Agnes and Middleton, then a King’s knight, who was attainted after the battle of Bosworth.28 Coronation of Ric. III ed. Sutton and Hammond, 374. A badly-damaged tomb chest in the church of Beetham has been attributed to our MP, but more probably relates to Middleton: Nicolson and Burn, i. 223; Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. tract ser. vii. 117-18; T.D. Whitaker, Richmondshire, i. 303. Henry VII granted the bulk of the lands so confiscated to the Stanleys, provoking a long-running dispute.29 CPR, 1494-1509, p. 325; E210/477.