HALL, Thomas I

Thanks to his common name, Hall is not always easy to distinguish from contemporary namesakes.3 e.g. it is impossible to tell whether he was the Thomas Hall who served as a bailiff and feodary for the duchy of Lancaster in Norf. in the early 1400s: R. Somerville, Duchy, i. 597; CPR, 1405-8, p. 93. It is unclear, for instance, whether he was the man appointed in 1405 to a commission of inquiry tasked with investigating the plundering of Prussian ships off the east coast by various English vessels, including a crayer from Kirkley Road, a stretch of coastal water controlled by Great Yarmouth.4 CPR, 1401-5, pp. 508, 511. The Yarmouth court roll for 1413-14 provides the earliest definite references to Hall, who acted as a surety on several occasions during that period. On 24 Sept. 1414, for example, he and Robert Cobalde gave Thomas Beaufort, earl of Dorset and admiral of England, a recognizance for £40, to guarantee that a Fleming would appear in the borough court before Dorset’s deputy to answer a trespass suit. The following April, Hall witnessed a deed on behalf of Peter Savage and Christine his wife (formerly the wife of Hugh atte Fenne†), but he was not always on good terms with them, for the Savages subsequently sued him and Thomas Adams for £3 13s. 4d. they owed for salt, sea coal and other goods. In December 1419, the borough court found that Hall and Adams had unjustly detained money from the Savages, although no more than 57s. It is probable that the lawsuit arose from the defendants’ role as executors for William Ondolf, whose will of 1414 Hall and Adams had enrolled on the borough court roll in late 1421.5 Gt. Yarmouth ct. rolls, 1413-15, 1419-20, 1421-2, C4/124, mm. 5, 9d, 12d; 125, m. 13d; 129, m. 8; 131, m. 7.

Hall was most active in an official capacity during the 1420s, for he represented Yarmouth in the Commons of 1423 and 1429 and was one of the first two chamberlains of the borough, an office established in 1426. Nearly three years after the Parliament of 1429, he and his fellow burgess in that assembly, John Manning*, sued Yarmouth’s bailiffs of 1429-30, Robert Ellis* and Thomas Eyr, for their wages as MPs, seeking payment for the 143 days they had spent travelling to and attending the Commons. There is no reason to doubt the plaintiffs’ claim but it is likely that the borough’s financial problems, rather than maladministration on the part of Ellis and Eyr, were to blame.6 KB27/686, rot. 21. An important concern of the Parliament of 1429 was the problem of crime and disorder throughout the kingdom, and Hall was included in the list of those in Norfolk expected in 1434 to swear an oath to conserve the peace. It was around about this time that he spent a period in Great Yarmouth’s prison, but at whose suit (assuming that it was a civil action) is unknown. In June that year, however, he won an action for debt in the borough court against Richard Falke. Falke had failed to pay him five marks, a sum which he owed for a share in a ship which Hall had sold him, and he was ordered to hand over this sum and damages of 12d. It is possible that Hall had interests in other ships as well, since it was as a ‘merchant’ that he stood surety for another burgess in the borough court in early 1439. The following year he and John Wulstan gave the bailiffs and commonalty of Yarmouth a security in the form of a recognizance for £3. This was to guarantee that Thomas Wale and his wife Alice, the widow of Thomas Adams (Hall’s former associate), would pay a debt which Adams had owed the town as one of its chamberlains a decade earlier.7 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 144, 146; CPR, 1429-36, p. 407; Gt. Yarmouth ct. rolls, 1429-30, 1431-2, 1433-4, 1435-6, 1438-40, C4/138 m. 1; 140 m. 1; 142 m. 11d; 144 m. 8d; 147 m. 17; 148 mm. 2, 18, 22.

Late in life Hall was of sufficient local prominence to serve as one of the bailiffs of Great Yarmouth. Still alive in February 1445 when he conveyed a messuage beside the town’s ‘Medylgate’ to Thomas Hyllys* and others,8 St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, recs., XV.55.71. he probably died soon afterwards. His son, John, did not long survive him. In a will drawn up in February 1448 and proved a year later John left his widow, Margery, the moiety of a garden in the town once belonging to his father.9 Gt. Yarmouth ct. roll, 1449-50, C4/156, m. 8.