BRADFORD, Thomas

The Bradfords were a well-established Leominster family.2 J. and C. Hillaby, Leominster Minster, Priory and Borough c.660-1539, 175-6. John Bradford† represented the borough in four Parliaments between 1377 and 1391, and several members of the family were active in the borough in the fifteenth century. Another John or Johns attested 17 of Leominster’s parliamentary elections between 1419 and 1460, held office as the borough’s bailiff in 1432, and served as a tax collector in the county in 1446. Walter Bradford, who attested four elections between 1426 and 1442, was also a tax collector in the county in 1446. Both men were, in 1434, included among the Leominster men of sufficient standing to be required to take the oath not to maintain peace-breakers, and in 1451 John was assessed on an income of £4 4s., making him one of the richest men in the town. Another Bradford, Philip, perhaps Walter’s son, was also assessed on the same sum.3 C219/12/3-16/6; CFR, xvii. 219; xviii. 36; CPR, 1429-36, p. 377; E179/117/64. The omission of Thomas from the list of those assessed implies that he was of lesser standing, and it may be that he was John’s son and heir-apparent. Yet, despite his apparent youth and insignificance, it was he who was returned for the borough on 24 Oct. 1450 at hustings attended by both John and Philip. His election, like that of his fellow Leominster MP in this Parliament, Hugh Shirley*, probably owed something to a connexion with the town’s important neighbour, (Sir) Walter Devereux I*, a servant of Richard, duke of York, and MP for the county in the same Parliament. Such an association certainly existed later. On 1 Apr. 1456, according to indictments laid before royal commissioners of inquiry a year later, our MP was one of several Leominster men who illegally took Devereux’s livery.4 C219/16/1; KB27/789, rot. 35.

Little else is known of Bradford’s career. By 1452 he was in office as chief constable of the franchise of Leominster, probably an office of the lord of the franchise, the abbot of Reading. In 1456 he sued several local men for depasturing his grass and crops, worth as much as £5, in the town, suggesting that he had worthwhile holdings there.5 KB9/34/2, m. 6; CP40/782, rot. 57d. Two years later, he was put to the inconvenience of suing a general pardon and personally appearing in the court of King’s bench to plead it against the livery indictment. In this pardon, dated 20 June 1458, he was described ‘of Leominster, gentleman, alias husbandman’, although in the indictment he had been described as a yeoman.6 C67/42, m. 9; KB27/789, rot. 35. In 1462 he was again described as a yeoman when sued for trespass by William Hood*, another of those who had taken Devereux’s livery, and it is also as a yeoman that he last appears in the records in 1475 as defendant in a plea of debt of 40s. brought by Sir Richard Bingham, former j.KB.7 KB27/804, rot. 42d; CP40/856, rot. 95d.