DALTON, Thomas

Throughout his career Dalton was styled ‘junior’, and it may reasonably be inferred that he was the son of Thomas Dalton, senior, an obscure figure who was alive at least as late as December 1454.1 Leicester Bor. Recs. ed. Bateson, ii. 425. A mercer by trade, the younger Thomas first appears in the records in the mid 1440s. In Trinity term 1445 he had pleas of debt pending against two mercers and a chaplain of Thorpe Langton (Leicestershire) and Sleaford (Lincolnshire), and on 27 May 1446 he witnessed a deed involving the lands of one of Leicester’s former mayors, William Asty alias Skinner. More significantly, by a fine levied in Hilary term 1449, he acquired five messuages in the parish of St. Martin from a Leicester cutler, and, if this represents a purchase, he must already have had extensive commercial interests.2 CP40/738, rot. 64; Wyggeston Hosp. Recs. ed. Thompson, 347; CP25(1)/126/76/68. Such interests are further implied by the frequency with which he brought actions of debt. In Hilary term 1458, for example, he had actions pending against at least 21 tradesmen and others for a total of over £90.3 CP40/788, rots. 279d, 447.

Having been appointed to his first borough office as one of the four stewards of the fair in September 1451, on 26 July 1452 Dalton witnessed an important settlement made by Thomas Charite* as a feoffee of John Church I*, and on 8 Jan. 1453 he sat on a jury before the county j.p.s at Leicester. In the following year he was elected to the mayoralty and, very unusually, was reappointed to the office at the end of both his first and second terms. Not until September 1457 was he replaced.4 Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 424, 448 (where he is wrongly called William), 453; KB9/270A/48.

Dalton’s mayoralty was an eventful one. In Michaelmas term 1455 the county sheriff, Thomas Berkeley†, brought a bill against him in the court of King’s bench. He complained that, on the previous 7 June at Sewstern in the north-east of the county, Dalton had collected as many as 500 malefactors with the intention of killing him, but had settled instead for assaulting and then imprisoning him for two days. No doubt his bill was an exaggerated description of the event – there was, for example, no parallel indictment before the j.p.s – but clearly something more than a routine trespass had taken place. This is unlikely to have arisen out of a personal quarrel between the two men, and it is more probable that the underlying dispute was between Berkeley as sheriff and Dalton as mayor. Berkeley was probably championing the cause of the royal bailiff of Leicester, Richard Hotoft*, who had incurred the enmity of the elected officials. On 27 June our MP had been obliged to find surety of the peace to Hotoft in the court of King’s bench. More revealingly, at a common hall held on the following 7 Nov. Hotoft was said to have ‘ex maliuolo corde et malicia’ unjustly indicted the mayor and the community in divers courts of the King, and, as a result, it was decided that all these unjust actions should be defended ‘tanquam materie et querele tote communitati ville ... tangentes et pertinentes’. Not improbably the sheriff’s bill was one of the actions the burgesses had in mind. Moreover, in the same law term, Dalton appeared personally in the court of common pleas to sue Hotoft and three townsmen for threatening him at Leicester, which suggests that not all the leading inhabitants were opposed to Hotoft. Nevertheless, this dispute probably explains Dalton’s election to the Parliament which met four weeks after the alleged assault at Sewstern, and his reappointments to the mayoralty (in defiance of the borough ordinance of 1379 forbidding the serving of successive mayoral terms).5 KB27/777, rex rot. 21; 782, rot. 43d; Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 194, 263-5; CP40/779, rot. 625; C219/16/3.

Premature death meant that Dalton makes few other appearances in the records. On 25 Aug. 1455, between the first and second sessions of the Parliament of which he was a Member, he was said to have assaulted one Thomas Worteley at Islington (Middlesex), but there is no evidence to give this alleged offence a context. Later, on 20 Oct. 1456, he was again absent from his native Leicester when he came personally into the court of King’s bench to plead not guilty to Berkeley’s bill.6 KB29/86, rot. 28d; KB27/783, rot. 44d.

In the following January he was one of several local clergy and townsmen, including William Wigston* and John Pacy, who appeared before royal commissioners at Leicester to testify that they ‘fuerunt socii scolares in scolis’ with the clerk who had been wrongfully treated as an alien Scot.7 C145/316/4; CIMisc. viii. 239. Dalton’s death followed soon after.

He seems to have died during Michaelmas term 1458 when process was issued against him for a debt of £29 15s. 4d. at the suit of Hotoft, and his widow was contesting this debt as his executrix.8 CP40/790, rot. 31d; 791, rots. 7, 600; 792, rot. 7d. His will does not survive, but another law suit shows that his wid. shared the task of its execution with their son, William, and the lawyer, Robert Staunton*: CP40/794, rot. 88d. By the following Trinity term she had married William Wigston’s son, Roger†, and she was, remarkably, alive as late as 1506, when, not surprisingly, she was too weak in ‘body and mynde’ to care for herself.9 CP40/794, rot. 88d; Leics. RO, Wyggeston Hosp. deeds, 10D34/953; PCC 24 Adeane (PROB11/15, f. 193). Our MP’s son William, a merchant of the Calais staple and a correspondent of the Celys, was admitted to Leicester’s merchant gild in 1469-70, and the family long continued to play a prominent part in the town’s affairs.10 A. Hanham, Celys and their World, 74, 349-50; Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 463.