BROWN, Thomas II

A royal pardon granted in 1458 referring to this MP as ‘alias late of London citizen and grocer’,10 C67/42, m. 37. lends substance to the opinion that the man who not only rose to be under treasurer of the Exchequer but also became a wealthy Kentish landowner able to attract a bride of aristocratic lineage, belonged to a family of London merchants. It has been generally supposed that he was the nephew of Stephen Brown*, the grocer who came to the capital from Newcastle-upon-Tyne,11 P. Nightingale, A Med. Mercantile Community, 426 follows HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 123-4 in this regard, but the latter provides no evidence to counteract the doubts expressed by Yeatman, 25-27. but there is no firm evidence of any such close relationship between the two men. In fact, the MP was the son and eventual sole heir of another London grocer, the namesake who was discharged from civic office in April 1426 on account of old age. This older Thomas had formerly been the business partner of William Sevenoak†, and joined the grocers’ livery in 1408, then becoming one of the two most active wool exporters in the Company. In 1413 he and eight other London merchants sent ships to the Mediterranean laden with wool worth £24,000, and although this enterprise was doomed owing to the determination of the Italians to prevent the English from competing in their home markets, it indicates something of the huge scale of his enterprise.12 Nightingale, 381-2; London Letter Bk. K, 34. The grocer invested in land and property, including an inn, at Cheshunt in Hertfordshire, as well as in messuages and tenements in the city parishes of St. Thomas the Apostle in La Riole, St. Giles Cripplegate and St. Mary le Bow, and in his will of April 1429 he stipulated how these holdings should be divided after his death and that of his widow Isabel, his sons Philip and Thomas both being allotted shares. The latter was to be one of his executors. Philip apparently died not long after their father, and another brother, Robert, a cleric, quitclaimed his title to the inheritance. Shortly before his death, the father had placed his Cheshunt estate in the hands of feoffees headed by Nicholas Dixon, the parson of Cheshunt, instructing them to carry out his will, which was that Isabel should keep the estate for life, with remainder to our MP, but in 1434 the widow and Thomas relinquished it to Dixon and his co-feoffees.13 Commissary ct. wills, 9171/3, f. 216v; CP25(1)/292/67/144; CCR, 1419-22, p. 110; 1422-9, pp. 183, 190, 191-2; 1429-35, pp. 323-4.

This link with Dixon, at that time one of the barons of the Exchequer, adds weight to the supposition that Thomas Brown the grocer’s son and Thomas Brown the Exchequer clerk and future shire-knight were one and the same person. Indeed, Dixon may well have played an important role in promoting the young man’s career at the Exchequer. By 1434 Brown had been employed there for at least eight years, and although he took no official salary it is clear that he regularly assisted the treasurer in the business of the Receipt. For instance, when a cash payment had been made to the duke of Norfolk in October 1426, it had been Brown who had completed the transfer. This was during the treasurership of Walter, Lord Hungerford, with whom Brown was to be frequently recorded until long after Hungerford ceased to hold his office. The association between the two men flourished not exclusively within the Exchequer (where, to take just one example, in May 1427 Brown received on Hungerford’s behalf the sum of £100), but in mutual support in their private transactions. That same year Hungerford and his under treasurer, William Darell*, together with the rising lawyer John Fortescue*, assisted Brown to complete the legal formalities when he took possession of the manor of Eythorne and other holdings in Kent, this being Brown’s first step towards becoming one of the most substantial landowners in the county.14 E403/677, 22 Oct.; 680, 24 May; CCR, 1422-9, pp. 445, 451, 467-8. Fortescue continued to offer his help to Brown for many years more, even after his promotion to chief justice (most notably by acting as our MP’s feoffee in the 1440s and 1450s), and the two of them readily assisted Lord Hungerford in various of his business affairs. Thus, in May 1429 when the treasurer entered a series of recognizances in sums amounting to 1,500 marks to Sir William Phelip† and others, Brown and Fortescue were both party to the transactions.15 CCR, 1422-9, p. 459. It is unknown quite how long Brown served the treasurer as steward of his household, but he was certainly exercising the office by 17 July 1430, when he received payment at the Exchequer for expenses he had incurred in riding from Hungerford’s home in Wiltshire to Poole in Dorset, bearing orders regarding the safe conduct of certain ships. Hungerford asked Brown to be a trustee of several of his manors in Wiltshire, and he duly fulfilled this function in the years 1430-5.16 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 54, 163, 248; Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 484-5; E403/695, m. 16. Furthermore, our MP was among those authorized by Hungerford to conduct negotiations for the ransom of his prisoner, Jean de Vendôme, vidame of Chartres.17 Wilts. Hist. Centre, Radnor mss, 490/1548.

During Hungerford’s treasurership Brown was kept busy at the Exchequer, engaged in tasks of considerable responsibility. He was the man employed in July 1427 to transfer an assignment of 100 marks to the executors of Ralph, earl of Westmorland, for the support of the earl’s ward the duke of York, and a year later to receive tallies on behalf of the duke of Bedford. In August 1429 he joined Hungerford in making arrangements for £1,000 to be sent to Bedford in France, with the help of the agent of a merchant from Lucca.18 E403/680, 3 July; 686, 6 June; Cal. P. and M. London, 1413-37, p. 231; Corp. London RO, jnl. 2, f. 137v. Together with the under treasurer Darell, Brown was instructed in November following to search the cargoes of two Venetian galleys berthed in the port of London for contraband, and his standing at the Exchequer is further emphasized by his appointment along with two of the barons of the Exchequer in July 1430 on a wide-ranging commission of inquiry regarding the concealment of revenues due to the Crown, in which these three took responsibility for investigations in five counties, and the chief baron alone conducted inquiries elsewhere.19 CFR, xv. 299; CPR, 1429-36, p. 74.

It is indeed curious that in all this time Brown held no official, salaried position at the Exchequer. Rewards came indirectly and intermittently. During Hungerford’s treasurership he profited from royal patronage in the form of leases granted by the treasurer’s bill. Thus, in 1428 he shared with Sir William Phelip the keeping of certain manors in Suffolk and Norfolk; a year later he took custody of property in Hampshire and briefly obtained the wardship and marriage of the heir of Walter Romsey; and in 1431, with others, he leased portions of the Wiltshire manors of Amesbury and Winterbourne for 12 years.20 CFR, xv. 208-9, 257, 269, 288; xvi. 64-65. Shortly before the end of Hungerford’s treasurership, Brown secured appointment as tronager and pesager in London, and even after his patron’s resignation in February 1432 he continued to prosper, for just a few days afterwards he was made customer in Boston. For the next ten years, under the direction of the new treasurer, Ralph, Lord Cromwell, he continued to take a prominent role in the implementation of fiscal policies in which the continued funding of the English forces in France formed a crucial element. He probably crossed the Channel in the spring of 1433, having been commissioned to inquire into the causes of the dissension between the lieutenant of Calais and the soldiers manning the fortresses there, hinging on the payment of their wages, and when in the winter of 1434-5 the Exchequer was unable to find the instalment of 5,000 marks due to the chancellor of France for the garrisons in the north, he also had a significant part to play. The treasurer’s proposal of a way to raise extra revenue was to purchase and export on the King’s behalf 222 sarplers of wool, and on 30 Mar. 1435 Brown and two others (one of whom was Thomas Pound*, a teller of the Exchequer) were licensed to ship and sell the sarplers at the King’s venture. It was at this stage in his career, and perhaps in order to facilitate the arrangement, that Brown decided to join the livery of the London Grocers’ Company, even though he had to pay 20 marks to gain entry. From then on he evidently traded on his own account as well as for the government, although it was the King’s business which took him abroad once more in August 1436.21 CPR, 1429-36, p. 454; Ms. Archs. Grocers’ Co. ed. Kingdon, ii. 234; DKR, xlviii. 314.

In April 1437 Brown was associated with the treasurer Cromwell and others including his fellow grocer, Thomas Canynges*, when one Baldwin Sanheuy made a formal release of all legal actions against them. Yet commercial rivalry between certain Londoners and Canynges and his kinsmen, who came from Bristol, may have prompted Brown to show excessive zeal when he was appointed to a commission sent into Kent the following year to make inquiries about evasion of customs duties. A number of the findings of the commissioners were eventually proved unfounded, most notably the accusation that Canynges and his half-brother John Young* had exported 200 woollen cloths and tin worth 400 marks from Queenborough to Zeeland without paying customs. Canynges asserted that he had paid his dues in London, and Young vehemently denied the charge saying that the inquiries had been heard before their ‘enemies and ill-wishers’, implying that Brown had used his official position to further his personal interests .22 CCR, 1435-41, p. 115; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 305, 310, 339, 512; 1441-6, p. 365; Nightingale, 451-2. But it should be noted that Young’s brother Thomas Young II* was prepared to act as Brown’s feoffee for some time longer: e.g. CP25(1)/115/316/562.

Brown continued to obtain Exchequer leases of property temporarily in the Crown’s possession, but now concentrated on those which would add to his steadily-expanding landed interests in Kent. For instance, for two years from July 1437 he had the keeping of a stretch of water called ‘Gestnyng’ near Sandwich. Seeking to obtain 100 acres of land known as Archer’s Court in the parish of River near Dover, he ran into difficulties over title and in 1438 had to purchase a pardon for acquiring it with others without licence, only, in August 1439, to gain custody of the same property, then said to be in the King’s hands owing to the death of John Baker of Caldham.23 CFR, xvi. 334; xvii. 101, 111; CPR, 1436-41, p. 158. He consolidated his interests in River in 1442, and later acquired other properties from Baker’s gds. who got into financial difficulties after seeking his aid: CP25(1)/115/316/562; CPR, 1441-6, p. 35; CCR, 1461-8, p. 314; E. Hasted, Kent, viii. 136, 145, 167. From the early 1430s he had increased his permanent holdings in the county, so that by 1434, when he was listed among the landowners of Kent required to take the generally-administered oath not to maintain lawbreakers, he already possessed substantial interests there. These were initially focused on Eythorne, but in the next year he received from John Fogg† a quitclaim to him and his feoffees of the manor of Tunford and lands in Tanyngton, Harbledown and Chartham (previously the possessions of Fogg’s grandfather, Sir Thomas†), and it was at Tunford that he now took up residence. Fogg subsequently entered recognizances in £1,000 to him, presumably to ensure he would abide by the arrangements for the transfer of title. Quite possibly, Brown already had tenure of the manor of Kingsnorth, and in 1438 he received with his kinsman Benedict Brown lands and rents in Luddenham, Ore, Davington and Morston (near Faversham). One of the manors he acquired was Barfreston, for which he owed dues for castle guard at Dover.24 CPR, 1429-36, p. 388; 1461-7, p. 90; CCR, 1429-35, p. 350; 1435-41, p. 170; Hasted, vii. 586; x. 72-73.

These purchases were quite apart from the manorial estates, mainly situated in Sussex and Surrey, which came to our MP through his fortuitous marriage. In November 1436 he and Eleanor, daughter and heiress of Sir Thomas Arundel, received from her father’s widow, Joan, all the latter’s life-interest in the manor of West Betchworth in Dorking, and at the same time he and his associates entered an agreement with Eleanor regarding her inheritance of Chancton in Sussex. The marriage, which by linking Brown to the earls of Arundel considerably improved his social standing, probably took place very soon afterwards.25 CP25(1)/232/72/8, 292/68/193; VCH Suss. iv. 168; vi (1), 252 (although the editors failed to realize that Eleanor Arundel married Brown).

Thus, by the time Brown was returned to Parliament by Dover in the autumn of 1439 he was an esquire of consequence in the locality. He had been a j.p. in Kent for three years, but of greater significance with regard to his relationship with the Portsmen of Dover is the fact that he had recently played a prominent part in ending the longstanding disputes between them and the men of Faversham arising over the exactions which Dover claimed from its member-Port. These disputes had been concluded on 1 Aug. 1438 by the mediation of Geoffrey Lowther*, lieutenant-warden of the Cinque Ports, John Darell*, steward of the archbishop of Canterbury and brother of Brown’s colleague William, and Brown himself. By this agreement the barons of Dover promised to accept a burgess chosen at Faversham as one of their parliamentary representatives, or else forfeit half of the customary annual contributions of 40s. Faversham was required to pay.26 Dover Chs. ed. Statham, 184-99; but see payments of 40s. in 1438-9, 1439-40 and subsequent years: Add. 29810, ff. 16, 27, 36, 43v. Evidently, when the parliamentary elections were held, either Brown or his fellow MP were Faversham’s choice, as the barons kept the full 40s. due from Faversham that year and the next. Yet even if Brown was Faversham’s representative (as seems most likely), he was personally known to the Portsmen of Dover, for the mayor, William Brewes*, had ridden to Eythorne with a number of his associates to mark Brown’s mother’s obit a few months earlier. Dover was responsible for paying the parliamentary wages of both MPs, in accordance with the agreement. The Port duly paid Brown 4s. for obtaining a certificate regarding allowances of the subsidy of one fifteenth granted in the Parliament, and promised him the customary daily wage of 3s. 4d. for attending the sessions for 90 days. However, he had to wait until the next accounting year (1440-1) before he was paid 53s. 4d. of the amount due, and there is no record that he ever received the remaining £12 6s. 8d. Nevertheless, he was still prepared to offer his services as an arbitrator in disputes between the commonalty and outsiders, as he did in 1442-3.27 Add. 29810, ff. 17v, 27, 28, 29v, 36v, 49v.

We might conclude from Brown’s purchases of land and other of his financial dealings, such as his involvement in the lucrative business of ransoming French prisoners of war, that he was accruing substantial sums of money as a consequence of his place in the Exchequer. But, curiously, it was ‘in consideration of his recent misfortunes and impoverishment in Kent’, that the King on 24 July 1440 granted him for life a licence to ship 100 sacks of wool every year from London, Southampton or Sandwich directly to the Mediterranean (avoiding the staple at Calais).28 CCR, 1435-41, p. 99; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 434, 441. What these ‘misfortunes’ can have been is not revealed directly, but they clearly related to the findings of inquiries conducted in Kent by Geoffrey Lowther and John Stopyndon, the keeper of the rolls, under a commission to investigate concealments of royal revenues. The jurors had accused Brown of extortion, false imprisonments and using force to make people sell him their lands, and he was attached at the Exchequer to answer for the heavy fines imposed as a consequence. However, on the very same day, 24 July, the barons were ordered to cease process against him, because certain ‘lords’ commissioned to inquire into the allegations had certified to the King that they were untrue.29 CPR, 1436-41, p. 315; E159/216, recorda Easter rots. 35-42d, brevia Trin. rot. 26d; 217, brevia Hil. rot. 1. Brown’s purchases in Kent continued unabated in the 1440s, and there can be no doubt either that the profits of his work at the Exchequer were substantial or that he could exert influence in governmental circles. A minute of a Council meeting held on 5 Apr. 1443 recorded that the chancellor, the earl of Suffolk and Master Adam Moleyns had ‘commanded Th. Brownes et Walsynghames bille passed as it was desired’ since Brown had promised to endeavour to track down certain prisoners who had escaped from Maidstone gaol. However, the purpose of the bill is not revealed.30 PPC, v. 259. More important, during Brown’s shrievalty of Kent a year later Henry VI granted him a life annuity of £12 from the revenues of the royal fisheries in the Tweed, of which Brown already held the farm.31 CPR, 1441-6, pp. 258, 278. Brown was returned as a knight of the shire for Kent in 1445, and on 8 Oct. that year, shortly before the beginning of the third session, he was granted a special licence to trade freely in wool, tin, woollen cloth and other merchandise with native and foreign merchants alike, and pardoned any offences regarding sales wrongly conducted in the past.32 CPR, 1441-6, p. 389. A further pardon, obtained in July 1446, was designed to exonerate him from misdemeanors while sheriff.33 C67/39, m. 40.

At this stage in Brown’s career the Exchequer faced a deep crisis, which it was hoped the new treasurer, Marmaduke Lumley, bishop of Carlisle, appointed on 17 Dec. 1446, would resolve. In his attempts to do so Lumley made considerable calls on the energies and experience of the clerks (‘approved and sadde men brought up of youth and of long tyme contynued in our Eschequier’), and on none more than Brown, whom he named as his deputy. Lumley’s first moves were to appoint new collectors of customs and subsidies, thus invalidating all tallies issued in the names of their predecessors, and then to suspend altogether payments of tallies from the customs. This all-embracing moratorium was bound to be short-lived, and was primarily designed to enable the Exchequer officials to prepare a report on the financial situation, so beginning a period of intense activity under the direction of Brown as under treasurer. A long and detailed financial summary was prepared for the Parliament at Bury St. Edmunds (10 Feb.-3 Mar. 1447), and Brown was paid at the rate of 10s. per day for the duration of the session, having gone to the Parliament armed with rolls and other memoranda for the purpose of making known the state of the realm to the King and Lords. At other times his regular wages were 8d. a day, and he also received 5d. a day for compiling certain of the records; while, in addition, there was a handsome annual ‘reward’ of £40.34 G.L. Harriss, ‘Marmaduke Lumley and the Crisis of 1446-9’, in Aspects of Late Med. Govt. and Soc. ed. Rowe, 152-4, 164, 170; E403/765, 17 Feb.; 769, 7 Dec., 21 Feb.; 775, 21 July. But even before the Bury Parliament met he had received another reward of substance. This was a grant for life, made on 8 Feb., of the stewardship of Milton and Marden in Kent with its fee of £20 p.a., to take effect from the death of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. The duke, arrested on his arrival at Bury, died just a fortnight later. Further perquisites were to follow while Brown remained under treasurer. In August 1447 he was given the farm for life of the royal manor and lordship of Havering atte Bower in Essex, and just over a year later he was granted an annuity of £50 out of the rent which he was charged for the lease. Also in December 1448 this ‘King’s esquire’ received a charter permitting him to crenellate his manor-houses at Tong, Eythorne, Tunford, Kingsnorth and Betchworth, and in each place to create parks enclosing up to 1,000 acres of land.35 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 44, 84, 269; CChR, vi. 102. In the years 1441-52 Brown was numbered among the esquires of the hall and chamber in the Household: E101/409/16; 410/1, 3, 6, 9.

Nevertheless, Brown does not fit easily into the mould of other courtiers to Henry VI, for contrasting oddly with these grants and their grandiose consequences is the impression given by the records that he was a hard-working Exchequer official endeavouring to put into effect Lumley’s stringent measures. On 7 Dec. 1447 he was paid £26 13s. 4d. for his labours in producing several views of the state of the realm, which he had drawn up to show to the King and Council, and for his attendance during vacations to deal with matters of concern.36 E403/769, 7 Dec., and regular payments to him continued: ibid. and 21 Feb.; 775, 21 July. The following July he was rewarded with the huge sum of £300, not only for similar tasks ably performed, but also for his efforts in organizing forces to recapture the fortress of Le Crotoy from the French. Then, in October 1448 he received a royal warrant authorizing a reward of £50 for his work relating to the collection of parliamentary subsidies, and six months later he accepted £100 for completing unspecified business.37 E403/771, mm. 8, 11; 773, m. 4; E404/65/16, 133. While under treasurer Brown also found time to assist the queen, Margaret of Anjou: she wrote to him expressing her special thanks after being ‘credible enformed what diligence, faithfull labor, and hertly love ye have shewed us in our maters; and in especial, now late in our assignement of the custumes of Southampton’.38 Letters Margaret of Anjou (Cam. Soc. lxxxvi), 148. For his services in the Exchequer for the queen’s yeomen: E403/765, m. 1; 767, m. 2; 769, m. 13. Lumley’s application of a stop on disbursements at the Exchequer was designed to introduce a period of general restraint and selective preferences in which to meet the minimum necessary charges, while, it was hoped, a measured repayment of invalidated tallies would gradually restore confidence. The policy was applied consistently for two and a half years and only began to falter in the summer of 1449 as war in France once more became imminent. Further financial statements needed to be made at the Parliament then in progress, and for Brown’s efforts at the Winchester session of the Parliament he was granted as much as £150, part of which, £100 in cash, was paid him on 21 July, just after the dissolution. In fact, this was his and Lumley’s last day in office. On his departure, Brown promptly took out an exemption for life from undertaking any further public service against his will, and obtained as a final reward a second royal charter, granted to him and his heirs, this time of the right to hold fairs on six of his manors.39 E404/65/209; E403/775, 21 July; 777, 20 Feb.; CPR, 1446-52, p. 282; CChR, vi. 113. It is uncertain how to interpret the loans, amounting to £170, which Brown made at the Exchequer during the next few months, but they may have been an expression of his continuing concern about the state of the Crown’s finances as it faced a new crisis.40 E403/775, 29 July; 777, 13 Dec., 20 Jan.

Meanwhile, Brown’s personal affairs had continued to flourish, thanks partly to the trading concessions granted him by Henry VI. During the Parliaments of February and November 1449 an undertaking was given to the staplers of Calais that licences to bypass the staple would be restricted, yet when the King agreed to annul them he excluded from the annulment those licences he had granted to his queen, his chief minister the duke of Suffolk and four others, one of whom was our MP. Furthermore, the Act of Resumption passed in the latter Parliament (in the spring of 1450) was not to extend to Brown with regard to any grant or lease made to him; any letters patent issued to him were ‘to stande in theire strength and pleyn effect’.41 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 393, 400; PROME, xii. 106, 144. Although impossible to prove, it may well be the case that he was the Thomas Brown then sitting in the Commons for the Wiltshire borough of Marlborough, which pertained to the queen as part of her dower. His earlier association with Lord Hungerford (who had died shortly before the Parliament met) meant that he was no stranger to Wiltshire. Furthermore, there were clear advantages for the government in having someone of his financial acumen and experience of the workings of the Exchequer present in the Lower House.

Brown had probably left the Exchequer after the end of his under treasurership, for there is no sign of any personal friendship between him and the unpopular new treasurer, James Fiennes*, Lord Saye and Sele (with whom he had represented Kent in the Commons of 1445). Unlike Fiennes he was not especially singled out for attack by Cade’s rebels, even though on 7 July 1450 (the day after the agreement which preceded their dispersal), a party of them broke into his property at Kingsnorth and stole livestock and goods worth £40.42 KB27/761, rot. 53d. However, he did suffer from the consequences of the revolt: in the governmental upheavals of the next few months he lost the Exchequer farms of the fisheries in the Tweed and the lordship of Havering atte Bower, and presumably also their associated annuities, amounting to £62. He was only partially compensated with the lease of the manor of Huntingfield (previously held by Fiennes) and a messuage in Chelsfield.43 B.P. Wolffe, R. Demesne in English Hist. 256, 263, 276; CFR, xviii. 206.

From 1450 onwards Brown’s fortunes rested to a large extent on his relations with Richard, duke of York. Indeed, his increasingly fraught dealings with York were eventually to cost him his life. York had turned to Brown during his under treasurership for help in securing fresh assignments for payment of the Crown’s debts and to smooth the path for the redemption of Exchequer tallies. As an inducement, in the spring of 1449 he and his duchess conveyed to Brown a group of manors in south-east England, as well as a number of knights’ fees in Essex. These were worth between £130 and £140 p.a. and the conveyance of such a portion of York’s inheritance evidently involved the expectation that payment of his dues would be made promptly at the Exchequer. At some stage, however, the duke became impatient with the process and seized a collection of tallies in Brown’s possession that included a substantial number belonging to other royal creditors. Also, most probably at the time of his ascendancy in the winter of 1450-1, he harassed Brown in his enjoyment of income from two of the manors, Erith and Swanscombe. It is possible that the earlier transaction involved some mortgages as well as alienations in fee, but it is also possible that York simply recovered some of his lands by force. The settlement of their dispute, made a year later when the political climate was in the process of changing once more (and to York’s disadvantage), laid down that the tallies should all be returned to Brown, with the exception of those worth 6,500 marks which belonged to York. Brown was also to be given tallies to the value of 300 marks to compensate him for losses he had incurred in ‘costes, harmes and scathes’ through the suit and through the duke’s ‘hevy lordshipp’, but since these losses had allegedly totaled 2,000 marks he may have been unfairly treated in this respect. York was to be permitted to buy back the manors of Erith and Swanscombe within the next five or six years for the sum of 2,400 marks (that is, roughly 20 years’ purchase by value of the property).44 E403/769, m. 7; 773, m. 10; J.M.W. Bean, ‘Financial Position of Richard, duke of York’, in War and Govt. in the Middle Ages ed. Gillingham and Holt, 194-5; CP25(1)/116/322/715; 293/71/343-4; CCR, 1468-76, p. 257. The settlement, made by the bishops of Winchester and Ely, Lord Cromwell, Sir William Oldhall* and Richard Quatermayns*, by authority of the duke given on 20 Dec. 1451, was not finalized until 5 Feb. following, by which time York had already risen in armed revolt against the Crown.45 CCR, 1447-54, pp. 326-7. Some lands either remained with or quickly returned to York: SC6/1113/12, 13.

Not surprisingly, Brown remained firmly committed to the Lancastrian government. He was knighted before April 1453 (perhaps in January that year on the occasion of the ennoblement of the King’s half-brothers), and in July he attended meetings of the Council, notably those concerned with the problem of threats to continued English rule in Guyenne. He agreed personally to purvey 2,000 quarters of wheat to be shipped out to Bordeaux, and was licensed to be absent from the council while he arranged shipment. However, it proved necessary to issue a strongly-worded reminder to him on 1 Aug. to have the consignment ready on the 20th.46 E28/83/29, 40; PPC, vi. 331; Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of the English ed. Stevenson, ii. 485-6. That October he was associated with the treasurer (the earl of Worcester) and others in making a loan to the Crown of 2,000 marks, but whether this sum had come solely from their own resources or had been raised from well-wishers remains unclear.47 E401/834, m. 3; E403/796, m. 1. Brown’s whereabouts during York’s first protectorate are not recorded, although it should be noted that he was appointed to the Surrey bench in July 1454, which may indicate that despite their earlier dispute the duke recognized the need of his services in the locality. At some point in the previous few months, Brown and William Isle* had been summoned to the King’s bench to give evidence at the trial of Robert Poynings*, and the sheriff of Kent, John Fogg, made distraint on their lands for failing to attend. This, however, was deemed to be contrary to the law, and the sums taken were returned to them.48 E404/70/1/81. Sir Thomas was one of the three men summoned from Kent to attend a great council at Leicester on 21 May 1455, so it is quite possible that he was present at St. Albans on the following day, when the forces of York and Lancaster met in battle.49 PPC, vi. 341. The Lancastrian government had no reason to doubt his loyalty, which could be rewarded when it regained ascendancy a year later. Brown then recovered at the Exchequer keeping of the manor of Huntingfield, to hold on a long lease;50 CFR, xix. 158, 204. and in June 1456 the Council asked him to attend the forthcoming sessions of oyer and terminer at Maidstone, to lend assistance to the King’s kinsmen and judges.51 PPC, vi. 288.

The 1450s were also a period when Brown consolidated his landed estate, for in this decade he bought two more manors and the hundred of Foxhunt in Sussex and additional holdings in Kent, most notably the aldermanry of Westgate, Canterbury (acquired by exchanging it for three parts of the manor of ‘Sellyng’).52 Suss. Feet of Fines (Suss. Rec. Soc. xxiii), 3115; CCR, 1454-61, p. 79; Hasted, v. 113; Stowe 850, ff. 127-9; C1/67/234. Not all of his holdings came to him by purchase. In her will made at the Browns’ manor of Tunford in June 1459, Joan, daughter and heiress of Henry Knowghte, named Brown’s wife Eleanor as legatee of all her lands, and instructed the feoffees of her late great-uncle, Richard Malmayns, to grant her the reversion of two manors as well. A Chancery suit followed when one of the feoffees refused to comply.53 Archaeologia Cantiana, xi. 373-4; C1/26/540.

It was perhaps inevitable, given Brown’s earlier confrontation with York, his long and amicable association with Chief Justice Fortescue and the considerable benefits he had received from service to Henry VI, that he would remain loyal to the King to the very end. On 14 Oct. 1459, just two days after the Yorkists’ defeat at Ludford Bridge he was commissioned to confiscate the possessions of York and his allies in Kent, a task made easier by his appointment as sheriff of the county for the second time. On 6 Dec. he was instructed with the duke of Buckingham to cause all of the earl of Warwick’s ships anchored in the harbour at Sandwich to be safeguarded and prevented from slipping out at high tide to join the earl at Calais, and four days later he was ordered to take the muster of men-at-arms and archers enlisted to put to sea in the company of Lord Rivers and (Sir) Gervase Clifton*. But the plan to winkle Warwick out of Calais and destroy his base of operations signally failed just a month later, when Sandwich was attacked by the Yorkists and Rivers and several ships were taken captive.54 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 525, 555, 561; Griffiths, 827-8. When the Yorkist earls and their army crossed over from France in the following summer, Brown endeavoured to come to the assistance of the loyalists blockaded in the Tower of London. According to contemporary accounts and the indictments later brought against him, on 26 June 1460 he and his eldest son, George, collected together a band of men in the city parishes of All Saints Barking, St. Dunstan in the East and St. Botolph and contrived a way of getting into the fortress. Then, during the absence from London of the main Yorkist forces he helped defend the Tower against the assaults instigated by the earl of Salisbury. On 16 July the other Yorkist leaders, triumphant from their victory at Northampton six days earlier, re-entered the city with the captive Henry VI, and the principal defenders in the Tower, worn down by hunger, opened negotiations with them the same day. But Brown and his men, who had entered the Tower at such risk and had experienced only a few days of short rations, were opposed to yielding, and continued to shoot ‘wyldefire’ into the city, causing the deaths and wounding of a number of the inhabitants. An attempted break-out at night resulted in the capture and slaying of Lord Scales, and (Sir) John Wenlock* succeeded in taking possession of the Tower for the Yorkists on the 19th. Many people clamoured for vengeance against the men who had fired on the citizens, and four days later Brown and his fellow prisoners were conducted to the guildhall for a speedy trial before the victors, headed by the earls of Warwick and Salisbury, Viscount Bourgchier and the mayor of London. All protested their innocence, but Brown and a handful of others (all of whom were lesser men who had been at one time or another in the service of the duke of Exeter while he was constable of the Tower) were found guilty of treason and condemned to be taken from Newgate gaol, where they were kept after their arraignment, to the gallows at Tyburn, there to be hanged, drawn, beheaded and quartered. Brown was attainted on 24 July, five days before the sentence was carried out.55 KB9/75; E163/8/10; C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, i. 90, 92-93; English Chron. (Cam. Soc. lxiv), 95-96; John Benet’s Chron. (Cam. Miscellany xxiv), 227; Three 15th Century Chrons. (Cam. Soc. n.s. xviii), 169. He was buried in the Dominican friary in London. Sir John Paston† requested in his will of 1477 that an ‘oratory’ be made at his own tomb ‘leke as ys over Syr Thomas Browne in the Frere Prechours’: Paston Letters ed. Davis, i. 506; J. Stow, Surv. London ed. Kingsford, i. 341.

There can be little doubt that Sir Thomas’s earlier clash with York was a decisive factor in determining his fate. His son George, who like most of the other defenders in the Tower escaped penalty, later alleged that the indictment and attainder, leading to the forfeiture of his father’s substantial estates, had been accomplished ‘by grete and inordynat labours and of grete malice of dyvers his ennemyes and evell willers’ so that these enemies might have his lands and possessions.56 PROME, xiv. 44-46. Since Brown had been fighting for a King who was still the undisputed ruler of the realm (albeit one who for the last few days of the siege was a prisoner in the palace of the bishop of London), his condemnation as a traitor hints at the depth of the personal enmities which were envenoming the political factions both in the City and in the kingdom at large. His fate had been decided by the victory of the Yorkist forces over the King’s army at Northampton on 10 July, and it is significant that the indictments date his treason only from that day. Those bearing grudges against him, who included the duke of York himself, were quick to stake a claim to his property. Although John Fogg had relinquished Tunford and various other holdings to Brown many years before, he now claimed to have been wrongfully deprived of his inheritance,57 CPR, 1452-61, p. 610. and in October he obtained custody of the manors of Tunford and Dane for as long as they were in the King’s hands. (He was also subsequently to obtain from Edward IV a pardon of all legal actions against him relating to the recognizance of £1,000 made by him to Brown over 20 years earlier.) Nor was it long before the Yorkist supporter and opportunist Thomas Vaughan* took advantage of the vulnerable position of Brown’s widow and seven sons. On 18 Oct. Vaughan joined the widowed Eleanor in offering £1,000 to the government to have all the goods, chattels, sums of money and debts which had been forfeited on Brown’s attainder. (Presumably these did not include the items worth £600 granted from Brown’s chattels two days earlier to Robert Stillington, dean of the free chapel of St. Martin le Grand.) Then, on 9 Nov. the two of them were granted all of Brown’s lands and possessions, with the stated intention that they should divide the premises among Brown’s sons in accordance with the last will of their father, if such a will existed. Yet when, inevitably, Vaughan made Eleanor his wife (before 28 Nov.), these sons were excluded from their inheritance, for the time being at least, for in December 1461 he obtained from Edward IV all of their estates which he would now hold jointly with Eleanor for term of their lives. Excepted from this settlement on the Vaughans were the two manors earlier granted to Fogg, and the manors of Swanscombe and Erith which had belonged previously to the duke of York. Otherwise, the full extent of our MP’s holdings now stood revealed. Altogether there were listed 28 manors, chief among them being Betchworth castle, along with at least 17 messuages and other urban properties, mainly in Kent, Surrey and Sussex but also in Hampshire, while in London he owned 13 more messuages, two wharfs and five tenements situated near Billingsgate, in Lime Street and in the Vintry. It was arranged that after the Vaughans’ deaths these estates should revert to a body of feoffees (all prominent supporters of the new regime) to hold in trust for Brown’s sons.58 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 626, 629, 631; 1461-7, pp. 88, 90. The widowed Eleanor and her sons allegedly mounted a spirited assault on some of their enemies at Southwark early in 1461: CP40/800, rots. 128, 217d, 218d. Vaughan and his wife were exempted from the Act of Resumption of 1465 with regard to Brown’s estates, but Vaughan was named alone in the Act of 1467-8,59 PROME, xiii. 171-2, 288-9; Wolffe, 158. and grants made to him meanwhile proved to disadvantage his stepsons, for various of their manors were settled on Vaughan and his own heirs, and the rest on his issue by Eleanor.60 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 464-5, 547-9. However, it is unlikely she was still of child-bearing age. The latter, still alive in June 1466,61 CPL, xii. 818. probably died before November 1472, when her son Sir George Brown made a formal quitclaim to the King’s mother Cecily, duchess of York, of the manors once acquired by our MP from her and the duke. Sir George, who regarded his father’s attainder for treason as having been caused by the malice of his enemies, successfully petitioned the King in the Parliament of 1472-5 to ask for the judgements against Sir Thomas to be ‘utterly voide and of noon effecte’, so that he and other of Brown’s heirs might enter their inheritance, and that all letters patent by Henry VI or Edward IV regarding any of the lands should be cancelled.62 CCR, 1468-76, no. 947; PROME, xiv. 44-46. Through another of his sons, Sir Anthony, our MP was the great-grandfather of Anthony Browne†, first Viscount Montagu.63 CP, ix. 94, 97.