BUCKLAND, Thomas

A ‘gentleman’ of uncertain antecedents,6 But there was a Roger Buckland of Glos. in 1406, a William Buckland of Gloucester in 1421 and another Thomas Buckland, prior of the Gloucester hospital of St. Margaret in the 1420s and 1430s: CCR, 1405-9, p. 117; Gloucester Corporation Recs. 384, 385, 390. Buckland owed his social status to his membership of the legal profession and he appears not to have owned any significant property in Gloucester when returned to his only known Parliament. In the mid 1450s, he lived in a tenement at Oxbode Lane in the town, as a tenant of a local guild dedicated to St. John the Baptist, but by the later 1460s his home was a messuage in Eastgate Street, where he also held a neighbouring tenement, shops, houses and other property.7 Gloucester Rental 1455 ed. Cole, 74; Gloucester Corporation Recs. 407-8. Elsewhere, Buckland and his then wife Margery received lands in Badgeworth and other parishes a few miles north-west of Gloucester through conveyances of March 1439 and April 1450, the second of which William Buckland, presumably one of his relatives, witnessed.8 Gloucester Corporation Recs. 392-3, 397. Some years later, he obtained property at Little Witcombe, Shurdington and Bentham, and he had acquired other lands at Prestbury, King’s Barton and Twigworth by the early 1470s. He had his estates settled on himself and his then wife, Cecily, in August 1473, an arrangement confirmed in January 1479. Buckland’s feoffees included the esquires, Walter Brockhampton and John Albury, and among those who witnessed the conveyance of 1473 were Sir John Greville, (Sir) John Butler*, John Cassy* and John Hugford†.9 Ibid. 405, 406, 409, 410, 412, 413. No doubt his work as a lawyer brought him into contact with these county gentry, some of whom he is likely to have served as a legal adviser. His clients certainly included men as eminent as Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, and William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, as well as the likes of Hugh Mille*, Robert Bentham II* and Thomas Sutton, abbot of St. Augustine’s abbey, Bristol, all of whom employed him as an attorney in the court of King’s bench.10 KB27/750, att. rot. 1; 775, rot. 77d; 776, rot. 44d, att. rot. 2; 777 rot. 15, att. rot. 2. Furthermore, it is possible that he should be identified with the Thomas Buckland who received an assignment of money at the Exchequer on behalf of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, in 1444: E403/753 m. 5. He was likewise an attorney in the common pleas.11 CP40/732, rots. 108, 214d; 756, rot. 77, att. rots. 1, 2.

During the 1440s and 1450s, Buckland was himself a party to suits in both courts. One of the more intriguing examples is a lawsuit brought by Thomas* and William Canynges*. The brothers appeared in the common pleas in person in Hilary term 1453 to submit a bill demanding that Buckland, then in court in his capacity as an attorney, should render 20 marks, the sum liable upon a bond that he had given them at London in November 1451. Buckland responded that he should not have to pay that, since he had in fact entered it under duress, while a prisoner of them and their ‘coven’ at Gloucester, not London. Although referred for trial in the following term, the case does not feature in the corresponding plea roll and its full circumstances are unknown.12 CP40/768, rot. 130. Just as intriguing, and apparently not related to his quarrel with the Canynges brothers, are the lawsuits that Buckland subsequently brought in the same court against William Hobbes and William Brygge, both yeomen from Tredington near Tewkesbury. They came to pleadings in Michaelmas term 1455 when he demanded £10 from each man, both of whom had given him a bond for that amount at Gloucester on 2 June 1454. In response, Hobbes and Brygge claimed that they should not have to answer the plea, since they gave the bonds under duress, while they were prisoners of Buckland and his ‘coven’ at Tredington.13 CP40/779, rot. 577. The sheriff of Glos. was ordered to summon juries for the octaves of Hil. term 1456, although no reference to either suit has been found in the plea roll for Hil. term that year. By the following Hilary term, Buckland was engaged in litigation, again as a plaintiff, in his capacity as an executor of the late Walter Asshewell, a skinner from Gloucester. He and his co-plaintiff, Asshewell’s widow and other executor Christine, sued Thomas Bygge, a ‘touker’ from Stroud, and Thomas Watkyns, a brewer from Bristol, claiming that both men owed debts to the deceased’s estate.14 CP40/756, rots. 6, 185d. In the same Hilary term, the court of King’s bench heard another suit in which Buckland was involved, this time as a defendant. The plaintiff, John Bradstone, alleged that Buckland and a co-defendant, John Holybronde of Bristol, had wrongfully seized six oxen from him at Winterbourne in south Gloucestershire in October 1453. Both defendants had missed several return days by the time Holybronde appeared in King’s bench in Hilary term 1456. Ironically, his attorney on this occasion was none other than his co-defendant Buckland, who had yet to answer Bradstone’s plea on his own account over two years later. Through Buckland, Holybronde obtained licence to treat with Bradstone out of court until the following term, when he pleaded not guilty. In due course, the case was referred to trial at the Gloucester assizes of July 1457, at which Holybronde challenged the composition of the jury, claiming that the under sheriff, William Wykes* had connived to select a panel which would favour Bradstone. The court accepted his complaint and summoned a new jury but it does not seem that a trial ever took place.15 KB27/776, rot. 61d; 777, rot. 33; 778, rot. 9d; 779, rot. 449d.

One of several members of the legal profession to sit as an MP for Gloucester in Henry VI’s reign, Buckland was returned to the Commons alongside a fellow lawyer, John Andrew I*. If the burgesses had a particular reason for electing two lawyers in 1450, the roll for the Parliament in question does not record any legislation specifically relating to the town. It is nevertheless possible that they were expected to employ their professional skills outside Parliament, whether in the law courts or elsewhere at Westminster. The fact that Andrew was one of the bailiffs of Gloucester at this date suggests that there was business of some importance to pursue on the town’s behalf. He was also a retainer of the duke of Buckingham, although there is no evidence that this connexion, nor Buckland’s own links with the duke, played any part in the Gloucester election to this Parliament. Shortly after the Parliament assembled Buckland took on the role of under sheriff of Gloucestershire, even though it would have been impossible to reconcile the performance of his duties in the locality with satisfactory attendance in the Commons through the three parliamentary sessions. A few weeks after the dissolution of Parliament, he found time to look to his own interests, since in July 1451 he and an associate obtained a 16-year farm of the subsidy and alnage of cloth in Gloucestershire, for which they agreed to pay the Crown a rent of just over £12 p.a. However, Buckland was excluded when a new farm was granted the following year.16 CFR, xviii. 194, 245.

A second spell of service as under sheriff of Gloucestershire followed in 1453-4, but it was not until over six years after sitting in Parliament that Buckland began the first of his two known terms as bailiff of Gloucester. This coincided with a dispute between the burgesses and the local hospital of St. Bartholomew, which began legal action against him, his co-bailiff John Hilley and their fellow burgesses for allegedly dispossessing it of certain freehold property in the town.17 Gloucester Corporation Recs. 405. Buckland was once more chosen to be under sheriff in 1464-5, when the sheriff was Sir Edmund Hungerford*. Afterwards, in 1466, Hungerford faced several lawsuits relating to his time as sheriff in the Exchequer, where he employed Buckland to represent him as his attorney.18 E13/151, rot. 87; 152, rots. 6, 25, 31d.

Later in the same decade, Buckland received a royal pardon, dated 15 July 1468. The pardon described him as ‘late of London’ as well as of Gloucester, suggesting that he must have spent a considerable amount of time in the City in pursuit of his legal career.19 C67/46, m. 35. If one is to believe a Chancery suit brought against him in the late 1470s or early 1480s, he was not above wrongfully exploiting his familiarity with London and the law to his own advantage. The plaintiff was a fellow burgess, William Danyes of Gloucester, then a prisoner in the City. In his bill, Danyes stated that he had gone to London in order to pursue a previous Chancery suit against Buckland, for inflicting certain unspecified ‘injuries’ upon him. Fully knowing that he had done Danyes grievous wrong, and ‘dredyng hym silf to be sore punysshed’, Buckland had sued his opponent for debt in one of the City’s courts in order to stymie the action in Chancery. As a result, Danyes had found himself imprisoned in London where Buckland had caused an unnamed alderman to ‘ley his commaundement upon’ him. This meant that he could not regain his freedom until he agreed to abandon his complaint to the chancellor, to whom he was now appealing for a writ of corpus cum causa ordering the City’s authorities to deliver him into Chancery and to explain the reason for his arrest.20 C1/64/510.

The controversy with Danyes is likely to have occurred late in Buckland’s life. Having made a settlement of his estates in January 1479, he was the defendant in a suit for debt (of ten marks) in the latter half of the following year but disappears from view thereafter. Some of the lands involved in the settlement of 1479 featured in a conveyance of 1512, in which one of the parties was Richard Buckland esquire, possibly his son.21 Gloucester Corporation Recs. 420; CP40/874, rot. 6.