CHAMBER, Thomas I

Thomas Chamber, from a family established in Northamptonshire only in the previous generation, was a notable figure, combining a military career with a prominent role in local administration. His mother brought to his father an interest in the manors of Spratton and nearby Holdenby, a few miles to the north of Northampton, together with a manor at Hanwell in Oxfordshire; and our MP was later to make good his title to these lands. He was a minor at his father’s death, but his mother’s survival saved him from wardship: she was alive at least as late as 1411, when she presented to her church at Holdenby.1 J. Bridges, Northants. i. 529. Her date of death is wrongly given as c.1404 in The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 510, apparently on a mistaken inference from a pardon for debt dated 26 Jan. 1404: CPR, 1401-5, p. 338. She took as her 4th husband William Mountfort, but not the prominent Warws. knight of that name: Feudal Aids, vi. 497. The young Thomas probably also had her to thank for a good marriage to one who was, like her, both heiress and widow. Eleanor Drakelowe’s inheritance comprised the manor of Wilby, a few miles from Spratton, where the Chambers had made their home, together with small manors at Napton-on-the-Hill in Warwickshire, Shangton in Leicestershire and Marcham in Buckinghamshire. Her dower from her marriage to a lawyer, William Vaux, was much less extensive (indeed, there is no evidence to show what she held of the Vaux lands), but the connexion with the Vauxs, a rising family in the county’s affairs, was to prove of value to our MP. There is every reason to suppose that her son, another William Vaux, was brought up in Chamber’s household at Spratton. Further, her daughter, Isabel, married William Tresham*, who was to become one of the most important men in the shire from the early 1420s.2 Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, ser. 5, v. 278.

Little is known of Chamber in the early years of his majority. He was of age by May 1408 when he joined Richard Wydeville* and others in offering mainprise in as much as 1,000 marks for the appearance of his half-brother, Sir John Chamber, in Chancery.3 CCR, 1405-9, p. 366; CPR, 1405-8, pp. 474, 483. Thereafter he embarked on a military career. In 1415 he joined his kinsman, Roger Chamber of Lillingstone in Buckinghamshire, in the retinue of Thomas, duke of Clarence, and was probably present at the battle of Agincourt. Although he was back in his native county to attest the first parliamentary election of 1416, he soon resumed his martial activities. He served in the 1417 campaign under Thomas, earl of Salisbury, before moving into the retinue of Sir Gilbert Umfraville in 1418.4 E101/45/4, m. 2; C219/11/8; E101/51/2, m. 10; DKR, xliv. 607. He remained abroad for much of the rest of the reign. In the spring of 1420 he was ordered to array the garrison at Conches; on 22 July 1421 he was entrusted with the captaincy of the castle of Guînes; and in the following February he was named to a commission to investigate the lands belonging to Guînes and other castles in Picardy.5 DKR, xliv. 632; PPC, ii. 363, 365; E101/70/6/738; C76/104, m. 10; 105, m. 1.

Despite this evidence of his presence in France, it seems that Chamber was back at home early in 1422 to conclude a very important domestic matter. His right to his mother’s lands, which represented his entire inheritance, was questionable. The common-law heir was his half-sister, Alice, his mother’s daughter by the second of her three husbands, and, if later pleadings are to be taken at face value, he had disseised her of the property (a disseisin that had taken place by March 1419 when he presented to the church of Holdenby). These same pleadings also state that, on 28 Feb. 1422, Alice made a quitclaim of the manors to our MP, binding herself and her heirs to warrant the title of him and his heirs. For the rest of his life Chamber appears to have had untroubled possession of property, although the whole matter raises difficulties which cannot be resolved by the available evidence. Alice’s husband had been his kinsman, Roger Chamber, with whom Thomas had served in Clarence’s retinue in 1415; and it may be that our MP’s entry and her surrender were prompted by his death leaving only daughters. Another possibility, however, is raised by litigation after our MP’s death, namely that Alice’s quitclaim was a forgery concocted by his nephew and heir, William Chamber. On balance, this accusation is probably to be rejected, but it does gain some indirect support from the fact that our MP may have been in France when the quitclaim was made.6 CP40/789, rot. 462; 791, rot. 515; Bridges, i. 529.

A delay in acquiring his mother’s property, whether by fair means or not, combined with the costs of a military career, would explain several of the early references to Chamber. Between November 1413 and February 1422 he had occasion to sue pardons of outlawry incurred on suits of debt sued by five separate London citizens. The sums involved were not large, none greater than 16 marks, but it was curious that a man of his rank should have let suits run so far. This may represent no more than carelessness in the pleading of protections; even so, it is not a mark of prosperity.7 CPR, 1413-16, p. 87; 1416-22, pp. 358, 359.

After his half-sister’s quitclaim (assuming it to have been genuine), Chamber had a much firmer basis for a career in local politics, and on 29 Oct. 1422 he embarked on such a career with election to represent his native shire in company with another soldier, Henry Mulsho*.8 C219/13/1. The rest of the decade he spent balancing the attractions and responsibilities of continued military service with those of local administration. On 14 May 1423 he was commissioned to take the musters of various retinues about to proceed to Picardy, and by the summer of 1424 he may have been serving in the garrison at Pont-de-l’Arche.9 CPR, 1422-9, p. 121; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, fr 25767/84, 101. In the meantime, on 23 Nov. 1423, he witnessed an important deed by which the Northamptonshire manor of Edgcote was granted by William, Lord Lovell, to Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester. This conveyance brought to the county his close friend, Richard Buckland*, treasurer and victualler of Calais, for whom the bishop was here acting. Buckland and Chamber had served together in France in 1421, and it was in his service that our MP continued his military career in the late 1420s.10 CCR, 1422-9, p. 123. In Feb. 1422 they were colleagues on a comm. in Picardy, and on the same day as Chamber was named capt. of Guînes, Buckland was appointed capt. of nearby Balinghem. On 7 July 1426 he took out letters of protection as a member of Buckland’s retinue, and the two men are frequently found acting together thereafter.11 DKR, xlviii. 241.

This apparent commitment to service abroad, at a time when many gentry of his rank had abandoned it, makes it surprising that, only five months after undertaking to return to France, Chamber was named to the Northamptonshire shrievalty. His term of office proved, however, only a brief distraction from further military service. Either he or a namesake is again recorded as in the garrison at Pont-de-l’Arche early in 1428; in May of that year he sued out further letters of protection as going to France in Buckland’s retinue; and on the following 27 June he was commissioned to take the muster of the earl of Salisbury at Barham Down.12 Bibliothèque Nationale, fr 25768/266; 25774/1311; DKR, xlviii. 257; CPR, 1422-9, p. 466; E403/686, m. 10. The final concord levied two weeks later, by which he and his wife conveyed her property (with the exception of the manor of Wilby) to Buckland and John Ash I*, was probably connected with arrangements for his departure, and he went on to serve at the siege of Orléans, where Salisbury met his death.13 CP25(1)/292/66/84; Add. Ch. 523.

Chamber was back in England in February 1429, when he joined his stepson, William Vaux*, in offering surety in Chancery that William, Lord Zouche, would keep the peace to Sir John Culpepper*.14 CCR, 1422-9, p. 453. His military career was then effectively over. He seems not to have taken part in the King’s coronation expedition of 1430-2, and there is no further evidence of his service abroad.15 He is not to be confused with his namesake, a yeoman of the Household, who did take part in the coronation expedition: E403/693, m. 20; 695, m. 6. Nor is he to be identified with the namesake who served in the garrisons at Touques, Honfleur, Rouen and Essay between 1437 and 1441: Bibliothèque Nationale, fr 25773/1184; 25774/1241; 25775/1369, 1403, 1441, 1504. This Thomas was at Honfleur when our MP was serving as sheriff in 1438-9: fr 25775/1403. With the end of his military career, it was natural that Chamber should come to take a more central role in local affairs. In February 1430 he was involved in the arrangements for the marriage of his stepdaughter, Eleanor Vaux, to Thomas Giffard of Twyford in Buckinghamshire; two months later he was one of those to whom William, Lord Lovell, conveyed his estates before departure on the coronation expedition; and in the following July he witnessed a deed on behalf of Lord Zouche. His year culminated on 14 Dec. with election to represent his native county in Parliament with Buckland.16 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 44, 57-58, 69; C219/14/2.

This election is suggestive of Chamber’s wider connexions. Both Buckland and Ash, who he employed as a feoffee in 1428, were associated with Cardinal Beaufort; and it is probable that the two Northamptonshire MPs were returned as supporters of the cardinal, who had a number of other supporters in this Parliament. It is a fair assumption that Buckland had introduced Chamber to the Beaufort service. Significantly, in Nov. 1431 and July 1432, Chamber received assignments at the Exchequer of £40 on behalf of the executors of the cardinal’s nephew, Thomas Beaufort, count of Perche, killed a month earlier, for the expenses incurred in the custody of Thomas’s hostage, Charles d’Artois, count of Eu.17 G.L. Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort, 203; E403/700, m. 6; 403, m. 9.

A Beaufort connexion would help to explain why Chamber was so active in local administration during the 1430s. Before the end of the decade he had completed two further terms as sheriff and, between his terms, had sat in the Parliament of 1435 in company with Tresham. Strangely, however, despite his three terms as sheriff, he was not appointed to the routine commissions of county government, and he made only a very brief appearance on the commission of the peace. Indeed, this latter appointment seems to have been made in error for it came while he was sheriff, and his last shrievalty effectively marked the end of his administrative career. Age may have begun to catch up with him, but he continued to be active in the affairs of his neighbours. On 1 Aug. 1441, in company with his stepson, he was a witness at Castle Ashby to an important deed by which the manor there was settled in jointure on Edmund, Lord Grey of Ruthin, and his new wife, Katherine, daughter of Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland. At the end of the same year he was an attestor when Vaux and Tresham were elected to Parliament in what appears to have been a contest. In 1444 he was named, alongside Humphrey, earl of Stafford, as a feoffee in three Norfolk manors belonging to Sir Thomas Kerdiston* in the interest of Kerdiston’s wife, Philippa Trussell, a Northamptonshire heiress.18 Northants. RO, Compton mss, 229; C219/15/2; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 270-1. On 19 Jan. 1447 he again attested the Northamptonshire parliamentary election; and on 20 Mar. he was one of those who conveyed the castle of Wardour and other property in Wiltshire to William, Lord Lovell, and Alice, his wife.19 C219/15/4; C139/158/28.

Chamber died soon after. Both he and his wife were certainly dead by 1449, when her son, William Vaux, had an action pending for close-breaking at her property at Shangton.20 CP40/755, rots. 192, 390. The couple had no issue and our MP was succeeded by his brother John. Since the lands Chamber had held in right of his wife passed to Vaux, John was a less wealthy man than his brother. Further, his brief tenure of the Chamber lands was a troubled one: he claimed in a petition to the chancellor that, on 7 Jan. 1455, his Oxfordshire neighbour, Ralph Greville of Drayton, had violently disseised him of the manor of Hanwell, plundering his tenants of their livestock.21 C1/2/46 (printed in Procs. Chancery Eliz. ed. Caley and Bayley, ii, pp. xxxii-iii). This was a manifestation of the insecurity of the family’s title to the lands that had come to them through Elizabeth Swynford, and that insecurity was again made apparent when John died soon after and the lands passed to his son, William. In 1458 William was defending actions sued against him for these lands by his cousins, Robert Fitzsymond and Richard Newdigate, grandsons and heirs of Alice Chamber. They made the allegation that the quitclaim of 1422 was a forgery.22 CP40/789, rot. 462; 791, rot. 515. These challenges were overcome, in whole or part, but the Chambers never again enjoyed the prominence that they had in the time of our MP. The family failed in the male line in 1505 on the death of William’s son, John, a cleric, who founded a well-endowed chantry in the church of Spratton.23 CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 206.