CHARITE, Thomas

Thomas was probably a descendant of a family established in Leicester by the early thirteenth century, although not recorded as holding major civic office before his time.2 Ibid. i. 29, 60; ii. 55, 202, 383, 389. No doubt he was a relative, perhaps a nephew, of John Charite, admitted to a prebend of the collegiate church of the Annunciation of St. Mary in the Newarke, Leicester, in 1404.3 If this canon is the same man associated with our MP as late as 1438, he must have died a few years later than 1434, the date suggested in Vis. Religious Houses Diocese of Lincoln, ii (Lincoln Rec. Soc. xiv), 189n, 204. Our MP is perhaps to be identified with the namesake, who, in November 1414, was commissioned by the Crown to hire workmen for the building-works at that church, a Lancastrian foundation, but, since the MP does not appear regularly in the records until the late 1420s, the commissioner is more likely to have been his father.4 CPR, 1413-16, p. 265. However this may be, it was the MP who, in 1430, sued a yeoman of the town in the court of common pleas for failing to pay for peas and beans he had sold him two years before. On 24 Apr. 1432 he was elected to represent the town in Parliament with the experienced MP, Ralph Brasier alias Humberston*, and soon after he was appointed to his first office, that of bailiff.5 CP40/678, rot. 24; C219/14/3.

On 6 Oct. 1432, just after Charite had taken up that office, he and a clerk, John Charite, perhaps to be identified with the canon of Newarke, were the alleged victims of a theft perpetrated at Evington on the outskirts of the town by no lesser men than Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor, and Sir Thomas Chaworth*.6 Leics. Village Notes ed. Farnham, ii. 228; CP40/692, rot. 106. There can be little doubt that this was a legal fiction: a year later a jury, sitting before the justices of assize at Leicester and including as many as five men who had been or were to be MPs for the town, ruled against the defendant’s defence that the Charites were their villeins appurtenant to their manor of Evington. Like so many other similar cases the purpose of the pleadings was probably to affirm the freedom of the plaintiffs in a court of record, as was the writ of attaint that the defendants sued out, only for it to be ruled against by another jury on 22 Feb. 1434.7 The five MPs were William Grantham, Thomas Hewet*, Walter Pomeroy*, Adam Racy and Thomas Waldegrave*. Nevertheless, the case raises a question over the social antecedents of our MP, and a similar question attached to at least one other of Leicester’s leading burgesses, William Grantham*. Grantham was one of the jury who found for him, and on 21 July 1435 our MP returned the favour: he was a juror in a similar plea between Grantham and Sir Richard Hastings*, who unsuccessfully claimed Grantham as his villein.8 CP40/699, rot. 301.

Whatever Charite’s social origins, he was, as witnessed by his two terms as mayor, one of Leicester’s most important townsmen over many years. In the late 1430s he was paid by the receiver of the honour of Leicester for providing cartloads of straw for the repair of shops in ‘Le Iremonger Rowe’ and the Saturday Market. In 1438 he added to his property in the town, acquiring, again in company with the clerk John Charite, a messuage from William Saltfleteby.9 DL29/212/3253-4; CP25(1)/126/75/46. A more important acquisition followed ten years later: on 5 Apr. 1448 William Walesby, the dean of the Newarke, demised a messuage in Loseby Lane in the parish of St. Martin to feoffees, including our MP himself, to hold for our MP’s life with remainder to his son, John Charite, in tail, saving the reversion to the dean and chapter of the college.10 Wyggeston Hosp. Recs. ed. Thompson, 349. The feoffees included two leading Leicestershire gentry, Thomas Everingham* and Richard Neel*, probably nominated to protect the dean and chapter’s reversion. He also added by lease to his holdings in the town. In 1452 a Leicestershire esquire, Thomas Walsh of Wanlip, sued him for making waste in lands there which the plaintiff had demised to him for a term of years.11 CP40/765, rot. 79d. His lands in the town were supplemented by others in its immediate environs, not only at Evington to the east (as implied by the collusive suit with Grey) but also at Bromkinsthorpe to the west. When a juror in the Grantham case he was described as resident there, perhaps as a lessee of the abbey of St. Mary de Pratis, a major local landholder.12 CP40/699, rot. 301.

In his later years Charite was an active litigant in the court of common pleas. In Easter term 1448 he had an action pending against John Wilton, vicar of Queniborough near Leicester, for selling him two corrupt sacks of wool. More significantly, a year later he sued two of his fellow Leicester MPs, William Newby* and Adam Racy*, together with a slater, William Richmond, for debts of £30 each. In 1450 he had pleas of debt of 25 marks each pending against Richard Holden, vicar of St. Nicholas, Leicester, and a London dyer, Robert Brewode. Such pleas imply that he had commercial interests, and he is occasionally described as ‘merchant’.13 CP40/749, rot. 430d; 751, rot. 187; 753, rot. 252d; 759, rots. 156, 195, 360. His appearances as a defendant are less common, but in 1446 he was sued by two local gentry, the brothers John Boyville* and Hugh Boyville*, for close-breaking at ‘Walshalle’ (now Dannett Street in Leicester).14 CP40/743, rot. 277.

In 1452 Charite made an important settlement of property he held on behalf of another. As the last surviving feoffee of John Church I*, on 26 July he conveyed the Church lands in the town and suburbs of Leicester to John’s grand-daughter and heir, Katherine, in tail, with remainder to the mayor and community of the town to find a chaplain to celebrate divine service daily in the church of St. Martin for the souls of the Churches and others named. That our MP himself was one of those to be remembered shows how close his ties had been with the feoffor.15 Leics. RO, Leicester bor. recs. BRII/8a/241, calendared in Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 424. Appended to the conveyance is Charite’s seal with the device of what looks like a cowled monk’s head. A little over a week later, on 5 Aug. he made a similar conveyance on behalf of a Leicester butcher, John Gyllowe, who in 1435 had enfeoffed him of a messuage in Deadlane in the parish of St. Peter. Now our MP conveyed this messuage to Gyllowe’s son, Henry, for life, with remainder to the mayor and community to fund the celebration of an obit in the church of St. Peter for the souls of the Gyllowes and others, again including himself.16 Leicester bor. recs. BRII/8a/242; Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 419, 424-5. On the following 19 Sept. Henry Gyllowe transferred the messuage to the mayor and community, forgoing his life interest: Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 258. Although these conveyances suggest that Charite was an elderly man putting his affairs in order before his death, he was not too old to be appointed to the mayoralty again at Michaelmas 1453. Yet he did not long survive his term of office. In Hilary term 1458 he was a defendant in an action of debt as an executor of his old associate, John Gyllowe, but he was dead by the following September, when Joan Charite, probably his widow, is recorded as holding tenements in St. Nicholas Street (‘Hotgate’) and Freeschool Lane (‘Deadlane’).17 Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 267; CP40/788, rot. 85d.