CLERK, Thomas II

It is possible that Thomas was a kinsman of John Clerk†, the weaver who represented Reading in the Parliament of 1414 (Apr.), served as mayor in 1414-15 and was still living in 1427,5 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 583-4. but his parents lived some ten miles away in the parish of St. Clement in Ashampstead, and it was not until August 1422 that they and Thomas obtained the two messuages in New Street, Reading, which Thomas was to hold for the rest of his life.6 WARD2/60/238/1, 2; CAD, iii. A5995. By 1435 he was paying an annual rent of 5s. for property in the town leased from the Stonor family.7 SC6/1122/19. He was nearly always described as ‘draper’ (as on the parliamentary return),8 C219/15/7. or sometimes as ‘hosier’, to distinguish him from two namesakes, a butcher who had been admitted to the guild at Reading in 1420-1, and a weaver, the son of a former burgess, who was admitted in 1427-8.9 Berks. Arch. Jnl. lxi. 65; cofferers’ accts. R/FA/2, no. 17. His own admission to the liberty came two years later, on payment only of the 40d. required for the formal breakfast held for members of the guild.10 Cofferers’ accts. R/FA/2, no. 19.

Clerk took an active part in the affairs of Reading from 1433, when he was elected cofferer, until 1466, his final mayoralty. He frequently provided pledges for the admission of newcomers to the guild, doing so at least nine times in this period, and among those whom he sponsored in this way was William Pernecote*, a fellow draper, and the landowner Thomas Beke*.11 Reading Recs. i. 6, 12, 17, 20, 35, 53, 55; Berks. Arch. Jnl. lxi. 73. He attested the electoral indentures for the Parliaments of 1442, February 1449 (during his first mayoralty) and 1450, on the last occasion endorsing the newcomer Beke’s return.12 C219/15/2, 6, 16/1. Quite often he was among those authorized to collect parliamentary tenths and fifteenths in the town, doing so in New Street ward, where he lived, in 1437, 1440 and 1446, and acting as an assessor in 1464. In addition, in 1442 he collected money for repairs to the guildhall (towards which he himself made the largest contribution, 3s. 4d.), and for a loan to the Crown in 1446.13 Cofferers’ accts. R/FA/2, no. 29; Reading Recs. i. 8, 10, 15, 25, 26, 58. Clerk’s first mayoralty was followed immediately by his election to Parliament in November 1449, but although he continued to be closely involved in the borough’s affairs ten years elapsed after the Parliament was dissolved before he became mayor again, and he was never re-elected as an MP. In fact, during this period he was nominated mayor a further four times (in 1453, 1456, 1457 and 1458), but on each occasion the abbot of Reading rejected him in favour of one of the other two candidates. In the meantime in August 1451 he had been listed among the 17 burgesses assigned the task of scrutinizing evidences in the guildhall, as part of the townsmen’s long-term attempts to gain independence from the rule of the abbot, and in June 1452 he was one of 25 delegated ‘ad determinandum et respondendum’ on behalf of the community. Just seven burgesses, specially dressed for the occasion at the guild’s expense, rode out of Reading with the mayor to greet the King when Parliament was summoned there in 1453; Clerk was among them.14 Reading Recs. i. 37, 39, 40, 46, 47, 49. Then too, he was a member of the jury at Reading which in October 1458 gave evidence to the sheriff about the property of Simon Porter* so it might be confiscated to pay a debt. He was present with five other named burgesses and the mayor at a ‘morow speche’ at Reading a month later.15 C131/70/15; Reading Recs. i. 48.

Although Clerk’s second mayoralty ended at Michaelmas 1461, and he was not one of those then nominated to serve in the next term, it would appear that he carried on in office when John West obtained a royal writ to obtain a discharge, even though this action was held to be against the custom of the borough. This meant that it was Clerk who was later held responsible for the loss of the writ de expensis for the payment of the wages of Beke and Pernecote, Reading’s representatives in the Parliament which met in November that year. In January 1463, when the two MPs had still not been paid (as the money could not be levied without the authority of a writ), it was decided in a meeting at the guildhall that Clerk should purchase a replacement writ or else pay all the wages himself.16 Reading Recs. i. 51, 53-54. To add to his woes, in Michaelmas term that year he was sued in the court of common pleas by the executors of a kerseyman of East Hendred for a debt of £13.17 CP40/810, rot. 253d.

In the course of his life Clerk had been engaged in several transactions relating to property in Reading. In Trinity term 1447 he and his first wife had conveyed two messuages and two acres of land to William Baron* esquire, the Exchequer official,18 CP25(1)/13/85/11. and for several years from 1452 he leased to the guild for 2s. p.a. a plot of land where the communal scales could stand.19 Cofferers’ accts. R/FA/2, nos. 35-44. In 1458 Robert Farle enfeoffed him and his second wife of a tenement in New Street which Farle had inherited from his father,20 CAD, iv. A9113. and in 1462 Clerk conveyed another tenement and vacant plot nearby to John Norris* of Bray, and William Aspull of Reading. During his final mayoralty, by a deed dated at Amersham in February 1466, Clerk transferred possession of all of his property in Reading and elsewhere in England to William Edmund*, a gentleman from Wells in Somerset.21 Reading deeds, R/AT 1/145; CAD, iii. A5691; iv. A9247. His reasons for so doing are not recorded, but perhaps it was in preparation for his death. He took no further part in Reading affairs, and may have died soon afterwards. Edmund authorized John Langham of Reading to receive possession of Clerk’s property in June 1470, and on 8 Jan. 1475 the MP’s widow Elizabeth released to Langham and his wife her title to the tenement in New Street which she and her late husband had acquired from Farle, and also gave the couple all her goods.22 CAD, iii. A5688; iv. A8925, 9111-12. Clerk’s heir was his nephew, Edward Clerk of Frilsham, a husbandman, who, however, relinquished his interest in property in New Street to (Sir) William Norris* in the following year.23 CAD, iii. A5686-7, 5689-90, 5959; iv. A 9037. Elizabeth made a gift of three silver covered cups to the guild at Reading, no doubt at her late husband’s behest. She was described as ‘lately deceased’ in October 1481.24 Reading Recs. i. 77, 80. Thomas and Elizabeth had presented a lavish set of vestments made of blue velvet embroidered with flowers of gold to the parish church of St. Laurence, and it was probably there that they were buried.25 Kerry, 125, suggested that a monumental brass there belonged to their tomb. Clerk had served as a sacristan of St. Laurence’s in 1436-7, 1440-1 and 1442-3: Trans. Berks. Arch. Soc. (1881), 6-8.