COMPWORTH, Thomas

Nothing is known of the pedigree of Thomas Compworth beyond his father. The elder Thomas was, like his son, almost certainly a lawyer. He established himself as a member of the lesser Oxfordshire gentry by marriage in about 1362 to Agnes, heiress of the manor of Thrupp near Kidlington, but, unfortunately for him, her title to the manor was disputed. Soon after the marriage the elder Thomas recovered it against Nicholas Mymmes of South Mimms in Middlesex, who claimed as heir-in-tail.3 CP40/416, rot. 210; 461, rot. 33; CPR, 1313-17, p. 478; Feudal Aids, iv. 163; Reg. Black Prince, iv. 366, 521; CP25(1)/188/12/50; JUST1/1458, rot. 68d. This, however, was only the beginning of what was to be a long-running and ultimately violent dispute, and was to be one part of our MP’s unwelcome legacy from his father. The other was the elder Thomas’s unorthodox religious opinions which, in the autumn of 1385, brought him the dubious distinction of becoming the first layman in England to be convicted of heresy.4 M. Jurkowski, ‘Lollardy in Oxon. and Northants.: the two Thomas Compworths’, in Lollards and Their Influence ed. Somerset et al., 74-82. This conviction, before a committee of Oxford theologians, was the prelude to a crisis in the family affairs. On 28 Dec. 1387, with a plea sued by Mymmes pending before the Oxfordshire justices of assize, a fracas occurred at Thrupp in which our MP killed Mymmes’s ally, Roger Foliot of nearby Tackley. A few days later he was indicted of felony before the coroner by a jury which included Nicholas Mymmes the younger, and in March 1388 the indictment was called into the court of King’s bench.5 CP40/505, rot. 423; 507, rot. 179; C258/24/22A; KB27/548, rex rot. 8d. Although he was able to avoid punishment, this unfortunate episode was followed by his father’s loss of the manor. At a trial held in Oxford in April 1389 the elder Thomas defaulted and Mymmes formally recovered seisin of Thrupp in the following Hilary term.6 CP40/513, rot. 132.

The loss of Thrupp was not the setback it might have been for the young Thomas, for the heir was not he but his elder half-brother, Elias Dounhall. None the less, a father convicted of heresy and an indictment for murder were not the most promising of beginnings for a successful career, and it was to be some time before matters improved. Having lost his country estate, the elder Thomas moved to Northampton, perhaps attracted by the town’s lollard community. He was there by 1393 when Richard Stormsworth† complained to the King and council that the mayor of the town, John Fox†, was maintaining a number of lollard sympathizers at his home, among them ‘un Thomas Compworth del countee doxenford qe fut convictz devant le chanceller [de] la universitee doxenford des plusours errours et heresies’.7 SC8/142/7099; K.B. McFarlane, Wycliffe, 141-5; A.K. McHardy, ‘Bp. Buckingham and the Lollards of Lincoln Diocese’, Studies in Church Hist. ix. 137-42. Fortunately for him, this did not result in further proceedings, and he presumably remained at Northampton until his death in about 1398, when he was again attempting to wrest the manor of Thrupp from Mymmes.8 CP40/513, rot. 132; KB27/547, att. rot. 1. In the meantime, his son was facing problems of his own as the murder of Foliot came back to trouble him. In July 1395 he had taken the precaution of suing a pardon for the crime, but when the court of King’s bench came to Oxford in Easter term 1398 and reviewed the records of the county coroners, proceedings were reopened. On 15 May our MP duly appeared to answer and was released to the custody of mainpernors until the following term. Then he was able to secure dismissal, but only after being put to the expense and uncertainty of securing a further pardon at the beginning of Trinity term.9 CPR, 1391-6, p. 600; KB27/548, rex rots. 8d, 13; C67/30, m. 23.

By this date, if not earlier, Compworth was probably receiving legal training in London. Late in 1398 he came personally into the court of common pleas to sue a plea for the detinue of chattels in London worth £5, and at about the same time he made the first of his many appearances as a mainpernor in Chancery and King’s bench.10 CP40/551, rot. 407; CCR, 1396-9, p. 405. Like his father, however, Compworth could not keep out of trouble for long, and he seems to have been implicated in the rising of the Holands against the new King in January 1400. The evidence is indirect but strongly suggestive. On 20 Mar. of that year he purchased a general pardon for all treasons and other offences committed before the previous 2 Feb. Significantly, among his mainpernors was a chaplain, William Sawtry, who had been indicted for his part in the rising before the court of the steward and marshal of the royal household. Further, Compworth can also be connected with another of those indicted, Sir Alan Buxhill the younger, stepson of the rebel earl of Salisbury and one of Compworth’s fellow sureties in a King’s bench recognizance of 1399.11 C237/24/2/144; McHardy, ‘De Heretico Comburendo, 1401’, in Lollardy and Gentry ed. Aston and Richmond, 119-20; CPR, 1399-1401, pp. 190, 228-9; E37/28; P. Strohm, England’s Empty Throne, 59; KB27/555, rex rot. 19d. These circumstances, when taken together with his later employment by the Holands, imply that our MP also played some part in the revolt, probably as a servant of John Holand, duke of Exeter. After the duke’s execution, he acted with other Holand men to limit the damage to the family. In May 1400 he took a lease of the manor of Langton in Yorkshire, forfeited to the Crown by the duke’s treason, on highly unfavourable terms, agreeing to pay an annual farm at the Exchequer of £41 for a manor extended at only £8 p.a. This was the prelude to the recovery of the manor out of royal hands by the duke’s feoffees, headed by Warin Waldegrave, who had acted as mainpernor in the grant of the manor to our MP.12 CFR, xii. 58; CCR, 1399-1402, p. 480; CPR, 1401-5, pp. 110-11, 172; CIMisc. vii. 21, 22, 54.

The marriage of the duke of Exeter’s daughter, Constance, to the young Thomas Mowbray, heir to the earldom of Norfolk, in 1400 brought Compworth into the service of another family whose loyalty to the Lancastrian regime was soon to fall into question. The first evidence of this service dates from July 1402, when he acted as surety for the commitment to five Mowbray servants of property in Norfolk and Northamptonshire during the heir’s minority. In November 1403 he stood surety for the pardon of Robert Butvelyn of Cottesbrooke (Northamptonshire), a Mowbray servant implicated in the Percy rebellion.13 CFR, xii. 162; C237/27/408; CPR, 1405-8, p. 80. His service to the family continued after the crisis provoked by the execution of Thomas Mowbray for rising with Archbishop Scrope in 1405. In November 1407 he joined John Lounde, the duchess of Norfolk’s receiver-general, in offering mainprise for the grant of the custody of the Mowbray manor of Crick in Northamptonshire to Sir Gerard Braybrooke†, Sir William Marney† and others; and a year later he gave surety for the award of custody of another Mowbray manor, that of Weston in Warwickshire, to three Mowbray servants.14 CFR, xiii. 84, 132; L.E. Moye, ‘Estates and Finances of the Mowbray Fam.’ (Duke Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), 387, 401, 403, 412. In the meantime Sir John Grey, Constance’s second husband, had named him as one of his attorneys during his absence in royal service in Wales, and in the following year he acted in a recognizance with Sir John.15 CPR, 1405-8, p. 437; CCR, 1405-9, p. 492; CP, ix. 605.

It was probably during these years that Compworth contracted what was, for a man of his rank, a potentially lucrative match. By the autumn of 1406 he had taken as his wife Elizabeth, daughter of William Hondsacre, heiress to lands in Warwickshire and Northamptonshire. Unfortunately for him, however, her title to this property was insecure, and this insecurity may have prompted him and his wife to sell their title. By a final concord levied in Hilary term 1407 the couple released their right in the manor of Withybrook in Warwickshire to the Coventry merchant, William Botener.16 CP40/583, cart. rot. 1d; Warws. Feet of Fines (Dugdale Soc. xviii), 2433; VCH Warws. vi. 265-6. The manor had been held by the Castells of Withybrook since the late 13th century, most recently by George Castell†, and Elizabeth’s right is not clear. Elizabeth also claimed title to another Warwickshire manor, at Wishaw: in 1408 the couple sued the widow of Sir Baldwin Berford for the manor in the court of common pleas, basing their claim on her descent from Robert Hondsacre and his wife, Alma, her great-grandparents. The defendant prayed aid of the reversioners, John Hore* and his wife Joan, and the Compworths failed in their claim as the manor descended to the Hores.17 C40/590, rot. 53; CCR, 1422-9, p. 34; C139/10/22; VCH Warws. iv. 259.

Despite these apparent setbacks Compworth’s legal career continued to make progress. He was sufficiently well established to be appointed briefly to the quorum of the Northamptonshire bench from 1412 to 1414. Soon after, on 27 Feb. 1416, he attested his first parliamentary election in the county, and he was again among the attestors at the election held in the next year.18 C219/11/8, 12/2. At this date his legal practice was extensive. He is found acting as an attorney in the court of common pleas, as a mainpernor in the court of King’s bench, as a financial guarantor in the Exchequer for recipients of royal grants, and so on.19 CP40/598, rot. 198d; KB27/608, rot. 27; CFR, xiv. 64. Interestingly, in a suit of 1415 in which he was a defendant, he described himself as an apprentice-at-law, ‘in eadem lege eruditi’, and it seems that he was of the legal rank just below the elite of serjeants-at-law.20 KB27/618, rot. 47.

Compworth also found another patron in Maud, widow of John, Lord Lovell (d.1408). No doubt their association arose in part out of their common Northamptonshire interests, but it is also significant that, as daughter of Sir Robert Holand, she was the cousin of his early master, the late duke of Exeter. In May 1415 Compworth gave surety for the grant to her of the custody of the caput honoris of the Lovells, the manor of Titchmarsh, but it seems likely that he had already been among her legal counsel for several years.21 CFR, xiv. 107-8; CIPM, xx. 196-203. In 1416 he acted as her attorney in Chancery in a dispute with the Crown over the tenancy of the estates of her late son, John, Lord Lovell (d.1414), and in January 1417 he represented her when a verdict was given in her favour at Northampton.22 CIPM, xx. 201; C260/130/32; KB27/621, att. rot. 1d, rex rots. 13, 14. Compworth also found employment in the service of her cousin, John Holand, earl of Huntingdon. In a petition to the chancellor in the summer of 1416, the earl asked that our MP be named to a commission of inquiry into the value of the lands of the Northamptonshire magnate, William, Lord Zouche, which he had been granted during the minority of Zouche’s son and heir. The earl suspected that the appraisal made of this extensive estate after the death of Lord Zouche had grossly underestimated its value, and his suspicions were confirmed in the new inquests held by his own commissioners. Almost all the values were increased in the second valuation, most notably at the inquest held before Compworth at Shrewsbury in June 1417.23 C81/1423/18; CPR, 1416-22, p. 80; CIPM, xx. 408-39. It was no doubt in recognition of this long service to the Holand family that Lady Lovell directed her executors in March 1419 to pay Compworth an annuity of five marks for the rest of his life.24 CCR, 1419-22, p. 125.

In 1420 Compworth joined with two other Northamptonshire lawyers, Thomas Billing* and William Tresham*, in winning from the Crown the wardship and marriage of Ralph (b.1409), grandson and heir of Ralph Parles† of Watford, at the cost of £100. A significant part of the Parles inheritance, including the manor of Helmdon, was in the hands of feoffees, but the grantees gained the custody of the manor of Watford with lands in Stoke Bruerne and Shutlanger. This raises the question of the status of Compworth’s own landholding in Helmdon. As early as 1412 he had been described as resident there, and it may be that he held the Parles manor as lessee. If this was so it would explain his interest in the wardship.25 CPR, 1416-22, p. 308; C138/53/107; E159/189, communia Mich. rot. 19. The grant was the immediate prelude to our MP taking a more active role in local administration. Remarkably, between 1421 and 1426, he served three terms as the Northamptonshire escheator, and from 1422 to 1432 he attested six parliamentary elections in the county.26 C219/13/1, 2, 4; 14/1-3.

In these circumstances it is curious that Compworth was not restored to the bench. No very likely explanation presents itself, but it may be that earlier lollard sympathies detracted from his qualifications as a magistrate. He certainly had strong associations among the sect his father had favoured. Sawtry, who acted as his mainpernor in 1400, was burnt at the stake for his heretical opinions in the following year. Much later, in 1425 he acted in bonds alongside John Clement, a London tailor once imprisoned as a suspected sympathizer of the fugitive Sir John Oldcastle†, and William Hert of Lincoln, who was later named as a lollard sympathizer by Robert Burton, precentor of Lincoln cathedral.27 CCR, 1422-9, pp. 186-7; M. Jurkowski, ‘John Fynderne’ (Keele Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1998), 323-5, 334-5. Compworth’s association with Hert seems to have been close: as early as 1409 Hert had offered mainprise with him in the court of common pleas, and in April 1425 he took the trouble to attend the Lincolnshire assizes as one of Hert’s sureties.28 CP40/595, rot. 262; Lincs. Archit. and Arch. Soc. iii. 71; JUST1/1537, rot. 10d. Further, in 1430 he was named among the feoffees of the Buckinghamshire esquire, John Cheyne I*, sponsor of a lollard preacher at the time of Oldcastle’s revolt and cousin of the more famous lollard, Sir John Cheyne I*.29 E326/1458; SC2/155/11; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 59, 60; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 334-5; KB27/611, rex rot. 13; E153/483/3; CPR, 1413-16, p. 261.

Compworth’s single election to Parliament came on 3 Oct. 1427, when he was returned for the borough of Northampton. He had continued his father’s connexions with the town: in 1406 and 1410 he had been described as ‘of Northampton’ in a deed and mainprise; in 1413 he stood surety in King’s bench for Edmund Ferrers, a prominent Northampton wine merchant; and in 1424 he was named as a feoffee of the Northampton property once held by Nicholas Horncastle†.30 CP40/583, cart. rot. 1d; CCR, 1409-13, p. 171; KB27/608, rot. 27; Northants. RO, Knightley chs. 166. None the less, his connexions there were weaker than those of any other of the borough’s MPs in the Lancastrian period, and there must thus have been a very particular reason for his election. Not influential enough to win return for the county, he probably engineered his election for the borough to advance his own interest. Even so, it is clear he had some support among the leading townsmen, two of whom, Henry Stone* and John Bertram*, stood as sureties for his appearance in Parliament. In any event, parliamentary service appears not to have been popular among them, and as a lawyer and willing candidate, Compworth was natural choice.31 C219/13/5. The reason for his willingness can only be inferred, but it may have involved a renewed effort to secure some of the lands claimed by his wife. The matter was, or else was soon to be, in agitation at this date. On 18 Feb. 1429, less than a year after the end of the Parliament, an assize of novel disseisin was heard before the justices at Northampton: Compworth and his wife joined her cousin, Joan, and her husband, Edward Brounflete, in claiming the manor of Newbold (in Clipston) against six defendants, including Ellen Swynford. The jurors ruled in favour of the plaintiffs, accepting that Joan and Elizabeth were heirs-in-tail to William Swynford. Compworth had thus made good his wife’s title to part of the inheritance she claimed.32 JUST1/1537, rot. 41.

Little is known of the last years of Compworth’s life. He attested his last recorded Northamptonshire election in 1432, and thereafter his legal business dwindled as his age advanced. He is occasionally found as a feoffee, acting both for the Buckinghamshire esquire, John Neville, and a Northampton gentleman, Thomas Watford, during the 1430s, but his appearances as a surety became far more infrequent than they had been at the height of his career.33 E149/164/3; CPR, 1436-41, p. 227; CCR, 1435-41, p. 198; C1/10/307; E40/8384, 10894. His last documented activity dates from Easter term 1439 when he purchased a messuage and land in Greatworth near Helmdon. He was dead by 4 Feb. 1441 when described as deceased in a writ for the proof of age of his former ward, John Parles. He was survived by his wife, who in Hilary term 1442 was sued by Margaret, widow of one Thomas Cherye, for dower in some 250 acres of farmland in Helmdon. He is not known to have left any issue.34 CP25(1)/179/94/87; CIPM, xxv. 475; CP40/726, rot. 286.