GALE, Thomas

Gale’s origins and early life are obscure,8 It is possible that Gale was the s. of a Somerset gentleman who in the early years of the 15th century held lands at North Curry to the east of Taunton: C1/16/114. This Thomas Gale’s mother, Joan, married as her 2nd husband one John Helyer. In the mid 14th century there were, however, also Gales living in the port of Sutton at Plymouth: Plymouth and W. Devon RO, Woollcombe mss, 710/659. but he had probably established himself as a merchant in the Channel port of Dartmouth by the early 1450s. He is first heard of in the spring of 1453, by which date he had entered the service of Sir Robert de Vere*, the younger brother of the earl of Oxford, resident at Haccombe in Devon by virtue of his marriage to Joan, daughter of Sir Hugh Courtenay† of Haccombe and coheiress of her mother, Philippa Archdeacon.9 C1/22/20.

Gale’s attachment to the de Vere household brought him into the circle of Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, and it was undoubtedly this connexion to which he owed his return to Parliament for the comital borough of Plympton Erle in 1455, while his master, Sir Robert, was at the same time returned for the county of Devon. It may have been his absence at Westminster that allowed Gale to avoid being drawn into the earl’s quarrel with his old adversary William, Lord Bonville*, which erupted into open violence in the course of that same year. Indeed, while the Commons were in recess during the summer of 1455, Gale took up a first government appointment as searcher in the ports of Exeter and Dartmouth. Further offices followed within a few months of the dissolution when he was included in a commission to inquire into an act of piracy committed by a group of south-Devon shipmen headed by his Dartmouth neighbour, Thomas Gille I*.10 CPR, 1452-61, p. 310. His career now rapidly gathered pace. In October he was appointed one of the collectors of customs in the same district of Exeter and Dartmouth, and two years later he also assumed the post of deputy to the chief butler, the earl of Shrewsbury, in the latter port. It is a mark of his administrative competence that he continued in office both as deputy butler under (Sir) John, later Lord Wenlock*, who assumed the office of chief butler in the autumn of 1460, and as a customs collector after Edward IV’s accession in March 1461.

There can be little doubt that the periodic loans that Gale provided to the as yet insecure Yorkist dynasty played a part in ingratiating him with the new rulers, but the regular rewards paid to him throughout his term of office provide tangible evidence of the regard in which he was held. Thus, in December 1461 he and his colleague John Hay received £20 for their ‘assiduous labours and diligence’, and similar payments were made in subsequent years.11 E403/824, m. 4; 825, m. 3; 827A, m. 7; 829, m. 6; 838, m. 5; 839, m. 10; 848, m. 7; E405/40, rot. 6; 51, rot. 2. In addition, Gale was granted a string of licenses to trade abroad, as well as safe conducts for the factors of prisoners he had taken in the course of his ventures.12 C76/146, mm. 2, 5, 16; 147, mm. 18, 21; 148, mm. 6, 21; 149, m. 19; 157, m. 8. Periodically, Gale’s dealings, like those of other officials aroused controversy. In 1459 he was able to use his appointment by the chief butler, as opposed to the Crown, in his defence against charges over the profits of his office brought against him at the Exchequer;13 E159/235, recorda Hil. rot. 49. three years later, his seizure as contraband of a cargo of wine imported to pay the ransom of certain Breton merchants captured at sea led to the appointment of a commission of inquiry headed by the abbot of Tavistock;14 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 233-4. and in early 1468 the failure of Gale and his colleague William Duke† to provide the required accounts at the Exchequer saw Gale formally committed to the Fleet prison (although he was permitted to post bail and remain at liberty).15 E159/244, fines rot. 1.

By the mid 1460s Gale was undeniably one of the leading townsmen of Dartmouth. He was regularly called upon to witness local deeds,16 Watkin, 142, 150, 151, 153; CCR, 1461-8, p. 404. and in 1464 was among the feoffees of the former mayor Robert Bowyer (with whom he had had business connexions), entrusted with the task of establishing a chantry on his behalf.17 Watkin, 141; CPR, 1461-7, p. 412. In part, Gale may have owed his place in the local community to the influence of the former mayor Nicholas Stebbing*. Gale was appointed a trustee for the establishment of a chantry in Stebbing’s will, and later in life remained associated with Joan, his widow.18 Watkin, 144, 145, 150; E13/162, Trin. rot. 7. In the autumn of 1465 Gale was elected mayor of Dartmouth, without, as far as is known, ever serving in the lesser office of bailiff, and two years later the borough returned him to Parliament.19 On account of the loss of the election returns for Edw. IV’s first two Parliaments it is impossible to be certain whether Gale was also returned in 1461 or 1463.

Now, however, events on the national stage once again gathered pace. Soon after the Commons were dismissed in June 1468 the growing tensions between the King, his brother the duke of Clarence, and the earl of Warwick escalated into a full-blown crisis. After the failure of Warwick’s attempt to rule through the captive King in the summer of 1469, and the defeat in March 1470 of a rebel army surreptitiously raised with his connivance, the earl and the duke were forced to flee for France. On 3 Apr. they reached Exeter (where the King’s commissioners, John, Lord Dynham, and Fulk, Lord Fitzwaryn, were under siege from Sir Hugh Courtenay* of Boconnoc, brother-in-law of Gale’s old patron, de Vere), and then continued on to Dartmouth, from where they set sail six days later. While it is not clear that Gale, the deputy butler in the port, played any active part in facilitating their flight, he can hardly have been ignorant of events as they unfolded. It is possible that, like a number of other leading south-westerners, Gale had forged a connexion with the volatile duke of Clarence, for not only was he confirmed in his offices after Warwick invaded England and restored Henry VI to the throne at the end of September, but he was allowed to retain his post as customer after Edward IV, newly reconciled with his brother, returned to power in the spring of 1471. That summer, moreover, while surrendering the deputy butlership after John Stafford, earl of Wiltshire, had taken the place of the dead Wenlock, he was given new and sweeping powers of oversight over all royal officials in the customs districts of Devon and Cornwall.

Gale was a natural choice to represent his Dartmouth neighbours in the fresh Parliament summoned in the autumn of 1472, when he was also once again elected mayor of his town. In the event, Parliament was to continue intermittently until the early summer of 1475, and Gale’s expertise in naval matters undoubtedly came to the fore in the preparations for Edward IV’s projected invasion of France. Indeed, he equipped two ships at his own expense and from 10 Feb. to 10 July 1475 he was on active service at sea. For the expenses he incurred in the process the grateful King granted him licence to export and import goods without paying customs and subsidies until he should have recouped what was owing to him, and two years later he formally exempted Gale from the prohibition on trading that normally applied to customs collectors. The King’s letters soon proved their worth, for the promise to the informant of half of the goods forfeited by any customs official caught trading in spite of his office, prompted one Thomas Williams to complain in 1479 that Gale’s ship the Mary Gale had been active in the overseas trade and to claim his share of her cargo.20 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 543, 555; 1476-85, pp. 13-14; E122/195/1. Gale was at this time trading to Ireland, but even with the King’s good will not all of his business ventures proved successful. In September 1477 a ship in the charge of Thomas Fitzjohn and Thomas Walsh, factors for Gale and his associate Alfred Corneburgh†, one of the Crown’s most important servants in the West Country, was taken off the coast of Ireland by a vessel from Minehead called Le Pykard. To add insult to injury, the pirates not only took the ship’s cargo, worth £60, and imprisoned the factors for nine days, but eventually robbed them of their clothes and set them free on the Irish shore naked.21 CPR, 1476-85, p. 79.

Having represented Dartmouth in the brief, if dramatic Parliament of 1478, Gale was once more chosen as mayor later that year. He was now so heavily occupied with his various offices that he was forced to discharge his responsibilities at the guildhall by a lieutenant, one William Harry.22 Watkin, 152. He was nevertheless expanding his property in the town. In the late 1470s he acquired two tenements, one between the upper High Street and the sea and one between the High Street and the Lower Street. It may have been one of these properties of which he enfeoffed the prominent local merchant and later mayor Richard Orenge, who however failed to return it to Gale when requested.23 C1/58/77. Here also, it seems, the burdens of office took their toll, leaving Gale with little time to oversee the maintenance of his extended holdings: in May 1494 the mayor’s court heard how John Rede had acquired a vacant plot from him, ‘le stappys’ of which were dangerously ruinous and broken.24 Watkin, 198. Two years later, in July 1496, Gale and William Huddesfield† lost seisin of two messuages in Dartmouth to Nicholas Seymour, and had to seek compensation from a local gentleman, John Prideaux of Orcharton, for his part in the transactions.25 Ibid. 201-2.

Such disputes aside, Gale continued to be respected among his fellow burgesses, and was frequently called upon to witness their property settlements or to act as a feoffee.26 Ibid. 151-3; Harvard Univ., Law School Lib., English deeds, AQD0616. He carried out similar activities well beyond the confines of Dartmouth, as when he acted as surety for Vincent Pitlesden* when the latter took the lease of the weigh-house of Southampton from Richard Pole†. Before the term of the lease had expired, Pitlesden died and Agnes, his widow and executrix, refused to honour her late husband’s obligation and pay the rent for the holding. In order not to forfeit the £100 he had pledged, Gale was forced to pay the outstanding £28 himself, although seeking redress against Agnes in Chancery.27 C1/55/208-9. Similarly, Gale came to owe several debts to John Myrfyn, one of the auditors of the Exchequer, who found bail for him at the time of his commitment to the Fleet in 1468. He repaid part of this debt without immediately securing a written and sealed acquittance, and although Myrfyn promised to provide such a document at their next meeting, he died before he could do so. Unable to prove his partial payment, Gale found himself sued in the courts for the full sum by Cecily, Myrfyn’s widow, and her co-executors Sir William Hampton† and John Middleton*.28 C1/64/111; E13/164, Mich. rot. 17d. By contrast, it may have been a commercial transaction that saw Gale indebted to the prominent Salisbury trader John Hall II*, a connexion which led to protracted litigation before the barons of the Exchequer,29 E13/162, Trin. rots. 6d, 7. and the same may have been true of a suit for debt brought in 1482 by the London scrivener John Morecok before the justices of common pleas.30 CP40/894, rot. 46d.

Following a fourth mayoralty of Dartmouth in 1481-2, Gale retired from his office of customs collector. Although he sued out two general pardons in early 1482, these specifically excluded his conduct of his offices, but there is no suggestion that he had to surrender his post on account of malpractice.31 CPR, 1476-85, pp. 249, 325. Certainly, Gale continued to find official employment after Richard III’s usurpation. In 1484 he was appointed escheator of Devon and Cornwall, and – perhaps as a consequence of his services in 1475 – in early 1485 he became joint keeper of the King’s ships. As the threat of an invasion by the earl of Richmond and his supporters in French and Breton exile became ever more acute, he was in addition charged with taking musters of men to go to sea for the defence of the realm.32 CPR, 1476-85, p. 545. It is thus not surprising that Richmond’s victory at Bosworth brought his career of office-holding under the Crown to an abrupt end, even though in the autumn of 1485 he was still employed for minor tasks like the delivery of various commissions and writs de auxilio to certain sheriffs.33 E405/75, rot. 2. In his locality, his standing was undiminished and he went on to hold a further two mayoralties in Dartmouth, as well as playing a regular part in the conduct of town business at other times.34 Watkin, 186, 194, 197, 254.

Gale was thus not only well placed to be a useful contact for anyone plotting to dislodge Henry VII by means of a maritime invasion, but also had reason to feel disaffected with the new regime. Such considerations may have been on the mind of his old acquaintance, the Exeter clothier John Taylor, who, if the later parliamentary indictment can be believed, sought him out at Dartmouth in 1491 to seek his support for the conspiracy intended to place the Flemish pretender Perkin Warbeck on the throne in the guise of Edward IV’s younger son, Richard of Shrewsbury, duke of York. Nevertheless, it is not clear whether Gale ever took an active part in the plotting, and there is no evidence to suggest that he was subject to reprisals by King Henry.35 I. Arthurson, Perkin Warbeck Conspiracy, 18, 88; PROME, xvi. 122-3. In any event, failing health may have prevented the ageing merchant from participating in the later stages of the conspiracy, and he was dead before Warbeck landed in the south-west in September 1497. He left a daughter and two sons. His grandson John Gale† was eventually to follow him into the Commons as the successive representative of two south-western boroughs.36 The Commons 1509-58, ii. 184.