MONMOUTH, Thomas

The Herefordshire subsidy returns of 1450-1 show that there were two Thomas Monmouths, the one resident in Hereford, assessed on an income of 40s. p.a., and the other living in Leominster, with an annual income of £4.1 E179/117/64. The latter was no doubt the MP. His family had been established in Leominster at least since the time of Henry IV, when their property there, in all or in part, comprised four messuages, a shop, 80 acres of land, seven acres of meadow, 40 acres of pasture and three acres of moor. His father, Thomas, was the bailiff of the borough in 1413 and attested its elections to the Parliaments of 1413 (May) and 1419.2 CP40/905, rot. 154d; JUST1/1525, rot. 9; C219/11/1; 12/3. Our MP succeeded him as one of Leominster’s leading burgesses.

Monmouth first appears in the records in May 1448, when, described as ‘of Leominster, yeoman’, he joined another yeoman of the town in entering a bond in £40 to (Sir) Walter Devereux I*.3 Longleat House, Wilts. Devereux pprs. I/9. Thereafter he appears occasionally as a juror: in August 1452 he was on the Leominster jury which laid indictments before the commissioners of oyer and terminer who visited the county in the wake of the duke of York’s rising at Dartford, led locally by Devereux; and, in July 1455, he sat on a jury at Leominster charged with listing the landholdings of the borough’s lately-deceased neighbour, Sir Roland Lenthall.4 KB9/34/2/6; C139/160/36.

In the meantime Monmouth was elected to Parliament at hustings held on 3 Mar. 1453. One reason for his return at this time may be tentatively suggested. John Monmouth*, one of the King’s serjeants-at-arms from 1444, is known to have originated from Herefordshire, and if he was a near kinsman of Thomas it might explain why the latter was elected to an assembly with a strong Household element. A further indication of Lancastrian sympathies is his appearance on the Leominster jury, which on 4 Apr. 1457 laid indictments before royal commissioners charged with investigating the recent Yorkist rising in the county.5 C219/16/2; KB9/35/73d. It might, therefore, be more than more coincidence that he had served in the same capacity in 1452.

None the less, although a juror in 1457, Monmouth could not prevent his own indictment for an offence unconnected with the Yorkist rising. He was fined one mark for his part in an assault on William Stodart, constable of Leominster, on 24 Feb. 1453. Later references to him are sporadic. Two years later he was joint-plaintiff with Thomas Parker, a former sheriff of Herefordshire, in an action of trespass, and in 1462 he himself was sued for trespass by another Leominster MP, William Hood*. In this latter action he was described as a yeoman, a more accurate description than that of ‘husbandman’ assigned to him when indicted in 1457.6 KB9/35/10; KB27/785, fines rot.d; 793, rot. 56; 804, rot. 42d. Aside from his attestation of Leominster elections no more is known of him until his death. This occurred between 3 Jan. 1478, when he last appears as an attestor, and Hilary term 1480, when Sir John Barre* sued a writ of formedon against his daughter and coheiress, Alice, and her husband, John Morris†, MP for Leominster in 1467, for four messuages and 240 acres of land in Winstone near Hereford. There is no evidence to show how Monmouth came by this property, but, if a plea in defence of this action is true, he settled it as his daughter’s jointure. Later, in 1488, Morris and Alice sued a formedon of their own for the family lands in Leominster against John Walker and William Taillour, presumably Monmouth’s feoffees, who did not contest the action.7 C219/17/3; CP40/871, rot. 355; 905, rot. 154d.