MONTGOMERY, Thomas

Nothing certain is known of Montgomery before his election to represent Nottingham in the Parliament of 1432, in company with the leading lawyer of the town, John Manchester*, and he disappears from the records as suddenly as he appears. He attested the next parliamentary election in June 1433, but does not again appear in that capacity.1 C219/14/3, 4. Between October 1432 and January 1436 he brought several actions in the borough court, the last of these being against a prominent townsman, John Squyer*, for debt. Since two of the other actions were for failure to pay for herring it is possible that he was a fishmonger, but there is no evidence to confirm this.2 Notts. Archs. Nottingham recs., ct. rolls CA1323, rots. 3, 18, 21; 1327, rot. 6. He is not mentioned in the records thereafter.

In view of the fact that the electors of Nottingham were not accustomed to returning lesser townsmen, Montgomery’s apparent obscurity is best explained by a premature death. Not improbably he was a scion, or perhaps even the head, of a minor gentry family resident at Brinsley, ten miles to the north-west of the town. One John Montgomery of Brinsley was assessed on an annual income of £4 in the tax returns of 1450-1.3 E179/159/84. There is a further more speculative possibility, namely that he was a member of a far greater gentry family, the Montgomerys of Cubley in west Derbyshire. On 12 Oct. 1431 an estate in the immediate neighbourhood of Cubley was settled on Thomas Montgomery, described as an esquire, and Cecily his wife. The possibility that this Thomas, who was dead by the end of 1439, is to be identified with the MP could be dismissed out of hand, but for the fact that one of the feoffees who made this settlement was a leading Nottingham merchant, William Halifax*. None the less, even with this connexion such an identification is less probable than the more modest Brinsley one.4 Derbys. RO, Vernon of Sudbury mss, D410M/15/643, 653.