MORE, Thomas I

The son of a burgess who represented Chipping Wycombe in no fewer than eight Parliaments, Thomas had a much briefer parliamentary career than his father, although he enjoyed the status of an ‘esquire’ as a member of Henry VI’s household.3 Centre for Bucks. Studies, CH1 T/6/12; CCR, 1454-61, p. 194; CP25(1)/22/124/19. The records of the court of common pleas provide the evidence that he entered the royal establishment, for he was referred to as ‘late of the King’s household’ when the executors of William Stocton I* sued him in that court over an alleged debt of 60s. in the late 1450s.4 CP40/787, rot. 79d; 788, rots. 186, 392d; 791, rot. 368d. It is possible that it was he who was serving Henry VI as a serjeant-at-arms by 1454 but it is unclear whether the Thomas More who received an assignment at the Exchequer in 1459 towards his livery as a royal servant was this serjeant or a namesake.5 E403/800, m. 4; 819, m. 3. Whatever the extent of his career in the Household, and however minor his position there, More was a figure of greater substance than most other residents of Wycombe and an obvious choice to stand for Parliament, even if he appears never to have held office within the borough.

Unfortunately, it is frequently difficult to distinguish More from a namesake and possible relative, Thomas More of Buckingham, who had acquired the manor of Bourton in that town through his marriage to a member of the Fowler family. As a result, it is impossible to determine which Thomas participated in the elections of the knights of the shire for Buckinghamshire listed above, which of them was commissioned to collect a tax in the county in August 1430 and which was called upon to keep the peace in 1434.6 VCH Bucks. iii. 485; CPR, 1429-36, p. 397. The subject of this biography, however, was one of the Thomas Mores involved in a series of legal transactions concerning the manor of Bainton in Oxfordshire, formerly the property of the Buckinghamshire lawyer, John Barton I*. Barton, who died in 1434, had made a settlement by which his wife, Isabel, was to hold Bainton for life, after which one half of the manor would pass to his sister and heiress, Isabel Ampcotes, and the other to Thomas Dodds, clerk, John Arderne, and Thomas More. While the latter was probably Thomas of Buckingham, in the later 1450s and early 1460s the Wycombe Thomas and his wife, Florence, were certainly parties to further dispositions relating to Bainton (subsequently purchased by Edmund Rede*), but in exactly what capacity is hard to discern.7 VCH Oxon. vi. 317; Hants RO, Cope mss, 43M48/219, 220, 223, 225, 275, 278, 280-2; CP25(1)/191/29/2; CAD, iii. A5711; CCR, 1454–61, 221; C1/222/113.

The earliest definite reference to Thomas of Wycombe is a conveyance of mid 1436, by which he and other feoffees of Sir Thomas Sackville* and his wife, Anne, received seisin of the Sackville manors of Marlesford, Suffolk, and North Clatford, Hampshire. He may well have inherited his connexion with Sackville from his father, since Roger More and the knight, one of the leading gentry of Buckinghamshire, had acted together in a land transaction (apparently on behalf of William Clerk†) in Henry V’s reign.8 CP25(1)/292/68/189; Worcs. Archs., Hampton (Pakington) mss, 705: 349/12946/494144, 494402. It is not known exactly when he succeeded Roger, who was still alive at the beginning of 1442 but dead by the middle of the same decade. Roger’s will has not survived, but a suit heard in the common pleas in Trinity term 1447 reveals that he appointed his son and John Redeshull* as his executors. In the suit, which they brought in that capacity, the two men alleged that John and William Hide of Oxfordshire had wrongfully taken sheets, towels and other household goods belonging to the dead man’s estate on 12 Dec. 1445.9 CP40/746, rot. 162d; 748, rot. 393; 751, rot. 208d.

In 1452 Joan, the widow of a former associate of Roger More’s, John Corbrygge, appeared in the manor court at Bassetsbury, the duchy of Lancaster lordship which encompassed most of Wycombe, to surrender her interest in a lease of a toft, virgate and other lands which her late husband and Roger had acquired in 1425. She did so in order to obtain a new lease of the same properties, made out to herself for life, with remainder jointly to Thomas More, the subject of this biography, her son William Corbrygge, and their wives. Later that decade, however, relations between Thomas and William broke down. By 1457 they had gone to law against each other, with More alleging that Corbrygge and three associates had stolen his horse and goods and Corbrygge claiming that More owed him 100s. The omission of the MP’s mother Eleanor from the renewed lease of 1452 suggests that she was already dead by that date. She was certainly no longer alive at the beginning of 1456, when her son bound himself in £40 to John Blakpoll* and other leading burgesses of Chipping Wycombe. The bond was intended to guarantee that Thomas would assign 6s. 6d. p.a. in perpetuity for a lamp in Wycombe parish church and provide an annuity of 4d. to the vicar of Wycombe and his successors, again in perpetuity. In return, the vicars were to say special prayers for the souls of both his parents every Sunday.10 St. George’s recs., XV/15/1, m. 6; CP40/786, rot. 52d; 787, rot. 578; Centre for Bucks. Studies, CH1 T/6/12.

The properties jointly leased by the Mores and Corbygges were held by copy of the court roll, but at Wycombe freemen commonly held a mixture of free and copyhold lands, and ‘Dawes’, one of More’s tenements in the town, was also held by custom of the manor of Bassetsbury. In the first half of the 1450s he was amerced several times in the manor court, for allowing Dawes to fall into ruin and felling a beech tree known as ‘Amerbeche’ at Dawes Hill, although in the same period the court recognized his right to enclose a pasture called ‘le Mille More’. In early 1452 he and his wife Florence conveyed away nine messuages and 43 acres of land and wood in Wycombe and nearby Hughenden to Henry Puttenham and others, apparently to the use of Puttenham and his heirs. Later, in the spring of 1457, the couple transferred a further six messuages, along with two mills, a dovecot and over 250 acres of land, meadow, pasture, wood and marsh in Wycombe to Richard† and Thomas Fowler†, the in-laws of Thomas More of Buckingham. It is possible that Thomas Fowler, a citizen and fishmonger of London, had bought the properties from the MP and Florence, since just a few weeks previously he and Richard acknowledged that he owed the couple no less than £169. More did not hold all of his property at Wycombe directly of the duchy of Lancaster, since he also farmed lands there (apparently situated in or near the West Field) belonging to the Household esquire Bartholomew Halley*.11 St. George’s recs., XV/15/1, mm. 2-6, 7d; CP25(1)/22/123/27; 124/19; CCR, 1454-61, p. 194.

In the conveyance of the spring of 1457 More was styled as ‘lately of Chepyng Wycombe’. By that date it is possible that he had settled at Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire, where a Thomas More took up residence in the later 1450s, having bought an estate there from Adam Alford.12 CCR, 1454-61, p. 194; C1/21/1. It was not a trouble-free purchase, since one of Alford’s feoffees refused to release his interest in the property. It is worth noting that the purchaser of Alford’s lands had links with both Wycombe and the Fowlers. In August 1457 this Thomas received a recognizance for £40 from a Wycombe man, John Welsbourne II*, another of those involved in the Bainton transactions, and three years later he made a formal release to the Fowlers of any legal claims he had against them, while at the same time taking a recognizance for £100 from Thomas Fowler. The reasons for these recognizances, and another (for £40) which he himself gave Ralph Verney*, William Danvers† and John Huet in July 1458, are unknown.13 CCR, 1454-61, pp. 217, 297, 460; Cope mss, 43M48/278. By the summer of 1460 Thomas of Leighton was known as ‘Thomas Moore of Leyghton the elder, esquire’,14 CCR, 1454-61, p. 460. so it is possible that he had a son or another younger relative of the same name.