MOTTE, Thomas

No reference to Thomas Motte has been discovered, but there is one piece of indirect evidence to suggest that he hailed from a family connected with the Nevilles of Middleham. On 1 Mar. 1458 a yeoman of Carlisle, Robert Motte, joined John Bere III* and other Neville servants in Chancery to offer surety of the peace for the earl of Salisbury’s lawless younger son, Sir Thomas Neville; and in the following spring this same Robert was among the servants of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, commissioned to arrest mariners to serve under the earl as keeper of the seas.1 C237/44/82; CPR, 1452-61, p. 494. That our MP himself was associated with the Nevilles also makes sense in the context of the Westmorland elections to the Parliament of 1453: one of the county’s MPs, John Tunstall*, was a Neville man.2 C219/16/2.