NEWTON, Thomas II

There is every reason to suppose that Thomas Newton was a native of Hereford, probably the son and heir of William Newton, a dyer who attested the city’s parliamentary election in 1423. Nothing is known of him until 16 June 1433, when he was returned to Parliament in company with a local lawyer, John Dewall*, and no more before his second election in 1437.1 C219/13/2, 14/4. He is to be distinguished from his more important namesake, a serjeant of the King’s cellar by 1414 and its butler by 1440: CPR, 1413-16, p. 248; 1436-41, p. 388. This Thomas was either a native of Surr. or had settled there by 1434: CPR, 1429-36, p. 380; 1446-52, p. 119; CCR, 1435-41, p. 167. The latter resulted in a revealing dispute over the payment of wages. According to the defence to a claim, made by Newton and his fellow MP William Buryton*, for payment at the standard rate of 2s. a day, the two men had appeared before the mayor, Henry Chippenham*, on 1 Dec. 1436 and undertaken to serve in Parliament for wages of four marks, however long the assembly should last. They had presumably been elected in response to the writs of the previous 29 Oct., summoning Parliament to meet at Cambridge, but new writs were issued on 10 Dec. moving the assembly’s location to Westminster. A new election was then held in the guildhall on 8 Jan., the date of the surviving election indenture, confirming the result of the previous one. Perhaps this was why Newton and his colleague acted after the assembly as though they had been absolved of their promise to serve cheaply. They sued out royal writs to the mayor and bailiffs for the payment of the full wages of £14 8s. John Woodward, the new mayor, pleaded the earlier agreement as justification for the payment of no further sum above the four marks that he claimed had been paid on 30 Apr. 1437, five weeks after the end of the Parliament. The matter was still pending in June 1438, when Newton sued out another writ for payment, but it is not known whether he ever secured the sum claimed.2 C219/15/1; Parliamentarians at Law ed. Kleineke, 48-55. Woodward was fined 20s. in 1439 for an insufficient return to this writ: KB27/714, fines rot. 1d.

This dispute is the only thing of interest known about Newton’s career, and after it he makes only one further appearance in the records, when, in 1439, he quitclaimed to John Abrahall*, a Herefordshire esquire who took an interest in the city’s affairs, his right in property there, in which they stood jointly enfeoffed by John Walker of Bergavenny.3 Herefs. RO, Hereford city recs. MT/V/7, 9. He probably died soon after, his place in the city taken by a putative son or younger brother, Maurice Newton, who was mayor in 1448-9 and regularly attested the city’s parliamentary elections between 1447 and 1460.4 Ibid. MT/VI/6; C219/15/4, 6, 7; 16/1, 2, 5, 6.