PEERS, Thomas

Presumably a relative of John Peers*, Thomas shared his name with his father, a fisherman and locally-born burgess of Dunwich. The elder Thomas was perhaps the son of Robert Peers, a member of the borough’s ruling council in Henry IV’s reign. A contemporary minute book kept by the bailiffs of Dunwich distinguishes him from his own son by according the latter the appellation ‘junior’. The minute book contains the earliest known reference to Thomas junior, recording that he was one of the 18 burgesses chosen to assist the bailiffs in administering the borough in 1419. By the early 1420s he had become involved in fishing, Dunwich’s main commercial activity, as both a boat owner and a sea-going captain. On some occasions in this period, he captained a vessel belonging to his father; on others one of his own. From the mid 1420s, however, he appears normally to have taken out his own vessel during the main herring season, which usually fell in October and November and was carried out by larger boats and specialist fishermen. It was perhaps while out on a fishing trip that he discovered the anchor for which the town authorities awarded him 5s. in the early or mid 1420s.5 Bailiffs’ Minute Bk. passim.

Upon accounting with the authorities at Dunwich in February 1426, Peers was found to owe them £1 2s. 3d., of which he gained a respite of 6s. relating to the ‘doles’ of the men of Sizewell. It is likely that he accounted as a collector of local doles (a fixed share of the season’s catch, payable by each skipper to the corporation), having encountered difficulties in securing payment from those Sizewell fishermen who operated out of Dunwich. He accounted again in the following June, probably in a similar capacity. In September 1427 Peers took part in his first parliamentary election, attesting the return of two burgesses to represent Dunwich in the Parliament of that year. The local corporation must have been particularly insolvent at this date, since it took the extraordinary step of levying a tax on the town’s residents to cover the cost of sending the MPs to Westminster. Both Peers and his father were assessed for the tax as residents of the parish of St. John the Baptist; he was expected to pay 12d. and his father 2s. 1d. Father and son also contributed to the building of the east quay at Dunwich, to which project they jointly gave 6s. 8d.6 Ibid. 126, 131, 133, 142.

The list of contributors to the new quay provides the last known reference to Thomas as ‘junior’, suggesting that the senior Thomas Peers died soon afterwards, and that it was the subject of this biography who acted as a mainpernor for John Polard*, one of the Dunwich MPs of 1432, and attested the borough’s elections to the Parliaments of 1433, 1435 and 1437. Almost certainly, it was the latter who appeared in the Exchequer as a surety for William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, in February 1443, when the King granted the keeping of the town’s fee farm to the earl. In the grant, Peers and his fellow mainpernor, John Gyne*, are described as ‘merchants’, an indication, perhaps, that the MP was a man of substantial local status.7 CFR, xvii. 248-9. Thomas again stood surety in June 1451 when the King recommitted the fee farm of Dunwich to its own burgesses.8 CFR, xviii. 221.

As his cursus honorum shows, Peers was most active in public affairs from the mid 1440s onwards. Of sufficient status to attest the return of Suffolk’s knights of the shire to the Parliament of 1455, he probably participated in more parliamentary elections than indicated above. Given that he witnessed the Dunwich elections to the Parliaments of November 1449, 1459 and 1467 in his capacity as bailiff, it is likely that he also attended its elections of 1460, 1463 and 1470 – for which no returns survive – since all fell within other periods when he held that office. In April 1463 he and his fellow bailiff, John Scheplyng, made an indenture with John Strange*, one of the newly elected MPs for Dunwich in the Parliament of that year. Perhaps a sign of their borough’s growing insolvency, it recorded that Strange had agreed to accept ‘a cade of full heryns, and halff abarell full heryns’ in lieu of his wages.9 Add. Ch. 40681.

Peers attended his last known parliamentary election in 1472. In the Dunwich return to the Parliament of that year he features as Thomas Peers ‘senior’, to distinguish him from a younger namesake among the witnesses. The junior Thomas and a couple of the other attestors, Walter and William Peers, were perhaps his sons.10 At the beginning of Edw. IV’s reign Thomas and William Peers were in dispute with a local chaplain, Richard Cuddon, who had impounded two of their horses in lieu of rent he claimed they owed him for a messuage at Dunwich. A lawsuit that Cuddon brought against the pair at Westminster referred to each of them as a ‘yeoman’, Thomas being of Dunwich and William of ‘Thorphithe’. Although the messuage lay in the MP’s home parish of St. John the Baptist it is not certain that the defendants were the MP and his putative son. Yet, even if they were not, they must have been related to the subject of this biography: CP40/802, rot. 387. By 1472 Peers would have been of advanced years. He probably died soon afterwards, since he did not attest the Dunwich return to the following Parliament.