PODMORE, Thomas

Podmore was from one of the leading families of Newcastle-under-Lyme. Established in the borough from the early fourteenth century, the family provided it with three MPs in that century: Richard† sat for the borough in six Parliaments between 1355 and 1366, Thomas† in four between 1377 and 1383 and another Thomas† in that of 1399.1 Staffs. Parlty. Hist. i. (Wm. Salt Arch. Soc.), 100, 123-4; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 95. Our MP may have been the son, or perhaps the grandson, of the latter, but beyond this the loss of the borough’s records for the bulk of the fifteenth century makes it difficult to go. There is no reason to identify him with two contemporary namesakes, the one butler to Henry V and the other a London merchant, active from the 1420s to the 1450s. More difficult to discount is the possibility that he was the attestor to the Shropshire parliamentary elections of 1427 and 1429, but although there is evidence of the family’s landholdings in Newcastle and the nearby vills of Penkhull and Clayton there is nothing to show that it held property further afield.2 C219/13/5; 14/1; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xi. 176, 197. Another possibility is that he is to be identified with the petitioner, who at an unknown date between 1413 and 1426 complained to the chancellor against a Coventry draper, William Tolles. Describing himself as a ‘gentleman’, he claimed that he had entrusted certain goods, including a large quantity of woad worth £80, to Tolles, but that now, finding himself imprisoned in the Fleet for a debt owed to the Crown, Tolles refused to release the goods to secure his release. Again, however, this is more likely to have been the London merchant.3 C1/6/107; CCR, 1422-9, p. 209.