PERSONS, Thomas

The survival of Persons’s detailed will saves him from obscurity. Nothing is known of his origins, but it is likely that he was from a family established for at least a generation before him. His father may have been the namesake who stood surety for Sir John Cornwall† of Kinlet, not far from Bridgnorth, on the knight’s election to represent Shropshire in the Parliament of 1407; and who, as a yeoman ‘of Gosbradley’ (?in Kinlet), fought in the retinue of the Herefordshire knight, Sir Roland Lenthall, during the Agincourt campaign.3 C219/10/4; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 102, 116. Our MP makes his first appearance in the records in May 1435, when, described as ‘of Bridgnorth’, he acted as a feoffee for Nicholas Croft of Croft near the town. Later he was named in the borough’s court leet book as numbering among the burgesses in the 21st year of the reign of Henry VI, and he soon began to play a part in the town’s affairs. On 21 Sept. 1444 he headed the jury of 12 empowered to elect the town bailiffs, and he again appeared on the nominating jury in 1445, 1446 and 1448. His readiness to discharge this function may reflect an unwillingness to assume the office himself. On 3 June 1442, he had sued out from the Crown a life exemption for any appointment to office or jury against his will, a concession suggestive of a standing greater than the surviving records imply, although one he did not use to prevent his later elections as bailiff.4 Salop Archs., Acton mss, 1093/2/212-13; Bridgnorth ct. leet bk. BB/F/1/1/1, ff. 4, 55, 55v; CPR, 1441-6, p. 86.

The timing of Persons’s office-holding could be interpreted as revealing of his sympathies in national politics. He was first chosen as bailiff in the wake of Richard, duke of York’s return from Ireland in September 1450; he was elected to Parliament after York’s victory at St. Albans with, as his fellow Bridgnorth MP, John Lawley*, whose Yorkist allegiance was, or was later to be, clear; and he was again nominated as bailiff in the autumn after Edward IV had taken the throne. If, however, he was perceived locally as a Yorkist, there is no more direct evidence. Further, if such were his sympathies, it is strange to find him heading the attestors to the election held in the guildhall of Bridgnorth on 24 Nov. 1459 after the Lancastrian victory at Ludford Bridge.5 C219/16/3, 5. The 1459 indenture is a unique survival. Bridgnorth election indentures were not generally returned into Chancery by the Shropshire sheriff, who was content simply to name the elected on the dorse of the election writ.

There is little else to say about Persons’s career. He seems to have been a mercer. At least that is how he was described on 5 Mar. 1456, when he offered mainprise for the prosecution of a petition in Chancery by Hugh Cardmaker, prior of the hospital of St. John the Baptist in Bridgnorth. Earlier, however, he had been less specifically described as a chapman. It was as such, for example, that he was sued in 1448 by one John Stubbes for joining John Cardmaker* in unlawfully taking goods worth 20 marks at Lichfield, and, in the following year, by Thomas Costyn for close-breaking at ‘Dunnyngesbrugge’. The probability is that his commercial interests expanded over time. Certainly, as his will shows, he died as a man of substance. The wealth of his later years is also suggested in the legal records. To cite one instance, in 1459 he had actions against another Bridgnorth mercer, Edward Gerus, for breaking his close and houses there and taking goods worth as much as £40, and against a variety of tradesmen for debts totalling £26.6 C1/25/151; CP40/748, rot. 352; 755, rot. 418; 795, rot. 73d.

If, however, the surviving records are generally unrevealing about Persons, the will he made on 24 Apr. 1465 goes a long way to making good this deficiency.7 Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. xli. 214-18. It is a detailed document, which carefully and cleverly balances the competing demands of the testator’s soul, his widow and the issue of his two marriages. The will’s terms show that by his first wife he had two surviving children, Edward and Alice, wife of Richard Sherman of Ludlow, and, by his second and surviving spouse, two sons, William and John, and a daughter or daughters. The perpetuation of the family’s influence in their native town demanded that Edward’s rights as the eldest son should be respected, and he was duly bequeathed the largest share of his father’s holdings. Immediately upon his father’s death he was to have an inn called The Antelope in the High Street with its cellar, cave and workshops, presumably the centre of the family’s business interests, together with his father’s lands in Tasley and Dudmaston, just outside the town (although unfortunately the will does not specify their extent). For the rest Edward would have to wait for his stepmother’s death: he was then to have the tenement in the High Street, in which his father had lived, another tenement in ‘Hongrey Street’ (now St. Mary’s Street), two pastures, one near ‘Cantren Broke’, the other at ‘Pyrylone’, 1½ acres in ‘Hoke Field’ and a barn in ‘Little Brugge’ (now Pound Street). Edward can have had little of which to complain, for within the constraints of providing for a widow and several other children his father had treated him fairly. The elder of his half-brothers, William, also had little reason for resentment: he was to have in fee-tail two tenements in ‘Hongrey Street’, which may have been the inheritance of his mother; 11 selions of land in the fields of Bridgnorth, which his father had acquired from John Hilton, a London grocer; and a house hollowed out of rock on the bank of the Severn. He was also to have two tenements in the High Street on his mother’s death. Less well treated, however, was the youngest brother, John. No property was set aside for him, although he was given a remainder interest in the family lands expectant on the childless deaths of his elder brothers.

The interests of one child had to balanced not only against those of another and against those of the widow but also against those of the testator’s soul, the preservation of which depended, under the prevailing theology, upon acts of prayer and charity. Here the will is at its most thoughtful and inventive. The testator contrived to ensure that his soul was prayed for without placing too great a burden upon those he left behind. To the chantry of the Virgin Mary in the church of St. Leonard – the church in which he was to be buried near to the font (presumably the one in which he had been baptized) in the nave – he bequeathed an acre of land for the celebration of his anniversary day. For the rest the safety of his soul was to depend largely upon the profits of trade. Edward was to have £100 to be ‘placed in merchandise’, and half of the profits were to be employed to fund a priest to celebrate divine service at the altar of the Virgin Mary. At his death, Edward was to assign this capital to trustees, who were to renew themselves perpetually to ensure the continual provision of the priest. It was an ambitious scheme, and the testator sensibly provided for its failure. If the finding of the priest should be neglected then the capital was to be surrendered to the perpetual chaplains of the chantry of the Virgin and St. Thomas the Martyr, who were to spend the money on the priest until it should be exhausted. Only in the remote eventuality of the issue of all his children failing was his soul to be more extensively provided for; then all his lands were to pass to the use of the chantry of the Virgin for the finding of a priest, either perpetually if this could be done from the issues, or, if the lands had to be sold (presumably because of the prohibitive cost of a licence to alienate in mortmain) then for as long as the proceeds should last. One last charitable bequest is also worthy of note because it suggests that Persons had something very specific on his conscience. His son William was only to have the house on the banks of the Severn if he come to an agreement with the parish priest to recommend the soul of John Owen from the pulpit on every Sunday for ever. It is a fair speculation that he held himself responsible for Owen’s death, perhaps because Owen had died at his hand or, more probably, in his service.

Within this complex scheme, the division of Persons’s moveable goods provided no difficulties. Named items were divided between his three sons, saving the life interest of his widow Margery. John’s share was the greatest, perhaps because so little else was done for him, and Edward’s the least. After the death of his stepmother, he was to have a great brass mortar, a great balance with its weights, a hook and mazer tipped with silver and washed within with gold, and six silver spoons. The debts due to the testator were also to be divided into three parts, one to Margery, another to their children, and one in alms for the salvation of his soul. Edward was to have nothing from them. Finally, each of his unmarried children was to have 20 marks and a silver goblet at their marriage ‘in the name of part of my goods’.

Although the will is a revealing document, it disappoints in giving little sense of our MP’s associations among his fellow townsmen. For his executors he looked exclusively within his own family, naming his wife and eldest son together with his son-in-law, Richard Sherman. No feoffees are named, although he refers to part of his property as held by gift of Richard Horde*, a leading townsman who had died in about 1451, and, more tantalizingly, of another part as the grant of John Holt, an esquire of Aston by Birmingham (Warwickshire). Persons survived the making of his will by some months, for it was not proved until 7 Jan. 1466. His eldest son took over his place in local affairs, serving as bailiff in 1470-1.8 Bridgnorth ct. leet bk. BB/F/1/1/1, f. 59.