TAME, Thomas

Thomas came from a Northamptonshire family. In 1408, after the death of his young cousin, William, the son and heir of Theobald Ward, his parents brought a suit against Robert Chiselden† and his wife Amy, Theobald’s widow, for possession of the manor of Harpole, claiming title to the manor under the terms of an entail made in 1364 whereby if the male issue of Simon Ward failed the manor should pass to his daughter Maud (Thomas’s mother) and then in tail-male. Although in about 1411 Chiselden made an agreement with James Bellers† (who had married his stepdaughter, Margery Ward), apparently permitting Amy to retain as dower a substantial part of the Ward property including the manor now in dispute, Maud Tame had taken possession of Harpole by 1412, and Thomas’s brother Robert died seised of it and the advowson of the parish church in April 1420. It was Thomas, his brother’s heir, who made a formal presentation to the living in 1444, although Amy Chiselden retained other Ward properties in the neighbourhood until her death in the following year.8 Peds. Plea Rolls ed. Wrottesley, 258; C138/45/26; C139/118/14; J. Bridges, Northants. i. 517-18; CCR, 1392-6, p. 4; Feudal Aids, vi. 482, 497. Besides Harpole, Tame inherited other interests in the Midlands, including the patronage of a chantry in the church at Thornhaugh. Yet his rights continued to be challenged in the law-courts, notably by the wife of John Browe*, and in 1453 he sold or otherwise relinquished his title to Harpole to Robert Tanfeld*. Furthermore, towards the end of his life he made a quitclaim to Thomas Pygge and Elizabeth his wife (Browe’s stepdaughter), not only of this manor but also that of Benefield and a moiety of ‘Tyllyesmanor’, also in Northamptonshire, together with other substantial properties in Lincolnshire (at Greatford, Barholm and elsewhere), Huntingdonshire (at Stibbington), and Leicestershire (at Carlton Curlieu), all of which had once belonged to his family. Yet whether these other properties had been in his possession ever since 1420 or had only fallen to him in 1445 is unclear. Whatever the case, the transactions of the 1450s marked his decision to cease defending his title to estates in the Midlands.9 CP25(1)/179/95/131, 133; CCR, 1454-61, p. 452; Bridges, i. 507; ii. 599. For Tame’s relationship to Elizabeth Pygge, see the ped. in G. Baker, Northants. 152, which, however, contains some errors.

Tame had moved to southern England long before, when, early in his career, he joined the retinue of the famed soldier Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury. In July 1417 he mustered as a mounted man-at arms in the force the earl had contracted to provide for Henry V’s second invasion of Normandy.10 E101/51/2. Within a year he married the widow of a fellow member of that expeditionary force, John Hardegrave, and it was the lands she brought to him which decided the focus of his future career. By an agreement reached in June 1418 with the feoffees of her first husband, John Pokeswell, Elizabeth received for her lifetime a rent of 25 marks p.a. from the deceased’s lands in Somerset and elsewhere,11 CIPM, xxiii. 284; C139/58/28; VCH Som. vi. 292. but more importantly she also brought to Tame a moiety of the manor of ‘South Avon’ in Hampshire and a reversionary interest in that of Ibsley, in the same county, and of property in Melbury and Shaftesbury in Dorset. These estates had passed to her and her second husband Hardegrave under the terms of a fine completed in 1416, and were entailed on her issue, with remainder to the grantors, Sir John Berkeley† of Beverstone and his wife Elizabeth Bettesthorne. Her precise relationship to the wealthy Berkeleys is not explained, but she may have been their grand-daughter.12 CP25(1)/291/63/37. In Hardegrave’s will of June 1417 Elizabeth’s parents were named as Roger and Alice Melbury: PCC 45 Marche. Tame was afterwards a feoffee for Sir Maurice Berkeley II*, Sir John’s son and heir, in lands in Glos. settled in jointure on his wife, Laura Fitzhugh: CCR, 1454-61, p. 417.

There is insufficient evidence to chart Tame’s movements properly in the years before his election to Parliament, although it is likely that he continued to serve with the earl of Salisbury in France for much of that period. In 1422 he was named as a co-feoffee with the earl of property at Wimborne Minster, and at an unknown date his lord granted him for life tenements known as ‘Tilherst’ and ‘Lokkeslond’ in Hampshire, worth 26s. 8d.13 Dorset Nat. Hist. and Antiq. Field Club Procs. lxv. 106; CIPM, xxiii. 284. It would seem that when at home in England he was employed in the administration of Montagu’s estates in the region, and the manors of Avon and Ibsley which he held jure uxoris qualified him for election to Parliament for Hampshire.14 Feudal Aids, ii. 349, 350, 371. Tame had a personal motive for seeking election in 1427. His wife was the executrix of her previous husband, Hardegrave, the serjeant of the pantry to Henry V. When the King, lying on his deathbed in France in 1422, had declared his will, he had asked that Hardegrave and the other sometime serjeants and officers of his household should be pardoned all debts, impeachments, accounts, arrears and prests arising from their offices (in accordance with his usual practice of pardoning them every year on Good Friday), but had died so suddenly that this could not be put into effect while he lived. Now, in 1427, the surviving officials and the executors of those who had died in the meantime petitioned the Commons to request Henry VI to pardon them. The Commons sponsored the petition, which was granted with effect from 13 Oct., the day the session opened. Undoubtedly, Tame helped to bring the matter to the attention of the House.15 CPR, 1416-22, p. 41; 1422-9, p. 463; PROME, x. 344-6. Significantly, his lord the earl of Salisbury was back in England and in attendance in the Lords. In the course of the Parliament he joined the duke of Gloucester in a petition regarding payment for their service on the Agincourt campaign, and negotiated the arrangements for him to lead a major expedition across the Channel in the summer of 1428, after the dissolution.16 PROME, x. 320-2.

Whether Tame accompanied his lord to the siege of Orléans, where Salisbury met his death the following November, is not known, but his participation in local government at home did not begin until February 1430, with his first appointment as sheriff. He was to fill this office, either in Hampshire or in Somerset and Dorset, for an impressive five terms altogether, and was placed on the short-list for the shrievalty of Hampshire on another two occasions, in 1441 and 1448, although not pricked in the event. It was in Hampshire that he took the oath not to maintain malefactors (as generally administered in 1434); and there too that he attested the elections to the Parliament of 1442.17 C47/34/2, nos. 3, 5; CPR, 1429-36, p. 396; C219/15/2. Yet despite his prominent position in the county’s administration, he was never returned to the Commons again.

Following the death of his wife Elizabeth, Tame had again married a woman who had twice been wed before. Gillian Hamely’s first husband, John Plecy, had held property in Christchurch near Tame’s manor of Avon, and had also left her dower lands in Dorset, Surrey and Northamptonshire, which, farmed by Plecy’s heir, John Cammell, gave her an income of 23 marks a year.18 C139/143/32. Her second husband, Robert Ashley, had been a landowner in Wiltshire. The marriage took place before the Hilary term of 1434, when together with Gillian’s son and daughter, her fellow executors of Ashley’s will, she and Tame sued a London draper for unjust detinue of the sum of £7. More importantly, Gillian was an heiress in her own right, having inherited from her father Sir John Hamely the manors of Wimborne St. Giles and Kinson in Dorset, and after the death of her mother those of Cranbourne and Eastrop in Hampshire. She and Tame sold Weston ‘Brayboef’ on the Isle of Wight in 1448.19 C136/103/25; Hutchins, iii. 579, 581-2; CCR, 1413-16, p. 420; VCH Hants, iii. 459; iv. 148; CP40/692, rot. 71d; CP25(1)/207/33/25. The value of these estates is not recorded, but that it exceeded £40 p.a. is clear from the fines levied on Tame for failing to take up knighthood.

On occasion, Tame was asked to be a feoffee of property in Hampshire and Dorset. For instance, he had a fiduciary interest in land in Fernhill once belonging to John Fromond, which increased the endowment of Winchester College in 1442, and in other of Fromond’s estates which passed to the elder son of John Roger† of Bryanston.20 Winchester Coll. muns. 9602-6; Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 344; CCR, 1435-41, p. 440; CPR, 1446-52, p. 411. An association with another famous soldier, Sir John Popham*, led to his involvement in transactions on behalf of Popham’s kinsman William Bulkeley of Chester, and in the same year, 1448, he joined in the foundation of a chantry in the chapel of St. Anne in Hinton Admiral, near Christchurch, in memory of John Sewarde.21 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 120, 201; CCR, 1454-61, p. 93.

Tame took out a royal pardon as former sheriff in February 1458. His removal from the Hampshire bench at the end of the year was probably prompted by his links with the politically-suspect Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, and his wife Countess Alice (the daughter and heiress of his former lord), from whom he held the manor of Kinson. It seems very likely that his service to Montagu had led to employment by his son-in-law Neville, and it was to the latter that he owed his appointment as constable of the earl’s castle at Christchurch. Earl Richard’s estates were forfeited by Act of Attainder in the Parliament held at Coventry in December 1459, following the rout of the Yorkist force at Ludford Bridge. Tame and John Filoll were then appointed by the Crown as joint stewards of his lordships of Christchurch Twynham and Ringwood, but it may that this merely confirmed their existing roles as a temporary expedient.22 C67/42, m. 37; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 532, 548.

Tame had drawn up a will on the previous 13 Aug., and in a deed dated at Ringwood on 31 Aug., and acknowledged on 4 Nov. before his stepson Edmund Ashley, he had made a formal quitclaim of his lands in the Midlands. The timing of these important documents strongly suggests an involvement with the Yorkists’ military activities, and that Tame was putting his affairs in order before joining his lord in the Welsh marches. He died at an unrecorded date before 25 Jan. 1460. The will, which was proved on 26 May, was brief, simply stating his wish to be buried in the chancel dedicated to the Virgin Mary in the church of Saints Peter and Paul at Ringwood, that small sums of money should be given to two canons of Christchurch Twynham priory to pray for his soul, and named beneficiaries should receive specified items of plate. Ashley was left a silver cup called ‘Welcombe’. Tame named as his executors his wife Gillian, John Holand, the vicar of Ringwood, the Surrey esquire Thomas Bassett* and John Whitehead.23 PCC 21 Stokton (PROB11/4, f. 158); CCR, 1454-61, p. 452. The last, Whitehead, is believed to have been his son-in-law, for when in 1470 his widow made enfeoffments of her manor of Eastrop near Basingstoke she stipulated that for 20 years after her death her executors were to use its profits to pay her debts and employ a chaplain to pray for her soul, and then convey the estate to Whitehead and his wife Katherine and their issue. Two years later, after a change of mind, she required the feoffees to grant seisin to the Whiteheads immediately.24 CCR, 1468-76, no. 1026; Vis. Hants (Harl. Soc. lxiv), 90. Another of Gillian’s daughters (possibly by Tame), married Robert Inkpenne of Longparish, who in a petition to Chancery alleged that Gillian had refused to return the sum of £40 with which he had entrusted her for the marriage of his daughter, Amy, when the latter married Richard Kyngesmyll†.25 C1/33/169. Gillian lived to be over 80 years old. Following her death in 1476 her inherited estates passed to Edmund Ashley, her son by her second husband.26 C140/61/31.