ROGER, Thomas

Roger’s first election to Parliament took place in highly unusual circumstances. His father John, who was then sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire, conducted the Berkshire elections at a shire court assembled at his own place of residence, ‘Chipping’ Lambourn (the one and only time elections were held there in the fifteenth century), and returned an indenture naming Thomas, who can have been no more than 23 years old, along with the experienced parliamentarian John Norris*. Despite the prohibition of the election of sheriffs to Parliament, John contrived his own return for the neighbouring county of Hampshire, so father and son sat in the Commons together.3 C219/16/2. His personal or political motives for doing so are obscure. About the same time Thomas’s father arranged his marriage, to the sister of another Member of the same Parliament, Henry Uvedale*. Although his wife’s name is not recorded, she must have been a daughter of Elizabeth, née Foxley, the heiress of the widespread Foxley estates, for in the 1470s, after the deaths of Elizabeth’s sons, Henry and Reynold Uvedale†, and of that of her husband (Sir) Thomas Uvedale, the Foxley manors of Rumboldswyke in Sussex and Bramshill in Hampshire, together with Elizabeth’s maternal inheritance at Westington in Hertfordshire, came into the possession of our MP’s son and heir.4 VCH Suss. iv. 171; W.H. Cope, Bramshill, 8; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 345, 365, 405, 460, 494; iii. 916. Thus Thomas’s marriage cemented an alliance between his family and that of Uvedale, one of the most prominent gentry families of the region. Thomas and his wife may have been given the Roger manor of Benham in Speen as part of their marriage settlement, for their son and heir was born there on 30 June 1455. One of the witnesses to the baptism, their kinsman Peter Shotesbrooke, later remembered the date because he arrived with a mandate addressed to Thomas Roger from the King, and the recipient rewarded him with a handsome gift of £1. The celebrations at the birth of the heir proved costly in other respects, too, for Roger lavishly paid merchants from Newbury as much as £39 for cloth to attire his servants and family.5 C140/39/63.

Along with his fellow Members of the Parliament of 1453, Thomas was appointed a commissioner to distribute allowances on the subsidies they had granted, and four years later he was associated with his father in a commission of array in Hampshire. In view of the latter’s links with the duke of York, and his own youth and lack of independent means, it is not surprising that this was the full extent of his involvement in local administration before 1461. The Acts of the Coventry Parliament of December 1459 left his father John a fugitive from the law, even though he escaped formal attainder for any support he was thought to have shown to the Yorkists at Blore Heath and Ludford. Within days of the dissolution, John transferred title to his Hampshire estates, notably the manor of Freefolk, to Thomas’s younger brother John II, to whom they had been promised. It may be that he met a violent death shortly afterwards or during the upheavals of the summer of 1460. In June the treasurer, James Butler, earl of Wiltshire, with his fellow commissioners of oyer and terminer, went to Newbury, ‘the whyche longed to the duke of York’, conducted trials of those alleged to have shown friendship to the duke and his allies and executed several whom they found guilty. Thomas was lucky to escape with his life. He was imprisoned in the gaol at Wallingford castle along with many men from his father’s lands at Lambourn, Freefolk and Speen. He, as an esquire, was the most important of the prisoners, although incarcerated with him were seven gentlemen (among them a close friend, William Sturmy† of Knowle, who had attended his son’s baptism), 17 yeomen, and 43 others (mainly artisans). They were not freed until two months after the Yorkist victory at Northampton in July. On 15 Sept. the new regime appointed Thomas’s great-uncle, Sir Robert Shotesbrooke*, and presumed father-in-law Thomas Uvedale among those commissioned to deliver the gaol.6 English Chron. 1377-1461 ed. Marx, 85; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 648-9.

Immediately after his liberation from Wallingford castle Thomas got himself elected for Berkshire to the Parliament due to assemble on 7 Oct. 1460, in the company of Sir Robert Harcourt*, a leading Yorkist who had helped effect his release. Significantly, the election was held at the Yorkist stronghold of Newbury. While the first session was in progress, on 27 Nov., he obtained a royal pardon of all gifts, alienations and purchases of lands held in chief, and of all intrusions and entries into his inheritance without due suit or livery.7 CPR, 1452-61, p. 643. Thomas had now inherited his parents’ manors in Berkshire (those of East Enborne, Beckett in Shrivenham, Church Speen, Benham and Ordeston),8 VCH Berks. iv. 105, 107, 171, 255, 265, 535. He was later, in 1469, involved in provisions made according to his father’s will, regarding the benefaction of five almshouses at Lambourn: J. Footman, Hist. Church Chipping Lambourn, 62-63. Dorset (at Allington and Pymore), and Staffordshire (Standon and Fenton Vivian). These had an estimated value of over £114 p.a. at his death,9 C140/39/63. and were rumoured to be worth as much as 300 marks p.a. in the early sixteenth century.10 J. Leland, Itin. ed. Toulmin Smith, ii. 16. During the parliamentary recess, in early January 1461, he and his younger brother were both appointed to a commission of arrest. Whether they were also called upon to fight against the Lancastrian forces at St. Albans and Towton is not known. After Edward IV seized the throne Roger won further notice. On 30 Jan. 1462 he was committed keeping for 20 years of the lordship of Hampstead Marshall in Berkshire. He was made sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire in February 1464. A year later, in February 1465, he provided sureties at the Exchequer for John Colynggrugge† when he took custody of the Cowdray manor of Padworth which had been taken into the King’s hands as a consequence of an inquisition held by him as a royal commissioner. Colynggrugge had apparently been a friend of Thomas’s father, who had given him ‘Estburyes’ or ‘Rogers maner’ in Lambourn to hold for life.11 CFR, xx. 59, 141; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 318. Roger’s fellow mainpernor was Edward Langford*, whose son and heir, Thomas, was married to his sister. Subsequently, Roger was to be one of the many feoffees-to-uses of Langford’s Berkshire estates, as named in February 1471.12 C140/50/38; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 934. Meanwhile, he attested the election to Parliament held at Abingdon on 29 Apr. 1467.13 C219/17/1.

Roger’s appointment to the Berkshire bench in June 1471 strongly suggests that he had remained loyal to Edward IV during the Readeption, but whether he had taken up arms to assist Edward’s recovery of his kingdom is not known. He died, intestate, on 31 Aug. following, whereupon his moveable goods were placed under the administration of John Isbery† and Master John Westlake, the rector of Welford church. Roger’s son and heir, another Thomas, was then only 16, and it looks as if there was an attempt to conceal his minority from the Crown. The inquisition post mortem required from the escheator in Staffordshire was not finally held until October 1474, and even after the heir came of age in 1476 questions were still being asked about the precise terms of tenure of the family manors in Berkshire.14 CFR, xxi. nos. 4, 252; C140/39/63; C67/49, m. 33. Elsewhere, in Dorset, the Crown did benefit from farming out the two manors which had belonged to the deceased. In January 1472 these had been leased out at the Exchequer to Thomas Hardegrave* (an old family friend), by mainprise of the heir’s uncle John II, and new leases were negotiated in December following and in October 1473. The heir received seisin of the Berkshire and Staffordshire estates in November 1476.15 CFR, xxi. nos. 93, 149, 216; CCR, 1476-85, no. 18. For unknown reasons, he let his uncle take possession of the Dorset and Staffordshire manors, so that they were said to be in John’s possession when he died ten years later, although they returned to the main line of the family subsequently. By the time of Thomas’s premature death on 19 Jan. 1488 he had also inherited the former Foxley estates, but with him the male line of this branch of the Roger family came to an end, for his heir was his only child, Elizabeth. She had been contracted in about February 1487 to marry William Essex†, the grandson of another William*, the former under treasurer.16 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 345, 365, 405, 460, 494, 521; iii. 916; Vis. Berks. (Harl. Soc. lvi), 7. For lawsuits over Roger property between Elizabeth and William Essex and Elizabeth’s stepmother, see Genealogist, n.s. xxiii. 26; CP40/910, rot. 598d, 947, rot. 348, 950, rot. 443.