THORNES, Robert

There is every reason to suppose that Robert Thornes was the younger brother of Thomas. Both men began their public career in the last years of their putative father’s lifetime, Robert being returned to Parliament in 1435 when still a young man.2 C219/14/5. This return came two years before that of Thomas, but thereafter our MP, as befitting the younger sibling, was the lesser man.

In the autumn of 1437 both men were drawn into a dispute within the important Shrewsbury family of Horde. According to an indictment taken before the Shropshire j.p.s at Ludlow on 17 Sept. 1437, Robert, described as ‘of Shrewsbury, gentleman’, had joined John Horde* and others in stealing goods worth as much 160 marks from Horde’s stepmother, Katherine. Thomas and Thomas’s wife Isabel were named as accessories to this act of plunder, which seems to have been prompted by Katherine’s efforts to disinherit her stepson. The indictment was taken expeditiously, for the alleged offence had taken place at Shrewsbury only five days before, and it is probable that the j.p.s, headed by an important local lawyer, William Burley I*, were acting to prevent the escalation of tensions in the county town. Such sensitivity was understandable, for Horde’s father, William*, had been murdered two years before. Their prompt action appears to have been effective. The matter, at least as far as its legal consequences were concerned, was quickly concluded: Horde and our MP appeared personally in the court of King’s bench on the following 12 Nov. and were acquitted at the Shrewsbury assizes in February 1438.3 KB9/229/1/48, 49; KB27/706, rex rot. 24.

Beyond this indictment, little of interest is known of Thornes’s career. His only borough office was that of coroner, and for the most part he discharged the tasks that generally fell to townsmen below the elite. In 1442 and 1446 he acted as one of the 25 electors of the borough officers (on the first occasion his putative brother was named as coroner), and in June 1448 he was one of the jurors of the borough’s curia magna.4 Shrewsbury assembly bk. 3365/67, ff. 17v, 18; ct. rolls 3365/868. In view of his apparently modest standing, it is curious to find him named among the attestors to the Shropshire parliamentary election held on 15 Oct. 1450. He was, however, not the only burgess of Shrewsbury named, and it may be that, because the sheriff, Roger Eyton*, was also one of the town bailiffs, the county and borough elections were held together in the county court, dispensing with the separate borough election in the guildhall. However this may be, Thornes was one of four townsmen who offered mainprise for the two borough MPs. He seems not to have lived much longer. He last appears in the records in June 1452 when he witnessed a deed for William Burley II*.5 C219/16/1; Salop Archs., deeds 6000/3986. By 1473, and probably long before, he had been succeeded by his son and heir, another Robert. In that year Robert released to Thomas’s son (or possibly grandson), another Thomas, all his right in the family’s lands both inside and outside the borough, another indication that their fathers were brothers.6 Salop Archs. Lloyd of Leaton Knolls mss, 103/1/3/75.