THORPE, Robert

A native of Dunwich, where he was a resident of All Saints’ parish, Robert was the son of a local burgess and former MP, whom he appears to have succeeded by 1427. At that date he was in possession of the lands, tenements, heath and pasture previously held by Hugh Thorpe, for which he paid the corporation of Dunwich a substantial annual rent of 27s. 1½d.6 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 601. He was probably one of the richest inhabitants of the borough, since when the local corporation imposed an extraordinary local tax to cover the expenses of its MPs in the Parliament of 1427 he contributed 5s., only 6d. less than the undoubtedly wealthy John Moreff*.7 Bailiffs’ Minute Bk. 132-3. Furthermore, when the town began building a new east quay at the end of the same decade he contributed 15s. 8d., while Moreff gave 13s. 4d.8 Ibid. 142-3. An entry on the patent rolls provides additional evidence of Thorpe’s status, styling him ‘merchant, yeoman or gentleman’. Dated May 1437, it records that he had been pardoned his outlawry for failing to answer several suits for debt, including a sum of £28 6s. 8d. he owed jointly to Walter Cotton (father of the Household man, William Cotton*) and the Cambridge merchant, Simon Rankyn*.9 CPR, 1436-41, p. 12. The circumstances of these debts are unknown but it is possible that they arose from business transactions.

Thorpe began office-holding at Dunwich during a period of administrative reform for the borough. Having completed a double term as a bailiff, he was one of the 18 men elected on 17 Dec. 1419 ‘to rule and to do justice to the town’ with the then holders of that office. This body replaced the 24 who had formerly constituted the borough council, probably as part of an attempt to reinvigorate local government.10 Bailiffs’ Minute Bk. 8, 100. A few weeks after commencing his initial term as a bailiff, Thorpe attested the return of two burgesses to the Parliament of October 1416. He regularly participated in subsequent returns for the borough and acted as a mainpernor for Richard Cuddon* following Cuddon’s election to the Parliament of 1431. As he was also a mainpernor for the newly-elected Henry Beaumont I* in 1432, Thorpe probably attested the Dunwich election of that year as well, although the relevant return has not survived. When he himself was elected to his only known Parliament in 1435, the attestors included William Thorpe, probably a relative, and John Moreff was one of his mainpernors.

Thorpe’s later years are less easy to chart. Either he had a younger namesake, perhaps his son, or he lived to a very ripe old age. A Dunwich estreat roll for 1441-2 shows that the properties for which he had paid a rent of just over 27s. p.a. in 1427 were by then in the possession of Reynold Rous*,11 Add. Roll 40729. perhaps suggesting he had died in the meantime. At the end of the 1440s, however, a Robert Thorpe of Dunwich was a prisoner in the Marshalsea. The reason for his incarceration is unknown but in October 1449 one Henry Broke, ‘gentleman’, took the opportunity to bring a bill against him in the court of King’s bench. Broke alleged that the prisoner had entered into a bond with him at Westminster for the considerable sum of £90 in September 1438 – for what reason is unrecorded – only to fail to pay him that amount on a given day. Thorpe riposted that the action should not stand since subsequently Broke had issued a release of all legal actions and demands to both him and John Thorpe (a merchant of Needham Market in Suffolk and presumably a relative) at Dorchester in Oxfordshire.12 KB27/754, rot. 106d. The plea roll, evidently in error, gives the alleged release a date of 10 Sept. 1431. It is also possible that the MP was the Robert Thorpe of Dunwich who featured in another lawsuit at Westminster, this time of the mid 1450s. In pleadings of 1455, Richard Cuddon, the MP’s erstwhile associate in the Commons, alleged that Thorpe owed him £10, but this was not a recent debt since it arose from a bond made 20 years earlier. Thorpe counterpleaded that he had entered the bond under duress, while held against his will by Cuddon. Both parties agreed to put the matter to a jury but this had yet to assemble in 1457 and it is possible that the trial never took place.13 CP40/779, rot. 145; 780, rot. 270; 781, rot. 95d; 784, rot. 189. If the defendant in the suits brought by Broke and Cuddon was the MP, it is likely that the subject of this biography was the Robert Thorpe who attested the Dunwich parliamentary elections of 1450, 1453 and 1459 and the Suffolk county election of 1455. If he was also the burgess of that name who witnessed the return of the borough’s representatives to the Parliament of 1467 he must have been approaching the end of his life by that date.