THURLAND, Thomas

Thurland was by far the richest merchant in the Nottingham of his day. His antecedents are obscure, but it is fairly certain that he was not a native of the town. Given his close association with William Thurland, a wealthy merchant from Boston in Lincolnshire, and his own connexions with that port, it is a reasonable speculation that he was born there.6 In 1434 he was described as ‘of Boston, merchant’ when sued for debt: CP40/692, rot. 382. By the time he first appears in the records he was already well established in the wool trade. In a Chancery petition of the mid 1430s he is described as ‘of Calais’ and appears, judging from the nature of the complaint against him, to have been then serving the first of at least two terms as mayor of the staple. The petitioner, Hugh Dyke, one of the leading staplers, alleged that Thurland had imprisoned one of his servants for selling wool against the ordinances of the staple despite the royal licence of exemption granted to Dyke and others on 2 Dec. 1435.7 C1/11/289; English Trade in 15th Cent. ed. Power and Poston, 86-87. It was probably in connexion with this complaint that, on 28 Feb. 1437, he was summoned to appear in Chancery on pain of £200. He duly appeared on the following 20 Mar. and was dismissed sine die: C47/24/15/13. A further indication of our MP’s interests as a stapler is provided by a tantalizing reference to either him or William in a damaged minute of the royal council meeting held on 16 May 1438. Lord Tiptoft† was appointed to hear matters pending between ‘Thurland’ and another whose name is lost concerning certain goods taken at Calais.8 PPC, v. 101.

The first evidence of Thurland’s move from Boston to Nottingham comes from a deed dated at Chesterfield on 21 Dec. 1439 in which he is described as ‘of Nottingham’. His appearance in this conveyance implies that he had married by this date for, while there is nothing to suggest that he ever had any landed interests in Derbyshire, his wife remembered the churches of Chesterfield and nearby Brampton in her will. This in turn suggests that his arrival in Nottingham was not the result of marriage.9 Notts. Archs. Foljambe of Osberton mss, DD FJ 1/107/26; Derbys. Chs. ed. Jeayes, 2516; Borthwick Inst., Univ. of York, Abps. Regs. 22, f. 324. However this may be, it did not take him long to establish himself among the elite of his adopted borough. On 25 Dec. 1441 he was elected to represent the town in Parliament, and in the following September the burgesses chose him as their mayor. The earliest evidence of his acquisition of property in the borough dates from this first of many terms in this office. On 9 Aug. 1443 Richard Taverner (one of the bailiffs as long before as 1408) and Alice, his wife, granted him in fee a tenement in Castle Gate. This, however, was only one of many such purchases, the majority of which have left no trace on the records.10 C219/15/2; Nottingham Archs. Nottingham recs., ct. rolls CA1333, rot. 7d.

Given the very active part Thurland was later to play in the administration of Nottingham, it is curious that, in February 1444, he sued out an exemption for life from holding office.11 CPR, 1441-6, p. 239. He was probably motivated by a desire to protect himself from any appointment that might deflect him from his very substantial trading interests. A petition presented to the King in January 1445 by merchants of Leiden in Holland, who were among the principal purchasers of English wool, provides evidence of the extent of these interests. They claimed that, during the course of the previous year, they had paid to Richard Whetecroft, the accredited factor of both our MP and two Boston merchants, William Thurland and John Lawys, at Antwerp the massive sum of £30,000 and at nearby Bergen-op-Zoom further ‘grete and notable sommes’ in return for letters of payment. When, on 1 Aug. 1444, they came to Calais to exchange these letters for wool, Whetecroft advised them to delay their purchase. He allegedly told them that ‘the king shulde be mariede, and that the staple must lene him a grete somme of money, upon which lene thordenaunce [of the staple] shulde be brokene’, and therefore that the price of wool was set for an imminent reduction. They accepted his advice but the needs of the clothworkers of their town soon drove them to return to Calais. Here they took further letters of payment together with bills of the Calais mint from Whetecroft and accepted a personal assurance from our MP that the bills were acceptable instruments of credit. However, when they offered their letters and bills to pay for wool at the staple, the letters were refused for ‘unsufficience’ and the bills because they were ‘falsede’. Moreover, after making complaint in the staple court, they now discovered that our MP, ‘maketh grete sute to bring the saide maters [from the said court] to be determynde afore my lorde chaunceller in Englande, the whiche thing ... shulde be [their] finalle undoynge’. Clearly this dispute, whatever its rights and wrongs, was a serious one as it appeared to threaten the basis of trust on which the trade of the staple depended. The King’s response was a politic one: he ordered the staple court to see that the Dutch merchants had their grievances redressed.12 Letters and Pprs Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, ii. 464-70.

Notwithstanding his dispute with the merchants of Leiden, Thurland’s mercantile expertise brought him diplomatic employment. On 18 Feb. 1446 he was one of those ordered to repair to Calais on pain of £100 to treat with the commissioners of Holland, Zeeland and Flanders. Three years later, on 28 July 1449, soon after the end of the first Parliament of that year, he was among those commissioned to negotiate with the emissaries of the duke of Burgundy. He was very well qualified to serve on this latter commission for not only was he then mayor of the staple but he was also a Member of the Commons, who had been full of invective against the Burgundians with whom relations had become gravely strained.13 J. Ferguson, English Diplomacy, 193; E28/76/19; Foedera ed. Rymer (orig. edn.), xi. 233; Cat. des Rolles Gascons, Normans et Francois ed. Carte, ii. 322; C76/131, m. 6. Nonetheless, despite these responsibilities and his extensive trading interests, he had found time meanwhile to take a leading role in Nottingham’s administrative affairs: on 26 Sept. 1446 he sat as a j.p. there to take an indictment concerning a riot in the town raised by the Household esquire, Thomas Staunton*; he attested the parliamentary election held there on 16 Jan. 1447; and in the following September he was again elected mayor. While in office, he extended his holdings in the borough: on 11 Oct. 1447 John Lyversegge and Alice, his wife, granted him in fee four messuages in Weekday Market, which they had of the gift of John Wollaton. It is a measure of Thurland’s great importance that his mayoralty was extended for a further year. This led him to play a dual role in the parliamentary election held on 14 Jan. 1449: he headed the attestors as mayor and was himself returned.14 KB9/254/44; C219/15/4, 6; Nottingham ct. rolls CA1337, rot. 3.

Thurland’s status ensured that he was one of the original body of seven aldermen established by the royal charter granted in the following June and which his efforts as MP may have done something to gain. On the following 13 Oct. he was again returned to Parliament. This assembly was of particular importance to him as a stapler rather than as a townsman for it came at a time when arrangements were being made for the repayment of substantial loans made by the staplers to the Crown. On 20 Oct., before Parliament met, he and two of his close associates, his putative brother William and John Williamson of Louth, had licence to ship wool from Boston free of customs in repayment of the £412 17s. 8d. they had contributed to loans amounting to £10,700 the staplers had made over the previous four years. While Parliament was in session arrangements were made for the repayment of a further loan of £2,000 advanced by the staplers for wages for the defence of Calais. Thurland was a member of two of the syndicates which had contributed to this loan, and, as such, he received licences to ship wool from Boston with 15 others in repayment of 1,000 marks and from Kingston-upon-Hull, with 14 others, in repayment of 1,200 marks.15 C219/15/7; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 315, 323; RP, v. 208-9 (cf. PROME, xii. 157).

Trading on such a considerable scale it is not surprising that, by the late 1440s, Thurland was wealthy enough to turn his attention to the acquisition of a substantial country estate. By fines levied in Easter and Michaelmas terms 1449 he acquired the reversion of the manors in Haughton and Gamston in north Nottinghamshire, expectant on the death of Margaret, wife of John Cockfield of Nuthall (near Nottingham) and widow of a former lord of the two manors, Ralph Monboucher. It is easy to see why the reversion of these manors should have come onto the market. Monboucher’s death in 1416 had marked the end of the male line of the Nottinghamshire branch of an ancient family. His widow had a jointure interest in these manors and her long survival kept out Ralph’s two sisters and coheiresses. They tired of waiting and, in their widowhoods, proved willing to sell the reversion to our MP.16 CP26/1/27, Easter 1449; C140/14/38. Neither of the final concords survive among the feet of fines.

The intensity of Thurland’s involvement in the affairs of Nottingham did not slacken in the 1450s. In September 1450 he was re-elected as mayor after a break of only a year; and a month later he was returned to Parliament for the third successive occasion. Before the end of the decade he had served three further terms as mayor. These onerous administrative responsibilities were maintained alongside undiminished activity as a wool merchant. On 2 June 1451, a few days after the end of the Parliament of 1450 in which he had sat, he was one of many staplers who had licence to ship wool free of customs from Kingston-upon-Hull in repayment of a loan of 3,000 marks; and on 6 Nov. 1454 he secured a further similar licence, on this occasion for export from Boston, as he still awaited full repayment of the loan he had advanced several years before.17 C219/16/1; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 210-11; C67/40, m. 8. His trading interests explain why, at about this date, he attempted to purchase property in distant Kent, probably intended as a staging-post for Calais. Between July 1452 and March 1454 he claimed, in a petition to the chancellor, that he had paid a ‘notabel summe of money’ for the reversion of the manor of Northcourt near Dover expectant on the death of Joan, widow of Walter Stratton*, but that Richard Grygge*, one of the feoffees of the Strattons in the manor, refused to make the necessary conveyance. The petition does not date this purchase, but it is likely to have taken place in about May 1449, when Augustine Stratton, a mercer of London and one of Walter’s sons, granted Thurland his goods. No further details of the case survive, but it is clear that the sale did not go through for, by the end of Henry VI’s reign, the manor was in the hands of William Hexstall*.18 C1/21/8; CCR, 1447-54, p. 141; E. Hasted, Kent ed. Drake, ix. 455-6.

More successful than this failed purchase was Thurland’s re-endowment of the guild of Holy Trinity in Nottingham’s principal church, that of St. Mary. On 20 Feb. 1447, in company with Ralph, Lord Cromwell, he had paid 20 marks for a licence to found a guild, to be named in honour of the Holy Trinity, and for that guild to acquire lands in mortmain to the yearly value of 20 marks for the support of two chaplains. It must be doubted whether this was a new creation: a guild of the Holy Trinity had already been established in the town in the 1390s. The licence thus probably marks a proposed further endowment of this guild. Cromwell’s part in the endowment is obscure, and it must be seen as Thurland’s project. Initial progress was very slow. Not until June 1460 did commissioners ad quod damnum sit to inquire into the grant of land he now proposed to make to the guild. Presumably this delay was occasioned by Thurland’s need to extend his property in the town before he was able to make the proposed endowment comfortably. By 1460, however, he was in a position to conclude a handsome settlement of 11 messuages, nine cottages and other property, including two booths in the Saturday Market, an estate conservatively valued by the local jurors at four marks p.a. On the following 10 Nov. Thurland was duly given licence to make the grant.19 Trans. Thoroton Soc. xxi. 57; C143/452/24; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 615-17.

By this date Thurland and his fellow townsmen had other more pressing matters to consider. In July 1460 they had been called upon to make a contribution to the Lancastrian army on its way to defeat at the battle of Northampton. Thurland’s wealth is reflected in the fact that he paid £4 whereas the other leading men of the town paid only £2 each. Moreover, in the following March he paid as much as 20 marks towards the ‘gift’ the town made to Henry Beaufort, duke of Somerset, when the Lancastrian army was in the town shortly before the battle of Towton, with a further £2 as a ‘reward’ to the duke’s servants.20 Trans. Thoroton Soc. xxvi. 19; Nottingham recs. CA 7452. These exactions may have played a part in determining the leading men of the town, Thurland first among them, to favour the Yorkist cause. There is evidence to suggest that a contingent from Nottingham under their banner ‘the George’ were with Edward IV’s army at Towton. If so, it would provide a context for the rewards the town won early in the new reign, and our MP took a prominent part in winning them. Although no returns survive it is clear that he was returned to represent Nottingham in Edward IV’s first Parliament. The chamberlain’s account of 1461-2, an isolated survival among the borough records, notes the payment of parliamentary wages of £7 9s. 4d. to him and his colleague, Thomas Babington II*, the town’s recorder. These MPs were entrusted with important responsibilities. Together with the mayor, Thomas Alestre*, and another leading townsman, John Hunt†, they travelled to Leicester during the prorogation ‘pro exhibitione unius billae Domino Regi pro rewardo habendo villae’, presumably in respect of aid rendered during the Towton campaign. Their mission, for which they were paid £4 5s. 4d. in expenses, appears to have been successful for soon afterwards the borough’s charters were confirmed and its fee farm reduced, Thurland, who probably took the leading role, receiving a further £17 in expenses and costs in connexion with the confirmation.21 Nottingham Recs. iii. 414, 416; CPR, 1461-7, p. 243.

Such sterling service in the townsmens’ interest resulted in Thurland’s election in September 1462 as mayor for a remarkable eighth term and his re-election in the following year. Less happily, while still mayor, in April 1464 he was indicted with three other Nottingham men in the sheriff’s tourn at Saxondale, just outside the town, for using ‘strikes’ of false measure for the purchase of grain – an indication that his commercial interests extended beyond the wool trade.22 The indictment was later found insufficient: KB27/818, rex rot. 32d. Towards the end of his last mayoralty Thurland benefited from a long-awaited event. Margaret Monboucher died on 15 July 1464, having survived her first husband by nearly 50 years, and so fell in the reversion of the manors our MP had purchased in 1449. On the following 11 Aug. at Stamford he did homage for them to the King as duke of Lancaster, and he lost little time in conveying them into the hands of feoffees. Two days later he granted them to two chaplains, who on 16 Aug. enfeoffed a more august body of trustees, including Thurland’s son-in-law, Henry Rochford, the second husband of his daughter-in-law, Gervase Clifton, and the prominent Boston merchant, Thomas Tototh.23 Nottingham Univ. Lib., Newcastle of Clumber mss, Ne D 1889; DL37/33/76, 77; Notts. IPM (Thoroton Soc. xvii), 71.

By the time Thurland acquired his country estate he must have been over 60 and it is not surprising that the pace of his career now began to slacken. Nonetheless, although he never again served as either mayor or MP, he continued to play a part in Nottingham’s affairs. On 29 Apr. 1465, with the mayor, recorder and other aldermen, he heard indictments for riot against the servants of the town’s powerful neighbour Henry Pierrepont†, an episode in a dispute over a mill obstructing the river Leen, and on 31 July 1467 he was one of those who swore an oath in St. Mary’s church in accordance with an award settling the dispute. In the meantime he had attested the parliamentary election held on the previous 4 May.24 KB9/313/4; Nottingham Recs. ii. 383; C219/17/1. He sued out further general pardons on 10 Feb. 1469 and 26 Aug. 1470, on the latter occasion with, among his aliases, ‘late mayor of the Calais staple’. In the meantime, on 13 May 1469, described as a draper, he appeared in Chancery to stand surety for Thomas Staunton of Nottingham, cordwainer. During the military campaign of 1471, during which the town briefly afforded a base for Edward IV, he was again called upon to contribute to the exactions suffered by the townsmen. On 26 Mar. he paid five marks towards the maintenance of soldiers in the mansion of the Trinity guild and a month later he contributed a further mark. On 18 May, as the townsmen raised a force to go to resist the rebellion of the Bastard of Fauconberg in Kent, he paid a further 11s. 8d.25 C67/46, m.7; 47, m.1; C237/46/108; Nottingham recs. CA 7452. He attested the parliamentary election held on 12 Oct. 1472 and was appointed as one of the commissioners to assess (in Nottingham) the subsidy granted by this Parliament. This is his last appearance in an active role. He died on 5 Jan. 1474.26 Nottingham Recs. ii. 285; C219/17/2; Notts. IPM , 71.

Thurland had drawn up his will on 16 Jan. 1471. In view of his generous patronage of the Holy Trinity guild it is not surprising that he bequeathed his body for burial in the church of St. Mary, although he was prepared for burial where ‘God wyll dyspose’ in the event of his death outside Nottingham. However, the church that gained most under the terms of his will was not St. Mary’s but that of Gamston. He left as much as £40 for the building of a steeple there, no doubt intended as a physical expression of his family’s new lordship there. He also remembered his native town of Boston, leaving 20s. to the guild of Corpus Christi and 6s. 8d. to every other guild of the town of which he was a brother. His will is, however, chiefly notable for its proposed expenditure for the salvation of his soul. He set aside a lavish £100 for the expenses of his burial, most of which was to be distributed to the poor, and his executors were to provide 20 priests to say divine service for his soul and those of the faithful in the year following his death. More strikingly, he instructed his executors to pay 13d. per week for ten years to 13 people to ensure that there were for that period eight men and five women adding their prayers to those that the priests had already offered. This alone represented a proposed expenditure of £366 3s. 4d. Thurland’s bequests of ready money to his family were almost equally generous. His widow was to have 100 marks; his grandson and heir, Thomas, 200 marks when he reached the age of 21; and John and Joan Rochford, children of his daughter Joan, £20 each. He named as his executors his wife Joan, Gervase Clifton, his old friend Thomas Tototh, William Bond, vicar of Burgh-le-Marsh not far from Boston, and Thomas Hunston of Nottingham. Clifton was to have ten marks for his labour; the others £5 each. Only part of his once magnificent tomb survives: probably only the elaborate canopy of the present tomb in the north transept of St. Mary’s belonged to his monument.27 Borthwick Inst., Univ. of York, York registry wills, prob. reg. 4, f. 6, of which there is an almost complete transcript in Test. Ebor. iii. (Surtees Soc. xlv), 183-7; Trans. Thoroton Soc. xxi. 53-54.

Thurland’s widow did not long survive him. She made her will on 8 June 1477 and was dead by 21 July 1479 when it was proved. It was modelled closely on that of her late husband. She wished to be buried next to him in St. Mary’s church, and like him also made provision for 20 priests to pray for their souls. The largest of her many charitable bequests was one of ten marks to the church of Gamston. It is curious to note that both she and Thomas made small bequests to the church of St. Stephen in Coleman Street, London.28 Abps. Regs. 22, f. 324.

As the most prominent townsman of his day Thurland had close connexions with some of the leading gentry of his adopted county. His eldest son Richard married Alice, daughter of the wealthy esquire, Thomas Neville of Rolleston. On Richard’s death in the mid 1450s Alice married Gervase, son and heir-apparent of Sir Robert Clifton*, and later our MP employed Gervase among his feoffees and executors. Yet closer was Thurland’s long association with William Babington*, who lived at Chilwell just outside Nottingham and whose brother, Thomas, was his colleague as Nottingham’s representative in the Parliaments of 1450 and 1461. William acted with him in the acquisition of the Monboucher manors in 1449, and ten years later roles were reversed when the esquire employed him in the foundation of a chantry in the church of Flawford. Their relationship continued until Thurland’s death: in his will he bequeathed William £5 ‘to be of gode counsell’ to his executors. He also had dealings with the Willoughbys, another important gentry family resident within the vicinity of Nottingham. In 1472 he acted in a settlement made in favour of Robert Willoughby, whose daughter Joan was already or was soon to be the wife of his second son, Thomas. For a spouse for his daughter Joan, however, he looked to the gentry of his native rather than of his adopted shire. In about 1460 she had married Henry Rochford (d.1470), a wealthy esquire with considerable landholdings in the vicinity of Boston.29 C140/14/38; Harl. 174, f. 13; Notts. IPM (Thoroton Soc. iii), 8; Westminster Abbey muns. 14717.

Like other men whose careers made them rich in cash rather than land, Thurland advanced money on mortgage. One of these mortgages is reasonably well documented. On 12 Aug. 1465 two Nottinghamshire esquires, Thomas Staunton of Staunton-in-the-Vale and William Thorp of nearby Thorpe, feoffees of Henry Hussey of Flintham, demised their feoffor’s manor of Fenny Drayton (Leicestershire) to Thurland for the term of ten years. A later conveyance reveals what lay behind this arrangement: in June 1468 Staunton and Thorp granted the manor to Thurland, William Babington, Gervase Clifton, and two aldermen of Nottingham, Thomas Lokton (who, like our MP, was also one of the aldermen of the Trinity guild) and Roger Hudson, on condition that the manor would revert to them after 16 years (from Whitsun 1468) if Thurland had untroubled possession during that period.30 WARD2/60/234/38; CAD, iii. A5596; iv. A9133; v. A13458. There can be little doubt that a mortgage also explains our MP’s dealings with his fellow merchant of the staple, Nicholas Bedford of Beverley. On 10 May 1453 Bedford had granted his goods to Thurland, and this gift was enrolled on the close roll under the date of 25 Nov. 1455. By a fine levied in Hilary term 1458 (but not confirmed until Michaelmas 1460) Bedford and his wife conveyed all their lands, including the manors of Estcroft (in Beverley) and Horkstow (on the other side of the Humber), to our MP.31 CCR, 1454-61, p. 103; CP25(1)/293/73/453. Since there is no record that these lands were still in Thurland’s hands at his death, it is probable that this fine represents a mortgage which was redeemed. Lesser men than Bedford may have fared more badly when borrowing money from Thurland. According to a petition presented to the chancellor after his death, Thurland had been guilty of advancing money at exorbitant rates of interest. One Robert Twig allegedly borrowed £280 from him and was bound for the repayment of £456 10s. He claimed that he had repaid the principal and a further 100 marks before Thurland, calling to mind his ‘mean delyng’ towards him, verbally pardoned him of the remainder. Moreover, Twig added, our MP, lying on his deathbed, had instructed his executors to honour this promise, but Hunston, as one of the executors, was now suing him on his bonds.32 C1/60/20.

Thurland appears to have intended his elder son, Richard, for a legal rather than a mercantile career. Richard was a member of Lincoln’s Inn by 1450, when he served in the junior capacity of collector of the coal money there, but his career was cut short by premature death. He did, however, live long enough to produce a son, also named Thomas. This Thomas, who was born in about 1453, succeeded our MP in 1474, and when he died without issue was in turn succeeded by our MP’s second son, another Thomas. The latter’s will, made on 26 Apr. 1497, shows that the family had completed the transformation from wealthy merchants to gentry of middling rank. He was to be buried not in the church of St. Mary but in that of Gamston.33 L. Inn Black Bks. i. 21, 25; Test. Ebor. ii (Surtees Soc. xxx), 185n. Later the manor there was sold to Thomas Markham by a Thurland whom Thoroton described as an ‘unthrift’, but this was not the end of the family. Sir Edward Thurland† of Reigate (Surrey), baron of the Exchequer in the 1670s, was its most distinguished later member.34 R. Thoroton, Notts. ed. Throsby, iii. 256; The Commons, 1660-90, iii. 562-3.