ROWE, Thomas del

Uncertainty remains about del Rowe’s parentage and family background. At the end of his life he held property at Chilham in Kent, and although he acquired this by purchase it is possible that he had deliberately chosen to re-establish his roots in his native shire. Indeed, he was first recorded in the early 1430s acting as an attorney in the common pleas for litigants from Kent, and in 1438 he was involved in a transaction relating to holdings at Boxley in the same county.7 CAD, i. B780. He may therefore have been Thomas, son of William Rowe, who had been mentioned in the will made in 1417 by a namesake, Thomas, son of Robert Rowe of Aylesford near Boxley: PCC 38 Marche (PROB11/2B, f. 79). Increasing expertise in the law led to his employment as a clerk in the common pleas by the summer of 1442, and engagement as an attorney by such dignitaries as Cardinal Beaufort and Archbishop Stafford, and the earl of Warwick,8 Baker, 1333; CP40/729, att. rot. 2. as well to as a succession of appointments to deliver gaols in East Anglia and elsewhere and accompany the justices on their Norfolk circuit. It was probably because of this last role that he came to be chosen, early in 1443, as attorney for the civic authorities of Norwich in their pleas before the commissioners of oyer and terminer meeting to investigate the recent disturbances in the city known as ‘Gladman’s Insurrection’. He was nominated by Thomas Wetherby*, the leader of the faction which had taken control of Norwich, but proved a poor advocate (intentionally, according to Wetherby’s opponents), for he pleaded a defence in the morning of 4 Mar., only to abandon his plea in the afternoon, with no just reason, or so it was said. By his action the mayor and commonalty were made to throw themselves on the King’s mercy, the liberties of the city were seized by the Crown, and Sir John Clifton was appointed warden ten days later.9 Recs. Norwich ed. Hudson and Tingey, i. pp. xci, 341-2.

On 17 Oct. 1444 del Rowe and John Ulverston, the receiver of Eton College, were granted in survivorship the highly lucrative office of keeper of the writs and rolls of the court of common pleas. However, Robert Darcy I* and Henry Filongley* had been jointly granted this same office four years earlier (indeed, Darcy had held it for more than 23 years altogether), and when del Rowe somewhat prematurely (on 3 Oct.) took from them 13 bundles of writs returned to the bench in the great hall at Westminster, they immediately started legal proceedings against him, claiming £600 damages for disturbances to their exercise of the office. They were subsequently able to produce in court a petition in which their claim to the keepership was allowed by the King in the Parliament of 1445, and although judgement is not recorded, it is apparent from the later records that the plaintiffs were successful and del Rowe and Ulverston were removed. The parties to the dispute remitted and quitclaimed all personal actions pending between them on 1 Dec. 1445.10 CPR, 1441-6, p. 316; M. Hastings, Ct. of Common Pleas, 132 (from CP40/738, rot. 528d; 739, rots. 337-339d); CP40/740, cart. rot. 1.

Important clients continued to require del Rowe’s services as a lawyer, and at the time of his only known Parliament these included Sir John Fastolf.11 P.S. Lewis, ‘Sir John Fastolf’s Lawsuit over Titchwell’, Historical Jnl. i. 11; Magdalen Coll, Oxf., Fastolf pprs. 42, m. 2. How del Rowe secured election to the Parliament of February 1449 for the Sussex borough of Horsham is unclear, yet personal contacts probably provide the answer. He had acted as an attorney for litigants from Sussex before that date, and among them had been John Lewknor*,12 CP40/730, rot. 325. whose half-brother the influential lawyer Thomas Hoo II* had acquired by marriage substantial estates in and around Horsham. Furthermore, Hoo served on the council of the lord of the borough, John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, and was his principal man of affairs in the south of England. While the Parliament was in session del Rowe obtained promotion at the court of common pleas, now taking up the post of one of the filacers, which he probably occupied until his death. He had recently suffered a personal tragedy, for on the previous 4 Dec. his brother James del Rowe, a ‘gentleman of London’, had been the victim of a premeditated murder at Barnsley in Yorkshire. Thomas, as his next heir, appealed the alleged perpetrators who, curiously, all came from Tottenham in Middlesex and were said to have been aided and abetted by Joan, the wealthy widow of the London alderman John Gedney*, and her son Richard Turnaunt. He later also brought a suit in his own court, the common pleas, charging Joan with illegally maintaining the culprits, and demanding 1,000 marks in damages.13 KB27/758, rex rots. 3, 4; CP40/761, rot. 368d.

Del Rowe’s last official appointment was as a commissioner of sewers in October 1452. While he was still busy as a filacer in Michaelmas term that year, he no longer held the office in Hilary term 1453. He may have died in the meantime.14 CP40/767, rot. 14; 768. By November 1455 his widow Thomasina had married Laurence Leventhorpe*, a retainer of the duke of Norfolk whose borough del Rowe had represented in Parliament. The couple petitioned the chancellor regarding a messuage and land which our MP had bought in Chilham, claiming that he had asked his kinsman John del Rowe to transfer possession to Thomasina after his death, if she would undertake to pay his debts as his executrix. John, who had been enfeoffed of the property to the use of Thomas and his heirs, denied any knowledge of Thomas’s will, but nevertheless said that he was ready to comply provided that the chancellor’s court accepted that it was not a forgery.15 C1/25/186. As the daughter and heiress of Peter Pope, a London draper, Thomasina brought to her successive marriages property in ‘Le George Aley’ off Secoll Lane outside Newgate. She may also have brought del Rowe the two messuages just outside the city walls in Finsbury which she and Leventhorpe placed in the hands of feoffees in 1475. She was still living in June 1478.16 London hr 208/7; CP25(1)/152/98/53.