SYLVESTER, Thomas

A merchant, from 1439 or earlier Sylvester regularly arranged for imported commodities to be carted to Winchester from Southampton, notably, quantities of wine and victuals such as herring, salt fish, garlic, onions, oil and fruit, but also black soap, wax, alum and madder. On occasion, too, he sent cartloads of goods to be sold in Andover and even in the capital.2 Brokage Bk. 1439-40 (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1941), passim; 1443-4, i (Soton. Rec. Ser. iv), 47, 62, 64, 95, 104, 107; ii (ibid. vi), 150, 152, 209, 313; Port and Brokage Bks. 1448-9 (ibid. xxxvi), passim. He was evidently not merely a ‘tapster’, as stated by D.J. Keene in Surv. Winchester (Winchester Studies, 2), i. 266. Not surprisingly, he established amicable relations with burgesses of Southampton, and when certain of the town’s dignitaries visited Winchester in September 1442 they dined at his house.3 Southampton City Archs., Soton. recs., SC5/1/6, f. 21.

In 1439 Sylvester had been elected a member of the 24, the body chosen to advise the mayor, and began a term as their bailiff, but on 18 Feb. following the mayor and his brethren granted him exoneration from office.4 Black Bk. 76. Whether he completed his term is uncertain, but it seems likely that he did, for he was recorded with the bailiff of the commons, Richard Bowland*, taking responsibility for the payment of Winchester’s fee farm at the Exchequer that Easter term, and the two were named together in a writ issued on behalf of the warden of Winchester College to secure payment of £29 16s. 4d. for a tally assigned on the same revenues.5 E368/212, rot. 9; T.F. Kirby, Annals of Winchester, 191. While eschewing formal office, he remained a prominent member of Winchester’s governing body. In August 1442 he was listed among a group of 12 citizens who decreed that henceforth the mayor should have an annual allowance of ten marks from the alnage granted to the city by the Crown; and he contributed 3s. towards the expenses of the parliamentary representatives of 1445-6.6 Black Bk. 79; Hants RO, Winchester recs., W/E4/4.

Robert Colpays*, the Winchester lawyer who died in 1446, asked Sylvester to be a feoffee of his property in Calpe Street, to fund obits in the church of St. Thomas the Martyr for the good of his soul and prayers for members of his family. Similarly, he agreed to take on the trusteeship of buildings in Minster Street, including those next to his own tenement on the lane leading to Calpe Street, which the Wiltshire esquire Robert Erle* formally conveyed to him and others in November 1450, during the first session of the Parliament to which he had just been elected.7 Stowe 846, f. 155v; Winchester Coll. muns. 1335; Keene, ii. no. 593. John Parys*, the former mayor, had offered sureties for his attendance in the Commons. Sylvester was returned again in 1455, to the Parliament which ended in March 1456, but although money was collected in Winchester to pay the expenses of the two MPs, only a record of the payment of £3 to his companion, Henry Smart*, survives.8 C219/16/1; Winchester recs., W/E1/21. Two months later he appeared in the mayor’s court as a pledge for Thomas Madehurst, who as a punishment for offences against the liberties had to provide new draperies for the exchequer in the guildhall at his own expense.9 Black Bk. 86.

On 11 June 1460 the mayor and council granted that Sylvester might have a stip of land two feet wide adjacent to the King’s highway so that he might build an extension to a house he had recently purchased, and also relinquished to him the city’s title to a lane on the east side of the property.10 Black Bk. 87. He is not recorded thereafter. The Joan Sylvester listed in 1464 among the inhabitants of the parish of St. Thomas may have been his widow,11 Winchester recs., W/E4/5. while a kinsman, William Sylvester, then living in the parish of St. Pancras, was perhaps his son. William, who had been a chamberlain in 1457-8 and one of 12 farmers of the alnage from May 1462, died later in 1464.12 Ibid. W/E1/22; CFR, xx. 74; C1/45/259.