THROCKMORTON, Thomas

The Throckmortons owed their rise to Thomas’s father, a successful lawyer who achieved prominence through his legal and administrative expertise and service to the Beauchamp earls of Warwick. It is very likely that Thomas also joined the legal profession. At the very least, he must have possessed a good working knowledge of the law, given that he was on the quorum throughout his service as a j.p. If a lawyer, he may have attended an inn of court, since he is referred to as ‘late of London’ in a royal pardon of November 1455.12 C67/41, m. 24. It is also worth noting that he received a pardon in July 1443 (the earliest known reference to him) for assaulting one John Bury within the palace of Westminster, where the main common law courts sat.13 CPR, 1441-6, p. 194. Possibly Bury was the serjeant-at-arms of that name: SC8/105/5220; E159/224, recorda Easter rot. 1; 226, brevia Trin. rot. 3d . Following the pardon, he was soon engaged in further lawlessness. In 1444 he and other gentry, including his brothers-in-law, Robert Russell*, Thomas Winslow I* and John Rous, participated in a series of raids on lands in Gloucestershire held by Katherine, the wife of Sir William Peyto‡. It appears that he and his associates were acting in the interests of the young Henry Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, even though Katherine’s husband, at this time almost certainly a prisoner in France, was another member of the Beauchamp affinity.14 Carpenter, 416; C1/15/77; M.C. Carpenter, ‘Political Society in Warws.’ (Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1976), 136n.

The death of John Throckmorton in April the following year may well have helped to bring such behaviour to an end. Thomas now had important responsibilities, as the new head of his family and as one of his father’s executors, and in the later 1440s and early 1450s he and his co-executors, his widowed mother Eleanor Throckmorton and Ralph Ingoldesby, pursued suits in the court of common pleas against those in debt to John’s estate.15 PCC 31 Luffenham (PROB11/3, f. 251); CP40/748, rot. 211d; 760, rot. 93d. Before the end of 1445, Eleanor secured the admission of her late husband to the martyrology of the cathedral priory at Canterbury, along with letters of confraternity from the priory for herself, Thomas and her younger son John.16 HMC 9th Rep. pt. 1, 114. In May 1448 she and Thomas obtained licence to found a chantry in memory of the elder John Throckmorton in Fladbury parish church, although it was not in fact established until 12 years later, with Thomas as the sole founder.17 CPR, 1446-52, p. 168; VCH Worcs. iii. 363n; Throckmorton mss, CR1998/box 48.

Six months after his father’s death, Throckmorton reached an agreement with the Buckinghamshire esquire Robert Olney for a marriage between himself and Margaret, Olney’s daughter and heir presumptive. The match probably came about through the nexus of the Beauchamp affinity, since Olney’s father John had served William Beauchamp, Lord Abergavenny, the uncle of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick. In return for his service, Abergavenny had granted John Olney the manor of Birdingbury in east Warwickshire – held of the earls of Warwick – so giving the Olneys a landed interest in that county. The marriage settlement itself has not survived, although Robert Olney’s obligations are recorded in an indenture drawn up between the two parties on 3 Oct. 1445. First, he undertook to settle lands worth £20 p.a. on the couple before the following Christmas. Secondly, he agreed to convey the greater part of his estates, situated in Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Warwickshire and Oxfordshire, to feoffees, to hold to the use of himself and his wife Goditha for his life and then, should he die without legitimate male issue, to the use of the Throckmortons and their children. Finally, should Goditha bear him any more children, Margaret was to share these lands with them, although his principal manor at Weston Underwood in Buckinghamshire was reserved for the Throckmortons.18 Throckmorton mss, CR 1998/J2/165. In the event, Olney did not father any more surviving children but outlived his son-in-law. By May 1470, however, he had voluntarily surrendered his estates, including the manors of Weston Underwood and Ravenstone in Buckinghamshire, Birdingbury in Warwickshire and Roxton in Bedfordshire, to his daughter in return for an annuity for life of £50.19 Ibid., CR 1998/J1/599, 654, 656, 669, 673, 677, 681; J2/179.

The Olney lands were probably more considerable than those that Thomas brought to the marriage. While his father had died owning reasonably substantial estates, John Throckmorton was by no means a major landowner. From his own parents John had inherited the farm of the manor of Throckmorton and holdings at Rous Lench. At Throckmorton he was a mere tenant of the bishops of Worcester but in 1436 Bishop Bourgchier granted him the manor in fee simple, in exchange for other lands worth £12 p.a. John also acquired property elsewhere in Worcestershire and gained interests in neighbouring Warwickshire, where he bought the manor of Spernall and held a moiety of that of Coughton in the right of his wife.20 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 606. It is unclear whether Thomas’s manor of Gannow next Inkberrow in Worcs. was acquired by him or his father: VCH Worcs. iii. 424; CP40/830, rot. 353. In May 1449 Thomas and his mother acquired the other moiety of Coughton from her nephew, John Tracy, whom they undertook to pay an annuity of £10 for the rest of his life, so securing the complete manor for the Throckmortons.21 Throckmorton mss, CR 1998/Box 35; CCR, 1447-54, p. 130. Initially at least, it was far from a trouble-free arrangement. On the one hand, it was challenged by Tracy’s sister Margery and her husband Thomas Mille*, prompting Tracy to take action against the couple in the Chancery. 22 C1/22/139. On the other, Tracy also sued Throckmorton in the common pleas for non-payment of his annuity, on the strength of a bond for the enormous sum of 1,000 marks that the latter had given him.23 CP40/760, rot. 59d. Notwithstanding these problems, the Throckmortons were able to retain the whole of Coughton which, as the pardon rolls indicate, Thomas adopted as one of his principal residences. A pardon he received in June 1446 referred to him simply as ‘of Worcestershire’; another of November 1455 as of Coughton and Throckmorton as well as ‘late of London’; a third of January 1458 as of Coughton; and yet another of July 1468 as of Throckmorton and Coughton.24 C67/39, m. 46; 41, m. 25; 42, m. 32; 46, m. 36. In spite of the importance of Coughton, he was always primarily identified with Worcestershire, the county for which he sat in Parliament and in which he was most involved in local government.

The Throckmortons took an active interest in exploiting their estates and their acquisition of the Tracy moiety of Coughton was prompted by the need to consolidate, and ultimately to enclose, for pastoral farming. By the mid fifteenth century their holdings included a particularly compact block of land centred on Coughton and Spernall in Warwickshire and Wyke in Worcestershire, some of which they leased rather than owned.25 Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 128-9, 184. While she lived, the widowed Eleanor Throckmorton retained a dower interest in the Throckmorton estates, and in 1450-1 she and Thomas jointly sued John Delamare, a gentleman from Eldersfield in Worcestershire, in the common pleas, for trespassing on their property at nearby Pendock. Thomas also pursued several suits as sole plaintiff in the same court in the late 1440s and early 1450s, in defence of other holdings in Worcestershire, at Stoke Severn, Chaceley and Evesham. Among the defendants were Thomas Washbourne and his wife, Margery, whom he accused of committing waste on the manor of Black Naunton in Severn Stoke. The manor was an acquisition of John Throckmorton, who had granted an estate in it to Margery (whose interest was for life) and her previous husband, Thomas Greet, presumably for their lives in survivorship.26 CP40/748, rots. 201d, 281, 453; 756, rot. 143d; 760, rots. 27d, 94d, 255d, 372; VCH Worcs. iv. 194.

Thanks to his estates and legal expertise, Thomas was well qualified to follow in his father’s footsteps, as a parliamentarian and an active participant in local government. He entered his first known Parliament, that of 1445, while his father was still alive, although John Throckmorton died in the recess between the first and second sessions of this assembly. At this date Thomas was a man of little administrative experience, but no doubt he had received a good knowledge of parliamentary procedure from his father, a knight of the shire in at least five Parliaments. His fellow MP, John Nanfan*, another novice to the Commons, was a servant of the Beauchamps, and his own connexions with that family may have assisted his candidature when he stood for election. Throckmorton’s first known county commission arose directly from his Membership of the Parliament of 1445 since it related to the lay subsidy that the Commons had granted the Crown. He was appointed to a like commission in the summer of 1449, following the dissolution of his second Parliament.

During the same summer, Throckmorton was also placed on a commission charged with investigating what lands the late duke of Warwick, Henry Beauchamp, and his short-lived infant daughter and heir had held in Herefordshire. Given his family’s longstanding ties to the Beauchamps, he was as well qualified as any to serve on such a body. No doubt these ties were also an important consideration when he was appointed steward of Elmley castle and other estates in Worcestershire that were part of the Beauchamp inheritance in June 1451. The appointment was made jointly by the husbands of the four coheiresses to the Beauchamp inheritance, Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, George Neville, Lord Latimer, and Richard Neville, the new earl of Warwick. Throckmorton maintained his family connexion with the earldom of Warwick by becoming a retainer of the last, who granted him an annuity of £10 for life in the same year.27 Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 699; eadem, ‘Political Society in Warws.’, app. 112. He was also retained in some capacity by Warwick’s uncle, Edward Neville, Lord Abergavenny, probably as a steward or receiver. In April 1452 he was caught up in a fracas at Kidderminster where Abergavenny was lord in the right of his wife. Abergavenny subsequently sued over 20 men from that town for attacking and wounding Throckmorton, claiming that he had lost the latter’s services for a quarter of a year as a result.28 KB27/769, rot. 53.

The Nevilles were far from Throckmorton’s only noble patrons, for he also maintained ties with the supervisor of his father’s will, the prominent courtier Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley, and served William, Lord Zouche. One of Sudeley’s feoffees, in 1453 he was involved in the arrangements for the marriage of that peer’s son and heir apparent to Eleanor, daughter of the earl of Shrewsbury, a lord whom his own father had served as an attorney, feoffee and surety.29 CCR, 1468-76, nos. 1058-9; CAD, iv. B3927; Warws. RO, Holbeche mss, L1/79, 81. Fifteen years later, he was party to a transaction by which the by then widowed Eleanor Butler conveyed estates in Wiltshire to her sister Elizabeth, duchess of Norfolk.30 Holbeche mss, L1/85. Throckmorton’s association with Zouche, his feudal overlord at Weston Underwood, dated from at least the mid 1450s. In late 1456 Zouche granted him and his father-in-law Robert Olney an annuity of seven marks for their lives in survivorship, for their past and future good service.31 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 607; VCH Bucks. iv. 500.

Lay magnates were not alone in seeking the services of Throckmorton, who also possessed ecclesiastical patrons. Prominent among them was John Carpenter, bishop of Worcester, in spite of a previously poor relationship between the two men. Upon becoming bishop in 1444, Carpenter had vigorously expressed his opposition to the grant that his predecessor, Bishop Bourgchier, had made to John Throckmorton in 1436. He had also threatened the monks of his own cathedral priory with excommunication for alienating part of the village of Throckmorton to the Throckmortons. The monks had appealed to the archbishop of Canterbury, asking that Thomas Throckmorton might answer the bishop, but by 1459 the two men had reconciled their differences so successfully that they became firm friends. On 5 Aug. that year Carpenter appointed Throckmorton as steward of his estates, with a fee of £10 p.a. Just under a decade later, Throckmorton agreed that he and his heirs should pay the bishops of Worcester an annual rent of £10 for a term of 47 years, and then £12 p.a. thereafter, from the Throckmorton manor of Black Naunton, Worcestershire, and in May 1469 he and his wife were admitted to the guild of the Holy Cross at Stratford-on-Avon, a town of which Carpenter was feudal lord.32 Habington, 424-6; CPL, xii. 531-2; Throckmorton mss, CR 1998/J2/176 (13 Jan. 1469); Shakespeare Centre Archs., Guild of Holy Cross, Stratford-upon-Avon mss, BRT1/1, f. 92. Coincidently or not, the fee of £10 that Throckmorton received for his stewardship of the episcopal estates matched the annual farm that his family was supposed to pay the bishop for the manor of Throckmorton. In spite of the reconciliation and subsequent friendship between Carpenter and his tenant, by 1470 the Throckmortons had not paid the farm for 30 years. At the close of his stewardship, however, Throckmorton made the gesture of paying a single yearly instalment of the farm, and by 1478 his widow had agreed that the bishop should receive a farm of £12 p.a., which was regularly paid thereafter.33 Dyer, 186. The bishop was not the MP’s sole ecclesiastical patron, since Throckmorton was also employed on the abbot of Westminster’s estates in Gloucestershire and provided counsel to the abbot of Evesham, from whom he held some of his own lands in Warwickshire.34 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 782; C140/41/33. He probably found work at Worcester as well, since the authorities there specifically exempted him from a civic ordinance of 1467 forbidding non-residents from becoming freemen.35 VCH Worcs. iv. 387. The exemption suggests that he was serving the citizens as a legal counsellor and, perhaps, that he held office in the city.

An office that Throckmorton certainly held by the first half of the same decade was that of auditor on the estates of Humphrey Stafford of Grafton, a prominent member of the west Midlands gentry. As one might expect of a lawyer, he was frequently a trustee and witness for other members of the gentry, usually but not exclusively from his own part of the country. He also had dealings with various prominent Londoners, performing like services for some of them. Among those whom he served as a feoffee were two of his brothers-in-law, Thomas Winslow I and John Marney of Cornwall and Essex (the father of Henry Marney†), and (Sir) William Catesby*.36 CCR, 1447-54, pp. 100, 141; 1454-61, p. 296; 1461-8, pp. 80-81, 188, 323; 1468-76, nos. 397, 923; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 417, 503; CAD, i. C331; ii. B3043; E. Suss. RO, Roberts and Dunn mss, DUN 1/22, 23; Shakespeare Centre Archs., Cookes mss, ER139/41, 45, 47. It was in that capacity that he acted for Catesby in the mid 1460s, when the knight was in dispute with John Brome II*. Catesby and Brome were rival claimants to an estate at Lapworth in Warwickshire, and in early 1465 Throckmorton and his patron, the earl of Warwick, were party to a series of releases that Catesby collected from the descendants of a former owner.37 CAD, iii. A4251; iv. A4256, 4274, 4381, 4402, 4513, 8410, 8424; v. A10642; E40/4395. In September the following year the quarrel was referred to Throckmorton and his fellow lawyers, Henry Boteler II* and John Beaufitz for arbitration, in an abortive attempt to reach a settlement outside the law courts.38 CAD, iv. 8420, 9613. Throckmorton was also associated with Sir William Herbert* and his younger brother Thomas†. In March 1453 he joined his brother John Throckmorton and others in standing surety for the unruly Thomas, and in June 1457 he and John were pardoned in their capacity as mainpernors for Sir William.39 CCR, 1447-54, p. 426; CPR, 1452-61, p. 360. Both Herberts were prominent followers of Richard, duke of York, in south Wales and the marches, but Throckmorton himself is not known to have had a personal connexion with the duke.

In spite of acting for the Herberts, John Throckmorton took up arms against York and his allies during the conflicts that marred the latter stages of Henry VI’s reign. He paid for his loyalty to the Lancastrian cause with his life, for in February 1461 he was taken prisoner at the battle of Mortimer’s Cross and executed. By contrast, his more circumspect elder brother survived this troubled period apparently unscathed. In all likelihood the pardons Thomas obtained in 1455 and 1458 were a sensible precautionary measure and had no political connotations.40 C67/41, m. 25; 42, m. 32. It is not clear why he was removed from the commission of the peace in the spring of 1454 but he was certainly not persona non grata with the Crown when, just under three years later, he was appointed attorney-general to the young prince of Wales. The appointment was made in spite of his ties with the Yorkist Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, although he possessed an important connexion at the heart of the Lancastrian establishment in the person of Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley, then steward of the Household. It is also possible that the court judged him particularly suitable for the office given his proven expertise in legal and administrative matters.41 Griffiths, 782.

In December 1459 and again in the following February, Throckmorton was placed on anti-Yorkist commissions, and in March 1460 he and (Sir) Walter Skulle* were ordered to defend the city of Worcester against the Yorkists. Notwithstanding his ties with Warwick, his sympathies were with the Lancastrian Crown for as long as Henry VI was on the throne, sympathies that were clearly expressed in the foundation deed, dated 1 May 1460, of his father’s chantry. Its chaplain, for whom he provided lands in Fladbury, Hill and More worth ten marks p.a., was not only expected to pray for members of his own family, both living and dead, but also for the wellbeing of the King and queen and for the souls of the King’s mother and the two previous Lancastrian monarchs.42 Throckmorton mss, CR 1998/Box 48.

At the accession of Edward IV the new government removed Throckmorton from the commission of the peace, no doubt because it was uncertain of his loyalty. Whatever his previous political sympathies, he was no partisan and he was restored to the bench in March 1464. In August the following year, he was made a j.p. in Warwickshire and appointed to a commission of oyer and terminer in the same county, and a few months later he was pricked for a term as sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire. The oyer and terminer commission was issued in the wake of disturbances among the gentry of Warwickshire. In an escalation of a quarrel between Sir Simon Mountfort† and Richard Clapham, there was an outbreak of serious disorder in that county during the summer of 1465. According to later indictments, on 31 July that year Mountfort, along with Sir Richard Verney and John Brome II, attacked Clapham’s property at Alspath with a large band, a raid that led to the death of a man, apparently one of Clapham’s servants. Clapham was a retainer of the earl of Warwick and it is possible that Mountfort was attempting to challenge the earl’s rule in the shire. Whatever the case, on 31 Aug. Warwick joined Throckmorton and other members of the commission at Warwick, to hear a jury indict the offenders.43 KB27/818, rot. 35; 821, rot. 88, rex rots. 6d, 8, 9; 824, rex rot. 23; 826, rex rot. 14d; Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 503-4. Within two years of investigating the ‘treasons’ and other offences of Mountfort and his associates, Throckmorton found it necessary to obtain a general pardon declaring that he himself was innocent of certain treasons and misprisions of which he had been accused.44 CPR, 1467-77, p. 20. The accusations are a matter for speculation since they are not specified in the pardon, dated 26 June 1467, but perhaps they arose from a private quarrel.

At the end of the same decade, Throckmorton was still in the employ of the earl of Warwick, for he was serving as receiver-general of Warwick’s lordship of Glamorgan in south Wales, in the autumn of 1469. During the Readeption of Henry VI, so prominently supported by the earl, he remained a j.p., as he did after Edward IV recovered the throne in the spring of 1471. A few months later, however, he took the precaution of securing a general pardon.45 C67/48, m. 31. On 1 July the following year, Throckmorton and Thomas Burdet* obtained licence to convey the Staffordshire manors of Kinver and Stourton to Sir Roger Tocotes† and others acting for George, duke of Clarence. Clarence, who had succeeded to the earldom of Warwick after the death of his erstwhile ally and father-in-law, Richard Neville, at the battle of Barnet, later granted them to Tewkesbury abbey.46 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 346-7, 530. Throckmorton and Burdet owed their interest in Kinver and Stourton as feoffees of the recently deceased John Hampton II*. In early 1464 Hampton had assigned the manors to them and two co-feoffees, Humphrey Stafford III and Humphrey Salwaye, and at the end of the decade Throckmorton and Burdet recovered Kinver and Stourton from Hampton and his brother Boyce in the common pleas.47 CPR, 1461-7, p. 379; CP40/830, rot. 104. It is unlikely that Hampton, a former member of the Lancastrian Household, willingly entered into the arrangement of 1464, given that it had begun the process leading to the alienation of the properties from his heirs.

The conveyance to Tocotes and his associates occurred just 12 days before Throckmorton died, on 13 July 1472. He was buried with his parents in the parish church at Fladbury and was succeeded by his eldest son Robert, a young man who had only recently attained his majority. On the following 24 Oct., there was an inquisition post mortem for the MP in Warwickshire. In that county he was found to have held the manors of Coughton and Spernall, along with lands in Kinwarton and elsewhere, in his own right and that of Birdingbury in the right of his wife. Excluding Birdingbury, these estates were estimated to bring in an income of some £35 p.a.48 C140/41/33; VCH Worcs. iii. 361.

Throckmorton’s widow did not enjoy an easy widowhood, because in the later 1470s Robert Neville† challenged her title to Weston Underwood. The grandson of a former owner of the manor and a trusted servant of the Yorkist Household, Neville had formally relinquished any claim to the property many years earlier but now he chose to resurrect his claim. Among those drawn into the resulting dispute was Richard, duke of Gloucester. Initially Gloucester was probably acting on Neville’s behalf, but by mid 1476 Neville and his son had granted the title they claimed to him and he was seeking to take the manor for himself. The duke’s intervention represented a formidable challenge but, supported by her son Robert, Margaret Throckmorton stood her ground, writing to him in humble but firm terms in defence of her title. In due course she was able to make good her claims, and Weston, along with the rest of the estates that she had inherited from her parents, passed to Robert Throckmorton. In the same period Margaret fell into dispute with Henry Stafford, duke of Buckingham, over her manor of Roxton, held of the duke’s honour of Gloucester. In April 1478 Stafford forgave her and her feoffees – in return for a payment of 20 marks – for entries that they or their predecessors had made on to the property. In all likelihood the quarrel concerned a feudal due that the duke claimed from the manor.49 Throckmorton mss, CR 1998/box4/bundle 4; box 55/31; box 54/bundle 4; box 61/folder 1/1; 1998/EB/26; 1998/J2/179; CP40/866, rot. 360d; Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 525-6.

Margaret Throckmorton survived until at least the early 1480s, for she was still alive in the autumn of 1481. At the end of October that year John Throckmorton, one of her younger sons, acknowledged that he had received 100 marks from her in full satisfaction of all goods and chattels bequeathed to him, presumably in his father’s no longer extant will.50 CCR, 1476-85, no. 847. Apart from John and his elder brother Robert, she had borne Throckmorton at least two other sons and five daughters, of whom Elizabeth became a nun. Elizabeth was the last abbess of Denny, a house of minoresses in Cambridgeshire, and in the mid 1520s she and her convent corresponded with the great Dutch scholar Erasmus. Following the Dissolution, she ended her days in retirement at Coughton.51 VCH Warws. vi. 78; VCH Cambs. ii. 301-2.