HOOD, Thomas

More may be added to the earlier biography.1 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 411.

In the later part of the reign of Henry V Hood and another Leominster burgess, Thomas Turball, were involved in an episode illustrative of the dangers of service on an indicting jury. They complained to the keeper of the realm, John, duke of Bedford, that, for their temerity in truthfully indicting William Croft of Croft for the murder of another gentleman, Thomas Lingen, they had become the victims of a campaign of intimidation by Croft and his adherents, among whom was Croft’s brother-in-law, Makelin Walwyn*.2 SC8/306/15292. Earlier, on 11 June 1400 our MP had travelled on pilgrimage to the church of St. Margaret at Wellington, some seven miles to the south of Leominster, and there witnessed the baptism of Thomas Dounton. This, at least, is the testimony he gave at Dounton’s proof of age in 1423, when he gave his own age as 47.3 CIPM, xxii. 357. This implies that he was not a young man when he represented Leominster in Parliament. Other evidence suggests that there was a younger namesake who, at the age of about 30, was present at another baptism in Wellington church on 4 Apr. 1427. It is therefore probable that more than one Thomas Hood attested 12 Leominster parliamentary elections from 1414 to 1453, but one can only speculate where, if anywhere, a line is to be drawn between the career of our MP and that of his younger namesake. The best guess is that the MP died in the late 1430s and it was the younger man who attested the elections of 1449 (Feb.), 1449 (Nov.) and 1453. On this assumption, it was the latter, who, described as a gentleman, sat as juror at Leominster on 9 Aug. 1446 in an inquisition into the lands of Henry Beauchamp, late duke of Warwick.4 CIPM, xxvi. 142, 437.

There is little else to add to the previous biography save that the MP’s commercial interests were probably, by the standards of his native borough, quite extensive. In Hilary term 1432, for example, he had actions of debt totaling 34 marks pending against several local men, including three of the borough’s MPs, his kinsman, Walter Hood*, John Walker* and John Crewe*.5 CP40/686, rot. 365d.