LAURENCE, Thomas

Thomas Laurence was a younger son of a family with a strong tradition of parliamentary service in Lancashire. An earlier younger son of the family, John†, had represented the county in the previous generation, and our MP, through the influence of his father as sheriff, was to do the same. He first appears in the records on 15 May 1429 when he witnessed, in company with his father, an act of homage at Billinge Hill in Witton (near Blackburn), and on 7 Apr. 1432 he attested the county parliamentary election at Lancaster, as he was to do regularly thereafter. His next appearance in the records is much more surprising. At the election of 19 Sept. 1435, conducted by his father as sheriff, he was himself returned to represent the shire in Parliament. It was a position for which he was scarcely qualified and his election, as too that of his elder brother in 1429, was engineered by their father. The return is slightly irregular in that none of the county’s knights appear among the attestors. It is also worth noting that several of the attestors were closely connected with the Laurences. Nicholas Croft, whose daughter was our MP’s sister-in-law, headed the 39 witnesses to the election, and three other Crofts were present, as was our MP’s cousin, Robert Washington.1 Lancs. RO, National Trust deeds, DDN 1/29; Lancs. Knights of the Shire (Chetham Soc. xcvi), 217-19. This, however, hardly proves that the sheriff exerted improper influence to secure his son’s election, and it is more likely that there was no competition for the seat.

Although Laurence did not have land enough to qualify for a county seat, he may not have been landless. Later evidence shows that he held the manor of Yealand Redmayne on the Lancashire side of the shire’s border with Westmorland and a few miles from his father’s manor of Carnforth. It is almost certain that he acquired it by marriage to Mabel, daughter of John Croft of Durslet in Dalton, a cousin of Agnes Croft, the wife of his elder brother, and it is likely that the marriage took place before his election.2 VCH Lancs. viii. 176. However this may be, he was to acquire further land soon after his service in Parliament. In 21 Dec. 1438, shortly before he died, Sir Robert made landed provision for his three younger sons, granting to our MP for life his lands at Natland (near Kendal), a few miles north of Yealand Redmayne. These were valued in Sir Robert’s inquisition post mortem at ten marks p.a., and, together with his wife’s inheritance, they explain why our MP was assessed, no doubt conservatively, on an annual income of £9 to the subsidy of 1450.3 C139/100/44; PL3/3/26.

Shortly after his father’s death in the autumn of 1439, Laurence came into violent conflict with his neighbour, Thomas Bethom* of Beetham, one of the leading gentry of Westmorland. The cause of their quarrel is not known, but it seems that the two men were already on poor terms as early as the mid 1430s. This is to be inferred from Bethom’s nomination as a collector in Lancashire for the fifteenth and tenth granted in the Parliament of 1435: the MPs were responsible for making nominations, and it is probably more than coincidence that Laurence sat in this assembly. Bethom’s appointment was irregular in that the right of nomination in Lancashire was the responsibility of the chancellor of the county palatine rather than the King. For this reason the commission was quickly set aside; none the less, Bethom must have resented Laurence’s part in the affair and resentment soon found expression in violence.4 CFR, xvi. 287-8. If indictments taken before the Lancashire j.p.s. are to be taken at face value, on 19 Mar. 1440 four of Bethom’s servants allegedly came with 400 armed men to Yealand Redmayne and set fire to Laurence’s houses there. This was the probable context of bonds, dated at Yealand Redmayne on the following 10 June, entered into by Bethom and one of his sons to our MP in 200 marks each, perhaps as an earnest of their readiness to abide arbitration. If so, that arbitration was unsuccessful for, on 9 May 1443, Bethom himself is said to have led 300 men in a raid on Yealand Redmayne, assaulting Laurence and his servants, who were then employed in digging turfs. This new violence prompted the intervention of the county’s j.p.s.: on the following 10 Aug. at Lancaster, before Thomas Haryngton I*, John Urswick and William Ambrose, indictments were taken against Bethom and many of his followers for both raids. This seems to have brought the matter to an end, and Bethom was acquitted on 8 Mar. 1445.5 PL15/6, rots. 23d, 25; 7, rot. 17; 8, rots. 17d, 29.

This dramatic passage of Laurence’s life was not to be repeated. He makes only sporadic appearances in the records later in his life. At the Lent assizes at Lancaster in 1449 he was inconclusively sued by another of his neighbours, Robert Rolston, rector of Warton, for a debt of over £40, partly arising from a brief period in the early 1440s when he had farmed the rectory’s tithes.6 PL15/13, rot. 20. More interesting, on 12 Nov. 1459 he was named third of the 91 attestors to the Lancashire election to the Coventry Parliament. This election had a particular local context. The rout of the Yorkists at Ludford Bridge a month earlier had exposed to ruin one of the leading figures of the county, (Sir) Thomas Haryngton I, a committed Yorkist now in Lancastrian captivity. The principal purpose of the Parliament was to attaint the Yorkists, and it is likely that the result of the Lancashire hustings were determined by a desire to prevent Sir Thomas from sharing that fate. His cousin, Sir Richard Haryngton*, was elected alongside Henry Halsall*, a close associate of the Haryngtons, by attestors headed by Sir Thomas’s eldest son, John, and Sir Richard’s eldest son, William. Our MP’s name appears next and his own sons, Edmund and William, also appear, implying that he was sympathetic to Sir Thomas’s cause.7 Lancs. Knights of the Shire, 225-6.

Laurence lived through the civil war of 1459-61 but there is no evidence that he played any part in the battles of those years. He last appears in the records in August 1467, when he was sued by his sister-in-law, the widow of his elder brother, for the repayment of £33 he had borrowed as long before as 1445. He probably died soon afterwards and was succeeded by his eldest son John.8 PL15/32, rots. 7d, 31; VCH Lancs. viii. 176.