Family and Education

m. Agnes.

Offices Held

Collector, customs and subsidies, Melcombe Regis and adjacent ports 24 Mar. 1401-Nov. 1417.

Tax collector, Dorset Dec. 1402.

Alnager, Dorset 13 Feb. 1405-10.

Biography

It was as ‘of Wareham’ that in May 1394 Thomas Barbour witnessed the will of John Russell alias Preston of Dorchester, whose brother Thomas I* had sat in three Parliaments for Melcombe Regis. On 22 Oct. 1399, during his second Parliament and along with his fellow Member for Wareham, Adam Denys, Barbour provided securities at the Exchequer for the newly appointed customers of Melcombe, Simon atte Ford* of Bridport and John Oke. Three months after the dissolution of the same Parliament, in February 1400, he and another Wareham man were granted an Exchequer lease for ten years of lands in east Purbeck, extending from Kingston (in Corfe) to ‘Warhammeswey’, their custody being back-dated to the first day of Henry IV’s reign. Although referred to as a ‘barber’ in 1402, Barbour was principally a merchant; and he probably traded at Melcombe where he served as customs’ collector for 16 years. For five of these he also acted as an alnager for Dorset, which perhaps suggests that he had a personal interest in the cloth trade. Barbour attended the meetings of the shire court held at Dorchester to report the results of the Wareham elections to the Parliaments of 1407, 1413 and 1414.1

The full extent of Barbour’s landed interests is not known, but when, in 1415, the prior of Montacute (Somerset) accused him at the Dorchester assizes of illegally occupying his lands in Holme, near Wareham, he was acquitted. He also died seised of property in Wareham and Worgret, of which his widow was in possession by 1421, when the feudal services were payable to Richard Byle.2

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

• 1. JUST 1/1519 m. 21; CFR, xii. 4, 42; E372/245, 247; C219/10/4, 11/2, 3, 5.
• 2. JUST 1/1529 mm. 3d, 16; Dorset Feet of Fines, ii. 296.