JUBBES, Thomas (by 1471-1533), of the Middle Temple, London and Bristol, Glos.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. by 1471, 1st surv. s. of Matthew Jubbes of Cardiff, Glam. and Bristol by Martha. educ. M. Temple. m. by 1492, Maud, 2da. suc. fa. 1500/2.2

Offices Held

Bencher, M. Temple 1505, autumn reader 1505, assistant 1508, 1512, Lent reader 1510, auditor 1506, treasurer 1511-12.

Servant of Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham by 1504-21; j.p. Som. 1506-14, 1521-d.; commr. subsidy 1514, 1523, 1524, Bristol 1523; recorder, Bristol 1522-d.3

Biography

The principal legatee and sole executor of the will of his father who had been sheriff of Bristol in 1494-5, Thomas Jubbes entered the Middle Temple where on 10 Nov. 1502 he was temporarily dispensed from all offices and permitted on payment of £3 6s.8d. to be in and out of commons at his liking. On the execution of Sir Richard Empson, Jubbes and his partner were admitted to Empson’s former chambers.4

Jubbes was in the service of Edward, Duke of Buckingham, by the fiscal year 1503-4 when he received black and red cloth for his livery as well as silk and velvet as one of the gentlemen of the duke’s entourage. By 1512-13 Jubbes was a member of Buckingham’s inner council and in receipt of an annuity of £2. He was among the senior servants and friends of Buckingham who brought collusive actions against the duke to free his property from entails. Unlike some of his other lawyers, Jubbes served Buckingham in a more than occasional capacity: the accounts of the duke’s cofferer make frequent references to Jubbes’s visits to Thornbury Castle from Bristol either alone or later with Thomas Matson and Richard Broke; all three waited on Buckingham the week before his arrest.5

The churchwardens of St. Ewen’s, Bristol, had retained Jubbes’s counsel in 1500-1. If he was not then already living in Bristol, he shortly afterwards acquired a house in Redcliffe Street, where his goods were assessed at 40s.for the subsidies of 1523 and 1524. He probably obtained the recordership of Bristol through his family’s connexion with the town and on the recommendation of his predecessor, a close friend and fellow Middle Templar, John Fitzjames. When Jubbes was appointed, it was stipulated that he had to be at Westminster during the law terms, but this did not mean that he received no parliamentary wages: sometime before his death on 7 Aug. 1533 he was paid £5 6s.8d. for ‘parliament money’ and other expenses. It was as recorder that he was returned for Bristol to the Parliament of 1529: he had probably already sat in that of 1523 and as a servant of Buckingham’s he may have been elected elsewhere to one or more of the earlier Parliaments of the century. Nothing is known of his part in any of their proceedings.6

By his will, dated 3 July 1533 and evidently made at Bristol since it was witnessed by other residents, among them David Harris and Thomas Lansden, Jubbes asked to be buried in the Lady chapel of St. Thomas’s church, to which he bequeathed £20 towards vestments. After several small bequests to friends and servants, he left his wife £40 in money, £40 in plate, and her dower; his daughter Alice some silver, and his grandson Francis Stradling ‘all [his] evidences ... concerning [his] lands ... and also all [his] books ... concerning the law and otherwise’. John Shipman and Thomas White I were appointed executors. At the inquisition held at Frome, Somerset, on 29 Oct. 1533, Jubbes was found to have held property in Chew Episcopi and Easton in Gordano which he had enfeoffed to the use of his wife and daughter who was reported to be aged 40 years and more. The recordership went to Cromwell and the vacant seat in Parliament to David Broke.7

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: A. D.K. Hawkyard

Notes

  • 1. Did not serve for the full duration of the Parliament.
  • 2. Date of birth estimated from marriage. Stradling Corresp. ed. Traherne, xx-xxi; D. Powel, Hist. Cambria (1584), 139-40; PCC 10 Blamyr, 7 Hogen; C142/83/297.
  • 3. Staffs. RO, D641/1/2/89, 3/9; CPR, 1494-1509, p. 657; Statutes, iii. 115; LP Hen. VIII, i, iii, iv; Bristol AO, 0427/8.
  • 4. M.T. Recs. i. 4, 36, 41.
  • 5. E36/220 et passim; SC6, Hen. VIII/5819 m. 4; C. Rawcliffe, The Staffords, Earls of Stafford and Dukes of Buckingham 1394-1521, pp. 150, 152 n. 20, 228, 241; LP Hen. VIII, iii.
  • 6. B. R. Masters and E. Ralph, Church Bks. St. Ewen’s, Bristol, 149; E179/113/192, 205; Bristol AO, 04026/1/170, 2/13, 2/328; 0427/8.
  • 7. PCC 7 Hogen; C142/83/297.