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GIBBON (GUYBON), Thomas (1470/71-1531), of West Lynn, Norf.
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Family and Education
b. 1470/71, s. of Gregory Gibbon of West Lynn by Alice, da. of Thomas Person of Ely, I. of E. m. (1) by 1507, Elizabeth, da. of Thomas Thoresby of Lynn, 2s. 2da.; (2) Rose, 1da. suc. fa. 24 Apr. 1480.2
Offices Held
Chamberlain, Lynn 1501-2, jurat 1512-d.; sheriff, Norf. and Suff. 1513-14; commr. subsidy, Lynn 1523, 1524.3
Biography
Thomas Gibbon was styled gentleman when he was admitted to the freedom of Lynn at Michaelmas 1502, on payment of 40s., immediately after his election as chamberlain of the borough, but in later life he was usually styled esquire, perhaps in recognition of legal qualifications of which no other trace has been found. His first marriage linked him with the Thoresby family, which had furnished two earlier Members for Lynn in Henry and Robert Thoresby and a mayor in his father-in-law Thomas Thoresby; it also made him a relative of John Grindell, another former mayor and Member with whom he was to oppose the Lynn assembly’s decision of November 1514 to negotiate with the bishop of Norwich about the town’s liberties.4
Gibbon had been similarly at odds with the assembly when on 10 Jan. 1504 he had first been elected to Parliament; he had then ‘utterly refused’ the duty and had been replaced. Six years later it was a different story, for on 7 Jan. 1510 he and Francis Monford accepted election in place of the two men originally chosen but excused: his reelection was in line with the borough’s practice of choosing the same person on two successive occasions. On 22 Mar., a month after the Parliament ended, he and Monford reported its legislation to the assembly, and on 8 June they handed over at the guildhall the charters which they had taken with them to London and the confirmation of the charter of 1484 which they had obtained; they also returned £2 out of the £20 given to them for that purpose. Gibbon was not to sit again and the assembly’s decision of December 1520 to excuse his absence from assembly meetings unless he was specifically summoned reflects his diminishing part in municipal life; he was, however, named a subsidy commissioner for the town in 1523 and 1524, and he was one of those whom the 3rd Duke of Norfolk reported to Wolsey in April 1525 as having guaranteed the payment of its share of the Amicable Grant of that year.5
Gibbon died possessed of lands in and around Lynn, most of them held by feoffees. By his will of 26 Jan. 1531 he asked these feoffees to give his wife Rose an estate in all his lands and to pay her what they yielded in income, but by word of mouth he instructed her to vest the remainder in the lands in his heir Thomas Gibbon, with £20 a year reserved to the younger son Anthony, and to dispose of his goods after discharging certain charitable requests, receiving £200 herself and giving her co-executor Francis Monford £40. He died on 21 Feb. 1531 and the will was proved on the following 14 Nov. Thomas Gibbon was aged 30 years and more when his father’s inquisition was taken on 23 Aug. 1538.6
Ref Volumes: 1509-1558
Author: Roger Virgoe
Notes
- 1. Lynn congregation bk. 4, f. 98.
- 2. Date of birth estimated from age at fa.’s i.p.m., C140/74/13. Vis. Norf. (Harl. Soc. xxxii), 141; Blomefield, Norf. i. 365; PCC 11 Thower.
- 3. Lynn congregation bk. 4, ff. 50v, 120; LP Hen. VIII, iii, iv.
- 4. Lynn congregation bk. 4, ff. 51v, 147v.
- 5. HP, ed. Wedgwood, 1439-1509 (Biogs.), 404; Lynn congregation bk. 4, ff. 57, 98-100, 227; LP Hen. VIII, iv.
- 6. PCC 11 Thower; E150/138/9.