WILD, Thomas (by 1508-59), of The Ford and Worcester, Worcs.

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 1508, s. of Simon Wild of The Ford. m. (1) by 1529, Alice, da. of Robert Ledington of Worcester, 1s. 2da.; (2) Eleanor, da. and coh. of George Wall of Droitwich, 2s. inc. George 1da.2

Offices Held

Chamberlain, Worcester 1545-6, bailiff 1547-8, bridgemaster 1554-5, member of the Twenty-Four 1555, auditor 1555-6.3

Biography

A clothier who was probably the second of his family and trade to settle and prosper in Worcester, Thomas Wild was elected to the Parliament of 1547 to replace John Braughing who had died about Whitsuntide 1551. He attended most of the last session which opened on 23 Jan. 1552, receiving on 28 Apr. a payment of £7 6s. for 73 days at the customary rate of 2s. a day. Re-elected to the Parliament of 1558, he and his fellow-Member Robert Youle set out on 16 Jan., four days before the opening of the first session, returning on 11 Mar., four days after its close, and receiving payment accordingly ‘over and above other charges allowed’ by the city. It was in this Parliament that Worcester’s repeated efforts to secure the amendment of an Edwardian statute regulating the cloth trade finally succeeded (6 Edw. VI, c.6; 4 and 5 Phil. and Mary, c.5) and it may well have been in this connexion that Wild was accused of slandering John Marshe, one of the Members for London, by saying ‘that he had unburdened the clothiers from the search of cloths and laid it upon the buyers’. On 18 Feb. the House committed the matter to the consideration of Sir John Baker and Mr. Mason, probably Robert Mason who sat for Ludlow rather than Sir John Mason.4

Wild shared with Youle an interest in the Worcester free school, and while attending Parliament together either in 1552 or in 1558 they procured from the crown £6 a year for its master. In his will of 19 May 1558 Wild bequeathed Little Pitchcroft and four-and-a-half acres in Great Pitchcroft to re-establish the school ‘for the bringing up of youth in their ABC, matins and evensong and other learning’. The extract thus preserved in the city records is the only trace found of Wild’s will. Besides the property there mentioned, in 1544 he had bought the hospital of St. Wulfstan in Worcester, known as the Commandery, from Richard Morison for £498. In 1551 he joined with Youle and others to purchase Trinity Hall, Worcester, and in the same year with Hugh Wild, perhaps his brother, to buy a manor in Bromsgrove: in 1559 Hugh Wild conveyed his interest to Wild and Wild’s eldest son Robert. Wild died on 11 Aug. 1559 and Robert, then in his 30s, had licence to enter on his lands in the following June. Wild’s goods were valued by inventory at £700 and his house, the Commandery, had 31 rooms, one of them containing 20 feather beds.5

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Alan Davidson

Notes

  • 1. Did not serve for the full duration of the Parliament; Hatfield 207.
  • 2. Date of birth estimated from marriage. Vis. Worcs. (Harl. Soc. xxvii), 151.
  • 3. Worcester Guildhall, audit of accts. 1540-1600; Nash, Worcs. ii. app. cxii; A. F. Leach, Early Educ. in Worcester (Worcs. Hist. Soc. 1913), 178; CPR, 1554-5, p. 81.
  • 4. A. D. Dyer, Worcester in 16th Cent., 187; Worcester Guildhall, chamber order bk. 1540-1601, ff. 43v, 72v; CJ, i. 49.
  • 5. Leach, pp. xxxv, 198-9, 217; VCH Worcs. ii. 293; iii. 26; iv. 392, 479; LP Hen. VIII, xix; CPR, 1550-3, p. 217; 1553, p. 108; 1558-60, pp. 271, 448; C142/128/94; Dyer, 101.