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WYBURGH, Thomas (by 1460-1531 or later), of Maldon, Essex.
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Biography Detail
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Family and Education
b. by 1460.2
Offices Held
Warden, Maldon 1481, constable 1489, chamberlain 1492, bailiff 1493-5, 1497-8, 1499-1500, 1503-4, 1510-11, 1512-13, 1516-17, 1518, 1522-4, 1527-8, 1529-30, 1531; commr. subsidy, Maldon 1523, Essex 1524.3
Biography
The only native and office-holder of Maldon known to have sat for the borough in Parliament during the early Tudor period, Thomas Wyburgh clearly owed his election to his 40 years of municipal service. No evidence has been found that he was paid parliamentary wages, although his fellow-Member John Bozom was, exceptionally, given 40s. His assessment of £260 for the subsidy which he helped to grant—more than double the next largest and far exceeding those of most of his fellow-townsmen—shows that Wyburgh could afford to meet his own costs, and this may mean that he had been elected to the Parliaments of 1512 and 1515, for each of which the name of only one Member has survived. In 1515 the Maldon court book records the admission of John Strangman to the freedom following his election, and its silence in respect of the other Member implies that he was already a freeman.4
No trace has been found of Wyburgh’s parentage and little of his personal affairs. In 1511 he purchased 24 acres of land at Bradwell-near-the-Sea for £20. He was joint defendant in 1526 or 1527 in a suit in the court of requests for recovery of land at Tillingham, Essex, which he claimed to have quietly enjoyed for over 43 years; the abbot of Waltham, who was commissioned to hear the case, reported that the plaintiff did not pursue the action. The frequency of Wyburgh’s mention in the borough records until 1531 makes its disappearance thereafter all but proof of his death at about that time, while the fact that it does not recur in a further generation implies that he left no son or at least none who remained in the town.5
